Hurde

Hurde are an aggressive species native to the Milky Way Galaxy.

Biology
Not so much as a species, but more of a distillation of biology and technology that has been perfected over vast periods of time.

The Hurde are made up of synthetic tissue and rather than possessing blood, Hurde contain a black analog that according to scientists resembles a stimuli-responsive gel that goes way beyond any-electro-active polymer humanity can create. The gel mimics tissue when a command signal transmits through it but when shed it becomes completely inert. Hurde script alters their bodies in response to different stimuli and environmental changes.

The Hurde physically would best described as living high-speed tissue printer, essentially making them living technology of high advanced nanotechnology. Thanks to their nanotechnology they can regenerate not only limbs but their bodies so long as a fraction of them exist. Not only that they can use their smart technology to instantly adapt their forms and create tools.

Hurde drones are strong beings as their modified bodies can withstand the most harshest environments, be it climbing a ten thousand foot mountain in sub-zero temperature or even in the vacuum of space.

Outlier
During the emergence of the humanity controlled Alliance, a Hurde ship was found by a scavenger vessel known as the Outlier. It was captained by Fason who ignored the warnings of previous Hurde encounters and opted follow her greed to claim the vessel as a rare opportunity to find any valuables and sell them to Falcorp as the company was interested in exploiting advanced alien technology. The mission was botched when another Hurde ship came to attack the derelict. Several crew members were left behind at the mercies of the aliens.

The Hurde took an interest on one of their human captives. After two years of continuously dissecting their human specimens, they became intrigued by the concept of human revenge. The notion of revenge fascinated them and in order to explore it, they released Caul converting hims into a Drone Soldier. Caul now free possessed a Hurde drone body set out to find those who wronged him.

The first victim of his crusade was Raoul Maizels a newly made billionaire Grazian who established himself on the planet Graegan. Caul caught Raoul right after a session with some hookers in his own apartment. Raoul was brutally beaten, though he tried to beg for his life and even offered to bribed Caul to spare him. To show his sincerity Raoul went to get some money from his safe only to turn a weapon on the intruder. The weapon had not effect and Caul proceeded to bash Raoul with a model of the Outlier.

Caul's murders attracted the attention of Jared Carcer, a Hurde survivor who lost his parents in an encounter. Not only that but when Carcer was captured by the Hurde, they had experimented on his giving him enhanced eyesight. After he managed to escape, Carcer fell into the employ of Falcorp, a human conglomerate working to unlock the secret of Hurde technology. Carcer was directed by his superior to intercept what they believed to be just a Hurde drone.

Carcer followed the trail to Drekklin, where Caul killed another of his old crewmates, Drexy who used his money to become an rich addict. By then Carcer's employer, Ms Farson had put the pieces together and determine who the Hurder drone was and his objection

Brothers Jay Krakow and Sol Krakow, another pair of the Outlier crew who had gotten rch at the expense of Caul, were tracked by the assassin to their privately owned safari planet Ampriss. The brothers were warned by Ramona and rather than flee the two gun-trigger men were hired by her to use an armory of weapons and traps to disable Caul, in hopes of scrapping their former comrade and also selling his remains to Falcorp. The two managed to lure Caul into a pit which had the function of fossilizing anything within its depths.

Their effort proved useless as the Hurde enhanced human merely grew wings to fly out and slaughtered them. At the same time Fason receive a call from her superior, Mr. Hain, at Falcorp who informed her of the corporation's findings from a sample of Caul's blood. The company executive wanted more samples of Hurde technology and despite the dangers made the capture of Caul a prioirty.

Carcer having finally caught up to Caul on Ampriss, tried to reason with him, having suspected that his employer was not so clean and surmised that she had betrayed Caul and left him for dead. Despite his attempt to talk to Caul, Carcer was stabbed but left alive while Caul continued his hunt. Though not before leaving a tracking bug on Carcer's ship.

