Walker
Gear
See also: Walker-tec; Walker Combat
A walker is a giant magitec/mechanical crab-like landship. It uses “walker-tec” (walker technology). The Mother’s Children of Sihblos developed walker-tec in order to survive on their inhospitable world.
Reactor and Hearth
Every walker has at least one fusion reactor. The reactor is the center of a walker’s sophisticated water and electrical systems.
However, the true heart of a walker is the hearth. In a small walker, the hearth is a single pod. In a large walker, it can be a much larger space, even park-like. The hearth is a communal space for fellowship, worship, letting children play, or just finding stillness.
Most of the Children’s walkers are military walkers or clan walkers.
Military Walkers
Military walkers are generally smaller, faster, and more expendable that clan walkers. Typical weapons include gauss cannons, lasers, and missiles. Military walkers have strong shields, relative to their size.
Almost all military walkers are jointly owned by two or more clans. They send volunteers to serve as crew. The assignment and rotation of these crews is a complex tradition that values talent development, clan prestige, and opportunities for inter-clan friendships and romance.
Clan Walkers
Clan walkers are generally much larger, slower, and less defensible. They typically have limited weapons, mostly for point defense against missiles and to stop boarders or hostile fauna. Clan walkers have shields, but these are weaker than military walkers' shields, relative to their size.
A clan walker is often large enough to include substantive living quarters, one or more schools, a hospital, agriculture, manufacturing, and more. Different clans specialize in different technologies and disciplines, including building new walkers. A clan’s walker often reflects such specialization. However, every clan walker is a self-sufficient mobile community: a city on legs.
Most clans own many clan walkers and keep them together in one or a few flotillas. These flotillas are protected by many more military walkers. Some military walkers range away from the flotilla to scout, hunt, salvage, transport people and goods, and so on. However, there is almost always a continuous close-in force providing a picket (in a loose circle).
A clan walker typically belongs to a single clan. In times of hardship, one clan might shelter another aboard their walker. However, if the struggling clan cannot rebound by fielding at least one new clan walker, they will likely be absorbed or dispersed.
Walker Names
A military walker’s name usually combines an admirable or aggressive adjective and an inanimate object. Examples include:
- Restless Blades
- Bold Hammer
- Unstoppable Blow
- Blazing Arrow
- Raging Knuckles
- Unflinching Avalanche
A clan walker’s name usually combines an admirable or optimistic adjective and a living creature or ideal. Examples include:
- Patient Mammoth
- Everlasting Melody
- Loyal Badger
- Unforgettable Solidarity
- Kindly Bear
Military Doctrine
Away from the flotillas, military walkers try to avoid combat, because a downed walker is a massive loss of elite personnel and rare materiel. The doctrine of skirmishing is similar to submarine warfare on Earth, including stealth, evasion, and surprise. Military walkers can minimize their heat signatures, absorb radar in their shields, and disrupt gravimetric sensors. They launch missiles via electromagnets. Thus, a missile can remain cold until it’s away from the walker, and then ignite its chemical fuel.
A walker itself can “run cold” for an extended time, but eventually it must dump its heat. Thus, if a walker can’t escape a cat-and-mouse encounter, it will eventually be forced to reveal its location.
A walker skipper knows this creed well: “The jaws cannot catch what the nose cannot find.” On a military walker, the Sensorkeeper typically faces more pressure and glory than the crew who actually fire the weapons.
The doctrine of flotilla protection is similar to protecting an aircraft carrier on Earth. The picket tries to detect threats at a distance and stop them. If a threat can’t be stopped, then the picket slows the threat at any cost, to buy time for the flotilla to escape. A clan would rather lose several military walkers than a clan walker. The crew of a military walker is usually prepared to die to protect the lives of the civilians on a clan walker, especially the children.
