Post by Phelan on May 21, 2008 22:22:56 GMT -5
Name: Ruiner
Story Appearances: None
Height: 21 meters (73 meters at tail)
Length: 113 meters (tail raised), 213 meters (tail straightened)
Weight: 78,000 tons
Physical Description:
Ruiner by Steve
A massive arachno-morph mech; Ruiner is a scorpion only in the loosest sense of the term. Eight legs, two pincers, and a curled tail all covered by thick slabs of armor; Ruiner is a warmech first and last. Colored a dull, oily grey except for the blackened ports for weapons there's little of beauty in this creation and much of function. It moves ponderously, slowly, but at the same time inexhaustibly and inexorably towards its goal. Its form is oddly angular, no doubt because of the armor. Each and every centimeters thick slab of metal is angled for maximum protection, set in position calculated precisely for the maximum effect. Even the joints are thick with reinforcement and bracing.
Origin Story:
Ruiner is a creation of man to fight in wars beyond the ken of most men and women. Built in the far flung future, to a universe only just rediscovering violence, Ruiner is, perhaps, the incarnate god of slaughter and destruction for those that created it, a literal man-made god. If he's man-made at all.
Questions and mystery surround Ruiner and where -- or when -- he or it came from. What little has been gleaned and extrapolated has revealed certain, chilling, implications about Ruiner's prescence in the past and his apparent one-machine crusade against all kaiju. What was it, in the future, that made the creation of such a machine not only appealing but necessary? And then, when they had created such a monstrous creature as Ruiner, why send it away, back in time?
The world will never know the truth; the hideous truth, behind Ruiner.
Many thousands of years into the far flung future of human kind there is a war for survival against not only the kaiju of earth but against galatic entities, powerful beyond hope or reason; strong beyond all measure. Awakened by....something beneath the crust of earth these creatures who existed in the cold void between stars descended on earth and all of humanity, slowing wiping them away.
In reponse, knowing their own timeline was doomed to end, Ruiner was created; the response of the most sophisticated Artificial Intelligence ever constructed. When posed with the question of how to stop these events from occuring again, in the past, of how to keep other timelines safe from these star-walking monsters, the AI responded with Ruiner; a completely functional warmech that no human hand ever touched. No one was sure how it worked or what powered it but none questions why or how. It was clear: Ruiner was meant to destroy the siren who woke the void-dwelling kaiju and called them to exterminate humanity.
Capable of stepping sideways through the 4th dimension -- the theory was beyond all but the most learned scholars and scientists but boils down to one, simple concept: If every point in space exists at every moment in time then every moment in time exists at every point space. Ruiner took advantage of that -- through some arcane means no one's figured out -- and stepped from spot in space-time to another spot, far away and far in the past.
Ruiner was damaged in the transition and is currently functioning between 15 and 20 percent of its maximum capabilities but its mission is the same. Humanity has one ally, one last defender against the darkness -- even if they don't understand that.
Personality:
It's a good question as to whether or not Ruiner has a personality at all; he's a machine run by an extremely advanced though non-communicative artificial intelligence system. Ruiner's whole being is clearly wrapped up in the fulfillment of some mission or objective but what that might be, no one is sure. However, from watching documented fights and first hands account of those who've witnessed this massive warmech in action have noticed a trend that Ruiner moves to protect human cities and even individuals; escalating his offense only to the necessary level to defeat whatever he's fighting. Ruiner's always on the move, never stopping, never resting. Because his primary function was to destroy the void dwelling kaiju -- or, more spceifically defend humanity from them -- Ruiner will automatically target any and all alien kaiju, even if they're just alien modified, to the exclusion of all other targets and will keep targeting them until the alien has retreated or has been killed.
Special Abilities:
Ruiner's primary weaponry consists of energy weapons, mostly set into his tail; like any self respecting scorpion his sting is deadly. At the top of the tail, right where the stinger would be in a natural creature, is a massive plasma cannon. Utilizing bolts of fusing hydrogen accelerated to near lightpseed as an offensive weapon this gun is capable of delivering 2.5 kilotons/second firepower, more than enough to completely obliterate most targets Ruiner might encounter. On either side of that are a pair of smaller energy cannon, ion bolt rifles in fact, that while firing faster than the main gun, are less powerful.
Fixed in front, on either side of the "head" area, Ruiner mounts a quartet of "infinite repeaters." These four guns are fully automatic, large calbur, anti-armor weapons that are, in fact, miniature, rapid-firing, mass drivers sending depleted uranium rounds jacked in nickel-iron. Each round is specially machined and shaped to acheive maximum penetration and damage. Supplmenting those, hidden underneath armor panels on the pincers, are a pair of rotary cannons; massive 14-inch guns, each featuring a ready-magazine of six shells allowing Ruiner to add up to twelve, rapid fire, shots to any assault. The magazines, however, take about a minute to reload once emptied (approximately ten seconds per shell). Inside his carapace, Ruiner carries a variety of shells, ranging from high-heat incendiary rounds, to high explosive, armor piercing sabot, and even kaiju sized fragmentation shells that are essentially huge shotgun shells, or even simple, dumb-iron solid shells. Normally these cannons are hidden behind retractable armored cowlings.
For even longer ranged bombardment, along the back part of the carapace, Ruiner has a concealed VLS missle system. While somewhat short ranged (only about two hundred and fifty miles or so), the warheads more than make up for that being rather large and heavy; designed to smash holes in fortified positions or to cripple similiarly sized warmechs. Though, through practical application, these missile work just as well against kaiju. There are a total of twelve VLS cells (three columns of four), each of which holds ten missiles in a rapid cycling firing chamber allowing Ruiner to launch one missile from each VLS cell about every second if he so desires. There's another four hundred missiles in storage, deeper inside Ruiner's ammo magazines and these missiles can be loaded into the VLS cells once the ready magazines are emptied though the process takes roughly ten minutes to fully load a cell -- note that's ten minutes to reload a single cell but more than one VLS cell may be loaded at a time. Ruiner, of course, carries a variety of warheads ranging from anti-armor missiles, to low-kiloton yield nuclear missiles, generic high explosive missiles, incendiary/naplam warheads, and ICM warheads which are filled with literally hundreds of small mini-bombs meant to simply saturate an area with explosives. Invididually the boms are low powered but together....
