A/N: Literally so bored at work during meetings I wrote this. Editing Gang did not review.

Subfile AYT-MERC-001a : ECLIPSE

Prepared by Senior Agent Dagama, reporting specialist.

Compiled by Master Field Agent Kossi, Executive Agent SOLUTHUS, Senior Agent Soril, Senior Agent Dagama, Master Agent Kolar (retired), and Master Agent Unai (retired)

This is a Virshan-Orange file. Distribution is for senior (non-FCA/non-FAC) agents and specialists only.

Of all the mercenary companies and groups extant in the greater galactic community today, the oldest, largest, deadliest and most terrifying is the asari group known only as the Eclipse. In the past seven centuries it has gone from a group of wild amateurs to becoming a nearly religious aspect of asari society.

Officially, the Eclipse is only one mercenary group. Unofficially there are at least thirty and possibly upwards of forty 'subchapters', at well over a hundred 'splinter' groups. On paper and to the public media, these groups are independent. In reality, all of them answer to one person.

The Dark Queen Matriarch, Jona Sederis.

While covering the history of mercenary groups may seem like pointless tasking, I have discovered that knowing where something comes from – the forces that lead to its creation and its success, or the factors that determined its courses of action – are more important than dry recitations of strike force numbers, weapons loadouts and financial details. The Eclipse, in particular, is defined and shaped entirely by history – and tied inextricably to the salarian people as well.

The Penumbra Eclipse: Early founding and history

Just over seven hundred and sixty years ago, the Asari Republic was very strong. While still recovering from the aftermath of the First Refusal War, the Republic's economic power had not been damaged by the savage counterattack of the hanar, and the rise of the power of House T'Armal was completed. They traded away their ancestral city, Armali, to the combined forces of the Houses T'Soni, Vasir, and Devir, and bought up and expanded Serrice.

Matron Thana T'Armal was just ascended to power as Matria, as she was not yet a matriarch and had just elevated her eldest, Aleena, as chatelaine and heir to her throne. Thana was obsessed with power and having just stepped down as Lunarch of the Temple, wanted to influence her future heir to even higher gains in power.

The story of Eclipse begins with that, and with a matron huntress known as Jona. Jona was the offspring of a purebred clan asari mother and a krogan father, with at least one or two ancestors hailing from the Lesser Houses. Unlike many asari she focused on the more militant aspects of being a huntress, actually becoming a bounty hunter and skip-tracer in the service of the Justicar Order for almost a century.

Jona's mother was Sederi of Clan Skywatch, a well-known confidant and advisor to the Thirty on matters scientific and despite her purebred background, well respected even by the Thirty. Sederi rose to the rank of Clan Matriarch early on and encouraged Jona to have an open mind. This resulted in the future Eclipse mistress engaging in far-ranging travels, from training with the STG Transcendental corps and turian biotics to having the honor of training more than a dozen daughters of the Thirty, a concession usually left to Lesser House sword-mistresses.

In any event, Jona was widely praised for not just being a very powerful biotic but a talented and skilled one, as well as a master swordmistress, sniper, and tracker. Thana hired Jona to train skilled youths of the Thirty in combat and self-defense, and Jona operated a school on the outskirts of asari space to do so.

The exact details are unknown and are ultimately irrelevant. What matters is that several years after she opened this school, there was an incident. The Thirty's personal assassin squad, the Black Blades, were sent in to do clean up, and Jona managed to escape, albeit badly wounded.

For several years many thought she had died, but she reappeared in the wild systems of the Terminus. Over the course of some twenty years she began gathering forces into a small mercenary group, and this took off in a bigger way when she linked up with a group of salarian yindo Lythari (what a combination) who were fleeing the Salarian Union.

The first records of the Penumbra Eclipse state that it was 'co-founded' by Jona and the leader of the Lythari, one Vanneth Alshalom. They originally started out as somewhat high-minded for a mercenary group – no doubt due to the influence of the Lythari, but also according to reports, due to Jona.

