In that case:
Countless years ago, the influence of humanity extended into the far beyond, reaching inhospitable areas that were rife with savage monsters and bandits that the local militias simply could not lend the man power in order to handle. Among these dangers, the goblins rose as the most prominent, continuously raiding hamlets in order to capture slaves for their own conflict against dwarvenkind. Within one of these hamlets, there lied an artisan toy maker, a man who wanted more then anything to calm and entertain people with his colourful creations. Yet, as long as his settlement was persecuted, rather then remain happy, the local denizens slowly grew more and more unhinged. Not wanting such a catastrophic even as those rumored to have occurred in dwarven settlements, the toy maker built a militia himself. Using techniques long forgotten, he forged soldiers of tin and magic, automa that surpassed even the greatest mortal swordsman in combat capability. So skilled, as the legends said, that a single automation was capable of felling an entire wave of arrows mid-flight with the swift moment of the blade. Yet on the other hand, they were also gentle; When not protecting their creators, the machines would serve as play things for their children, their whimsical colourscheme of yellows, purples, and blues soothing and exciting them as the massive constructs safely watched over them.
These machines remained in operation long after the toy maker had finally passed away, protecting generations of people and instilling fear in the legends passed by their adversaries. Yet, though no living threat was capable of threatening them, natural (or so it seemed) disasters were a different matter entirely. For on that faithful day, the day that obsidian covered the world, the hamlet which the tin guardians were devoted to protecting, now having grown into a respectable city, was unceremoniously buried. Nothing remained of the area, and its inhabitants, the tin men included, were encased within the ground for centuries, the latter remaining conscious for every waking moment. And perhaps it was for the better, as the machines, warped from isolation for such a long time, had lost touch of their original directive; without anything to protect, their orders warped into destroying anything that moved.
(Universe where The World is Obsidianized)
Though their story would most likely have ended there, to be slowly crushed by the pressure of the earth, Armok would have other plans for them; A tremor, of the very same kind that imprisoned them in the earth, would be the force which exposed these automa to the surface once again. Their appearances were reflections to how far they had fallen; Once resembling stylized representations of human champions, built to a towering scale, the tin men were now devoid of colour or any other frilly gubbins. Their bodies were austere masses of metal, dull grey plates held together by rivets, and all that remained of their faces were protruding, beak-like noses and two eerie, golden lenses for eyes. Like zombies they now roam, attacking and destroying the humans they were once made to protect, like a tyrant acting against his own people.
(Universe where the World is saved through Corporate Decisions)
As Parasol took the time to scout across the reaches of Everoc, they minutely noticed the tin automations standing guard at a single seemingly insignificant town. Though normally not something of much note to them, the fact that they possessed uncanny reflexes for machines built in such a primitive world drove interest, and the corporation confiscated a handful of machines in order to study. Stripping the machines of their childish exteriors (ostensibly to "enhance their performance" by reducing their drag, though mainly because they thought their appearance was silly), testing commenced.
Results were miraculous; The tin automations were capable of completely deflecting concentrated machine gun fire, even when being shot at by multiple guns from multiple directions, only failing when the blades they wielded physically gave way. Larger projectiles proved more challenging, but the machines triumphed over conventional light infantry weapons virtually 100% of the time, and attempts at trying to challenge the machines in a melee have proved them fully capable of destroying virtually any available unit in combat given the proper weapon, only being bested after hours of fighting wielding swords of non-weapons grade materials against fully power-armoured genetically advanced infantry teams, or attempting to use non-bladed weapons (noting that "whomever programed these tin mechanicals must have limited them to using fencing techniques"). This promising display gave ideas of using them as either shock troops or mobile shields (utilizing their uncanny ability to deflect bullets), but ultimately, all attempts at getting the machines to cooperate have proved costly, bloody, and expensive in both time and resources, though the option of releasing them into enemies on their own and letting them work on their own devices has yet to be entirely ruled out.
Dissections of downed machines (usually derelict wrecks already broken down when recovered then fresh subjects) showed that the automa worked through a combination of clockwork mechanisms and metal pulleys in order to move their limbs, but remained inconclusive as far as to what was powering them or where their computation units were located, beyond interesting patterns engraved within the backs of the metal plates that made up their exterior skins, leading to hypothesis that these patterns are in fact circuitry of some kind. Until their main source of programing, as well as said programming's language is deciphered, these tin tyrants prove frustratingly impossible to reproduce; all attempts at building physical replicas, cast using molds of the individual plates and modified to use a conventional power source have proved laughably incapable.
Eventually, many of the units have been stored on bases upon the surface of Everoc [(the current continuity)], and there have been "baseless" reports of some of the machines escaping confinement and running amok, reacting violently to their foreign surroundings by destroying anything they detect as moving while vainly attempting to find the lands they were abducted from. The Parason PR department has assured any weary populace that whatever threat they might posses is diminished by the fact that any units stored on the surface are kept separate of any possible object they could effectively wield as a weapon.
Some partially successful modifications conduced by Parasol include restraining tin automations (mainly those that they are lucky enough to catch disarmed) and welding plates of sturdier materials such as titanium or hardened steel over their more fragile tin bodies, sometimes extending towards integrating fully hardened vehicle-grade composite armour in order to maximize defensive abilities. These "Clad Tyrants" are a fearsome entity indeed, lacking the vulnerabilities of their unarmoured peers, yet also move far slower as a result, and are scarcely less vulnerable to the high-calibre weapons capable of defeating a tyrant's physical deflections anyways, limiting their existence to a few safely confined prototypes.
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Topic: [34.11] Spearbreakers - It shudders and begins to move (Read 2282824 times)