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The Crytek Advanced Research and Development Corporation
OVERVIEW
The Crytek Research and Development Corporation is a shadow company that operates largely within Republic space. Dealing in illegal high-tech products that range from military-grade cybernetics to bioweapons, the Corporation has found a place for itself within the black market. It conducts its dealings anonymously, relying on a robust network of spies and contacts to broker deals with potential buyers. CARD’s only loyalty is to credits and itself, and thus usually works for the highest bidder.
HISTORY
[Skip this if you like.]
[Skip this if you like.]
Shadow Corporations. A favorite subject of babbling conspiracy theorists, shadow companies are supposedly corporate structures that had disappeared from the public eye and work completely underground. They pay no taxes, observe no law, and their goods flow almost exclusively to the black market and those few planets who are willing to turn a blind eye to the illicit services provided by the companies. Most of the better known shadow companies have been proven to be nothing more than rumors. The Jarill Arms Company, Tannith Medical, Elysium Robotics; these famous corporations and more have been brought to light and shown to be naught but widely spread fables.
However, one of these ‘rumors’ has yet to be dismissed: the shadow corporation known as CARD. These elusive company was once a famous research and development agency, brought to its knees a decade ago by a series of lawsuits, probing investigations, and incidents of corporate espionage. Rather than allow itself to be destroyed, CARD decided to slip away. It liquidated all of its planetary assets, laundered and hid every last credit it had, and loaded everything it could save aboard three research ships, guarded by three destroyers and nine corvettes. In the last days of the company, they were sent into deep space on a ‘research mission’ that CARD stated would revitalize the company. In reality, the fleet was their ark; the key to their corporate survival.
One month after the fleet’s departure, they declared bankruptcy. Their CEO committed suicide with considerable help from a CARD security officer, their lead researchers dropped out of the eye of the scientific community, and their security forces moved towards the Outer Rim. After a year, their long-range fleet was declared lost and their ships struck from the Republic naval registry. CARD had, in effect, disappeared.
They weren’t gone for long, though. The company was frighteningly quick to pull itself together. Within a few months, they had recalled their researchers and security teams. The fleet’s research ships were bustling with activity; research was ongoing and projects were being finished up. CARD, not willing to wait until their financial reserves were exhausted, sent out scouts to seek out and establish contact with the black market. CARD had soon integrated itself with the criminal world, buying its raw materials and selling its goods almost exclusively through black market dealers.
As the years went on, CARD spread out. They mothballed their destroyers and six of their corvettes, leaving the bulk of their military fleet hidden away in deep space. The remaining three corvettes were paired with a research ship, and each duo was sent to an isolated locale.
One moved into orbit over Borleias and linked with a CARD facility already in place there. A second hid in deep space near Coruscant, using hyperspace-capable shuttles to connect it with its black market contacts on Coruscant’s underworld. The third roved the galaxy via less-traveled hyperspace routes and visiting neutral or Hutt-aligned worlds, collecting specimens and raw materials for CARD’s research projects and distributing them to its sister ships.
This trinity of research ships - the Illusory Heart, the Noblesse Oblige, and the Dreamcatcher - formed CARD’s backbone for several years. The support they provide has been augmented through the addition of a number of legitimate front companies and refuges that have been set up on a handful of worlds across the Galaxy. These range from large installations, such as the Viceroy Casino and Hotel on Coruscant, to a tiny safe houses, such as the Elysium House on Naboo.
It has been a slow and painful process, but CARD has climbed back from the ashes of its stinging corporate defeat a decade ago. Now operating outside the law and armed with a robust array of spies and contacts, the company is more profitable than ever. CARD recognizes no boundary or law, and happily offers its services to the highest bidder.
SERVICES
CARD researches, develops, and manufactures new technology. Much of what is developed is military-oriented; directed energy weapons, explosives, chemical and biological agents, and cybernetic augmentations have all been thoroughly researched within CARD laboratories. To this end, the corporation sells weapons and augmentations to interested buyers, in addition to renting out elements of their security force as bodyguards and assassins.
They always make their deals anonymously, and so they rely largely on agents and contacts to meet with potential clients, assess the risk and profit of a deal, and then broker -or abandon- the deal. As CARD does not have a specific list of goods or services provided, it is their broker’s responsibility to gauge a client’s needs and prepare a list of services that would best suit that client.
BRANCHES
The Corporation has three major branches.
ADMINISTRATION takes care of all management duties. The Legates, three in number, are the executive officers of CARD. They, along with the Board of Directors, dictate corporate strategies, examine major deals, and set research priorities. The Legates are appointed every year by a vote conducted within the Administration branch, and they have the power to veto any decision made by the Directors. Conversely, the directors are voted into office every two years by a popular vote of the Research and Security branches. This ensures that the entire company has a voice in how it is run.
