Episode 12: Fall of The Berlichingens

The Berlichingens was established almost at the same time as the mercenary groups. In some ways, this gang is like a huge garbage disposal ground for mercenary groups, or rather, just a group of lunatics. They are both a military and a bandit group and do not target any other particular force. Anyone who obstructs their interests will be subjected to continuous attacks and retaliation until they are worn down to death.

For the Uranus, the Berlichingens was the biggest thorn in the flesh before the emergence of the Matr1x Alliance. Even the heavily guarded site of the New Triathlon Finals was once bombed by the Berlichingens, resulting in the deaths of many spectators and athletes, including high-level Uranus Group members and top henchmen. For various mercenary groups, the Berlichingens is the most troublesome opponent, and the term "BerLame Gang" coined by the Spartans got quickly spread in society. Their combat capabilities are stronger than those of typical gangs. Battles to eradicate the Berlichingens often become cruel meat grinders, with blood flowing like rivers on every street and in every house. Furthermore, the Berlichingens would send out mobile squads to disrupt transportation lines, seize logistical supplies, and the reinforcements would often fall into firepower pockets set up by the Berlichingens. The pre-arranged "BerLame Gang" would surge from all sides, eliminating one wave after another, leaving defenders unable to fend them off. Even the use of drones and satellites was hardly effective in discovering their whereabouts, as it seems that they are all experts in camouflage.

The brutality and shamelessness of the Berlichingens are appalling. Their atrocities on the battlefield speak for themselves. Captives are often tortured to death, and sometimes killing them is solely for the purpose of obtaining their cybernetic prostheses or even just a component of such prostheses, which fully demonstrates their fanatical pursuit of human body modification. Of course, being spared is not a good thing either. 80% of the time, the captives will be sold on the dark web to the human organ black market. After the invention of cortical stacks, they searched the bodies for cortical stacks and confiscated them. They use them as leverage to extort ransom from the families of the dead. However, by the time the ransom is paid, the cortical stack may have already been thrown into the sea somewhere.

The abuse of human body modification brings painful and insane side effects to the "BerLame Gang." Compared to how they treat their mercenary counterparts, they treat ordinary people slightly more "politely": wherever they go, they would loot all the medicines from the local hospitals, and then continue to rob civilians, kidnap hostages for ransom, and plunder valuable items, alcoholic beverages, and addictive drugs. Whether it is a black factory of a gang or a legitimate factory under a company's name, all the equipment and products inside are often taken away, regardless of whether they are needed or not. This kind of behavior of digging deep into the ground has ordinary people tremble with fear. There was this one time when the Berlichingens even tried to rob the Spartan's spindle factory but was defeated by Spartan female workers. This was unexpected to them, and all subsequent attacks were also wiped out. After encountering setbacks, they kept a distance from the spindle factory

When serving in the Spartan Legion, Sergeant Hanssen, a tank commander, once assisted in interrogating a prisoner of war from the Berlichingens, and the following is a partial excerpt from the interrogation record. It offers a glimpse into the mental state of the faction members.

Hanssen: Name?

Prisoner: Your papa!

Hanssen: Where are you from?

Prisoner: From Spartan of course! You can’t even recognize your biological father?

(Background electronic file retrieval: Sergeant Cosmin Lupescu, joined the Spartan Legion on xx/xx/xxxx, but was expelled due to abuse of genetic drugs and extortion of civilians, and has since disappeared.)

Hanssen: Why did you join the Berlichingens?

Prisoner: After I was kicked out, I was starving, where else could I go? You gonna take me?

Hanssen: Stop being nonsense. What were you doing in the Berlichingens? How many people are there now?

Prisoner: I am in leading a few hundred Cyborg homies in the Berlichingens, making pigs of ourselves, and killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing…we share drugs, and we go crazy without drugs, hahaha! General Marshall D kicked me out, and I've been struggling for years. He’s not gonna be any better either!"

