Emperor Cyem IV

"Don't run. It will only be more painful."

- Cyem's warning to the Sayan Squad

Emperor Cyem IV is an antagonist introduced in the fourth season of the Xat RP. He is the former leader of the Cimorian race, and now cooperates with The General.

History
Cyem used to be the ruler of the Cimorian race, which has conquered many worlds and even clashed with The Rebellion on some occasions. However, the Cimorians were targeted by The General and suddenly disappeared. Cyem IV is the only known remaining Cimorian. He is unique in that he is a non-human who was allowed to serve The General without being Conscripted (essentially lobotomized), and was even granted an Invulnerability Generator. It has been confirmed that The General is holding his race hostage in exchange for his cooperation, and that if he stepped out of line or if the Rebellion made a move for Cimoria Prime, all Cimorians would be killed.

Xat RP Season 4
Cyem's first appearance and meeting with the Sayan Squad appears in Beyond the Stars, Part 2, as the Squad investigated the destruction of an RAG outpost on Earth-M724. The Squad is completely unable to match up to his augmentations and firepower, not even with their Mimics, and are forced to retreat from the planet and The General's Head.

Following this altercation, Cyem meets up with Captain Hood on the planet in the solo The Conquered Conquerors, to discuss their future plans. Cyem is surprised by Hood's decision to not pursue the Squad, though the Captain states that it would work out better to intimidate the Rebels with Cyem's presence, along with distracting them from a project The General is working on. Hood then turns to berate Cyem for letting the Squad escape the planet in the first place, though the Cimorian accepts full responsibility for not realizing he was alone and for not defeating them before a distress signal could have been given. The Captain seems to accept this, ordering Cyem to re-enter his containment area aboard the Head.

His next appearance is in Gravity, as the main instrument in Captain Hood's trap for the Sayan Squad above the planet Paa-M912. Once the Sayan Squad's ship, The Vulture, was ensnared in his tractor anchor, Hood deploys the "Little Man", who was Cyem himself outfitted in space module to allow him to survive and maneuver in space. He proceeds to latch onto The Vulture to try and deal critical damage. He gets knocked off once, but manages to re-attach on the ship's bow, breaking off one of its cannons to use for himself. Before the Squad could destroy the cannon, Cyem reaches the ship's engines and destroys them. No longer able to resist Paa's gravity, The Vulture falls toward the planet, with Cyem in hot pursuit in a new air module.

During the pursuit, as the Squad is attempting to teleport the crewmembers off the ship without Captain Hood or Cyem knowing, Arachnos halts Cyem's pursuit by emitting a psychic screech. The resulting mental attack enrages the Cimorian, focusing his attacks on the spider, but a reprimand from Hood calms his emotions and he returns to the chase. The Squad are unfortunately unable to completely obscure their escape attempt, as at the last moments they can only blind the emperor long enough to warp out and cannot obscure their departure. Cyem advises Hood that it's unlikely the Squad is dead, and recommends a search of the area for them. Hood agrees, also suggesting they enlist the help of a "friend", to Cyem's derision.

The Squad manage to avoid Cyem and Hood's forces for awhile during their stay on the planet, but their lucks runs out once Hood confronts them at Mr. Owl's lone remaining base, known as the War Fortress III. In the episode And Hell Followed, he does not appear for the first portion of the fight, but once Dr. X tells Hood that at this point in the fight it's unlikely that Hood will capture them, the Captain turns his full force toward the Squad's destruction, including deploying Cyem again. This forces the Squad to retreat into the fortress, with Owl serving as a defender against Cyem so the rest of them could get inside, and they barely manage to enter the basement before Hood decimates the fortress with an orbital strike from the Head's cannons as well as a blast of divine power from The White Father. Hood and Cyem both joke about destroying the base, but do suspect that the Squad are still alive. Hood himself is willing to stay as long as it takes to see the Squad dead or captured, something that Dr. X balks at, unwilling to stay on the planet for very long. Hood stands firm, though, and X eventually relents. Cyem stays on the ground to oversee the search in the meantime.

Again in hiding, the Squad escaped notice for another month until starvation and desperation forced them to re-enter enemy territory. Cyem confronts them alone after they defeated a Dragon that was corrupted by the Sayans in Harrowing Encounter. Cyem tells the Squad that he is alone, and that Hood was keeping them here until he knew they were dead or captured. Cyem was unwilling to prolong their presence here, and so offers that the Squad let him kill them as quickly and painlessly as possible, pointing to what will happen to them in The General's clutches should they resist. The Squad naturally refuses, stating they knew the risks when they signed up, and turn onto Cyem instead, asking him why he serves the General and if he even knows what The General has planned. He replies that he does, having been told directly from the General, but is not going to question the orders given to him, and refuses to answer why. He also tries not to escalate the confrontation with insults, seeing this simply as business, not something personal. Despite this, The Sayan Squad still tried to run, with Cyem able to easily pursue. Only a twin Hadron Cannon blast from Mr. Owl's Gawain stalled him enough for the Squad to escape into a tunnel that was collapsed right behind them, and he could not dig through the tunnel before they got away.