Despite the fact Ruiner is obviously made for heavy assault missions the designers -- assuming there are any -- included a pair of infinite repeaters in the rear to discourage attacks from behind. Despite an indentical name, these guns are not the same as those that are in the frontal arc; instead of using standard shells these two guns utilize high-energy ion bolts or standard shells at Ruiner's discretion. Being both larger and with a higher firing rate what Ruiner lacks in the number of rear-facing weaponry he makes up for with effectiveness and brutality.
Rounding out Ruiner's offensive suite is an odd pair of weapons, mounted just where the "mouth" of a normal scorpion would be -- harpoons. Each of these harpoons not only is a functional chelae but is a missile weapon capable of a rocket assisted launch to over seven hundred meters distance, acting exactly as a normal -- though kaiju sized -- harpoon. Upon piercing an enemy, barbs will snap outwards, resulting in two things: extreme difficultly in removing the harpoon and extensive damage even if successful. And, obviously, each harpoon is attached to a chain that's capable of holding up about 40,000 tons without additional support (so both chains together can support and winch about 80,000 tons). Using these harpoons Ruiner's more than capable to towing in monsters of a comparable size to him with ease -- or simply playing merry hob with certain limbs. And, of course, in case of a tight spot, both or either of the harpoon assemblies can be ejected as a safety measure.
Defensively, Ruiner's systems are nearly as comprehensive as his weapons. The first line of defense isn't his armor but rather a mobile barrier system. A small energy shield, a disc maybe two dozen meters across, is formed and controlled by Ruiner through some unknown means. While it only shields a small portion of Ruiner at any given moment, it moves at what amounts to the speed of thought across Ruiner's carapace and has been shown to deflect and negate most attacks that the barrier intercepts, including thermal and kinetic energy. While extremely powerful attacks can break through the barrier even then the attacks will be weakened. Of course, the barrier does have to intercept an attack in order for it to be effective.
Ruiner also possess a nano-tech based healing ability where raw materials -- organic or inorganic -- are broken down to their base minerals and then used to repair, rebuild, and refit Ruiner including upgrades. It's somewhat slow and requires Ruiner to have a supply of raw materials at hand -- or claw so to speak -- in order to repair himself.
Quick Reference List:
--Plasma Cannon located in tail; same position as the stinger
--Ion Rifles to either side of the Plasma Cannon
--Quad Infinite Repeater set above the chelae
--Concealed cannons in pincers
--VLS missiles concealed underneath the back portion of the carapace
--Chelae double as Harpoons
--Pair of ion bolt infinite repeaters facing backwards, set near base of the tail.
Combat Style:
Relentless is the best way to describe Ruiner; overwhelming is also useful. His fighting style is simple, straightforward, brutality for the most part. Though, that's not to say he's incapable of advanced tactical or even strategic planning. Being an advanced AI system, Ruiner can and has altered his tactics to suit a situation or he's altered the situation to suit his tactics. He's shown himself to be capable of using or altering terrain to his advantage as well as bluffing or feigning weakness. Being a machine doesn't make him unintelligent as many kaiju have come to realize; in fact, given that Ruiner is a computer and a machine, he's capable of storing, studying, and utilizing enormous amounts of data that gives him a nearly endless set of options. But, at the end of the day, Ruiner is designed for one purpose: assualt.
Strengths:
Being a robot, or mech, is an obvious strength in and of itself; Ruiner never gets tired, never needs to sleep or eat or breath. Because he is nothing but an AI, Ruiner's able to ignore nearly any attack or ability that affects the mind or senses. Speaking senses, Ruiner relies on a veritable bevy of scanning devices that range from simple audio/visual sensors all the way to such esoteric devices that measure seismic activity (such as that of a 20,000 ton moving object), infrared energy, and even electro-magnetic activity. While not impossible, hiding from Ruiner is extremely difficult, nearly impossible as it can analyze and track creatures by just about any trace they leave behind. Being what Ruiner is, it should be clear that his forte is ranged combat, while scorpion in form he has only minimal melee weaponry. In the area of ranged fighting though, his powerful weapons coupled by an advanced targeting system make Ruiner deadly. Finally, the entire warmech is protected by armor that's measured, in some places, by meters of thickness. While the armor is a high-tech composite of metals and crystals, sloped, angled, and shaped to have projecticles deflected away and energy dissapate, it has nothing beyond extensive R&D work and, some would say, absurd thickness. This durability also allows Ruiner to travel underwater, along the sea floor and gives him great resistance to all sorts of high pressures; he can also "swim" after a fashion but is none too graceful. Given the nature of Ruiner's primary weapons, all his electronic systems are hardened and protected from electro-magnetic radiation making them hard to disrupt.
Weaknesses:
As mentioned previously, Ruiner's not a melee fighter and while he's got nearly 80,000 tons of warmech to beat opponents senseless with, melee is strictly a last resort. Despite some of the most sophisticated articulation developed, Ruiner's slow and awkward in melee combat as well as somewhat inflexible in motion. Despite that, the pincers have a powerful grippnig strength....but that's only useful if Ruiner can snap them closed on an enemy. In addition, for all the benefits being a computer gives him, Ruiner is a computer at heart; he lacks intuition. While he may give the appearance of "thinking" or even "leaping to conclusions" that's not the case; in fact Ruiner's a logic based system. He must consider each and every possibility or course of action that fall within his operating parameters -- he just does this at a rate that's literally beyond organic capabilities. Beyond that; even with the heavy, advanced armor, Ruiner's made to absorb punishment, to wade through it, rather than avoid it making him slow moving. Plus his barrier system is small and easily circumvented by clever opponents. Ruiner also has a key design flaw: he was meant to fight in open air or in a vaccuum. As such, while he can move through water, his weapons are, for the most part, useless.
Sample Fight:
Ruiner, that goliath warmech descended from the far flung future, was moving to some destination that hard been determined and calculated by its own warped and complex logic. It had crawled and swam its way across first the lowest portions of Texas and then through the Gulf of Mexico; moving out into the Caribbean Ocean proper, traveling along the shelf or drifting laconically through the warm blue waters above, moving always closer to a cluster of islands just off the route of the cruise lines.
