-- Back: Fires of Raficon Masterpost --
AC: KINETOTAXIS
ARENA RANK: 62/O
Emblem: A cartoon of a frog’s head in deep green, superimposed against the Redhearts insignia. The frog head is ringed by three thin, lighter green lines, one “orbiting” horizontally with the other two set at the intercardinal diagonals.
Character artist: @fiin1ky
they/she/he
Red Twenty-One Salnur’s addition to the Redhearts came by way of a recruitment drive late into the Ision War seeking “unconventional talent;” their qualification for the AC division was in no small part thanks to their adeptness as a champion Formula Front AC architect back in the Sol system. However, having come in from offworld, Salnur found the bleakness of Raficon 7 a stark contrast to the colorful fanfare of the world of sportified mechanized carnage they hailed from.
Their custom midweight reverse-joint green-and-gray AC, KINETOTAXIS, carries a variety of (fittingly) kinetic weapons modified for massively increased ammunition capacity at the expense of overall impact; the frame itself is as nimble as its appearance may suggest, if not more. Furthermore, in combat, Salnur is typically the one to volunteer to draw the enemy’s attention, distracting them from the Redhearts’ movements. It helps that KINETOTAXIS is actually an unmanned AC capable of fighting autonomously or via manual control, using an advanced variation of FF autonomous AC tech that interfaces directly with Salnur’s implants. (For longer-range deployments, Salnur relies on the comms array mounted on Incus’s AC to control theirs.)
It is not to say Salnur has never been in an AC cockpit proper, for they did have a stint as a civilian test pilot themselves before becoming renowned for their mastery of FF AC configuration. Perhaps most noticeable on their person are their horn-like implants; these are an unconventional form of “10.5th” generation augmentation that allows them direct mental communication with and control over an AC while the pilot is outside of the cockpit. Such a connection has its limits, though: while the Ision-assisted connection has virtually no data lag to speak of, Salnur does not “sense” the machine’s surroundings in the proper sense like a typical augmented pilot hooked into an AC would. As a result, this “wireless piloting” does not afford as quick a reaction time in combat despite (or, better put, in exchange for) putting the pilot far out of harm’s way.
Regardless of implants, their dependability and expertise on and off the battlefield alike does not go unnoticed. Many Redhearts have come to Salnur to optimally reconfigure their ACs in order to better suit their combat tastes. Their improvements have been responsible for reliably furthering the Redheart’s mission successes as of late, despite mounting ConVex pressure in the Ision War.
-- Back: Fires of Raficon Masterpost --