Commodore Robot

David Drake - Hammer's Slammers

Oh heck yeah. I love some me some Hammer's Slammers. Count me in.

FRAMEs (Mech combat, political intrigue & corporate struggles)

The talkative newbie has a lot of feet to put in his mouth, Isabella thought. She stifled a giggle as he was dressed down by the XO. He certainly was an interesting character, one she would have to keep her eye on in the future: assuming he made it of course. Only time would tell with most of the new blood. She shrugged to nobody but her own thoughts and shuffled out towards the hangar bay with the others.

During the short trek she began to feel it. The stomach tying itself in knots and the slightest trickle of adrenaline. It was time for action. She picked up her pace, suddenly filled with purpose and managed to make it just in time to see Bernard rise out of his cockpit and spook one of the others. She openly guffawed at that and waved her hand at the old man. "Hey gramps, fell asleep at the wheel again? They aught to take your license away for good." Her words were punctuated with a doofy smile to her squad mate and fellow prosthetic pincushion. Her Handau sat resting in the spot adjacent, so she got to work giving her machine a fin spot check without waiting for a response.

She brought up the maintainance log for her Ghost Killer with her eye and checked it against what she saw. She trusted the mechanics more than she trusted herself, but it was better to be safe than sorry and helped to kill a half hour. Content with what she found and didn't find, she gently caressed the chest art of her FRAME. She'd seen people with elaborate murals, pin-ups, shark faces, the works. Hers was simpler, a smiling little ghost like a pinched napkin with a hole blown clean out of the top corner of it's head. The thing was hardly larger than her splayed out hands, but she was proud of it. She had drawn it herself and had been happy to find that having mechanical digits made art infinitely easier than it had once been. Her pre-operation rituals complete, she popped the cockpit and climbed aboard. She thumbed the drive start and felt her FRAME growl to life. She flicked through all of the pre-launch steps like an old pro, which compared to some of the new blood in the Panthers she supposed she was. Everything came out green and she let out a sigh and emptied her mind. It was go-time.

FRAMEs (Mech combat, political intrigue & corporate struggles)

Isabella sat with the others in the waiting area and made good on the rooms intended purpose. Not that she waited patiently of course, she hated the downtime before the briefs or any downtime for that matter, and tried her best to keep herself occupied by scanning over the fresh meat. The newbies were a mixed bunch, homogeneity certainly didn't seem to be the Panther's MO if the people they recruited were any indication. The fact that the newbies were going on this mission made Isabella uncomfortable, she'd only been with the Panthers for a year but they'd at least given her a proper evaluation that wouldn't potentially kill her or result in a loss of profit for the company. The entire thing just seem needlessly risky, but considering the lack of veterans still kicking around the outfit, a trial by fire did make a certain kind of sense. Either way, its not my call, she thought and pushed her apprehension from her mind and went back to scanning the motley crew assembled outside of the war room.

The girl in the corner with the purple hair was interesting. She was strikingly beautiful, but what drew Isabella's attention was her mechanical arm. Its not often that people that young walk into a merc outfit, much less with replacement limbs. But Isabella supposed that she wasn't much older when she got her own arms blown off. She seemed pensive, or adamant on avoiding contact with others and so Isabella let her be, no need starting something right before her first mission with the crew, though Isabella would certainly like to get to know her afterward. There was also the man who seemed like he wanted to say something but couldn't. He was an odd duck by her first glance, but nothing too out of the ordinary.

Her observations were cut short when the door opened and XO Lang ushered them inside. Isabella let out a sigh of relief and plopped down into her seat in the war room. She listened carefully to the scant details of the briefing. She wasn't sure if Bentz' omission of what they may be facing was intentional or not, but it certainly didn't put her at ease. Her body and infrequent dreams could attest to what happens when you have bad intel and she certainly didn't want a repeat.

“We're heading out in an hour,” Cecilia informed the pilots. “Until then, make any preparations to your FRAMEs and be ready to move. Any questions?”

Isabella moved to speak, but her question had already been forwarded by Elaine. Instead she simply pointed at the fiery readhead "Yeah, what she said." While she waited for an answer the guy who wasn't talking earlier seemed to suddenly find his voice again. What began as a question rather quickly turned into a long treatise on why he needed C&C modules for his FRAME. That's a bit forward for a new recruit she thought and also made a mental note to not ask him many questions. Isabella suspected that if she got him talking he would never stop.

