You two! Stop fighting long enough for me to kick your ass!
Malachi Spyder was a Mind Mage and a soldier in the Tech Infantry who fought during the Third Civil War on both the Grand Council Loyalist and Tech Infantry Rebel sides.
Early Life[]
Spyder's early life is shrouded in mystery. What is known is that he tried to evade the draft and instead entered the criminal underground while still a teenager. During his time on the run he had repeated run-ins with another criminal by the name of Max Thames, who would become his lifelong nemesis. After Spyder managed to steal away from Thames control over an extensive criminal empire of smuggling and arms dealing, Thames turned Spyder in to The Raptors and had him arrested and forced into the military. Despite his arrest, Spyder managed to retain control of most of his criminal enterprises, converting them into a semi-legal business of manufacturing and selling weapons primarily to the very military he had tried to avoid joining in the first place.
Project Cerberus[]
Thames himself was a corrupt Tech Infantry training officer, and he managed to engineer Spyder's assignment to Thames' own training unit at the TI boot camp on Deimos. Spyder endured much abuse, but managed to graduate as a PFC and then served a tour of duty as a Marine aboard the EFS Prince of Wales, eventually making corporal and becoming a squad leader. Annoyed at Spyder's success despite the obstacles in his path, Thames then managed to get Spyder assigned to Project Cerberus, an effort to improve TI training methods by seeing just how brutal and extreme they could make a boot camp program without an unacceptable rate of recruits lost to injury and death in the process. Despite the tough regimen of training, Spyder thrived, eventually becoming a leader of the project. During this time, he began a romantic and sexual relationship with one of his fellow test subjects, Justine D'Amprisi. They worked closely together until her injuries forced her out of the program.
Becoming An Officer[]
Spyder during OCS training
Spyder's success during Project Cerberus earned him an appointment to Officer Candidate School. Following graduation, he served a brief cadet tour on board a Star Control Ship, before taking his first real command, that of "Spyder's Sabres",the 278-211 (4) Marine Expeditionary Unit, a unit of Tech Infantry soldiers assigned as Marines on board the light cruiser EFS Schaumburg, under the command of Captain Erich Von Shrakenberg. Although less than impressed with the brawling bunch of malcontents under his command, Spyder struck up a good working relationship and deep friendship with his platoon sergeant, Sgt. Eleanor Ragdowski.
While on board the Schaumburg, Spyder and his unit participated in the boarding and search of the smuggling vessel Fearless, and the arrest of Andrea Treschi on suspicion of smuggling. Spyder was on board the ship when it was fired upon by the InSec corvette ISS Enforcer, and it was partly to save his life that Von Shrakenberg ordered the InSec warship destroyed, earning him the deep hatred of InSec commandant Rashid King. But it was the freighter Fearless that Von Shrakenberg used to destroy the Ashdown-Rios Jumpgate and destroy an incoming Jurvain invasion fleet, preventing (at least for a while) the alien conquest of the Rios system. There was little for Spyder and his troops to do in the ensuing Battle of Rios except act as damage control parties, and his frustration at this inactivity led him to cut a deal with Andrea Treschi, asking for a transfer for himself and his platoon sergeant to a more active posting. Treschi came through, and the two were soon given orders to report to the EFS Vishnu for their new command.
==New Madrid Campaign==
Spyder's new posting would be as commander of the 137-122 (3) Advance Recon unit, a scout platoon. He got the news while checking in on Avalon with his business manager, Bob Schmidt, and his personal secretary, Kassandra Hope Johnson. Both had been with him since his smuggling days, and now they ran his semi-legitimate business interests while he was off serving in the military. Elly Ragdowski came along to once more be his platoon sergeant, and his new unit was soon christened "Spyder's Snakes". Their first mission was to participate in the invasion and liberation of the New Madrid system, landing by drop pod near the capital city of Talavera. The initial landing did not go well, and it was only Spyder's personal capture of an enemy artillery piece and turning it on the enemy forces that turned the tide of battle. Despite personally wiping out two full enemy platoons, Spyder himself was captured covering the escape of the rest of his unit. Spyder was shocked to find his old nemesis, Max Thames, working with the Rebels, and personally interrogating him. However, Spyder would be rescued when the Federation forces completed their conquest of Talavera, but not before Thames revealed that he was also holding Spyder's ex-lover Justine D'Amprisi prisoner. Spyder had his men search for any sign of her, to no avail.
