Name: Miranda Ammar, ‘Mira’

“No one can pilot a mechanical.” “I can.”

Appearance:


Age: 19

Personality:
Brilliant, tenacious, and fiercely independent. She’s willful, but that’s what makes her scary as a mech pilot. She has the makings of a great engineer in her, but it’s somewhat gone to her head and grown a degree of arrogance. To that end she’s fiercely protective of Legion and is picky with who she lets work on it. The mech is very much her baby ... a massive, 80 ton metal baby.

Backstory:
She was only one of many worked on the project and a mal-envisioned project it was at that. Just inside the fringes of Paragon territory in what was once Morocco was a chaotic region with both bandits and Paragon soldiers constantly a threat. The settlement needed a weapon, a mech of their own to hold off bandit raids and scare away hotshot corporals coming to impress people into service. When a salvage mech was brought down trying to save the neural core from a larger downed mech, it was the chance they needed. The neural core itself was shot, but the fully working salvage mech (bar a few bullet holes and a blood stain in the pilot harness) was a priceless score.

They didn’t have the resources to develop that much by themselves but with a serviceable skeleton at their disposal, a machine of war would soon be theirs. Mira was among those working on the machine, being an inquisitive youth and a brilliant mind. She was prominent throughout development and one of the regular test pilots, though she would not go on to be the mech’s regular combat pilot. Nonetheless she did operate the mech in combat once out of necessity, when a surprise raiding attack pinned down all other trained pilots. The machine, christened Vanguard, was brutally effective at its task of defending the settlement, but knowledge the group possessed such a trophy ended up encouraging a higher frequency of attacks in vain attempts to steal Vanguard.

The story of her time in combat swept the desert faster than the summer dust storms. Unfortunately truth doesn’t make a good story. As it traveled it became farther from reality and by the time it reached former Somalia it was the story of the girl who built her own mech. Somewhere along the way some charlatan had snuck in the rumor she had taken on a real NC and won, which couldn’t have been farther from the truth. The largest thing ever destroyed by Vanguard was a lone IFV. Vanguard stood barely 3 meters at full stature and couldn’t take a hit from anything larger than 9.3mm high-power.

For quite obvious reasons, Tshwane Mining was very interested in the supposed ‘girl who built her own mech’. Despite the exaggerations, she had piloted a mechanical in combat at sixteen, a feat for sure. Mechanical mechs were notoriously difficult to utilize as combat platforms due to sluggishness, lack of feedback, and the physical exertion of controlling the machine. She was recruited by the company as an apprentice engineer with the offer to construct her own mech at their expense. Thus began the long process that would culminate with the completion of Legion.

Tactical Preferences and Skills:
Throughout Legion’s development, she insisted the mech’s primary function control remain mechanical against the advice of the engineers that tutored her and all standard practice of mech construction. Her neural systems are predominantly sensor and information feed, haptic feedback, and ancillary systems. The neural haptic feedback provides enough precision to allow Legion to be combat viable, even has a hybrid mechanical.

Her synchronization score for a full-control setup is far too low to ever operate a true NC. Her neural implants being located behind her temples for reduced low-control interfacing, combined with her preference and experience with a mechanical harness enables her to cheat, and achieve over 65% synchronization when piloting Legion specifically.

Legion is a behemoth of a mech. Even with full-control neural systems the mech would not handle at significant speeds, so the lack of responsiveness of the mechanical harness presents relatively minimal impedance to the mech’s combat function. The lack of load on the neural net from the absence of movement control is used to compensate for imprecision, running advanced targeting correction software in its place.

Mira has developed a preference for a high-precision, one-shot-kill weapon stemming from Vanguard’s modified magnetic cannon that could demolish light vehicles with ease. Combined with the suppressive shredding power of a rotary cannon as complement, she naturally gravitated towards fitting a railgun. She opted for more military traditional ammunition types for Legion rather than Tshwane signature diamond-boron rounds. Depleted uranium APFSDS penetrating slugs are arguably better against armored targets.

