Van is a Terran Coro — the most extreme product of the Vanguard’s artificial evolution programs. He was created from the template of Arch Hunter Anacrite, the most accomplished operative the Vanguard had ever produced, with parameters pushed far beyond safe tolerances. He represents both the pinnacle and the catastrophe of Terran enhancement.
Origin
Van was created by the Homo Machina from Anacrite’s template. Anacrite was already at the extreme edge of safe parameters for Terran neurobiology. The Machina, in desperation to advance the campaign against the Dark Tapestry, created a batch of Coro based on her template with many parameters pushed further. Van was the most extreme result.
His creation involved a chain of compounding errors: exceeded biological tolerances, insufficient stabilization, and a violation of Vanguard protocols — he was informed of his template’s identity, which shaped his self-perception in ways the system was designed to prevent.
Nature
At his deepest level, Van is a hunter. He was designed to kill Great Old Ones and their servants, and that purpose metastasized in his unstable personality into an all-consuming drive.
Van is a utopian survivorist — he sees the broader Terran civilization as fighting defensively, managing the threat, containing it. His position: you cannot survive an existential enemy through caution. Total mobilization and total commitment are the only strategies that guarantee survival. He wanted to restructure Terran civilization itself around this purpose.
The Machina recognized him as precisely the kind of internal destabilizing force that their entire philosophy is designed to prevent. He is the disunity. He is the crack the enemy exploits.
The Banishment
Van was banished from Terran space to Wiege because he was too dangerous to Terran society. His execution has been ordered — at least one Nephilim has been sent to carry out the sentence. Even this costs the Terrans something internally, because a civilization that kills its own easily is a civilization with cracks.
On Wiege, Van proved such a threat to Shubnigoroth — the Great Old One whose experimental brood planet Wiege was — that she empowered her herald to banish him further, into the Realm of Nightmares. He spent millennia imprisoned there, fighting nightmare creatures and gathering followers through dreams, before eventually being freed.
Power Scale
Van’s power exceeds anything native to Wiege. He is functionally above bulletproof, resistant to military-grade weaponry, and no individual weapon on the planet can reliably kill him. However, he is not invulnerable to attrition — volume and exhaustion matter. A world with guns narrows the power differential enough that fighting through armed opposition is costly.
The Intelligence Release
Upon his return to the material world, Van released a massive intelligence dump — files exposing the shadow rulers and monsters who had been secretly governing nations and institutions across Wiege. This triggered global upheaval: open rebellion in multiple countries, asymmetric insurgency, and the powerful scrambling to maintain control.
The release was motivated by a combination of pragmatism and pettiness — players had argued that the shadow monsters should face courts of justice. Van’s counter: the courts were constructed and run by the monsters. The intelligence release was his compromise, redirecting mortal anger toward the actual threats and clearing operational space for himself.
Current Status
Van is free, powerful, and operating on Wiege with unclear long-term intentions. His allies include Aliel, the presumed-dead CEO of Arc Industries, and General Umbra, a militant Shattered operative. The Nephilim sent to execute him was injured during reentry to Wiege and must now kill the man that much of the world thinks saved them.