Cresting through the waters several dozens of miles from the shoreline, Ruiner could finally lay metaphorical and entirely electronic eyes on what had brought him so far, so quickly: there, resting in the shallow waters of a deep-water bay was a monolithic creature, laying in the hot sun and lapping waters. A monstrous serpent armored in rough, overlapping scales that lay contentedly in the humid tropical air, sea birds perched quietly on its scales; starkly white against the darker green-grey of Leviathan's bulk.
It didn't matter one bit to Ruiner how peaceful and calm and placid the creature appeared -- or might actually be. It was one of the Kaiju, as far as Ruiner was concerned, the mere fact of its monstrosity made it a scion of the void travelers.
Sensors had long since scanned what bits of the beast they could in every conceivable way possible before letting the powerful tactical sections of the AI's psychotronic "brain" take the data and more, calculating and weighing odds and variables and probabilities; running through dozens and hundreds of scenarios and possible attack patterns and stratagems.
It took, perhaps, a tenth of a second before Ruiner reached his decision.
Even as Ruiner drifted purposefully forward armored hatches along the back snapped open, the covers sliding aside, as the tail elevated, arching over the warmech's back as all of the primary weapons were engaged and brought onto target. It was with a banshee's keening howl that the calm Caribbean afternoon was broken as missiles were hurled from Ruiner's VLS cells; a fraction of a second later both of the Ion Rifles in Ruiner's tail let loose blasts in quick succession. Despite firing after the missile launch, it was the high energy bolts which struck first, the argent streaks tearing into Leviathan's bulk, seawater boiling away from refracted energy. Leviathan's screech of not pain but surprise was drowned out in the thunder of the three or four or even five dozen missiles dropping onto their target, high-yield warheads detonating as one.
Scales were cracked, shattered, and outright blown apart under the hammer blows from Ruiner; blood flew, briefly, at the end of the initial attack, water flash boiling explosively under the heat of Leviathan's blood. Even as Ruiner's computer mind updated the battle's progress, adding in new data and running through scenarios, Leviathan flung his body into motion, barreling through the steam clouds rapidly, seeking the deeper waters where he could more freely and with agility. Even at the distance the two were at Ruiner's radiation alarms screamed warnings after just the brief glimpse at Leviathan's blood. Beyond that and much more troubling for the warmech was the fact that, even with the firepower Ruiner threw in the opening seconds, intending to cripple the serpent, Leviathan's skin had sealed up and the thickening ridges of newly growing armor could already be seen. Aside from that weakened section of the snake's armor there was no indication that Leviathan had ever been injured. Realizing, with a touch of what might have been considered alarm in another creature, Ruiner raised itself fully above the ways as the armored vambraces snapped back on its pincers.
With a whir like a screaming buzz saw all four of the infinite repeaters opened fire only to be overshadowed by the half dozen water-rocking booms of Ruiner's vambrace cannons firing their loads of 14 inch shells. Leviathan swam right into the onslaught and appeared to be ignoring it entirely even as water geysered around and in front of him; chips and chunks of organic armor shattered and spun away under the hail and hammering of Ruiner's guns. The warmech's tail came up, tracking Leviathan as the snake exited the bay's confines and aiming at the enormous but sinuous bulk as capacitor's peaked at full power.
Unfortunately for Ruiner, the shot from it's primary plasma cannon had come just a second or so too late to do any good; Leviathan had reached the deeper waters of the ocean and sank under the waves which left the thunderbolt of fusing hydrogen skimming above the choppy surface of the water and blasting a glass-bottom crater in the beach of the island behind Leviathan. It was luck, on the snake's part, even though he could read the intense heat buildup in the last seconds prior to firing, Leviathan hadn't known then what it had meant. Luck, indeed, had allowed the giant snake to avoid the worst of the blast and, buffered by the water and his own natural defenses, Leviathan rode out the thermal and physical shockwaves while still charging towards Ruiner.
The battle, thus far, had lasted only a few minutes and Leviathan had already traveled a third of the distance between himself and Ruiner. The warmech, as awkward in water as on land, discovered that Leviathan's agility, in the deeper waters, was troublesome, making it hard for Ruiner to keep the snake in the firing arc of its guns. But the battle wasn't over quite yet. Ruiner's vambrace cannons were nearly finished reloading and the VLS cells were ready again, loaded with torpedoes. Ruiner submerged; infinite repeaters firing at the oncoming monster.
By now, all life in the area, with the rather notable exception of Leviathan, was long since dead or fleeing for safer waters and it would be a long, difficult road for the ecosystem to recover from the damage these few minutes of combat had already wrought and which promised to continue.
Leviathan still swam sinuously and with obvious purpose through the water, following the metallic tang he tasted and "smelled" in the water, using heat pits to roughly pinpoint the source. Unfortunately for Leviathan it was Ruiner standing between him and the open ocean. To escape to freedom, Leviathan would need to win past the warmech and Ruiner was clearly having none of that.
Vambrace cannons, torpedoes from the VLS cells, and the infinite repeaters fired as soon as Leviathan was in the proper arc but, underwater, Ruiner was at a serious disadvantage; none of those weapons -- torpedoes aside -- were adapted for aquatic combat. Contrails blurred and cut the water as armor piercing rounds tore in Leviathan's armored scales without noticeable effect, the armor was healing nearly as fast as the damage was inflicted; the water robbed the shells of their power. Only the torpedoes made any sort of notable impact -- figuratively and literally -- but, lacking most course correction features, the majority whipped past Leviathan and those that did hit were spread along the snake's body.
The distance continued to close as Ruiner rearmed for a second and then third and finally fourth salvo all without slowing Leviathan down; he was too big and healed too quickly for Ruiner's sub-optimum weapons to wound significantly. The titanic snake kept charging forward, through the water and, finally, as the range dropped seven hundred meters, a spark of triumph ignited in Ruiner's psychotronic mind.
What had looked like normal archanoid fangs shifted position around Ruiner's "mouth" revealing themselves as a pair of heavy duty harpoons which lashed out. These were the only real weapons Ruiner had that could be called hydrodynamic. Despite the staggered launch meant to catch Leviathan with both, one missed, deflecting off of Leviathan's curved flank but the other....
