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 assist FORCE 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 Colonel Fedmahn Kassad participated in the last Shrike Pilgrimage.

Kassad will be one of the one thousand Far Future Warriors who fight against the Machine UI's champions for the destiny of Life.

He is a follower of New Bushido which is some 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.

Meta Information

In general Pax era equipment is of higher quality that FORCE era equipment. Swiss Guard equipment in particular is much better than FORCE equipment. This does not mean the FORCE equipment can't do the similar things, it just won't do them as well.

Feats that are scaling off normal Pax equipment will be denoted as ^Pax. Swiss Guard feats will be denoted as ^SG.

Kassad only gets the Void That Binds powers after the Shrike Pilgrimage. He also would also have had access to Pax equipment at that point.

So if you don't want either of those things specify Kassad from the Shrike Pilgrimage.

Out of Armor Physicals

Strength

• Climbs up a shuttle under a three gravities of acceleration.

• Swiss Guard conditioning trains their soldiers to fight under any worlds gravity. It is likely that FORCE training is similar.

• [Limit] Kassad was unable to lift his arms under eight gravities of acceleration.

Speed

• Catches up to a tram car over ice. The Consul describes this as "incredible" and looking like an Old Earth Jaguar.

• His speed is probably that of a fairly tall very in shape adult.

Durability/Endurance

• Survives a building collapsing on him albeit with considerably damage and he needed immediate medical assistance.

• While in nigh perfect vacuum swaps his heavily damaged suit for a working one.

• Able to survive sustained under eight gravities of acceleration.

• Takes a light slap from someone wearing a phase suit though this almost makes him go unconscious. And to be fair he had gone through everything in the FORCE ground armor's durability section in the minutes before this.

Skill

• Kassad has been trained extensively not just in "modern" combat but also in combat from various historical periods in highly advanced simulations. This include but is probably not limited to The Battle of Agincourt, Gettysburg, the Battle of Verdun, Vietnam, and various post-current day conflicts.

• He is a decorated soldier who has served in several campaigns.

• Is trained to use many weapons. (Note: this was durring the first round of sim traning so this list probably expanded quite a bit).

• Trained in the operation of vehicles of various complexity.

• Takes a space suit off a dead marine and puts it on himself while the ship he is on is undergoing rapid decompression.

• Rigs a medical laser to ambush some Ousters while in a heavily damaged suit with a near failing rebreather.

• Deals with a rebellion by using antiquated defense satellites to target rebel's com implants.

• Holds the Sol system against the Pax (interstellar theocratic government which has been the major power in the Orion Arm for the past hundred years) for five years. Despite having worse equipment and ships.

Standard Equipment

• A Deathwand. this will kill any human (and only humans) though it has a shortish range of around 50 meters.

  • It works by frying every synapse in said human's head.
  • Deathwands can have some degree of AOE.
  • On a tight beam setting it forms a cone which is one meter wide at the the ten meter mark.

The Void That Binds

Anyone that took Communion with The One Who Teaches (Which Kassad did) over time gains access to The Void That Binds and gets some special powers from that access.

• The Void That Binds can be used to transmit information (in this case it is an entire book).

• It can also be used for regular communication between people who have access to it.

Language of the Dead

• Knowing the Language of the Dead lets the listener access the memories and thoughts of the dead. Language differences are not a barrier to this form of communication the listener simply understands the language of the person they are listening to.

Language of the Living

• Knowing the Language of the Living is similar to the Language of the Dead except it is for living people.

• The listener can choose to listen to specific people.

• It also lets them "see" the emotions of those arround them.

• Knowing the Language of the Living makes the listener feel pain equal to what they administer to others. This does not do any actual damage to the listener or physically impair them in anyway. It is just the pain.

Hearing the Music of the Spheres

• Hearing the Music of the Spheres is essential for Taking the First Step. It lets the listener understand the spacial locations of other humans, aliens and places that they have been in the past.

• The First Step can only be taken if the person can hear the Music of the Spheres.

Taking the First Step

• The First Step is using the spacial understanding acquired by hearing the Music of the Spheres and stepping through the Void That Binds to instantly move pretty much anywhere in the universe.

• It can be used to move entire Spacecraft and people..

