Z 
Ceux qui ne se souviennent pas du passé sont condamnés à le répéter. - George Santayana
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Z traversait une jungle. Il faisait sombre, les arbres s'écoulaient de pluie qui s'affaissaient comme du cuivre et le sol s'écoulait sous leurs pieds nus griffés. Ils regardent vers le haut dans la canopée - un millier d'yeux regardent en arrière, reflétant rouge dans la flamme de gouttière du flambeau qu'ils tiennent élevé au-dessus de leur tête. Sous les pieds, le sol cède la place aux tourbières, tout en appuyant sur. La tourbière cède la place à un marécage de mangrove, tout en appuyant sur. L'eau se ferme au-dessus de leur tête - tout devient noir.
Les vagues s'écrasent sur la rive alors qu'elles s'écoulent toutes de l'embarcation d'atterrissage au soleil de midi. Alors qu'ils traversent l'eau, l'extraterrestre à côté de Z se tourne vers eux et sourit un sourire large et joyeux. Soudain le sourire est parti - il y a un trou où il était auparavant. Soudain, l'air est rempli de balles et de feu. L'extraterrestre clignote deux fois avant de s'écraser dans le surf, ses trois jambes noires se repliant sous elle sans grâce. Z tourne en arrière vers la plage et commence à charger en avant, tirant dans la ligne d'arbre.
Ils sont tous ici, tous leurs frères et sœurs - ils sont entiers. Z regarde avec neuf cents paires d'yeux sur les saints. Ils brillent avec une lumière dorée comme le ciel violet autour d'eux craque avec la foudre rouge. Ils s'avancent pour rencontrer les Dieux...
Et puis Z se réveille.
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"C'est votre capitaine qui parle, je veux que tout le monde dans la salle commune immédiatement. Viens ou sois absent, mais ne sois pas en retard. Je ferme la porte après cinq minutes."
Le crépitement de l'interphone retentit dans l'obscurité chaude des animaux des quartiers de Z et les fit sortir du passé. Ils se sont roulés sur leur côté et ont essayé de se boucler dans une balle pour échapper à la réalité. Mais c'était déjà en train de s'effacer. Ils voulaient y retourner, ils voulaient y retourner... partis. Ils s'y trouvaient dans l'obscurité, sachant que c'était mieux que tout ce qui se trouverait en dehors des limites du petit nid solitaire qu'ils avaient construit pour eux-mêmes. L'éperlan du nid de Zeruuli, il a fondu comme la famille, mais Z savait qu'il n'y avait pas de famille ici - ils étaient seuls.
Pour l'instant, ça sentait comme si le sommeil revenait, mais la bronzée bourdonnait à nouveau d'une voix monotone. C'était tellement agaçant.
"Toutes les mains, préparez-vous au saut de phase." 
Le navire a lurgé et les yeux de Z s'est ouvert, orange brillant avec une faible lumière malade de l'intérieur profond. Ils étaient réveillés maintenant. Le tas de chiffons sales qui étaient empilés sur leur couchette s'est effondré au fur et à mesure qu'ils surgissaient. À partir du haut de la pile, ils ont choisi une pièce particulièrement tachée et tachée et ont commencé à l'arracher avec leurs longs doigts griffés. Une inspection plus étroite révélerait qu'il s'agissait d'une combinaison de saut en plastique gris standard, mais celle-ci était tellement non lavée et sale qu'il était difficile de le dire. Le cou avait été arraché large pour permettre aux Zeruuli d'étrangler leur imposante masse à l'intérieur. De même, les manches avaient été arrachées aux épaules pour exposer les grandes dalles de muscles effrayés et tatoués que Z appelait bras.
L'éclairage automatique de détection de mouvement ne s'est pas allumé tel quel, Z l'avait détruit il y a longtemps. La seule lumière dans la pièce provenait d'un seul écran de visualisation fissuré qui était assis sur le plancher dans le coin, faisant face au lit à un angle. Il a été accordé à statique - le volume a été retourné.