The Penumbra Eclipse had been in operation for less than seven years when Aria's takeover of Omega happened. The resultant shockwaves sent through the Terminus systems meant a great deal of new business from the warlords and Aria herself, and Jona was apparently liked by the new Queen of Omega. Eclipse picked up dozens of new recruits – out of place asari outcast clanless, failed clan engineers, disgraced commandos.

As the original Lythari contingent began to age and die off, replacements into the ranks slowly hardened the group. However, it was the so-called Battle of the Omega that sank Eclipse's mistress into true madness.

The Battle of the Omega

It was no secret that the Thirty did not like the idea of Aria holding control of the Terminus Systems. As it turned out, however, Aria was much harder to just kill off than Terena Terminus had been – her security was tight, and the warlords were not going to trust the Citadel on anything. STG teams had little to no success in getting close to her as she only used asari and the occasional krogan as guards, and assassins all failed – including at least one Rembrance Dancer.

A large reason for many of the failures was Eclipse, and by now the group had grown to well over a thousand personnel. Jona was charismatic and (by asari standards) very beautiful, and many disaffected asari maidens joined her groups in search of adventure and exotic alien heroes or 'bad rides'.

(As an aside, while sexual promiscuity is not something offputting, the sheer focus they put on sex over almost every other aspect of life becomes both tiresome and worrisome. This is the danger of yindos, Lythari and sensation-chasers, the asari offer an addictive drug with no escape.)

The asari sent in several small teams of Nightwind to take out both Aria and her strongest supporters – the Warcaptain Uraz, a powerful krogan warlord; Elder Bhailist, another yindo deviant and one of the first cloneleggers that went big; Vanthrix Savakar, a turian outcast and shipwright of no little repute who was thrown from the meritocracy for bonding with an asari - and of course Jona herself.

The results were ugly. The Nightwind utilized chlorine gas bombs, biotoxins, and explosives to wreak confusion and havoc, then consumed members of the patchy emergency services team and blew up key support centers and medical areas. While the station tried to deal with that, multiple bands of Nightwind engaged their targets.

Half of Bray's family and the patriarch himself were brutally slain, while Warcaptain Uraz was butchered by Nightwind on live transmission and his crest torn off his skull. Aria herself lost dozens of her people and was badly wounded, with more Nightwind streaming in through the shattered approaches to her command center.

That is when Jona Sederis arrived, and dispatched a dozen Nightwind single-handedly, laughing madly the entire time. From what we gathered, her current bondmate and both of her children had been raped and murdered by the Nightwind before Jona could respond, and one of them tried to force-bond Jona herself.

It failed, but the combination drove her insane. Her biotics grew even more powerful somehow, as she was able to face down and defeat multiple Nightwind as if they were green maidens, ending the fight with a massive flare-singularity combination that melted everything in the radius to biological goop and flaming embers.

In the aftermath of the battle, Eclipse grew more and more. Less than five years after the fight, the group had doubled its numbers and purchased several midsized cargo liners converted to transports for the mercenary group.

Eclipse Rises

In the centuries since that day, the Asari Republic has been careful not to directly oppose Eclipse. There are many rumored theories as to why, but none of them seem to fit the facts as we know them.

Eclipse absorbed large numbers of disaffected clanless maidens and, on occasion, clan expatriates. This alone made them a valuable resource, as Eclipse members were unlikely to directly attack the Asari Republic, and this also kept them out of the hands of Aria, or other groups. But the Republic's tolerance for the group went further than that.

As far back as three centuries ago, Eclipse got regular sentry, garrison and protection contracts directly from the Thirty to various asari pilgrimage sites. The Turians employed Eclipse regularly as well to perform 'dishonorable' things in the pursuit of targets of the thasvar or the regular turian military police.

The Salarian Union has never utilized Eclipse, both due to the fact that Jona Sederis is a frothing maniac and also due to the high numbers of yindo followers, Lythari, and disgraced salarians and disavowed STG in the group.

We are not sure what secrets Jona Sederis knows, what dirt she has on the Thirty, or on Aria, or the turians. What we do know is that we have run the finances of her various enterprises and missions and she is bringing in money beyond that which can be accounted for by their work.

