The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space
A/N: This took ... much longer than expected. Putting together a coherent military wasn't hard, but making it both unique and yet capable of actually doing what we see it doing in ME3 took some work.
As usual, reviews are welcomed.
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MARS-ZERO-FIVE-EIGHT
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Bossman, Boss Lady, Boss Mr. Roboto,
Finally, a goddamned report I can write, where I actually know something about what I'm saying.
Before I even start, bossman, there's one thing you should keep in mind. Make sure the SA remembers, too.
The spikes do not do subtle. Can't stress this enough. Whenever you fight them, keep repeating that to yourself. If you see something that looks subtle, or sneaky, fucking retreat immediately.
You fucking run, and you do not look fucking back. It means a goddamned Palavanus is calling the shots, and you are completely fucked, and have been fucked from before you even got onto the battlefield. I'll come back to this later on, but remember it.
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Turian Military Generalities and Mindset:
Turian strategy is simple, so is their way of looking at the fight.
Humans are about maneuver warfare, with feints and flanks, use of armor to strike fast and deep, and air support for taking out supply columns. Asari focus on formation, using that whack-ass echelon shit to tear apart enemy commands and panic the enemy into a rout, air support mostly as flankers, and armor as a barricade to enemy attacks on their leadership. Salarians focus on intel and reaction, figuring out all the angles before firing the first shot and reacting to whatever the enemy does, using their armor to counter enemy armor and their air support to tie up enemy heavies that would break their shitty lines. Batarians are all about waves of shitty attrition infantry to wear you down, spraying explosives everywhere, then one clean shot of armor and air to punch through and core your force from the inside out.
Turians, on the other hand, focus on sheer fucking power. Every part of their mindset focuses on putting as much firepower downrange as fast as possible, then moving in hard before the enemy can even recover. Every element of turian military – Skytalon battlesuits, armor use, even space combat – focuses on this style of attack.
Most turian tactics assume three things that are almost always true. First, the spikes outnumber you. Second, they have a clear line of attack. Third, they can bring most of their firepower to bear directly.
If the answers to any two of those questions is 'yes', the spike launch a frontal assault every time. (Remember, they don't do subtle.) It's not that they aren't flexible – I've seen them pull of other shit, flanking if the opportunity is there and things like that.
But rather than fancy-ass tactics, most turian generals and admirals go straight for the kill whenever they can. In a ground fight, they lead with their heaviest units. If they have armor (which they fucking will) it goes in. In space, they lead with dreadnaughts and follow up with more fucking dreadnaughts.
The only time you'll see them deviate from this pattern is when they can't get clear lines of fire and they are are outnumbered. Then they act a bit more cautiously, using heavy weapons and artillery to try to crack an enemy open wide enough, and typically call support forces down to assist. They also won't act quite like this when a spike is commanding Citadel fleets, but even then it's just variations on the same shit they usually have their infantry do on the ground – have the non-turian ships flank and pound the bad guys with heavy guns to hold them in place, while the turians do the heavy lifting.
The other time they deviate from this is when the Palavanus are running shit, in which case you fucking run and pray they haven't already prepared for that too.
Turians focus on three things. Overwhelming firepower. Strict unit discipline. And combinations that don't give an enemy any chance to do anything but sit there and take a fucking pounding until they break and run, or die.
Turian Military Doctrine – Ground
The turian basic ground doctrine is based on just a couple of ideas. First is combined arms. The turians don't build 'infantry units' or 'armor units'. They build units around the job they do. Every turian ground force is about a 40/40/20 split of ground infantry, combat armor, and air support. This mix rarely if ever changes, and it is a nasty fucking thing to work around cuz there are zero fucking weak spots.
Even the smaller units fit this description. The smallest turian unit, the diamond, has three infantry, two heavy infantry, and two light combat grav-bikes sporting launchable VI controlled air-support drones.
Second, asset use. The turians use their lines of infantry and vehicles much differently than we do. As weird as some of the salarian and asari units are, they're still pretty much like ours. Light shitty infantry for the lead. Heavier units for breaking lines, armor doing it's own thing, usually flanking. Artillery for fixed assault. Air support for suppression. Turians break all these rules, as you can probably tell by their combined arms usage. A unit 'type' for lack of a better word, uses it's assets based on what role it plays. There are three basic unit roles: Assault, Defense, and Open.
An 'assault' unit is the ones that go into fixed defense and break them. 'Defense' units are the exact opposite, they defend a given area. 'Open' units are the most flexible, as they are used when fighting in the field, or when clearing urban areas or stations. The breakdown of not only the numbers but the kinds of vehicles, infantry, and air support varies based on these roles. For example, defense units have more of the heavier infantry, slower vehicles, and lighter aircraft, while open units have almost all light infantry and smaller vehicles.
Third, turians use even their soldiers different. All units are broken down by their position in the Four Movements, which are the basis for turian combat. I'll get to that later, but what you should take away from it is that turians don't slot a type of soldier into combat based on what he does so much as the role he fills. Sounds the same, different in action. A human marine is infantry. He holds a line, or he leads an assault. Sometimes he does defense,other times he does offense. A turian soldier will be used in one specific task, like suppression, in one specific instance, like on defense. It makes them better suited to their jobs, but less flexible when taken by surprise – another reason we didn't get waxed during the FCW.
Turian Military Doctrine – Space
Their space tactics are a bit more shitty, if you ask me. And since you are, I'll tell you why.
First off, turians have a big gun fixation like you wouldn't believe. The turian fleet is the biggest in the galaxy after the quarians, but the quarian fleet is 80% civilian ships, some of 'em converted to have guns. Likewise, the asari fleet isn't much smaller than the turian fleet, but more than half the asari fleet is lighter ships. Turians love dreadnaughts, and have more than any other race. Last reckoning had us with the asari at having thirty one (the max), the salarians twenty-four (seven less than the max), the elcor with eight and two building, us with nine and one building, and the volus still working on their first.
The turians at last count had fifty, and are working on the fifty-first and final one under their cap. That's not counting their mega-heavies and shit. 65% of the turian fleet can be classed as heavy cruiser or heavier. This leaves them with some pretty shitty scouting and flanking capabilities.
Secondly, the turians only build warships – more on that later. But just keep in mind, the turian tactics stem from them wanting to put the most fire downrange all the time, which means everything not directly related to that is shit. Maneuvering? Shit. Sensors? Shit. Damage control? Shit. Labs? Get the fuck out of here. Medical and supply capabilities are crap, too.
Third, their logistics are, frankly, so shitty that they can't handle really big engagements. The main reason the FCW turned into a clusterfuck for them is that they didn't properly cover and protect their goddamned supply lines, and they just put shit in big depots for us to raid and blow up. That hasn't changed. In medium battles, they are perfect. In smaller battles, they do well. In big extended wars, they tend to get sloppy.
That stems from the fact that they've had the turian fleet scattered to hell and gone for the past fucking eight hundred years, and their military has literally fucking forgotten how to fight really big naval battles.
