RAAM (Dark Horse)

"Ssssimpliccccity issss elegancccce."

- RAAM's mantra regarding military tactics and strategy.

Supreme General of the Horde RAAM, also known simply as General RAAM or just RAAM, was the brutal supreme commander of Locust Horde's armed forces. He was one of the most brilliant military minds on Sera, if not the most brilliant. His intelligence was equalled by his strength and his desire to utterly exterminate all of Humanity, a goal which he would pursue relentlessly from the very first moments of Emergence Day until his death 14 years later.

Ascension Through the Locust Ranks
RAAM spent just under a year as a basic Drone soldier before becoming a Theron Guard, and he continually outperformed his peers and even his superiors at almost everything. Queen Myrrah soon took interest in RAAM, and after he was captured (with great difficulty) while leading a coup d'etat against the Locust military leadership, she offered him a challenge: if he could defeat the then-current Supreme General, Koruus, in a battle to the death, he could claim the title of Supreme General for himself.

They were allowed a metal spear and nothing more, and aside from this limitation there were no rules. Koruus was expected to crush RAAM, but instead RAAM defeated him with ease, blocking the General's first swing and then forcing the blunt end of the spear through his heart.

As promised, Myrrah granted RAAM the rank of Supreme General.

Bitterness Over Koruus's Death
"Obey me or perisssshhhh."

- RAAM's ultimatum to the Locust reluctant to follow his orders

Koruus was a well respected general, and after his death many Locust were upset with RAAM for killing him. While RAAM could understand this to some degree, he knew that he had to secure loyalty of his troops, and he was ruthless in doing so. He gathered any Locust who were hesitant to obey him, and told them that they could either follow his orders or die, and those who still resisted were impaled upon a pike and beaten senseless. This terrible show of brutality successfully established RAAM's dominance over his troops, causing them to both respect and fear him.

First Battle As Supreme General
Around B.E. 7, RAAM led his troops into battle for the first time in order to fend off a swarm of Lambent. His troops were vastly outnumbered and lacked heavier support units such as Brumaks or Reavers, but he was nevertheless able to win the battle by using unconventional tactics to overpower the Lambent, eventually pushing them back into position from which they were unable to retreat and mercilessly gunning down every last infected Locust in sight.

Further Battles
After his first time in command, RAAM continued to defeat the Lambent in every battle he fought in. However, when he did not actively participate in battles, his tactics were less effective, as the other Locust commanders were not as capable as he was.

Losing Ground
While RAAM had the ability to adequately defend the Locust from the Lambent threat, it was not possible for RAAM to hold off the Lambent simultaneously from every front personally, and thus the Locust continued lose ground, albeit more slowly.

In desperation, Myrrah contacted a brilliant human scientist named Adam Fenix in B.E. 5, and told him to develop a solution to the Lambent. While Fenix came up with a multitiude of possible methods to defeat the Lambent, he was unable to produce an actual solution fast enough. Faced with the extinction of her people, Myrrah decided to forcibly take control of Sera's surface from the humans, despite Fenix's protests against this idea.

Myrrah amassed an enormous army to invade the surface and wipe out Humanity, with RAAM in command.

Emergence in Jannermont
"No ssssurvivorssss."

- RAAM's only instruction to his troops in Jannermont, given only moments before emergence.

Six weeks after the end of the Pendulum Wars, Myrrah launched her assault on the surface. This cataclysmic event began in a Tyran city called Jannermont, where RAAM personally oversaw a horrific massacre. Every human his troops could find was killed; some were gunned down on sight, while others were gathered and lined up and shot execution-style or taken underground and brutally tortured to death. Due to the confusion and panic, RAAM met little organized resistance from the humans, and when it was it was put down with little effort. When most of the humans were dead, Berserkers and Wretches were released into the city to sniff out and kill any survivors. The Locust were extremely thorough in their systematic genocide of the city's population, with less than 40 out of an estimated 32,000 people making it out of Jannermont alive, most of them considerably injured in some way.

Several hours into the attack on Jannermont, news of the bloodshed began to reach the ears of COG officials, who suspected UIR remnant forces to be responsible, but soon realized that the situation was far more serious.

