It's almost Halloween so I think it's the perfect time to post these frightful fellows. They're actually part of the setting I've developed for my Snow Leopard Avra who I've posted lots of, figure it's time to publicly expand on that before I do, the lovely art is from ferris
So, the Cyborgs. There are more than a few names for them in setting: Bugs or Buggers (I'll say why in a sec), C's, Bluebloods, and Hosts. They are what remains of humanity, though people like Avra are to. At a point around100 years in the past from Avra's timeframe, as Earth was slowly expanding through the solar system and even into a few exo-solar colonies, a military industrial company had a new idea for a product. Sort of a middleground between a biological and computational weapon. They invented some micro-bots, roughly the size of a gnat, they were designed to be airdropped over a region in order to "pacify" it without damaging any of the valuable infrastructure or resources.
Swarming in through the mouth, nose, and any other entrance they would subvert the local population. Those they could not subvert they would use the controlled to hunt down, a way to put boots on the ground without one of your soldiers ever leaving the barracks until it was all over. Controlled by Geo-Fencing this new system was eagerly sold all around the world and beyond.
Of course, like all wunder weapons, it didn't quite meet expectations when first deployed, the sad thing though, is that it worked just well enough to get iterated upon, rather than just dumped. Successive generations responding to hack attacks, protective gear, and other defences. Until one day, something went wrong. Maybe it was outside hacking, maybe a badly designed update, but something stripped out the geofencing and other protections. The micro-bots damaged programing now saw the whole world, nay, universe as their designated combat zone.
At first their conflict was blamed on local insurrections, but once the bots began "upgrading" their hosts, the reality set in.
I'll expand more on the Cyborgs and how humanity responded to them in future pictures
Here we see a Peltast and Hoplite class cyborg. The Peltast are the "light" troops of the horde, much more common in the early days of the war they are either freshly converted bodies or pieced together scraps barely holding together. They have little built in weaponry and are relatively easy to take down, which is a major reason they aren't used much any more. The micro-bots programing seems to now prefer heavily armed and armoured units, having mostly lost the ability to convert new bodies.
Hoplites are that heavily armed unit, designed for void and exo-planet operations their monstrous durability is largely down to their ability to mount force screen projectors. Still seeking to capture and infect, they can wade through squads of fire to carve up resistance.
