Reaver (Firefly)

The Reavers are a group of humans in Firefly who live on the fringes of civilized space and have become animalistic. They are known to raid ships and colonies to kill, skin, rape and cannibalize whoever they find (though not neccesarily in that order). They disfigure themselves and wear their victims' skin as clothing. Their ships often have the bodies of past victims stuck to the hull and are not well maintained. In particular they tend to have very little engine containment and are often "flying hot", leaking radiation into the crew areas of their ships.

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Shepherd Book theorized that the Reavers had been driven mad by the sheer vastness of space.

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The Reavers do occasionally intentionally leave survivors of their raids, but they drive these survivors mad through torture, effectively turning them into more Reavers.

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In the movie Serenity, Reavers are revealed to be humans from the planet Miranda. The Alliance government on Miranda experimented with a chemical agent known as "Pax" designed to keep the population passive and under control.

Related Topics:
Serenity - Miranda

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The agent worked too well, causing 99.9% of the population to simply cease activity. They become so calm that they stopped trying to move or eat, and laid down wherever they were to die. The chemical had the opposite effect on the other 0.1% of the population of 30,000,000, causing them to become insanely aggressive. These people became the Reavers.

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