THE HELLFRIEDE FILES [1]
{Observation of SSC private soldier.
Name: Hellfriede Ripley. Callsign: SKYLINE.
Video File Transcribed By: ???}
The execution parades in the capital were always led by Metalmarks. The Assembly had been in bed with Smith-Shimano Corpro for a long time, and the light, easy steps of the mechs along the streets were coldly melodic. What do beauty and craftsmanship care for blood if the shedding can’t be remembered as artistic? Hellfriede stood with the other Cavaliers. They were always required to be present for the killings. Maybe it was to remind them that their uniforms were keeping them far away from the firing squad.
The people sentenced to death—the condemned—had been branded with thick, black words on their arms stating their sins. When they reached their final positions, they’d be bound to posts with their branded arms on full display for appropriate mockery. Beside Hellfriede, two Cavaliers muttered to each other about the remnants of a revolutionary cell. They sounded bored. In the heavens above, someone wept, but their tears fell to the city as nothing but a drizzle. Hellfriede closed her eyes when she felt the first drops. Two Death’s Heads mounted on opposite high rises in the central square, two Metalmarks leading the procession and two in the back, two White Witches waiting by the execution posts, invisible Dusk Wings stalking the grounds. Deaths like this had to be orderly, at least, if they couldn’t be beautiful.
A woman with the word “insurgent” on her arm was wearing red; the torn cloth draped over her was probably a cloak once. She was led by the same wrist shackles as those around her. Her clothes slumped off her body at awkward angles; she was slight and probably not older than eighteen. The person behind her hadn’t stopped staring at the back of her head. It might have been despair. It might have been hatred. The woman stopped walking. “She’ll die to the second Death’s Head,” Hellfriede said it only to herself. It was a reminder to stay still when the woman in red slipped her shackles and turned on her heel.
Previously dull voices rose in pitch. Footsteps fell out of time. Two Dusk Wings appeared and fired their Burst Launchers in sync, but the woman hit the ground fast enough for the explosive shots to collide in the air. The resulting fiery burst knocked an entire line of condemned off their feet. The woman disappeared under the wave of struggling bodies and rattling chains. The two Metalmarks in the back turned invisible. That didn’t matter because the woman emerged from the throng of bodies and shackles from a spot the pilots hadn’t thought to cover. A Shock Knife severed an entire inch from her hair, but she just kept running. Hellfriede watched like someone being forced to take an eye injection. Two Railgun shots went off. The first Death’s Head missed. The second one spread shards of the woman’s skull across the street. It was quiet again after that.
No one knew what to do with the headless corpse in the street, so it was ignored until after the executions. Hellfriede stared at the dead woman’s red rags as though she wanted to wear them herself when no one was looking. She didn’t. The Cavaliers met with the Assembly that day. They were still young—all around 13—and still training to be useful. It was their first true interaction with their planet’s leaders. The head of the Assembly was a woman with a name that sounded like her parents knew she was going to watch many people die. Hathor Grimm. It was a funny name that didn’t make anyone laugh. Ms. Grimm shook Hellfriede’s hand and Hellfriede stared down at their fingers. They both went to bed early that night. For Hellfriede, it was after vomiting and brushing her teeth.
“You know, you’re not the prettiest woman here.” Reign says. She’s a 5’3 bombshell blonde and she’s very aware of that fact. Hellfriede should be just as aware since she’s been splayed out on her bed the past half hour. She has to see it: the way Reign pouts to push out her plush mouth every so often and glances up at Hellfriede with her perfectly baby brown eyes. Hellfriede didn’t crack the top ten on their last exam, but she’s far from dumb. There’s no such thing as a stupid Cavalier.
“Ouch.” Hellfriede glances over her dataslate, eyeing the blonde bundle on the silver platter that is her own leg. Her hand darts forward to pinch Reign’s arm.
Reign doesn’t scream because she is a mature adult who can regulate her frustration. Instead, she swats at the hand that pinched her. “Let me finish!” Oh, how she would love to- “You’re not the prettiest, BUT, I think you could take a bunch of people here to bed if you tried. Maybe most people.”