FRAMEs (Mech combat, political intrigue & corporate struggles)

I'll get a post up once I am back from class.

FRAMEs (Mech combat, political intrigue & corporate struggles)

The way it looks, from most characters written up so far, you guys are newer additions to the P. Panthers. But if anyone wants to have been tagging along for a longer period of time, that's fine. The unit was started three years ago, so I'd expect a few veterans, in fact. For the newer guys, the first mission will be an evaluation, of sorts.

@Aristo

I figure my character could be a veteran, not like a founding member or anything but Isabella probably came around in the earlier days. Kept my timeline ambiguous.

FRAMEs (Mech combat, political intrigue & corporate struggles)

Ahhh, okay, that makes sense. I think I'll put more thought into my loadout in the morning. For now I have a stopgap solution.

FRAMEs (Mech combat, political intrigue & corporate struggles)

Isabella Leclerc

Name: Isabella Leclerc
Age: 28
Gender: Female
Disposition: Bellicose, frenetic, results oriented, health nut.

Isabella is a person that finds it very difficult to sit still for any measurable period of time. If idle hands are the devil's playthings then Isabella has an archangel in her palms. If she isn't working then she is either exercising, training, or asleep. There still appears to be deep scarring left from her days before joining the Preying Panthers and that doesn't just include her face and body. If there is any impetus for her constant activity it appears to be a fear of being alone with her own thoughts, and so the few times she isn't throwing herself into some task she surrounds herself with others. She keeps to a very exacting regimen of exercise in order to keep her body in peak physical shape. According to Isabella, this is so she can get the most out of her augments as it doesn't matter if her arms are rated for 600 pounds of lifting capability when the bones and muscles they are anchored to will destroy themselves at half that. While on leave Isabella has a prodigious drinking habit and likes to always be the life of any party she can find, though she is doubly sure to burn off all those empty calories once the haze has worn off.

To her comrades she is jokingly called a robot both because of her Prostheses and refusal to remove herself from a task until she is finished, not that she is emotionally cold or distant. Quite the opposite in fact. People tend to be put off by her intensity and aggression more than anything else, and she is known for picking fights with strangers if the opportunity presents itself. While certainly an aggro individual she doesn't like to curse much, and will instead come up with creative alternatives to commonplace invective.

Background: Isabella was born to working class Sardonian parents who, like most working class blokes in a nation on the rise, were staunch patriots. This patriotism rubbed of on Isabella at a young age and stuck with her throughout her relatively uneventful childhood and adolescence. It led her to join the Sardonian Defense force at the age of 18 where her high scores in coordination and motor control landed her a spot in the nation's illustrious FRAME units. At the time when she finished basic and got assigned to a FRAME unit, the regions that would become the USK were still under the boot of the PU whose constant saber rattling resulted in a border war with the ISS. This would be Isabella's first taste of combat as her unit was quickly thrust to the front to stem the tide of a Perizian advance. Her early battles were against light infantry and infantry fighting vehicles and were therefore slaughters. They instilled in her a euphoric sense of invincibility that was to be short lived once proper PU armor was deployed to the region. While in transit between border towns, Isabella's squad were caught off guard by a prowling unit of Perizian MBTs. The first shot of what was to be a devastating fusillade blew out the front half of the cockpit of her FRAME, taking with it her arms, eye, and shredding her internals with white hot shrapnel. It appeared to be divine providence that she managed to survive the encounter at all as the others in her squad were not so lucky.

Considering the scope of the damage, many say she was lucky to be born Sardonian as both of her arms were ruined up to the shoulder, her eye and parts of her skull had been blown clean away, and her ribs were crushed. She would require extensive reconstructive surgery as well as the wholesale replacement of her arms with prostheses. Her replacement eye managed to cover up most of the facial scarring and reconstructive surgeries actually succeeded in restoring her mostly to her initial facial shape, but her body remains crosshatched with scores of scars from the initial attack and the dozens of surgeries needed to remove the bits of shrapnel and crushed bone from her torso. By the time she was discharged from the military hospital the border conflict had ended with the forming of the USK and a new battle was beginning for the survival of the fledgling nation had begun. She was given the option to re-enlist in the ISSDF but when she found that the ISS was not sending any ground troops to support the USK she declined, no point sitting on a military base with a thumb up her arse til she grew too old to be a FRAME jock. Instead she put herself on the market as a mercenary FRAME pilot in need of a job and a FRAME. She spent a few years jumping around between several low key companies operating in the USK/PU border region before eventually finding her way into the fold of the Preying Panthers. Her reputation as an armor hunter brought her to the attention of Captain Bentz, and having satiated her lust for vengeance, she signed on to the team having found a need for a stable income that didn't come standard to the life of a free agent.