Both sides know that the Squad needs to leave in order to have any chance to survive, and they also know that there is only one more place they can head for an escape ship: Dark Side, Dr. X's personal city. In The Other Side, Part 1, Cyem appears briefly to pursue the Squad after the latter group assaults Dark Side, but is stopped at the main entrance when Lynna removes the door from existence right as Cyem tried to fire upon them. With Hood's order, he makes his way into the place by force to pursue. He catches up to them in one of Dark Side's chambers, dead set on defeating the squad and preventing them from saving as many of the crewmen as they can. He attempts to do a special attack, which causes sparks in his invulnerability generator, but is stopped by the Arachni and four Squad members who pushed a bomb-toting robot carcass next to him and deonated it, stunning all present (including Cyem). Some more crewmembers died from the blast, but it still allowed them a breach to escape through that Cyem could not, forcing him to find another way around the base.

Their next meeting is in The Other Side, Part 2, within Dark Side's starport. Cyem announces his presence by trying to enter through one of the doors manually, and when that fails, forces his way through. By the time all of members of the Squad and The Vulture can regroup, Cyem had already killed the captain, chief medic, and a couple engineers of The Vulture. Oneiros proceeds at Cyem for using his invulnerability generator and not playing fair, which Cyem countered by saying Oneiros was only mad that he could not steamroll Cyem the same way he and the Anathemites had steamrolled others, such as the Nihilius Clan. Driven into a frenzy, Oneiros unleashes multiple attacks that fail to faze Cyem at all, and continues to rant at him, joined in by the other Arachni. Despite Cyem's attempts to show them that things aren't as clear-cut or black-and-white as the three see them, through words and some metaphors, he is completely unable to change their mindsets, not convince them that he, like them, is simply fighting for survival. However, the spiders' argument provided enough of a distraction for Amadeus to call in G Squadron, and Ketsueki's arrival through the windows allows the vacuum of space to suck Cyem out, sparing them from a hopeless battle. He wasn't kept away for long, as Hood recollected him, outfitted him with his space module, and enacted one last, desperate attempt to stop the Squad's departure ship, to no avail.

Upon his return to the Head, Cyem weathers Hood's frustrated outbursts at being unable to corner the Squad in the solo Failure, along with preventing Hood from killing Dr. X after the latter incited the former to choke him to death. After giving a stern warning to X to not attempt such provocations on The General, he departs to his chamber.

Hood deploys Cyem once again to initiate another trap for the Squad at a refueling station in Fate Wears Metal. This time the Cimorian goes all out, unloading an impressive arsenal of weapons to take down half of the group that was separated from their new ship, the Storm. However, they were able to regroup, and Cyem accidentally helps get the Storm out from some damaged clamps. Despite this, he proceeds to clamp down onto the ship's hull and turns off his air module, forcing the ship to bear the entirety of his bulk. Owl attempts to stop him, but only helps Cyem reach the roof. However, the Anathemites decide to cut off the part of the hull Cyem is attached to, surprising him enough to let them escape to hyperspace; not for long, as Hood pulls the Head up next to them and blasts them out of hyperspace.

Cyem and the Squad don't encounter each other again until Burial, as The General himself, not Hood, deploys Cyem to take down the Squad for good on Earth-M745 as the Head hovers over the surface. Cyem acted colder than usual, admonishing the Squad for not staying dead and implying heavily that The General himself was watching the upcoming battle. With one last plea for them to go down easy for the sake of his people, Cyem engages them once more. However, right as he attempts to engage, Rebel ships emerge into the airspace and open fire on him, throwing off his charge. It also allows the Squad room to make a beeline for their escape ship, as Cyem is instead forced to watch the last of the rebel reinforcements sacrifice themselves to destroy the Black Star Cannon in a massive plume of cyan and smoke.

Once he returns to the Head, Hood comes to inform him that the Rebels are likely to target the flagship next to cash in on their momentum during the solo Emperors. Hood furthermore attempts to give Cyem one more chance to visit his species, stating that things might not go so favorably in the upcoming days, but Cyem refuses on the grounds of not wanting to make them a target for neither the Rebels nor The General. Hood concedes, but promises to let Cyem have a chance to visit them as soon as possible, to the Cimorian's gratitude. It further serves to mark how the two emperors have found something akin to friendship with each other in their shared servitude.

The Squad's last encounter with Cyem in Season 4 is surprisingly within his own living quarters, in Tower of Babel. He informs them that the bare chambers the Squad finds him in are his, also stating that it's the "best" place he's been kept so far. He also reverts back to his amicable self, but engages the Squad regardless as his assignment is to capture the group. He proves to be nimble enough as well as powerful, dodging two shots from a specially-made gun held by Qiang that would disable his generator, but a local earthquake made from one of the Arachni destabilizes him enough for Qiang to succesffully land the final shot. When he realizes that he's actually able to be hit, he thanks the Squad for giving him a chance to finally cut loose, and brings out all the weapons he can against them. However, the cramped space hampers his ability to bring them all to bear and makes some of the backlash from his weapons hit him as well. In desperation he unleashes a thick green energy blast to defeat them, but that collides with a Nihility sphere from Lynna, creating a massive explosion that slams him against a wall and damages him heavily. Before anyone in the Squad can land the finishing blow, however, he is saved by Captain Hood, who engages the Squad in his stead. Though he is left behind in the room following the discovery of The Sayan Mastermind, it is presumed that he was given medical attention and in the process of healing.

