"The Last War ended an entire civilization of technologically-adept super-beings.

I think we should count our blessings that it did."

Elim Braddoz, interplanetary merchant

Relics of that time are lost to history. Perhaps for good reason. Centuries ago, Valkna fell under attack by its own protectors. Seen as flawed and corrupt, the governing bodies of Valkna were held under siege by Urok the Breaker and his coalition of warriors gathered from outlying worlds.

What the next decade showed was nothing less than absolute horror. The Last War, contrary to popular belief, did not end quickly. Billions of people called Valkna home, and Urok's alliance consisted of billions more. The interplanetary trading system upheld by the Valknans had turned itself against them in the end. What resulted would be a gruelling, punishing war of attrition. Urok deigned it necessary to cut the population cleanly in half through battle and skirmishes.

Yet Tarvok, his son, became a figurehead of the defending forces. He would continuously defy his father until the bitter end when no Valknan save him remained.

After the EMP bombs cascaded down, erasing resistance for a time, the orbital strikes rained upon cities and countryside alike - randomized, as per Urok's instruction.

Though, the defenders soon regained their means to fight back. Across the planetary expanse, countless battles were waged all at once. Virus bombings, incineration waves, plasma annihilators, any number of apocalyptic weapons locked away during the arms race the Valknans endured before all of this were unleashed one after another. One of the deadliest, Phosphex, the Crawling Death - a virus of fire, leaping from living matter to living matter, consuming it down to the bones before extinguishing itself. Irradiated Volkite weapons, beam rifles and their walker-mounted culverin-types, ignored armor altogether and disintegrated flesh and organs.

Battlefields that were not outright abandoned following a thunderous advanced through No Man's Land were often the subject of orbitally-deployed solid-round projectiles. Only rarely were these empty, however, usually at the mercy of virus or Phosphex technology. Initially, millions died in the carnage. Heavily populated cities were feared to become primary targets, but the unpredictable nature of Urok's strategy eventually became impossible to determine.

When the countermeasures to the Breaker's orbit-bound ships came, they found warriors of unrelenting compromise. Several times were expeditions forged to cripple the fleets, and only a few were successful enough to tear the target ships from the sky.

His fleets soon ran out of ammunition, and were grounded intentionally where they fell silent, their plasma cores overloaded until final impact.

Tarvok himself tried many times to kill his father and end the war prematurely. Only a handful of times did he catch sight of the Breaker, and he could have isolated their skirmish and possible killed him each instance. Yet, unconsciously, he stopped himself. It is not time.

It is not time, not yet.

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When the time came for the Titan-gene-afflicted youth to ascend to his rightful place as Defender of Valkna, he did so with a sense of pride he now knows had been fabricated. Such patriotism extended from his father, who taught him very little and expected everything. He was granted access to the Enurum Clan armory, though Urok had already ransacked it.

There would be only one source of technology capable of defying the Breaker. Beyond even the flesh-eating Phosphex, and the starlike gaze of the Apocalypse-class siege machines.

A simple trinket, from a darker age.

The Deus Engine had been locked away in secret for eons, ever since the Makers ceased to be. What these architects of Valknan society had accomplished was the very first city of their people, who would become the Titans. It was buried deep underground, where only those of Titan-born genetics could find. The Makers were the aboriginal species on Valkna, forging the foundation upon which their descendants would grow.

First came the Titans, and then the Valknans. When the latter were born, however, they rose up against the Titans and imprisoned them after a long and costly war. Ever since then, to see a child with the Titan gene was thought to be a curse. However, those superstitions faded after nearly two-thousand years without a single baby born with the Titan gene. Of course, now Tarvok stood in the antechamber of the great hall of his ancestors.

The gauntlet affixed itself to his arm, and he saw that it was incomplete. He would have estimated at least more than half of its component parts were scattered elsewhere, or perhaps these were merely additions to its own design. He did not know then, and is only beginning to understand now. But all the same, finding the Engine turned the war around in favor of the Titan.

And only the Titan.

With the Engine in place, Tarvok's already formidable psionic powers were increased by order of magnitude. Those who stood against him were obliterated in cutting scythes of eldritch energy. Urok's warriors stood little chance when confronting the Titan, and so the Breaker had to take to the field himself.

The details of their duel have been lost to history. Tarvok remembers how he feared losing to his father, for though he had youth on his side and a great many years of experience in fighting lesser Valknans, Urok was ancient by comparison. The amount of wars and battles he had seen and participated in could not be counted with merely two numerals.

But in the end, Tarvok got what he wanted. And Valkna burned for it.

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Tarvok is an extremely deadly individual.

Born a Valknan, he was already physically adept compared to other common species in the galaxy and beyond. The average Valknan ranged in strength capability from being able to lift 20 to 30 tons, with the Class 35 range being considered 'exceptional'. Urok himself, a renowned warrior and feared 'Breaker of Worlds' fought strenuously at about Class 50.

