Myrmidon

Appearance:

A myrmidon is a synthetic humanoid, notable for their exceptional and superhuman strength, durability, and speed. Visually they are easy to identify, they have dull skin colors, typically olive drab, tan, gray, or similar washed out industrial colors. Their heads are bulbous and snake like, and have very prominent mouths, and nothing else. Myrmidons do not have eyes, ears, or noses. The mouth is exceptionally prominent and large enough to take off a limb with a bite, or to bite off a human sized head. Their very presence is highly disturbing as they fall into the category of 'things that should not be'.

Capabilities:

The myrmidon is a highly capable hand to hand fighter, and this is their preferred method of fighting. They will use weapons and armor if commanded, but will abandon these as quickly as possible, unless said items are manually attached to their bodies.

Strength - the average myrmidon is as strong as five men, able to lift vehicles, tearing down doors, and delivering hand to hand attacks capable of damaging armor and killing unarmored men. Myrmidons have synthetic muscle tissue, similar to the myomer that mecha use. This allows them to be tremendously strong.

Durability - myrmidons have synthetic muscle, armored thermoablative skin, and a dense layer of insulating polymer 'fat'. This allows myrmidons to all but ignore hand to hand damage, shrug off low velocity weapons, and even blades and other melee weapons simply because the average foe isn't strong enough to penetrate their skin.

Agility - having synthetic bodies, the myrmidon has a genetically engineered trace on system giving them immense speed, agility, and balance. This is most often an unexpected aspect of the myrmidon, as most foes would expect such a large and muscular foe to be deliberate and slow, not expecting them to be as fast and precise as a ballerina or figure skater.

Regeneration - the engineered biology of a myrmidon allows them to rapidly heal from injuries, they don't bruise, they don't bleed out, and their polymer fat layer is fuel for their combat activity and regeneration needs. This rendered myrmidons largely immune from attrition based fights, or to shake off incessant low level attacks. They don't wear down in a fight, not unless a fight lasts for days at a time.

Sensitivity - despite being deaf, blind, and mute, the myrmidon has a keenly sensitive psychic sense, a sort of psionic radar that detects their environments and the bioelectric fields of living things, as well as the developed thought patterns of sentient beings. This can spoofed by EM blocking materials like sneak suits, and shroud technology. In this instance, the myrmidon retains its sense of smell and taste, with the olfactory nerves mimicking those of a snake and being located in the roof of the oversized mouth. Myrmidons can sense, smell, and taste human emotion.

Control module - each myrmidon has a control module implanted inside its armored skull allowing for it to be linked to an operator. The operator has a parapsychic link to the myrmidon and will follow their commands without fear or hesitation.

Purpose:

The Myrmidon is a bioweapon system that was designed and grown to counter the threat of the supersoldier, commando, parapsychic warrior, power armor trooper, and other manifestations of ultra level infantry. They are alive, and can be grown in tanks, and if harmed, they heal. They are asexual and cannot reproduce, but they are easily grown, and more importantly, can be specificially engineered to face a specific threat. A foe who uses lasers, thermoablative carapace, conventional guns, dense anti-ballistic hide. Claws, horns, barbs, spurs, and all the rest to rip flesh, tear apart armor, and when possible, the murder and consumption of human foes.

The ideal use of the myrmidon is an asset that murders its way through the enemy, then consumes said enemy as food, requiring little to no support or supply.

Creation:

The creation of the myrmidons is a pyramid of human testing, unethical, immoral, and flat out evil human experimentation and medical abuse. The first few iterations involved altering humans, making them into the idea of a myrmidon, altering flesh and muscle. This proved problematic as this level of modification proved detrimental to the human psyche and human condition. Those who underwent the full series of augmentations were no longer human, and no longer operated on a human level. They were bundles of vibrating muscle and shrieking neuroses. They were as likely to attack themselves, other myrmidons, their own handlers, they were simply... abominations. The 'successful' specimens were kept in hibernation, and only activated long enough to carry out a single mission before being tranq darted and recovered by their handlers.

Eventually the synthetic approach was tried and was successful. The skeleton of a myrmidon is printed out of a biometallic ceramic, incredibly strong, able to handle the immense strength of the synthetic muscle. The myomer bundles are grown around the bones, and then the organic aspects, the synthetic embryo, is implanted and grows into the assembled chassis of muscle, bone, and armored skin. As this process advances, the synthetic organs, fresh from biomanufacturing plants, are planted in the growing biomass, and are incorporated into it.

Once the embryo reaches a specific point, a synthetic brain, complete with control module, and other contingency protocols, is implanted into the armored skull. Eventually, the creature is fully grown, and is hooked into a training system that uses psychotronic intimation to force program its empty brain.