Appearance: Isabella is an attractive women with slightly greater than shoulder length blonde hair(tied up during operations to not get in the way) which frames a face that looks out with a single gray eye. She stands at an impressive 5'10" and has an athletic build brought on by her line of work and borderline obsessive fitness routine. Her most notable features however are her cybernetics and extensive bodily scarring. A Near miss from a run in with a PU MBT blew out the front half of her cockpit, resulting most obviously in the loss of both arms and her right eye, though the damage extended internally as well. Her replacement arms are a new military design that more easily blends in with flesh, though close inspection reveals the are certainly mechanical, while her replacement eye is far more noticeable. Having decided that one way or another she was going to return to the field some day and found that a rugged and functional design would beat out looks any day. Her new eye has more in common with a FRAME's sensor and fire control suite than it does with any fleshy bit it was meant to replace and has the added bonus of making her look like a pirate, so overall a win-win there.
Inventory:
-10mm pistol (Sardonian Defense Force standard service pistol)
-anti-rejection medication
-Bomber Jacket bearing former unit insignia, "Harman's Harpies"

Funds: 276,160c

MP21-AC Handau

Name: MP21-AC Handau "Ghost Killer"
Manufacturer: Kelhei Manufacturing
Height: 4.3 meters
Weight: 6627 kg
Armor: 45 mm durasteel alloy
Speed (Walk): 42 kph
Speed (Skate): 72 kph
Sensor range: 2 km
Communication range: 10 km
Operating range: 500 km
Power: 140
Weight: 85
Price: 305,840c

Armaments:
-1x Autocannon(AFC-40/L) (8)
-2x Missile Launcher (MGR-2A) (40)
-1x AP Machine Gun (MG27) (2)

FRAMEs (Mech combat, political intrigue & corporate struggles)

@Commodore RobotThe rest of the sheets look a-okay; I like Isabella already!

@Aristo

Righteous! Shall I move her over to the character tab?

FRAMEs (Mech combat, political intrigue & corporate struggles)

<Snipped quote by Commodore Robot>

I'll read the character section in a moment but first to answer your question:
I'm not sure I actually specified anywhere, but shoulders can carry one weapon system a piece. The MGR-2A is a one-tube launcher and one of these can fit on a shoulder, just as one rocket pod can fit on a shoulder.
So for the time being two AT missiles are all you can carry, but future launchers may have greater capacity.

@Aristo

Roger Dodger, Will adjust accordingly.

FRAMEs (Mech combat, political intrigue & corporate struggles)

Isabella Leclerc

Name: Isabella Leclerc
Age: 28
Gender: Female
Disposition: Bellicose, frenetic, results oriented, health nut.

Isabella is a person that finds it very difficult to sit still for any measurable period of time. If idle hands are the devil's playthings then Isabella has an archangel in her palms. If she isn't working then she is either exercising, training, or asleep. There still appears to be deep scarring left from her days before joining the Preying Panthers, and that doesn't just include her face and body. If there is any impetus for her constant activity it appears to be a fear of being alone with her own thoughts, and so the few times she hasn't thrown herself into some task she surrounds herself with others. She keeps to a very exacting regimen of exercise in order to keep her body in peak physical shape. She says this is so she can get the most out of her augments as it doesn't matter if her arms are rated for 600 pounds of lifting capability when the bones and muscles they are anchored to will destroy themselves at half that. While on leave Isabella has a prodigious drinking habit, and likes to always be the life of any party she can find, though she is doubly sure to burn off all those empty calories once the haze has worn off.

To her comrades she is jokingly called a robot both because of her Prostheses and refusal to remove herself from a task until she is finished, though she is not emotionally cold or distant. Quite the opposite in fact. People tend to be put off by her intensity and aggression more than anything else, and she is known for picking fights with strangers if the opportunity presents itself. While certainly an aggro individual she doesn't like to curse much, and will instead come up with creative alternatives to commonplace invective.

