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Lore Compendium 2 - Stryders and Their Weapons
🕑 Added 2024-06-11 04:44:09 +0000 UTC‘Stryder’ is the term used to describe any anti-gravity, five-limbed vehicle with a height of over 3 metres that can switch between a flight mode and a bipedal mode.
Inception: The first two stryders were built by Emperor Schorl in 51348AD using Twilight Shroud pylon nanomachines and Neural Flare knowledge. Although Schorl quickly lost the ability to construct more stryders of this type, they provided the blueprint on which all other stryders were based. The first stryder factories, created when Schorl still retained much of his flare knowledge, produced combat models closely resembling the two initial machines in function and appearance. When the Rat Civil War reached a point where expansion was more important than defence, a second type of stryder factory was created that produced simpler, less powerful utility machines that could be built rapidly. These were used in the construction of the megawarrens, then once the war was won, to conduct every large-scale project within the northern hemisphere. As Schorl lost more of his knowledge, stryder construction at their standard size became too difficult for him to comprehend, so his next factories produced much larger models, essentially upscaled utility stryders. These were constructed to enable the threat of continent-wide decimation and designated MK 3 stryders, with the previous combat and utility stryders being retroactively designated MK 2, and the original models designated MK1. Later, in 51350AD, Emperor Schorl created his last stryder factory. Being now barely able to understand his own technology, Schorl could only work at a colossal scale. This was fortunate, as he wished to produce a vehicle of oppressive menace, wielding a weapon large enough to fire effectively into space and through the crust of the earth. Thus, the giga stryder came to be.
Anatomy: Stryder frames are made up of bone-like segments held together by lubricated ball-and-socket joints. Armoured panels and storage compartments cover some or all of this skeleton, depending on the model, and gravity motors are housed in dome-like structures on the forearms, thighs, calves, crotch and neck of the machine. The main body contains space for battery storage and cargo, and also holds a small engine-room and a bathroom. At the rear of the body is the main gravity impulse drive for flight, and two more such engines are situated at the rear of each thigh section. Embarkation and disembarkation are done through the articulated mouth of the stryder, and the vehicle is driven from a motorbike-like seat in the middle of the pilot cabin in its head. The top of the head has its own gravity engine and can be separated from the main body and used as an escape pod or shuttle.
Stryders are composed primarily of carbon fibre. The virtually endless supply of this material enables near limitless stryder production, and at the height of Schorl’s empire, it is estimated that three hundred million machines were in simultaneous use. Carbon fibre also renders stryders immune to electromagnetic pulses or catalytic oxidisation waves. The gravity engines, ship computer and pilot interface require some metal and crystal components, but these are deeply integrated to minimise risk of damage.
As well as flexible arms for dextrous, strenuous work and close combat, stryders have long legs to ensure that when standing or walking, their gravity fields don’t interfere with anything on the ground. Their hunched posture allows them to more easily interpret the nerve impulses of their pilot, who is sitting in an almost horizontal position. As close correlation is important, stryders intended for use by animals other than rats are altered to more closely resemble the shape of their pilots. Combat stryders are never modified in this way.
Every stryder’s body and computer had redundant sub-systems incorporated into their design when Schorl built the factories that made them. His incomplete flare knowledge meant that he himself did not know the function of these systems, only that he needed to include them for the machines to work properly. The systems can be hijacked by an individual with full flare knowledge, allowing for remote control of any stryder.
Locomotion and control: Calculations made by a stryder’s computer regulate the direction and intensity of artificial gravity fields emitted by the gravity motors in its limbs and digits to move each part in specified directions, with specified force, and at specified speeds, according to the extrapolated nerve impulses of their pilots. This system also allows stryder parts to be controlled, with difficulty, while detatched. Unhindered by the latency produced by mechanical or hydraulic systems, stryders are comparatively swift and dextrous, as the only resistance to their movement is inertia.