Recent Events

Eclipse was instrumental in dealing with some of the fallout of the Benezia Incident, specifically in retaking the orbital and ground stations of the CDEM on Tuchanka. As a result, given the large loss of life in the military in the aftermath of the Benezia Event, Eclipse was given a charter to operate the CDEM with some Citadel oversight.

Amazingly, Eclipse hasn't done anything illegal (in large scales) during their contract thus far. They do not smuggle drugs or weapons to or from Tuchanka, but rather raw construction materials, eezo, food, medicine, and vehicles.

The fact that Jona herself operates on the surface of Tuchanka and seems to have let the rest of her organization run on its own implies there is something valuable she is focused on obtaining, guarding, or finding. Additional STG units have been deployed to monitor the situation.

ECLIPSE: OVERVIEW

Focus Rating:

Strength: 5/4 (Very large field group, extensive funding)

Equipment: 4/5 (custom weapons, armor; infowar, medical, biotic and air support)

Training: 3/5 (roughly heavy infantry level, all members).

Be aware, the elite of Eclipse (the Sunfires) count as 5/5

Specialization: BIOTIC ASSAULT, 3.

Threat Rating: 4.8 (Extremely Dangerous)

Eclipse has, by far, the highest threat rating of any mercenary company, of any type, configuration, or ownership. This is due to three factors.

First, Jona Sederis invests most of her money in buying up gear for her people. Even neonates who haven't even met the joining requirements are given lightweight but strong armor and a choice of weapons. Jona's money has allowed several Traverse and Terminus corporations to focus almost solely on producing Eclipse equipment of a very high level.

Second, Eclipse is comprised of chapters. Each chapter is lead by a Mother and conducts their own recruiting. Once they reach a size of a field lance (roughly 500 members) they can split off their own chapters.

Additionally, every so often Jona will take a new lover and 'found' a 'new baseline' chapter of the Eclipse, basically building up a new set of chapters while leaving the old sets in the hands of the Mothers. As a result, Eclipse has a staggering three hundred and seventy chapters, averaging between one hundred and fifty to four hundred members each. Alongside special Eclipse chapters, Jona's own groups, and various auxiliary and support teams, Eclipse boasts well over two hundred thousand combatants, possibly more.

The nature of the chapter construction means that even if Jona is taken down the organization will continue with the oldest Mother simply stepping up.

Finally, Eclipse is powerful and dangerous because of its longevity and contacts. Many merc groups come and go – the average span of time they are stable for depends on the founding race. But even asari groups tend to splinter after two or three centuries.

Jona, on the other hand, has been at this over six hundred years, and has parlayed her group into contracts with dozens of warlords, corporations, independent colonies, and several governments. More importantly, especially in recent decades, Eclipse has been an outlet for troublemaking and discontented asari maidens who would otherwise present a policing and governmental problem for the Asari Republic.

Eclipse: Leadership and organization

Eclipse is organized along roughly matriarchal-influence lines, like many asari merc companies. At the top is Jona Sederis. Alongside her is the 'co-founder' of the current main chapter, which is usually either a salarian or (rarely) a krogan. Jona is very different in that she has never bonded with anything but salarians and a handful of krogan. As most asari do not pursue salarian lovers (aside from Thessial, but she has good taste) this is unusual and strange.

The 'co-founder' usually has a heavy amount of influence on the direction Jona takes in developing the new main chapter. For example, Jaroth Manno (the current co-founder) has pushed for more infowar and haxtech elements to Eclipse, while his predecessor (Yanta, some yindo deviant) was more interested in performing disaster relief and making money.

The 'main' chapter will usually start off with handpicked selections from other chapters. Most eclipse wear yellow armor with the asari sigil for eclipse in black. The Penumbral chapter wears black armor with the symbol in white, and are the only ones allowed to do so. Eclipse members who have been a part of the Penumbral Eclipse in the past are allowed a black shoulder guard as a visible token.

