Featured Character: Colonel Fedmahn Kassad (The Hyperion Cantos)

[u/KarlMrax]

---

Bio

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad was born on Mars somewhere between 2800 and 2825 to an impoverished Palestinian family. By the age of 16 he was involved with a gang killing and was sentenced to either go to jail or volunteer to join FORCE (The Hegemony of Man's military branch) in quelling the Glennon-Height Rebellion.

Afterwards he fought in two more major conflicts (with FORCE) the Maui-Covenant Island Wars, and the Battle of Bressia before ending up on Hyperion and encountering the Shrike.

Several years later Kassad participated in the last Shrike Pilgrimage.

He is a follower of New Bushido which is a poorly explained honor code which involves keeping the loss of civilian life low, conflicts between large militaries limited and disparaging the use of indiscriminate weapons.

This CotW focuses on Kassad in Impact Armor as that is most representative of him as a combatant.

The full RT covers the Impact Armor and it's equipment in much more detail, his unarmed capabilities, as well as certain... more exotic capabilities and a far more powerful suit he gets access to.

 

---

FORCE Impact Armor Physicals

FORCE Impact Armor is the powered armor that is issued to FORCE: Ground personnel. It enhances strength, speed, agility, durability, among other enhancements. The suit also will render the wearer invisible and maintain thermoneutrality with the background.

• [Strength] Jumps three meters, high enough to go over a human (Note: Hyperion has weaker gravity than Earth). Then swings his gauntlet at supersonic speeds, which capable of going through half a meter of stone.

• [Speed/Reaction Time] Starts moving before a blast from a nearby explosion hits him.

• [Speed/Movement] Runs about a kilometer while under fire (so not in a straight line and not continuously). Though the exact time frame is not known

  ^{Note: Here is a table of values for how long he might have taken and the average speed he would have needed to move one kilometer in that time period.}

• [Durability] Takes hits from a FORCE Multipurpose Rifle. It is likely that the Impact Armor offers at least some protection against every setting on the FORCE Multipurpose Rifle.

  • Some lasers. Notice that when hit by a laser the Impact Armor radiates so much energy it makes the walls start to glow.
  • Flechettes and high velocity slugs.

• [Durability] Survives getting thrown through a three meter thick chunk of crystal.

• [Stealth] The armor has active camouflage good enough when only partially showing his face to a normal person it looks like it is just floating in the air.

• [Scenes] Various sensors including active radar, sonar, and motion tracking, can magnify the his view by 100x, as well as that the armor can back trace where incoming fire came from.

 

---

Additional Equipment

FORCE Multipurpose Rifle

The FORCE Multipurpose Rifle is a non-specialized rifle with a wide variety of capabilities. While it isn't going to be as powerful as a dedicated weapon system, it makes up for it by the sheer volume of fire it can generate and the greatly increased flexibility of being able to use many different types of munitions with the same platform.

• [Aim assist] This rifle will automatically aim to some degree.

• [Particle Beam] A Bhee Keeper which fires beams of high energy electrons that can drill 14cm diameter, 500 meters long holes through rock.

• [Lasers] There are many laser settings including pulsed and wide continuous beam which can be used to blind opponents that rely on sight or as a weapon. In this feat, the wide beam setting it turns cubic meters of sand into glass within seconds.

• [Plasma/Pulse Bolts] are a high velocity plasma weapon capable of hitting targets at great range. In this feat a FORCE MPR blows up a boulder and Kassad consider's this weapon to have no chance of missing unless the target is more than 10 km away.

• [Flechettes] These are a shortish range shotgun type weapon that involve firing clouds of thousands of small high velocity flechettes. They are powerful enough to throw the (possibly) 1630 kg Shrike across room.

• [Canister Grenades] These grenades seem to detonate at some proximity to the target and shower them in flachettes.

• [Body-heat-seeking darts] Some kind guided weapon that tracks thermal emissions.

• [Countermeasures] Smoke grenades and chaff.

Additional Equipment

• [Death Wand] This will kill any human (and only humans) though it has a shortish range of around 50 meters.

• [Grenades] We know he carries grenades but we don't know the type, but here are some plasma grenade feats for reference.

 

---

Kassad on WWW

I know the first temptation for a lot of people will be to pit Kassad against other powered armor forces. BUT, the sensor capabilities, stealth and physical enhancement of the FORCE Impact Armor combined with the sheer power and range of the FORCE Multipurpose rifle make most matches against powered armored opponents kind of a stomp (though there are a few lesser known suits of powered armor...).

So for sci-fi opponents his you probably should be thinking about ships/vehicles and mecha instead. Those generally speaking are more likely to have tool that give them the ability to deal with him.

Also remember that the Death Wand just instantly kills it's target if they are in range. Against human opponents it is probably a good idea to limit that.

If you want to use him as a pure melee combatant it is probably best to match him against people a bit stronger than the "Cap-Bat" level of street tier though not by TOO much.

In general other than the Death Wand I would recommend limiting Kassad's more exotic/Void-That-Binds abilities (from the full RT). The specific down side incurred have is hard to argue reasonably and the versatility of the First Step makes it hard to find decent matches for him.

[u/Overthinks_Questions]

Great thread. One note about the Death Wand: it will only kill human, or things that are very similar to and related to humans. It kills the 'Ousters' in the Cantos, which are no longer strictly speaking human. They are, however, very similar to humans and differ only by some genetic engineering and a few thousand years of evolution in space.

So, while I'd say it's legit to limit it against things like DC Martians, Kryptonians, Saya-jin, Asgaardians, etc. it will probably work fine against Marvel mutants, Inhumans, Fallout ghouls, etc.

Does the Shrike have an RT? It would be an interesting match for Brainiac.

[u/KarlMrax → u/Overthinks_Questions]

When I said to limit it in regards to human opponents, what I mean is "Kassad instantly kills them with his Deathwand" isn't a very good debate. So against humans put restrictions in the OP that prevent Kassad from instantly killing his opponent with it.

Does the Shrike have an RT?

Yep.

[u/Overthinks_Questions → u/KarlMrax]

I was remarking that if a deathwand restriction is absent, people can't claim that certain characters (like MCU Quake, for example) are immune to it. It will kill anything that's pretty damn close to human as well.

Put up my Brainiac Shrike match.