Recognition · standing issue

What walks up there

Ten chassis are common enough that every operative is expected to name them on sight, from silhouette, in bad light, at range. Learn the four of ours first — you will be standing next to those — and then learn the six of theirs in the order they will kill you, which is not the order of their size.

At one scale

Drawn at the same pixels per unit, which is the only way this picture is worth anything. A Malakh is not a small Nehemoth. It is a different problem.

Ours

Flying · Small · “wheels within wheels”

Ophan

A maintenance drone: two rings turning perpendicular to each other around a lit core, which is a shape somebody chose deliberately and which the older instructors will quote Ezekiel at you about if you let them. It finds whatever near it is damaged — you first, if you are bonded to it — and mends it with a beam, and it turns faster while it works.

Send one to the door of wherever you live. Coming home injured and being repaired without asking for it is the single best argument for building constructs at all.

Integrity

15

Armour

2

Speed

0.35

Ohr/s

2

Quadruped · Medium · “the flaming sword”

Cherub

A four-legged sentry that patrols slowly and does not leave. Cherubim are what you put at the entrance to something you intend to keep — which is, again, the exact job the name is taken from, and the complex has never pretended otherwise.

Slow on purpose. A sentry that chases is a sentry that has been lured off its post.

Integrity

30

Armour

4

Speed

0.25

Ohr/s

2

Bipedal · Medium

Erel

A guardian: bipedal, the heaviest thing Seraphim fields on two legs, and the only one of ours built to stand in front of you rather than behind you. Fifty points of integrity and six of armour, which is more than the Hunter that will be sent to deal with it.

Erel takes a weapon slot and an energy blade. It is the construct you build when you have accepted that something is going to have to be met head-on.

Integrity

50

Armour

6

Speed

0.35

Ohr/s

3

Flying · Small

Malakh

A mining drone, and the only construct here with no armour at all. It digs, it stockpiles, and it will do that until its Ohr runs out or something notices it. It is not a combat unit and will not pretend to be one.

Fifteen integrity and nothing on top of it. Do not send a Malakh anywhere a Watcher has been.

Integrity

15

Armour

0

Speed

0.35

Ohr/s

2

Theirs

Flying · Small

Watcher

A hovering eye, carrying every sensor modality the enemy has thought worth miniaturising. It is not what kills you. It is what tells the things that kill you where to go, and it will call an ever-increasing weight of them until you are dust.

Sixteen integrity and almost no armour — trivially destructible, and destroying one is the loudest thing you can do. The correct answer to a Watcher is almost always to not be there.

Integrity

16

Armour

2

Speed

0.4

Sitra/s

1

Flying · Small · “field medic”

Gamaliel

A small flying support frame that stitches its own side back together mid-engagement with a flickering gold beam. Twelve integrity, one point of armour: the most fragile thing on the surface, and the reason an engagement you were winning suddenly is not.

Kill the healer first. This is the oldest instruction in the manual and operatives still die learning it.

Integrity

12

Armour

1

Speed

0.45

Sitra/s

2

Bipedal · Medium

Hunter

Bipedal, raptor-shaped, and built for exactly one purpose. It sprints when it has you. Its eyes carry a searchlight and it will use it. When it cannot reach you it charges and fires a gold beam instead, which is the part people find out about after they have climbed something.

Pillaring up does not work. It was the standard advice for about a year and it is in older manuals and it will get you killed.

Integrity

24

Armour

4

Speed

0.35

Sitra/s

2

Quadruped · Large · “the Disputer”

Thagirion

Sixty integrity behind eight of armour on four legs, and it anchors. Anchored, it is a wall with opinions; unanchored, it charges, and what it charges through does not stay standing. It is slow — a fifth of the speed of a Watcher — and that is the whole of your advantage.

It cannot follow you everywhere. Take the fight somewhere with corners.

Integrity

60

Armour

8

Speed

0.2

Sitra/s

3

Quadruped · Large · “the Burners”

Golachab

Artillery. It barely moves at all — the slowest thing either side fields — and it does not need to, because it turns stone to slag at a range you will not close casually. Eighty integrity, eight armour, and a core that exposes when it fires.

The core is the entire fight. Everything before it is positioning, and everything after it is fast.

Integrity

80

Armour

8

Speed

0.08

Sitra/s

2

Stationary · Large · “the Whisperers”

Nehemoth

A control node: stationary, three metres of it, a hundred and fifty integrity, and it never attacks anything. It makes everything around it better — buffs its brood, moves Sitra to whatever is running low, and calls in more. It is also, per orbital survey, manufacturing unit variants nobody predicted.

While it stands the engagement does not end, because the engagement is not with the things attacking you. It is with the obelisk that keeps sending them.

Integrity

150

Armour

10

Speed

0

Sitra/s

0

Fuel, and a courtesy

Both sides run on the same principle and not the same substance, and this is exploitable. A Seraphim construct takes an Ohr Capsule from your hand and is the better for it. An Adversary construct takes Sitra the same way — and takes Ohr as damage, which is a fact worth carrying about with you.

Ours will also accept Sitra. It works. It costs you a point of corruption each time and it costs the construct something slower than that, and § 3 of the manual is where that argument is had properly.

10 chassis, with integrity, armour, speed and drain read out of each construct's own configuration in the mod source rather than out of the player guide, which is a generation behind on roughly half of them.

Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear. Job 41:33