Background: Isabella was born to working class Sardonian parents who, like most working class blokes in a nation on the rise, were staunch patriots. This patriotism rubbed of on Isabella at a young age and stuck with her throughout her relatively uneventful childhood and adolescence. It led her to join the Sardonian Defense force at the age of 18 where her high scores in coordination and motor control landed her a spot in the nation's illustrious FRAME units. At the time she finished basic and got assigned to a FRAME unit, the regions that would become the USK were still under the boot of the PU whose constant saber rattling resulted in a border war with the ISS. This would be Isabella's first taste of combat as her unit was quickly thrust to the front to stem the tide of a Perizian advance. Her early battles were against light infantry and infantry fighting vehicles and were therefore slaughters. They instilled in her a euphoric sense of invincibility that was to be short lived once proper PU armor was deployed to the region. While in transit between border towns, Isabella's squad were caught off guard by a prowling squad of Perizian MBTs. The first shot of what was to be a devastating Fusillade blew out the front half of the cockpit of her FRAME, taking with it her arms, eye, and shredding her internals with white hot shrapnel. It appeared to be divine providence that she managed to survive the encounter at all as the others in her squad were not so lucky.

Considering the scope of the damage, many say she was lucky to be born Sardonian as both of her arms were ruined up to the shoulder, her eye and parts of her skull had been blown clean away, and her ribs were crushed. She would require extensive reconstructive surgery to her face as well as the wholesale replacement of her arms with prostheses. Her choice for a replacement eye managed to cover up most of the facial scarring and reconstructive surgeries actually succeeded in restoring her mostly to her initial facial shape, but her body remains crosshatched with scores of scars from the initial attack and the dozens of surgeries needed to remove the bits of shrapnel and crushed bone from her torso. By the time she was discharged from the military hospital the border conflict had ended with the forming of the USK and a new battle was beginning for the survival of the fledgling nation had begun. She was given the option to re-enlist in the ISSDF but when she found that the ISS was not sending any ground troops to support the USK she declined, no point sitting on a military base with a thumb up her arse til she grew too old to be a FRAME jock. Instead she put herself on the market as a mercenary FRAME pilot in need of a job and a FRAME. She spent a few years jumping around between several low key companies operating in the USK/PU border region before eventually finding her way into the fold of the Preying Panthers. Her reputation as an armor hunter brought her to the attention of Captain Bentz, and having satiated her lust for vengeance, she signed on to the team having found a need for a stable income that didn't come standard to the life of a free agent.

Appearance: Isabella is an attractive women with slightly greater than shoulder length blonde hair(tied up during operations to not get in the way) which frames a face that looks out with a single gray eye. She stands at an impressive 5' 10" and has an athletic build brought on by her line of work and borderline obsessive fitness routine. Her most notable features however are her cybernetics and extensive bodily scarring. A Near miss from a run in with a PU MBT when she was just a greenhorn FRAME jock in the Sardonian Defense Force blew out the front half of her cockpit, Resulting most obviously in the loss of both arms and her right eye, though the damage extended internally as well. Her replacement arms are a new military design that more easily blends in with flesh, though close inspection reveals the are certainly mechanical, while her replacement eye is far more noticeable. While she could have sprung for a less conspicuous model she decided that one way or another she was going to return to the field some day and found that a rugged and practical design would beat out looks any day. Her new eye has more in common with a FRAME's sensor and fire control suite than it does with any fleshy bit it was meant to replace, and comes with the added bonus of making her look like a pirate, so overall a win-win there.
Inventory:
-10mm pistol (Sardonian Defense Force standard service pistol)
-anti-rejection medication
-Bomber Jacket bearing former unit insignia, "Harman's Harpies"

Funds: 276,160c

Other: If anything doesn't check out feel free to tell me, I invented some world events that I hope aren't too overboard.

MP21-AC Handau

Name: MP21-AC Handau "Ghost-Killer"
Manufacturer: Kelhei Manufacturing
Height: 4.3 meters
Weight: 6627 kg
Armor: 45 mm durasteel alloy
Speed (Walk): 42 kph
Speed (Skate): 72 kph
Sensor range: 2 km
Communication range: 10 km
Operating range: 500 km
Power: 140
Weight: 85
Price: 305,840c

Armaments:
-2x Autocannon(AFC-40/L) (16)
-2x Missile Launcher (MGR-2A) (40)
-1x AP Machine Gun (MG27) (2)

For your humble consideration. I have a question about weapons for our FRAMEs though. specifically if there are hard limits to the weapons mounted on them or if that is solely determined by weight? If its just weight then my stuff checks out, or if its a more defined system of 2 shoulders, 2 arms, and a torso; or something like that then I need to revise my choice of arms.