Ravenstein Experimental Bureau

The Ravenstein Experimental Bureau is a design firm set up by Clan Ashen Corsac with technical assistance and support from MacthWerk and Schwarzstein Metall on the planet of Ravenstein. It was created for the purpose of experimenting with all sorts of unusual or unproven Mech technology, which are not cleared for use in mass-production designs and would not be used by any commercial entities due to the high amount of risk involved. Over time, it evolved to become the Corsacs' premier R&D skunkworks working on all sorts of unusual or novel designs or technologies.

## Company Information

### Product Ranges

* OmniMechs
* Battle Armor
* ProtoMechs

### Specialty

R&D Skunkworks

After Operation PROVING GROUND tripled the number of worlds under the fledgling Clan's control, the Council wanted to avoid putting all of its proverbial eggs in the same basket and wanted to decentralize its war material production, while also preventing a single entity from being responsible for the entirety of the Clan's Mech production. It also needed a dedicated facility for Mech research and testing, as while the MachtWerk facilities had considerable production capabilities, they were not equipped for experimental research, only mass production and small, modest design tweaks.

It also stood to mention that due to its inherent nature, the Corsac Scientist caste was orders of magnitude more flexible and proactive than that of other Clans, most of whom by now had a long tradition of stifling creativity and allocating fundings and resources only to a select few programs that those Clans' Warrior deemed capable of bearing immediate and direct combat results. This chaffing was what would lead to the Society uprising in much of Clan Space around the same time the REB was founded, and the REB by contrast provided an almost too-good-to-be-true alternative where a wide breadth of research was permitted and funded and Scientists were allowed to experiment far more freely. This caused a small but not insignificant number of Scientists from the Invader Clans who were moderates and had thrown some support towards the Society out of a feeling of being backed into a corner and having no other option... to suddenly have another option. These Scientists, who were dejected, but not quite happy about the sheer extremism of the Society, quietly defected to Corsac space in some numbers, providing the Corsacs with considerable amount of insight into other Clans' methods and mindsets when it came to more scientific and technical fields.

Shortly after its completion, the REB would launch several major projects and dozens of minor ones, becoming one of the most proactive centers of Mech design - and not much later, Battle Armor and ProtoMech as well - in the whole of the northern semi-Periphery. Many of those designs and the supporting systems and alloys that made them up would go on to be produced either locally, or by other Companies such as MachtWerk and Schwarzstein Metall on various worlds of Corsac Space. Modifications of extant designs would generally be the later, while local production focused on more esoteric designs, such as the Goliath Spider tripod Mech.

## Branches

**REB - Material Sciences**

* The Material Sciences branch of the REB focuses on the properties and applications of elements and composites. In its simplest expression, it is the production of new allows and production methods for the internal structure chassis of war machines and the armor that clads in, but their field of study also include crystalline materials and light phenomenon, both important components of laser systems, among others. The Material Sciences branch was instrumental in laying the groundwork that was later used by Schwarzstein Metall to begin mass production of the Obelisk series reinforced structure chassis for Mechs and the PanzerKristall reflective armor brand. Engine and heat sink experiments also fall within their purview given much of the work consists of finding alternate materials for their construction.

**REB - Electronics**

* The electronics branch of the REB focuses more on software than hardware, to a certain degree. The most visible part of their work is that they produce sensor, ECM and communications equipment for various types of combat platform, among which their most significant breakthrough were the 'Oracle' suite using by the Hellhound Battle Armor, which was a miracle of miniaturization, and the jamming-resistant 'Omega' variant of Vanguard's VoxPionner used by Einherjar ProtoMechs. Outside of support systems, the Electronics branch also played a role in building the actual hardware used by the Corsacs' Augmented Neural Interface system.

**REB - Weapon Systems**

* Ironically a somewhat smaller branch than the others, the Weapon Systems branch has primarily worked on the creation of the Corsacs' own brands of Heavy Lasers and ATMs (The 'LanzenReiter' and 'WeissHexe' models sold by Schwarzstein Metall respectively), two weapon systems who were developed by the Homeworld Clans and which the Corsacs had very little access to, but found to be very desirable and efficient.

**REB - Mech Skunkworks**

* The first and most notorious of the two Skunkworks divisions is the Mech one, established early in 3067 and having worked on a great many designs incorporating innovations from the above three in equal parts, but also obscure technology found elsewhere in the Inner Sphere. Through Project Ruby they made unique variants of the venerable Leviathan and Dragoons produced by MachtWerk and introduced the Onyx Eel and the Stalking Corsac, the clan's only Light Mech. They also created the Goliath Tarantula artillery tripod Mech which would go on to feature prominently in the clan's Executioner Clusters, as well as the amphibious Kraken tripod Mech.

