Project Aspis
From Elan Vital Wiki
Project Aspis is a Stocklin-sponsored project to develop men and women of Phalanx caliber. In the sixty years since its conception and founding, it has failed to successfully produce a candidate meeting Phalanx criteria. As of 709, the project is in crisis, its reputation stained by failure and controversy.
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Founding
In AT 649, Dr. Thutmose Stocklin asked the question: Can a Phalanx be built?
It was a question at the forefront his mind in the wake of a particularly brutal attack on the city by the wildling beasts of the outback. Thousands of the militia's fighting men and women had been slaughtered like pigs in the most grisly, stomach-churning fashions; and if that were not enough, an entire outpost and years of research had been lost in a massive explosion which nearly decimated the power armor Panzer and killed its pilot. Were it not for a last-minute intervention from a Petakovan reserve of Brigadiers, the north wall may have very well been overtaken and the populace overrun. The whole of Titania was shaken.
It seemed that an individual eventually meeting the criteria to man Stocklin's best hope against the nightmarish invaders was a gamble, a deadly game of roulette upon which too much depended. The people of Titania did not have time for chances, Dr. Stocklin reasoned. A talented gengineer, the 33-year-old Luten and professor of Advanced Bioengineering Applications at the Mailin School in Stocklin penned the proposal for a groundbreaking new project: the manufacture of men and women of Phalanx caliber.
The first hoplites
Dr. Stocklin's ambitions were bold ones indeed, and risky in and of themselves. Gengineering, while quite advanced in the Empire at large, was a shaky science with uncertain footing on the isolated world of Voltumnus. But his ideas were solid - Celestians competent enough to join the Brigade could not be "created," per se, but non-Celestian children fostered by the project could one day pilot power armor. And with a ready reserve, more armor could be put into production. More pilots, more armor, larger Phalanx, greater offensive and defensive potential. House Stocklin smiled upon the project - dubbed "Aspis" by its founder - and supporters bolstered the effort with grants, donations, and well-wishes.
The original plans for Aspis involved around the selection of orphaned children from local institutions, all meeting (or, ideally, exceeding) certain benchmarks: above-average performance in athletic programs, high academic marks, and strong immune systems confirmed by medical records free from the worst of the city's transmissible diseases and chronic conditions. Nicknamed "hoplites" by the geneticists, the first gifted kids included eleven-year-old Audrey Garron, nine-year-old Derrick Mitchum, and the now-parentless five-year-old Essen Francis Stocklin, the only son of the deceased Panzer pilot, Luten Victor Stocklin.
All three hoplites underwent rigorous training at both Stocklin and Petakovan military installations on either side of the Whiterush, running a gauntlet of tests and participating in programs conceived, constructed, and instructed by veteran soldiers in specialist fields. Extensive combat training, demanding fitness protocols, and educational cirriculums were developed specifically to cater to the needs of the Machine Men and encourage mental and physical growth in optimum directions. Early results were promising - particularly in the case of young Audrey, who by age seventeen, had not only completed her second round of aptitude tests with the highest marks in her age group, but was capable of operating within counter-celestial and neutralization units with little to no assistance, with a particular affinity for carbine operation in urban environments. She was a shining star, and every positive indication of what Project Aspis was capable of producing.
Something Audrey herself was capable of producing, however, was a child.
It was a scandal, to be sure. Eighteen, unwed, and pregnant by none other than sixteen-year-old fellow hoplite Derrick Mitchum. Dr. Stocklin came under fire, especially when his reports of his team's screening Audrey for a highly illegal abortion came to light. The resulting media explosion was almost enough to do the project in, and Audrey's subsequent resignation complicated matters only further. When Derrick proved to be a sub-par substitute for the mother of his child - performing far beneath the high bar set by the Aspis coordinators - and Francis fared no better, Dr. Stocklin and his collaborators were forced to return to the drawing board.
Relaunch and scandal
Funding and supporters still remained, despite the controversy. In AT 672 Aspis relaunched, this time armed with a new and more daring methodology, one borne partly out of the desire to avoid a repeat of the previous disaster and partly to entice new investors. Advances in stem-cell research and a string of successful transplantation trials encouraged attempts at culturing hES cells and directly manipulating the genetic material of developing embryos, allowing the gengineers to conceive its subjects in vitro and simply create the ideal candidate for the project. They would foster the children from day one: a boy, named Jacob after the famous pillar of Lunism, and a girl, Rose, named for Dr. Stocklin's wife.