Siege of Gorasnaya
While the humans in Jannermont put up little fight against the Locust, the Republic of Gorasnaya had more or less managed to fend off their subterranean attackers (though not without heavy casualties). RAAM set his sights on taking Gorasnaya, and directed a large amount of troops there.

RAAM used Reavers and Nemacyst to neutralize Gorasni air cover, then crushed their lines with Corpsers and Brumaks, punching a hole in the Gorasni defenses. RAAM invaded the country, largely toppling its government in just under a week.

RAAM's Strategy
"Cut off the head of the snake, and the body dies."

- Queen Myrrah's description of RAAM's plan to defeat the COG.

For a while, the Locust simply attacked randomly, emerging and killing indiscriminately as they saw fit. But a year after the first attack, Humanity finally made an organized effort against the Locust, using the Hammer of Dawn to ravage most of Sera's surface and force the Locust back underground.

Afterwards, the area of the surface hit by the Hammer of Dawn was largely devoid of anything of real use to the Locust, and it was only loosely populated with violent groups of stranded humans living in small, somewhat civilized tribes or in relative anarchy.

When the Locust attempted to attack the largest the Jacinto Plateau, they found the rock beneath the plateau to be composed of compacted granite, which was difficult to dig into. When the Locust managed to get near the surface, the humans pumped nerve gas into the tunnels, then filled them with concrete. When they attempted to scale the sides of the plateau, or attack densely populated areas near it, they found them to be heavily defended.

It was clear to RAAM that the Locust would require an organized strategy to eliminate the remaining humans. He decided to slowly wipe out the remaining human cities one-by-one, drawing the humans out of their strongholds to protect less defended areas, and use their numerical superiority to thin out the human's military forces. The human's defenses would gradually weaken as the troops protecting their stronghold cities were diverted to fend the off Locust in a war of attrition. Once the human's defenses were weak enough, the Locust would destroy them, and seek out the leader's of Humanity and kill them. Once they did this, human civilization would largely self-destruct as it had in the areas bombarded by the Hammer of Dawn.

Before the Battle
When the Madrigali citizens endangered the Hollow in A.E. 4, RAAM ordered Sikrar Kli Xizius, the Kantus of Famine, to assist him in commanding an attack on the city.

Commanding from Beneath the Surface
Famine sent a Theron Sentinel named Wundeg to lead the attack on the surface, while he and RAAM gave commands from underground. Initially this worked, but when Wundeg failed to keep COG reinforcements from entering the city, RAAM decided to lead the attack personally.

Taking Charge Above Ground
RAAM and Famine traveled to the surface, executing Wundeg for his failure upon arrival. RAAM attempted to keep as many COG troops away from the breeding farms as possible before nightfall, when they would have to seek refuge from the Kryll and a group of Therons led by Yortuk would launch a suprise attack on the farms.

Attacking the Breeding Farms
Yortuk successfully infiltrated the farms, and killed Damian Gregor, the man in charge of them. RAAM and Famine arrived just before sunrise, with RAAM using his influence over the Kryll to protect his troops from them.

Bloodbath in Housing Section E
RAAM arrived at the farms about an hour before sunrise in Housing Section E, where approximately 750 patients were locked in their rooms at the time.

The Locust went room to room, murdering their helpless occupants in an orderly fashion under RAAM's supervision. The terrified patients were shot to pieces, curbstomped, dismembered and left for dead, burned alive, or beaten and stabbed to death.

Shootout in the Procreation Chambers
RAAM's troops advanced to the Procreation Chambers, where RAAM met up with Yortuk, who informed RAAM that Gregor was dead. Yortuk's Therons then rounded up the humans in the procreation chambers, and prepared a firing line of Drones to execute them.

However, they were interrupted by an ambush from a group of Gears led by SGT Craig Randall. The Gears utilized flashbang grenades to cause confusion amongst the Locust ranks, then performed a chainsaw bayonet charge to eliminate the firing lines.

RAAM ordered his troops to fall back and regroup at Housing Section E while he laid down covering fire with his Troika. The Gears were forced to take cover, and a pack of Wretches attempted to flank them from behind via emergence hole. The Gears killed off the Wretches and closed the hole before RAAM was able to get close enough to easily cut them down, then retreated to safety along with the patients who hadn't been shredded apart by the Wretches or RAAM's initial Troika fire.

