Brenodi Elite Arms Conglomerate / BEACON

You’ve done well in your training and have been selected above the rest for your quick reactions and dead on aim. The final day of training begins for you with history… Please, have a seat.

The planet Brenodia perished in civil war long ago, in the year 2189 between a nearly monolithic Brenodi Empire and an increasingly organized rebellion calling themselves the “Northern Faction”. War waged for 117 years, when ship technology had finally been developed. The new dimension of battle violently shifted the fighting out of established no-mans-land, from swaths of smoke and desolated concrete ruins to the civilian colonies distanced beyond. In the infancy of the battle for air superiority, a new leader emerged among the Faction. His real name long forgotten, he was only known as Mr. Die… or at least that’s all that anyone cared to remember afterwards.

Infantry of the Empire, 3rd Battalion, 6th Division, were the vanguard deployed against the Faction. Many resourceful and ambitious officers were forged in service under this battle group, and proved themselves as savvy field tacticians. Seasoned enlisted were cherry-picked on the rare occasion that there was a need for new blood in the Brenodi Sixth Infantry Division, or BSID as it became known among the colonies of the empire. The name stuck, media digests made it a household name and an effective marketing and recruiting force for the war machine.

As ships were developed and deployed, BSID was one of the first battle groups to be converted to the all too vital air and space combat zones. The empire feared the possibility of the Faction developing the capability to perform orbital strikes, as the drive to militarize space grew into a frenzy. Mr. Die relentlessly pushed ground forces, using subterfuge to direct Brenodi forces away so the Faction could shell key hangers and laboratories. The fighting reached critical mass when an armed Faction craft, made for a single mission at unsustainable speeds, successfully maneuvered a nuclear warhead into the royal palace in the Brenodi capital.

The empire fell into anarchy in the aftermath, and several cities on both sides were nuked in the chaos. Factories and supply lines for building ships and reactors were devastated. Those not already in possession of ships were doomed to a fate worse than death. The stripped and poisoned planet being no longer habitable, ships abandoned sides and gathered as a fleet of those who were willing and able. They took to the vast reaches of space to find a habitable planet to start anew, and come back to ferry what remained of their stranded civilization to safety.

The Brenodi Solar System was lacking in habitable planets, but it had a wormhole. Desperate to survive, without alternatives and unwilling to give up, the BSID did what they were trained to do and forged ahead, giving the fleet confidence and organization. The fleet braved the wormhole, despite being unfamiliar and unequipped to properly navigate it.

Over 400 ships entered the wormhole, and barely 40 arrived together in Banu space. The rest are euphemistically thought to have arrived in groups in other systems. More than likely they perished in the unforgiving journey. Reality was indeed harsh: there was no wormhole opening for a return trip, none of the ships were in any condition to attempt one, and the race couldn’t hope to survive another loss of that magnitude. Worn and tired, the remnants of the once proud battlegroup and their “civilization” docked at space lounge on Hyperion, a planet in the Fora system, where merchants traded for some of their antique ships, providing enough credit for repairs and upgrades from technicians and engineers.

The BSID evolved to stand for something else, Something greater. The military trained elite of the group no longer represented an empire, and were far from a civilization anymore. They started an organization, mercenaries for hire. Through tenacity and tactical presence, they succeeded in several boardings, as shock troops for assaults at remote installations, and their engineers scavenged the weapons from their fallen enemies for resale on the market.

The Brenodi survived this way. The organization became what is known today as BEACON (the Brenodi Elite Arms Conglomorate). Through the generations they streched thin across UEE space and beyond, nourished into a mobile underground through their various successful associations, diverting profits from tactical and mercentile missions to support top mapping and exploration vessels. BEACON prefers not to have any large standing force in one place, as the universe is large and expansive; the truly deadly are not the massive, but the unseen. They are always moving along the fringes of the known universe, searching for some way back. Some way back to the system they once called home.

Although, we are just as happy with systems that we can’t call home, too. Primitive systems fetch much more than the price of the effort for finding them. Yes… I’m part Brenodi… This crest, this insignia of the warriors we were is a legacy that defies belief. Like all good legacies, it isn’t mine anymore: it’s yours.