Quote:
Originally Posted by TGLS
Question 88 [HIST] When and what was the Wolfshead War?
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Answer 88 [HST] - Wolfshead War
The Wolfshead Series C Bioshell
The
Wolfshead Series C Bioshells by Worldware Biosystems were the highest grossing shell model for the period 5283-5291. The Wolfshead was a military specced physiobuild that captured the boardroom bro tacticool sector of the civilian market. At one point, Worldware were pumping out more Wolfsheads for domestic consumption than they were shipping to defence clients.
The problem started to be noticed some time after Wolfsheads had reached significant consumer market penetration. While a brain transplanted into a new bioshell maintains all its memories and personality traits, it's not immune to the physiological stimuli and glandular and hormonal signals being pumped out by its body. In this case, Wolfsheads, with their increased muscle mass, superior bone density, tightened reflexes and host of battlefield-ready mods, contained a ream of lymphatic system enhancements, hormonal adjustments and optimised energy transfer systems that were perfectly suited to a battlefield environment but were ill-suited for civilian life. A large percentage of Wolfshead transfer recipients, particularly without appropriate clinical counselling, became restless and dissatisfied with being mere gym-club gladiators or trading floor warriors. The shells themselves provoked an incessant urge to fight. Episodes of so-called "shell-psychosis," violent uncontrolled outbursts in public places, increased. Some sated their urges in full-contact sports, others in fighting sports, but the main outlet to combat their compulsion was in fact to enlist for combat.
Wolfsheads VS OAI Wolfsheads
The Fiumgnazza Delta War (5286-5291) was a messy, drawn out, complicated little conflict, ostensibly between the neighbouring states of Republica di Magdrille and Fortenza, a client state of the Union Grimizna Drzava, but with hefty support and interference from regional bloc powers and megacorp proxies. In the public conscience, however, this is known as the Wolfshead War. The Fortenza Armed Forces (FAF) had been generously supplied with Wolfshead troops, running NeuroTech NT450-HDCR OAIs, for their armoured infantry, recon and special forces units. These operated as a well-programmed, highly disciplined and highly trained fighting force, equipped, adequately at least, for their mission and properly integrated into their parent units.
Into this active warzone, looking for active combat, spilled thousands of these disaffected, maladapted affluent civilian volunteers, from countries both near and aligned and distant and unrelated, in their high-street clinic Wolfshead bioshells, sporting designer combat load-outs purchased out of their own pockets. They freelanced for Magdrille uniformed forces and provincial warlords alike, brought insurgency actions in Fortenza-occupied towns or even set themselves up as militia capos. They were untrained and undisciplined, had no supply lines to speak of, and barely integrated into the Magdrille defence command structure, more often running wildcat than supporting the local forces. Only months before, these were sales execs, software engineers, hedge fund managers, real estate agents, media producers and junior VPs, as well as trust fund babies or gang lieutenants, and now they were fighting and dying in a bloody insurgency or committing atrocities against the local populace. The tenor of the war darkened significantly when hordes of gung-ho, bloodthirsty amateurs arrived en masse.
In the meanwhile, with both belligerents heavily dependent on the Wolfsheads, Worldware Biosystems were busy profiting off both sides of the conflict. Supply trucks and hovers bearing the WWB logo manned by guards and drivers in their gold and forest green livery were making deliveries to all parts of the contested delta. The combat bioshells were high maintenance equipment and required regular medical servicing on top of the treatment for actual combat injury. Pallets of crucial dietary supplements, high calorie feedstuff, blood analogue, model specific organs and body parts and whole replacement shells came in on regular shipments to airbases for distribution to field bases and outposts. Worldware personnel were everywhere - med-techs, warehousing and supply chain, analysts embedded in combat units to assess the performance of their hardware in a variety of environments, and all doing so with open impunity. They were a protected species.
Backlash against Worldware
Protests against Worldware started up in many capital cities for two reasons. There was the overall conduct of the war, with their brazen profiteering from the ransacking of the native populace, as well as the suspicion that they were covertly directing the conduct of the war to create desired engagements or to extend it indefinitely. And there were the protests and class actions from families, colleagues and employers of the so-called volunteers. Even if the volunteers didn’t suffer lifepath termination, they had still been somehow coerced into giving up their regular lives and careers to weirdly hive off to a foreign warzone. There were the accusations that Worldware had deliberately programmed the bioshells to create a class of combat slave, and other accusations that they had aided or encouraged people smuggling agents to transport volunteer combatants to this particular battle zone, knowing they'd face an opposition force of identical Wolfsheads.
In the end, it was the threat of hundreds of billions of WorldWons (their own proprietary digital coin) of damages and payouts that Worldware were faced with which brought an end to the Fiumgnazza Delta War. They made mass settlements for ultimately much lower sums with the plaintiffs, withdrew support from the theatre and paid out for repatriation of non-local combatants and their rehabilitation.
Worldware Today
Wolfshead bioshells, however, are still widely available today on the physiobuild market, with no particular changes to their hormone expression, and indeed models from that era, only twenty years ago, are still seen around. Instead, some after-market mood dampening exoplants are available from Worldware or third party manufacturers, with the appearance of an array of flat plastic modules running up either side of the neck, which seem to have somewhat quelled the shells' compunction to band together and decamp toward new war zones.
Worldware Biosystems still suffer reputational backlash, despite their intensive community rebuilding projects in the Fiumgnazza Delta region. There is their overall conduct with respect to the war itself, and there's the insinuation that they deliberately create mind controlling bioshells. While the case is ambiguous regarding the Wolfsheads, the scandal drew a lot of close scrutiny toward their other activities and there are credible claims that they have conducted behavioural control research with other consumer models. There are also the rumours that, during the war, a clandestine research unit was experimenting with captured volunteer Wolfshead users, by installing a personality cut out switch then inserting the combatant into an opposing OAI Wolfshead platoon. Again, Worldware Biosystems deny such hearsay and would welcome any solid evidence that this practice was conducted with their knowledge.