The greatest Armournaut of all time, so much so that many techniques, as well as close-quarters combat doctrine, inherit his spirit and insight. Hailing from Morganna, Zunbox reportedly started his own Armournaut band at 15 years old. He quickly became known as the “Imp,” owing to his small stature and aggressive fighting style. Unable to afford and maintain ranged weapons, he favored using his MOA's steel arms to damage other vehicles. This approach led him to strip down much of the weight and all the armor of his frame to gain the necessary speed and maneuverability to close on his targets. This twitchy, reflex-focused fighting style served him well, and he developed techniques that supported it: ambush, hit-and-run, and staying so close to his enemies that their allies would not risk firing upon him. He would simply flip tanks rather than fighting them directly, ignore infantry, and isolate enemy MOAs through positioning or distraction. All the while, he taunted over speakers and comms. Recordings of his prowess quickly spread, and soon he was flooded with contracts and young Armournauts wanting to join him.
This success was troublesome, however. Previously, he had only his MOA and a small team of friends to help support and maintain it. Far from business and logistically minded, he struggled with new recruits, most of whom were young and simply tried to imitate his style, often with fatal results. Over the years, he began to recognize that his approach was becoming less effective. Close calls and the bodies of his fellow Armournauts piled up, sending as sure a message as any. He was aging, his opponents were adapting, and his Armournauts failed to be anywhere near as effective as he was. He resolved to change this. He intended to study strategy, learn how to be a proper Armournaut, run his band effectively, and train his recruits. But before he could even attempt this, he had to learn how to read.
At 20, he returned to Morganna, selling much of his Armournauts' equipment and reducing the size of his unit. He sought out a pandit, a spiritual leader of the Gene Flagellants, and said he wanted to learn. Faith obligated the pandit to agree, and soon Zunbox began his tutoring, but not before being admonished for his faithless lifestyle. Zunbox was instructed that two paths were laid out by the texts to end suffering: to create utopia or to reach enlightenment. Zunbox had pursued neither and had led a life the pandit deemed worthless. Angered, he struck out at the pandit, who didn't even attempt to evade the attack, receiving the blow squarely and only retaliating when Zunbox attempted a second strike.
Zunbox woke some hours later in the care of the pandit. They continued their lessons while he recovered, and Zunbox, humbled now, listened more closely. Confined to recovery from his injuries, he soon learned to read and began voraciously consuming Flagellant texts. After exhausting them, he began reading history, fiction, and writings of every genre. By the time he recovered, rather than wanting to learn how to be an Armournaut, he wanted to learn how to be a Flagellant guru. He said he was called to the utopian path and that his skills could help create it. The pandit, skeptical, set a number of trials for Zunbox.
Morganna is an inhospitable world. Once a planet-spanning ecumenopolis, it now stands ruined, fallen into disrepair through generations of disaster and neglect. Run away thermal cascades, resulting from much of the surface being covered in concrete, have over generations created great firestorms. These left in their wake vitrified and ashen deserts whose sands of glass, steel, and plastic submerge the few structures that survived. Ecosystems on Morganna are comprised of cavern-dwelling flora and fauna adapted to living in the network of hollows and voids left by the world-city. The oceans have reclaimed much of the world-city, and there are even some places that can be seen from the surface. Reefs built from the rotting skeleton of the ecumenopolis harbour a new hope for life on the world.
But Zunbox was not sent to these places. No, he was tasked with crossing the great equatorial desert: hundreds of kilometers of city worn to nothing but dunes of toxic sand. There, he was tasked with finding new knowledge to share with the universe. If he returned with some artifact of lost or forgotten technology, he would never be accepted. He was permitted to take no vehicle, only what he could carry, this was an opportunity to inure himself to suffering to take his first virtuous step on the utopian path. He took it, but not alone joined by his most loyal recruits and friends he set off into desert. He could not have known that he would return alone 2 years later, dragging their remains behind him with nothing to show for their sacrifice and his stuggle. seeking out the pandit he was dismayed to find they had died of sickness before he returned. Failing this first trial one that all on the utopian path must complete meant no other pandit would guide Zunbox, consumed by grief he remained on Morganna and was forgotten by the Cluster, his time as the Imp had ended.