Xat RP Season 5
As he survived the assault on The General's Head, Cyem will make a return for Season 5.

Hellgate 2 Part 4
SDM has stated Cyem will appear here, though when and how has not been divulged

Appearance
Cyem IV is a member of a reptilian alien race known as the Cimorians. Because he is a full-grown Cimorian Major, he is enormous, described to be about the size of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. He has a single, glowing red eye and a mouth full of sharp fangs. He displays a significant array of various GenTech implants. Notably, his hands have been enhanced with metallic claws, three claws per hand arranged in a triangle. His feet are also enhanced with hydraulics to improve agility.

Personality
Cyem is described as a warlike ruler who personally led the conquest of many worlds by the Cimorian race. A born warrior, he led by example, personally heading his army from the frontlines. Despite his ruthlessness, he is not necessarily cruel, and was a just ruler to the Cimorian race. His conquests were an effort to lead his kind to prosperity, which seemed to have been mostly successful until The General took an interest to them. Cyem is being forced to cooperate with The General because the latter is holding the rest of the Cimorian race hostage, ready to eliminate them at the first sign of disobedience.

In his first battle against the Sayan Squad, Cyem seemed to view his opponents as little more than pests, a perception which is mostly justified given his Invulnerability Generator. Judging by his warning ("Don't run, it will only be more painful") it seems that he wanted to quickly eliminate them in order to spare them from being destroyed or, worse, captured by the inbound The General's Head. Further encounters showed that he holds some sympathy for his opponents, trying to give them a quick death at his hands rather than capturing them to be experimented upon by The General's men. Despite numerous insults made by Sayan Squad members against him, he still attempts to keep relationships as amicable as possible between himself and the Squad, assuring that he has nothing personal against them.

Powers and abilities
Cyem is described as a formidably strong and vicious fighter of his own right, even before he was enhanced by The General. As he is so gigantic, he presumably possesses proportional strength, possibly even greater than would be expected from a creature of this size. He was able to devastate an entire Rebel outpost using mostly his sheer power rather than weaponry.

On top of that, the General's implants make him nigh-unstoppable. He can fire concentrated plasma bolts and beams from his claws, as well as missiles. He can also shoot homing rockets out of launchers installed on his back. Cyem is also equipped with multiple other weapons which he has not been shown using yet, such as a fast-firing rocket launcher and a very powerful energy cannon. His hydraulic enhancements grant Cyem surprising agility for a creature of this size, and he is able to make very powerful leaps. In addition, he is able to tunnel through the ground.

The already very tough foe is turned into an utter nightmare to face since he is also equipped with an Invulnerability Generator. This rare device, usually reserved for The General's highest-ranked commanders, creates a field around the wearer that provides total immunity to most conventional weaponry.

Relationships

 * The General - The man directly responsible for Cyem's captivity and the captivity of his species. His true feelings for the man are vague, as there have been almost no interactions between the two that have been seen. The most he has said is that he is not a fan of The General's actions, but understands and follows the orders given to him.
 * Captain Hood - Cyem's direct handler and current Captain of The General's Head in the Xat RP. Though the two were at most acquaintances at arm's length initially, their shared predicament with being involved with Project Nero and being enslaved by The General has forged something vaguely resembling friendship, though it does not extend farther than that. Cyem is the cooler head of the two, helping to reign in some of the captain's more impulsive tendencies.
 * The Sayan Squad - A group from the RAG who have encountered and fought Cyem multiple times, though almost always at a disadvantage. Cyem does not see them as foes to hate, only as enemies to defeat for the purpose of completing his assignment and surviving another day under The General. Despite their attempts to insult him or rile him, Cyem continues to be amicable in his dealings, except when such an attitude cannot fly, and continues to offer the group quick and painless deaths over what would happen should The General get his hands on them.

Theme
Emperor Cyem's leitmotif is "Call to Arms," the main theme of the console editions for the Doom series. His main theme is the Doom 64 Intro version, while his battle theme is the Playstation version.

Trivia

 * Emperor Cyem IV is very significantly based on the Cycloid Emperor from the Duke Nukem franchise, right down to his appearance. SDM has stated that, even though the Cycloid Emperor has no personality in the series, his own interpretation of the character is a ruler who is ruthless to those who oppose him, but who only desires the best for his subjects. This makes him more of a morally gray character, who is the champion of his own race in the same way as Duke himself is the champion of humanity. The same qualities are reflected in Emperor Cyem.
 * Many of Cyem's weapons are inspired by the weapons found various First-Person Shooters like the Serious Sam, Half-Life, Doom and Duke Nukem series, including the BFG and the Devastator.