Ammunition is heavy, armor is heavier, and the Rift doesn't care if your back hurts. The Walking Armory isn't just a training regimen; it’s a bio-mechanical necessity. Mercenary contracts in the Outer Sphere are often priced by weight—not of the cargo, but of the Soldier protecting it.
"Light infantry is dead infantry" is the motto of the Vlaan Yards security forces. A true Soldier doesn't choose between a rotary cannon and a rocket launcher; they bring both, strap a shield to their back, and hang a med-kit off their belt. They are walking fortifications, their boots reinforced with hydraulic dampeners to keep them from cracking the pavement under their own density. To a Soldier, being "encumbered" is a state of mind they do not possess.
Walking Armory redefines the Soldier’s relationship with equipment, shifting the burden of weight from raw muscular strength to sheer physical resilience.
Walking Armory Feature
Your endurance training empowers you to carry a load of heavy equipment. When determining your Strength for using armor, you can instead choose to use your Constitution modifier. If you already meet the Strength requirement for the armor you're wearing, reduce that armor's Bulk by 1 (to a minimum of 1).
In addition, increase the amount of Bulk you can carry before becoming encumbered by half your Constitution modifier rounded up. Increase your maximum carried Bulk by your Constitution modifier.
Non-Combat Applications
The "Human Mule": In salvage operations where gravity is unstable or vehicles can't fit, the Soldier becomes the primary transport. They can strap entire reactor cores or loot caches to their rig, carrying the party’s payday out of the danger zone.
Physical Anchor: In high winds, hull breaches, or gravity shifts, the Soldier is the safest thing to hold onto. Their mass and magnetic boots make them an immovable point of reference.
Concealed Smuggling: A "Walking Armory" has so many pouches, plates, and compartments that searching them is a nightmare. Soldiers often smuggle high-value, small-bulk items (data chips, gems, refined Rift-dust) simply by mixing them into the chaotic jumble of their standard loadout.
Societal Impact
The logistics of the Commission armies are built around this capability. Drop-ships don't need to deploy supply crates if the Soldiers jumping out are carrying three days of continuous-fire ammunition on their backs. This has led to the design of "Soldier-Pattern" support weapons—guns so heavy that non-Soldiers can't even lift them without powered armor, effectively serving as a theft-deterrent system.
Adventure Hooks
The Gravity Well: The party is trapped on a planet with 1.5x standard gravity. While the rest of the team suffers penalties to movement and exhaustion, the Soldier (whose carrying capacity is defined by Constitution/Endurance) operates normally, becoming the sole provider of physical labor and combat efficacy.
The Living Barricade: During a prison riot, the Soldier must block a hallway not by fighting, but by physically piling so much of their own dropped gear and body mass into the doorway that the rioters physically cannot push through.
The Golden Load: A Chronologist hires the Soldier to transport a "Time-Anchor"—a device of immense, unnatural density—across a zone where anti-grav tech fails. The Soldier is the only biological entity capable of bearing the weight without spinal collapse.
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