Kerra Astra Veliti
Age 26 | Height 5'9" | Alias: "Princess"
Born to House Veliti of Myssanea Colony
Once upon a time, House Veliti was the ruling family that administered a mid-sized mining colony called Myssanea, located on planet AEX-1278, in the Tyrrhenian Sector on the ass end of nowhere. The colony consisted of three major cities and several peripheral towns clustered around a mountainous coastal area rich in rare earth minerals. House Veliti initially got rich by shipping these minerals off-world, but when the miners discovered bunker vaults full of ancient war machines buried under the mountains, Myssanea colony quickly became a minor player in the astro-politics of the Tyrrhenian Sector. Five generations later, every scion of House Veliti was being given mandatory mech training as part of their noble education, whether male or female. While custom dictated that only the men were deployed into military service, Kerra found herself forced to take to the cockpit when Myssanea came under attack by... y'know,
those things.
While Kerra's older brothers and cousins were assigned to the heavier main battle mechs, Kerra accompanied them in one of the smaller and nimbler Stalking Spider models to provide fire support (the Myssaneans called them Quads, since they were the only models in the fleet with four legs). The family fought as best they could, but their forces were simply not strong enough to resist the invaders. During a succession of losing battles, her brothers were killed one after another, their mechs destroyed beyond repair. Ultimately the decision was made for Kerra to evacuate by starship with the rest of the colony's population while the remainder of Myssanea's forces launched a costly operation to cover their escape.
The survivors of Myssanea linked up with the nearest armed faction, which was the Tyrrhenian Coalition, and they pledged to their service to the Coalition to fight the swarm. Those who were able bodied joined the war effort, and Kerra added her Quad to the coalition's growing fleet of battle-ready mechs. For the next four years, she fought against the creatures that destroyed her home, and sometimes against other humans. She fought on three different planets--Obrovia, Tanguul, and Metarkia--making friends and losing friends along the way, including her lover, a man named Loki Ezrahi, who was the commander of the first lance she joined. It was called Viking Lance, and it was based out of a Coalition troop carrier ship called the Auriga, which was crewed by men and women from House Katari, one of the major coalition members.
Viking Lance was annihilated six months ago when they were ambushed during a raid on planet Metarkia. Kerra only survived the massacre because her mech had become crippled during the battle and she fled on foot into the surrounding jungle where she was able to hide from sight. For four days she narrowly evaded enemy patrols and scavengers by moving on foot and hiding in the shadows among the ruins of the battle, until on the fifth day a lance from the RUPIC company arrived and put the enemy to flight. Kerra flagged down the RUPIC mechs with some flares and learned that they were working on contract with the Tyrrhenian Coalition. Her Quad had already been disassembled for parts by this point, but RUPIC was able to recover all of the salvage and rebuild the mech to its original configuration. Since RUPIC was now in possession of Kerra's mech, they offered her a contract to fight with them, and if she survived after 6 years the mech would be hers to keep.
The RUPIC dropship brought her back to Coalition space where the Auriga was waiting, and Kerra resigned from the Coalition. But before she left the Auriga, she convinced two technicians she trusted to follow her and join RUPIC as well.
Mech Dossier
Stalking Spider model :: 50-tons :: Callsign "Talaris"
Armour: 8 tons ferro-fibrous
Heat sinks: 11 double
Top speed: 86 kph (119 kph using MASC)
Jump Jets: 150m vertical
Armament:
- 1x ER-PPC (15 damage, 15 heat, range 1-7/8-14/15-23)
- 2x SRM-4 (2 damage per missile, 4 missiles per launch, 3 heat per launch, range 1-3/4-6/7-9, 25 ammo per ton)
- 2x Medium Pulse Laser (7 damage, 4 heat, range 4/8/12)
- 1x Infantry Machinegun
*The Sarna wiki sometimes lists two figures for a given state, for IS and Clan. I'm using the Clan numbers.
This mech was one of a group of eight that were uncovered from a vault underneath the Myssanean mountains. They were initially given identifiers "Quad 1" through "Quad 8", due to their having four legs instead of the usual two. Kerra took Quad 5 as her personal mech while she was training and operating with the Myssanean army reserves. During exercises, the spiders would typically deploy in packs of four, with the individual mechs rotating back and forth between active duty and maintenance.
When Myssanea had to be evacuated, Kerra took Quad 5 with her onto the transport ship that took her and the other refugees off planet. Upon joining with the coalition, she was advised by her lance commander to give her mech a more personalized callsign to distinguish it within her lance and the broader war band, and so she called it "Widow", after the species of venomous spider that once existed on Earth. She also redid the paint job, from the original olive drab that the Myssanean army had been using to a black-grey-brown camouflage pattern suitable for mountain and urban environments.
