Ancient Annie

Common Name: Anne Halloran-1124

Morphology: Amero-Nipponese with silver hair and red eyes. The Halloran series had regular issues with albinism.

Race: artificial clone

Sex: Female

Age: apparent - 20, actual - 2

Occupation: Heavy Equipment Operator/Military

Residence: Alpha City

Faction: Halloran-1124 is an assault mech pilot working for the Alpha City Security Division, itself a branch of the organization that is scouting and working to claim Alpha City as its own. They are heavily backed by the Glassenheim Foundation and the Anunnaki

Background:

The first thing to consider is that the Halloran are a genetically engineered line of clones, and technically don't even have a mother or father donor, but were cobbled together from the genetic material of several women. The line was intended to operate heavy machinery, mecha, power armor, and other enormous vehicles, allowing for a more unified set of controls, a smaller cockpit, and a pilot designed to be as submissive, tough, and stoic as possible. In this, the Hallorans were a success. In various instances, Hallorans died while following their orders or mission parameters. Lethal radiation exposure, viral weapon exposure, DFE encounters, missing limbs, mortal wounds, and the like failed to stop Hallorans with orders and a machine that was still partially operational.

The series was also highly sought after for a sort of concubine status, with their diminutive frames, meek demeanors, and absolute ability to take anything the worst sort of degen or pervert could throw at them and walk away from it, assuming the pervert didn't have a bone breaking or murder fetish. While certainly a victim-like clone, if their plight was known they would garner little support or sympathy. In carrying out their orders Halloran clones showed no hesitation to commit war crimes, massacres, crimes against humanity, and atrocities that could not be named.

Then, Anne Halloran, 1124 was decanted (they're all named Anne, and designate as either Anne and their number, Halloran and their number, or more often than not, just their number) and activated. 1124 piloted a CP-11-C3 Cyclops assault mech, a 90 ton machine that dropped the common heavy autocannon or gauss rifle the mech is typically equipped with for a massive and expensive command and control system, in this case, a one of a kind Manzat boosted master system. While under gunned, 1124 could all but remote pilot any machine that linked into her C3 network, engage in high level brute force cyberwar attacks, and most importantly, maintains a C3 network even in the presence of electronic jamming and countermeasures.

Attached to Reflex Team 00, unit colors white with orange and black accents, 1124 served with unremarkable duty. Reflex 00 also contained a Rifleman, a Warhammer, and a regularly rotating series of two to three medium mechs. These depended on where 00 was deployed, and what task they were pursuing. On the morning of the attack, Team 00 consisted of a heavy reinforced star, headed by 1124's Cyclops. Supporting mechs included her normal team's Rifleman and Warhammer, supported by a Marauder and two Wolverines. These machines would prove to be inadequate to face what appeared.

Entity 1623 was an erelim, functionally a teratomorph with a parapsychic active core. Such a beast would have the ability to dominate an entire world alone and either devour all life on its surface, or render itself a god among those it left alive. While powerful, the erelim had never encountered mecha equipped with arcanotech gear. It's descent into the atmosphere was tracked, and 1124 coordinated its welcome party. It was able to dodge and evade most of the powerful anti-ship weaponry deployed from the bulwarks of Alpha City. It was deduced that since it bothered to avoid the batteries of heavy naval lasers and naval particle cannons, it could be wounded, and if it could be wounded, it could be killed. As it approached the ground, Team 00 engaged it with autocannons, lasers, and PPC fire. The autocannons had no effect against it, it didn't bother to even dodge the barrage of 75mm rounds. It's attempts to evade the energy weapons were hampered. The powerful J-band and S-band radars of of the Rifleman kept it electronically illuminated, and the Dalban Hi-Rez of the Marauder made sure that everyone watching the fight had an 8K resolution video feed, and the combat computers were able to render the entire scrap in 4k on the holo-projection tables in the command center.

The Wolverines fought to protect the Rifleman as the entity, apparently aware of the powerful radars violating it, went after that mech first. Both were destroyed, and the Rifleman was disabled. Of the three pilots, only one would survive. While fighting those three, the two heavies engaged the entity at close range with their particle cannons, and 1124 would move into close combat so she could use her mech's medium lasers to better effect. As the fight progressed, it was apparent that they would not win. The entity. composed of anemone-like glowing cilia attached to a quasi-piscine body with legs, quickly ripped the Warhammer apart. The Marauder was torn almost in half before the pilot Stackpoled her reactor and vanished in a gamma flash and low yield nucleonic blast. With her mech badly damaged, and the entity slumped over, but visibly regenerating itself, 1124 called in the direct strike. When she illuminated it with the laser designator, it attacked. One of the luminous tendrils penetrated the cockpit and punched through her abdomen, before she punched out, the head of her Cyclops rocketing away from the entity. A second later the entire area was awash with higgs bosons, as an Anunnaki frigate fired its main coaxial higgs bosun/graviton cannon. The blast measured in the low megaton range, and succeeded in eliminating the entity, most of the combat wreckage, and causing some collateral damage to Alpha City, almost thirty miles distant from the point of contact.