Victory
Despite this setback, RAAM and his forces continued to push further and further into the farms, slaughtering any and all humans they encountered. The order was finally given for COG forces to pull out of the city, and as many Gears, farm patients, and civilians as possible were loaded onto King Ravens, Derricks, and Armadillos and transported out of the city. Anyone who wasn't fortunate enough to have made it to a transport in time was left to be killed by the Locust.

RAAM wished to kill the humans who still remained in Madrigal, but Famine proposed that they be used to aid the Locust war machine as slaves, as a new method of "taming" human prisoners to be used for forced labor had been developed. RAAM, previously unaware of this, quickly agreed, feeling that the Horde was in greater need of slaves than target practice.

Bearing Down On Jacinto and Ephyra
Under RAAM's leadership, the Locust conquered city after city, closing in on the Jacinto Plateau, and by A.E. 5, the Locust had reached Landown, a large city just one day's drive from the capital city of Tyrus and the COG, Ephyra. However, the defenses in Landown were supposedly "insurmountable", a claim backed up by several failed attempts by the Locust to capture the city. RAAM soon proposed a new approach to taking Landown; a stealthy infiltration to sabotage the city's defenses, followed by a full scale invasion.

Infiltration & Invasion
"They came during the night."

- Landown survivors.

RAAM deployed several squads of Theron Guards into Landown during the dead of night. They stealthily eliminated much of the defenses set up in the city, killing Gears and dismantling barriers, turrets, and artillery. Once this had been completed, they returned to the Hollow to inform RAAM of their success.

The Invasion Begins
At about 8:30 AM, just before sunrise, Drone snipers quietly positioned themselves throughout Landown, and the invasion began soon after. Two-thirds of the city's population was killed off within a couple of hours.

Operation: Midnight
"Ssssuffer..."

- RAAM to Midnight Squad upon arrival at Ferro Bridge.

Battle Aboard the Tyro Pillar & Death
"Sssserve the Queen!"

- RAAM summons the Kryll to his aid during his battle with Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago aboard the Tyro Pillar.

Legacy
RAAM's death and failure to prevent the detonation of the Lightmass Bomb was one of the most decisive events of the war. The bombing was devastating for the Locust, but it may have actually been RAAM's death that allowed Humanity to gain the upper hand.

RAAM's successor, Skorge, was an incredibly vicious and capable warrior, but he lacked RAAM's leadership skills, and was not nearly as good at commanding troops in battle.

Man-Portable Troika
RAAM's most iconic weapon was his portable Troika. The weapon began as an old, worn-down Troika that was intended to be trashed. However, the weapon still fired like new, as the cooling and firing systems had been well-maintained. RAAM discovered the Troika in a scrapyard, and did not wish to see still useful equipment wasted, thus ordering that the weapon be put to use in some fashion. It was sent to the Locust forges, where gunsmiths found that the Troika was outdated, and its components would not be able to be attached to a new weapon, as the parts were incompatible, and the many of the parts were too rusty to be smelted down. However, as RAAM had ordered that the Troika be recycled, the gunsmiths completely disassembled and reconfigured it. The heavy shields were removed, and the bulky casing was replaced with that of a Boomshot. The firing chambers were inverted and simplified to accommodate a single Boomshot magazine feeding two ammo belts simultaeneously. The result was a one-of-a-kind man-portable version of the massive Troika turret, which was given to RAAM as a gift.

RAAM uses the weapon only on occasion, but when he does, he does so to great effect, cutting down foes at almost any range in a matter of seconds.

Sword
RAAM also possessed a massive serrated sword, which he used frequently in close-range combat. While it looked quite mundane, the weapon was considerably high-tech by Locust standards. The inner blade was made of folded tempered steel partially coated in a thin layer of translucent ceramic, and was exposed in-between the serrations, while the outer blade was composed of titanium alloy. The hilt was built around a steel and aluminum frame, and it was crafted from sculpted granite and obsidian.

Trivia

 * RAAM was also the leader of the Elite Theron Guard, and also had a small unit of Mauler Elites. RAAM usually fought with an escort of two Mauler Elites and one Theron Elite.
 * RAAM was subjected a series of mutations just after becoming Supreme General, which gave him his massive size, unique facial features, and extremely tough skin.