After the defeat at Metarkia that saw Widow dismantled by the enemy for salvage, the machine was rebuilt from the recovered parts and upgraded a little to tweak its layout and take advantage of some more efficient parts and systems that became available to Kerra through RUPIC's internal marketplace. The resurrected spider was renamed "Talaris", which is the latin name (in singular form) for the winged sandals of Hermes, which is the symbol of House Veliti. Kerra redid the paint job as black and blue tiger stripes, matching the colours of Myssanea, and she dedicated this reborn spider-mech to the purpose of avenging her lost family and colony.
More Background Details
Tracing their name to the ancient "velites" class of skirmishers in the Roman Republic, House Veliti's symbol is a winged sandal, usually depicted in gold upon a circular white background representing a parma shield. The family's colours are white, gold, and blue, representing virtue, ambition, and temperance. Myssanea's flag often has the house symbol superimposed on the center of it, though not always. The background of the flag is a white diagonal cross dividing the flag into four triangular quadrants, with the top and bottom quadrants being black, and the left and right quadrants being blue. The colours are meant to represent space and sea, referring to the two elements that had always sustained the colony: off-planet trade, and the life-supporting nature of the planet's oceans.
House Veliti was originally one of five families that ruled over Myssanea as a governing council when the colony was first founded 167 years ago. As the colony expanded from one city into three, the five families branched out into different commercial enterprises and built their own mercantile empires within the colony's little bubble. House Veliti was the first to be involved in the creation of the city of Delphi in the mountains to support more intense mining operations (the city was so named because of the surrounding gas deposits reminiscent of the original Delphi on Earth). The discovery of a fleet of ancient mechs buried under the mountain radically shifted the balance of power between the five houses, and House Veliti seized on what they had found in order to carry out a coup and seize complete control over the colony, during the time of Kerra's great-grandfather.
Where Myssanea had up until that point been a member of the Tyrrhenian Coalition for its own security, the newfound strength of House Veliti made this alliance no longer necessary, and they formally cut ties 86 years ago. Their membership in the Coalition was only restored four years ago when Myssanea came under attack by the swarm, and Kerra's father reached out to the Coalition for help.
Some friends among the ground crew:
Bruce Carmack, age 48
Technical background is in particle physics and the maintenance of energy weapons
Carmack comes from the same planet as Loki and was the foreman for Viking Lance's ground crew, being also one of Loki's inner circle. After the lance was destroyed at Metarkia, he stuck by Kerra as a friend, joining RUPIC as a senior technician. He was instrumental in getting her Spider salvaged and rebuilt, and in finding the right parts that they needed to replace the ones that had been destroyed. It is also thanks to this man that Talaris' ERPPC functions as cleanly as it does, even after all these years of use. He has had to completely rebuild the weapon and it's complex cooling system three times in the past four years to keep it functional.
Hiro Onoda, age 29
Technical background is in electrical systems
Hiro manages one of the ground crews on the RUPIC ship that picked Kerra up. He was the one overseeing the reconstruction of Talaris, and Kerra soon made friends with him. Thanks to Onoda's ingenuity, Talaris' laser targeting systems can track a laterally-moving target just a little bit faster than before, increasing Kerra's ability to maintain a beam on point during a fast-paced engagement.
Brianna James, age 39
Technical background is in materials science and myomer repair
Brianna is a refugee from Myssanea who used to work as a technician at Delphi base and had spent a lot of time on the Quad mechs, including Kerra's. After joining Viking Lance, Kerra pulled some strings to get Brianna a position on the Auriga's mech maintenance crew that was well-suited to her abilities. After Metarkia, she followed Kerra and joined RUPIC, so that they could continue working together. When Talaris was rebuilt, it was Brianna's expertise and lateral thinking that allowed the myomer fibers to be strengthened to adapt to the higher stress of an upgraded MASC system that the crew had found and wanted to install. This solved a lot of the problems of wear and tear that the old system was causing, which had been one of the factors in Widow's breakdown at Metarkia.
Colton James, age 18
Technical background is unspecialized
This is Brianna's son. He was young enough to be evacuated from Myssanea four years ago, and after he finished school aboard the Auriga, his mother arranged for him to work in the mech maintenance department as a junior tech. This was short-lived, and he inevitably followed her over to RUPIC, where he now works directly under Onoda's supervision.