  • Treeships are one kilometer long.
  • They later did this with both the Treeship and ten hectares of the City of Endymion.

• Someone who can take the First Step can also teleport others around (assuming they can target them by hearing the Music of the Spheres) even when they are light years away.

FORCE Impact Armor

FORCE Impact Armor is the armor used by FORCE: Ground soldiers. It provides excellent protection, a pretty big strength boost along with greatly enhancing the user's senses.

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, this is apparently capable of going through half a meter of stone.

• ^SGA Swiss Guardsman smashes open a "heavy steel" cabinet with a single blow.

Speed

• Starts moving before a blast from a nearby explosion hits him.

• Avoids gunfire. But in this case there is a chance in this case the shooter was not actually shooting directly at him.

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

  • Here is a table of values for how long you think he might have taken and the average speed he would have needed to have in order to go one kilometer in that time period.

Durability/Endurance

• Takes hits from a FORCE Multipurpose Rifle. It is likely that the Impact Armor offers at least some protection against every setting on the 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.
  • A Rifle Bullet
  • Flechettes and high velocity slugs.

• Survives getting thrown through a three meter chunk of crystal.

• Survives a 60 meter fall after the armor has taken damage from a Multipurpose Rifle.

• After the armor is basically out of power he survives getting thrown twenty meters.

• FORCE Armor can inject drugs like pain killers if the wearer is wounded.

• ^SGSwiss Guard Armor can do at least some first aid. Like, closing wounds and applying tourniquets to areas that are bleeding excessively. It is likely that the FORCE Impact Armor has similar capabilities.

Senses/Other

• 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.

• ^SGSwiss Guard Armor has inbuilt automatic targeting. It is likely that FORCE Impact Armor has similar features

  • A note about the feat itself, They say "less than two seconds" but they also say humans couldn't react to it. So in order to befuddle the usual settings in this case the Shrike was probably only appearing for fractions of a second.
  • This "fraction of a second" rather than 2 seconds busness is also supported by, the Shrike in that battle killed 15000 Pax regulars, 5000 Swiss Guardsmen and a number of Torchship crewmen in 30 seconds which comes out to ~666 soldiers per second or ~1.5 milliseconds per soldier.

• Infrared/heat sensors are good enough to see footprints made by people a few minutes ago.

• ^PaxPax troops can use deep radar to sense through rock and find underground passages it is likely FORCE Impact Armor has something similar.

• Night vision goggles from a fairly backwards world are capable of making night time functionally equivalent to day time.

• Can detect people clearly through a sand/electric storm.

• 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.

• [LIMIT] This armor will run out of power pretty fast if it is being put through heavy use and taking significant damage.

Equipment

FORCE: Multipurpose Rifle.

• This rifle has many settings and will auto aim to some degree.

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

• Lasers

  • Wide beam lasers which can turn cubic meters of sand into glass within seconds.
  • Pulse lasers which can be used to blind enemies.
  • These lasers are powerful enough to make 5-10 meter diameter craters of glass.
  • Laser will automatically be modulate the wavelength and frequency (this is because FORCE armor and equivalents will change color to try to mirror laser light).
  • The control over the laser's power is so great it can be used to cook meals.

• Pulse/plasma bolts

  • Pulse bolts are a some kind of energy weapon.
  • They are not affected by wind or significantly effected by gravity. Theoretically they can hit anything the shooter can see and properly lead, including targets on nearby moons. Raul also expects that after firing at a nearby moon with a civilian plasma rifle he would have been able to see the hit if he had a better scope which implies a VERY high muzzle velocity.
  • 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.
  • They can split trees.
  • Pulse/plasma bolts are said to be able to easily go through steel. Also a Endymion era plasma rifle is able to easily cut a 8 meter chunk of ice apart.
  • An untrained pacifist makes a three to four kilometer shot with a civilian plasma rifle from a small raft in the middle of an ocean.
  • High explosive pulse bolts. There is not a lot of information on these, if I was to guess this version of the pulse bolt releases it's energy when it hits a solid object, rather than putting energy into penetrating the object.

• A civilian plasma rifle has a magazine capacity of 50 bolts. The Multipurpose Rifle could have a similar magazine capacity.

