Talos Legionnaire

“Who are those guys?! They’re utterly fearless bastards! Ran up into that Slaver party and ripped the hell out of ‘em! Left no #####ing survivors! Anybody see them outside their power armor? Because I’d like to buy those can-jockies a drink or three!”

## “Talos Legionnaires” Shemar Ghost Rider Oreseme

Related to the Wulfgar are the Talos Legionnaires, an Oreseme creation o f the Ghost Rider Tribe. Talos Legionnaires are various power armor suits, refurbished and refitted with robotic or neural intelligence A.I.s.

Talos Legionnaires can be of any type of power armor, but the majority of them in service to the Ghost Riders are Northern Gun models, mainly because they are the most readily available in North America. The suits are fitted with extra sensors, and a more advanced control system linked to an A.I. brain. That A.I. brain is programmed with a full complement of Military Robot programs, appropriate to the Legionnaires’ intended roles. Being products of the Ghost Riders, the Legionnaires are programmed with simulated personalities from various pre-Rifts video games and historical persona-sims (listening to the communications between a squad of Legionnaires can sound downright WEIRD when several of the ‘bots may be based on videogame characters, others on movie characters, and yet others on historical figures). The Legionnaires may also incorporate additional and concealed weaponry, usually Shemarrian-specific weapons, while externally carried hardware is more often than not battlefield salvage, so as to further the illusion of non-Shemarrian affiliation.

The Ghost Riders have collected over three hundred complete power armors (over 50% of Northern Gun types, with the remainder a mix of Black Market types such as the Shadowboy, some Titan Robotics models, and a smattering of Triax, Kittani,
Naruni, Chipwell, CS and FQ types) and built a small army of Talos Legionnaires based in a hidden enclave near Mad Haven. They have deployed small numbers of Legionnaires about their domain and beyond as scouts and patrollers, allowing the Tribe to conceal their own movements without sacrificing coverage of their areas of responsibility. Seen from a distance, the Legionnaires look less conspicuous than a Shemarrian patrol, and are less likely to arouse suspicions, though closer scrutiny (such as a request to ‘get out of that can’) will cause problems for the robot soldiers. In fact, the term ‘Talos Legionnaire’ has been circulated as the name of a mercenary unit operating somewhere in the northeast, though nobody outside the Shemarrian Nation has been able to hire, or even contact, them.

Most other Tribes look askance at Talos Legionnaires, comparing them to the oft-controversial ‘myrmidons’, and those Talos Legionnaires taken into the service of other Tribes like the Silvermoons, Darkwaters, and Hawkmoons are ‘Awakened’ with the Ecotroz essence, and typically more extensively modified to include such features as the regenerative nanite repair system or Tribe-specific Upgrades (the Silvermoons like to mirror-chrome theirs).

Talos Legionnaires are also expected to be part of the ‘retinue’ of the Shemarrian Star Nation branch of the Ghost Riders, using locally available PA types and either imported or new construction Rifts Earth types.

Ecotroz-‘Awakened’ Talos Legionnaires have all the traits and psionic abilities of regular Awakened Shemarrians.