In battle, the tactics are simple and brutal – jump in, use light units to do the calculations and ranging, and then open fire with the heavies until everything is shot to pieces. There's not a whole lot more to it than that, unlike all the complexity of their ground combat strategy. There are a few turian admirals who use pieces of the Four Movements, particularly when they command Citadel fleets, using the alien ships as flankers and half-assed inhibitors, while their own cruisers handle the rest, with the dreadnaughts acting as the disembowel force.
Turian Military Doctrine – Ship Design
Turian ships have some very fucked up design names, which I've ignored to come up with the best-fitting human name. When I can't, I at least try to tack on which ship class it should be in. Some of these terms come out kinda old fashioned...but then again, turians would be right at home in naval combat on earth back in the pre-Iron days when it was all sails and shit, so that shouldn't surprise you.
Spike ships have one long center hull, with two wings to either side – these are swept back, not like the wedge-wings on a SA ship, or those wimpy ass curved things on asari. They look like real warships, like ours, not that swoopy graceful salarian shit.
Like I said, they build warships and only warships. Even their merchant ships are mostly cut down cruisers with attached cargo-pods, and their freighters are mostly a pair of cruiser hulls cut in half and slapped to either side of a large cargo-pod system. This means all the support systems on all their ships are for shit. They don't have redundancies for anything.
No backups, no secondary fallback systems, nothing.
On the other hand, because they don't have all of that, their power management levels are superb. Their weapons all hit harder and their shielding is tougher than almost any other ship class equal size in another race's navy.
All turians ships have a gym and a hand-to-hand combat space, a big nest-like bar/lounge area, and living quarters in weird tucked off areas. Spike crews try to keep as close to fifty-fifty split between males and females as possible so everyone can get laid regularly. They actually have regulations requiring the ladies to get banged once a week so they don't space out. I hate the fucking turians.
Most turian ships have a pretty shitty medical bay, mostly just to stabilize injuries, since the only real goddamned doctors they have are all Palavanus and none of them are going to serve on a warship that isn't a dreadnaught.
Weirdly enough, they also all have big kitchens. Turians guys like to cook, the women think it's beneath them. Backasswards idiots. Their bitches are already barefoot and pregnant all the time, why not just go full out and do the cooking too?
Turians go very, very heavy on not just forward but broadside firepower, with one class focused on it. They're a touch light on GARDIAN arrays, and their ECM sucks, but they have pretty tough armor and, as I said, extremely tough shields. Except on lighter ships, turians don't favor missiles much.
One more thing : remember that the turians are big fans of particle packets. Their mass accelerators don't just fling slugs, but blocks of unstable particles, like a compressed particle beam all in one ugly hit. Unlike our shitty half-ass versions, the turian kind will wreck merry hell on shields, and if they penetrate the armor it's rad-burns and fried chicken all around for anyone in the blast radius.
Turian Military Doctrine – Vehicle Design
Turians only have four types of vehicles – hoverbikes, grav platforms, light fighting vehicles, and superheavy monster trucks. They never developed a 'tank' concept, really, but what they have means they don't need one.
Turian design splits between light and heavy. The light shit – bikes, platforms, ground cars – focuses on moving fast and being agile, with lots of firepower and rugged durability. The heavy stuff is mostly focused on armor, terrain handling, and suppression firepower.
Spikes never figured out anything like an APC, but their LFV's hold enough troops to do the same thing, except they can shoot as well as be carried around. Likewise, they have tons of mobile infantry concepts, so vehicles are used more for shock value and speed than transport or heavy assault.
The hover bike is nasty, agile, and heavily armed, and comes in light or heavy flavors. The lighter one is faster than even salarian aircars and GASCAR racers, and the heavy ones pack the firepower of a goddamned FRIGATE into a small frame. Not even exaggerating.
Most of them have an VI controlled weapons drone that spits mini-missiles, so watch out for those.
The grav platforms are basically like big-ass floating surfboards, using mass effect fields and ion propulsion systems. Heavy weapons guys and biotics use them a lot, for better line of sight, floating above the infantry. The front of these things mount vehicle-class kinetic barriers, and they're more agile than they look, making them a pain in the ass to deal with unless you have missiles.
The trucks...Jesus fuck. Big ass heavy blocks of armor, with an open-top back full of turrets and armor plating for spikes to fire, on top of armored tyres eight feet tall. They'll just crush infantry underneath, and I've seen them smash down six foot tall walls. The main weapons are all anti-infantry, multiple rapid fire turrets and plasma flamers, but they can swap the back part out for medium range ground missiles, plasma mortars, even small GTS arrays.
Turian Military Organization : The Talon Stances of the Four Movements
The Four Movements were modeled off of the turian hunting technique, with rough translations of 'pounce', 'bite', 'hamstring', and 'disembowel'. Pretty much every single battle starts with the one of three variations of the Four Movements. Each variation is intended for a different style of fight. The basics of the four movements don't change, only the 'flavor'. The three variants are translated at 'path of speed', 'path of power', and 'path of danger'.
The path of speed is used when closing on distant enemies. It focuses on getting lighter units in first, progressively heavier as the fight goes on. The path of power is when an enemy is dug in, and the requirement is to break their front or defenses, starting off with area-effect and shock units. Finally, the path of danger is when the enemy is stronger or outnumbers the turians, and focuses on more suppressive fire and heavy units. The variants just shift around the balances a bit.
The first phase, pounce, is done by the spikes considered pouncing units. No matter the organization, the goal of pounce is to hit the enemy ranks hard before they can get dug in, or if they are already dug in, to bypass static defenses and wreck shit. The pounce is usually done quickly, and the goals are shock, impact trauma, and confusion.
The reason for this is simple. While the enemy is reeling from the pounce, the next phase, the bite, begins. It's done by units tagged as inhibitors. Their whole job is to pour on firepower, flanking and frontal, to pin the enemy in place. Suppressive rockets, light mortars, the works. Armor gets in on this too, raking down the flanks to keep 'em off their toes and stop any early attempts at a breakout.
By this time the pounce guys have withdrawn under the cover fire of the bite. They regroup while the slash and hammer units head out for the hamstring. Slash units go in hard and fast, concentrating on ripping up the structure and organization of the enemy. Lots of auto-fire, flame units, info-war to overload and cripple weapons systems. Armor used by slash units is mostly intended to blast open holes in the front lines and sew more chaos.
Slash units are replaced by hammer units in defensive situations, similar to slash units but with more of a focus on explosives, area-effect damage, and lingering damage. Armor in a hammer unit runs right the middle to tear the shit out of the center of the enemy while the air support is busy firing suppressive fire at the rear to keep it pinned down.
By this time, the bite units are a little ragged, and they finally disengage. With a huge hole torn in the middle of the enemy, and their flanks bleeding, it's time for the disembowel. The regrouped pounce units form up and do another deep strike, this time towards the rear of the enemy, sometimes blowing the entire rear of the force apart, scattering explosives. While they do this, the thrust units go to work. These are nastiest bastards in the turian army, designed to completely tear apart and crush whatever is left of the enemy.
