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Four-seven is a “Crusader” model of infantry droid, the crusader is highly standardized and used widely even in non-combat roles, designed to share many dimensions and capabilities with an armored human the Crusader features a well armored chestplate, facplate, as well as additional armor over the forearms and shins (as they were decided to be “high risk” components when in a standard shooting position). The armored components are typically painted a distinct parade white as opposed to the black or grey of less armored segments of the frame. The crusader’s face plate is largely inspired by medieval and fantasy knights, with an angled faceplate that covers the droid’s voice unit, a visor that serves as a display for 2 digital “eyes” that allow the Crusader a modest range of visible emotion, and a pair of swept back “ears” on the sides of the head that both receive audio and serve as wireless transmitters. The Crusader runs a micro-scale fusion powerplant in the torso, allowing extremely prolonged operation but making the platform very frail, contrary to popular belief the reactor poses no threat to nearby creatures thanks to thorough failsafes in the event of damage and the overall low output. Damage to the torso will usually result in loss of motor functions or a complete loss of power and is considered easily repairable, damage to the head will, in a best case scenario, result in a noticeable decline in processing abilities, and at worst result in fatal memory damage.
Personality
Reckless, arrogant, ambitious, actually just a bit insecure. Four-Seven’s years of service and glory seeking has left him with a hit-or-miss ability to cooperate with a team, and a strong drive to excel with only some of the skills to back that up.
Special Skills
Able to perform basic maintenance on his custom fighter, modest marksmanship.
Background
Beginning his career as an F-23 “Raven” fighter/bomber pilot for the Tecarian Air Force, Four-Seven quickly earned the callsign “Buzzard” for his risk averse tactics and attacking weakened targets. Although it was normal for squadrons to assign new pilots a humiliating callsign Four-Seven took it to heart and committed himself to become a more aggressive and proficient pilot, which quickly gave him the highest simulator loss rate of any pilot in the entire wing his squadron was attached to. Practice made perfect though and eventually Four-Seven was able to hone reckless aggression into effective tactics, which he quickly leveraged to build an impressive streak of air victories over his peers in the simulators, earning him the attention of the Tecarian Imperial Guard. After some remedial training Four-Seven and his Raven were assigned to the fighter complement of an Imperial Guard battlecarrier for space superiority operations, in his new squadron Four-Seven left his old callsign behind and quickly earned the callsign “Spitfire” for his quick wit and quicker mouth, nearly coming to blows with fellow pilots on several occasions, and being routinely matched if not bested in simulations against his new peers. When the Guard began retraining pilots for their new “Peregrine” starfighters Four-Seven routinely struggled with the much smaller and more responsive craft, ultimately feeling defeated and as if he had peaked, Four-Seven made the decision to retire. This retirement lasted less than 2 years, Four-Seven found that he missed the cockpit, but the Imperial Military had retired all of its Ravens, so he decided to become a freelance pilot. Unfortunately the Imperial Military also refused to part with any of the retired Ravens, and the Raven was strictly carrier bound, whereas any mercenary pilot needed an FTL capable ship. Four-Seven ultimately purchased a foreign-made “Grison” gunship, the smallest FTL capable craft on the arms market, and called in several favors from old friends in the Imperial Military, although he couldn’t secure a Raven he was able to acquire enough spare parts to build one, and with the help of his old contacts he was able to tear down the Grison and rebuild it with the engines and power plant of a Raven, as well as a new set of ion cannons, powerful but temperamental particle weapons that gave his Grison, which he dubbed Roadrunner, a decisive advantage over even larger gunships. Working as a freelance pilot turned out to be much more Four-Seven’s speed, although Roadrunner wasn’t quite his old Raven, he was able to wring it for performance just as well, and his years of experience honing himself against skilled Tecarian pilots put him miles ahead of many of the wealthy amateur freelancers, pirates, and militia pilots who his contracts pitted him against and meant he was able to quickly carve out a name for himself. In between missions many other former military pilots turned freelancers reached out to Four-Seven, forming a few quick friendships over the shared experience and profession, even if they had served in vastly different navies.
Roadrunner Specifications
- Type
- The Grison is the smallest and nimblest gunship offered by Lottel Aerospace, equipped with quad pulse lasers, and a dorsal pulse laser turret supported by two heavy missile pylons, the Grison is a credible threat in any combat situation while being able to run circles around any other type of gunship thanks to its powerful engines and small mass. Named for a small avian predator on Marr, the Grison is an uncommon but highly potent choice for many experience mercenary pilots.
