Blackout

Blackout is a military organization founded and lead by Arien Krome, then his son Xephyer Krome after his death. Focused on continental domination through genetic enhancement and cybernetic augmentation, Blackout's leaders command without ethics and their soldiers act independent of any moral compass, being known to kidnap PADs for their often-lethal experiments. Despite their malice, their technology is matched only by Kisarian automata, and with programs like Project Synthesis, their use of magic on the battlefield is of a level never seen in human warfare.

Project Synthesis
One soldier from each Blackout platoon is chosen to participate in Project Synthesis, a program focused around the limits of human magic. The program, a series of strenuous mental conditioning, aimed to unlock the true potential of sorcery.

While falling shy of its more direct goals of giving its soldiers more power outright, one clear advancement was seen in the program's participants. With enough exposure, each participating soldier became capable of accessing, or even independently duplicating other participants' magical paragons. Because their minds had become so similar, the process of learning a partner's paragon could take only a few minutes. Unlike other Combined Volition Techniques or otherwise fusion spells, this ability was completely unaffected by proximity. The main limitation was that each participant could only 'remember' one additional paragon at a time.

The soldiers chosen for Project Synthesis were always the best of their respective platoons, and once the training was complete, an additional paragon became that much more of an advantage. Strike teams composed of Synthesis soldiers were incredibly effective as their versatility would prove tactically overwhelming as they learned, combined and traded new powers from each other during combat. Often sent on assassination missions, their adversaries could never know whether to prepare for Tango 25's Deathfire, or Echo 15's Ghostform.