A force that is hit by the Four Movements is a gutted wreck which can't do much more than flee in all directions.
Turian Military Ground Unit Types
As I mentioned, there are various types of units.
Inhibitors focus on just that, locking enemies in place. They focus on using tech mines, suppressive fire, area-denial grenades, and knockdowns of enemy equipment. They're fast and mobile, moving around the flanks of an enemy to tie them up in skirmish. These guys are usually your lower ranking types. A unit pinned by inhibitors will typically take lighter damage if they stay put, but get cut to pieces trying to advance or retreat – that is the idea, after all. These fuckers are really nasty with tech mines and other mine-based shit.
Slash units are heavier than inhibitors, but with the same focus on speed. They favor more damaging weapons that will cause ongoing problems – flame units, weapons with bleed capabilities, incendiaries, and lots of shotguns and heavy area of effect attacks. Slash units also like to get in and do some CQB, literally living up to their name.
Pounce units are all mobile infantry, either jump assault or worse, Skytalons. These guys are basically like our DACT, with lots of the same tactics and weapons choices. Pounce units are also the only turians you will regularly see fall back, as they are not supposed to get over-extended. Given that spikes like valorous bullshit, it's usually older, wiser types who fill this role, ones who've already proven they are badasses.
Hammer units are like a nastier brother of slash units. Super-heavy infantry, mostly with lots of squad-level machine guns, missiles, hi-ex, and the like. Anything that takes out bunches of the enemy at once, that's hammer units. As I said, hammer is mostly used on defense, to bust up enemy charges once they've been stopped cold, and turn them back, sometimes routing them.
Finally, thrust units are the true shit-wreckers. This is all an assortment of badasses – Final Line fuckers, Blackwatch, Deathwatch and the like. The thrust unit kills entire enemy units, sometimes carving them up so bad they can't even surrender or flee coherently. Having a swarm of these nightmares spring and pounce and tear the heads off your buddies and laugh will break most units with ease. In the FCW, our N7's would take all the other turian bullshit with ease, but get owned by these guys over and over again.
Turian Infantry Classes:
Every type of military class in the Hierarchy corresponds to one of the Four Movements. I'll give the translation, and what kind of unit they are.
Fang Soldier : The fang infantry trooper is the basic infantry type. Fangs wear light Velek or Thermal armor and carry Phaeston rifles and a few grenades. Their job is that of inhibitors – sink into the enemy and hold them in place so you claw the shit out of them. Fangs are usually new and junior types, given a fairly safe job to see how better soldiers get shit done, but also because the job requires a lot of running around and is best left to the youngsters.
Talon Soldier the other half of the basic infantry lineup, talons are 'slash units'. Using Tornado shotguns, frag and incendiary grenades, and lots of hand-to-hand combat, these guys are a step up from the Fangs. Usually wear Phantom armor.
Cataphract : Family elites, these guys are very highly mobile mixes of soldiers, snipers, engineers and tacticians. Wearing Family Ceremonial armor and using Raptor marksman rifles, they're also handy with grenades, plasma and cryo blasts, and tech mines. Flexible enough to be used in pounce or slash tactics, they are often very tough to stop because of their armor. These are also the fuckers you will find piloting almost all the vehicles.
Raptor Guard: Nasty fuckers in jump-capable Silverback armor, these guys use Hydra missile launchers and the Krysae to blow shit up in all directions. They always act as pounce units.
Shadow Guard: Clan based units, these are a mix of solider and combat engineer. They are inhibitors, and prefer to stick to the sidelines, launching drones, turrets, tech mines and shit like that to keep enemies pinned in place. Wearing Monitor armor, they use the Judgment pistols with very good levels of training and can pull off headshots at scary long ranges.
Raven Guard: Clan heavy combat engineers, these guys run in with the slash units, setting off explosions. Wearing Silverback armor and packing Sunfire pistols, these guys are masters of area-effect info-war – plasma clouds, nanite storms, shit like that.
Blackwatch: the Blackwatch is the spike version of the N7 program, formed of teams of badasses, Blackwatch is mostly pretty clean cut, sent on missions a lot like our own Spec Ops, and most of the shit they get up to is classified, although most people in the know can tell you they have the highest success rate of any turian unit in history. Blackwatch guys are often used independently, in five man fire-teams, but their role in a fixed battle is as a thrust unit. They wear Titan Armor, and use the Indra and the Tornado as their weapons, so they're dangerous at any range.
Deathwatch: The Deathwatch is basically turian Cerberus. Their only goal is the preservation and protection of the turian race. They don't give a shit about laws, casualties, or who they piss off. The Deathwatch has lots of ceremonial and semi-religious bullshit attached, and each one is technically severed from their family, much like biotics are. Unlike biotics, being in the Deathwatch is a huge honor, basically saying you are badass enough to be trusted with the fate of the entire race. The Deathwatch is mostly Clan and Family types, and almost all of them wear Family or Clan Ceremonial armor. Their signature weapons are the Sunfire pistol and the Widow sniper rifle, but lots of them pack customized weapons, like Revenants, Serrations, or worse – one gigantic Torkus nutjob had his legs and arm hacked off and replaced with enough cyber to haul around a cut-down BRKR railgun. They are thrust units. Shock.
These guys, like the Dog, could give a shit if they kill aliens. I'd leave your Iron boys at home, Rachel, none of them would match up well against these lunatics.
Support Cabalist: weaker biotics often assist with pinning enemy forces in place, and are classed as inhibitors. The support cabal uses lots of pull, throw, and smash biotics to keep the enemy off balance, and occasionally will use salvos to pin them down more directly. They carry around Judgment pistols, but prefer to use biotics and claw daggers – don't get in close, those things are like tiny fucking warp swords. The armor they were is about as tough as Vedek light armor.
Strike Cabalist: The more powerful (and fucked up) turian biotics, on the other hand, go in for the fucking kill, as either slash or on occasion thrust units. Wearing heavy Titan armor and packing plasma flamethrowers and omni-axes, these guys fling big warps, shockwaves, and other crazy shit around. Their favorite trick is using throw to fling grenades deep into enemy lines, before anyone can react or flee.
SkyTalon Battlesuit : The SKYTALON is a heavy mass-effect powered battlesuit that can fly short distances, like a cross between a DACT and a Thermopylae suit. It has thicker armor and better durability than a Thermopylae, and is fully space-combat capable. It has twin kinetic barriers, and lacks on-board weapons, but it packs a giant omni-axe in one hand, and the SPEAR minigun in the other, so it doesn't really need other weapons. A properly piloted SKYTALON will wreck a Thermopylae, and it can hammer the shit out of a Shieldbreaker or Asari Paladin before going down, the SPEAR does a lot of damage. This is the killiest of the pounce units, and sometimes even gets all up in as a slash unit when the pilot is in a pissy mood.
SKYTALON battle armor suits are some of the very worst fuckers to fight. Maybe not the strongest, but they're fast and they can fly, are articulated and nimble enough to fight on the ground with in melee, and some of them can even generate bullshit like omni-armor facings or omni-gel repair underlays. Back in the days, even Mike Saracino couldn't drop one of these bastards solo.