He might have remained in his grief if not for the Clan Wars on Morganna. The Flagellants, often caught in the crossfire though far from defenceless, had a use for Zunbox. He would fight alongside the Gunmonks this time without freneticism; instead, with a cold focus, he piloted his MOA. For a decade, he simply walked onto battlefields, many believing he intended to meet his death but certainly not by lying down. He learned from and taught the Gunmonks; together they modified their MOAs so that, rather than just strike, they could grapple, lift, and toss. This new martial art proved devastating, as even the most resilient vehicles are not capable of having all their own weight slammed onto their weakest points. Zunbox would also target pilots: high-speed impacts, strong blows to cockpits, anything to stun or incapacitate them, striking always at the weakest point of his targets with practiced precision. Using the environment was another key development; structures, craters, and battlefield wreckage all were valuable weapons to off-balance or overwhelm the enemy. Soon, he reincorporated his old techniques speed, ambush, hit-and-run and this reunion produced nothing less than the contemporary close-quarters combat doctrine, what history would soon recall as the Zunbox Style.
Surviving the Clan Wars, Zunbox had earned the respect of the Gunmonks, if not as a peer in the faith, then as a warrior, and many followed as he created a new Armournaut band. These mercenaries, disciplined and principled, sworn to him and the Utopian Path, left Morganna and travelled to the Jambles. Their infamy grew, earning their moniker of "the Bloody Monks," and they were quickly considered the most dangerous Armournauts in the Jambles. Many of their rivals would abandon their contracts or defect to the Monks if they learned of their presence in the system. New recruits seeking to learn the Zunbox Style would also have to commit themselves to the Utopian Path and the Flagellant teachings, becoming faithful and fierce in equal measure. This proving ground and influx of recruits helped develop countless novel tactics and techniques; the Mine Waltz, Limb Sweep, and the eponymous Zunbox Maneuver were born here. Zunbox has spent the last three decades in the Jambles, earning billions in criptoscrip, furthering his vision of the Utopian Path, and drawing thousands to his cause. Zunbox has created a network of aligned colonies that fall under his protection, and many suspect that he intends to create a new nation, but that remains to be seen.
No Armournaut is so renowned, influential or documented even at 65 years old he is considered the most dangerous MOA pilot in the Cluster and even the Superpowers steer clear of his colonies.
Gellica is a fighter ace under contract with the powerful Seaside private military corporation, with over 2,000 combat missions to her name. Her career began in the high-stakes world of aerospace racing, a background evident in the unparalleled, aggressive grace of her piloting. She flies a custom-made, blisteringly fast fighter craft, the Cicindela, which is as much a part of her legend as the pilot herself. That legend includes a famous point of defiance: the loss of her left foot, which she refuses to have replaced with a graft. It stands as a stark reminder of her mortality and a symbol of the sheer will that has kept her alive in the deadliest skies.
An Averi noblewoman and industrial magnate whose empire is built on grown organs and purposed lifeforms, Yoyo is the Sworn Spear of the Peahen Empress, cloistered in distant Maganasanti. Tasked with establishing an Averi presence on the lawless frontier, she pursues this imperial mandate with chilling, corporate efficiency. She commands a private army of slave-soldiers, leading them with ruthless precision to fulfill lucrative contracts for the megacorps with which she is economically entwined. Her mission: to crush any threats to their colonial claims, clearing the way for the outposts she intends to form the backbone of a resurgent Averi nation. She is both a harbinger and an architect of a new imperial dawn.