==Forced into Betrayal==
Spyder on Babylon
His efforts to find her attracted the attention of Tech Infantry Internal Affairs bureau chief Colonel Tomas Delarosa. Delarosa had been D'Amprisi's commanding officer once she left Project Cerberus, and he had forced her into a sexual relationship against her will. When she tried to leave him, he vowed to destroy her, and had her brought up on bogus charges of treason, and she had tried to go into hiding. Delarosa now tried to force Spyder into entrapping D'Amprisi into revealing herself so she could be arrested and he could have his petty revenge on her. But Spyder refused to turn her in, even after she revealed herself to him, hiding in the dark corridors of the EFS Vishnu. Delarosa was monitoring Spyder's activities, however, and when Justine came to him in his new posting as a military policeman on the Babylon system, Delarosa and his men tried to arrest the pair. The arrest was interrupted, however, by the Tech Infantry Rebels invading the system, and in the confusion Spyder and D'Amprisi were able to knock out Delarosa and escape. Fleeing through a pitched battle in the nude, they were soon captured by rebel forces under the command of Alastar Dimiye. Initially treated as prisoners of war, Spyder and D'Amprisi volunteered to fight when a Loyalist counter-attack threatened to overrun their holding facility, and Spyder helped personally beat back an attack agianst overwhelming odds. Spyder was soon promoted to Major and given command of a brigade within the Dead Boys, replacing a fallen officer named Taylor as one of Alastar Dimiye's brigade commanders. He fought in the closing phases of the Tower City campaign, before being withdrawn with the rest of the rebel forces for the impending assault on Avalon.
==Avalon and the End==
Spyder and the rest of the Dead Boys were initially tasked with helping take out Avalon's orbital defenses, starting with Archimedes Shuttle Transfer Station. Balking at taking on such a large target crammed with civilians, instead they hit Battlestation Achilles, capturing it and turning its guns on the defending Loyalist ships. They took out the light cruiser EFS Palatine before the station was destroyed by other Earth Fleet vessels, and the Dead Boys escaped on shuttles to the surface. There, they linked up with the 27th Army on the continent of New Africa, under the overall command of General Cao. Cut off and surrounded by superior enemy numbers, their situation grew increasingly desperate. Alastar Dimiye himself was apparently killed while covering their withdrawal from one tactical ambush early on, and Spyder inherited overall command of what was left of the original Dead Boys. His command was not unquestioned, however, due to his only recently joining the unit, and Major Otto Wilhelm challenged him repeatedly for command, eventually causing a fatal split in the loyalties of the unit. Individual platoons and batallions lined up on the side of one claimant for the throne or the other, and their divisions were exploited by the enemy. Spyder won the fight for command, but found his crippled and decimated unit being chased and tracked across the New African Savannah by Loyalist elite scout unit led by a Lt. Jonathon Walters. Finally, Walters was ordered to approach Spyder and his surviving troopers with an offer of clemency in exchange for support in countering an impending military coup launched by Grand Fleet Admiral Kristen Vorheis. But before the negotiations could proceed, they were interrupted by Damien Richter and his cyborg sabotage squad, trying to find allies in destroying the enemies of Internal Security. In the ensuing three-way bloodbath, Spyder was killed in the crossfire, and most of his surviving Dead Boys wiped out.
==Behind the Scenes==
Malachi Spyder was the Season 4.3 player character of Josh Wooden. Part of the original core of players who initially agreed to all play crew on the same ship, he was one of the first to chafe under the restrictions of being a bit character in someone else's story, and to request a transfer off the ship as soon as possible. His Actor Avatar is Joaquin Phoenix.