Ramona Fason then contacted the five other remaining members of the Outlier, informing them of the situation. Her former crew blamed her for the cause of the deaths, as they felt they should have never provoked the Hurde. Ramona though believed it was not time to place blame for 'her' mistakes, but proposed to find a way to survive. She invited her crew to a secure island that contained the state of the art sentient architecture that would protect them from the Hurde-Human Hybrid long enough for the Falcorp scientists to devise a way to deactivate Caul and contain him.

One of the crew Arlo though saw that the offer would turn them into bait. He believed that Caul was only after Ramona for revenge, but suggested that everyone take a vote on it to decide. However while on a holo conference with the crew Arlo was killed in his home by a shadowy figure that was believed to be Caul. Arlo's death spurned the remaining survivors to agree to Ramona who seemingly cried tears for the loss of a comrade. Once the call ended, Ramona received a call from Hain who was pleased to learn that the crew accepted the terms. Ramona wiped away her fake tears and revealed that Arlo's death was committed by an assassin hired by her to motivate her crew to accept the deal so that Falcorp could move forward with the trap on Caul.

The remaining crew of the Outlier gathered on Ramona's island located on the planet Solzengar. While Ramona welcomed her guests and allowed them to get to their accommodations, Carcer arrived to speak with her. Ramona suprised that Carcer was left alive by Caul, and also knowing his value, tried to use Carcer's sympathies to get him to reason with the hybrid. Carcer knowing the intents of his employers believed that it was possible but not likely. Eventually Caul made his way into the island's complex via the ocean ducts. The Falcorp scientists though were arrogantly confident that they decrypted enough of the Hurde language to disable Caul and were planning on proceeding. The entire sentient island complex was used as lab experiment with the guests in the room as bait to test out Caul's abilities. Guests were isolated into their rooms and Caul given entry by the watching Falcorp scientists.

These tests included to see if Caul could be slowed down with a hostage or to see if he would kill an unarmed, non-hostile target; bribe with financial incentives, personal appeals, etc. After all but two of the Outlier crew was killed, Ramona and Mr Hain decided to send in troops to stop Caul. However they learned that they had severely underestimated his combat abilities after he ripped all of them apart. Mr Hain though still believed that they had a chance to subdue Caul and order Ramona to stall the hybrid.

Carcer guarding one of last survivors faced Caul again and tried peacefully talk it out so that he could know what happen and get justice for Caul. Caul revealed what really happened on the Outlier. He was a menial cook aboard, who fell in love with another crewmember named Jess. Ramona jealous of Caul and Jess abused her authority as captain to make his and Jess's life miserable. When scavenger ship came across the derelict, Ramona Fason forced him to board it as payback on Caul for refusal to have sexual relations with her. When the Hurde came to recover the derelict, Ramona intentionally locked out Caul and the scavenger team, to buy her and the Outlier time to escape. Though she claimed it was not personal but in the name of survival, Ramona at the time stated it was a nice bonus in leaving Caul and his lover to their fate. Furthermore Caul explained he was not even the real Caul, but a copy that was sent while the real one was kept captive in the Hurde's grasp.

By then Ramona and her accomplices managed to crack the Hurde language and used their newly found access to the Hurde database to enhance their latest weapons, the Armorigami Droids. The robots were a form of smart technology that could adapt and anticipate Cauls attacks and used electrified graphene nets to disrupt Caul's command signals, in effect paralyzing him.