Do not match ATLAS suits against this, Rachel.
Final Line: When it comes to bad motherfuckers, the Final Line is pretty much it. Everyone has heard of them. Final Line soldiers are spikes too shot up and wounded to live a normal life. Rather than doing the sane thing and just dying, they end up as nearly-full conversion cyborgs, sometimes going as high as 85%, and wear articulated power-armor 'frames' to make them even tougher. They can act in hammer or thrust roles.
Final Line soldiers are usually only deployed in the unthinkable situation when the turians are being overwhelmed and most other races would be retreating. Them showing up means the Hierarchy expects the turians on the battlefield to die. To see Final Line guys striding up, calmly speaking orders and organizing the lines, is an eerie sensation. Turians get very calm and focused around them, because they know shit is about to get real.
The Final Line cyborg is bad news by himself. Out of his powered suit, he's still rocking built-in armor roughly on par with Titan Armor, a built-in set of arm-cannons roughly on par with a shotgun, and an omni-grenade launcher. Also can generate an omni-shield on either arm, and usually carries a PAIR of fucking Sunfire pistols.
When they ARE wearing their battlesuit, well, then shit gets real, like I said. Encased in two tons of what is pretty much just hydraulic-driven four-inch thick slabs of spaceship armor, backed with a power supply and carrying around a Heavy Hyperluminal Particle Accelerator, they brake for nobody. Their kinetic barriers are vehicle grade, and they can lift a krogan with a single hand or punch down a reinforced titanium door.
Their weapon will blow the complete shit out of anything it hits, and the armor is thick enough to bounce any kind of anti-personnel weapons entirely. The suit also has built in missile launchers, plasma throwers, a pair of VI drones, micro-mines, a full info-war suite, onboard omni-repair systems and, of course, omni-claws two feet long.
Final Line soldiers have bitchslapped Shieldbreakers out of their way before, and even stood up to and killed one of those fancy asari battlesuits once, although that wasn't a one on one fight and the asari bitch killed three of them first.
Turian Support Units:
Volus Missile Auxiliary: The wobblies aren't worth shit in any fight not involving food or money, but they do build some nasty fucking vehicles. The volus aux units are, as I said before, missile units. These are converted asari hovertanks, with the asari weapons stripped off, more armor added, and tons of missiles. The unit can be configured as ground saturation, artillery bombardment, anti-air, or GTS.
People laugh at the volus, but damn, these things can put out more fucking hurt than you'd expect. The ground saturation version in particular is nasty, a single aux carrier can throw sixty M/AM tipped missiles up to ten miles away in thirty seconds flat. That will turn an entire goddamned regimental combat unit into atoms, Bossman.
Civilian Auxiliary Support Teams: The turians have a couple of pre-space client races that they have do support duties sometimes - running ammo, hauling back casualties, supplies, that kind of shit. They only pack the C-404 civvy rifle and maybe some flash grenades, but at least one of these races - Jirmbo or something like that - are meaty bastards that look like the shit you fight in Galaxy of Adventure - twelve feet tall, six fucking arms that end in strangler hands, and a mouth in the middle of the body that can eat a krogan whole. I really cannot recommend getting your shit wrecked that hard just to shoot up the ammo runners, especially since I saw one of these big corn-fed bastards eat a goddamned mech.
Turian Warship Classes:
The primary weapons of the turian fleet are accelerated particle-packet (APP) cannons, mass-effect disruptor torpedoes (they don't use matter-antimatter in their torps, but see the fucking motion corvette), and high powered mines. Secondary weapons are both flek and pulse missiles, GARDIAN lasers, and traditional mass accelerator cannons (mostly found on the lighter ships).
E-Boat: The smallest ship is the e-boat, which is like a built-up pinnace with an FTL drive. Stuffed full of ECM gear, it also acts as a mine-layer and scanning platform. Like every other spike ship, this one is heavily armed – three 10 mm mass cannons, plus a rack of missiles. E-boats are pretty common throughout turian space as part of the eye they keep on the colonies and clusters, but are seen as wimpy and most staffed with low-ranking trainees. These things don't get names, just the cluster they work in and a serial number.
Missile Frigate: The missile frigate is the spike's very unhappy answer to all the other missile-shit the volus have introduced to us in the past ten years. Turian frigates are mostly assigned to patrol duties, and the missile frigate is basically an over-sized anti-piracy platform for the spikes, rather than being seen in the line of battle. It has a pretty good missile load, but for-shit armor to make room for it all, ending up with it being a damned flying bomb. This is actually seen as a good thing by the turians, since it encourages the captains to fire off their missiles rapidly and get the fuck out of dodge so 'real ships' can fight. The spikes name them after mountains in the cluster they are built in.
War Frigate: The 'war frigate' was the first human-turian joint engineering effort, and it's pretty new, replacing an older frigate that frankly sucked. Built along more human lines, it's more like a destroyer and built roughly along the same lines in terms of firepower, armor and shielding. It is the flanking and escort unit for most smaller turian fleets, and is the only other turian ship besides e-boats, corvettes and a few dreadnaughts to have ECM and pretty heavy GARDIAN arrays. The war frigate picks off incoming fighter, missile and light frigate attacks, it's weapons a pair of wing APP cannons and a bigger APP gun centerline. Armor is, like a proper human ship, thick enough to stand off ranging shots, and frankly for a frigate (or even a destroyer) it's pretty heavily armed. Sadly, not agile at all. The turians seem to like the design, and the stealth frigate they worked on with us is their way of repayment, I think. God knows the spikes needed a ship like this. Amusingly, they're named after turian ambassadors. Real subtle, spiky.
Torpedo Corvette: Spikes don't like missiles, and they absolutely hate torpedoes, since they ruin their nice dreadnaughts. The 'torpedo corvette' is more backasswards turian shit, a better name would be 'anti-torpedo corvette'. The turians bought the rights to the basic salarian corvette hull, gutted it, and fitted it with engines, piles of ECM, strip after strip of GARDIAN lasers, and a special set of forward arc cannons called splinter guns. Splinter guns basically fire out a 'cloud' of excited ions and particle matter in a long cone shape. This tends to destabilize the detonators on torpedoes, causing premature detonation. Even of it doesn't, it scuffs up and ruins the reflective coating most torps have, making them more vulnerable to GARDIAN laser fire. The Corvette also has four 5mm rapid fire turrets with high-power, high-speed accelerators mounted, which they use to shoot down torpedoes as well as bombers and torpedo fighters. They're named after important pieces of ancient turian armor.
Motion Corvette: The motion corvette is … fucking weird. Built around a trio of dreadnaught engines stuffed into the same hull as the Torpedo Corvette, and given much stronger shields, this thing can outrun almost anything else in space. The boat features fairly light weapons, but heavy armor – and a tank of two hundred fucking pounds of antimatter. The real job of the motion corvette is to blaze past enemy lines and open up this bay which shoots out long metallic lines that move slowly enough to pass enemy shields and connect to the hull. Once four of these are in place, the motion corvette energizes them, making a magnetic funnel, and then dumps this antimatter right into the enemy ship. That is usually enough to vape a hole clean through even dreadnaught armor. Turians aren't above having them ram an enemy directly, sending up the entire mass of AM in one go, making a gigantic fucking bang. These are all named after famous turians who sacrificed themselves.