A stryder is piloted by a single animal, although other crew members will often be present in ancillary roles, especially in Mk 3 or giga class machines. In flight mode, the stryder is controlled much like a motorbike with a three-dimensional range, with muscular impulses from the pilot’s movements in their seat translated to turns, climbs and dives by the computer, and handlebar interfaces controlling speed and weapons. In bipedal mode, the nerve-interfacing undersuit of the pilot’s body armour is connected to the stryder’s computer by inserting the armour’s gorget into the front panel of the pilot seat, and a VR headset from the suit’s backpack covers the pilot’s eyes, giving them a real-time visualisation of what the stryder sees through its eyes.
Stryder weapons:
Diffusors: These energy weapons fire streams of near-lightspeed subatomic particles, gravitationally accelerated in a vacuum centrifuge (the large disc that is often visible at the rear) and forced out through a barrel-situated gravity vortex tunnel. These particles glow red as they pass through airborne molecules and cause relativistic reactions in any solid or liquid mass they encounter. The acceleration of the particle stream is such that it will instantaneously turn almost any obstacle to plasma, although high-density materials such as lead provide some resistance. Increasing in logarithmic scale, diffusor weapons are given classes to denote their relative power, with class 1 diffusors being handheld pistols capable of firing through four metres of solid steel, while class 12 or higher diffusors beams can pass through the moon when fired from Earth.
Diffusor blades: Most stryder’s ‘wings’ convert to long, forearm mounted blades in bipedal form that employ diffusor technology. Instead of being fired out through a gravity tunnel, the particles accelerated in a blade’s gravity centrifuge are forced into a tight orbit by a carefully defined gravity field that runs along the edge of the blade. Effectively a sub-lightspeed chainsaw, the blades can effortlessly penetrate any solid object, although active blades of a similar class will repel each other, a much higher-class blade will pierce a blade of a much lower class, and a strong enough energy barrier will repel the particles of any class. Diffusor blades can be deactivated by instantaneously reducing the orbit of the particles in the stream, bringing them back down through the mono-molecular channel that runs through the middle of the blade and back into the gravity centrifuge.
Catalytic oxidisation wave (COW): This weapon emits a wave of energy that breaks metallic bonds, rendering any metallic machine it comes into contact with brittle and useless.
Statistics:
MK 2 Utility stryder
Height: 12 metres (standing)
Crew: Minimum 1 - Maximum 18 small creatures
Weapons: Two class 2 diffusors, two class 2 diffusor scalpels, twenty-five class 1 diffusors
Max speed: Mach 1.1
Average armour thickness: 15cm
Mk 2 Combat stryder
Height: 15 metres (standing)
Crew: Minimum 1 – Maximum 6 small creatures
Weapons: two class 3 diffusors, two class 3 diffusor swords, one hundred class 1 diffusors, six gravity bombs, catalytic oxidation wave, E.M.P pulse wave
Max speed: Mach 3.6
Average armour thickness 80cm
Mk 3 Stryder
Height: 45 metres (standing)
Crew: Minimum 1 – Recommended 3+ - Maximum 200.
Weapons: four class 8 diffusors, twenty-five class 1 diffusors, two class 4 diffusor scalpels
Max speed: 880kp/h
Giga stryder
Height: 205 metres (standing)
Crew: Minimum 1 – Recommended 230 – Maximum 8000. Stryder compliment: 8
Weapons: Class 12 diffusor, two class 8 diffusors, 2 class 8 diffusor scalpels, 10,856 class 2 diffusors
Max speed: 620kp/h
Average armour thickness: 5,000cm
Comments
Kitfox Crimson
I'll add those bits into the lore. ^__^ But the short answer is yes, the weapons are detatchable, modular and interchangable.
MercenaryX
juicer then I thought
Nyxcha
question about the Mk 2 stryder weapons. We see Mk 2 utility without its weapons, so guessing they optional. is the combat stryder able to pick up and drop its Diffusors in a similar way? and if a utility picks up a class 3 diffusor, would it be able to use it? or is its power connection different/incompatible. or power output not enough
