The colony began as three members; Nicole Aguilar(known as 'Smelly'), Hiroshi Conrad, and I. We have known each other for some time, joining together for the sake of escaping the over-arching laws of the royalty and society's limiting scope. Many deem us psychopaths, and they might not be wrong, for me and my compatriots agreed upon an organ harvesting operation as it is a fine source of wealth for those as willing as us.
Shortly after planetfall I quickly surveyed our environment despite still suffering from cryosleep sickness, and with incredible luck we landed near a closely packed trio of steam geysers ripe for power production with another on the other side of a mountain. We got to work immediately setting up a shelter, using a nearby ruin and cave as the basis for our new home.
After moving supplies, assigning sleeping spots, and handling all the other basic necessities for our new lives it finally came time to sleep, however one of my companions expresses distress when they tell me of noises coming from the other side of the wall next to their sleeping spot, on inspection, I discover it is made of bricks, granite specifically. I show satisfaction with the strong building material being available, though concern over these noises. I figure we will tackle this issue later, after our colony has been properly established, and tell them to sleep away from the wall.
In preparation for our operation, I have Conrad put together a large 'pen' of sorts around a sizable portion of land, helpfully surrounded by various hills and a convenient ruin, while I research geothermal power. The research took me over a season or two to complete, but was well worth it as the two wood generators wouldn't handle the power load we would quickly amass.
Organ harvesting of course has its challenges, not the least of such is finding those who share our lack of concern for such things. Because of this difficulty, I have set requirements for recruiting new colonists.
The candidate must have one of the following qualities:
- Be like minded in character, a 'psychopath' as others would call us.
- Be of great mental fortitude with a quirk bringing sufficient satisfaction to outweigh the effects of mass organ harvesting.
- Be of sufficient skill to warrent temporary colonist status.
The last option is not a case of desperation, but simply expoitation of resources. Human resources. Corporations do it all the time after all.
To that end, I remember our first addition was Dean 'Disaster' Hydronic. As of recent events, I hope her nick-name was not an omen to us all. She was bought from a slave trader due to the following observed qualities:
- High social skills, as we did not have a suitible 'face' to the colony that would not tip off those who would redily judge us for our methods, as well as maximize profits from our trade.
- An iron will, this was hard to discern from first glance, but after some questioning we determined she kept a stronger demeaner than the other two slaves presented. The traders seemed somewhat irate, but quickly calmed when I declared my purchase.
- She's a nudist, I was dubious of the value of this at first until I realized this could be leveraged alongside her brazen attitude to keep her calm even in the face of mutilation. As such it was a major factor to the purchase that has so far proven true.
To this day, Disaster serves as our custodian, warden, and spokesperson, vastly important roles for our trade.
Early on we attained our first prisoner, Sun. She served in our fields surrounded by the thin wooden and stone wall that makes for our pen. She quickly proved her worth as a miner and was considered for recruitment so that she might hollow out the mountain for our bedrooms as well as gathering the gold and silver deposits nearby. She had a companion she was with that we managed to imprison as well, but he was struck with an infectionand as we were still a developing colony, we opted to rip his heart out. That heart helped finance Disaster's purchase.
Since I cannot seem to remember much else at this moment besides my current companions, I shall continue with them.
The next to join our colony was Yaroslav Horne, he was another bought slave who was the first like minded individual we could find, it cost us the colony's dog, but he was well worth the price. He had asthma in both lungs that he had to contend with for some time, but we eventually dealt with that, as lungs were easy to find after our first major harvesting.
Later, we were suprised by the arrival of Smelly's brother, Nemo. The nervous sack of crap joined without any of our consideration, though Smelly insisted he be allowed to. He turned out to be a better craftsman than I, so he was put to work making clothes for winter, at least he was useful for more than just body parts.
Next we had busted into the ancient danger we settled next to, killing the mechanite scyther inside and uncovering a number of ancient slaves, one of them was Orange Locanbust, another surgeon. Now that we had two well practiced physicians, we were ready to expand into our trade properly. The rest of the slaves were taken as prisoners, as they did not fit our recruitment criteria.
we eventually expanded into that tomb, converting it into the science and medical wing that will host the great majority of our technological feats.
