A vast federation and empire of many belligerent species and civilizations brought under the ruling hand of the mysterious Overseers, the Hierarchy is one of the greatest threats to the continued existence of humanity in the entire universe.
Numbered beyond all hope of counting, utterly relentless, and dedicated to nothing but continuous expansion throughout the stars under the purpose of eradicating all Masari altered forms of life and uniting the universe under the species passed over by the Forerunners, the Hierarchy is starting to press into what humanity would deem to be it's immediate galactic back yard, and it seems that there is nothing that can stop them.
Another world burns before the aliens
The Hierarchy Modus Operandi is simple, fleets go from world to world, destroying all life upon them, then harvesting every last drop of matter on the planet, before ripping apart the rest of the solar system, even peeling off the matter from a star for the sheer mass it can provide for transmutation systems to provide more materials and fuel.
If the native species is deemed unaltered by the Masari, essentially meaning if the species does not more or less exactly resemble a human outwardly, they are incorporated into the Hierarchy first, giving them a place among the enormous empire and joining the Overseers' genocidal crusade.
With domains that stretch for over two hundred and fifty billion times the size of the observable universe, the Hierarchy has the manpower and the materiel to wage war on scales that the human brain cannot even begin to comprehend.
Untold numbers of species and warriors pledge their allegience to the Overseers who rule the Hierarchy from the artificial baseworld of Klo'Vis, who command almost unwavering loyalty from their subjects, the highly psionic Overseers almost seeming to have them under a spell of some sort.
Recently, they came frighteningly close to activating one of the MARATHON rings, which would have surely eradicated all unshielded life across a vast portion of the universe. Luckily, a band of heroes and peacekeepers was able to stop them from activating the weapon or allowing the Thoughtsin long kept onboard the doomsday device from escaping.
In absolute terms, the amount lost to the hierarchy was minimal, but the loss of a MARATHON ring, which could have greatly simplified their goal of wiping out all Masari altered sapient life that much easier, has been quite a shocking one, prompting rumors that the Zolkri, long the favored executioners of the Overseers, may start to fall out of the Council's favor.
The races and armies of the Hierarchy
The Zolkri Federation
The first and longest serving of the servant races of the Overseers, the Zolkri have seen war in countless galaxies, and have conquered virtually all they have seen. It is they who are trusted with protecting the Overseers from harm. It is they who formed the Lynchpin of so many assaults. And yet, it may be they who are to fall from grace given the recent debacle at the MARATHON ring.
Monolith: The Hierarchy's main scout flier, Monoliths are equipped with variable setting lasers, surprisingly thick armour, and teleporters to reach around the lines of their foes, along with a highly advanced sensor suite to detect hidden foes and scan wide areas of the battlefield at once. Additionally, they are quick enough to be used as interceptors.Glyph Carver: A small, man sized drone, Glyph carvers have deadly laser cutters, but are primarily used to create entrenchments, and glyphs that are scanned by orbiting hierarchy vessels to be interpreted into requisition orders.Aides: Potent Psions, Aides are in many ways like Tyranid Zoanthropes, having developed their brains to the exclusion of nearly all else. While they're fairly rare, they are incalculably valuable on the battlefield thanks to the wide array of psychic abilities they can deploy on the battlefield, as well as possessing a level of intelligence that most of the Hierarchy's infantry are sorely lacking in.Zolkri Brutes: Colossal, twenty foot tall mutated beasts, Brutes possess class two hundred and fifty strength and durability, reflexes twenty five times faster than normal humans, great healing factors, and less brains than a sack of hammers. Brutes are deadly anti-tank infantry who literally jump into the fray from miles away to pound enemy vehicles into pieces with their massive fists and claws.Skykiller drones: Equipped with three gravi-metric beams, Skykillers defeat enemy fliers by literally yanking them out of the sky and bringing them crashing into the ground. Their gravity beams are actually strong enough to lift up enemy tanks or people, and are incredibly versatile under the correct set of commanders.Grunts: The Hierarchy's premier heavy infantry, the Grunts are famed for their incredible toughness, heavy armament, great strength, incredible armour, and complete lack of fear. Grunts stand at ten feet tall and tower over most other beings, and are possessed with great superhuman strength. Each Grunt is as tough and well armoured as a Symaarian Terminator marines, and their primary weapons, scatterschot plasma-rad cannons, are considered some of the galaxy's deadliest shotguns, capable of felling whole squads in a single shot, while their heavy power claws let them rip through armour in close combat. Grunts also carry a large number of plasma, melta, and radiation bombs and grenades to give them even more punch, as well as an optic laser capable of punching through heavy infantry armour.Lost ones: The rejects of Zolkri society, lost ones are drafted into the military, horribly mutated, and used as cloning templates to turn them into the barely sane short little freaks that are the most common form of cannon fodder in Hierarchy assaults. Equipped with little armour, the Lost Ones rely on their plasma-radiation carbines, capable of skeletonizing men in one hit, and small size and monkey like agility to carry them through in battle. They also have enough reflexes and range with their carbines to fire upon aircraft. Some "lucky" lost ones also get plasma grenades and melta-bombs which function as powerful anti-vehicle weapons and deadly booby traps. This of course, needs the lost one to get close up to use them. But the Zolkri don't care, they were expendable anyway.Phase tanks: Equipped with dual phase missile launchers, a plasma caster cannon, a turret mounted cutter laser, and a quartet of radiation orb spewers, the phase tank is an admirable hover tank, though it relies more on speed and firepower than armour. The tank got it's name for it's ability to turn incorporeal to allow incoming attacks to simply pass