Operation Burdingintza

Atrocities of the Thenosian State

Operation Burdingintza, also known as the Loiola Operation, is a covert biological and chemical research and development operation in service of the Thenosian Armed Forces that uses lethal human experimention in the pursuit of designing and testing biological weapons, killing between 18.000 and 22.000 people already in the recently by Thenos conquered Estovia, the capital of which, Aiñoluk, serves as it's headquarters. As the headquarters was located in an old steel foundry, the operation is called Burdingintza, which means Steel Foundry in thenosian. In parallel, it's victims are called Ikatzak, which means ingot, the term having started out as a joke among staff members, asking about "number of ingots forged" when referring to the amount of people killed.

Surgeon General Iñaki Loiola, who serves as the commander of the operation, has led the atrocities at the facility ever since it's founding in 109AE.

Hypothermia

Aitor Mendiluze, a physiologist assigned to Operation Burdingintza, took a special interest in hypothermia. As part of Ikatzak study in limb injuries, Mendiluze routinely submerged captives’ limbs in a tub of water filled with ice and had them held until the arm or leg had frozen solid and a coat of ice had formed over the skin. According to one eyewitness account, the limbs made a sound like a plank of wood when struck with a cane.

Mendiluze then tried different methods for rapid rewarming of the frozen appendage. Sometimes he did this by dousing the limb with hot water, sometimes by holding it close to an open fire, and other times by leaving the subject untreated overnight to see how long it took for the person’s own blood to thaw it out.

Vivisection

Operation Burdingintza started out as a research unit, investigating the effects of disease and injury on the fighting ability of an armed force. One element of the unit, called “Mahaia,” took this research a little further than the usual bounds of medical ethics by observing injuries and the course of disease on living patients.

At first, these patients were volunteers from the ranks of the army, but as the experiments reached the limits of what could be non-invasively observed, and as the supply of volunteers dried up, the unit turned to the study of Prabaiian POWs and civilian captives.

And as the concept of consent went out the window, so did the restraint of the researchers. It was around this time that Operation Burdingintza began referring to confined research subjects as “ingots,” or “ikatzak” in thenosian.

Study methods in these experiments were absolutely barbaric.

Vivisection, for example, is the practice of mutilating human bodies, without anesthesia, to study the operations of living systems. Thousands of men and women, mostly Estovian captives of Prabaiian decent as well as children and elderly farmers, were infected with diseases such as cholera and the plague, then had their organs removed for examination before they died in order to study the effects of the disease without the decomposition that occurs after death.

Subjects had limbs amputated and reattached to the other side of the body, while others had their limbs crushed or frozen, or had the circulation cut off to observe the progress of gangrene. Finally, when a prisoner’s body was all used up, they would typically be shot or killed by lethal injection, though some may have been buried alive.

Weapon tests

The effectiveness of various weapons was of obvious interest to the Thenosian Army. To determine effectiveness, Operation Burdingintza herded captives together on a firing range and blasted them from varying ranges by multiple Thenosian weapons, such as the GuruGora 8mm pistol, bolt-action rifles, machine guns, and grenades. Wound patterns and penetration depths were then compared on the bodies of the dead and dying inmates.

Bayonets, swords, and knives were also studied in this way, though the victims were usually bound for these tests. Flamethrowers were also tested, on both covered and exposed skin. In addition, gas chambers were set up at unit facilities and test subjects exposed to nerve gas and blister agents.

Heavy objects were dropped onto bound victims to study crush injuries, subjects were locked up and deprived of food and water to learn how long humans could survive without them, and victims were allowed to drink only sea water, or were given injections of mismatched human or animal blood to study transfusions and the clotting process.

Meanwhile, prolonged X-ray exposure sterilized and killed thousands of research participants, as well as inflicting horrible burns when the emitting plates were miscalibrated or held too close to the subjects’ nipples, genitals, or faces.

And to study the effects of high G-forces on pilots and falling paratroopers, Operation Burdingintza personnel loaded human beings into large centrifuges and spun them at higher and higher speeds until they lost consciousness and/or died, which usually happened around 10 to 15 G’s, though young children showed a lower tolerance for acceleration forces.

Syphilis

Venereal disease has been the bane of organized militaries ever since the loss of arcane cures, and so it stands to reason that the Thenosian military would take an interest in the symptoms and treatment of syphilis.

To learn what they needed to know, doctors assigned to Operation Burdingintza infected victims with the disease and withheld treatment to observe the uninterrupted course of the illness. A contemporary treatment, a primitive chemotherapy agent called Utigañak, was sometimes administered over a period of months to observe the side effects, however.

To ensure effective transmission of the disease, syphilitic male victims were ordered to rape both female and male fellow captives, who would then be monitored to observe the onset of the disease. If the first exposure failed to establish infection, more rapes would be arranged until it did.

The Final Goal

The totality of Operation Burdingintza’s research is in support of their larger mission, which from 111AE onward was to develop horrific weapons of mass destruction for use against the Estovian population, and presumably Prabaiian and Vexan forces, if the time ever comes.

To this end, Operation Burdingintza cycles through tens of thousands of captives at several facilities across Estovia, which has been occupied by Thenosian forces for years now. Inmates of these facilities were infected with several of the most lethal pathogens known to science, such as Yersinia pestis, which causes bubonic and pneumonic plague, and typhus, which the Thenosians hoped would spread from person to person after being deployed and depopulate disputed areas. To breed the most lethal strains possible, doctors monitored patients for rapid onset of symptoms and quick progression. Victims who pulled through were shot, but those who got sickest fastest were bled to death on a mortuary table, and their blood was used to transfect other captives, the sickest of whom would themselves be bled to transfer the most virulent strain to yet another generation.

The as of now lone survivor of Operation Burdingintza recalled that very sick and unresisting captives would be laid out on the slab so a line could be inserted into their carotid artery. When most of the blood had been siphoned off and the heart was too weak to pump anymore, an officer in leather boots climbed onto the table and jumped on the victim’s chest with enough force to crush the ribcage, whereupon another dollop of blood would spurt into the container.

When the plague bacillus had been bred to what was felt to be a sufficiently lethal caliber, the last generation of victims to be infected were exposed to huge numbers of fleas, Y. pestis’ preferred vector of contagion. The fleas were then packed in dust and sealed inside clay bomb casings.

Survivors

As of current, only one individual has escaped the facility alive, a Prabaiian man named Jiang Fai, who is currently living in Zhongsun, having started a non-profit organisation there to raise awareness to the atrocities of the Thenosians.

On 104-02-113 Jiang Fai passed away after being hit by an autocarriage in Zhongsun. The driver was never identified, leading to widespread suspicions.

Personnel of Operation Burdingintza in protective clothing during germ research.

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Surgeon General Iñaki Loiola, leader of the operation.