Our current final member arrived in a raid against the colony, Wicked was captured and added to the growing collection of prisoners, his brilliant mind was paired with shared outlooks and learning ability that suggests him to be 'too smart'. He was quickly considered for recruitment as I desperately needed a research partner, although I am now somewhat regretting that decision.
Eventually, one of the many prisoners broke and committed suicide. I'm not exactly sure how it was done, but Smelly insists it was asphyxiation. We enacted a mass harvesting immediately after, due to quickly diminishing moods. The harvest gave us the lungs we needed to replace Yaroslav's and gave us several hearts, one of which was used to replace Disaster's since her heart developed blockages.
The mass harvesting however did as we predicted, causing Sun to break. She decided to attempt releasing the one last prisoner, Wicked, and thus caused us to have to knock her out. Two chances to pass us on adding Wicked to our group... If only I knew.
In any case, Sun was considered too much of a liability at this point to keep, so we put her into a coma along with Nemo, since he too was breaking with no sure sign of being able to withstand the thoughts plaguing his mind long enough to stay sane. The original plan was to keep them in a coma until long past in hopes they would forget, but Smelly and Locanbust informed me that brain damage and eventual death was likely, so I opted for more harvesting. Smelly frowned but followed through with it, I don't know what he saw in him...
Eventually we recruited Wicked, he joined under the condition that he could guide the colony to a 'purpose'. The purpose he sought was to create a super soldier, one that could defend him and the colony and be used to take whatever we wished from other colonies. At first I was on board with his proposition, the ability to simply take prisoners directly from other colonies rather than waiting for them to attack us was very attractive, so we began research together toward that goal.
Several detours in science was made according to the needs of the colony, Wicked promoted researching basic prosthetics in hope of replacing his lost eye, my own eye was badly scarred in a fight recently so I agreed, and so I made light receptors to replace them. They don't work quite as well as my old eye but at least I have depth perception again.
Afterwards I proposed a better means of feeding our prisoners, since we plan to hold many for processing. The goal is to automatically break down the bodies of the many raiders we kill into a paste that the prisoners would then eat. I would presume being fed a paste should mask the source, preventing another suicide scenario. This plan is still being persued, with conveyer belts and a pushing mechanism just having been researched, the machine will be assembled once we have a comfortable amount of components. We might look into how to craft those.
That leads us to now... In a recent raid, we captured Skye Lorne, an enforcer. After interrogation we discovered that she is a transhumanist, and given what it took to put her down, she's clearly pretty tough too. This got Wicked's attention, he's convinced she is the perfect candidate for his experiment.
This is a clear problem, Skye does NOT share our outlook on human life, instead she has just the quirk that she'd like as many artifical parts shoved into her body as possible. It is going to take very careful handling to make sure she does not break, and Wicked is counting on this girl's fetish?. I'm not one to kink shame, but this does not bode well for us. If this girl gets everything he's dreaming of, bionic limbs, adrenalin infused ribs, mechanite enhanced skin, freaking blades for hands, and she goes berzerk? We are all dead.
I cannot talk my fellow compatriots out of this, they are all on board with it. We have faced too many raids, too many hospitalizations. They want better protection, and Wicked has them all hopped up on the idea of one unstable girl to do it.
I have to find a solution... And well... I have an idea.
We need protection, but I don't want just one body, I want five. I am enacting project Skye-Net, a squad of cyborgs, with Skye as the captain. The other four will be chosen by me and might not have her level of enhancement, but I will push for them to weild psychic shock lances. The purpose on paper will be to give us defense that is not all of our eggs in one basket, and the ability to send her on raids while not leaving home completely defenseless. In reality, these four will be at the ready to use their lances to put her down in the event of a rampage.
Wicked can have his project, but not without a leash. As stated at the beginning of this journal, if Skye-Net fails, be wary of following in our footsteps, and look out for this monster we unleashed upon this world.