The other harpoon buried itself in Leviathan's left eye; spikes deployed, snapping outwards from the main shaft at right angles and biting deep into the bone and muscle inside Leviathan’s ocular cavity. Blood billowed out causing the water to sizzle and pop and steam as it was boiled away and Ruiner's radiation alarms shrilled again.
Leviathan gave a muted, burbling shriek of genuine pain as the tether chain snapped taut and Ruiner attempted to tear the snake's face off from the inside out. Muscle gave ground grudgingly, tearing ever so slowly against the inexhaustible pull of the massive winch but as the harpoon barbs ground into the bones of Leviathan's skull and stuck fast, the hyperstrong skeleton refused to crack or bend in the slightest.
Without realizing it, Ruiner had made a mistake; by attempting to pull in the tether chain he'd actually pulled Leviathan closer, accelerating the snake's advance just a bit and over a hundred thousand tons of enraged sea serpent slammed into Ruiner's face at over 150 knots -- more than 170 miles per hour. The kinetic energy of the head butt along was enough send visible shockwaves through the water and crater the surface of the waves overhead. The warmech's barrier system, activated at nearly the literal last second, took part of the blow but the shield wasn't capable of protecting the entirety of the warmech.
Plate armor cracked along welds from the brutal impact and boiling seawater poured through the breaches shorting out sensors and weapons around Ruiner's head; two of the infinite repeaters falling silent. Even as Ruiner's pincers began to swing around towards Leviathan the snake was pulling away only to have the chain snap taut, pulling still on the harpoon embedded in Ruiner's face; the sudden tension in the chain wrenched Leviathan's head around, the barbs grating on bone. Unknown to either one, the harpoon was weakening. Despite being made out of the same material was Ruiner's armor Leviathan’s super-heated blood, still seeping from the open wound, was melting the harpoon still deep in the snake's left eye.
Lashing out in rage Leviathan's teeth came in and were blocked, again only partially, by Ruiner's barrier system. What wasn't blocked tore through Ruiner's armor and super structure, ruinously effective to shredding the metal. Jaws snapped shut around Ruiner's right arm, crushing joints and obliterating the feed system to the vambrace cannon. As Leviathan twisted in the water, snapping the length of his body with a whip-like crack audible even underwater the warmech's right arm was literally torn from its socket in cloud of oil, lubricants, and shattered armor.
Even as the remaining vambrace cannon fired at point blank range Leviathan's tail came around like the fist of an angry giant -- or perhaps god. Sabot rounds tore into the snake, punching holes through armor, skin, and muscle, cracking bones and tearing deeper. Blood softened and deformed them before much internal damage was done but even so, hearts and lungs were shredded, sending spikes of agony through the giant snake. It was too late to stop the made of hardened bone that swung in from Ruiner's left side; it crashed into the warmech's legs and buckled armored, deforming the limbs and destroying the actuators in three of the legs. As Leviathan wrenched himself away the harpoon in his face, mostly melted by now, broke free of the serpent's eye socket. Without it there to keep the wound open the gaping socket quickly filled in, scabbing out and letting a new eye begin to grow.
But there was still a problem; Ruiner was still between Leviathan and the open ocean. More to the point the warmech was still able to....
Whatever it was, whatever thought Leviathan's brain had been forming was cut short as Ruiner, VLS cells reloaded, unleashed a fullisade of torpedoes which hammered into the serpent, cracking and breaking armor all over Leviathan's body but doing little real damage. But that wasn't the point; Ruiner had launched the two dozen torpedoes as a distraction, just to keep the snake's attention from the real threat: Ruiner's plasma cannon.
A few grams of hydrogen, frozen to subzero temperatures and then compressed far enough to begin nuclear fusion and accelerated to nearly the speed of light ripped into the seawater. Instantly thousand of gallons flash boiled away with explosive force. Ruiner was hurled away, armor pock-marked with craters and rents, covered in spider web cracks from the point blank explosion of what amounted to nearly three thousand tons of TNT. It was that massive explosion coupled with the sheer directed energy of the ravening plasma bolt that literally blew Leviathan out of the water. All hundred thousand plus tons of the serpent was flung up and out of the ocean and became fully airborne, bellowing in pain from the almost-direct-hit the entire time. Ruiner surfaced as Leviathan was thrown dozens of meters into the steam filled air, Ion Rifles firing as soon as the tail broke water sending bolt after argent bolt of high energy particles tearing into the rising and then falling beast.
Scaled armor cracked, splintered, and began to boil away under the repeated impacts. Refracted energy bled around Leviathan, haloing the snake as he fell. Blood flew and dropped to the water, sizzling and adding more steam to the already choked battlefield and still Ruiner fired, adding another half dozen sabot rounds from the surviving vambrace cannon. Armor piercing rounds ripped into already ravaged scales and skin, a feat of precision targeting possible only to something like Ruiner. Muscles shredded and exploded, stripped from Leviathan's very bones.
Despite the horrific damage the sea serpent wasn't dead or even mortally wounded when he hit the water; Leviathan was very much alive when he plowed through the surface of the waves. The surge resulting from that collision raced outward, swamping Ruiner and driving the warmech back into the same bay Leviathan had occupied not twenty minutes ago. Ruiner waited, weapons cycling and reloading, for Leviathan to resurface, to continue the fight but there was nothing. A minute passed, then two and Ruiner's sensors reached outwards, going under the waves only to find Leviathan's massive presence already heading out into the ocean and seeking the colder, darker depths of the world's abyssal plains.
It couldn't be called a victory or a defeat despite the mauling Ruiner had both given and received. One arm was laying some two hundred feet below the water's surface; three legs were utterly mangled and useless. Two infinite repeaters gone and Ruiner was running on half backup sensors. And the beast, while injured, was already recovering from the damage Ruiner had inflicted. The big warmech settled back into the steaming water of the bay to repair itself and to plan how to go about hunting a beast that, seemingly, couldn’t be killed.