There is one Director at each major CARD facility. The Legates are free to station themselves wherever they please, so long as they remain in a CARD facility and are in constant contact with the Board.
RESEARCH handles all research, development, and manufacturing related duties within CARD. They are divided into four departments; Military, Medical, General, and Production. Each department is overseen by a Head of Research, with the exception of Production, which is overseen by a Foreman. As their names suggest, these departments are responsible for military, medical, and general research, respectively. Production is responsible for manufacturing any and all devices created by the three research departments.
SECURITY is in charge of all military operations in CARD. Composed of the Security Bureau and the Special Operations Legion, the Security branch is responsible for guarding installations, providing protection details, and eliminating rivals and corporate threats. The Security Bureau utilizes heavily armed and armored officers who patrol CARD’s facilities, as well as plainsclothes investigators who seek out traitors and spies, in addition to acting as brokers with the black market and potential buyers.
The Special Operations Legion, on the other hand, is a special purpose force used almost exclusively outside of CARD facilities. Legionnaires are put through four months of brutal basic training, with another two to three months of specialization training atop that. Culled from the ranks of mercenaries, ex-cons, and veteran soldiers, these men are thoroughly broken by the Legion’s trainers and then built back up into cold and precise killers, loyal only to CARD. The Legion is careful not to turn them into drones, however; a thinking soldier is far more dangerous than a robotic warrior.
Legionnaires are usually deployed to chase down and terminate test subjects, corporate spies, and anyone who is getting too close to discovering that CARD exists. Thanks to the fact that an individual Legionnaire is just as capable of working alone as he is capable of working in a team, these soldiers can be deployed on solo assassination and sabotage missions, making the Legion CARD’s best tool for solving their problems through force of action.
PROJECTS
Some of CARD’s most notable projects are listed here. This section will be expanded upon as more projects are researched and developed, be they for CARD's private use or for the use of customers.
-Advanced Combat Entity Project
The ACE Project was brought together with the purpose of designing and creating perfect soldiers through the use of extensive cybernetic augmentations. There have been four tiers thus far. Listed from oldest to newest, they are Delta, Beta, Alpha, and Omega.
The Deltas were little more than robot zombies. Horrifically disfigured and driven insane by their augments, Deltas viciously attacked anything they couldn’t recognize as being similar to themselves. They boast wicked claws and fangs as their sole means of attack, and have rudimentary intelligence. They are capable of scaling walls and ceilings with their claws, and attempt to swarm opponents using primitive pack-like tactics. They are frail and easily defeated; the Deltas are no longer manufactured by CARD, but they can be found stored at various abandoned CARD facilities.
Betas were slightly better than Deltas. Unlike the Deltas, who were culled from every bipedal race available, Betas consisted mostly of humans and near-humans. Outwardly, they look very much so normal, though their synthetic eyes glow a disturbing red. Their muscles have been replaced with outdated synthetic muscles bolstered by hydraulics, giving them considerable strength - though they still aren’t quite a match for a wookiee. They have average reaction times and are reasonably nimble. However, their augments caused considerable brain damage; they are barely capable of forming coherent sentences and only obey very simple commands. They are prone to insanity and dangerous spurts of uninhibited aggression. As such, Betas are no longer in production. Like Deltas, they can be found abandoned in a handful of facilities once owned by CARD.
The Alpha is a unique ACE. Only one was made. Tube-grown and trained rigorously since infancy, with considerable amounts of flash-learning augmenting his physical conditioning, the Alpha was incredibly dangerous without his augments. Once augmented, he was a super soldier. CARD believed their Alpha to be the perfect embodiment of the ACE Project… At least, until he developed a conscience, realized he was a slave, and started tearing people’s heads off. The Alpha was subdued -after considerable damage to personnel and property had been done- and stuck in cryostasis, the Alpha series was discontinued, and the Omega tier was created.
Omegas are the current mass-production ACE model. While early versions used the advanced neural net, synthetic eyes and muscles, healing capabilities, and computer systems integrated into the Alpha, they were also culled from less-than-willing volunteers. As such, early Omegas tried their best to escape, and behavioral control implants did virtually nothing, aside from driving anyone implanted with one insane - considering that all Omegas retained full cognitive abilities and suffered no mental trauma of any kind, much like the Alpha, insanity was not a very desirable thing. Ultimately, CARD began recruiting volunteers into the Omega program, causing a dramatic increase in the loyalty towards CARD displayed by the Omegas. Still, a few physically astounding specimens are forcibly recruited; these poor souls are controlled through the use of addictive substances, blackmail, and anything else CARD can dream up.