Hellfriede looks back at her dataslate. Then, something divine and without indifference wills itself into existence just to look down on Reign and wink, because Hellfriede sets the slate aside. “I don’t think most people would pick me out at a bar.”
“Yeah, but you’re, like, the perfect average.” Reign draws a gesture up Hellfriede’s thigh and appreciates the muscle there. They’re all soldiers, but Hellfriede wears it especially well right now. “Not so far out of the everyman’s league and not so far below it. If you made the first move, someone without another person in mind would totally go for you.”
RA kills the other divine—Hellfriede takes a mech engineering book out from under her pillow. “Most people wouldn’t like being called average by the woman who’s trying to sleep with them.”
The divine lives and they only ever looked down at Reign to laugh at her. “… You fucking knew? This entire time?”
“I’m not stupid and you’re not clever,” Hellfriede deadpans.
Reign takes a moment to seriously consider screaming. She lunges to push Hellfriede down. Desperation must be making Reign sluggish because she knows she’s quicker than Hellfriede, but the other woman is out of her grasp and behind her far too fast. Hellfriede pins Reign’s dominant arm behind her back and shoves her down face-first. “Please do something. Do literally anything or just put me out of my misery.” Her voice is muffled by chamomile-scented pillows.
Hellfriede leans down and says, “Ask nicely.” Her voice is a rough whisper.
Reign dies multiple times that night. Then, she wakes up alive and gargling her own blood. She’s too weak to scream now. Her gaze swims through the room, trying to find Hellfriede. The noises spilling from her throat aren’t quiet. Hellfriede is standing by the edge of the bed. She checks her dataslate, pockets it, and heads for the door.
Tears bubble up in Reign’s eyes. The attempt at crying makes her choke harder. Hellfriede’s back is the last thing she sees. As she dies, she takes the smell of chamomile with her into whatever waits after life.
Not the prettiest, but she’ll do in a pinch.
Relevant Information
Hellfriede Ripley was born on the Diasporan planet Varuvi in the confines of what is now known as the Old Capital. Her birth was part of Smith-Shimano Corpro’s secret Cavalier Program to develop ideal soldiers for private armies and classified missions. Hellfriede was immediately taken from her birth parents to be raised by a group of handlers who regularly assessed their aptitude in various areas: coordination, intelligence, obedience, etc. While in this phase of the program (which lasted for 11 years), Hellfriede befriended a girl named Dorothea. The two of them initially bonded over a mutual appreciation for quiet moments; they could often be found sitting quietly together and completing their assignments in tandem. The assessments showed that Hellfriede had great potential. As a result, she proceeded to the second phase of the Cavalier Program. Dorothea didn’t make it to the second phase. On the day of the program’s graduation ceremony, Hellfriede asked everyone where Dorothea was. No one could give her a satisfactory answer; they all just waited for her to stop asking.
At age 11, Hellfriede started training to be a Lancer. By age 13, she had acquired her first two license levels in the SSC Monarch and had an integrated flight system in her mech. Hellfriede proved to be a terror in the sky during drills and was quickly developing a combat style adept at dispatching multiple opponents without help. Phase two of the Cavalier Program was far more openly brutal than the first. Multiple other Cavaliers were “pulled out of the program”. When this happened, a handler would list out their failures before a Dusk Wing appeared to drag them away. There was still never an explanation for what happened to them, but the threat hanging over Hellfriede’s head had become obvious. As the first series of missions for the Cavaliers approached, they were allowed a personal meeting with the Varuvian Assembly: their planet’s leaders. This meeting took place after an execution parade wherein “wannabe revolutionaries” were killed. When the head of the Assembly shook Hellfriede’s hand with all the care of someone who would sleep easily that night, Hellfriede started planning. She was going to need to climb the ranks and stay in the Assembly’s good graces.
At 14, Hellfriede went on her first mission: it was supposed to be simple reconnaissance on another planet in the same star system, but she and her allies were quickly met with resistance. Their opponents were also using mechs, though theirs looked far more scrapped together. Hellfriede took out the frontline with a series of hit and run skirmishes while others focused on the backline. The mission was a resounding success, but something didn’t feel right. With a year of subtle investigation and occasionally sucking up to those above her, Hellfriede learned that the people she had helped kill that day were the remnants of an older SSC experiment similar to the Cavalier Program. Apparently, SSC had “cut them loose” as a trial for their new Cavaliers. Hellfriede kept her head down.
