"Hey, It's cozy down here."
The Pilot[]
Personality[]
Eric is an easy going kind of pilot. His calm demeanor can easily be mistaken for apathy or even casual cruelty, especially on the battlescape, but he isn't one to split hairs on intent; His goal is survival, a behavior he extends to his team-members. Beneath the veneer of efficiency, he extends a surprisingly warm manner to those around him, even his rivals and enemies.
Appearance[]
While not muscular, Eric has a tall, moderate build, implying either relapsed or resumed conditioning. Eric has wavy brown hair that spills out the back of his helmet and green eyes. Though not necessary due to his user interface, as a habit he typically wears his suit helmet. He does so for comfort and visual contact with the suit's AI. His helmet remains untinted however, leaving his eyes exposed barring the glare of the occasional warm status light. Beyond that, he wears a motley collection of casual apparel, favoring college hoodies, plain color tshirts and cargo pants.
Relations & Allies[]
Eric maintains a degree of distance from pilots, not out of shyness or fear, but as an observer. He easily makes friends however, as long as his initial aloofness does not put them off.
The Suit[]
Appearance[]
Shai-Hulud is a impressively large Fortress Graboid, modeled after the fictional Sandworms of the desert world Dune. The suit shares very little practical aspects with the brutes of Herbert's opus beyond stylistic quirks. The interlocking plates across the suit are mostly used for locomotion, and little actual armor has been added to the unit; It relies on redundancy and overall integrity to tank hits, and would rather avoid them completely safe underground.
The front third of the suit is dominated by a tri-part mouth, with the ability to deal considerable damage to suits that make the mistake of ignoring the incoming machine. Along each mandible, a set of highly flexible hydraulic manipulators give the suit the necessary dexterity to operate and feed the internal manufacturing plant. Along the midsection of the bot, pop-up launchers fire an effective if sparse swarm of missiles as a long range option. Aft of the launcher, flush-mounted "hangars" deploy the bulk of the suit's firepower: A cadre of drones with a generally adaptable weapon set. The final third of the bot bristles with thin spines, intended to detect shock and motion regardless of orientation. Beneath these sensory spines, much heavier spikes conceal shaped charge dispensers.
The bot's appearance is difficult to discern due to the prevalence of sand and dust while in motion, but on the rare occasions it's clean, the hull gleams orange, white, and black in equal parts.
AI[]
The Uplifted AI in Shai-Hulud is a female modeled after a character from an obscure series from before suit-fall. She and Eric maintain a strict but genial relationship according to overheard conversations, but she rarely designs to speak to outside lines (at least inside the barracks: logistics has a bet on a particular "mechanic" who's always "on assignment").
Suit Crunch[]
Shai-Hulud is designed to deep-strike into dangerous territory, using the cover of the earth to avoid exposure to heavier weaponry. Typical tactics include surfacing to lay mines along a path of approach, deploying drones, softening hard targets with missiles and returning below ground to avoid counter-fire. When faced with melee suits at close range, Eric attempts to force them to follow in the path of his mine layer while attempting to disengage. If an opponent is too fast, powerful or adaptable to escape, Eric doubles back on the bot, attempting to deal significant damage to discourage his pursuit. If forced to stand and fight, he attempts hammer and anvil tactics with his remaining drones, flanking his assailant between the durable, half-buried Graboid and a fusillade of firepower.