Production and Service

Producing myrmidons takes only moderately more effort than running a body farm, making myrmidons remarkably cheap compared to the cost of manufacturing power armor, or combat robots. This is drastically cheaper than the cost of turning a commando into genetically and cybernetically augmented supersoldier.

They are not producing in large numbers, as the most effective myrmidon is the unexpected foe. In larger numbers they encourage the escalation of force and being organic in nature, the myrmidon is going to be vulnerable to anti-armor and anti-robot weaponry, if not tactics. A myrmidon might ignore infantry weapons, but being hit by a tank round, or stomped by a mecha is going to seriously injure our outright splatter one.

The Myrmidons are highly effective. In close combat they are devastating, and the only effective way to fight them is at range with heavy weaponry. Most hostile encounters with them is usually at very close range, and ambush situations. While not favoring weapons, myrmidons can use melee weapons. The less skill needed the better.

Anti-Supersoldier Operations, the Ballad of Fisto Kellogg

Baron Fisto Kellogg was a well known freelancer, a fisto by name and modification recorded one of the most infamous myrmidon encounters. Kellogg had a reputation as a nasty operator, not afraid of bad publicity or collateral damage. His combat recorder transmitted a corrupted feed showing close quarters combat with a pair of myrmidons. The damaged nature of the feed undermined it, and many assumed the stuttering stream showing a pair of eyeless hypermuscular beasts dismantling a top flight shadowrunning team as a hoax. The common theory is that Kellogg and his team staged their own demise to get out of some sketch deal or out of an unpayable debt.

Few found the record of cyborgs being torn limb from limb and gnawed on like summer BBQ believable.

They were.

Variants

Armor Myrmidon - has even thicker dermal armor, including bone/chitin plates protecting their vulnerables. These tank like synthetics are invulnerable to almost all infantry based weapons, and have suitably worse attitudes.

Aquatic Myrmidon - has gills, and a scaly hide suited for underwater environments.

Space Myrmidon - has a silicate based skin, and internal pockets that allow the creature to survive for a short time even exposed to the conditions of space. These monsters can move through airlocks, crawl across a hull, and let themselves back in somewhere else, without a suit.

'Werewolf' Myrmidon - hide is covered in shaggy hair, and the hands and feet have large claws. The jaws are larger and the teeth more pointedly carnivorous. (the average myrmidon has largely human like teeth, just larger). These are suited to long deployments in arctic conditions.

Juggernaut Myrmidon - twice the size, 50% stronger

Reptile Myrmidon - the skin is reptilian and scaly, and designed to retain moisture. The creature has a slower metabolism, and reduced water needs so that it can live a long time on minimal supplies. The reptile myrmidons can often survive by just consuming human victims.

Limitations

The myrmidon has several limitations. The largest is that they are, despite their training, mindless. Unless acting on given orders, myrmidons are perfectly content to just... sit... in one place and not move. They will respond if threatened, and will act if they are hungry or thirsty. Non-threatening individuals can interact with myrmidons, like children, kittens, special needs, and so forth can engage and interact with the myrmidons without triggering their kill instincts. It is speculated that given a long enough period of exposure could see a myrmidon imprint on a non-threat individual as a guidance figure, and would take instructions from them.

Likewise, Myrmidons cannot use advanced combat tactics, and are not tool or weapon users. When they use melee weapons they favor warhammers, axes, and other basic hit the other guy weapons. This can make them highly vulnerable when fights are held at long range or heavy weapons.

They also have no identity, no sense of self, and most couldn't pass a sentience test. They have the minds of attack animals.

Inspirations

The Myrmidons were primarily inspired by the savage nomu from My Hero Academia, where they are enormous threat monsters, and more importantly, they are highly durable punching bags for the heroes to throw down their heaviest beatdowns without it becoming a splatterfest. In a Cosmic Era cyberpunk game, the typical band of heroes can have some proverbial and literal big guns, and the introduction of the half grown half manufactured myrmidons can let those heroes throw their big hits and tactics without blowing mooks to bloody pulp, or creating a cycle of escalation where unreasonable numbers of foes have to be thrown at the PCs to challenge them. Visually, the myrmidons take some cues from the nomu, being large and muscular and having large mouths.

The mass production evas from Neon Genesis Evangelion share the lack of eyes, oversized mouth, and are demonstrated cannibals, devouring Unit 02. Stylistically the Nomu and the MP Evas share common elements, and the eyeless nature gives the soulless vibe (eyes being the windows to the soul) and the oversized mouths make them all the more lurid. Just seeing one is disturbing, as they are incredibly not human, but also, have very human elements.

The super mutants from Fallout would also apply, as they are large, can soak up a ton of bullets before kacking out. They are also loud, stupid, and cannibalistic.