By the age of 16, Hellfriede had acquired multiple more license levels. She wasn’t the best in the program, but was also far from the worst: a solidly middling soldier by program standards. Hellfriede intentionally scaled back her efficiency in combat, allowing others to have the spotlight and earn more praise. She befriended other Cavaliers and found that a good amount of them had bought into the Assembly’s rhetoric. It would have been immensely risky to try changing their minds. Hellfriede waited. She gave her formerly nameless Monarch the moniker Hell’s Sister.
When she turned 17, Hellfriede celebrated her birthday by finally requesting a TLALOC-Class NHP which she promptly shackled to her mech. Hellfriede’s limited experience with NHPs made her uncomfortable with using a sentient being in such a manner, but she needed a TLALOC for her plans to work. She acquired a Player_Two Neural Bypass to let the TLALOC have access to her body when she deemed it necessary. For two years, Hellfriede and her TLALOC discussed every possible way of killing the entire Varuvian Assembly and the other Cavaliers.
Hellfriede’s 19th birthday would go on to become Varuvi’s Liberation Day. She woke up early in the Cavalier training facility and quietly murdered every other Cavalier she could find along with their handlers. Alarms were eventually raised, but it was too late. Hellfriede had already mounted Hell’s Sister by then and launched her assault against the Assembly. The fighting lasted for 10 hours. It was 10 hours of seemingly endless skirmishing from Hellfriede and TLALOC. They picked off the Assembly’s ground soldiers and mechs with a ruthless efficiency that would come to be known as the Hellfire Style of combat. The two of them were utterly relentless, even for the final 6 hours when TLALOC was cascading. The revolution ended with one of the single most lethal uses of the Monarch’s core system—Divine Punishment—in recorded history. As the Assembly’s forces lay decimated, Hell’s Sister plummeted from the sky and crashed to the ground as a mangled scrap heap. Hellfriede had died, but miraculously, the TLALOC’s casket was able to be recovered.
In the aftermath of Hellfriede’s revolution, SSC distanced themselves from Varuvi, unwilling to take direct control of the planet to avoid drawing Union’s full attention to their operations. The Liberation Council was formed to govern the planet with laws that abolished SSC’s genetic caste system and allowed for more personal freedoms like open critique of the government. Union’s attention was eventually drawn to Varuvi for one reason or another and plans were made to convert it into a Core World. The current planet capital of New Varuvi stands on the bones of the Old Capital and there’s a park dedicated to Hellfriede along with a statue of her in the city’s heart.
Hellfriede’s TLALOC copilot went on to become a legionnaire and take the name Torin. He joined a sect of Horizon Collective in the effort to fight for NHP rights. Torin also took the remains of Hell’s Sister and created a downsized, scrappier version of the original mech. According to him, Hellfriede had never really liked how “put together” the Monarch’s design was.
HER LAST MESSAGE
{Subject: Hellfriede Ripley, Callsign: SKYLINE.
Video Recorded By: Torin, TLALOC-Class NHP.}
“… I thought about trying to start this with something that could inspire the people who hear it, but I wasn’t built to be a leader. I’m not going to lead anyone. I’m just going to talk instead.
The reason why I’m doing this is entirely selfish. It’s not because I want to live a life outside what was chosen for me by SSC. No, ultimately, I’m just doing more of the same. It’s because I’m so, so tired. I’m tired of listening to the other Cavaliers gossip about the brands during the execution parades. I’m tired of standing between them and predicting which condemned man is going to run and lose their head for it. I’m tired of not feeling sick because of it anymore. I’m tired of this numbness that I’ve had to perform for so long because it’s not a performance anymore.
I’m going to kill a lot of people. And I don’t know if I want to be praised for a lot of it. I’m just tired at the end of the day. That’s all there is. I need to do something before that goes away, too.”
Hellfriede makes direct eye contact with the camera for most of the recording. There is bone deep weariness to her face as she speaks. She’s only 19. As soon as she’s done talking, the youthful exhaustion disappears, and her expression numbs into that of a murderer.
