All-Terrain Artillery Crawler

Ultimately, the inner workings of the ATACs are largely centered around the Mark 1 'Iron Sun' Reactors that their enormous frames are built around(The workings of which are described in detail in the 'history' section of this article - despite their towering size and monolithic scale and scope, the ATACs are surprisingly simple and robust in their mechanics.   As the reactor at their core draws up the natural energies of the planet and accumulates the resulting natural and semi-magical energies within it, the energy is then channeled through the PATRIOT System's Control Sarcophagus nestled within the ATAC Unit's Core - where the entombed pilot uses the energies to pilot the Crawler in whatever ways they see fit, acting as an organic power distribution and control system to send the power to the systems that require it. and even using the accumulated power to invoke a number of incredibly complex and dynamic transmutations or alterations to the Crawler or its systems. This is no mere mental task, however - for the pilot installed within the Patriot System must serve as the catalyst to spark any given reaction in the absorbed energies themselves, requiring them to funnel the vast energies collected by the Crawler's Reactor through their shattered bodies constantly to transmute the energy in the correct ways to power the Crawler and its various subsystems.   Of course, doing all this while simultaneously controlling the Crawler's systems and moving the Crawler's enormous frame is massively taxing to the entombed pilot within the PATRIOT System - and while this innovative system technically allows any given ATAC to operate autonomously thanks to the PATRIOT System's Pilot being able to pilot the Crawler as if it were their own body, the complex natural of the crawlers themselves means that any given PATRIOT System Pilot is only capable of contrlling roughly 70% of the ATAC's functions at any given time(Though certain pilots may raise or lower this percentage depending on their mental, physical, and spiritual fortitude). Due to this limitation, all ATAC Units are crewed with living crewmen to help alleviate the burden placed upon the PATRIOT System by taking some of the burden of control for some of the Crawler's systems and weapons off the System's Pilot to allow them to more effectively control the Crawler or divert their attention to where it is needed most in any given moment. For most ATAC Units, this often means that the Crawler's Crewmen handle the calculation of the firing solutions for the Crawler's Top-Mounted Naval Guns, the Crawler's locomotion, and incoming and outgoing communication so the PATRIOT System's Pilot can handle point-defense, firing and loading the Crawler's Weaponry, Managing the Crawler's Reactor and properly distributing the resulting energies, and virtually every other subsystem - most notably the Terraforming Systems present on every ATAC crawler that allow its smokestacks and TERRATUBES to transform any battlefield into a smog-choked quagmire in mere minutes.

Essentially, at their barest level, the manufacturing process of the ATACs is simply a retrofitting and refurbishing process on the largest possible industrial level - the only sections of the Crawlers that must be constructed are the supermassive arachnid frames that are built around the reactors at their core.   As the Mark 1 Reactors themselves require little more than cleaning and minor repairs after being in deep-storage for so many centuries, the manufacturing process of the ATACs boils down to little more than a large factory line - where the massive crawler frame is assembled around the reactors in surprisingly little time.   Ultimately, the most limiting factor of the ATAC manufacturing process is the Mark 1 Reactors themselves - as utterly ancient "Archeotech"(A term coined by the Technis Brotherhood to denote ancient technological artifacts that defy traditional understanding or are poorly understood) that are largely impossible to properly manufacture in the modern day due to being originally constructed in a joint venture of many species and cultures(Described more in detail in the 'History' section of this page), the loss of even a single ATAC makes for an irreplaceable tragedy. While the LEIFRIG company has been hard and work for decades attempting to reverse engineer the mechanisms and designs of the Mark 1 Reactors, they have made startling little progress - meaning that for now, the limited number of ATAC Units in service are all that will exist for the forseeable future.   Thankfully, the reactors themselves are startling durable - meaning that even in the theoretical scenario where an ATAC falls in battle, the Reactor will more than likely be salvageable and able to be retrofitted into a new Crawler Frame with relatively little effort.