Ramona triumphantly declared Caul her property and ordered her minions to bring Caul to the lab. Knowing that her crimes would be brought to light if Carcer spoke, she proceeded to shoot him to keep him silent. Whilst Caul' immobile body was being studied, Caul informed Ramona and her peers that his capture by them was part of the Hurde's strategy. The drone then began a chain reaction within his body, changing its molecular structure. Mr Hain realizing what was happening tried to flee but was incinerated a sample of Caul's energy cells that he and his men were studying. After Hain was killed, Caul explained to his captors that the Hurde sent him not just to fulfill his revenge but to neutralizes all the stolen Hurde technology Falcorp acquired. Their every move had been anticipated, knowing that they would scrutinize Caul, a Hurde-Human Hybrid, to access their database, and thus planted a failsafe to cause his energy cells to undergo extreme volatile reaction. Despite still being a pawn to others once again, Caul was content with his fate as it gave him a front row seat to see Ramona die. Ramona and the remaining Falcorp staff were killed by the explosion near Caul, reducing them to bones.

Caul and the remaining Outlier survivors though managed to limp out of the building to safety in front of a contingent of Alliance military personnel. However Carcer's problems were just being and was soon arrested under trumped up charges for being associated with Falcorp's illegal actions and Ramona Farson. The crime for not alerting the Alliance, despite being under a confidentiality contract with the company, was two decades of prison time. The Alliance offered to make a deal with Carcer, though it was hardly a choice. The military also had an interest in Hurde technology and wanted to exploit it just as the defunct Falcorp did. They believed that Carcer's expertise to be valuable given his nature with Hurde technology, and wanted him to investigate a Hurde ship. Disgusted by their greed for power, Carcer rebuked that the Alliance military officials blindness for not learned anything of the deaths from the incident. He advised that the military should open their eyes to the fact that the Hurde were more advanced than humanity in every aspect and any further interaction would end badly.

Outlier: Dark Symmetries
Jared Carcer managed to avoid accepting the deal made by the Alliance Military, by feigning PTSD from the Falcorp incident for six months. However the military had Carcer under surveillance at the recovery center and determined that his symptoms were fake. The military official, Colonel Amit Luthra, assigned to get Carcer cooperation and unwilling to let the issue go, seeing that bribes and threats failed chose another tactic by going with transparency, and showed Carcer images of the Hurde vessel the Alliance Military wanted his to investigate. Th vessel was explained to be found right after the Outlier discovered the first vessel. They found thr Hurde ship on a nearby planet, it was damaged by weapons fire indicating that it had attacked the other Hurde ship. The colonel explained that the Alliance Military believed that the weapons damaged was evidence of infighting between the Hurde which to the humans was valuable information.

The symbols on the vessel piqued Carcer 's interest as his optic implants recognized them to be Hurde but also denoting of military rank. Determining that the second craft was a military ship, Carcer agreed to go along with the investigation, under several conditions. During his time in the recovery center, Caul came to the conclusion of about what Caul told him, that he was just a drone copy, making him wonder that perhaps his parents who were taken by the Hurde were still alive.

Culture
The Hurde are beyond anything humanity can hope to understand. Encounters with other species are of only second hand accounts, and they mostly stated to end disastrous. The Hurde have obtain a reputation as bogeymen in the galaxy as those that have the misfortune of crossing the Hurde are never heard from again.

Though the stories that spread outside Hurde space do no justice to the Hurde their victims described that the Hurde are much more worse than anyone could possibly imagined. When encountering intruders into their territory, Hurde torture their victims, absorbing every moment of pain, experience they inflict to understand them. New victims are taken to the Hurde Archive, a storage facility that contains captured lifeforms from across the galaxy.

Their technology is so advance that their victims survive through the brutal vivisections and torture, exploring every facet of their bodies to determine how much pain they need to inflict to break their captives. Thanks to this level of examination, the Hurde have amassed a database of over several thousand life forms, which they use to modify their bodies.

The Hurde consider themselves as strain of life that alters itself to become stronger, by absorbing successful strategies from other species whilst letting inferior species die. They are focus on survival and it has served them well for millennia, through learning and adapting from every species they encounter. The Hurde's motives are not clouded by pride or ego but only with the purity of survival. The Hurde witnessed every horror in the universe, from countless civilizations rise and fall, extinction events that wiped out planets in a single moment and the collapse of solar systems, shaping them to become the horror to survive.