Zhong Iron Beast By Imperator-Zor Watch

10 Favourites 1 Comment 1K Views

Zhong Iron Beast (also known as Iron Dragons). These machines are an arcane combination of clockwork mechanics and magic. Commanding each of these mechincal is a jade vessel containing the soul of an animal (usually a specially trained Dog, Boar or Monkey, in this case a Dog) which commands its new form through an intracate device and should it be destroyed the machine stops working. The making of Iron Beasts is a delicate art and requires skilled artisans to make the complex devices, train animals (which continues after being placed in their metallic forms) and maintain them, as well as requiring highly dedicated specialists to command them in combat. Said specialists generally command packs of between five and ten such creatures.



This praticular Iron Beast is fairly typical, although dozens of sub varients exist due to the artisan nature of their construction. This often plays hob with logisitics. Specially treated silk is used to fill in the gaps between the gaps in the armor to protect sensitive mechanical systems from dust and so forth. This unit can run at 100 Li per Hour and can jump nearly 8 bù. Iron Beasts commanded by the souls of Dogs tend to be built more for speed, those commanded by the souls of boars tend to be more heavily armored and armed and those commanded by Monkeys tend to have heavy apelike builds, anti-infantry armaments and are good in close combat, being able to go up against Trolls and Golems. For armament this one has a low caliber cannon, a magazine loaded from a hatch on the bottom, its meathook like claws, its jaws (able to crush armor) and a mouth mounted flame thrower. Iron beasts tend to have holdovers from life, notable among them is a tendancy to attempt to eat corpses. The Arcane clockwork systems inside them don't need conventional sustinance (although they do require "recharging" after periods of activity by the artisan mages responsible for their care), but various alchemists and engineers have made use of this trait by putitng in oboard processers which convert flesh and bone eaten by these machines into fuel for the flamethrowers. To conduct repairs, recharge, safely transport, load and do other nessisary things to these machines, Iron Beasts have an off switch.



Due to their comparitively small numbers (only about 4,500 exist in total and only a few dozen are produced each year) these machines are used sparingly. The main use for Iron boars and dogs is to have packs of them lead by mounted masters move ahead of the main forces of the army and raid enemy supply lines, villages and posistions while Destroying Enemy scouts. On the Battlefield they are used in a similar manner to cavalry, flanking enemy posisitions. Monkeys (which are generally the slowest) are either sent against praticularly durable formations of infantry or formations of enemy monsters or are kept in reserve to defend riflemen and trenchlines sould the enemy get to close. The prefered tactics used against iron Beasts by the westerners involve long range bombardment with artilllery, sending creatures such as trolls and Golems against them as well as using slayers. However if at all possible, the prefered targets are that of their trainers. While Standby trainers exist for this purpose, it does cause them to loose clear tactical direction.

IMAGE DETAILS Image size 2935x2061px 983.44 KB Show More