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So I remember reading many moons ago a scene that went down for an experiment where the CS had made a "ultimate badass" human, and the story in the book went they threw this super soldier up against a pair of grackletooths and won without breaking a sweat. CAN'T FOR THE LIFE OF ME REMEMBER WHICH BOOK I READ IT IN! Someone out there knows what I'm talking about. Would be awesome for someone to refresh my mind on where the heck that was.

There was the highly unofficial (In both the sense that the project is not officially sanctioned by the CS central government AND that the article is not official) Janissary Project in Rifter #28 which might be what your thinking of.

eliakon wrote:There was the highly unofficial (In both the sense that the project is not officially sanctioned by the CS central government AND that the article is not official) Janissary Project in Rifter #28 which might be what your thinking of.

No wonder I couldn't find it, here I was digging through all the coalition war books, world books that had anything coalition, and even the mercenary books. Yeah, that was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!

The mutation abnormalities in Lone Star could be added to any CS occ to create a super soldier also.

please note that the Jannisary article has some issues when trying to fit it into regular rifts setting. for one, it is extremely powerful (MDC, supernatural strength, and master psionics? plus even more advanced than normal CS tech?) which can make it harder to balance. but some of the bigger issues is the backstory takes extreme liberties with the capabilities of Lonestar. for example, that Lonestar was able to engineer them to be master psionics, when by the official setting, lonestar still does not know what makes psionics work (see the Psi-X aliens fluff). or that these beings, which are as tough and strong and powerful as Demons, are accepted with open arms by the rest of the CS (when the CS has a lot of issues rectifying their use of Psi-stalkers, dogboys, and the psibattalion with it's citizens and soldiers due to CS propoganda against non-humans.) further it takes the stance that MDC creatures are "MDC skin only", which may not be true for all GM's and campaigns.

it is an interesting idea, and for a GM that wants to take the time to address the issues above (one way or another), could make for an interesting addition to a game. but IMO i'm glad it wasn't labelled as "official", because the article would cause so many problems due to it's ripple effects on other books.

The MDC skin thing can be interesting. Reminds me of Luke Cage, Marvel character who's skin could only be cut by adamantium.

If the character ever suffers internal injuries or gets sick enough to need surgery, they better hope there's a fairly high tech medical facility around.

Yeah the "concept" Of the CS wanting a super soldier is a good one. The "juicer" process having so many problems. They'd love to get their hands on a Captain America type formula.

The Jannisary article though. Whooooo. lol Like pointed out above it kinda "Cranked everything to ELEVEN!!!"

To the point it's almost... comedic or farcical in it's application.

Better to use it as an 'idea' and... you know make something yourself that's not quite that twinked out/munchkin.

A Burster Psi Net agent with two mutation abnormalities, Supernatural Strength and Endurance.
Is effectively a super soldier master psionic.

Pepsi Jedi wrote:Yeah the "concept" Of the CS wanting a super soldier is a good one. The "juicer" process having so many problems. They'd love to get their hands on a Captain America type formula.

The Jannisary article though. Whooooo. lol Like pointed out above it kinda "Cranked everything to ELEVEN!!!"

To the point it's almost... comedic or farcical in it's application.

Better to use it as an 'idea' and... you know make something yourself that's not quite that twinked out/munchkin.

my personal list of changes i'd make, if i was to use it? (as mentioned, it is an interesting concept. just badly handled)
first, get rid of the psychic powers stuff. they have to roll on the table in RUE like anyone else. (after all, Lonestar does not know how to engineer psychics, and their attempts to figure it out have generally been failure (again see the Pso-X), or accidental (Psi-sensing mutant animals, the rare mutant dogboy with nonsensitive powers, etc)

2nd, the backstory. the idea that Bradford would decide to work on humans? sure. but there are some tweaks still.

first, rather than use surrogate mothers, Lonestar's cloning technologies are used to engineer the jannisaries for the testing phase. which allowed the sworn-to-secrecy Lonestar scientists to more carefully monitor the results, and to determine if a given alteration is working well before birth. (also avoids the need to shoot newborns with a laser pistol to see if things work right. yuk.)
2nd, while MDC skin and regeneration proved doable, the PS is limited to Bionic only. (personal preference.)
3rd.. after several 'prototypes' are birthed and allowed to grow up, they aren't enrolled in the CS military proper. in how i'd do it, Bradford wasn't happy and was about to cancel the program, when he realized that with some adjustments to Level 7 of the Lonestar complex (his priivate playground) he could clone, train, and equip his own (small) private army that would be loyal to only him. which means he'd no longer have to rely entirely on hired outsiders or falsified orders to CS troops do the things he needs. further it would give him a force of guards for some of his off-the-books facilities outside the complex.

so he clones them in small batches (to keep them more covert, and to ensure that the older ones can train the new ones), and has the custom gear built for them so they just look like special CS troops. and then has some of that gear made available to general's Kalpov and Kashbrook so that his own troops can hide in plain sight.

of course, IMO Bradford knows that as soon as Joeseph Prosek comes into power, he'll lose control of the Lonestar complex and all his resources. if young Joe doesn't just have him killed. so the Janissary's and other off-the-books projects are Bradford's "hole card".. defenses he can call on should he end up having to face down the CS military.

CS super solider programs(as I understand them) suffer a contradiction problem. Yes they want them, but they are scared of them and would not trust them. so yes they would want one but they have rules blocking there creation. As I understand it is illegal to experiment on humans in the CS. (Heck PSI has a hard time being accepted by CS at times.)

In the CS you would be much more paranoid of the Intangible mutant than you would of a lot of other powers.