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Hm, the project?
*cough*
No, I’ve given this speech before many times already. It’s fine.
The start of it all was very…innocuous. My sickness, not Project ARCANE. That comes later. As I said, it was small issues. Morning tiredness that lingered far too long, a shortness of breath after using my tools, things like that. I ignored the signs, but my condition worsened as the months went on. I had issues keeping my grip on the smaller instruments, and walking uphill became a chore. My warband medic, sharp as ever, finally spoke up after I fumbled my soldering iron for the umpteenth time that day. I brushed her off at first, but she dragged me to the infirmary, where they sliced off a sample of my forearm and calf muscles for testing. Hurt like hell, but they doped me afterwards and I dozed off like a cub in the recovery rooms.
The report afterwards was amusingly short. While I’m half-asleep in my cot, some physician lumbers to my side. He says “Dystrophy. You’re off active duty,” and shoves a cane and paperwork into my paws. I was wide awake after that.
Officially, I was to be barred from my warband workshop, but my legionnaire showed a bit of grace. I kept up with the warband’s projects for a while, off the books, but my muscles wasted away further and became more of a handicap. Instead, I set my sights on some asuran scrap we salvaged after an Inquest attack on…somewhere. My warband, Power, specialized in portable energy sources. Mostly generators and the like, but at the time, we also had some requests from upper command to study the golem remains. To learn or to reverse-engineer, I don’t know. They were low-priority anyways. But out of that mound of magitech, I managed to extract an intact energy crystal from one of the golems. A bit of tweaking afterwards, and I could charge them with our generators and discharge into something else. If you wanted to pinpoint the true beginning of ARCANE, that was it. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The cane was getting excessively annoying to use by that time, as I kept losing my grip, and my medic gave me a set of leg braces to help. I couldn’t stand walking around like a puppet on strings with that slag, so I fashioned some miniature pressure switches and actuators to a set of wrought-iron gauntlets. Also did the same to the set of braces, after I did some drilling for joints. Some linkages to the energy crystal from earlier, and my first suit – of sorts – was finished. Crude, but I was walking much better than with the cane. After a few days of practice, I could run again. Full mobility. Almost.
No, I kept the project hush-hush. Warbandmates only. Some centurion would have razed us like the Searing for disobeying orders.
Speaking of the warband, they were impressed, but more so my legionnaire. Partially because he had another soldier capable of working again, but he had another idea after I regained my gait. He slipped me a small bag of gold and gave me the location of a krewe of eggheads in Metrica, then sent me on my way. I returned with a single asuran computer and every variety of energy crystal I could never need. He wanted to see if I could build something…better. Something more than mechanized braces and gloves with actuators.
The next few months were a blur, and my progress alternated between lightning-fast and slow as tar. I had help from my warband if they could spare the time, but most of the engineering was done alone on my part. The gloves and braces were stitched together with heavy leather and metal plates to create a full suit of armour. The pressure switches were replaced with crystalline dust-lined meshes, while energy storages were increased tenfold with battery attunement. Integration of a multi-gadget platform into the wrists meant I wouldn’t need to carry a battlefield tool kit anymore. Also, I crafted a mask to make the entire thing airtight, while a set of gas tanks provided some mild stimulant that my medic recommended. And to tie it all together, I taught myself how to code with that asuran computer, and developed a basic interface to operate the suit’s functions.
By the time I was finished, it was about a year and a half after I was let go from the infirmary. With the suit’s proper completion, my legionnaire suggested I should present it during our next warband inspection. We had been reassigned to some freshly-promoted centurion – Kyra Hammerlord – and she was fired up, antsy to survey her new subordinates. And so I was clad in my suit while Hammerlord walks through our workshop, and she stops right in front of me. After a few questions from her part…she challenged me to a duel. Right then and there.
I won’t say who won, but…I will say that she was the one who stopped the fight after several minutes. A few days later, Hammerlord returns with several aides and a mountain of paperwork. She wanted me to expand the scope of my research, to include other injured or disabled soldiers. I was all too happy to oblige. The forms were to establish the project as an official Iron Legion R&D operation, and to give me limited leadership over any recruited charr. Not long after, I was given the keys to a brand new workshop in a different corner of the citadel, and a nice chunk of gold to start filling it with heavy machinery and researchers.
The project also needed a name. As you know, it’s ARCANE. Augmented Reparative Combat Armour Nascency and Evolution. It’s been a few years since we started, and now we have over thirty charr working on magitech solutions to battlefield injuries. That includes six full-time testers, all of which would be bedridden or crippled without their suits. Given a few more years, most of them won’t need them anymore, while right now, all of them are just as battle-ready as any other soldier. If not more.
Me? No, no such luck. Dystrophy is not the same as a reattached arm or mended jaw. But that only means the project will continue as long as I breathe. And many more charr will get second chances on the battlefield because of ARCANE.
- Zolgear Powerhouse (The Severed)
Distal Muscular Dystrophy. The charr don't have the words for it yet, but the disease persists regardless, as rare as it may be.
Zolgear the Severed © me
Art © LupisDarkmoon
GW2 and charr © ArenaNet
*cough*
No, I’ve given this speech before many times already. It’s fine.