Commander Yagan of the Farimba Extremophiles is regarded as history’s greatest warrior. For 75 years, he has waged a longitudinal war against the Yscenic occupiers of Odelke, hibernating for decades and waking only to lead daring raids and sabotage missions. His unit survives without resupply by scavenging enemy materiel and employing cultivated GELF technology: living “skins” that bond with the wearer to enhance physical prowess, enable survival in hostile environments, and permit years of hibernation. What they cannot scavenge, they grow with the Gelfbow being a noted favourite. Not really an Armournaut though many have offered fortunes to his government to utilise him and his unit as such, however Yagan has made it clear that he will only leave Odelke once the Yscenic occupiers have been destroyed.
At only 23, Reida is already a legend among Armournauts, an elite interfacer and MOA pilot of staggering talent. Her skills are so profound that she is rumoured to have been a student of the mythical Superhot, history's greatest interfacer. An expert in drone warfare, her signature tactic is to saturate the battlefield with swarms of hacked and commandeered machines, overwhelming enemies through sheer, coordinated saturation. She has parlayed her genius into a pirate’s hoard, amassing a vast collection of vehicles stolen through expert systems-hacking. This arsenal forms the backbone of her large and notoriously independent band, known as the Truants, who operate with the swift, disruptive efficiency of their young leader.
A solitary and terrifying figure, Lord Molotov is infamous across the contested systems of the frontier for his signature weapon: fire. No one has seen the face behind the iconic GELF skin, a unique fireproof specimen that has inspired numerous copycats. Operating outside any known band of Armournauts, he is a free agent, appearing without warning to unleash devastating incendiary attacks before vanishing into the smoke. Persistent rumors suggest he is an exiled Venti prince, though this only adds to the enigma of a warrior who has become less a man and more a beast. Others suggest that his GELF skin has driven him mad and that he is far more motivated by cruelty than greed.
A candidate for the Temple Diaconate, Morocco is a scholar-warrior who ventured to the ancient, wandering planetoid of Dreaver. His mission was to study pre-Scattering technologies and learn from the station's reclusive religious caretakers. He diverges sharply from traditional Diacons, spurning bulky power armour in favour of faster, more agile exosuits that complement his unique talents. While only an interfacer of passing skill, his true danger lies in close quarters. His formidable martial arts, amplified by the speed and power of his exosuit, make him a devastating hand-to-hand combatant. He leads a small, tight-knit band of Armournauts, serving primarily as Dreaver’s local militia but occasionally venturing off-world for contracts that fund their continued existence and studies.
Named for the great revolutionary who preached a unified homeworld for all speciated and anthrodivergent peoples, Little Symar was born into the brutal infighting that consumed the GELF factions after their leader's death. Forced to learn self-defense in a world turned hostile, he found his calling as a tank operator. His genius lay in countering the era's dominant MOA platforms, developing tactics to outmanoeuvre and destroy them. As a leader, he taught these skills to his band, forging them into a lethal "wolf pack" of armour. Through relentless contract work, he financed their exodus from their homeworld of Lhrot to Gerrister. Every mission funds their true goal: stabilizing and securing vulnerable GELF communes across the frontier, a tireless crusade that has truly earned him the name of his legendary namesake.
A Venti princess who fled her home on Adria with a substantial portion of the familial treasury, Cassani has forged her own legend far from the palace. Her band is small, operating from a single, well-equipped vessel that is already the object of intense scrutiny across the Jambles. She earned her reputation in the brutal, close-quarters Bunker Conflicts on Brogno, where her tactical genius and lethal precision drew comparisons from seasoned locals to the legendary commander Stel. An expert markswoman, her true mastery is displayed in the cockpit of her MOA, where surveillance vids capture the terrifying, surgical accuracy of her cannon fire.
The promising interfacer for Princess Cassani’s fledgling band, Paren is a master of the invisible battlefield. Encased in the durable protection of his Diacon armour, he specializes in full-spectrum electronic warfare. His skills were forged in the crucible of Semaj, a total-war environment where he survived by scavenging technology from the very machines hunting him, learning their protocols and vulnerabilities from the inside out. He is the unit’s ghost, jamming communications, blinding sensors, and disorganizing enemy formations to create chaos. This electronic shroud allows his more direct comrades, like Cassani herself, to move in for the precise, killing blow.