Arachnos (M-745)

"Rest assured, my friends. For those of you who are lost, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We are so close to reaching it. And I shall do everything in my power to guide you towards that light. Until then, remember – fear is freedom. Subjugation is liberation. Contradiction is truth."

- Supervisor Arachnos addresses the population of Gensokyo Arachnos of Gensokyo on Earth M-745, better known as Supervisor Arachnos, was the primary antagonist of the Earth M-745 miniarc in the Xat RP. As his name indicates, he is the Supervisor of Earth M-745, having willingly joined The General.

Appearance
Supervisor Arachnos has the appearance of a regular Arachnos.

Background
Originally an ordinary Arachnos in an ordinary Gensokyo, his fate turned when The General invaded Earth M-745 in search of rare and valuable Force Crystals. Because The General is known to have a hatred of non-humans, most of Gensokyo's residents seemed to be doomed to either death or, even worse, Conscription. With The General's forces proving all but unstoppable, Arachnos worked out a compromise with the dictator which, he believed, would benefit both sides. Arachnos volunteered to use his "guardian sense" of his world to easily locate the Force Crystal deposits for The General all around the world. In return, The General would allow the non-humans of Gensokyo to keep their minds. The General agreed to those terms, and Arachnos was instated as the Supervisor of Earth M-745, in charge of maintaining the order on the planet. He now reigns as a tyrant over M-745, working the locals (especially the non-humans) to near-death in order to fulfill the terms of his deal with The General and prevent the total destruction of Gensokyo.

Role in the story
Supervisor Arachnos was the main antagonist of the Xat RP episodes 19, 20, 21 and 22, even though in 19 his identity had not been revealed yet. While his shadow was felt and his vile deeds were on display throughout all of the episodes, and his broadcasts were heard in both 20 and 21, he was only interacted with in person during episode 22: first when he contacted the Rebels as they invaded the Moonbase to warn them not to proceed any further, then during the climax of the episode, when he personally attacked the Rebel fleet in retribution for destroying the Moonbase. During this attack, he piloted a giant Suika, whose brain has been removed and replaced with a control center. Despite his best efforts to destroy the Rebels, Suika was eventually destroyed. The Supervisor's attempt to escape failed, ending up with his escape vehicle (Suika's head) being disabled and crashing into the Earth with him still inside, presumably killing him in the crash.

In episode 36, it was revealed that the Supervisor survived. His mind, however, broke completely after his defeat, causing him to turn the Blackstar superweapon against the Gensokyo he had tried so hard to protect, all but annihilating it. This also caused his reign to falter, with havoc engulfing the planet as local rebellions started gaining the upper hand on his uncoordinated, poorly-led troops. In an attempt to take out the Warp Nets and allow the Rebel fleet to destroy the superweapon, the Sayan Squad assaulted and took his Bureau, taking out two more of the Supervisor's abominations: a mutated Desmond and a flawed clone of Flandre Scarlet. However, the Supervisor was revealed to have been located within the Blackstar superweapon all along, and sprung a trap that resulted in the Rebel fleet trapped in orbit with The General's reinforcements closing in. In episode 37, the Sayan Squad traveled to the site of the superweapon (built on the location of the destroyed Chernobyl power plant), successfully infiltrated it and defeated the Supervisor. Upon being told that The General would most likely execute him for his incompetence and the murderous clone of Flandre he had created without permission, the Supervisor used his emergency capsule to escape to parts unknown.

In the solo Sicarius, the Supervisor is revealed to have taken a transport to an unknown point of space he calls "the Source", using the crew for experimentation with unknown materials that he eventually integrated into his own body. His mental state is shown to have deteriorated further, to the point where he is barely capable of coherent speech.

Personality
Supervisor Arachnos has a personality vaguely similar to an average Arachnos, but horribly warped almost beyond recognition.