There would be no catastrophes this time, no matter how many romantic liaisons might occur. The team had secretly and deliberately rendered Rose infertile, a trend that would set a precedent leading the project on its first step down a slippery slope. Before, the children had been supplemented with genetic modifications so mild, they could merely be thought of suggestions toward a particular outcome; now, emboldened by the success of the stem-cell applications and what was being termed as "corrective therapy," Aspis dared to serve the children a variety of experimental cocktails to bolster their capabilities, with mixed results.
Jacob reacted positively, at first. His predisposition toward heaviness was encouraged by treatments to build mass and shape him into a solid, unbreakable wall; in addition, whireid DNA had been introduced into his cellular makeup with the hope that it would help mold his body into a leaner distribution of muscle without sacrificing grace or power. However strange and perhaps baseless such a notion might have been, similar splicing continued to occur: over the course of several years, both hoplites would find themselves the recipients of sampling from lentir and neta, domesticated beasts, and even high-performing athletes and soldiers. These highly risky and ethically debatable practices were swept under the concealing rug of extremely moderated diets and extracurricular activities, and in some cases, even staged medical emergencies.
An accident at an outpost during a training drill in 677 gravely wounded both hoplites, who were onsite with a unit of Lovers in what amounted to a glorified field trip - the collection of exotic plants and the tracking of migrating alabears through the western wilds. In what was reported as a freak mishandling of a male alabear in rut, a gas line was ignited, and the resulting blaze almost spelled the end for the Aspis children. Almost.
Third-degree burns lacing up and down Rose's right side were not treated with the standard grafting that was common practice, nor "erased" from sight through the skilled application of biomancy; rather, she underwent a full amputation of all four limbs, both injured and not, and awaited the transplantation of new arms and legs. In the team's opinion, this would be a fine time to determine the pros and cons of lab-grown appendages and artificial muscle in the project, as well as explore the opportunities now open to them in synthetic blood, bone, and plasma, the employment of nanotechnology, and advanced neuroresponsive systems. Aspis's public relations department drummed up support for what they were hailing as advances in medical science, an alternative to standard "regrown" limbs and the risks of common cybernetic technology...
... Except in 678, four days before six-year-old Rose would undergo the groundbreaking surgery, she was found dead in her bedroom, strangled by her tutor, who had immediately turned a pistol upon himself in a gruesome murder-suicide. A note left by the man described the horrific act as one of "charity," and expounded upon his grief over the "beautiful little girl" now "nothing but a guinea pig." Aspis, he claimed, had forgotten its own humanity, and the humanity of the hoplites. Once again, the project found itself in peril.
Stocklin/Petakova partnership
As the militia descended upon Dr. Thutmose Stocklin's operation to seize Jacob, and the public cried for justice, Titania's government engaged in hot debate over the morality versus the benefits of the troubled program. Stocklin and Petakova were deadlocked in their disagreement over Project Aspis's fate, torn between the eastern desire to simply regulate and tightly supervise the work being done, and the western opinion that they should just shut everything down and try the entire team.
In the end, it was a Petakovan who secured Aspis's future. Manda Nicklaus Petakova, a notable Biomancer of Promethian persuasion with solid footing in controlled wildlife eugenics, offered to partner with Dr. Stocklin and jointly oversee the project. A former battlefield medic directly affiliated with the Celestial Brigade, Manda Nicklaus had retired to a comfortable political and academic life within the Academy hierarchy. Fond of children and experienced in educating them, the good doctor nevertheless was himself childless - an outbreak of the pox eleven years before had robbed his wife of her fertility, and the failure of the cards to fall in the right directions for a possible adopted son or daughter was a constant thorn in his side. What good is a Titanian without a child? The signs were pointing in what appeared to be only positive directions for both the project and for the Manda himself.
His chief concern was restoring the good, solid foundation and forward-thinking intentions upon which Aspis had originally been built, starting with improved welfare of the children and stronger ties with the militia. In his mind, the solution was simply to produce another hoplite from a test tube, limiting the amount of gengineer interference to strictly cosmetic modification; he desired that the child strongly resemble his wife, as if it were her own flesh-and-blood daughter. Nine months later, in the summer of 679, a healthy baby girl was born - the final desperate hope of the problem-plagued Project Aspis and the realization of years of waiting and wishing on the part of the Manda. It was only appropriate that she be named Faith.
Aspis today
Plagued by failure, scandal, and a lack of funding, Aspis is on its last legs. With its hopes pinned on the questionable success of its one remaining hoplite - now approaching thirty years old, with over a decade's worth of history in the Militia - its future is in doubt.
Its project headquarters is located in Stocklin, in the Mailin medical facility.
