Mind Impulse Unit - Titan Mind Impulse Units: A Titan is operated by an individual commanding officer known as a princeps, who must link with the ferocious Machine Spirit (artificial intelligence) housed within the Titan's adamantium hull and subdue it in order to exert control over the mighty war machine.The Mind Impulse Unit enables this link by creating an interactive and immersive sensory space -- sometimes referred to as "the Manifold" -- in which the princeps can comprehend their war engine and their environment when they become one with the towering god-machine. The Titan is operated, in enforced cooperation with the Machine Spirit, through mental commands issued in the Manifold by the princeps.Such neural enmeshing is extremely taxing, and most princeps cannot bear the strain of controlling all of a Titan's systems -- and those who do, only can for short periods of time. Thus the princeps must be assisted in operating the war machine by junior officers called moderati, whose purpose is to operate some of the Titan's systems in their commander's stead.When the princeps is linked to a Titan's MIU, they feel the Titan's body as if it were their own -- their hands become weapon arms, their senses are turned into powerful auspexes and their skin becomes the thick adamantium hull -- an experience of supremacy and escape from Human frailty that addicts every princeps who links with a Titan.The princeps is then able to command the Titan intuitively -- he merely needs to think of undertaking an action and the great machine complies. During this process, the princeps does not lose conciousness of their own body, and is able to simultaneously move and act as normal, within the limits dictated by the continued use of the Mind Impulse Unit to which they are connected.Being linked to the MIU can also be dangerous and even lethal, as the potent Machine Spirit of a Titan can wreck an unprepared individual's consciousness and drive him or her to madness. Even when bound to the will of a princeps, the Machine Spirit never surrenders completely, and its feral need to walk and rain destruction will prevent the Titan's pilot from terminating the link without suffering the consequences of restraining it.This, along with the addiction to the link that princeps fall victim to, contributes to the painful withdrawal suffered in between periods of being in the mindlink. Shivers, aching bones, thudding headaches, muscle cramps, night terrors and a searing feeling of dislocation -- all the while longing for the joy of reconnection -- are the hallmarks of separation from the MIU, and those symptoms grow more severe with time. When the time of reconnection to the MIU comes, however, it is never an easy task.The Machine Spirit seems resentful at being woken, and each and every time a princeps links with their Titan they must reestablish cooperation and regain the machine's trust -- which has been described as being similar to having to break in the same rebellious steed every time it is mounted. All this mental strain, over many Terran years of repeated reconnections, and sometimes even through the Titan's own patient endeavour, will cause the princeps to eventually lose their sanity.They will be broken in turn by the Titan, or completely overwhelmed by the domineering Machine Spirit, lost in the machine's mental landscape -- at which point disconnecting the princeps from the Mind Impulse Unit will result in certain death.The Titan's Machine Spirit is at its strongest in the heat of battle, and some princeps allow themselves to be engulfed by it, enmeshed even further, in order to lift their performance to an instinctive level. In the heat of battle it is not unknown for a princeps to suffer a stroke, a tonic-clonic seizure or be completely lost in a screaming psychic maelstrom frothing within the Titan's mindscape.Additionally, damage to the Titan's system circuitry can cause the MIU to go haywire, and in such circumstances, the luckiest princeps are killed instantly by the psychic shock, while the rest of the crew are reduced to gibbering lunatics. Most of the crews' MIUs are equipped with manual emergency cut-offs, however, sometimes the moderati and princeps are not able to utilise them quickly enough to avoid the damage.As mentioned above, the mindlink is a very immersive and intimate connection, through which the princeps feels the Titan as if it was their own flesh. Such a mental bond also causes the princeps to perceive all damage inflicted upon the machine's hull as injuries to their own body, and although no physical harm is actually done to their, they will perceive pain and suffer from the emergence of psychosomatic wounds which can, in extreme cases, cause death.MIU links are attached, most traditionally, via implanted cybernetic socket connectors in the cranium and neck and aided by cyber-optic implants, or in the spine -- in which case the body armour a Titan's crew wear must accommodate links to these sockets. Additionally, some Titan Legions utilise auxiliary haptic connectors, though others discard such measures as too delicate and too easily compromised to be placed in a war engine.