Below the main chapter is the high chapter – which is the previous main chapter Jona moves away from when she finds a new co-founder and lover. This is usually run by one of her daughters, granddaughters, or great granddaughters, but on occasion talented officers (Relli's Kiss, Seotha Sine, Elevance of Tyrogr, etc.) have been given the command. The high chapter's main job is to provide super-heavy backup to any chapters in trouble, while the main chapter performs high level tasks as directed by Jona herself.

Below the high chapters are the Sun Chapters – all of them former main/high chapters from the past. Some of these have been in operation for more than five hundred years. There are currently seventeen of them, and each one specializes in a different field – direct assault, sniping, biotic defense, air support, assassination, environmental sabotage and more. Sun chapters are led by the Sunfires, the eldest and most dangerous Eclipse sisters.

At least one Sun Chapter (Sirael's Smile) is well known for being popular with younger and likely disenfranchised daughters of the Thirty and goes to extreme lengths to protect their privacy. The Thirty, in turn, have reluctantly tolerated the chapter to actually build bases and training facilities on Thessia, as long as they agree to let the Thirty deny potential applicants if the applicant is too important.

Each Sun chapter sponsors a number (between two and fifteen) Moon chapters, which are filled with junior members, trainees, and neophytes trying to join. These typically follow the specialty of the Sun Chapter who sponsors them and take jobs related to that. Moon chapters are led by Elder Sisters.

There are five 'Star' Chapters. These are strictly limited to pre-neophytes – those who want to join Eclipse. Star Chapters run candidates through simple fitness tests, martial arts practices, shooting practice, biotic testing, skills assessment and seduction assessment. Those who pass must survive patrolling for one month on some dangerous world before being an official neophyte and moved to one of the moon chapters. All Star Chapters are led by one of Jona's granddaughters.

Eclipse is not a corporate entity, but it maintains two headquarters locations – a private asteroid in the Omega System, and an orbital fueling and habitation station in the Traverse. Jona herself operates from the offices of the CDEM on Tuchanka itself, but her representatives can be found in the two locations or at dozens of local Eclipse recruiting offices.

Eclipse: Ranking System

Most mercenary groups do not tightly define their members, as mercenaries are distressingly disorganized and usually not big on real military discipline. Eclipse is strikingly different; in that it enforces both rate structure and an order of battle on its recruits and members.

Jona, before she lost her mind and became a cackling mega-loon, was both well known for her orderly operations and very highly prized for her training abilities. The latter has survived her insanity intact, the former has been… warped by it.

All Eclipse are divided into two types: sisters and the Joined. The Joined are any and all non-asari members, who have looser restrictions, easier promotion, and no chance for actually leading anything.

Joined have five ranks: Trainee, Soldier, Adjutant, Exemplar, and Captain. The last two ranks are officer ranks, and usually Joined Captains advise Sunfires and Elder Sisters. The Joined themselves are typically only focused into two areas – technical assault (infowar, hacking, omni-engineering) and infiltration (using the race of the soldier to match the target).

Asari are ranked as follows:

Desired, Neophyte, Trainee, Ascendant, Sister – these five ranks make up the initial course of an Eclipse mercenary's career. They are promoted to Neophyte upon completing training, and to Trainee upon passing all the tests of the Moon chapters. They are moved to Ascendant and a Sun Chapter upon making their first kill in combat, and then to Sister upon their second kill or fifth year of service.

A Sister of the Eclipse can then choose one of four directions to apply herself: biotic assault, biotic defense, heavy assault, or seduction and infiltration. These each have the same five ranks – Sister, Moon Sister, High Sister, Elder Sister, and Sunfire.

A Neophyte is paid a base salary of 2000 cr a month, with a 'battle rider' of 500 cr per battle or garrison assignment. They also get paid for kills, up to 100cr per kill in a battle.

Higher ranks add roughly 500cr to 1000cr a month per rank. Most Sunfires, for example, makes roughly 8,000 to 9,000 cr a month. Bonuses also increase in size with rank.

Every Eclipse soldier gets a yearly budget of 12,000 cr to spend on weapons and 15,000cr on armor. All purchases must be done through Eclipse stores, and unused money in the budget goes to a general fund for the chapter that pays for equipment, ammunition, medigel, and the like.