Escort Cruiser: Pretty much the lighter stock cruiser. It has a slightly stronger shields and and a heavier weapons load than a human line cruiser, and much better speed , but maneuverability and armor sucks.. The escort cruiser often does just that, escorts larger ships as a flanking element. It's pretty boring, really. Named after old Valluvian priests.
Assault Cruiser: Thick armor, and a ton of forward firing APP cannons. Assault cruisers are used to set the flanks of the line when the dreadnaughts charge, picking off the small fry the big boys miss out on. Again, there's not much to this ship, except engines, armor, guns, and more guns. I'm not even sure the fucking things have medical bays or not. Named after various turian melee weapons.
War Cruiser: Twice the length of the Assault Cruiser, more guns, more armor. Notable only for the fact that this is where the spikes also start loading the ships down with heavy broadside firepower as well. The war cruiser is the only turian ship that can carry fighters, even if it's only six of them. Sometimes they act independently as border patrol ships, where the fighters come in handy. Named after stars in the Hierarchy.
Battlecruiser: There are more of these ships than any other kind in the turian fleet. The battlecruiser is EXACTLY fifty tons and thirty feet under the size/weight classification for a dreadnaught, which is just so much bullshit. Basically, they're pocket dreadnaughts, pound for pound twice as powerful as the heaviest asari or salarian cruisers and about on par with our actual dreadnaughts. They have hundreds of these things. Each one has a centerline main gun as strong as our dreadnaught guns, except they fire a forty pound APP slug that would blow a cruiser into sparks and scrap. They're named after famous turian marksmen.
Sloop: The sloop is smaller than the battlecruiser, and lacks forward firing weapons, instead being twice as broad in beam than any other ship. It focuses entirely on broadside firepower, and is used in defensive postures or to storm and assault space stations or ships. The sloop has thick armor and good shields, and of course very decent cargo capacity to haul soldiers. It also packs more GARDIAN lasers than most other ship classes, as well as external mounting hooks for landing craft. Named after cities on Palaven.
Dreadnaught: The turian dreadnaught is a nasty piece of work, bigger than most other navies dreadnaughts. It's mostly a block of armor stuffed full of guns, shield generators, and space for soldiers and vehicles. The ships do have some other features, like full medical bays with Palavanus doctors, and even full info-war and ECM suites and the like. Most dreadnaughts have two center-line guns and lots of turrets down the flanks, with strips of GARDIAN lasers on the wings and a bay full of bombs. They are slow and unwieldy, but they can take a severe pounding. They're named after turian generals and admirals of note.
Battleship: The last two turian dreadnaughts built, and the one they're laying the keel on now, are monstrously huge – way bigger than even our carrier dreadnaughts. These fucking things pack four heavy main guns, and then no less than three barrage-style APP cannons on each wing, on top of a volus-inspired rotary missile launcher rack that can ripple fire forty missiles in a single salvo. Turrets with APP cannons and GARDIAN lasers dot the top, sides, and bottom, while the back of the ship actually docks three war frigates that can deploy as escorts, as well as fifteen claw fighters. The most worrying thing about the Battleship is the triple hull, which has advanced kinetic barriers between the fucking hull layers. This means there are multiple levels of shields that have to be cracked to even damage the things, making torpedoes almost useless. So far, each one has been named for an ancient Praetor.
Turian Fighter Classes:
Turian fighters are nowhere near as good as ours, but they are serving a different role, so maybe I'm being, whatchamacallit, subjective.
Or maybe they just suck ass. They're not real maneuverable, and they have too many guns and not enough armor.
Claw Fighter: The most common fighter type, this looks like, well, a claw with wings on it. Most retarded shit I've ever seen after watching Kai Leng and David Anderson get in a fistfight over a white girl while in a goddamned strip club. Packs a pair of heavy APP cannon, some light shielding and sensors, and some incendiary bombs. It's only real use is ground harassment.
Merhku Fighter-Bomber: The more serious looking ship, this one was developed as a joint effort between humans and turians around the same time as the stealth frigate shit was. This fighter packs a four-pack missile launcher under each wing, a double-barreled APP nose turret, and four GARDIAN laser turrets on the wings – a nasty package. It has better armor, shields, and speed as well.'
Turian Vehicle Classes:
Lincent Hoverbike: the light bike packs a pair of APP rapid-fire cannons in the nose, a four-pack of light missiles, and a single VI drone in the back. Top speed is about 350 mph.
Velorthi Hoverbike: This thing is badass! That fucking Kai got one and won't tell me where, the stupid bastard. I should have shot his ass back when we were both in the SA. Anyway, this thing has twin engines and three kinetic harpoon launchers on either side, along with a fullauto APP gun in the nose. No missiles, but it can drop up to ten small mines that have a haptic cloaking field over them. Nasty things. Slower than the Lincent, only about 200 mph, but it also has a tough-ass kinetic barrier that will bounce most sniper rifle fire. The baddest thing about this bike are the fucking harpoons. Each one is loaded with a fleck of fucking antimatter! These things can drop a GREAT WHITE in one shot. Given the cost of the harpoons, the bikes are pretty rare, but still...
The pair of VI drones in the back is just overkill, honestly.
Aranthus Grav Platform: shitty platform most of the spikes use. Basically a metallic board with a shield generator, a mag-lift engine, and a mounted pair of Phaestons in a turret, this is for suppression fire and tactical support.
Arterius Grav Platform: the heavier and nastier grav platform, this thing is about nine feet long and nearly as wide, boasting much heavier shields and a rack of frag and plasma missiles on the bottom. It has two turrets, one to each side, mounting rotary APP miniguns. These things lay down some serious fucking hurt, and biotics use them a lot, the gunners keeping the biotic safe while he wrecks shit. This thing also has four VI drones that can help out in combat.
Vitha Armored Fighting Vehicle: Basically an armored ground-car with a big trailer on the back that holds spike soldiers, this thing is also lousy with more APP miniguns, kinetic barriers on the sides, and a decent top speed.
Serothis Heavy Command Fighting Vehicle: Take a eezo-core 35k vakar-power engine and stick it in a block of armor with giant ass monster-truck tires. Then hitch four ten meter long armored trailers to it, each also on monster-truck tires, and install frigate-grade shielding on the entire mess. That's the Serothis. Each fighting trailer is capped by a triple-mount lance cannon manned turret and has a pair of APP minigun turrets along the sides, along with firing ports. The first cab is all C4I and comms, the second is a full-out medical treatment setup, and the final two are infantry transports - with rack-slots on the side to allow SKYTALONS to latch on.
