Board Thread:Custom Lore Development/@comment-26084195-20170102204711

In modern days, the Terran Alliance has made leaps and bounds in the field of cybernetic modifications. While cybernetic limb replacements have been rendered obsolete by the fact that limbs can simply be regrown inexpensively, the cybernetic enhancement has not gone by the wayside. Cybernetics are high quality, cheap, and can provide a wide array of benefits. Often people get cybernetic enhancements just because they want to. To jump higher, to see farther, to be stronger without having to actually work out.

The cybereye is the most common cybernetic enhancement in the Alliance, as it has such a wide array of uses. It looks just like a normal eye, but provides 20/20 vision, and a built in recording device. It can also be equipped with many extras, such as low-light vision like a cat's, or thermal vision, or microscopic enhancements for lab work, and many things besides. There are of course cyberears, cyber-olfactory boosters, cyber-taste boosters, and even a touch link, if somebody is impaired in any of the five senses or wishes to improve a sense to impressive levels. Cybernetics can even be used to fixe physical or mental conditions.

Some Alliance Legionnaires may feel inclined to spend their pay on off-the-shelf cybernetic enhancements. Some may get cybereyes with vision magnification to supplement their visors with an in-built scope for greater accuracy, while others may use vision enhancement, to notice details on the battlefield others may miss. Some Legionnaires might replace part of the spinal column with superconducting material to increase their reaction time on the battlefield.

However, no Alliance military unit make more use of cybernetic enhancements than the Centurions and Valkyries. The Centurions possess a network of cybernetic enhancements that we would find highly complex and frankly mind-boggling. The truth is that the Alliance can afford to relatively easily incorporate this into their foremost elite soldiers.

The Centurions and Valkyries do have cybereyes, though they only have some basic enhancements, such as vision enhancement and night vision. However, their cybereyes are hooked up to their helmets, which don't have vision slits, but instead just have smooth white plating over a large degree of sensors, with which they can even see through some walls. Their helmets also collect audial information which is sent to their cyberears. Their brains are also heavily modified, including a system which allows the Centurions to mentally transmit messages, also allowing them to be completely silent in battle. The main thing therein is an advanced system which prevents the bearer from feeling pain. That combined with the augmented vat-grown muscles and bones laced with titanium, almost nothing short of a fatal blow can slow down a Centurion.

Perhaps their most advanced and influential augmentation is their wired reflexes. This augmentation is reserved for only the Centurions and Valkyries, and maybe for some agents of Naval Intelligence. It is also a highly invasive procedure, where the Centurion is implanted with a multitude of neural boosters and adrenaline stimulators in strategic locations throughout the body, catapulting the Centurion into a whole new world, where everything moves in slow motion. The Centurion's familiar is in sole control of turning this system on and off, to make sure it's used in combat. Speaking of which...

The Centurion's familiar is a vital part of its armoury. Within a Centurion's brain is a teeny tiny chip, known as a datavault, which is connected to all of the Centurion's cybernetics and equipment. And in that datavault resides the familiar, an AI that helps the Centurion run things. Without the familiar, things would be a lot harder for a Centurion. The stress of all that information would be a lot on a Terran brain, or anyone else in the Alliance for that matter. The familiar helps to manage that, and takes a lot of the load off the Centurion's brain. They are often the only friends a Centurion has.

You see, there's a problem with the Centurions. Sure, they're the posterboys of the Alliance, at the head of all their propaganda machines. And why wouldn't they be? Their gleaming white armour, their marching in flawless lockstep. When kids play war in the park they all fight over who gets to be a Centurion. But their nature is kept from the public, and is known best only by the Legionnaires that fight alongside Centurions for extended periods, and the crewmates of Valkyries. The problem is that they seem soulless and compassionless. Like emotionless robots. While this isn't entirely accurate (they have emotions), it is true that the Centurions are removed from the rest of humanity. The fact is, the more cybernetics one has, the less human they are, the further removed they become. 