Ability Meters
Melee Ability: 4
Ranged Ability: 9.5
Toughness: 9
Invulnerability: 9
Healing Ability: 3
Physical Strength: 6
Stamina: 10
Instinct: 0
Logic: 10
Creativity: 5
Speed: 3
Reflexes: 9
Acrobatics: 2
--Phelan
Story Appearances: None
Height: 21 meters (73 meters at tail)
Length: 113 meters (tail raised), 213 meters (tail straightened)
Weight: 78,000 tons
Physical Description:
Ruiner by Steve
A massive arachno-morph mech; Ruiner is a scorpion only in the loosest sense of the term. Eight legs, two pincers, and a curled tail all covered by thick slabs of armor; Ruiner is a warmech first and last. Colored a dull, oily grey except for the blackened ports for weapons there's little of beauty in this creation and much of function. It moves ponderously, slowly, but at the same time inexhaustibly and inexorably towards its goal. Its form is oddly angular, no doubt because of the armor. Each and every centimeters thick slab of metal is angled for maximum protection, set in position calculated precisely for the maximum effect. Even the joints are thick with reinforcement and bracing.
Origin Story:
Ruiner is a creation of man to fight in wars beyond the ken of most men and women. Built in the far flung future, to a universe only just rediscovering violence, Ruiner is, perhaps, the incarnate god of slaughter and destruction for those that created it, a literal man-made god. If he's man-made at all.
Questions and mystery surround Ruiner and where -- or when -- he or it came from. What little has been gleaned and extrapolated has revealed certain, chilling, implications about Ruiner's prescence in the past and his apparent one-machine crusade against all kaiju. What was it, in the future, that made the creation of such a machine not only appealing but necessary? And then, when they had created such a monstrous creature as Ruiner, why send it away, back in time?
The world will never know the truth; the hideous truth, behind Ruiner.
Many thousands of years into the far flung future of human kind there is a war for survival against not only the kaiju of earth but against galatic entities, powerful beyond hope or reason; strong beyond all measure. Awakened by....something beneath the crust of earth these creatures who existed in the cold void between stars descended on earth and all of humanity, slowing wiping them away.
In reponse, knowing their own timeline was doomed to end, Ruiner was created; the response of the most sophisticated Artificial Intelligence ever constructed. When posed with the question of how to stop these events from occuring again, in the past, of how to keep other timelines safe from these star-walking monsters, the AI responded with Ruiner; a completely functional warmech that no human hand ever touched. No one was sure how it worked or what powered it but none questions why or how. It was clear: Ruiner was meant to destroy the siren who woke the void-dwelling kaiju and called them to exterminate humanity.
Capable of stepping sideways through the 4th dimension -- the theory was beyond all but the most learned scholars and scientists but boils down to one, simple concept: If every point in space exists at every moment in time then every moment in time exists at every point space. Ruiner took advantage of that -- through some arcane means no one's figured out -- and stepped from spot in space-time to another spot, far away and far in the past.
Ruiner was damaged in the transition and is currently functioning between 15 and 20 percent of its maximum capabilities but its mission is the same. Humanity has one ally, one last defender against the darkness -- even if they don't understand that.
Personality:
It's a good question as to whether or not Ruiner has a personality at all; he's a machine run by an extremely advanced though non-communicative artificial intelligence system. Ruiner's whole being is clearly wrapped up in the fulfillment of some mission or objective but what that might be, no one is sure. However, from watching documented fights and first hands account of those who've witnessed this massive warmech in action have noticed a trend that Ruiner moves to protect human cities and even individuals; escalating his offense only to the necessary level to defeat whatever he's fighting. Ruiner's always on the move, never stopping, never resting. Because his primary function was to destroy the void dwelling kaiju -- or, more spceifically defend humanity from them -- Ruiner will automatically target any and all alien kaiju, even if they're just alien modified, to the exclusion of all other targets and will keep targeting them until the alien has retreated or has been killed.
Special Abilities:
Ruiner's primary weaponry consists of energy weapons, mostly set into his tail; like any self respecting scorpion his sting is deadly. At the top of the tail, right where the stinger would be in a natural creature, is a massive plasma cannon. Utilizing bolts of fusing hydrogen accelerated to near lightpseed as an offensive weapon this gun is capable of delivering 2.5 kilotons/second firepower, more than enough to completely obliterate most targets Ruiner might encounter. On either side of that are a pair of smaller energy cannon, ion bolt rifles in fact, that while firing faster than the main gun, are less powerful.
Fixed in front, on either side of the "head" area, Ruiner mounts a quartet of "infinite repeaters." These four guns are fully automatic, large calbur, anti-armor weapons that are, in fact, miniature, rapid-firing, mass drivers sending depleted uranium rounds jacked in nickel-iron. Each round is specially machined and shaped to acheive maximum penetration and damage. Supplmenting those, hidden underneath armor panels on the pincers, are a pair of rotary cannons; massive 14-inch guns, each featuring a ready-magazine of six shells allowing Ruiner to add up to twelve, rapid fire, shots to any assault. The magazines, however, take about a minute to reload once emptied (approximately ten seconds per shell). Inside his carapace, Ruiner carries a variety of shells, ranging from high-heat incendiary rounds, to high explosive, armor piercing sabot, and even kaiju sized fragmentation shells that are essentially huge shotgun shells, or even simple, dumb-iron solid shells. Normally these cannons are hidden behind retractable armored cowlings.
For even longer ranged bombardment, along the back part of the carapace, Ruiner has a concealed VLS missle system. While somewhat short ranged (only about two hundred and fifty miles or so), the warheads more than make up for that being rather large and heavy; designed to smash holes in fortified positions or to cripple similiarly sized warmechs. Though, through practical application, these missile work just as well against kaiju. There are a total of twelve VLS cells (three columns of four), each of which holds ten missiles in a rapid cycling firing chamber allowing Ruiner to launch one missile from each VLS cell about every second if he so desires. There's another four hundred missiles in storage, deeper inside Ruiner's ammo magazines and these missiles can be loaded into the VLS cells once the ready magazines are emptied though the process takes roughly ten minutes to fully load a cell -- note that's ten minutes to reload a single cell but more than one VLS cell may be loaded at a time. Ruiner, of course, carries a variety of warheads ranging from anti-armor missiles, to low-kiloton yield nuclear missiles, generic high explosive missiles, incendiary/naplam warheads, and ICM warheads which are filled with literally hundreds of small mini-bombs meant to simply saturate an area with explosives. Invididually the boms are low powered but together....