Despite the affection and beloved status they now enjoy in the eyes of both civilian and military populations across the empire, the story of the ATACs begins not with their construction, but with their core component - the outdated and archaic Mark 1 Iron Sun Reactors that, even at the time of the first prototype ATAC's construction nearly a century ago, were so ancient as to be considered forgotten archeotech that had slumbered, mothballed and abandoned, in governmental warehouses across the Empire for well over a thousand years.   Initially constructed during the earliest days of the Empire, the first Mark 1 Reactors were(and in many ways remain) veritable miracles of engineering - vast and mighty behemoths constructed of the expertises of all living beings of the time who, at the time, stood fast in unit against the undead menace. During those ancient times where men, elves, and dwarves united in defense of the common good, the Mark 1 Reactors were a miraculous product of those beautiful halcyon days gone by - designed to draw the life energy of the planet up from the depths into the bowels of the reactors(Whose frames were constructed from the resources of men and the smithing skill of dwarves) where teams of experienced Elven Druids and "Planetspeakers"(An esoteric practice that was and remains a largely Elven discipline, whose practitioners call upon and manipulate the very primordial energies of reality as easily as breathing) to then use the collected energies to catalyze and ignite a large-scale fusion reaction to, quite literally, create a white-hot burning sun high above the reactor that, so long as the reactor continued to operate, would roil and burn endlessly - casting white-hot sunlight down upon the surrounding area and in many cases literally melting nearby Undead creatures.   Though invaluable in the early days of the empire, the endless march of time proved as cruel as it always does - and as the needs of the Empire changed with the times and relations between the living soured, the Mark 2 Iron Sun Reactors(Ancestors of the super-advanced Mark 3 Reactors of the modern day) were eventually designed and brought into full production after Ironite machinists rebuilt the Reactors from the ground up under completely different design goals(Which, while practical, were also driven by a desire to end the Empire's reliance on its former allies it was coming to view as increasingly untrustworthy inhuman degenerates).   In the end, as the old Mark 1 Reactors were decommissioned and their signature "Iron Suns"(For which the reactor was named) began to wink out one by one, never to return in favor of the more streamlined Mark 2 Reactors whose different design principles meant the flashy hanging "Iron Suns" were discarded in favor of more practical energy distribution tubes, the Empire debated scrapping the now-defunct reactors - but, eventually, decided to simply mothball the once-proud machines and store them away should the need arise for them again in the future. After all, the Empire's finest minds reasoned, the Mark 1 Reactors remained fantastically efficient and use machines - machines whose operating principles meant the enormous reactors operated with virtually zero waste or environmental impact; a stark contrast indeed from future iterations of the Reactor's Design. It would, it stood to reason, be wasteful to simply scrap them - besides, it would be foolish to let the Mark 1 Reactor's history as products of cross-cultural alliances stain the machines' reputation.   And so, the Mark 1 Reactors came to languish in ancient warehouses for over a thousand years - forgotten relics of days gone by that witnessed the fall of the ancient open-air Ironite Cities and the rise of the towering Hive Cities, that witnessed the death of an Emperor and the birth of a God, and watched as the empire that had once come together with its enemies now unite to exterminate or subjugate the species that once united hand-in-hand to create them.   Yet, that was not to be their end - for it was the curious ingenuity of the brilliant Ironite Scientist Johann Leifrig that eventually brought the Mark 1 Reactors out of deep storage and to the forefront of the Ironite Military effort once again. Johann, a machinist by trade whose fascination with the history of the Iron Empire and its technological development had often made him the subject of ridicule by his peers for his obsession with the past, saw the potential of the old Mark 1 Reactors and studied them religiously for nearly a decade. Despite the ridicule he faced, his constant study of the old reactors eventually made him one of the less than five people in the entire Iron Empire(And indeed, the world) who still understood why and how the Mark 1 Reactors functioned at all - and the first such expert not part of the Technis Brotherhood by trade(All of whom had dismissed the aging reactors out of hand as outdated).   Eventually, his obsession sparked in him an idea - and after his decade of research earned him a small government research grant and the right to study an old Mark 1 Reactor in an old Ironite Warehouse, Johann made history. Together with a team of volunteer laborers, engineers, and scientists he knew as friends and colleagues and employees, Johann oversaw the first prototype All Terrain Artillery Crawler within the warehouse over the course of two years - and though the initial prototype was little more than a Mark 1 Reactor with shoddy metallic limbs and a cobbled together metallic chassis around the Reactor, his genius had proven him correct: Though the aging reactors had relied upon a team of ancient Elven Druids and Planetspeakers to shape the collected energy and catalyze it to sustain the fusion reaction that created the Iron Suns, modern Ironite Energy Technology meant that the energy could still be collected and shaped - though in far less complicated ways, but still enough to power an armored frame around the reactor. And while his initial designs called for willing pilots within the Reactors themselves deep within the heart of the ATACs, these ideas quickly changed and became the PATRIOT System - the only means by which the infinite energies collected by the reactor from the planet itself could be shaped and utilized in a meaningful way and dispensed into the metallic frame surrounding the reactor.   Upon seeing the first true prototype of Johann's Crawler(Whose ATAC acronym was initially meant to stand for 'All Terrain Armored Crawler'), it is said that the Ironite Officials went slack-jawed with wonder when seeing the enormous metal behemoth arrayed before them - so amazed, in fact, that they returned the next day with a Dieselborn who, in excess of all Johann's expectations, pentupled his project's operating budget and threw the entire support of the Ironite War Machine behind his design, demanding only that a viable product be online and operational within a year's time for personal inspection by Tavross himself.   With virtually unlimited resources and total trust of Tavross himself, Johann quickly found that the possibilities were endless - eventually changing his designs which envisioned the ATACs more as armored crawlers to transport infantry to mobile artillery and command and control platforms, and changing the designation of his machine to 'All-Terrain Artillery Crawler' accordingly. With unfettered access to virtually every weapon and cutting-edge technology of the empire, Johann and his team honed and perfected the design of the ATAC over the following year and presented the prototype to Tavross himself - who was supposedly so impressed that he named Johann a national hero on the spot, and immediately handed control of the largest factory in Lumisterra over to Johann to create more ATAC Units as the rest of the aging Mark 1 Reactors were brought out of deep storage in warehouses across the empire under the Diesel-God's orders.   Though the construction of more Mark 1 Reactors remains a near impossibility, the ATACs catapulted Johann into national fame and fueled the formation of his own company, LEIFRIG - named after himself. Though Johann himself died many decades later of old age, the ATAC Units remain one of the most powerful and famous weapons in the Iron Empire's war machine - powerful enough to turn the tide of any battle and all but immune to conventional attack. Indeed, it was only after decades of continued operations in countless theatres of war across Numiastra and beyond did the ATACs experience their first operational loss on the savannahs of Ruatiwanga - falling only under the combined magical might of the entire Ruatiwangan Army and of the Invincible Suzerain himself.

While not as utterly critical to the defense or survivability of the Iron Empire as the IV1-Series Combat Droid or IV2-Series Combat Droid nor as fearsome to its foes as the X-Series Commando Droid, the ATAC has become a vital part of not only the Ironite War effort, but its industrial base as well - for in such modern times when the engines of war largely idle in peacetime, the massive ATACs double as highly effective mobile Mining Rigs and Mineral Factories, meaning ATACs that transition away from frontline service often see use in quarries, mines, or other such jobs where their unique systems and weapons can both highly speed up the efficiency of the local operation as well as drastically increase the safety of the area and its workers.