The Temple of the Exploding Head

The nefarious Black Hats, the scourges of Xaphan Space, have been in an on-going disagreement with their hated rivals of the League, the Sisterhood of Light for ages. In the older days of the AX Time Epoch, the Black Hats regularly met the Sisters on the battlefield like two great armies, the Black Hat slinging their Shadow tech and the Sisters countering with TK.

Eventually, after many defeats and a bit of internal strife, the Black Hats began shying away from direct engagements with the Sisters and commenced a campaign of smaller “harassing actions” against the League. The Black Hats became known and feared for “Snaring” certain places across the League, overrunning them with painted illusions and Shadow tech. However, the Sisters, ever vigilant, became adept at detecting Black Hat snares and eliminating them. The Black Hats were again frustrated.

Going back to the drawing board, the Black Hats finally came up with two forms of Shadow tech that the Sisters could not easily detect of be rid of: Shadow tech Traps and Whamic.

Shadow tech Traps (StT’s) were invented by Ethylrelda of Waam, a Black Hat of immense power. StT’s are tiny, undetectable, and can do virtually anything and go anywhere. StT’s can take on any number of shapes and forms, however the most common appears to be a tiny six-legged “cockroach”-like creature that latches onto a victim and will not let go until it has either run its course or is dispelled by the Sisterhood of Light. StT’s can be left in an given area and there they will wait until they are “triggered”. They can be instantly deadly (sometimes exploding, catching fire, lashing out and cutting) or they can perform “harassing” activities like latching onto a victim and causing misfortune at a measured rate. As they are most often Cloaked into invisibility, a person may carry an StT for a long period of time and not know it. StT’s may also infect devices and machinery and cause them to either malfunction, operate on their own, or provide false information. Persons suffering from extreme bouts of misfortune or bad luck often present themselves to the Sisters to determine if they have been “StT’ed”. They can also self-replicate, making them extremely difficult to be rid of. The Bilson-Gorman are of Bazz was declared “uninhabitable” by the Sisterhood of Light due to the high number of devious and self-replicating StTs placed there by the nortorious Ethyrelda of Waam. Use of StT’s became a Black Hat favorite and became a usual weapon of most of them.

StT POTS:
Lady Poe of Blanchefort, a great innovator in the use of Silver tech, invented a variation of standard StT’s called an StT Pot, which can create vast amounts of programmable StT’s from a small space in a very short amount of time. StT Pots resemble a decorative vase with tiny Silver tech bugs wandering out to the rim. Highly effective, one or two StT Pots can eliminate an entire army in a matter of moments.

As they are made of Shadow tech, StT’s are very difficult to dispel. The Sisterhood of Light is adept at detecting and removing them. Also, a branch of Xaphan Cabalism and certain wavelengths of light have recently been discovered to dissolve or kill StT’s as well

WHAMIC:

Whamic is another Black Hat scourge that is rapidly growing in League space. Whamic is a form of viral spam holo-mail that does not attack your terminal or hardware, instead, it attacks the person viewing it. The “Mad Black Hat of Waam” Wilhella Cormand-Grande of Waam is the known inventor of Whamic in 0003002AX. Whamic is enfused with an altered form of Shadow tech and is capable of being transported holographically. When opened, Whamic may do virtually anything. Monsters may jump out of of holo cones or terminals and attack, invisible demons might take up residence and cause no end of grief, or one might be hopelessly mesmerized into performing activities not of one’s own making. The Black Hats’ usual antagonists, the Sisterhood of Light, were completely unprepared for these holo-attacks and had to turn to the Science Ministry for assistance. The Science Ministry was largely successful in purging most bits of Whamic from the holoways, however, some of it still gets through. As a counter-measure, the Sisters threatened to assassinate Wilhella, and, being somewhat of a coward, she greatly abated her Whamic attacks. Unlike StT’s, mastery of creating Whamics was held exclusively by Wilhella.

copyright 2014, Ren Garcia, Eve Ventrue and Ewelina Dolzycka