The start of it all was very…innocuous. My sickness, not Project ARCANE. That comes later. As I said, it was small issues. Morning tiredness that lingered far too long, a shortness of breath after using my tools, things like that. I ignored the signs, but my condition worsened as the months went on. I had issues keeping my grip on the smaller instruments, and walking uphill became a chore. My warband medic, sharp as ever, finally spoke up after I fumbled my soldering iron for the umpteenth time that day. I brushed her off at first, but she dragged me to the infirmary, where they sliced off a sample of my forearm and calf muscles for testing. Hurt like hell, but they doped me afterwards and I dozed off like a cub in the recovery rooms.
The report afterwards was amusingly short. While I’m half-asleep in my cot, some physician lumbers to my side. He says “Dystrophy. You’re off active duty,” and shoves a cane and paperwork into my paws. I was wide awake after that.
Officially, I was to be barred from my warband workshop, but my legionnaire showed a bit of grace. I kept up with the warband’s projects for a while, off the books, but my muscles wasted away further and became more of a handicap. Instead, I set my sights on some asuran scrap we salvaged after an Inquest attack on…somewhere. My warband, Power, specialized in portable energy sources. Mostly generators and the like, but at the time, we also had some requests from upper command to study the golem remains. To learn or to reverse-engineer, I don’t know. They were low-priority anyways. But out of that mound of magitech, I managed to extract an intact energy crystal from one of the golems. A bit of tweaking afterwards, and I could charge them with our generators and discharge into something else. If you wanted to pinpoint the true beginning of ARCANE, that was it. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The cane was getting excessively annoying to use by that time, as I kept losing my grip, and my medic gave me a set of leg braces to help. I couldn’t stand walking around like a puppet on strings with that slag, so I fashioned some miniature pressure switches and actuators to a set of wrought-iron gauntlets. Also did the same to the set of braces, after I did some drilling for joints. Some linkages to the energy crystal from earlier, and my first suit – of sorts – was finished. Crude, but I was walking much better than with the cane. After a few days of practice, I could run again. Full mobility. Almost.
No, I kept the project hush-hush. Warbandmates only. Some centurion would have razed us like the Searing for disobeying orders.
Speaking of the warband, they were impressed, but more so my legionnaire. Partially because he had another soldier capable of working again, but he had another idea after I regained my gait. He slipped me a small bag of gold and gave me the location of a krewe of eggheads in Metrica, then sent me on my way. I returned with a single asuran computer and every variety of energy crystal I could never need. He wanted to see if I could build something…better. Something more than mechanized braces and gloves with actuators.
The next few months were a blur, and my progress alternated between lightning-fast and slow as tar. I had help from my warband if they could spare the time, but most of the engineering was done alone on my part. The gloves and braces were stitched together with heavy leather and metal plates to create a full suit of armour. The pressure switches were replaced with crystalline dust-lined meshes, while energy storages were increased tenfold with battery attunement. Integration of a multi-gadget platform into the wrists meant I wouldn’t need to carry a battlefield tool kit anymore. Also, I crafted a mask to make the entire thing airtight, while a set of gas tanks provided some mild stimulant that my medic recommended. And to tie it all together, I taught myself how to code with that asuran computer, and developed a basic interface to operate the suit’s functions.
By the time I was finished, it was about a year and a half after I was let go from the infirmary. With the suit’s proper completion, my legionnaire suggested I should present it during our next warband inspection. We had been reassigned to some freshly-promoted centurion – Kyra Hammerlord – and she was fired up, antsy to survey her new subordinates. And so I was clad in my suit while Hammerlord walks through our workshop, and she stops right in front of me. After a few questions from her part…she challenged me to a duel. Right then and there.
I won’t say who won, but…I will say that she was the one who stopped the fight after several minutes. A few days later, Hammerlord returns with several aides and a mountain of paperwork. She wanted me to expand the scope of my research, to include other injured or disabled soldiers. I was all too happy to oblige. The forms were to establish the project as an official Iron Legion R&D operation, and to give me limited leadership over any recruited charr. Not long after, I was given the keys to a brand new workshop in a different corner of the citadel, and a nice chunk of gold to start filling it with heavy machinery and researchers.
The project also needed a name. As you know, it’s ARCANE. Augmented Reparative Combat Armour Nascency and Evolution. It’s been a few years since we started, and now we have over thirty charr working on magitech solutions to battlefield injuries. That includes six full-time testers, all of which would be bedridden or crippled without their suits. Given a few more years, most of them won’t need them anymore, while right now, all of them are just as battle-ready as any other soldier. If not more.
Me? No, no such luck. Dystrophy is not the same as a reattached arm or mended jaw. But that only means the project will continue as long as I breathe. And many more charr will get second chances on the battlefield because of ARCANE.
- Zolgear Powerhouse (The Severed)
Distal Muscular Dystrophy. The charr don't have the words for it yet, but the disease persists regardless, as rare as it may be.
Zolgear the Severed © me
Art © LupisDarkmoon
GW2 and charr © ArenaNet
Category Artwork (Digital) / Fanart
Species Charr
Size 1000 x 1073px
File Size 1.27 MB
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