Despite the fact Ruiner is obviously made for heavy assault missions the designers -- assuming there are any -- included a pair of infinite repeaters in the rear to discourage attacks from behind. Despite an indentical name, these guns are not the same as those that are in the frontal arc; instead of using standard shells these two guns utilize high-energy ion bolts or standard shells at Ruiner's discretion. Being both larger and with a higher firing rate what Ruiner lacks in the number of rear-facing weaponry he makes up for with effectiveness and brutality.
Rounding out Ruiner's offensive suite is an odd pair of weapons, mounted just where the "mouth" of a normal scorpion would be -- harpoons. Each of these harpoons not only is a functional chelae but is a missile weapon capable of a rocket assisted launch to over seven hundred meters distance, acting exactly as a normal -- though kaiju sized -- harpoon. Upon piercing an enemy, barbs will snap outwards, resulting in two things: extreme difficultly in removing the harpoon and extensive damage even if successful. And, obviously, each harpoon is attached to a chain that's capable of holding up about 40,000 tons without additional support (so both chains together can support and winch about 80,000 tons). Using these harpoons Ruiner's more than capable to towing in monsters of a comparable size to him with ease -- or simply playing merry hob with certain limbs. And, of course, in case of a tight spot, both or either of the harpoon assemblies can be ejected as a safety measure.
Defensively, Ruiner's systems are nearly as comprehensive as his weapons. The first line of defense isn't his armor but rather a mobile barrier system. A small energy shield, a disc maybe two dozen meters across, is formed and controlled by Ruiner through some unknown means. While it only shields a small portion of Ruiner at any given moment, it moves at what amounts to the speed of thought across Ruiner's carapace and has been shown to deflect and negate most attacks that the barrier intercepts, including thermal and kinetic energy. While extremely powerful attacks can break through the barrier even then the attacks will be weakened. Of course, the barrier does have to intercept an attack in order for it to be effective.
Ruiner also possess a nano-tech based healing ability where raw materials -- organic or inorganic -- are broken down to their base minerals and then used to repair, rebuild, and refit Ruiner including upgrades. It's somewhat slow and requires Ruiner to have a supply of raw materials at hand -- or claw so to speak -- in order to repair himself.
Quick Reference List:
--Plasma Cannon located in tail; same position as the stinger
--Ion Rifles to either side of the Plasma Cannon
--Quad Infinite Repeater set above the chelae
--Concealed cannons in pincers
--VLS missiles concealed underneath the back portion of the carapace
--Chelae double as Harpoons
--Pair of ion bolt infinite repeaters facing backwards, set near base of the tail.
Combat Style:
Relentless is the best way to describe Ruiner; overwhelming is also useful. His fighting style is simple, straightforward, brutality for the most part. Though, that's not to say he's incapable of advanced tactical or even strategic planning. Being an advanced AI system, Ruiner can and has altered his tactics to suit a situation or he's altered the situation to suit his tactics. He's shown himself to be capable of using or altering terrain to his advantage as well as bluffing or feigning weakness. Being a machine doesn't make him unintelligent as many kaiju have come to realize; in fact, given that Ruiner is a computer and a machine, he's capable of storing, studying, and utilizing enormous amounts of data that gives him a nearly endless set of options. But, at the end of the day, Ruiner is designed for one purpose: assualt.
Strengths:
Being a robot, or mech, is an obvious strength in and of itself; Ruiner never gets tired, never needs to sleep or eat or breath. Because he is nothing but an AI, Ruiner's able to ignore nearly any attack or ability that affects the mind or senses. Speaking senses, Ruiner relies on a veritable bevy of scanning devices that range from simple audio/visual sensors all the way to such esoteric devices that measure seismic activity (such as that of a 20,000 ton moving object), infrared energy, and even electro-magnetic activity. While not impossible, hiding from Ruiner is extremely difficult, nearly impossible as it can analyze and track creatures by just about any trace they leave behind. Being what Ruiner is, it should be clear that his forte is ranged combat, while scorpion in form he has only minimal melee weaponry. In the area of ranged fighting though, his powerful weapons coupled by an advanced targeting system make Ruiner deadly. Finally, the entire warmech is protected by armor that's measured, in some places, by meters of thickness. While the armor is a high-tech composite of metals and crystals, sloped, angled, and shaped to have projecticles deflected away and energy dissapate, it has nothing beyond extensive R&D work and, some would say, absurd thickness. This durability also allows Ruiner to travel underwater, along the sea floor and gives him great resistance to all sorts of high pressures; he can also "swim" after a fashion but is none too graceful. Given the nature of Ruiner's primary weapons, all his electronic systems are hardened and protected from electro-magnetic radiation making them hard to disrupt.
Weaknesses:
As mentioned previously, Ruiner's not a melee fighter and while he's got nearly 80,000 tons of warmech to beat opponents senseless with, melee is strictly a last resort. Despite some of the most sophisticated articulation developed, Ruiner's slow and awkward in melee combat as well as somewhat inflexible in motion. Despite that, the pincers have a powerful grippnig strength....but that's only useful if Ruiner can snap them closed on an enemy. In addition, for all the benefits being a computer gives him, Ruiner is a computer at heart; he lacks intuition. While he may give the appearance of "thinking" or even "leaping to conclusions" that's not the case; in fact Ruiner's a logic based system. He must consider each and every possibility or course of action that fall within his operating parameters -- he just does this at a rate that's literally beyond organic capabilities. Beyond that; even with the heavy, advanced armor, Ruiner's made to absorb punishment, to wade through it, rather than avoid it making him slow moving. Plus his barrier system is small and easily circumvented by clever opponents. Ruiner also has a key design flaw: he was meant to fight in open air or in a vaccuum. As such, while he can move through water, his weapons are, for the most part, useless.
Sample Fight:
Ruiner, that goliath warmech descended from the far flung future, was moving to some destination that hard been determined and calculated by its own warped and complex logic. It had crawled and swam its way across first the lowest portions of Texas and then through the Gulf of Mexico; moving out into the Caribbean Ocean proper, traveling along the shelf or drifting laconically through the warm blue waters above, moving always closer to a cluster of islands just off the route of the cruise lines.