De la lumière qui clignotait et qui changeait l'écran, on pouvait voir une partie de la pièce obscurcie. Une grande partie des murs, du sol et du plafond étaient cachés sous une couche de mucus comme de la boue qui s'y est accrochée dans une épaisse globule et des taches. C'est Zeruuli bile - la substance qui a formé l'espèce cocons reproducteurs, et est également venu pour enrober leurs nids quand ils ont été laissés en un seul endroit assez longtemps. Des tas de poubelles ornaient le sol, pourrissant la nourriture, des bouteilles vides et du verre cassé. Rien de tout cela n'a dérangé les semelles en cuir des pieds de Z alors qu'ils s'éloignaient de la porte et s'enfoncent dans le couloir à l'extérieur.
Ils bûchaient le long sous les lumières clignotantes, griffes s'accrochant sur les planchers métalliques grillés vers la salle commune centrale où ils mangeaient normalement. Quand la porte sifflait, ils étaient surpris de la voir si vide - normalement ils étaient les derniers à arriver pour le petit déjeuner, mais il n'y avait que le capitaine, le pilote et Riggs. Ils ont été également surpris quand ils ont réalisé que la table n'était pas posée pour manger.
"Pas de nourriture..." Ils disaient dans un sifflement bas, et regardaient de côté et de côté avant de se rappeler qu'il n'était pas encore temps pour la nourriture. Ils sont entrés dans la salle commune et se sont étendus sur le sol, dans l'angle le plus proche du pilote. Ils ne se souciaient pas du pilote. Le capitaine allait bien aussi, mais ils les ont fait travailler. Riggs qu'ils considéraient avec un regard hostile et sans lien. Ils n'aimaient pas Riggs, son esprit s'est déplacé à jeûner pour Z.
Z/35712 – Chopper - Z
   
Name
 Z/35712 is technically their official name, it’s a batch number tattooed on the back of their neck from whoever originally birthed them. 
Nicknames
Prior to conviction inmate was known by the alias Chopper, an epithet given to them by their non Zeluuri comrades – supposedly derived from their propensity for machetes?
Since conviction they have adopted a new name that was given to them by fellow inmates, Z, short hand on many world’s for Z/35712's race – the Zeluuri.
Position
Convict 
Age
Unknown – Zeluuri memories aren’t particularly sharp and pretty much end up completely resetting after about fifteen years. Z/35712 has served nine of a twelve year sentence, and we have records stretching back for another ten years before that. 
Gender
Zeluuri are sexless – most professional or medical reports will refer to them as a ‘they’. On world’s with less stringent laws regarding sentient life Zeluuri are often downgraded to an ‘it’ however, and most people refer to them in the male pronoun as they conform to galactic culture’s general gender expectations for males more readily than females – they don’t seem to mind.
Charged Crime(s) 
Currently serving a twenty galactic standard year sentence (reduced to twelve via Picking) with additional five years monitored probation for murdering a settler on the colony of Prander’s World. Has previous convictions for minor drug charges and violent assault on other worlds.
Reputation
 Z/35712 lives up to the stereotypes surrounding Zeluuri well – they’re violent, dangerous, exceptionally strong, but ultimately simple minded and easy to please. General population is mostly scared of Z/35712, given they can damn near tear most other people in half with their bare hands if they wanted to. The guards however are somewhat complacent, as knowledge of how to bribe Z/35712 into following orders is commonplace. 
Appearance 
 Imagine a Conger eel with six dull glowing orange eyes stuck in the sides of its face. Now put that Conger eel on two legs, give a set of arms ending in clawed hands have two sets of opposable thumbs on each side. Congutulations you have just met your first Zeluuri. They have no lips or eyelids and just slits for a nose, their mouth is a jumbled mess of fangs that sometimes keep members of their race from closing them all dripping with toxic saliva. They start off full height but skinny and lean when first birthed but rapidly bulk up on muscle in the first few years of their lives. They lack sexual organs – instead they produce asexually with a parasitic slime that is used to wrap dead bodies in to create a cocoon. The flesh of the host becomes altered to the genetic code and a 'clone' is made. Because each host is difference, every Zeluuri doesn't look the same and takes on a minor change in format to the traces of DNA left from the cadaver.