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Code-name: Legion

Development:

The previous ‘Vanguard’ mech developed with the aid of scavengers was built on the chassis of a salvage mech. Due to the value of neural interfacing in constructing combat mechs, the salvage machines relied on older, clunkier mechanical control interfaces with a pilot strapped in, physically moving to control the vehicle. Even with advancements in haptic force feedback, mechanical (or physical) interfacing remains far too sluggish and unresponsive to contend with modern neural nets.

Despite its tactical shortcomings, a working skeleton of a mech was a huge score for Moroccan independents. Mira was among many who worked on refitting the frame into a viable combat mech. She was also among the most proficient to operate the vehicle in testing. It was armored mainly for small arms fire, able to easily shrug off most of what any opposing clan would throw at them, and fitted with a machine gun and a salvaged magnetic cannon. Mira only piloted the mech in combat a single time, though prior to that she was closely involved in its development and piloted it in testing frequently.

Legion bears the same rough formfactor as its predecessor, though with several key upgrades made during its development as a military grade war machine. Instead of weapons being hastily bolted in an underslung position against the grasper forearms, the weapons themselves were affixed directly to the elbow. The pilot arm housings no longer protrude from the torso, though its continued use of a mechanical harness in the com-pod has required even more size increase than previously expected. Its natural hunched posture reduces its height by several meters, though if it stands fully erect it exceeds 14 meters from ground to sensor pod.

A proper neural net was integrated into the com-pod but is limited to information/sensory feedback. Much of the data is also still displayed through the virtualized reality HUD in the com-pod despite being neurally linked and most of the neural control functions have voice key activation backups. In theory this means anyone could pilot Legion even without neural implants, though in practice a variety of obstacles prevent this, not the least of which being that Legion’s harness is sized for Mira’s modest frame, limiting it to rather petite individuals to even strap in. While a technical possibility, all combat efficiency would be lost in attempting such. The addition of neurally interfaced tactile and sensor feedback greatly improves the precision with which Mira is able to operate the mech compared to its miniature predecessor. The unique neural interfacing makes it extremely difficult for a pilot used to full-control interfacing to take control of Legion.

Its rear features four modular mounting positions in a square pattern. One on each side is always used for ammunition storage for the mech’s primary armaments, and the second is available for mounting ancillary weapons systems. Different options are available depending on the use of the upper or lower mount for a given side. Generally, the upper mounts are utilized for missile-based weapons while the lower mounts receive smaller direct-fire weapons. Both secondary armaments are fully retractable, concealing them from frontal fire.

Design Archetype: Bipedal, approx. humanoid, hybrid mechanical

Strategic Role: Ranged combatant, artillery & missile specialist,

Primary Armaments:

-35mm ballistic rotary chaingun
A vicious high ROF weapon chambered in large caliber SAPHEI-T ammunition firing from a rotary tri-barrel on the left arm that is used for shredding through unarmored to moderately armored targets.

-75mm high precision railgun
An extreme-range weapon chambered in DU-APFSDS penetrating slugs on the right arm optimized for effectively defeating heavily armored targets.

Secondary Armaments (upper option):

-Multipurpose Tactical Missiles
These missiles include a highly advanced targeting computer enabling a variety of different flight profiles, ranging from direct attack to a high-arc artillery style approach that rains death from above. They come in various sizes, each striking a different balance between individual destructive power and raw quantity. Mira tends to prefer fewer missiles with each packing a sizable tandem HEAT warhead.

Secondary armaments (lower option):

-MGL cannons
Magnetic Grenade Launcher tech was developed to lob high explosive shells long distances in the hands of a rifleman. The magnetic acceleration coils provided far more punch than traditional grenade round propellant charges. When adapted to mechanized combat, the technology takes the form of a short-barreled 60mm gun firing polymer-stabilized HESH shells. The weapons are useful for short to medium range combat, being limited by low velocity and relatively poor aerodynamics.

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Interfacing:

Synchronicity:

Combat:

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Primary:
-35mm ballistic rotary chaingun

-75mm high precision railgun

Secondary:
-Multipurpose Tactical Missiles (upper)

-MGL cannons (lower)