Cresting through the waters several dozens of miles from the shoreline, Ruiner could finally lay metaphorical and entirely electronic eyes on what had brought him so far, so quickly: there, resting in the shallow waters of a deep-water bay was a monolithic creature, laying in the hot sun and lapping waters. A monstrous serpent armored in rough, overlapping scales that lay contentedly in the humid tropical air, sea birds perched quietly on its scales; starkly white against the darker green-grey of Leviathan's bulk.
It didn't matter one bit to Ruiner how peaceful and calm and placid the creature appeared -- or might actually be. It was one of the Kaiju, as far as Ruiner was concerned, the mere fact of its monstrosity made it a scion of the void travelers.
Sensors had long since scanned what bits of the beast they could in every conceivable way possible before letting the powerful tactical sections of the AI's psychotronic "brain" take the data and more, calculating and weighing odds and variables and probabilities; running through dozens and hundreds of scenarios and possible attack patterns and stratagems.
It took, perhaps, a tenth of a second before Ruiner reached his decision.
Even as Ruiner drifted purposefully forward armored hatches along the back snapped open, the covers sliding aside, as the tail elevated, arching over the warmech's back as all of the primary weapons were engaged and brought onto target. It was with a banshee's keening howl that the calm Caribbean afternoon was broken as missiles were hurled from Ruiner's VLS cells; a fraction of a second later both of the Ion Rifles in Ruiner's tail let loose blasts in quick succession. Despite firing after the missile launch, it was the high energy bolts which struck first, the argent streaks tearing into Leviathan's bulk, seawater boiling away from refracted energy. Leviathan's screech of not pain but surprise was drowned out in the thunder of the three or four or even five dozen missiles dropping onto their target, high-yield warheads detonating as one.
Scales were cracked, shattered, and outright blown apart under the hammer blows from Ruiner; blood flew, briefly, at the end of the initial attack, water flash boiling explosively under the heat of Leviathan's blood. Even as Ruiner's computer mind updated the battle's progress, adding in new data and running through scenarios, Leviathan flung his body into motion, barreling through the steam clouds rapidly, seeking the deeper waters where he could more freely and with agility. Even at the distance the two were at Ruiner's radiation alarms screamed warnings after just the brief glimpse at Leviathan's blood. Beyond that and much more troubling for the warmech was the fact that, even with the firepower Ruiner threw in the opening seconds, intending to cripple the serpent, Leviathan's skin had sealed up and the thickening ridges of newly growing armor could already be seen. Aside from that weakened section of the snake's armor there was no indication that Leviathan had ever been injured. Realizing, with a touch of what might have been considered alarm in another creature, Ruiner raised itself fully above the ways as the armored vambraces snapped back on its pincers.
With a whir like a screaming buzz saw all four of the infinite repeaters opened fire only to be overshadowed by the half dozen water-rocking booms of Ruiner's vambrace cannons firing their loads of 14 inch shells. Leviathan swam right into the onslaught and appeared to be ignoring it entirely even as water geysered around and in front of him; chips and chunks of organic armor shattered and spun away under the hail and hammering of Ruiner's guns. The warmech's tail came up, tracking Leviathan as the snake exited the bay's confines and aiming at the enormous but sinuous bulk as capacitor's peaked at full power.
Unfortunately for Ruiner, the shot from it's primary plasma cannon had come just a second or so too late to do any good; Leviathan had reached the deeper waters of the ocean and sank under the waves which left the thunderbolt of fusing hydrogen skimming above the choppy surface of the water and blasting a glass-bottom crater in the beach of the island behind Leviathan. It was luck, on the snake's part, even though he could read the intense heat buildup in the last seconds prior to firing, Leviathan hadn't known then what it had meant. Luck, indeed, had allowed the giant snake to avoid the worst of the blast and, buffered by the water and his own natural defenses, Leviathan rode out the thermal and physical shockwaves while still charging towards Ruiner.
The battle, thus far, had lasted only a few minutes and Leviathan had already traveled a third of the distance between himself and Ruiner. The warmech, as awkward in water as on land, discovered that Leviathan's agility, in the deeper waters, was troublesome, making it hard for Ruiner to keep the snake in the firing arc of its guns. But the battle wasn't over quite yet. Ruiner's vambrace cannons were nearly finished reloading and the VLS cells were ready again, loaded with torpedoes. Ruiner submerged; infinite repeaters firing at the oncoming monster.
By now, all life in the area, with the rather notable exception of Leviathan, was long since dead or fleeing for safer waters and it would be a long, difficult road for the ecosystem to recover from the damage these few minutes of combat had already wrought and which promised to continue.
Leviathan still swam sinuously and with obvious purpose through the water, following the metallic tang he tasted and "smelled" in the water, using heat pits to roughly pinpoint the source. Unfortunately for Leviathan it was Ruiner standing between him and the open ocean. To escape to freedom, Leviathan would need to win past the warmech and Ruiner was clearly having none of that.
Vambrace cannons, torpedoes from the VLS cells, and the infinite repeaters fired as soon as Leviathan was in the proper arc but, underwater, Ruiner was at a serious disadvantage; none of those weapons -- torpedoes aside -- were adapted for aquatic combat. Contrails blurred and cut the water as armor piercing rounds tore in Leviathan's armored scales without noticeable effect, the armor was healing nearly as fast as the damage was inflicted; the water robbed the shells of their power. Only the torpedoes made any sort of notable impact -- figuratively and literally -- but, lacking most course correction features, the majority whipped past Leviathan and those that did hit were spread along the snake's body.
The distance continued to close as Ruiner rearmed for a second and then third and finally fourth salvo all without slowing Leviathan down; he was too big and healed too quickly for Ruiner's sub-optimum weapons to wound significantly. The titanic snake kept charging forward, through the water and, finally, as the range dropped seven hundred meters, a spark of triumph ignited in Ruiner's psychotronic mind.
What had looked like normal archanoid fangs shifted position around Ruiner's "mouth" revealing themselves as a pair of heavy duty harpoons which lashed out. These were the only real weapons Ruiner had that could be called hydrodynamic. Despite the staggered launch meant to catch Leviathan with both, one missed, deflecting off of Leviathan's curved flank but the other....
The other harpoon buried itself in Leviathan's left eye; spikes deployed, snapping outwards from the main shaft at right angles and biting deep into the bone and muscle inside Leviathan’s ocular cavity. Blood billowed out causing the water to sizzle and pop and steam as it was boiled away and Ruiner's radiation alarms shrilled again.