Skin density alone meant that firearms not operating at what would be considered '.50-caliber' simply didn't affect the everyday Valknan. Warriors trained to fight from an early age, by human standards, would be considered entirely bulletproof - even against advanced heavy anti-armor rounds. Further study into Valknan anatomy, accounts provided by Tarvok himself, record muscle density reaching thicknesses and texture much like 'tightly-corded steel wire' in normal citizens. Again, the difference in the warrior-caste would have been much higher, making the upper echelons where Urok stood as 'extremely resistant to most forms of physical damage', if not 'nigh-invulnerable'.

Tarvok's continued biological studies into his own species go on to describe how, without the Titan gene, normal Valknans and even those belonging to the warrior-castes as elite as his own father were mostly able to avoid incoming rounds from high-powered firearms. The distances shifted according to the experiences involved, but the perceptive faculties of the citizenry were considered 'peak-human' by Earthly standards, allegedly. It only increased from there, in both sensory awareness and actual physical speed.

What this all alludes to, however, is the fact that the Titan himself is in a class all his own even when compared to the race of super-beings he originated from.

Tarvok has shown to be able to lift up to 75 tons with modest effort involved, completely outclassing his father by order of magnitude. Though it remains unlikely that the Deus Engine has multiplied his physical output, it should not be entirely debunked.

Due to the Titan mutation, all of the normal physical statutes of even a greater warrior Valknan are only improved upon in Tarvok's genetic structure. Such was the destructive potential of the Titans that even when driven underground and left to die, the Valknans still feared them thousands of years later.

The Titan has within his arrangement of weapons perhaps the deadliest analytical mind his people could have ever produced. Centuries of insight and meditation has given Tarvok a mental razor's edge. He not only takes in information and processes information at an astonishing rate, but practically anything he comes in contact with he can decipher given time.

This carries into combat effectiveness as well, as once Tarvok has the means to defeat an opponent within his grasp there is nothing that will stand in his way.

The Deus Engine in question once denied the greater part of Tarvok's powers, interfering with his self-appointed mission of 'helping the galaxy' by better preparing its various denizens for potential war. The gauntlet was designed by the Makers as a means of creating, and changing. What Tarvok had been doing for the centuries following his father's death was essentially the opposite: promoting stagnation and decay.

As such, the Engine kept Tarvok's potential from being reached. The staggering amount of bioelectrical impulses needed to keep a human from doing something entirely is considered torturous. How, then, must the Titan have felt knowing that his own arm had betrayed him, lost to the machine-spirit of the Engine.

Yet upon realizing the mission of the eldritch device, Tarvok understood the synergy it possessed with his compounding admiration for his own Mistress Death: Hela of Helheim. Once this had been achieved, the Engine never once denied the Titan of his overwhelming power - as well as granting him its own in kind.

The Deus Engine is merely one part of a many-angled puzzle, fully half of its core component and missing many others besides. Yet with it Tarvok can achieve what seems to be the impossible. His teleportation capabilities now span entire star systems. His magic, once inhibited by the device, now melts and fades into reality as water through broken stone.

Besides the Engine, Tarvok's psionic abilities are at the apex of his mastery. He purposefully utilizes these powers as a means to an end, finding far more pleasure derived from fighting hand-to-hand.

Mountains crumble at his passing, and ships are torn out of orbit. His psychic defenses are just as formidable, likened to 'clawing at a closing portal, through a tempest of wind and hatred'.

The limitations of telepathic and telekinetic involvement in the physical plane cannot accurately be expressed, as a mind can continue to expand itself - especially when influenced by self-inflicted telepathic limitation removal. However, one should always be careful of knowing too much.

That is what caused the downfall of the Makers, after all.

• Body Language Analysis - to anticipate based on physical movement or posture.
• Danger Sense - to detect impending threats.
• Enhanced Awareness - to perceive beyond illusions.
• Enhanced Memory/Panmnesia - to recall events long thought lost to time.
• Extrasensory Perception - to bring oneself beyond normal sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste.
• Precognition - to perceive future events, the date of which is unknown.
• Psionic Magic - a combination of his teachings at the Sanctum and his psionic prowess.
• Psionic Manipulation - to conjure and alter all preexisting forms of psionic and psychic energy, as well as pioneer new ones.
• Psionic Technology - a combination of advanced alien innovations and his psionic powers, as well as the ability to make solid and complex structures out of projected mental energy.
• Psionic Constructs - much in the vein of force fields and psionically-generated weapons.
• Psy-Leech Energy Manipulation - to drain and convert other sources of energy, despite their origin.
• Psychic Navigation - to map out a location using only the projections of the mind.
• Psychometry - to perceive residual information about a person or object.
• Telekinesis - to move objects based on raw psychic output.
• Telepathy - to mentally receive or transmit information.
• Teleportation - to move instantaneously from one location to another without physically occupying the space in between.