1124 survived, as did one of the Wolverine pilots. Six days after the battle, the Wolverine pilot would be euthanized in his sleep, as he reported nightmares related to the event, and scans indicated possible psychic contamination. 1124 was also scanned, but reported nothing out of the ordinary and was allowed two weeks of recovery before scheduled redeployment.

The Birth

1124 was so very much contaminated by the entity. It had invested part of itself in her, realizing that its doom was seconds away. This fragment fused with 1124's cloned body, and found that as a clone, she didn't have a soul of her own. The two fused and Anne 1124 became a Desolate One.

Her parapsychic eruption depopulated Alpha City. She was no longer Anne Halloran-1124, she was Ancient Annie. She immediately formed a gestalt with every other Halloran on Earth and within the orbit of the Moon. This congregated all of their experiences and thoughts into a single cosmic entity, and Ancient Annie let her power flow through her gene sisters like conduits. Thousands of Glassenheim, Anunnaki, and Noddites working in Alpha City felt the touch of a Halloran, and then for a moment, each was merged with the gestalt, harvested of their knowledge and animating essence. The city was littered with corpses in seconds. Dozens of her hundreds were gunned down, incinerated, or destroyed as crews suddenly aware that the clone in their midst had turned to some unimaginable horror did what they were trained to do. Ships illuminated the sky as their cores were detonated. Secret facilities turned into abattoirs in fusillades of gunfire and arpeggios of screaming horror.

Then it was over.

The Hallorans were all gone. They ... melted ... into a protean slime, which evaporated with supernatural speed. Alpha City was completely depopulated, and only automated fail-safes shut systems down before critical incidents.

Across the Solar System, all of the Halloran clones followed this same fate. The witnesses claimed the clones seemed surprised at first as they started turning translucent and their extremities running like melted wax, then seemed to experience euphoria or even extreme manic joy as they collapsed into a puddle of organic ooze.

Abilities:

Ancient Annie is a Desolate One, Arhat level on the parapsychic scale. As an Arhat (Or a Weak God of Earth in the Lovecraft Mythos), Ancient Annie can do pretty much whatever she wants. She has all the parapsychic powers at master level, can use them without concern of entering parapsychic burn, and as she is a transcendent lifeform, no longer has to worry about the metabolic costs or damage from using said powers.

The legacy of Ancient Annie is important for two reasons. The most important reason is that Anne Halloran-1124 was at her heart, a good person. When she merged with a fragment of divinity, she remained a good person, because Entity 1623 was not evil. It had been drawn to Alpha City because of something that was being done in the research labs and it was going to stop it. 1124 learned this when they merged, and she agreed with its mission. As her parapsychic birth occurred, she reached out with her powers, rescued her sisters from the abuse they were created to suffer, and accomplished 1623's goal. She remains *somewhere* or possibly in the *elsewhere* as a non-corporeal goddess who for the most part likes Earth and her friends, but knows the evil that humans can perpetuate.

The Aftermath

The Ancient Annie event would have massive effects on the Glassenheim, Anunnaki, and Enochians. In less than half an hour, they had lost more than ten thousand people from their respective organizations. This wasn't the loss of foot soldiers, conscripts, or allies. These were the deaths of ranking members, officers, financiers, and even several divine-named members of the Cabals. Their own protections, psychotronic defenses, arcanotech weapons, and parapsychic powers were insufficient to stop a smiling albino girl from grabbing them and pulling their souls from their bodies. The loss in manpower was matched by the loss of material. Hundreds of vehicles, mecha, aircraft, and ships were lost, given the widespread usage of the Halloran series as pilots. Some would remain salvageable, but too many self-destructed in a protocol-driven containment plan to stop DFEs. Some entire facilities had to be reopened, and their security systems and AIs were convinced the End had come. Thankfully many deadman switches seemed to fail so many apocalyptic contingency plans did not activate.

These events would set the hidden masters back not years, not decades, but actual centuries of progress.

This spurred the development of improved psychotronic defenses, work into energy barriers and shields, as well as seeing the wholesale abandonment of large series clone lines to staff the organization

Usage:

Ancient Annie is a boogeyman of the Hidden Masters in the modern age. It's been decades since she erupted and dealt the masters their worst beating ever. The only loss suffered by them would have been the Resource Wars when nations were trading thermonuclear, biological, and chemical weapons like it was a 1999 party. Hard to maintain a clandestine intelligence and resource agency when cities occasionally vanish in pillars of fire, or the BOD meeting is interrupted by everyone bleeding from every orifice on their bodies.

In the context of a CE game, Ancient Annie is a myth, a legend, a nightmare, something utterly horrific that happened, changed the course of multiple organizations, set back arcanotech decades, murdered somewhere around 20,000 people, more if you count people killed by falling debris, failed systems, or who witnessed it all, survived, and had such nightmares and trauma from it that they decided to eat a bullet or a pound of poison to not see her smile when they closed their eyes.

I would personally use it as a secret historical event, and if the story is useful, let it be doled out as found footage material, recovered records, that sort of thing, and find out a few of the current Hidden Masters were alive then, and remember her angelic appearance, and the horror that unfolded when she manifested, an avatar of their hubris and cruelty.