This is their command vehicle when doing heavy invasions and ain't no brakes on this rape train. Among other features, this bad boy boasts a two-hundred drone launch rack, two pop-up volus M/AM flek missile launchers, full ECM and the entire armor system is underlain with omni-gel emitters for rapid repair. The axles alone are sixty centimeters, the suspension uses something like six pounds of fucking eezo, and that engine can pull the whole thing along at about a hunnerd and fifty KPH.
You see this coming, you'd best head the other way.
Vakarak Heavy Fighting Vehicle: The war-truck. I already described this monster. Goddamned spikes. Nothing much you can do to something with half a meter of silaris-plated laser steel armor and triple kinetic barriers, alongside two SPEAR minigun turrets and an articulated HYDRA rapid launch system. Oh, and six light GTS turrets incase you start thinking about using gunships or any of that shit.
I'm not sure if I'm more pissed we don't have something this bad-ass, or the fact that it can take direct hits from a GREAT WHITE MBT and hit the thing with its own main gun, which is a monster rail gun firing depleted uranium chevron-sabots thirty mm wide at mach 9.
Yeah, fuck that noise. You ain't blowing up one of these bad boys without orbital fire in most cases, or serious artillery.
Turian Military Equipment: Weapons
Most spike weapons are APP (accelerated particle packet) based. Instead of a bit of metal, they fling a compressed ball of particles that blow up when they hit. This is weaker at getting past shields, but deadly once it does so, and has the ugly tendency to blow off arms and legs. You can't make particle ammo for pistols or sub-machine guns, so most of those still use good old mass rounds.
M-842 Judgment Pistol: A super-heavy, single-shot hand-cannon, the Blood Pack made a shitty knock of this a few years back. It fires explosive, high-impact armor-piercing slugs, one at time. This the stock sidearm of the turians. It has a lot of recoil, and what it hits is not getting the fuck back up anytime soon. Saw one of these blow a hole right through a krogan's skull once, bastard didn't even realize he was dead for a few seconds, stumbling around.
M-903 Sunfire Compression Plasma Pistol: The single most powerful handgun on the market, makes a Carnifex look like a fucking popgun. Creates and compresses plasma blasts and fires them out with a mass accelerator, smashes pretty much whatever it hits. These bastards cost more than a rack of Revenants, but they're worth the cost. I've seen this gun blow holes in Silaris like the shit wasn't even there, and when we went after the Primarch the Sunfire he had is what dropped a charging krogan in heavy armor with a single headshot.
Every member of the Deathwatch gets one once they pass some kinda trial, but some other turians have them too – Final Line guys like 'em, and the Raven Guard. Outside the Hierarchy they are very rare - some big-shit in the STG is the only guy I can think of who has one that actually works, although a few humans have broken ones from the FCW as mementos.
M-667 Tempest SMG: Often used by turian and asari mercs, the Tempest is a nasty piece of work. Hot rate of fire, good range, good penetration, and a pretty scary spread. It also can handle incendiary or hot-shotted explosive ammo. Tends to jam if left on full auto for too long, though. Bit unbalanced for single-handed shooting.
C-404 Civilian Defense Multifunction Rifle : This is a dual-stage weapon. The primary firing system is a stepped-down mass accelerator rifle, a bit shittier than a semi-auto Avenger. It can be compacted into a decent if short ranged shotgun. These weapons aren't really military-class weapons, but the dual-functionality is a severely handy feature. Be aware: every turian gets one of these upon reaching full maturity. So storming colonies, you have a threat at range and up-close.
M-393 Tornado: a really nice shotgun, this thing is double barrelled, and the barrels are slightly angled. With buckshot-pattern APP blasts, it tends to pulp whatever it hits. Not much ammo, and very short range, but it's a good inside shotgun and great for urban work. I use one myself.
M-772 Phaeston: one of the finest, if not the finest, military assault rifles I've ever used. Tight bursts, with both short burst and full auto select, and an extendable barrel with a singleshot mode and more power for turning it into an on-the-fly marksman rifle. Really good heatsink capacity, tearaway mag-rails for clamping on accessories, hydraulic-mount extendable shoulder stock, and three trigger packages in the stock – turian, human/asari, and salarian. Even comes with self-gimbaling auto-leveling features, and a pop-up UV laser sight that's invisible except through the eyepiece (and I guess to drell and salarians). The best part has to be the goddamned omni-bayonet that slides out of the front.
This is a kickass rifle, and we should seriously get some human guys to tinker with it and make a version for the Dog. Leng and I use nothing else. The APP rounds it fires are just gravy, really.
M-439 Vakial Rotary Assault Weapons System: The V-RAW, as it's often called, is some straight up bullshit.
So there's this minigun... thing. Like eight barrels of a Phaeston, but longer. The entire assembly is mounted on a harness-thing that has incorporated eezo lift systems and a hydraulic/myomer bodysuit you wear, as well as a power pack. There's a sort of armor-top-shell thing they drape over this.
The V-RAW fires six hundred APP rounds a minute at stupidly long ranges. Now, I know what Rachel's thinking now. "Pfft, only six hundred rounds a minute? Miniguns usually fire more." You don't need more. A full burst from this thing will saw a fucking MAKO in half if you sit there and let him shoot you up. Let's not even talk about the fact that they can sustain this fire rate for over an hour before they run out of power - and if they are riding on one of those fucked up turian trucks they can hook into the truck's power.
Ain't nothing this side of real armor on a tank is bouncing this kind of firepower. Fortunately, the weapon is kind of rare, very fiddly and prone to jamming and breaking. Thank God for small favors, Bossman, and we need to steal one. You know, for... research and shit.
M-342 Raptor: Speaking of knockoffs, we've already made a version of this weapon, I think. Ours is a light sniper, theirs is a marksman rifle. Semiauto APP rounds, with a pop-up scope and semi-fluidic shock mounting. Prettty low recoil, long range, very accurate. Hits much harder than the Phaeston, but without the full auto. Like I said, it's a designated marksman's rifle, not quite a sniper.
M-990 Krysae Anti-Materiel Rifle: I have said it before, but spikes do not fuck around. Their heavy long-arm, the Krysae, is sick. It uses unstable overloaded APP rounds to create an explosion when it hits, often tossing off hard rads at the impact point. For a sniper this thing is heavy and bulky, mostly due to the advanced range-finding shit in the main body that automatically adjusts the length of the barrel to affect the range of the shot proportional to the firing position or some shit. This thing hits a human in anything under Devastator armor, and they're turning into a fine red mist. Very, very accurate out to almost a mile and a half. Slow rate of fire, but who gives a fuck?
M-90 Indra: The other turian sniper rifle, this one is really nasty. Long and accurate, it has a pair of fire modes. The sniper fire mode spits out twin APP shots, calibrated for accuracy. The other mode turns it into a full-auto assault rifle a touch less accurate and powerful than the Phaeston...but with a sniper rifle's fucking range. Yes, that means the goddamned spikes can lay down full auto APP fire at several thousand fucking yards. This weapon killed more marines in the FCW than anything else combined, and the turians keep it up to date and refit older models from time to time. It is very delicate, however, compared to other turian-designed weapons.