……

The Berlichingens originated in Europe many years ago. It was not really a gang, but a legitimate mercenary group, and one of the earliest mercenary groups. Its leader was a great admirer of Gottfried "Götz" von Berlichingen, a 16th-century German mercenary leader, and changed his own surname to Berlichingen in honor of him. However, as he was not of noble birth, he dropped the "von" prefix. Nowadays, few people remember his real name, and he is usually referred to as "HauptLame" (the lame chief). Today, wherever the Berlichingens appears, nearby residents often flee in fear, as the gang blocks their escape routes and extorts them.

However, the gang was not born this way. At first, it was a chivalrous and righteous army that welcomed many unemployed soldiers and disabled mercenaries from other forces, as well as many war orphans. They were disciplined on the battlefield and followed all written and unwritten rules. With the support of their employer, a large technology company, disabled mercenaries who joined the Berlichingens could get free treatment and installation of prosthetic limbs. When they took over a city or drove a gang out of it, the Berlichingens did not plunder them, but instead provided relief to the people and returned the seized goods to them. "HauptLame," who was an early member of the gang, had a high reputation at the time. However, things are unpredictable, and the person who climbs to the top of the tower will eventually come down, and the difference lies in whether they come down on their own, or are pushed down by someone else.

"The Berlichingens" refers to a group of unemployed soldiers and disabled mercenaries in Berlichingen. Originally from poor backgrounds, they were convinced by the propaganda of the Uranus Group and joined the mercenary organization in hopes of improving their lives and those of their families. In the brutal war, some died while others were left disabled and with no compensation or support as they were only contract workers. They had to wear cheap mechanical prosthetics and suffered from various complications and sequelae. Despite repeatedly seeking compensation from the Uranus Group and the mercenary organization, they were met with repression and expulsion. With nowhere else to turn, they banded together and resorted to violence and destruction to demand justice.

As former soldiers, their preferred method of seeking justice was through killing and destruction. Fortunately, they were taken in by the Berlichingens, which prevented the situation from further deteriorating and transformed them into a formidable armed force. However, the situation took a turn for the worse in the 2040s and 2050s when an environmental crisis and economic collapse in Europe caused a famine. The employer of the Berlichingens Legion was facing financial and resource crises. The company was replaced by the rising new generation of the Uranus, leaving the Legion bankrupt and unable to provide economic support for the prosthetics or maintain its original business. As cyber-psychosis became more prevalent, the Berlichingens Legion lost its discipline, order, and morale. They were gradually pushed to a corner of Europe by other mercenary forces, suffering repeated defeats on the battlefield and nearing disintegration.

During this period, members of the Berlichingens Legion began to conduct bizarre modifications to their prosthetics to ensure their normal functioning. For example, if someone's prosthetic forearm broke, they would attach a random chainsaw at the elbow joint. When they went into battles, the chainsaw would smoke and make frightening noises, making it a formidable melee weapon, but they couldn't hold a gun from a distance. However, they could simply fix a shotgun in a parallel position with the chainsaw and use their other good hand to load it. The craftsmen in the workshop had to consider combat needs, and material limitations, and also satisfy the personality and vanity of Party A. At that time, various unimaginable, bizarre, or fancy prosthetics emerged, dazzling people, but they all weren't very durable, so looting prosthetic parts became as important as obtaining ammunition. Even Oswin, who has strict aesthetic requirements, collected several assembled prosthetics from the Berlichingens in his small museum, reckoning that as the best reflection of the current era.

The members of the Berlichingens pursue power and killing at all costs. Their prosthetic limb designs are also very unregulated, causing immense pain to their nerves and bodies, which could only be eased by medication. Without prescription medication, they can only rely on their limited chemical knowledge and doubtful information obtained from the internet, to randomly prepare oral and injectable medications. There are no well-equipped medical laboratories on the battlefield, and they can't even find a small scale for students to conduct experiments. Therefore, their way of preparing medication is often crude and simple, such as "grab a handful of this, a handful of that, stir it up, filter it with gauze, and it's good enough if the color looks ok." It is as rough as a drug addict. It is conceivable that such drugs will only accelerate the birth of cyber psychopaths and make them crazier in their own unique ways.