-Project Ocelot
The Ocelot Program is a super soldier project designed entirely by Professor Renee Vadim and her team. In many ways the antithesis of the ACE project, the Ocelot program focused solely on improving the preexisting capabilities of an individual, rather than adding entirely new ones. Furthermore, it did so through the use of genetic engineering and therapy, rather than relying on expensive and invasive cybernetic augmentation. While the effects of Ocelot modification take months, if not years, to be fully felt by the subject, there is no recovery time and none of the risks posed by cybernetic augmenting.
As a 30-something year old program, much like the ACE project, the Ocelot program again differs from its cousin in its success rate. With a overall subject fatality/failure rate of less than 1%, compared to the 34% fatality/failure rate of the ACE project, the Ocelot program is considerably more successful and less expensive than the ACE project, though it is notable that Ocelots are less capable and far slower to prepare than ACE units, as ACE’s are flash-trained and quickly augmented, sometimes reaching combat readiness in weeks as opposed to months or years.
Currently, Ocelot genetic modification focuses on improving the performance of the nervous system, cardiovascular system, regenerative systems, sensory systems, the muscular system, and the skeletal system. Bone and muscle density is typically doubled if not tripled, making an Ocelot far stronger and tougher than a normal man without altering his appearance. Sensory organs are improved, enabling an Ocelot to see farther and with better clarity, to hear a wider range of sounds and from a farther distance, to be more sensitive to touch, and less receptive to pain. The cardiovascular system is improved, toughening and strengthening the heart so that it can cope with the demands of an increasingly altered body. Regenerative systems are improved, enabling rapid wound healing and, remarkably, somewhat slowing the aging process, theoretically adding a decade or so onto an individual’s life. Lastly, the nervous system is augmented, vastly improving redundancy and response time, which endows an Ocelot with superhuman reflexes.
It’s worth noting that the Ocelot program has also conducted extensive research into the use of genetic therapy to correct genetic abnormalities and diseases and their experiments have met with tremendous success. As such, CARD usually suggests to all married couples or parents within its ranks that their children are tested for genetic defects and, if any are found, that they allow the Ocelot program to correct them. As the service is free and anonymous, many parents working for CARD have taken advantage of the offer.
At the moment, the Ocelot program is the only super soldier project in CARD’s ranks to exclusively use volunteers. As such, it has Ishikawa’s full support and, to a lesser extent, the support of the Legion. It is also the only super soldier project that is marketed by CARD, as customers are allowed to pay to be augmented or to have their personnel augmented.
HOLDINGS
CARD maintains various safehouses and front companies throughout the galaxy. Most of these do not turn any sort of profit back to CARD, but a few installations are surprisingly lucrative, supplying CARD with a stream of raw materials, test subjects, and almighty Credits.
-The Dome, Underwater Research Facility, Manaan, Large
-The Institute, Research Lab, Borleias, Large
-Naboo Safehouse, Theed. 2 Bedrooms, 1 Bathroom.
-Eriadu Complex. Manufacturing plant, large, 800 employees.
-Viceroy Casino and Hotel, Coruscant. Massive, 1,200 non-CARD Employees, 200 Security Bureau Personnel.
-3x Corellia Ship Fabrication 'Titan' Class Research Vessels
Names: Noblesse Oblige, Dreamcatcher, Illusory Heart
Length: 650 Meters
Armament:
20x Dual-Linked Point Defense Laser Cannon Turrets
Notes: Non-military ship. Weak armor, average shielding. Has tremendous power generation ability and can very quickly charge up its hyperdrives, allowing it to flee from any trouble that finds it. Modular; it can swap out compartments at any dry dock, or jettison modules in an emergency.
3x Corellia Ship Fabrication 'Defender' Escort Corvettes
Length: 120M
Armament:
2x Quad-linked Heavy Laser Cannon Turrets
4x CIWS Combi-turrets; 30MM Gatling Mass Driver, 4 Proton Torpedo Tubes, and 2 10-round Concussion Missile pods per Combi-turret.
Notes: Outdated. Weak armor, strong shields, fast. Most effective against fighters and gunships.
PERSONNEL
930 - Administration
15,890 - Research, Development, and Production
15,000 Crytek Naval Self-Defense Force
3,500 Crytek Marine Corps
950 - Special Operations Legion
243 - Omega Tier, ACE Project
Crytek Naval Defense Force / Crytek Marine Corps info thread located HERE.
930 - Administration
15,890 - Research, Development, and Production
15,000 Crytek Naval Self-Defense Force
3,500 Crytek Marine Corps
950 - Special Operations Legion
243 - Omega Tier, ACE Project
Sign-up thread located HERE.
Crytek Naval Defense Force / Crytek Marine Corps info thread located HERE.
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