At that time, the Wetenschappelijk Broederschap van Natuurkundigen was effectively a government agency in the Spanish Netherlands. The brotherhood had begun a couple of centuries earlier when two noblemen, Grootvader Ernst and his business partner and cousin Gerd, Count of Leeuwen, funded the efforts of some shabby alchemists. Said shabby alchemists had been unexpectedly, mind-blowingly successful in their efforts. The two noblemen had put money in, and unfathomably advanced biotechnology had come out.
In the beginning, the mission of the Broederschap had been simple research — pushing the boundaries of human knowledge, gaining a greater understanding of the glory of God’s creation (with an initial emphasis on replacing the leg Ernst had lost in a riding accident), and extending everybody’s life span to ensure there was enough time to get a really good understanding. Ernst and Gerd, being responsible members of the nobility, had informed the government of the brotherhood’s work. The government had responded with the bureaucratic equivalent of some pocket money, an encouraging pat on the head, and an absentminded suggestion to run along and play, do.
Thus unencumbered by interference from the authorities, the Broederschap pursued their activities with an enthusiasm and focus almost as astounding as the results they produced. In a time without flush toilets, they unraveled the genome. In laboratories lined with hand-painted Delft tiles, men who bathed at most once a week cracked the secrets of immortality and developed surgical procedures that allowed them to twist the human form (and various other forms) into whatever shapes they pleased. Their work was based firmly on scientific principles and human intellect, but the results were nothing short of miraculous.
At which point, Ernst and Gerd decided all this could make them look very, very good to the government, and they finally wrote that status report they’d been putting off for decades.
The report raised a few skeptical eyebrows in Antwerp, but after the government scoured the books and realized that, yes, they actually had funded a scientific brotherhood of scientists a while back, a minor bureaucrat was dispatched to check in on this obscure little group. Upon presenting himself at the gate of the nearest Broederschap facility, he was cheerfully welcomed, given a beverage, and shown around the place. His hosts assured him that they were not sorcerers and that everything he was seeing was the result of natural philosophy and thus perfectly aligned with God’s will. He returned to his office with his acne all cleaned up, his piles a mere memory, and a troublesome allergy to gluten scrubbed from his system. The brotherhood’s executives had sensibly kept the existence of the immortality project to themselves, but the military potential of their work was apparent to even the least visionary of quill-pushers.
Once he’d overcome his astonishment and nausea, the bureaucrat wrote up a detailed report and submitted it to his superior. His superior reviewed the report, asked his subordinate if he was feeling quite well in the head, and then passed the report to his superior, who took it immediately to the governor-general, one Carlos de Aragón de Gurrea, duke of Villahermosa.
The governor-general was delicately informed that, tucked away in a forgotten corner of his government, there appeared to be the ultimate weapon. The Most Excellent Lord (the honorific to which the duke was entitled as a grandee of Spain) reviewed the paperwork, looked incredulously at the drawings he’d been provided, poured himself a glass of Malaga sack, and had a think.
He could report these developments to his lord and master, the king. That would be the proper thing to do, bureaucratically speaking. But His Majesty Carlos II, king of Spain; duke of Milan, Lothier, Brabant, Limburg, and Luxembourg; count of Flanders, Hainaut, and Namur; and count palatine of Burgundy, the anointed sovereign to whom the governor-general owed his sworn allegiance, was, not to put too fine a point on it, completely fucking useless. Indeed, he was so inbred that he could barely function as a human being, let alone as a king.
Carlos II’s ancestors had been marrying their close relations for so many generations that the scion of the line suffered from uncountable intellectual and physical disabilities and indeed was technically his own cousin, his own cousin once removed, and his own second cousin. All of his eight great-grandparents were descendants of the same couple, and his mother had been his father’s niece, making his grandmother also his aunt.
For all that he was really qualified only to sit quietly, blink, and then expire, Carlos II did happen to possess a rather extensive kingdom, including a huge overseas empire. It was the kind of empire a governor-general might seize if he possessed drive, clarity of vision, faith in himself, and access to an unstoppable army.
So the governor-general very carefully did not pass word back to Spain about what had been unearthed and instead drafted a memo to Ernst and Gerd. In a time of verbosity and poetry, it was quite to the point. The memo stated that it was the will of the government (by which he meant himself) that the existence of the Broederschap remain a secret from the general public and that they turn their attention to creating a military force capable of conquering any nation on earth. If they accomplished this, the rewards for their work would be suitably and unbelievably lavish.
Ernst and Gerd were a little surprised that they weren’t immediately invited to Madrid to receive the kingdom’s highest honors or at least asked to see if they couldn’t do something about the king’s multiple disorders, but they shrugged. The promise of unbelievably lavish (if somewhat vague) rewards was sufficient incentive.
Overnight, the Broederschap’s priorities shifted from general research to offensive applications. They were tasked with producing soldiers who could shrug off musket balls (or cannonballs, for that matter) without breaking stride. Soldiers who could build an empire.
The scientists set to work with a will. They had, of course, already done some exploration in this arena. The brotherhood’s estates were guarded by the world’s most terrifying watchdogs, and any ruffian who laid hands on one of their modified guards would have really regretted it — in the few moments before he was torn into little pieces. However, now the project consumed all their attention. The governor-general provided men, the sort of men who were willing to go under the knife, and the saw, and the chisel, and then spend several days in a sarcophagus of slime in exchange for might and future wealth. A general was appointed, a professional killer from outside the Broederschap whose loyalty to the governor-general was unquestioned and who had been promised unbelievably lavish rewards of his own.
In their workshops, Ernst and Gerd’s fleshwrights created troops who would be unstoppable.
Each soldier was unique, a bespoke warrior equipped with living armaments. The troops were designed to operate in all conditions and to withstand all known weapons. Above all, they were designed to terrify, with all the artistry and cunning that the Broederschap could muster. An army of nightmares, led by a monstrous general whose new modifications gave him the appearance of having crawled out of hell.