**REB - Nano Skunkworks**

* Effectively the little brother of the Mech Skunkworks in all senses of the term, the Nano division focuses on smaller warmachines than Mechs, which is not nearly as easy as it sounds because it requires considerable efforts in miniaturization when almost all systems are intended for use by Mech-sized platforms. They are behind the creation of the Hellhound suit of Battle Armor and the Einherjar ProtoMech.

## Major Projects

### **Project Ruby**

Project Ruby was a large-scale program started during the Wars of Reaving to create a new line of 'Future Mechs' for Clan Ashen Corsac using the new technology being developed by the REB at the time. These new Mechs needed to share a great amount of streamlined components and to make use of the same internal structure and armor production lines, while providing, in theory at least, superior battlefield performance. Project Ruby would need to provide one Mech for each of the primary weight classes (Medium, Heavy and Assault) used by the Clan, as well as a dedicated Light Electronic Warfare support platform. In order to achieve this, considerable amounts of cooperation needed to be undertaken between all participating manufacturers.

The imperative behind Project Ruby was that between the Wars of Reaving raging in the Homeworlds and the Jihad embroiling the near totality of the Inner Sphere, the Clan was concerned about the possibility of all of known space degenerating into senseless total war and butchery - this would later be proven correct in the Homeworld, while it was already a thing locally in some battlefields of the greater Inner Sphere - and Khan Faust, whom knew well of the realities of warfare outside of the rigid traditions of Clan structure and honor, wanted to prepare for the eventuality of a war for one's very survival. This required squeezing every ounce of efficiency possible out of production lines with streamlined, standardized mass production lines, while maximizing the battle performance of every Warrior on the field.

With the available technologies, that meant a new Mech line based on two things: Reinforced Inner Structure and Reflective Armor. This would, in theory, offer the Clan's new Mechs unparalleled durability, with Reflective armor being especially effective against PPC and Large Lasers that made up the backbone of many armies, while Reinforced structure provided an overall boost and gave the frames protection against AP rounds and physical attacks which were a vulnerability of the Reflective armor. The standardized use of Laser Heat Sinks also made Mechs completely insensitive to local temperature. On paper, this worked quite well as a combination. In reality, it proved extremely weight-intensive, and forced the designers to work with weight constraints for weapons space and ammunition that were very low compared to the standard Endo-Ferro OmniMechs.

These weight constraints immediately meant that large Ballistic weapons were out. Missiles could be fitted, but only their lighter Clan variants, with heavier IS models and often even the Streak variants of Clan launchers being out of question. Energy weapons seemed to be the winner in those conditions - an irony, given that Project Ruby's mechs were extremely resilient against Energy - but these too had their own issues. While they were very weight and space efficient, the heat build-up from stacking many high power energy weapons required an equally large amount of Heat Sinks to keep under control, which were not so space or weight efficient. Nonetheless, this was still the lesser evil, and Mechs of Project Ruby were still primarily equipped with either All-Energy weapons, or a mix of Energy and Missile weapons. Another thing that gave points in favor of all-energy loadouts was their advantages in protracted campaigns where supplies could become an issue.

In the end, Project Ruby produced four Mechs. The Leviathan-G, whose already slow engine allowed to mount a truly obscene amount of energy weapons and heat sinks, made an already fearsome monster of a Mech into an even more ridiculous powerhouse that never ever ran out. The Onyx Eel was a variant of the Fire Eel IIC OmniMech which managed to become a versatile Medium despite its design constraints. The Stalking Corsac as a brand new dedicated EW support platform still had the capacity to obliterate squads of Battle Armor which was especially valuable in combined arms warfare. Finally, the Scarlet Dragoon as a Heavy Mech crystallized the Corsacs' experiments to revive the Rim Worlds Republic's ancient modular Dragoon program - an early predecessor to current OmniMech technology with its own advantages and drawbacks - into the modern day.

Project Ruby's Mechs began seeing production in 3075, after the end of the Wars of Reaving, and say their baptism of fire under Kadenza Schtern's Taskforce ADMONISHER as part of the greater Coalition to end the threat of the Word of Blake. After the religious sect was dismantled and the republic that replaced it brought in an unprecedented period of disarmament in the Inner Sphere however, the fears of being forced into a total war for survival seemed to have been exaggerated after all. Nonetheless, the Corsacs would have plenty of opportunities to make use of them in the Second Restoration Wars.