Leviathan gave a muted, burbling shriek of genuine pain as the tether chain snapped taut and Ruiner attempted to tear the snake's face off from the inside out. Muscle gave ground grudgingly, tearing ever so slowly against the inexhaustible pull of the massive winch but as the harpoon barbs ground into the bones of Leviathan's skull and stuck fast, the hyperstrong skeleton refused to crack or bend in the slightest.
Without realizing it, Ruiner had made a mistake; by attempting to pull in the tether chain he'd actually pulled Leviathan closer, accelerating the snake's advance just a bit and over a hundred thousand tons of enraged sea serpent slammed into Ruiner's face at over 150 knots -- more than 170 miles per hour. The kinetic energy of the head butt along was enough send visible shockwaves through the water and crater the surface of the waves overhead. The warmech's barrier system, activated at nearly the literal last second, took part of the blow but the shield wasn't capable of protecting the entirety of the warmech.
Plate armor cracked along welds from the brutal impact and boiling seawater poured through the breaches shorting out sensors and weapons around Ruiner's head; two of the infinite repeaters falling silent. Even as Ruiner's pincers began to swing around towards Leviathan the snake was pulling away only to have the chain snap taut, pulling still on the harpoon embedded in Ruiner's face; the sudden tension in the chain wrenched Leviathan's head around, the barbs grating on bone. Unknown to either one, the harpoon was weakening. Despite being made out of the same material was Ruiner's armor Leviathan’s super-heated blood, still seeping from the open wound, was melting the harpoon still deep in the snake's left eye.
Lashing out in rage Leviathan's teeth came in and were blocked, again only partially, by Ruiner's barrier system. What wasn't blocked tore through Ruiner's armor and super structure, ruinously effective to shredding the metal. Jaws snapped shut around Ruiner's right arm, crushing joints and obliterating the feed system to the vambrace cannon. As Leviathan twisted in the water, snapping the length of his body with a whip-like crack audible even underwater the warmech's right arm was literally torn from its socket in cloud of oil, lubricants, and shattered armor.
Even as the remaining vambrace cannon fired at point blank range Leviathan's tail came around like the fist of an angry giant -- or perhaps god. Sabot rounds tore into the snake, punching holes through armor, skin, and muscle, cracking bones and tearing deeper. Blood softened and deformed them before much internal damage was done but even so, hearts and lungs were shredded, sending spikes of agony through the giant snake. It was too late to stop the made of hardened bone that swung in from Ruiner's left side; it crashed into the warmech's legs and buckled armored, deforming the limbs and destroying the actuators in three of the legs. As Leviathan wrenched himself away the harpoon in his face, mostly melted by now, broke free of the serpent's eye socket. Without it there to keep the wound open the gaping socket quickly filled in, scabbing out and letting a new eye begin to grow.
But there was still a problem; Ruiner was still between Leviathan and the open ocean. More to the point the warmech was still able to....
Whatever it was, whatever thought Leviathan's brain had been forming was cut short as Ruiner, VLS cells reloaded, unleashed a fullisade of torpedoes which hammered into the serpent, cracking and breaking armor all over Leviathan's body but doing little real damage. But that wasn't the point; Ruiner had launched the two dozen torpedoes as a distraction, just to keep the snake's attention from the real threat: Ruiner's plasma cannon.
A few grams of hydrogen, frozen to subzero temperatures and then compressed far enough to begin nuclear fusion and accelerated to nearly the speed of light ripped into the seawater. Instantly thousand of gallons flash boiled away with explosive force. Ruiner was hurled away, armor pock-marked with craters and rents, covered in spider web cracks from the point blank explosion of what amounted to nearly three thousand tons of TNT. It was that massive explosion coupled with the sheer directed energy of the ravening plasma bolt that literally blew Leviathan out of the water. All hundred thousand plus tons of the serpent was flung up and out of the ocean and became fully airborne, bellowing in pain from the almost-direct-hit the entire time. Ruiner surfaced as Leviathan was thrown dozens of meters into the steam filled air, Ion Rifles firing as soon as the tail broke water sending bolt after argent bolt of high energy particles tearing into the rising and then falling beast.
Scaled armor cracked, splintered, and began to boil away under the repeated impacts. Refracted energy bled around Leviathan, haloing the snake as he fell. Blood flew and dropped to the water, sizzling and adding more steam to the already choked battlefield and still Ruiner fired, adding another half dozen sabot rounds from the surviving vambrace cannon. Armor piercing rounds ripped into already ravaged scales and skin, a feat of precision targeting possible only to something like Ruiner. Muscles shredded and exploded, stripped from Leviathan's very bones.
Despite the horrific damage the sea serpent wasn't dead or even mortally wounded when he hit the water; Leviathan was very much alive when he plowed through the surface of the waves. The surge resulting from that collision raced outward, swamping Ruiner and driving the warmech back into the same bay Leviathan had occupied not twenty minutes ago. Ruiner waited, weapons cycling and reloading, for Leviathan to resurface, to continue the fight but there was nothing. A minute passed, then two and Ruiner's sensors reached outwards, going under the waves only to find Leviathan's massive presence already heading out into the ocean and seeking the colder, darker depths of the world's abyssal plains.
It couldn't be called a victory or a defeat despite the mauling Ruiner had both given and received. One arm was laying some two hundred feet below the water's surface; three legs were utterly mangled and useless. Two infinite repeaters gone and Ruiner was running on half backup sensors. And the beast, while injured, was already recovering from the damage Ruiner had inflicted. The big warmech settled back into the steaming water of the bay to repair itself and to plan how to go about hunting a beast that, seemingly, couldn’t be killed.
Ability Meters
Melee Ability: 4
Ranged Ability: 9.5
Toughness: 9
Invulnerability: 9
Healing Ability: 3
Physical Strength: 6
Stamina: 10
Instinct: 0
Logic: 10
Creativity: 5
Speed: 3
Reflexes: 9
Acrobatics: 2
“I, the applicant, have studied the FFKT rules and regulations in detail. I understand them and agree to adhere the terms and conditions outlined by the FFKT staff in this form. I acknowledge that breaking the rules are grounds for rejection of my application or disqualification from the tournament, and hold full responsibility for my actions.
--Phelan