- Sensors
- The Lottel “Lookout” sensor suite is the basic sensor kit mounted in the nose of all Grison gunships, it is also one of the worst sensor suites on the market. Due to the small, trimmed down nature of the Grison, the sensor suite was never able to be on par with that of larger vessels, even non-combat vessels have superior sensors. The Lookout system is distinctly “good enough” for its purpose, able to provide LOS detection out to roughly 1,000km under ideal conditions, and 100km under combat conditions. The sole positive trait of the Lookout system is its decidedly low power draw.
- Computer
- Roughly half of the original Grison flight computer is stripped out and the remaining half has been rebuilt as a tactical slave computer, performing mundane calculations and system management while serving as a hardware extension of the pilot. The new computer system is still able to perform most basic management tasks but all functionality that can be performed manually has been stripped out.
- Weaponry
- Roadrunner exchanges all of the Grison’s armaments for a pair of Tecarian vehicle-class 2 ion cannons in the base of the wings, the turret has been removed entirely and both the ring and nose mounts plated over. The cannons are on the lower end of ion cannons, but still sufficient enough to rip apart any foreign airframe in two shots or less. The heavy missile pylons have also been exchanged for four standard missile pylons, allowing Roadrunner to accept the Tecarian Nebula plasma missile, a prolific fragmentation weapon renowned for its wide radius of destructive potential even against armored craft.
- Defenses
- Roadrunner retains the standard armor configuration of a standard Grison, this includes a small boon in the form of a weak shield emitter, allowing it to weather many more blows than its weak armor normally would. Plans to replace the turret with a Tecarian external shield generator were scrapped due to a lack of access to manufacturing facilities.
- Power
- Roadrunner uses a twin-core Tecarian fusion power plant, the starter system takes up much of the room formerly occupied by the flight computer, but the twin-core system allows Roadrunner to maintain minimal navigation power even after critical damage to one of the reactors.
- Propulsion
- Roadrunner has a pair of Type 1 Cyclonic Plasma Thrusters (CPTs) packed tightly into the aft end of the fuselage. CPTs were developed from the Cyclonic Ion Thrusters of the heavy Banshee dropship, using electromagnetic acceleration and compression of magnetically responsive exhaust to increase thrust with comparatively low power draw, CPTs dramatically increased the power requirements but still represented an appreciable improvement over similarly sized conventional plasma engines, leading to widespread use on strike craft with the power to spare.
- Heat Management
- The Grison was equipped with state of the art heat management systems, which Roadrunner retains, in addition to a Tecarian fluid cooling system installed under the power plant. Under combat conditions Roadrunner can sink heat for at least an hour before it becomes necessary to disengage and vent by exposing its heat sinks and diverting power to its vacuum heat pumps. Although able to fully discharge all heat in at most 10 minutes, Roadrunner is left extremely vulnerable during the process, usually sparing power for the heat pumps by shutting down weapons to preserve shields and propulsion. Under standard navigation Roadrunner can operate for up to 24 hours straight before needing to vent, as passive venting via the Tecarian cooling system controls the power plant effectively on low outputs.
- Cockpit
- The Grison’s cockpit canopy slides forwards over the nose to allow the pilot in or out, Roadrunner retains this, but otherwise completely redesigns the cockpit in the image of a Tecarian starfighter. The control configuration would be familiar to any experienced pilot, a throttle stick controls acceleration, and can even provide retrograde thrust in zero-G, while a joystick and pedals control the ship’s axes. To overcome the 3D nature of deep space maneuvering the ship features an alternate control scheme which can be toggled on or off, and dynamically switches between the use of flaps and positioning jets as it detects local atmospheric conditions, or lack thereof, though an additional control exists to toggle positioning jets even in-atmosphere. In the primary control scheme the ship’s controls affect direction, using positioning jets bidirectionally to move the nose, in the alternate control scheme the controls affect position, firing the jets unidirectionally to shift the ship up, down, and side to side as needed.
- Communications
- Much of the space saved by reducing the flight computer went into the new power plant, the rest of this space, as well as space saved by the removal of the life support, was spent expanding the ship’s communications suite, the new system is able to provide lightspeed communications out to 1 Ls with complete clarity.
- Storage
- Any mercenary vessel contains modest accommodations for its pilot due to the long distance nature of their work, however gunships such as the Grison are almost always created by removing the passenger bay of a normal mercenary jumper, instead providing longevity to the pilot via storage compartments that hold basic supplies to keep the pilot going on the fringes of civilization. As the smallest of mercenary gunships the Grison also has the least storage, composing of 5 storage compartments too small for anything but basic essentials, 4 are located on the exterior, just aft of the cockpit, and the fifth is found underneath the ship’s ejector seat.
- Life Support
- None