Warning: The Below Contains Fluff I Wrote That is Likely Amusingly Contradictory to the Established Canon, But I Wrote Anyways, Because EhThe
Manus (
"hand", referring to the
Hand of the Republic which the Penrian Army represents) series of argoths are the mass-produced war machines that form the bulk of the Penrian Army, notable for being one of the first models of argoth to be produced using the assembly line method which the Republic of Penry has become renowned for, pioneering the use of interchangeable parts and industrial production methods in order to produce machines of adequate quality by the thousands, which in turn has allowed the series to proliferate beyond the boarders of the republic, in spite of the fact that the nation is known to keep its doors closed to all other civilizations.
Prior to the use of factories, argoth within Penry were similar to those of many of the outside nations; Though each nation had its own closely guarded secrets and subtly differing methods in the manufacturing process, virtually all argoths were pain-strikingly fabricated by hand, with even machines of the same class having widely varying properties tailored to suit their owner's needs, the upkeep of a single argoth requiring a significant amount of income in order to procure. As a result, argoth were owned and used by those that could afford them, these individuals primarily being knights supported by guilds (and, in Penry's case as a republic, the
"Gentry", argoth-owning wanderers that are rough analogs to the nobles of other nations), who were tasked to fight off Gaiakin (huge monsters) in the same way that their increasingly ineffective landship predecessors (from which many knights had originated from) had attempted, as well as bandits and invaders.
Though this period of time has often been romanticized as a golden age by most other nations, Penry faced serious problems in regards to its boarders. The cavalry on threads were dying out as support shifted to the more elegant men in argoth, and the Penrian army had all but dissolved, leaving wide gaps of defense from which the then untamed clans of Hexsis used as points to maraud towns and villages with impunity, having procured argoth themselves which they used to a devastating effect. It was at this point that the Republic figured out that machines capable of covering a large amount of ground while still posing a threat to the raiding barbarians was need, and the guilds of Penry banded together to find a solution to their predicament.
The initial suggestion of producing more affordable tracked landships was closely looked into yet found ultimately unfeasible, as the last knights knowledgeable in how the machines worked had died out almost a century ago, and the once mundane controls of these machines had become incomprehensibly alien (though, the knowledge regained from studding their track system would later become indispensable, see bellow). Proficiently strong magicians could fight off single machines, yet their use in the creation of argoths themselves made committing them to such tasks ultimately counterproductive. It would have appeared that in order to build an army of argoths capable of defending all of the Penrian boarder, they would need to find a way to make argoth simple enough to be produce using existing technology.
Notably, centuries of metallurgy research had granted the Republic important innovations in weapons production, and some time around
290-300 A.E., weapon production had become standardized to the point that most Penrian arms were of the same, homogenous quality and balance, making their weapons very sturdy and reliable, yet also cheap enough to be issued at an army-wide scale, leading to a large argoth-grade weapons surplus as far more weapons were being produced then being used and replaced. It was thought that applying this method of quality control in order to homogenize the parts from which future argoth were assembled would make producing them easier, when in reality it lead to the discovery of
interchangeable parts.
While many nations today have since learned to use templates similar to the ones first procured by Penry in order to produce argoths with similar outward appearances in a way sufficient to arm large-scale militaries, these machines often have variable quality, are largely restricted in production to small workshops fielded by guilds of artisans, and many times two argoths of the same template will have few interchangeable parts amongst each other, requiring either professional mechanics or machines in order to repair. The use of standardized, interchangeable parts remains a trait largely unique to the republic, and has led to a massive logistics advantage that gives the nation dominance over others when it comes to maintaining large armies of argoth, allowing designs such as the Manus to be repaired on the field by their pilots without the need of expensive magic, which might not always be available.
An even later innovation would be the use of the assembly line, a production tactic ingeniously pioneered by the combined knowledge of multiple Penrian guilds, which had since merged to form multi-skilled companies capable of employing a wide range of workers. Combined with threads powered by water wheels and mana generators, this allowed the production of reasonable quality argoth parts by relatively unskilled workers, and lead to the creation of the
Manus I in the year of 3
94 A.E., the first argoth model to be successfully mass-produced. The Manus was hardly an elegant machine under most definitions: its legs were solid cast bars of steel, given crude metal feet and cylindrical joints (sturdier and easier to fabricate then the more complex ball joint utilized by most conventional designs, yet also far less flexible with a restricted range of motion) in order to make their production as simple as practically possible, yet also resulted in the machine adopting a cumbersome gait; Precision movement was frustratingly difficult, while the insufficiently large feet meant that the top-heavy vehicle was liable to sink into softer earth such as sand and marshland, thought by some to defeat the very purpose of using legs in the first place. Rivets held much of the plating in its upper body in place, and were known to fail long before the armor they held in place gave way, allowing a skilled opponent to simply strike an area of the machine repeatedly in order to knock literally its armor out. A turret based off of an aborted landship design served as the machine's head from which the pilot sat within, and was originally given the ability to rotate 360 degrees in order to compensate for the argoth's poor turn rate, allowing the pilot to watch their back without moving the whole machine. In practice, the use of the turret was situational at best, often times the heat of battle causing it to turn on its own, hindering the pilot's view while also disorienting and dizzying him, causing many to request to mechanics to have the turret be manually welded into the machine itself.
Yet in spite of these flaws, the Manus I was cheap and otherwise mechanically sound front-line soldier; it rarely broke down, and once the pilot got used to its jarring movement cycle, it could march for exceedingly long distances without extended maintenance, and when its armor didn't come off at the seams, it was more then capable of withstanding both Gaiakin and bandit blows and retaliate in kind. The simple design and availability of the argoth led to many modifications over the course of its long service life, leading to the more reliable
Manus II, which replaced the clumsy legs with more conventional ball joints as well as simplified the design even further, and the
Manus III, which used an all-welded construction in order to eliminate the problem of spalling, as well as improved the vehicle's balance. The later Manus IV and beyond would be completely new models produced by the same company, their main connection being similar methods of production and aesthetic.
Though still among the, if not the most technologically advanced nation within known world, Penrian's technology base has stagnated greatly due to its lack of contact from the outside world. Tough the venerable Manus Is are no longer in active service among the Penrian Army, having been replaced by the Manus II-X over the course of the last few centuries, the thousands of argoth produced meant that simply phasing them out would be too costly, so machines that are still in working condition find use as pilot trainers, construction vehicles, or in unscrupulous hands, tools of banditry utilized by highwaymen and mercenaries, often heavily modified, and the Manus X itself is a design almost sixty years old.
On an aside, despite being arguably one of the nations largest achievements, the Manus has also led to a wide scale decline in the gentry class of soldiers, which though not yet outlawed, have been increasingly at odds with the conventional Penrian Army, the two sides having bitterly feuded since the Manus's conception allowed argoths to be used by common men, often accused of stealing Gaiakin kills from the mass produced machines mid-battle in order to
"make better use of the mana they release", viewing them as little more than cannon fodder to be expended for their glory, while the gentry themselves have been likened to mercenaries by the soldiers.
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Topic: (Mecha-FEF) The Reawakening (OOC) (Read 41362 times)