[center][b][h2]Miranda ‘Mira’ Amaar[/h2][/b][i]“No one can pilot a mechanical.”
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Age 19[/i] (personal notes: moroccan-nigerian)[/center][hr][h3]Personality:[/h3]
[indent]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. Those on the service team for the machine are among her most trusted associates, most being transfers from Tshwane for that reason. The mech is very much her baby ... a massive, 80 ton metal baby.
(personal notes: Amara + Shuri)[/indent]
[h3]Backstory:[/h3]
[indent][i]She never really did what the legends say. Even the elements of truth to her tale are dripping with hyperbole. But even since before the Great Fire, truth was never more than half of any good legend.[/i]

They say she did it alone. Really she was only one of many worked on the project and a mal-envisioned one 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 families that lived there were constantly in fear of the next attack, struggling to get by every time their supplies were pillaged. 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. The big break would come one fateful day when the dust settled from a corporate skirmish.

Three full-size Neural Combatants had fallen just a few kilometers away. The shantytown had been rattled for hours by the explosions of the battle. A few warriors were able to ambush a salvage crew trying to recover the precious neural nets from the downed mechs. The neural cores themselves were all shot, run through with anti-tank warheads or heavy piercing weapons, but the salvage mech being utilized was completely intact barring a few bullet holes and a blood stain on the harness. The industrial salvage suits weren’t neurally interfaced, relying on the less-capable mechanical control interface, but a working skeleton of a mech was still a better trophy than nothing.

Mira was among those working on the machine, being an inquisitive youth and a brilliant mind. Her unique way of thinking solved several problems with the armor fitting and with ammo feeding. She also served as one of the regular test pilots and became rather proficient at it over time, though she would not go on to be the mech’s regular combat pilot. Nevertheless she did operate the mech in combat once out of necessity, when a surprise raiding attack pinned down all the other trained pilots. The machine, christened Vanguard by its design team, was brutally effective at defending against raiding attacks by bandits and even Paragon, but the news that an independent village in northwest Africa had a working combat-capable mech ended up drawing more frequent attacks rather than deterring them even if they were easier than ever to put down. A variety of bandit clans thought they could steal the mech for themselves, but none were ever successful.

The story of her time in combat swept the desert faster than the summer dust storms, twisting itself into a legendary fable as it traveled. It became farther from reality with each passing mile 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, and not at Mira’s hand. Vanguard stood barely 3 meters at full stature and couldn’t take a hit from anything larger than 9.3mm high-power, lead alone any of the gamut of energy weapons a real NC could be carrying.

For quite obvious reasons, Tshwane Mining was very interested in the supposed ‘girl who built her own mech’. Despite the exaggerations in the so-called “Legend of Mira Amaar”, she had still piloted a mechanical in combat at the age of sixteen. Mechanicals, non-combat mechs notable for their mechanical control interface harnesses, were widely considered impossible to utilize as combat platforms due to sluggishness, lack of feedback, and the physical exertion of controlling the machine. The interface style had never even been considered on a combat vehicle due to its inability to compete with neural interfaces. 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. She, and the mech she calls her own, are on loan with a mercenary company based east of the horn of Africa.[/indent]
[h3]Tactical Preferences and Skills:[/h3]
[b]Interfacing:[/b]
[indent]Mira pilots her mech through a hybrid interface, perhaps the only one in the world. Sensor data, sensory and haptic feedback, and secondary control functions are handled through a neural interface. The primary movement control and weapon triggers are a physical harness. The mechanical interfacing favors her existing experience and lets her cheat the sync score system in order to pilot when she should not be able to by all accounts.[/indent]
[b]Synchronicity:[/b]
[indent]Her synchronization score for a full-control setup is far too low to ever operate a true NC, measuring around 35% in testing. The unique hybrid interface of Legion essentially cheats the system. The reduced neural load of not controlling the mech’s movement inflates her sync score to 60%, making effective piloting possible. Her neural implants are located just behind her temples, maximizing interface with the sensory regions of the brain but do not interface at all with motor control.[/indent]
[b]Combat:[/b]
[indent]Legion is a behemoth of a mech, built for heavy fire. Being such a massive vehicle makes it sluggish in combat, but the vehicle’s lack of mobility conceals the sluggishness of her unique interface setup. The pacing of the mech is in many ways a necessity, though it also enables a very methodical combat style. 

Mira opted to mimic the combat capabilities of the Vanguard mech which essentially served as a prototype for Legion’s design. The left arm would carry a high volume of fire weapon to suppress and shred lighter targets, while the right arm was a massively powerful weapon that could obliterate targets given an accurate shot. To this end, she naturally gravitated towards the fitting of a rotary cannon and a railgun, and then opting for more military-traditional ammunition types, rather than Tshwane-signature diamond-boron rounds. She fervently argues that depleted uranium APFSDS penetrating slugs are better against armored targets anyway.[/indent]
[hr][hr][center][h2]Legion[/h2][i]“Fear Nothing.”[/i]
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[i]Vanguard, Legion’s predecessor, testing its mobility after the armor fitting was complete. Weapons were not yet attached.[/i]

[img]https://exodusesports.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Bot_titan.png[/img]
[i]In my head Legion’s general chassis shape somewhat resembles this, but it’s not 1:1. The torso protrudes too far forward, the legs are a bit too tall, and there’s a lack of head/sensor pod.[/i][/hider][u]Long-range Heavy Weapons Specialist, bipedal humanoid, [i]hybrid-mechanical[/i][/u][/center][h3]Development:[/h3]
[indent]Legion bears the same rough formfactor as its Vanguard predecessor, though with several key upgrades made during its development as a military grade war machine. The weapons are bolted directly to the elbow joint, rather than being underslung against an existing forearm structure. The torso region now fully encloses the com-pod rather than leaving lightly-armored protruding arm housings. This has necessitated the vehicle be quite large, even moreso than initial expectations. 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.

It is fitted with a modern neural net and interfacing, though it was at Mira’s insistence that the primary movement and weapons control remain tied to a mechanical interface. This hybrid control scheme is unheard of in modern mecha, widely considered impossible, and is possibly the only example in the world. The mech also features voice key detection and a mixed reality display in the com-pod as backup systems in the event the neural interface fails for whatever reason. It is thus theoretically possible for anyone to pilot Legion regardless of sync rating, though in practice it is not that simple at all.

Its backside features four modular mounting positions in a four-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.[/indent][h3]Armaments:[/h3]
[b]Primary:[/b]
-35mm ballistic rotary chaingun
[indent]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.[/indent]
-75mm high precision railgun
[indent]An extreme-range weapon chambered in DU-APFSDS penetrating slugs on the right arm optimized for effectively defeating heavily armored targets.[/indent]
[b]Secondary:[/b]
-Multipurpose Tactical Missiles (upper)
[indent]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.[/indent]
-MGL cannons (lower)
[indent]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.[/indent]