Eclipse's asteroid base has free housing that could accommodate up to seven hundred thousand personnel, although food would be an issue for turians or quarians.

Eclipse: Soldier types

Eclipse proffers multiple soldier types, but these are the most common:

Huntress: Most neophytes and newer sisters are placed in this role. They utilize light armor and biotic barriers along with lightweight assault rifles, smoke grenades, and basic biotic attacks. Eclipse tends to use the echelon in heavier fights, and the huntresses fill the role of flanker there, which is safer and less likely to get them killed.

Most huntress type Eclipse units are built for skirmish and raiding, not heavy combat, much like STG teams only far less well trained. They all have comm links to call for both air support and backup from more senior and better armed units but can be panicked by heavy fire.

No special tactics should be necessary to rout even multiple huntress units. As with all asari they deal with fire poorly.

Generalist: Most Eclipse sisters fall into this role – heavy armor, defensive biotics, and usually a shotgun and grenades or a heavy machine gun and high explosives. These asari use their biotics to buttress their already impressive defenses while they laydown either extreme firepower or rush enemy lines and assault at close range.

Generalists weakness is that they are designed for the attack – while durable armor and biotic barriers are hard to bring down, once their defense is breached they are usually not in good defensive positions. Proper use of grenades to manage movement and Rapier x-ray laser shotguns is recommended.

Other than that, the basic generalist is a well-rounded mercenary, with none of the obvious weaknesses of most mercenary line troops. Caution is advised.

Guardian: A more defensively focused sister, the guardians have the same heavy armor but heavier barriers and utilize omni-shields and omni-barriers liberally. Deployed for garrison duty mostly, they are armed with both long-range assault rifles as well as shield-ripping submachine guns and shotguns.

Guardians are usually not dangerous, as they are rarely as alert as they should be. However, they can be very difficult in a fight as they mitigate a huge amount of damage and are trained heavily in holding a line. Evasion is better than fighting.

If forced to engage, the best counter is to make defense impossible. Use explosives to disrupt choke points, liberally use smoke grenades for mobile cover and engage omni-drones to drop gamma grenades to irradiate their defense points. Utilize Mobile Defense Protocols Seven through Nine to deny them a chance to setup – harassment, infowar attacks, whatever is required.

Specialist: seen in both Eclipse Sisters and the Joined, specialists are assigned a specific role – sniper, medic, hacker, infowar engineer, support, etc. – and do not stray from it. They wear much lighter armor that is a haze gray with a black panel down the front, with the Eclipse sigil in yellow on the panel, and are typically deployed with an existing squad. Specialists are rarely expected to fight directly (with the exception of the Sniper, and even then he or she is more for traditional one-shot one-kill assassination) and are likely to be heavily guarded.

They are also targets of opportunity that will derail the entire mission if you can take them out, so when looking at specialist Eclipse assaults this is the first person you should figure out how to kill.

They can use almost any weapon you can think of, and at least some of them have already managed to crack the DRM on certain turian weapons.

Duelist: Probably the most dangerous of the roles, the dualist is a specialist combatant specifically designed to take down enemy command structures. Most of the Eclipse dualists are failed war priestesses, the rest are still very strong in biotics. Duelists use biotic attacks and defenses along with warp swords, poison grenades, and sniper rifles to hit their targets in a bewildering array of attack types.

Duelists are best handled by war specialist attacks, but as usual the liberal use of gas, explosives, and possibly radiological grenades will render them harmless.

Commando: Utilized and trained almost identically to Asari Republic commandos, the Eclipse version is similar to the huntress – light armor (although usually heavily augmented with omni-armor and kinetic barriers), light weapons (more DMR and light sniper than assault, however), and a focus on biotic attack and defense in lieu of heavy weapons.

The difference is that these are elites, trained for decades or more and extremely accurate. They will use stealth tactics and hit-and-fade attacks, draw out units for flanking assaults from other Eclipse units, use biotic detonations as well as poison gas, snap-flak traps, and all manner of info-war to jam, confuse and harass the enemy, and will fade back into the lines if pressed.