Z/35712 is a particularly large and strong example of a Zeluuri, indicating both a large original host, and a long life. They are distinguished from others of their kind through the many scars and markings on their body. They are missing their right middle eye, their left inner thumb and half their ring finger on the same hand. Mercenary and prison tattoos around their pale fleshy body faded like newspapers left out in the rain.

Height 
 6ft 10inches or 208cm
Weight 
400lb or 181.5kg
Personality
Violent and slothful are two most identifiable traits of Z/35712. Like most Zeluuri they have a natural propensity to violent and war like behaviour, and the fact that their loyalty imprint was activated years ago when they were first birthed means that getting them to do anything is a real pain. However, they do respond well to promises of extra food rations or luxury goods, as long as you remember to keep them. Z/35712 is obedient, trusting when coerced as such and their idleness is made up for by their sheer strength and endurance, making them a relatively effective worker. However, be sure to treat them with respect, don’t try to trick them, break a promise or deceive them because when they get angry… they sure do get real angry, and a 400lb bipedal eel with claws can do a hell of a lot of damage.
When it comes to their interaction with the other inmates, most of them are scared of Z/35712, (hell did you see what he nearly did to Kravat in his first week here? I hear his doing well these days by the way, eating solid food again) but they don’t really seem to realise it – there’s not really that much going on up there. And they insist on sharing double cell for whatever reason which makes more of the gen pop uncomfortable, they keep thinking Z/35712 wants to cocoon them and make a friend for themself. Like the rest of their kind they have the odd habit of referring to themselves in the third person. 
Likes
 Meat
 Sedatives/Opiates/Anything chemical that produces euphoria
 Sleeping
Music of any sort – lone Zeluuri are much more docile when there is constant background noise whether it be classical music or static.
Dislikes
 Work – unless sufficiently bribed
Being tricked, deceived, or lied to in anyway
Jokes or witty people - they don’t often understand them and assume they are being laughed at
Strong electric shocks – due to their low level psionic hive mindedness
Being left alone
Skills
Really, really, strong
Faster than average
Skilled at hand to hand combat – both armed and unarmed
Has exceptional night vision
Weaknesses
Dumb as a doornail
Uncooperative with others except to other Zeluuri or original owner
Easily distracted by sleep, food, drugs and alcohol 
Fears 
Strong electric shocks – it’s like being punched directly in the brain for them
Being alone – the general pack mentality of Zeluuri means they get agitated and upset when left completely alone.
 Certain types of ancient alien artefacts makes them completely freak out – anything related to the High Vos culture. 
History
 Z/35712 first shows up on any official record about 20 years ago as a fully grown Zeluuri arrested for drug trafficking on Azatone. They served two years there before being released and emigrating to the desert world of Hakkon – trail goes completely cold for four years until they show up an enlisted mercenary with the USSC (United Security Solutions Corporation). For the next six years they fought in a variety of conflicts, the invasion of Fyndii by the Damoosh collective, the Derelict War during the Colchis Offensive on Magu Minor, and the civil war in the Ethelholm System.
Around ten years ago they ended up on a posting protecting one of the frontier colonies on Prander’s World, rooting out pirates and illegal homesteads in preparation for another wave of expansion. One night he was in a bar playing cards with a bunch of other Zeluuri mercs and a stranger joins in and ends up winning a lot of money. A fight breaks out, the Zeluuri accuse the stranger of cheating, someone pulls out a gun and Z/35712 machetes the guy in the face. Supposedly it was self-defence but anyway the card player dies and Z/35712 gets arrested.
Justice on frontier worlds isn’t much so the normal procedure would be for USSC to post a bail and make Z/35712 pay it back. But as it turns out the stranger was the son of some wealthy capitalist from Urras who got wind of what happened and demanded justice – so Z/35712 gets shipped back to a core world and given a proper trial. They get 20 galactic standard years for murder and after brief stints elsewhere, ends up in a penal colony in the Siren System. This was how they managed to get into picking – Zeluuri aren’t bright enough to be good pickers, but Z/35712 is freakishly strong and can do the grunt work of 3 or 4 other inmates. 
Zeluuri 
 Lifespan 
Unknown – most of them end up being killed before they reach the 100 year mark and those that have often don’t even know it themselves due to their memories resetting every fifteen years or so. There have been recorded cases of individual Zeluuri living well over 300 years. 
