Karol Xie

## Venerable Xie's Life

Venerable Karol Xie is a versatile expert pilot in his mid-50's and is trained to operate many types of ranged and melee mechs on land and in space. He reached a resonance strength of eight laveres at his age, which was pathetic. Xie's cross-training in so many different types of mechs had left the expert pilot without a strong focus. He has specialized in rifleman mechs armed with kinetic weapons, but the time spent training his versatility has limited the growth of his piloting ability. Because of his versatility he primarily piloted two expert mechs: the Pale Dancer, a landbound a highly mobile rifleman using kinetic rifles, and the Meridian Echo, a spaceborn rifleman mech.

Venerable Xie served as truly loyal personal guard for Hix-Klaaster, the Fourth Prince of the Royal House of Talk, which reigns over the Palast Kingdom (third-rate state) in the Dark Plasma Star Sector. His growth in resonance strenth was virtually stagnant, because his expert mechs were designed to be weaker to intentionally limit his growth, which was unknown to Xie and his prince. Xie was able to briefly surpass twelve laveres, while riding O'Callahan's Parallax Star.

He traveled with the prince on a colonization fleet through the frontier, where they were attacked by the Fire Treaders (pirates). The pirates aligned to Ravienne overwhelmed his customized spaceborn rifleman mech, the Meridian Echo, with sheer weight of numbers.

He joined the Flagrant Vandals as a result of a trade agreement to save Prince Hixt-Klaaster in the frontier. Prince Hixt-Klaaster later died, because of an infiltration attack of an acolyte from the Church of Haatumak. The Flagrant Vandals hid the death of the prince and replaced him with an AI. To create a more long term solution, Ves tampered with the neural interface of his simulator pod and the Pale Dancer to slowly brainwash the mech pilot to instill loyality to the Flagrant Vandals.

Venerable Xie was assassinated in a camp nearby the Starlight Megalodon following a discussion of Ves and Calabast about him potentially colluding with the Vesians. He was shot in the head with a laser weapon. His assassination further motivated the camp to fight against the overwhelming Vesian force, which was believed to have executed the attack, rather than attempt to flee or lose hope.

## Expert mechs

### Pale Dancer

The Pale Dancer consisted of a highly mobile rifleman mech that employed fast-firing kinetic rifles to devastating effects. For an expert mech, it was light, fast but could withstand a decent amount of unaugmented attacks from non-elite mechs. It fired light to medium-hitting projectiles at a fairly fast rate of fire, making it ideal for mowing down entire mech companies of light mechs within a matter of seconds! The Pale Dancer's relatively light caliber kinetic rifle didn't possess an overwhelming advantage against heavier opponents. Medium knight mechs and any kind of heavy mech would probably be able to shrug off the Pale Dancer's projectiles for maybe a dozen or more seconds.

Whoever designed the Pale Dancer intended to deliver an improper product to the Fourth Prince and Venerable Xie at the initial stage of conception. The mech is intentionally weak, thereby limiting the growth of the expert pilot. This sabotage likely occured because of a political conflict for power between the princes.

The Pale Dancer was destroyed on Ves' orders to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Vesians near the Starlight Megalodon.

### Meridian Echo

The Meridian Echo is customized spaceborn rifleman mech, it was destroyed during the defense of the colonization fleet against the Fire Treaders (pirates).

### Parallax Star

Venerable Xie also briefly piloted a modified version of the Parallax Star from O'Callahan. Xie surpassed twelve laveres for a brief moment of time while riding the Parallax Star.