The Lane Hackers | Manual

[The Lane Hackers]

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The Spyglass Lore

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The Hellfire Legion

Hellfire Legion started in 800 AS as a Liberty renegade fleet led by Drake Thastus. Shortly after its escape, the Hellfire Legion fleet was ambushed by the Liberty Navy in Magellan. The Lane Hackers, perceiving The Legion as a potential ally in their fight against the Liberty, sent their fighter wings to help the Legionaries to break through the ambush and gave them shelter in a nearby Vespucci system. While The Lane Hackers were helping the Legion to build their infrastructure in the Vespucci system and joined their Spyglass program, Professor Moriarty signed a mutual protection pact with Lord Commander Denelo Mori. However, shortly after Mori's death, the Hellfire Legion radically changed the direction it was heading, severing any relations with the Outcasts and Liberty Rogues, while forming an alliance with the Xenos. The relations between the Legion and The Lane Hackers started to slowly deteriorate with numerous incidents which finally led to Legionaries betraying Hackers and expelling them from Vespucci system. Even though The Lane Hackers tried to maintain neutrality afterwards, occasionally even selling information to the High Command, the Legion's more and more aggressive stance finally led to the outright hostility followed by numerous skirmishes. Ever since the two factions treat each others' vessels as hostile targets of opportunity.


The Vagrant Raiders

The Vagrant Raiders were a paramilitary group founded shortly after the Nomad War by a smuggler John Petrucci. Originally recruiting mostly from Liberty pirates and closely affiliated with the Lane Hackers, the Raiders were smuggling cardamine from Omicrons to Liberty, while pirating traders along the way. Despite close ties and fully convergent agendas, The Vagrant Raiders were showing a strong aversion and general animosity towards The Lane Hackers. Numerous arguments between Overlord Petrucci and Professor Moriarty, as well as Taskmaster Escher and Professor Phate finally led to severing any ties between the Lane Hackers and Vagrant Raiders. Only after changing leadership and loosing their flagship Metropolis The Vagrant Raiders decided to reestablish Cardamine operations in Liberty and increase cooperation with The Lane Hackers. Once Blain Spike, formerly independent business partner of the Lane Hackers, took over the remnants of the Vagrant Raiders a pact of friendship was signed by Ms Elektra King on behalf of the professorship. However, after over a year of successful operations the Vagrant Raiders once again lost their strength and numbers. When former Overlord Harlod Kane and Taskmaster Escher reappeared and took control over the weakened Raiders, Professor Nicole Hunter decided to cautiously monitor their doings before making any commitments. It turned out to be a wise choice, as the new Vagrant Raiders were slowly transforming into a semi-lawful para-military organization with ties to the Liberty government. This turn of events seriously cooled down relations between the Lane Hackers and the Vagrant Raiders. After destruction of Interspace operated Ithasca Station in Kansas and gathering strong evidence of Vagrant Raiders cooperating with Interspace Commerce and Ageira Technologies a declaration of open hostility was only a matter of time if it wasn't preceded by the group's dissolution.


The Spyglass Battleship

During his escape to Magellan, Drake Thastus was commanding Ragnarok, a prototype battleship of Spyglass class designed originally by the Liberty Navy. Once The Hellfire Legion arrived safely to Vespucci, Ragnarok was disassembled and reverse-engineered in cooperation with The Lane Hackers. What was unique in this prototype were not its quite powerful armaments, but incredibly sophisticated array of scanners and devices to conduct advanced electronic warfare. Hellfire Legion engineers managed to reproduce the ship skeleton, plating, engines and avionics, while Lane Hackers technicians focused on what was most interesting for them - electronics and software. Once the original prototype has been completely disassembled, the Hellfire Legion managed to reproduce several copies. Only two of them were in service outside of Hellfire Legion fleet. Fu Manchu was Lane Hacker mobile base of operations, while Metropolis served as home for the Vagrant Raiders. Both these battleships were lost or destroyed. Over the years, Hellfire Legion decided to even further cut the costs on expensive electronics while boosting pure combat potential of their vessels. This is how Arbiter class of battleships had been developed. The Legion slowly replaced all of their Spyglasses with Arbiters. Spyglass battleships no longer exist, although at some point Vagrant Raiders re-pressurized wreck of Metropolis and for some time used it as their stationary base of operations. The aura of uniqueness and specialty which surrounds this class of battleships is still fooling many people, who forget that it was developed over two decades ago and by today standards it is already outdated.


The Spyglass Scanner

Since both Hellfire Legion and Vagrant Raiders were more interested in sheer fire-power of their vessels, only Lane Hacker Fu Manchu Spyglass battleship had complete set of scanners and electronic warfare armaments of the original prototype. Before their flagship was lost, The Lane Hackers even further refined original battleship's sensor array developing their own upgraded version of Spyglass Scanner, a very sophisticated and thus expensive piece of equipment allowing detection of threats and possible targets from a significant distance, as well as data injections into the trade lane network, basic transponder spoofing or limited electronic warfare. A limited number of these scanners remained in the hands of Hellfire Legion after the schism, though huge energy consumption made the scanner mountable only on large or specialized ships. After loss of their flagship The Lane Hackers discontinued the original scanner and focused their efforts on researching scanner miniaturization. This resulted in development of a superior Spyglass Network Scanner.


The Spyglass Network Scanner

Because Spyglass Scanner requires a powerful data processing unit to perform massive iterative recalculations of the raw signal data installing it on small vessels is impossible without reducing its efficiency. In order to overcome this limitation Lane Hackers have built an extensive network of interconnected data processing hubs called The Spyglass Network. Each Lane Hacker base houses an enormous number of data storage units and processors connected into whole network through extremely powerful communication arrays.

The Spyglass Network Scanner is a lightweight version of the Spyglass Scanner. It relies on Lane Hackers' distributed network of data processing hubs instead of a ship's own capabilities to perform extensive computations of the raw signal. It allows Lane Hackers to use the scanner to its full potential on small ships that are unable to support a more powerful processing unit. It is also the most guarded technology of The Lane Hackers, which they refuse to share with even their closest allies.


The Minified Spyglass Scanner

With Spyglass Network Scanner operational The Lane Hackers became more liberal with selling their technology to their allies and business partners. A miniaturized version of original Spyglass Scanner with reduced power consumption at the cost of lower scanning range was deemed fit to be openly sold and is now available to be purchased on the Black Market.

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The Lane Hackers

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