As usual for an Arachnos of Gensokyo, he bore the firm belief that it is his responsibility to prevent the destruction of his assigned region and the death of its inhabitants. He was originally either unable or unwilling to acknowledge the fact that Gensokyo under his rule was a rotten, dying world, of which the mistreated and disfigured inhabitants would at this point probably welcome the escape of death. To keep the population in line and give the residents some hope, the Supervisor had installed monitors around the Earth, through which he regularly broadcasted propaganda speeches trying to paint the current state of the Earth in a positive light. Despite his noble intentions, Supervisor Arachnos was quite ruthless and would stop at quite literally nothing to keep Gensokyo under control, believing that the truce with The General must be maintained at any cost. If it came to that, he would not hesitate to destroy or Conscript even former friends, as shown when he reduced the Scarlet Devil Mansion to dust to make sure he would never oppose him.

After his crushing defeat in the First Battle of Earth-M745, the Supervisor lost the little sanity he had left. He unleashed Blackstar upon Gensokyo and destroyed it, perceiving it as a "tumor" and reasoning that this is what The General would have wanted (it is implied that the opposite is true, as he destroyed a valuable Force Crystal mine in the process), and became a raving madman fixated on two things alone: nostalgia for the Gensokyo he had once known, and sheer hatred for the Rebellion, which he perceived as having taken everything from him.

Powers and abilities
Arachnos possesses the regular skillset of a normal Arachnos, including the ability to secrete poison or acid, weave magical webs, summon members of the Black Brood to his aid and use Void magic. However, his greatest asset is his scientific knowledge, which he developed (as occasionally happens to some Arachni) through years of close contact with GenTech-level technology. Supervisor Arachnos is personally involved in the creation of "enhanced" entities such as Reinae. He has also designed various machines that are not found on any other world subjugated by The General, such as the massive walking battle-tanks known as Harvesters, the small search-and-destruction robots called Huntsmen, and flying camera-drones called Kiters. Those inventions tend to be named after spiders or other arachnids.

During the Second Battle of Earth-M745, he displayed three powerful machines that he used to combat the Sayan Squad. The first was his own life support device, outfitted with an arsenal's worth of weaponry. The second was the Matricial Engine, a spider-like mecha rolling around on an orb which also served as its core, and was powered by the life force of the last Gensokyans remaining. The third was the Suppressor, a six-armed humanoid mecha armed with rockets, lasers, melee weapons and a powered-up Mimic core that amplified the Supervisor's own natural powers.

Musical themes
Supervisor Arachnos' main leitmotif is Dr. Neo Cortex's boss theme from Crash Bandicoot.

His alternate leitmotif is a set of themes from F-Zero GX/AX, which includes the character themes of Deathborn, Black Shadow and Blood Falcon.

Design and influence
Arachnos (player) had stated multiple times that he would like to see Arachnos (character) play the role of a well-intentioned extremist prioritizing order above freedom or anything else. This had already happened once in the Xat RP in the form of Dark Beast -Arachnos-, but the spider in question was corrupted by a foreign influence at that point.

The concept of Arachnos as a Supervisor was created and slowly fleshed out over the course of multiple conversations between Arachnos and SDM, and finally given its own miniarc which is primarily planned out by SDM, but GMed by Arachnos.

Supervisor Arachnos' role and personality were significantly modeled on the character of Doctor Wallace Breen, the primary antagonist of Half-Life 2. Similarly to him, he is a puppet ruler with good intentions in the service of a vast interplanetary army. The propaganda monitors installed around Gensokyo and the speech heard in episode 20 are a nod to Dr. Breen's speeches known as "Breencasts".

Trivia

 * Supervisor Arachnos' "catchphrase" by which he closes most of his speeches - "Fear is freedom, subjugation is liberation, contradiction is truth" - is borrowed from Satsuki Kiryuin, one of the antagonists of the anime Kill la Kill. They emphasize the fact that Supervisor Arachnos subjugated the population to save it from what he perceived to be an even more terrifying kind of enslavement.
 * Those statements themselves are a nod to Big Brother's propaganda slogans in Nineteen Eighty Four - "War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery", and "Ignorance is Strength".