through it and go through solid objects, though it cannot attack in this state.Reaper drones: Harvester drones with terrifying deconstructor tractor beams, reaper drones strut across a battlefield, drawing in matter into their furnaces to help fuel the Hierarchy war machine with resources. Human sized targets can be instantly plucked up and drawn in for "processing" by Reaper drones, though larger targets will need a longer time to be deconstructed.An ordinary, unmodified Zolkri; Zolkri on average stand about five to seven feet tall. Physically speaking, the Zolkri are quite unimpressive, being weaker and more frail than a human at base level. However, the Zolkri are a highly intelligent species and have universal psionic ability amongst their unmodified castes, which can be quite powerful. The Zolkri civilization is quite old and incredibly far spread, with over two hundred and fifty billion galaxies having been conquered into their empire, with billions of more either being conquered or mined.Assembly Walker: Colossal behemoths equipped with multiple hard points for the Hierarchy's deadly weaponry, Assembly Walekrs are the second most formadible of the Hierarchy's ground units. In addition, they serve as mobile command and control centers and walking vehicle production plants. An Assembly walker has it's "oral ray", turrets on it's legs, two triple batteries to the sides of it's oral ray, dual arm turret mounts, and four turret mounts on it's head. Their shielding and armour are also superior to that of most other Zolkri walkers.Habitat Walker: The most iconic of the Hierarchy's ground units, the Habitat walker is a mobile cloning facility with enough firepower to lay waste to armies. Equipped with an "oral ray", two triple batteries, four hard points on it's head, and four hard points on it's legs, a Habitat walker is quite capable of dishing out colossal amounts of Damage while cranking out massive numbers of soldiers, all while having titan equivalent armour and shielding.Saucer: A very odd form of multi-purpose small craft, the Hierarchy Attack Saucer has six "orb casters" which are quite unlike most conventional weapons. The orbs have two settings, blue repair orbs and red attack orbs. These orbs will latch onto a target and do a set amount of repair or damage over time rather than dumping out their fire power at once. Obviously, the more orbs are latched onto a target, the faster the repair or damage. A saucer can cancel out it's orbs if it needs to redeploy them elsewhere, and the craft are incredibly fast and nimble, albeit lightly armoured.Purifier: Bar none the deadliest Hierarchy Unit yet seen, a Purifier dwarfs other hierarchy walkers by a colossal margin. Not only is it's ocular ray tremendously devastating, but it has no less than thirty hard points for weapons, is incredibly heavily armoured and shielded, and each are equipped with a matter to energy warhead in their "cranium" that can be launched to devastate an entire world to render it "pure" for Zolkri strip mining.Science Walker: The smallest of the Hierarchy's great walkers, the Science walker only has a modest three hard points for weapons on it's "head" and three more on it's legs, along with it's radiation sequence beam that it can fire from it's central orb. The Science walker also possesses a trio of gravi-metric beamers that rip fliers out of the sky and can deploy the Hierarchy's dreaded resonance cascade blast, which fires off a colossal series of radiation beams that come crashing down and irradiate a targeted area so tremendously that flesh literally liquefies into green goop under the effects of the energy. That being said, relative to the other great walkers, Science Walkers are glass cannons.Deathless: While the Hierarchy is known for being incredibly callous with the lives of it's soldiers, sometimes there are those who prove themselves so valuable that the commanders of the Zolkri military decide that they cannot be allowed to simply just die. These individuals are downloaded into deathless shells to serve the Zolkri forever more. While the power of a deathless shell varies quite heavily, the standard one is as tough as a titan despite only being eight meters tall, with heavy shielding, dual deconstructor-tractor beams/gravi-metric beamers, twin triple Plasma chaincannons, an ocular phased laser cutter, and twin melta-mortar launchers along with power claws, shockwave generators, and the ability to deploy heavier, rapidly regenerating armor when they absorb enough mass. Deathless upgrade themselves over time with the matter they absorb so no two are exactly alike.Telfast Artillery Walker: About as simple as they can get, the Telfast has a rad-plas artillery cannon capable of lobbing immensely powerful radioactive plasma orbs great distances to explode in the faces of their enemies with tremendous force. Alternatively, they can be used as flak cannons or as direct fire anti-tank weapons.Jorvix Superheavy tank: Proof that the Zolkri give no craps about standard military design philosophy, the Jorvix is a vehicle that leaves most onlookers wondering what the hell the Zolkri's engineers were thinking. But they won't be laughing much longer when it reveals it's massive dual laser lance cannons, quadruple rad-plasma casters, phase missile array, and turret mounted artillery cannon.Harifax Heavy aircraft: A more traditional sort of heavy fighter-bomber, the harifax is equipped with no less than four plasma casters, a pair of high intensity laser cutters, an octet of phase missile launchers, and an melta bomb generator and dropper. These vehicles are capable of raining unspeakable devastation from above, and can maneuver with surprising speed and agility.Defiler: Six meter tall and incredibly skinny drones, defilers are swift scouts armed with powerful radiation lances that can burn through tanks, track and shoot down aircraft, and turn organics targeted by it into radioactive goop and ash. Additionally, they can let loose radioactive sludge to deny an area to an enemy as radiation capable of melting the flesh off of one's bones permeates an area, though they cannot fire their lance beams in this state.
Riktal Dominion
The Riktal are a highly psionic species from another dimension who were absorbed into the Hierarchy not long after the Zolkri and the Overseers formed the pact that would lead to the formation of the Hierarchy. The Riktal, though seemingly natural rivals for the Zolkri, are actually somewhat unambitious in their designs for their place in the Hierarchy. That being said, they are peerless and deadly warriors,
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