At this point, the only thing that can bind the largest cyber madhouse as a whole is a rope twisted with fear, madness, and hatred - fear of death, madness driven by pain and the side effects of drugs, and hatred towards their enemies. Given their previous painful failures, members of the Berlichingens believe that the emerging Uranus, such as Thoule, destroyed their past lives. They hate the Uranus, the mercenary groups, the Uranus' leaders, and even innocent civilians - all of whom are the Uranus' lackeys. This also explains their cruelty towards civilians.

The Berlichingens gradually devolved into a large-scale gang, no longer referred to as a "legion". Having lost their jobs, they have long abandoned the glory and discipline of mercenaries. Just as Thoule's bionic prosthetics provide them with a bunch of components to keep those strange prosthetics running, the combat effectiveness of this organization is also sustained by various remnants and defeated soldiers who come to join them, with the most important being the exiles from the Spartan Legion. Since Diamondagis cannot tolerate their imperfections, they were seeking a place where they could be accepted and allowed to freely express themselves. Apart from here, these imperfect people seem to have nowhere to go. Once captured by their former colleagues, they are unlikely to survive. The advantage of the Spartan exiles is that they are very familiar with the tactics of the Spartan Legion and other large mercenary groups; knowing how to deal with them, how to maximize their use of force, and how to survive their large-scale attacks and encirclement operations. Their guerrilla warfare and "firepower pockets" have proven effective. Although they have had encounters on the battlefield before, every Spartan exile newbie will still be greatly shocked by the cruelty and shamelessness of the Berlichingens. However, with the wear and tear of prosthetic components and the decreasing effectiveness of suppressant drugs, they will eventually become just like the despised "BerLame Gang". Eiriksson and Hanssen are fortunate to have caught the period when the Spartan Legion relaxed its control over human body modification. Otherwise, it is difficult to say whether they would have become members of the gang.

Due to the excessively crude and insane nature of their modification methods, the "BerLame Gang" was despised by other cyborg gangs. However, they persisted in believing that they had undergone "self-modification" and were the purest cyborgs

Just when people thought that the lame gang's momentum had faded away, they rose up again in the name of resistance against the Uranus, and reappeared in many cities, launching a massive riot. The original " HauptLame" had disappeared, and it was said that he had been overthrown by a group of Spartan exiles and gang members. The gang finally realized that the vicious cycle of explosively modifying prosthetics and indiscriminately taking drugs was no longer viable and that they needed to use genetic modification technology to build their bodies stronger in order to support more in-depth body modification and stronger prosthetics. They needed to seize genetic modification factories, kidnap scientists, and start riots to obtain this technology. Another reason was that the lame gang's economic system was on the verge of collapse and they were about to go hungry. They needed a new business. During the riot, the Berlichingens gradually mastered genetic modification technology, regained their fighting strength, and had the ability to compete with large mercenary groups like the Spartan Legion once again. After a period of time, the Berlichingens gang also developed exclusive genetic modification technology which was later spread to other gangs.

Do you remember the orphans adopted by the Berlichingens? In fact, compared to the deformed members of the "BerLame Gang," the "Robber Knights" orphanage controlled by the Berlichingens is a more terrifying presence. Some of these orphans are indeed war orphans, and some may have been obtained through human trafficking. They keep instilling anti-social and anti-establishment thoughts into these orphans and provide them with military and destructive skills training after they reach a certain age. These orphans have a stronger street style and gang style than their elders who come from military backgrounds, and it's difficult to associate them with the Berlichingens. The destructive activities that support the Berlichingens are often carried out by them, such as the timed bomb in the audience stand of the New Triathlon. There is no doubt that they are a young force that resists the rule of the Uranus, but the damage and chaos they cause are often far greater than the contributions they make.