Hellfriede originally died 10 years before the events of In The Shadows of a Willow. In 5026U, she was cloned by Torin and a mysterious benefactor. She lives.
THE HELLFRIEDE FILES [2]
{Observation of Union Liberation Front leader.
Name: Hellfriede Ripley. Callsign: SKYLINE.
Video File Transcribed By: ???}
Silas Vega dies the kind of death worthy of a man who spent his final hours having his foremost slave do a solo performance of the third play written in his honor. Four missiles decimate the silver platinum door to his sanctum (a man cave of a bunker underneath his estate). He has enough time for indignance to make the veins in his neck flush royal purple. He draws breath to scream for his dead guards to cast aside the audacity of the Monarch mech presenting itself without due reverence. Hellfriede Ripley gets out of her mech, cocks her gun, and shoots him twice before the would-be shriek can be anything more than a suggestion to his vocal chords. She shoots him the way you shoot a man who should have been merciful enough to ask for death a long time ago—without a smile. The former slave makes a break for it.
“Why did you bother getting out?” Torin, the acting NHP of Hellfriede’s mech, asks when she gets back into the cockpit.
“I think he needed to see that just one person could be his killer.” Hellfriede ignores the incoming call from her Union superior. “Maybe that’ll matter to him in another life.”
“Hah. Do you remember anything from the afterlife?” Torin asks. It’s a joke. It sounds like a stab at himself.
Hellfriede turns her Monarch away from the crownless corpse. “There was a lot less work to do.”
Seth Knox, the Union member who pretends he doesn’t give actionable information to a violent revolutionary, has to at least pretend that Hellfriede went further than a violent revolutionary should. “You were supposed to investigate the planet and see if it was possible to arrange an audience with Vega.” This is what Hellfriede gets for finally accepting one of his calls.
“He met the Liberation Front’s arrival with a slave display and had his officials threaten to execute us if we wouldn’t prove our willingness to abide by his laws. By choosing a slave to own for the duration of our visit. He wanted us to own a slave.” Hellfriede’s voice never rises—it stays low and flat. She sits in the nondescript office in New Varuvi City that Union has her unofficially working out of. The only hint of personality in her office is a small replica of Simon Dominguez’s mech, Free Me From Hell, that sits on her desk.
“You’ve been briefed in de-escalation. He just needed to feel like his power wasn’t being threatened.” Seth’s tone indicates that he, or someone else, has already decided that she needs more de-escalation training.
“Us being on the planet at all was a threat to him. He was going to find a reason to kill us regardless of anything.” Hellfriede’s dataslate earns more of her attention than Seth does by presenting information that doesn’t sound like bureaucratic recitation. While Seth tells her about the one-on-one negotiation classes she’ll be taking next week, she looks at potential systems for a Black Mountain mech.
The Black Mountain is a mech suit that focuses on boosting the defenses of allied mechs. It only has one weapon mount. It’s inherently slower than her Monarch. It’s an alternate version of the Emperor mech, which is all the pomp and pleasure of SSC given physical form. The Black Mountain should only draw one thing out of Hellfriede: a disdainful form of apathy.
“How long are the classes going to be?” Hellfriede asks. The obvious weapon to give the Black Mountain is the Emperor’s bolt bow. Hellfriede is not going to use the Emperor’s bow.
“Only about an hour.” Seth says something about how Hellfriede should use the hour to its fullest. The will to waste time was being bred out of her before she even existed. “… Off the record, I think you did good work.” He hangs up quickly, as though his own superiors are waiting for the chance to trap him with the bureaucracy he just espoused.
Since the Black Mountain is so small, it’s less trouble to get it printed. There’s a decent enough printer in the basement of Hellfriede’s office building, so she heads downstairs and lets the printer confirm the licensing data in her biosignature.
Hellfriede doesn’t hear the voices of the dead. The only version of mourning she has ever known is the prestigious efficiency of SSC’s Mourning Cloak mech when other Cavaliers piloted it. Even after being revived, her one week of readjustment downtime spared no thought for her kill count.
What Hellfriede hears instead, as the body of the Black Mountain prints, is a voice that reflects her own.
