Koldan, Sin and the Doomed Ship

The Persephone is an experimental starship designed by an interstellar corporation called Nastrand Industries. It was the first ship to use warp drive technology. It was sent into the warp on its maiden voyage, carrying a full crew for unknown reasons, many of them cryogenically frozen. Something went terribly wrong.

Demons

The Persephone passed through a nightmarish realm in the warp, inhabited by malevolent entities. These beings are called demons by many. The ship’s warp core has become a constantly activated portal to Hell, through which demons and their psychic influence can reach the crew.


Demons seem to take a deep interest in the negative emotions of humans and other sentient creatures, and can both possess them and manifest through them when they have been thoroughly corrupted. Demons are often classified according to the sin(s) they enjoy indulging in when they are free to interact with the physical world.

Some human religions from back on Earth seem to know useful information about the demons, while the rest of their writings are misleading and incorrect. For instance, Krof [an inhabitant of the ship, see further below] carries a chain with numerous religious symbols on it. It’s useful for finding demons among the survivors, for they react distastefully when these items are shown to them. Exorcisms also seem to be effective, at least when done properly by someone with true religious conviction. Krof lacks any sort of belief in this.

The ship

These victims can be from any time or place, and when they have the time to compare histories of the galaxies they come from, it becomes obvious that they are often not even from the same timelines…the Persephone can pass through time and even alternate universes.

Trapped!

Krof came on board around three years ago. He was involved in ship boarding actions during a war the NovoSov Commonwealth was fighting. The Persephone showed up and was assumed to be a hostile vessel joining the fighting. The rest of his boarding team was killed as they attempted to breach into the ship, but Krof survived and was trapped on board when the Persephone went back into the warp.

His immediate concern was re-arming himself, which he did by tracking down his dead teammates and scavenging their armor and weapons. He also did not initially speak English, and had a difficult time communicating until he found translator software.

A more long-term concern was his metabolic failsafe. Skolls are designed to not be able to go rogue and operate on their own. His body is intentionally designed to not produce a specific enzyme that he needs to live. This chemical is instead given to him in his rations. When he is away from support, he eventually dies of malnutrition due to this missing enzyme. He befriended a surviving Nastrand scientist, who was eventually able to synthesize the chemical for him.

Krof befriended some Nastrand marines despite them being enemies of his nation, and worked with them to defend the crew deck and make scavenger runs to the Maintenance deck. All of these Marines are now dead, however.

There was an uprising over a year ago where the remaining survivors on board attempted to regain control of the ship. Parts of the ship were isolated from the Persephone’s possessed computer by severing them from the network and installing portable CPUs. Some of the ship’s functions like astrogation and communication have been liberated in this way. Many of the Power cells were captured and made unavailable to the reactor, and now it runs at less than full capacity and often can only be open for short periods. This has made the demons’ presence on the ship less frequent, and they usually try to influence and possess the crew mentally more than they directly manifest these days.

The ship has responded to this rebellion by ceasing its agenda of torment and actively trying to kill off the remaining crew. This doesn’t mean that the demons on board don’t still enjoy their sick pleasures, though.

Krof

Skolls are artificial life-forms made by the NovoSov commonwealth. Their DNA is put together from many different species. Human, canine, creodont (a large, prehistoric, now extinct life-form from Earth), and also entirely artificial genes written by scientists.

Skolls are designed to be bred and sent into battle quickly. There are no female Skolls – whelps are born in artificial laboratory wombs and are force-grown to adulthood within a year. They are trained in units made up of Skoll teachers and human commanders.

There are many familes, or ‘clades’ of Skoll that are descended from a single ancestor. These clades are all named after Heroes of the Soviet Union from old Earth. Krof belongs to the Zhukov clade, named for a historical general. Skolls are given first names while they are in training, one-word descriptions in old Russian, much like a human would name a dog. Krof means ‘blood’, and he was named this because he often became covered in blood during live hand-to-hand training exercises.

Skolls are never given control over human troops, and are given ‘sub’ ranks that indicated the rank only applies to other Skolls. Krof is a sub-sergeant,for instance.

The Skoll mindset is very different from a human’s, and instead of revolving around personal advancement or protection of relatives it is based on competition, and their perceived prestige in the eyes of their ‘pack’. No Skoll wants to fall behind in performance and become their unit’s omega.