 Home planet 
 Zeluuri are found all over the place and lack a definitive home planet. They are a very old galactic race and appear in depictions and records of long dead races under different names – apparently appearing in waves throughout the eons. Mostly they show up on Planets which have been involved in galaxy wide conflicts or have been colonised over and over again, this due to their use as foot soldiers and menial workers. Some planets are almost entirely Zeluuri, however, archaeological evidence has shown that these are not home worlds at all – but planets which have been infected with a strain of the Zeluuri and they have eventually completely overrun and subsumed the indigenous populations. 
 Culture
 To understand Zeluuri culture one has to understand their fragmented and little understood past, as well as their important psychological make up. There’s academic consensus that the Zeluuri are not a naturally occurring life form, its believed that they were created in the Age of the Dawn Empires of the galaxy as a form of biological warfare by the Ancient High Vos culture group. Hieroglyphs from the pyramids of Old Vos often refer to the High Vosians as being the ‘givers of life’ (from what we know they were extremely gifted biological engineers) and refer to a slave race underneath them as the ‘corpse-born’ - it is believed that this refers to the modern day Zeluuri.
Originally they could be unleashed on an unsuspecting world through orbital bombardment of spores which would infect host creatures and begin the transformation process – however, how this particular process was achieved is lost to ages and now Zeluuri only reproduce through cocooning. Early records from the Great Sagas of Yi Angli Pret mention a War with a group known as the Adversaries and how they made monsters fall from the sky that swallowed the dead and split in two, one again these are believed to be Zeluuri.
The other great strain of evidence for the connection between the Ancient High Vos culture and the Zeluuri is their strange behaviour around artefacts from this period – in particular any representation of a High Vosian. They refuse to look at them and begin to uncontrollably gibber and quake in whatever language they know about damnation and their shame. The Zeluuri lack a conscious collective memory (it is well known they almost completely reset their memories every fifteen years or so) but equally there is the possibility here of an unconscious memory being handed down throughout the generations through their psionic abilities – the Zeluuri pseudo hive-minds.
All Zeluuri have low level psionic abilities and when left in a group will eventually form links, allowing groups of several hundred of them to act in one purpose and to one plan. At above 300 or so individuals these links break down and groups of 20 or 30 Zeluuri will break off to form new hive minds, but this is inconsequential when you consider that there must be a continuous mental link going from the Zeluuri of Ancient Vos right the way through to the modern age. It appears that there is a form of indelible imprint upon them as a race relating to the Vosians in a way which beyond their birth imprinting which is traditionally considered the primary control method of their species.
When a Zeluuri is first birthed from a cocoon it is ready to be imprinted with commands, commands that will stay with it for life. A hive mind made up of enough individuals with the same imprint will assimilate other Zeluuri to that imprint if they enter it, similarly a hive mind with too many conflicting imprints will break down the authority of the original master of the Zeluuri. Because of this ability to imprint loyalty or servitude onto them, as well as their massive strength and general inexpensive nature to run, Zeluuri are an extremely popular choice for labourers on worlds where slavery is still legal.
The Zeluuri as a race are supposed to live in groups, a lone Zeluuri appear very stupid, and most people never experience them in hive minds of 30 or upwards, where they still seem quite dim. However, a full hive mind of 300 Zeluuri is very mentally capable and can be said to be quite devious when it comes to tricking their opponents in battle.
Left to their own devices on worlds long cleared of any other opponent, Zeluuri will band off into groups roughly the size of a large hive mind and begin protracted periods of warfare against each other. Generally their technology will devolve to hunter-gathering and stone or scavenged tools.
The one exception to this is the world of Skhien, where the Zeluuri virus ended up hosting on a race of naturally gifted telepaths. This ended up producing genetic anomalies in the planet’s Zeluuri population to this day. Here the Zeluuri can form hive minds of several thousand individuals and have preserved a much higher level of technology and civilisation. They have created a feudalistic society, retained the art of metal working and agriculture, as well as formed political unions and organised religion. Although this is one world in many hundreds which the Zeluuri show up on, and only accounts for a very small percentage of their overall population.