King Oni

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*"Who has awakened me?"*

- King Oni

## Tactical Analysis

* **Mecha Warrior**: Enemy armour is no match for the King Oni's Wave-Force eyeblasters, and little else can stand up to the crushing blows of its arms for any length of time. And modern anti-armour weapons seem ineffective against the King Oni, which seems able to withstand many times more punishment than a typical main battle tank. Stopping it would likely require an intensely concentrated attack of some sort.

* **Bull Rush**: The King Oni can reportedly charge straight through enemy ranks, demolishing formations and leaving any survivors in complete disarray. This attack seems hopelessly destructive, and thanks to advances in technology, the King Oni can do it often.

* **Cost-Prohibitive**: There is almost no way that the Empire of the Rising Sun could be manufacturing the King Oni in significant supply. The research-and-development costs alone must have been staggering, and the Empire of the Rising Sun would likely be using even more of these things if it could.

* **Great Cleave**: Recently the scientists had reverse-engineered the glaives from the failed Steel Ronin and managed to basically create a zanbato that uses the same mechanic as the Warrior beam katana, except it can power indefinitely, with Shiro now gifting these new weapons to Oni pilots who have shown their skills in battle. Giving the Oni's who wields it greater range and letting them cleave through multiple enemies with a single swing.

## WWIII Operational History

 File:KingOniArtwork.jpg  No one yet knows exactly how the Empire of the Rising Sun managed to keep its outlandish army a secret for so long. The Soviet Union was taken especially by surprise, as her borders were among the first to be darkened by the Empire's shadow.

When the Empire finally revealed its military might, many top military aides in the Soviet Union quickly resigned in embarrassment, while others were incarcerated (or worse) for failing to gather sufficient data on their new enemies. Some maintain that reasonable human error caused the world's greatest military minds to fail to detect the development of Imperial forces purely designed for ambush.

However, there is no satisfying explanation for how a monstrosity such as the **King Oni** could have been overlooked by the global intelligence community's top aides and agents until this massive battle-walker was already being put to use on the front lines. How could such a preposterous weapon, which flies in the face of decades of conventional mechanized warfare, have been developed purely in isolation?

The only explanation that makes any sense is that the Allied Nations and the Soviet Union were so embroiled in their own conflict that they became oblivious to the storm brewing in the far East; a storm best characterized by the unbelievable visage of the King Oni.

It remains unknown why the Japanese military was compelled to design such an unorthodox fighting machine as this humanoid-shaped construct, which stands approximately six stories tall and evokes images of a mechanical, hulking ogre. However, battlefield performance reports of this vehicle are very sobering, and suggest that its bizarre form factor is not merely a play against enemy morale. Indeed, the King Oni's combat capabilities alone are more than enough to dampen an opposing army's spirits. The "eyes" of this robot conceal energy weapons that can reduce a tank to molten ruin in seconds.

Also, the King Oni is remarkably capable of fighting with its own body, using its massive arms and legs to crush anything that stands in its way. An early battlefield report involving the King Oni suggested that just one of these robots, when faced with an entire tank platoon, simply charged the main battle tanks head-on. Their shots deflected off of the King Oni's white armour (which must be some sort of new compound), even as it barrelled into the tanks, simply crushing them underfoot as though they were children's playthings.

Until recently it was not even known if the King Oni was a piloted, remote-controlled, or autonomous vehicle. Still, the only thing that is certain about the King Oni is its combat proficiency. Military strategists surmise that it is almost impossible for the Empire of the Rising Sun to have constructed more than a handful of these remarkable machines. However, their credibility these days seems to be somewhat dubious.

## Post-War Operational History

After many reports of a King Oni dishonourably standing back and shooting enemies while brave warriors were being killed in front of them, a modification to the AI was quickly uploaded on each model, as well as a power routing system modification. The tempered and cautious AI is now bound more to the wishes of the human component, who has been encouraged to throw caution to the wind. Now King Onis fight much more honourably, charging forth into battle to deliver devastating blows that can crush anything that gets in the way, while the eyeblasters are used more sparingly to strike down armour from range. After all, the warrior is the weapon; his eyeblasters are merely his allies.

During this time the scientists had reverse-engineered the glaives from the failed Steel Ronin and managed to basically create a zanbato that uses the same mechanic as the Warriors beam katana, except it can power indefinitely, with Shiro now gifting these new weapons to Oni pilots who have shown their skills in battle, with a pilot receiving it considering a mark of excellence, since making each one is a long process that is similar to forging a katana.

Thus fierce competition soon grew between Oni pilots as each of them now strives to show their worth of wielding the blade.

## Greater King Oni

During the Great World War III, there have been reports about even mightier mecha then already feared King Oni. These King Oni were painted in red colours and their design was slightly different. The heads of these **Greater King Oni** were similar to samurai helmets and on the shoulders were missile racks. Greater King Oni are special variants only for the highest of Imperial commanders, and as of now only six are known to exist.

The first appearance of the Greater King Oni was during the Mt. Fuji Incident, piloted personally by Emperor Yoshiro, named the *Scarlet Chrysanthemum*. However, Yoshiro was killed the same day the Greater King Oni appeared, so the *Scarlet Chrysanthemum* was assigned to Oki Islands to guard the Emperor's remains. Of the others, one was assigned to Shogun Kenji but was damaged in battle, although it was later recovered and now awaits reassignment. Another one was given to Tenzai Robotics, in order to guard their facilities, while the Hokkaido Defence Force received one and remaining two serve as guardians of Tokyo.

## Just the Stats

 **Armour Type** | Superheavy Armour

 **Kill Reward** | 24000

 **DPS** | 75

 **DPS** | 100