Headhunters of the Inhuman

History

During the War Against the Artificials, House Crux promulgated The Synthetic Sedition Order on February 1, 3184, calling for the retirement of all Synthetic Humans created by House Cygnus and criminalizing as sedition those acts that would resist or oppose the execution of the order itself. However, with billions of Cygnus-made synths on Hiera alone, and trillions throughout the core worlds, not to mention the sector itself, scouring the synthetic scourge would be a tall order, even for the might of a Major House.

House Crux was fully aware of the scope of the work that needed to be done, as following a May 29, 3181 daring raid by a joint task force of Cathar and Scharfrichter personnel on the planet Gats, House Crux managed to recover a somewhat corrupted but complete copy of the House Cygnus Synthetic Registry. The forces of House Crux retired millions of synthetics each month, but while House Crux was mighty indeed, standing up to the forces of the current Emperox allowed the unimportant synths to slip through the cracks. A backlog of synths to face retirement quickly formed, as House Crux did not have enough manpower to track down and retire all of the synths and fight House Cygnus by itself.

To solve this issue, the House Crux Inquisition had an ingenious idea - turning to a group of super patriotic serfs that volunteered en masse to cull Hiera’s population of synths. The Inquisitors decided to set up a bounty program for this group to hunt the unimportant synths that were not worth sending a task force or noble personnel to retire - for example, former synthetic factory workers or synthetics that worked in pleasure houses. There were some within the nobility who believed that the serfs would kill a few synths and be sated - and there were some that thought the serfs would be culled themselves by the synths and thus further establish the hierarchy of nobility, but surprisingly, the peasantry took to synth hunting like bloodhounds - in the first month, the group retired 1,956,078 synths on Hiera. The House Crux treasury was forced to pay out over a billion credits to the group, and other serfs flocked to the cause, now known as the Headhunters of the Inhuman.

Due to the ongoing war against the Betrayer of Humanity, at first, oversight of the Headhunters by the Crux Judiciary was quite lax. The Inquisitors delivered a list of names and visual identification for suspected synthetics, the Headhunters delivered piles of retired synthetics to authorized dumping zones for processing and delivery to House Fornax. However, the zeal for the Headhunters in rounding up synthetics eventually led to enough collateral damage that couldn’t be written off as the just desserts of seditious activity, and the Richters of House Crux began to demand damage reports and to monitor Headhunter personnel for potential criminal activity. Members of the Headhunters who took too many liberties with their hunting strategies and retirement methods eventually faced justice by Crucian Anwalt Prosecutors at the Oberlandesgericht.

Over the course of the next fifteen years, the members of the Headhunters of the Inhuman amassed a considerable fortune - establishing a small “middle class” on Hiera. While the Headhunters could not own land, the estates of minor nobles who were desperate for cash or who died in the war were leased to the group for the purposes of continuing their quest to eradicate the synth menace. The Crucian Nobility took to calling the Headhunters “Scalpers” in a derisive manner, as the majority of the senior Headhunters started to take trophies from their kills, which was forbidden under the contracts they had with the House Crux nobility. However, most turned a blind eye to this practice, as the Headhunters got results.

Current Day

As most, if not all, of the synthetics on Hiera had been eradicated by 3200, the Headhunters of the Inhuman currently are burning through the cash they had built up at a massive rate. The serfs of House Crux were never taught how to save money, only how to work, and most of the Headhunters blew their money very quickly on fancy toys and clothes from the Trilliant Ring, living from retirement to retirement.

The Headhunters currently are hunting throughout the sector for the next large group of synths  they can find and retire for a quick cash infusion, desperate to maintain the lifestyle they have grown accustomed to and not have to return to their lives of serfdom under their Noble betters.

Known Headhunters

• Herolt Konig (aka “The White Fang”)
• Catchin’ Aldea Reuss
• Rosalina (aka “The Reprobate”)
• “Lynch” and his twin “The Beast”
• Stahlman “Polar Bear” Garde
• “Hague” (Geier)