Reavers

The Reavers are a vicious and deadly faction of humans living on the very fringes of The 'Verse. To the Core Worlds, the Reavers are little more than myths and empty stories, but those closer to the brink know otherwise- and the people of the galaxy are right to fear them. The Reavers descend without warning and without hesitation, and they are unprecedented in their brutality. Towns and colonies burn at their touch, and the people unfortunate enough to become their victims soon wish they had simply been killed before hand.

Most people believe that the Reavers are merely men who made it to the edge of The 'Verse, and when they looked off into the void of space, they were greeted with a nothingness that resonated in them so deeply, it turned them primal- hostage to their own bestial urges, but few know the true story. On a planet called Miranda, the Alliance had been testing various chemicals on the population in order to create a "world without sin"- a place where the people were always peaceful and docile. They introduced the G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate, or Pax for short, a chemical designed to weed out aggression and anger, and were met with horrifying results. On most of the population, the Pax succeeded, and these subjects no longer wanted to fight or have conflict...but they also stopped working, stopped thinking, stopped breathing and simply laid down and died. The remainder, however, had the opposite reaction, with their aggression and primal instincts boosted beyond simple madness into murderous rage, sadism and xenophobia. The Reavers slaughtered the Alliance left on Miranda, and soon began to set out in their twisted vessels into space- where they could spread their violence and increase their numbers, being left as the Alliance Parliment's dirty secret from The 'Verse until the crew of the Serenity discovered the truth and broadcasted it to every signal they could, greatly weakening the Alliance's hold on The 'Verse.

Battle vs. Splicers (by BeastMan14)
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