• Flechettes.

  • ^PaxThe flechette launcher is a short ranged weapon. Some Pax trooper's flechette guns only were accurate to 60-70 meters.
  • ^PaxPax flechette guns can easily blow holes in people and send them flying.

• Canister grenades.

• Body-heat-seeking darts.

  • ^SGA somewhat similar weapon used by the Swiss Guard had a range of at least 175 km and flew at mach 6.

• Smoke grenades and chaff.

• Here is the passage showing a full barrage of MPR fire.

  • This blew 20-30 meters off the top of the Crystal Monolith.
  • The range of the engagement was around a kilometer.

• Miscellaneous

  • Raul Endymion thinks he could use it to shoot down primitive jet fighters despite the fact he does not have FORCE Impact Armor or any other kinds of targeting assistance other than the weapon itself.
  • ^SGSwiss Guard energy weapons are "unreliable" at 175 km (in a dust/electric storm).
  • The MPR is quite heavy for someone lacking a suit of powered armor.
  • The MPR is very loud. These people were somewhat deep inside what is functionally a cave and there is a big sand/snow storm in progress.

Additional equipment

• Extra ammo.

• FORCE Officer's are known to use Deathwands as sidearms so it is likely he would be carrying that with him.

• Powered Binoculars and Grenades.

  • Kassad's binoculars can automatically find targets, self stabolize, and see clearly see one kilometer long objects in orbit from the ground.
  • We do not know what type of grenades Kassad has but here are some plasma grenade feats.
  • ^Pax/SGPax era plasma Grenades can damage Swiss Guard armor at close range. Swiss Guard armor can tank kiloton range nukes.

Phase Suit

The Phase Suit is a combat skinsuit from the far future. In appearance the suit makes it look like it's wearer is made out of chrome. It uses time manipulation to boost the wearer's speed and reaction time to incredible levels.

This suit is controlled directly via the users mind.

Kassad was able to beat the Shrike in battle and kill it. So when wearing the Phase suit he can be scaled off of the Shrike.

When the Shrike wanted to, it was able to effortlessly stomp Nemes clones. So when wearing the Phase Suit Kassad's capabilities can be scaled off of Nemes.

Strength

• Staggers the Shrike and blocks some of its attacks. Also, the valley they are fighting in dose not have a significant atmosphere so making a loud sound is somewhat impressive.

• In the final battle in the future Kassad kills a Shrike.

• Cuts through an Ouster in combat armor with his hand.

  • Ouster armor is comparable to FORCE armor.

• Throws a stone faster than the speed of sound.

  • Presumably this can be scaled up the faster the Phase Suit is running.

Speed

• EM waves appear to be frozen.

• Dodges a laser.

• Lasers appear slow.

• Dodges attacks from the Shrike.

• This is part of Kassad and the Shrike's fight perceived by a normal human.

• The Phase Suit reverse it's flow of time and go backwards through time.

• With help from another Phase Suit user his suit can shift through time.

• The Phase Suit can follow the Shrike teleportating through time and space.

• In the Final Battle (which Kassad is leading) is supposed to take place between a few thousand combatants on millions of worlds.

• Phase Shifting is not precisely speeding the user up. It is more like being "outside time". This is why despite moving at FTL speeds they don't turn the atmosphere into plasma.

Durability/Endurance

• Despite unloading a large amount of weapons fire into the Crystal Monolith, Kassad thinks that would be unable to kill a Phase Suit user.

• The Phase Suit will suture wounds closed, compress, act as a tourniquet and kill pain.

• A different Phase Suit user effortlessly tanks a blow from Kassad's FORCE Impact Armor.

• Can protect the wearer from vacuum.

• [Limit] The Shrike's blades easily penetrate the Phase Suit.

Senses

• Can see EM waves into the radar range as well as sound.

• Can see through FORCE camouflage as well as make out faces from five kilometers away. Along with being able to listen in on FORCE battlechatter.

• Knows the amount of Ousters who survived orbital drop.

Other Equipment

The Phase Suit also accelerates weapons fire from Kassad's FORCE multipurpose rifle up to FTL speeds. Else the Shrike would be effortlessly dodging them because it can move/react FTL.

• Lasers.

• Flechettes.