While some Eclipse units are definitely a challenge for an STG team to engage, an Eclipse Commando unit is really on par with most nations' special forces. They have matched against and triumphed against human N-series marines, turian Blackwatch, and even on occasion STG Silent Step – they are far more than a match for a stock STG team without heavy War Spec support.

On the other hand, they are not invincible, and if they are caught by surprise or flanked are not that much tougher than a huntress unit. Worse, since they are often very close to one another and/or sexually involved, multiple unit deaths will shatter their morale quickly.

Rapturous: By far the most disturbing unit in the Eclipse ranks, the Rapturous are Jona's personal guard. Extremely heavy armor, but usually cut and fashioned to be revealing and sexually lewd, this is augmented by extremely strong biotics as well as conventional barriers. They use light rifles, warp swords, eezo whips (this is not a typo) and both black nano toxins as well as conventional poisons.

Each one of these asari is a murderess and assassin a dozen times over, and most of them are nearly as crazy as their leader. The bulk of them are blown on a constant stream of red sand, resulting in many having respiration masks and/or cybernetic lung augmentation as a requirement. Illegal combat drugs and various batarian symbionts are also common.

There is no hard counter for this kind of lunatic aside from a handy high explosive trap.

Eclipse: Typical contracts and operations

Eclipse is a violent and near criminal group in many chapters, while others are entirely above board. Given the structure of the group and the loose control Jona Sederis maintains, it is a well-known fiction that any chapter or subgroup that draws Citadel or law enforcement sanction is 'operating without approval from the Queen Matriarch'.

Thus far, given Jona has no problems letting her own people be arrested or executed by Justicars, this excuse is allowed to hold. As such, unlike the Blue Suns or other large mercenary companies who must pick and choose jobs carefully, Eclipse handles a wide array of disreputable and illegal jobs.

The three most common Eclipse jobs are garrison duty, police augmentation, and raid assault.

Eclipse has tens of thousands of asari, who are probably the best at garrison tasks after turians. Eclipse garrison units are more affordable as the mercenary company pays for transport and offsets the cost of room, meals, and provides their own medical and comms needs. Especially for small corporate asari enclaves or 'free' Terminus colonies, you can get several strike-group sized Eclipse companies for the same cost as a single Blue Suns strike lance. Most of the garrison work is done by the star and moon chapters, where you have young maiden asari and not hardened fighters and criminals.

Likewise, asari are perfect for police augmentation – they are by nature de-escalatory, and biotics are excellent at non-lethal crowd control. Usually units that are somewhat more hardened are used for this task, as occasionally riots get violent and Eclipse is happy to put an end to them.

The turians use Eclipse forces as augments for their thasvar and hastatim vigilante groups, as almost all other mercenary companies shy away from the dubious legality of such things. Eclipse, on the other hand, is more than happy to send hardened killers to help and even advertises their skill at assisting with the barbaric corpse defilation such hunts tend to end in.

But Eclipse is the most famous for their terrifying raid assault attacks, where thousands of asari with biotics surge forward while all manner of info-war and cyberattacks are conducted by the auxiliaries. Eclipse uses a specialized form of the Echelon called the Chevron, which somehow manages to interlink and combine the barriers of multiple asari into a single, powerful shielding effect.

STG units have seen groups of several hundred asari create mobile biotic barriers that rival or even exceed the power of a war priestess and can stand off even rapid-fire ground saturation missile barrages. Once asari get beyond your front lines, the combination of flash step, grenades, heavy automatic plasma fire, and biotic disruption is almost impossible to rally from.

Eclipse also dabbles in eezo shipping, as well as providing most of the security for much of Aria's larger empire. Eclipse is known to be heavily involved in the production of red sand and STG operatives believe at least fifty percent of captured asari sold by slavers end up in the hands of Eclipse, who recruits a handful and uses the rest in the production of red sand, various asari sex drugs, and sex slaves.

Eclipse is very careful about keeping all of its illegalities deep inside the Terminus, with the most dangerous stuff basically being done in Omega System itself, far beyond the reach of any law enforcement figure.