M-459 Heavy Particle Acceleration Lance Cannon: Lance Cannons, the very best there is. When you have to absolutely, positively kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes. This is probably the most widely known and distributed heavy weapon in the galaxy. Lance cannons (no one uses the official name, not even spikes) are upscaled versions of regular APP weapons. And by 'upscaled', I mean instead of flinging a little tiny packet of packed particles this thing throws bolts two inches wide and a meter long.
Lance cannons are not very long range, but they fuck up anything they hit. They fuck up armor. They fuck up barriers and kinetics. They fuck up omni-armor, plated omni-gel, and they can crack Silaris if you work at it. Unlike most heavy weapons, which are either focused on anti-armor, anti-material, or anti-mech, this can do all three. Plus, the shots move fast enough that they can take out shuttles and gunships. Being hit by one is no joke, as that much APP doesn't just blow up - it detonates. You get hit with a full burst of APP rounds, you lose you arm - you get hit in the chest with a lance cannon your arm loses you.
Lance cannons are found all over, both in and out of Council space, and are one of the few things the Hierarchy exports that bring in a big profit. Unlike most heavy weapons lance cannons don't have any DRM shit except the APP colliater, so making your own is possible.
It's also hilarious to hit guys on foot with it - makes them go flying like in old Hollywood flicks. Nothing beats blasting a krogan and watching his eyes go wide as the stupid fuck skids ten meters backwards.
M-550 Hydra: This the turian version of our own ML-77 heavy missile launcher. The Hydra's designers – a bunch of Palavanus freaks – came up with the idea of bypassing the missile launcher's main weakness. Most launchers either go for dropping a single heavy target or for big explosions against a buncha targets. The Hydra has a VI that assesses the designated target and modifies the warhead on launch. It fires a sub-munition multimissile. Against multiple targets, it brackets them, overlapping the explosions split-seconds apart to overwhelm shields. Against a single target, though, it stages the shots in sequence, using three shaped charges The first fucks the target's kinetic barriers before the second destroys its armor, and the third warhead blows the fuck up INSIDE the goddamned target.
Saw a krogan get hit with one of these, limbs everywhere. Goddamned made me lose my lunch.
Heavy Hyperluminal Particle Accelerator : The superheavy weapons carried by Final Line soldiers, these things are sick and deadly. They are big fucking rifles, bigger than BRKR railguns even, almost five feet long. Each one is a crude and primitive mass effect tunnel generator, from what I understand. The Palavanus salvaged the shit from some Inusannon ruin about ten years ago. Anyway, when the gun is fired, it basically makes a small kinda weak mass effect shunt, like a mini-relay.
In vacuum, the weapon is useless. In any form of atmosphere, the air in the beam is flung at about a third of the speed of a mass relay jump. This is waaaay fucking faster than light. The air is literally converted into a blast of plasma, particles, and radiation, all compressed into an ugly flare of blue-shifted light that just completely fucks up almost whatever it hits. The minimum range is four hundred feet – then again, being hit with the mass tunnel itself is also not healthy. A cone of shit from four hundred feet to about seven hundred feet is either destroyed, wrecked, or badly damaged.
Beyond seven hundred feet out to about nine hundred feet, it's like a spray of grenades, and beyond that it's not more than some hard rads.
If, God help you, you are stupid enough to be hit by the fucking mass tunnel, it will probably tear a living being in half, and wreck armor. The things fire very slowly, but are still ugly.
SPEAR (Sub-molecular Particle Enhanced Assault Railgun): This is what happens when you give a goddamned Palavanus unlimited funds and tell him to horrify salarians. The SPEAR is kind of a built-up version of the Krysae, except instead of a mass accelerator they use mag-shells filled with compressed particle explosive rounds inside a railgun. With five barrels and the power supply of a battlesuit, this is a Very Bad Thing to face on any battlefield. Each round is a high-explosive particle blast, flung at four or five times the impact of a normal mass accelerated round, and it fires thirty rounds a second. I've seen, more than once, entire bands of pirates cut to bits by these things.
Omni-axes: Spikes don't do swords. They like axes. Nuff said.
Turian Military Equipment: Armor Systems
There are five weights of turian armor (not counting Final Line bullshit or Skytalon suits). Light armor is mostly for skirmish. Moderate is for regular battle. Heavy is for heavy infantry. Augmented is super heavy infantry. Ceremonial is … well, their idea of ceremony is different than ours.
Velek (Light): light turian armor is mostly formfitting ballistic cloth with a heavy spall liner on the inside, and a thin set of energy-deflecting plates on the exterior. The plates are usually topped with impact resistant leather padding. This is popular with scouts, inhibitors, and young turians. Not designed to stop heavy fire, more incidental stuff and shrapnel. Not environmentally sealed, nor is it space rated. If nothing else, EVERY fucking spike family will have sets of this for every single family member, even the kids.
Thermal (Light): the other kind of light armor, this is a set of nano-weave plastics topped with hard battle ceramics over the chest, cowl, shoulders, and upper legs. Designed to stop heat and rads, it's mostly worn in the more dangerous areas of Palaven. Unlike Velek armor, it can be sealed and it's space-worthy. This stuff bounces light rounds very well, but even a shitty rifle will go right through it.
Phantom (Moderate) : the 'stock' turian armor, this is a ballistic hardsuit about on par with our Onyx. Two layers of energy-absorbing spall liners, hard outer layer of battle ceramic, and an inner set of shock padding. Full environmental controls, six hour air supply, all that jazz. Mostly only the junior guys wear this crap.
Monitor (Moderate) : While no thicker or tougher than the Phantom armor, Monitor armor has more gadgets, their engineering types use it. Some built in sensors and info-war bullshit, and a thin gel layer to block radiation. Haptic lighting to see in low light environments, more on-board air, and a heat-managment system for spacewalks.
Silverback (Heavy): the most common type of armor for the bulk of the infantry, everyone remembers this shit. Silver and black, lots of curves and funny shapes. The surface is laser-polish compressed metals backed with high-impact ceramic, over a gel-padded bodysuit of spall-liners and omnigel that automatically seals suit breaches. Gyros in the wrist, heat management, FLIR and UV sights in the helmet, a full day of O2, and fully environment sealed. This suit WILL bounce light fire from Predators and Avengers that go for center mass. The knee joints are weak, but not a good shot on a turian, as they can work past that shit. Try a hip shot, and if that doesn't work, repeated rounds at the face will eventually get through. Better yet, don't use a fucking shitty ass weapon like an Avenger.
Titan (Augmented) : thick ugly plates, big fat slabs of armor on the chest, and multiple suit layers are what make the Titan a pain in the ass. Used mostly by the turians whose job is to storm positions, this thing was designed to take heavy fire, complete with two synched kinetic barriers and built-in medigel dispensers. It's built off the shell of the Silverback, so it has all the features that suit does.
Clan Ceremonial Armor / Family Ceremonial Armor: When it comes to bad-ass protection, neither the Clans or Families fuck around. This stuff looks all medieval and shit, lots of fancy curves and a surface layer of delicate ceramic, but underneath is a monster of a suit. There are five (or more) layers of anti-impact ceramics and energy-resistant laser steel, smashed in a mass effect forge and super compressed, then packed between more armor under that fancy-ass surface layer.