“A soldier offers indifference
when they do not offer mercy.
That kills much more than wrath.”
A mechanized bow that Hellfriede didn’t print is leaning against the finished mech. It’s black with cracks of silver coursing through it. After Hellfriede reaches for the bow, because it must be hers even if she didn’t ask for it, she picks it up like it weighs nothing. Silver cracks reflect in her pupils. The bow is indifferent. It is not the Emperor’s.
She names the mech Irreverence. It only sees use in the least official capacities.
Mech Hangar
These are the mechs Hellfriede uses on Liberation Front missions: unofficial assignments given to an unofficial task force to investigate particularly egregious human rights violations in the Diaspora.
Second Sister
After her revival, Hellfriede surprised no one (aside from perhaps SSC) by acquiring another Monarch mech. She named it Second Sister after her original Monarch, Hell’s Sister. Despite being a legionnaire now, Torin transfers his casket into this mech to act as an approximation of a Tlaloc when Hellfriede pilots it. Second Sister is primarily used for solo or small group missions since Hellfriede excels in using the Monarch to take down multiple opponents without aid.
- Flex Mount: Sharanga Missiles. These missiles don’t need line of sight and can attack two targets at once.
- Main Mount: Sharanga Missiles. “Strike the sky with fire and blood. That will make people think life is finally in motion.” — Unknown.
- Heavy Mount: Gandiva Missiles. The Gandiva Missiles target electronic defense, don’t require line of sight, and ignore cover. They also deal energy damage rather than explosive.
- Avenger Silos: The Monarch can deal extra explosive damage to another target after critical strikes.
- Seeking Payload: When the Monarch consumes lock on to attack with a launcher, that weapon gains the ability to bypass cover and hit targets it doesn’t have line of sight to. Consuming lock on also prevents damage reduction (from armor, resistance, etc.).
- SSC-30 High Penetration Missile System
- Divine Punishment: The Monarch can launch a barrage of self-guiding missiles against a vast number of targets.
- Superpositional Profile: Can be used to make ranged attacks less likely to hit and grant limited teleportation.
- HYPER ENGINEERED MUNITIONS: When attached to a ranged weapon mount, attacks fired from that mount deal additional armor piercing damage and impair targets.
- Trajectory Arc Mapper: Attacks that capitalize on a weapon’s range gain additional accuracy.
- Expanded Heat Sink: Adds additional heat capacity.
- Personalizations: Personal touches that bolster the mech’s hull.
- TLALOC-Class NHP: The Tlaloc Protocol allows the mech’s NHP to rapidly take control of weapon targeting and firing. Missed attacks will be retargeted. However, this protocol temporarily immobilizes the mech.
Irreverence
- Flex Mount: Painful Indifference. This nexus bow is an enhanced version of the one from the SSC Emperor license. It deals both energy and explosive damage and easily pierces armor. Like the Emperor’s nexus, it targets electronic defense, doesn’t need line of sight, and ignores cover.
- An End to All Things: The Black Mountain can incur heat to have an ally it gave temporary shielding (called overshield) to deal additional damage.
- Dread Harbinger: When this mech or an ally lands a critical strike on an enemy, that enemy becomes locked on. The Black Mountain gains overshield when this lock on is used.
- Fragile: The Black Mountain’s hull isn’t the sturdiest.
- Blackstone Bell
- Bringer of Glory: The Black Mountain can reactively grant overshield to an ally by “exalting” them.
- Fell the Mighty: This mech can mark a hostile target as “Doomed”. This increases accuracy against them and makes allies who successfully hit them increase their overshield.
- The Walk of Kings: This quick tech ability gives an ally overshield. While they have this overshield, their melee attacks become armor piercing. In addition, the first time they hit with a melee strike or get hit, they release a burst of armor piercing energy damage.
- Shahnameh: A quick tech ability that grants an ally overshield. While they have this overshield, they become resistant to hostile sources of heat and will clear all heat when they lose the overshield.
- Superpositional Profile: Can be used to make ranged attacks less likely to hit and grant limited teleportation.
- Expanded Heat Sink: Adds additional heat capacity.
- Minimized Silhouette: Irreverence’s general shape takes up less space, making it harder to target.