Pioneer Service Group The Pioneer Service Group is an unusual mercenary group operating in the United Territories, best known for being composed largely of armed Ruvilian orphans who openly sell their services as bodyguards and hired escorts. Though their appearance makes them seem more like children playing soldier than a legitimate military outfit, the United Territories’ deteriorating social order has made such sights disturbingly ordinary: armed children on the street attract little concern, and the group was first encountered openly begging for work. Despite this absurd beginning, the Pioneer Service Group is not harmless. Ruby, who grandly styles herself “General Ruby,” serves as the group’s self-appointed commander, using half-remembered cartoons, films, and heroic speeches as the basis for her military doctrine. Beneath the childish theatrics, however, she possesses enough instinct and social intelligence to assign roles, maintain morale and give her companions pride in their duties. Mei Mei acts as the group’s caretaker and practical survival expert, gentle in daily life but ruthlessly capable when the group’s safety is at stake. Tiko serves as the heavy weapons specialist, her immense EGO-driven strength allowing her to handle burdens and weapons far beyond what her age would suggest. Murphy, the quiet aspiring doctor, lacks real medical training but has turned her strange anatomical knowledge into an effective close-combat ta The group’s official employer is Karula, a vacationing Earth woman who hired them almost immediately after arriving on Nox. Whether she truly needed bodyguards is doubtful, but her money, indulgence and strange maternal affection gave the Pioneer Service Group a level of stability it otherwise lacked. In turn, the children often end up protecting, managing and even caring for her as much as she claims to care for them.

Previous history: The origins of the Pioneer Service Group lie in a declining border city of the Republic of Ruvila. During the height of the space race, the city had once been important due to its rare earth mineral deposits, but after the Federation’s dissolution, joint industrial development between the Republic and the United Territories stalled. Municipal services decayed, poverty worsened and the local orphanage gradually lost the ability to provide even reliable meals. Its vegetable plots were stripped by starving locals, its animals stolen and even the remaining dairy cow eventually stopped producing milk from lack of feed. Faced with slow starvation, Ruby led a small group of the orphanage’s most capable children out into the wider world to seek money and survival. Their decision was not a heroic adventure, but the result of institutional collapse: no state, sponsor, or charitable system arrived to save them. Mei Mei prepared supplies for the journey, even slaughtering and butchering the orphanage’s remaining cow to make dried meat for the road, while Ruby convinced the others that their best chance lay in finding the supposedly wealthy Earthlings of the United Territories. After reaching the United Territories, the children discovered abandoned Union military equipment left behind during earlier withdrawals. Ruby immediately transformed the find into a business plan. Equipping her companions with obsolete weapons and surplus gear, she declared them a trained mercenary group and began offering bodyguard services to newly arrived Earth travelers. In a healthier society, armed orphans selling combat work would have caused outrage. In the United Territories, they were merely another symptom of the times. Karula became their first true patron. Drained by her former life on Earth and chasing an escapist fantasy on Nox, she found the self-proclaimed mercenaries charming and hired them as her personal bodyguards. Her support gave the Pioneer Service Group money, food and legitimacy, while the children’s own discipline kept Karula’s doting impulses from completely spoiling them.

Members

Name	Class
Karula	Commander
Ruby	Sniper
MeiMei	supporter
Tiko	Heavy Weapon Specialist
Murphy	[unknown]