The entire thing is lined with synthetic muscle, boosting the spike's strength. There's capacitors for shields and shield regeneration, superior energy links for omni-tools, heat sheathing and heat management shit, gyro-kinetic coils for ranged weapons...God knows what else. There's even a fucking VI enhancement most of them use, linked to an eyepieces, that helps them target enemy vulnerable spots or to snipe.
Most big-shit Clans and Families will have at least two or three suits of this shit, one for the leader, one for the heir, and one spare if they can afford it. Most of the Deathwatch wears it as well.
You can fucking forget about one-shotting a Clan or Family puke, even a goddamned gunship doesn't have the firepower to punch through five fucking layers of anti-ballistic hard ceramics.
Special Tactics: the Palavanus
Palavanus rarely go to war. When they do, it becomes suddenly goddamned clear why turians put up with their bullshit.
First off, they are fearless. I mean, actually, literally fucking fearless. Along with whatever else the fuck is wrong with them, they really honestly think they cannot die. This has been tested by turian psychologists. It could be one fucking Palavanus with a pistol against six dreadnaughts and he will be talking shit and yawning.
It's one thing to see bravery, it's another for turians watch a leader fucking walk right into the heaviest goddamned fire and start mocking the enemy, or go up against two vakars at the same time while taunting the things. It does strange shit to the turian morale. It's already up there, but a Palavanus can whip them into a truly terrifying battle frenzy.
Second, even when they get hurt, they just shrug it the fuck off. The turians have a pack of legends about Palavanus doing this shit, and I've seen one take a full fucking burst from a LMG, get thrown to the ground in a splatter of blue, and manage to get back up to talk shit. They aren't any stronger per se than a regular spike, maybe a bit bigger on average, but all of them have hella pain tolerance, and they practice some kind of waking mediation bullshit that allows them to suppress pain and control their breathing. Again, turians watching a Palavanus keep going with nine or ten lethal fucking wounds get even wilder and more determined than usual.
Third, they're a fucking nightmare in hand-to-hand. Claw-to-claw. Whatever. Back in the day, they never gloried in war the way normal turians did, they just went at it with this cold fucking brutality that left anyone jacking around with them deader than dog shit. When it comes to shooting, they're sick fucking snipers, but they prefer to get up close and personal. Combined with them thinking they're immortal and unkillable? Yeah, it's like fighting the turian version of fucking Wolverine. Take my advice and don't do it. Seen krogan loose their ass off trying it, a human has no fucking chance whatsoever.
Finally, they're military geniuses. If the Six Families are all badasses at planning ahead, and the Thirty masters of manipulating shit and twisting people around to their thinking, then the Palavanus are masters at warfare. They come up with shit that no one even sees, using turian military units in ways that don't make no fucking sense, and they completely wreck shit. No one, not in twenty thousand years of recorded history, ever beat a Palavanus on Palaven. And the few times a Palavanus has had command in the modern era, no one has beaten them then.
The Palavanus commanded most of the strikes during the Krogan Rebellions, crushing the krogan lines before personally going out and just murder-fucking the krogan warlords. The only reason the krogan were hanging on towards the end is that they just bred faster than the turians, and even then it was only going to be a matter of time.
There are stories piled on top of stories of how many times Palavanus types have been outnumbered, outgunned, and surrounded, and just wrecked shit three hundred and sixty degrees. The last bigshot Palavanus general in the Krogan Wars, General Vetha, was outnumbered twenty-to-fucking-one at the Battle of the Kephic Valley, and routed the entire fucking krogan army, inflicted six hundred thousand casualties and lost less than five hundred of his own spikes.
Just run.
I got to see one in action once, in HANDSHAKE. Worked with one of their more adventuresome types, big corn-fed spike named Vorkus Palavanus. Terrifying guy – he is the only goddamned Palavanus in centuries to bother with the military, and he's carved his way to one rank below that of Praetor. Vorkus was always coming up with weird science shit, and HANDSHAKE sent two detachments on one of his crazy ass expeditions.
The total force was something like maybe thirty of us, and one hundred turians, working on some backwater planet digging up Prothean data, when there's an alert from the cruiser that brought us here, saying it's under heavy fire from pirates. Before it can do shit else, it's blown out of the fucking sky.
The SA destroyer we caught a ride on made tracks, leaving us stranded. Calm as you can please, Vorkus asks us humans to stay out of the way, and he has his men setup explosive traps in the ruins. He also gets his engineers to jury rig some of the missiles from the tank accompanying the group, before splitting his forces.
Batarians come down heavy, probably six hundred of them. Shit looks dire. Vorkus splits the unit into five teams and has them start harassing and sniping the batarians, even as more land. It's fucking hopeless, and I'm ordering my own men to fight well, because we can't fight past a thousand fucking batarians. The snipers hit some batarians, and the stupid fucks wheel around in confusion for a while, before they start to reform.
Then a funny thing happens. He pulls his snipers back, and sends out two squads to directly attack the batarians near their landing zone, while we fall back with the tank. Squads get shot to shit and fall back in good order. The batarians chase them, and the squads keep falling back, drawing the batarians into the traps, which explode.
The batarians that survive are clearly pissed, and we've only killed about fifty of them. But they don't attack, again just milling around, and instead one of their ships comes down. Vorkus has the engineers fire off that missile, and it hits the ship, generates some kind of EMP burst, and crashes it. Vorkus and three squads of turians rush it, managing to get aboard while telling the rest of us to fall back as rapidly as we can.
We do so, which is easy – the batarians on the ground are swarming the cruiser. We get to high ground, and see Vorkus and one of his squads escape, and disappear into the ruins. Then the cruiser's mass core goes up – he sabotaged it and left two squads behind to defend it until it went up. That explosion killed pretty much the entire landing force of batarians.
Vorkus and his guys hid inside a Prothean ruin , which stopped the blast. Calm as you please he and his last squad walk back to us, and he's fucking excited because the cruiser blowing revealed more of the ruin.
Turns out his plan depended on his knowledge of batarians. The snipers shot up the officers, and when the batarians charged, the remaining officers took the lead, and got caught up and killed by the traps. Batarian tactics at that point called for a ground bombardment, and then more officers to get off the command vessel to take over. He had an EMP missile ready to disable the cruiser when it came down to do a bombardment, then used the wreck to bait in the rest of the batarians. With the command vessel and all the high-caste leaders gone, the batarians would panic, and when his sabotage killed them all, they'd want to flee.
Sure enough, with most of the manpower of their fleet gone the fuckers split, and Vorkus wasn't even sweating the shit, busy digging through Prothean bullshit.
Boss, when your ride has been shot out of the sky and you are outnumbered five or six to one, the normal answer is you kiss your ass goodbye and sell your life fucking dearly. Vorkus, at NO FUCKING TIME, was even concerned about the batarians, and more importantly, neither were any of his fucking soldiers.
Do not fuck with them.