Prefsbelt Commander
The Naraka I Automated Worksuit
“Even in death, our enemies must not be allowed to rest. They will toil for us until the end of time.”
~Anonymous Prefsbelt Office of Labour Official
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To create a nightmare fuel dystopian machine. Also for Halloween.
- Image Source: Wookieepedia [x], but edited by the lovely
Zef Halo
. - Canon Link: Linked within submission.
- Permissions: None.
- Primary Source: Materials lifted from the PC-1 Auxiliary Armour [x]
- Manufacturer: Prefsbelt Command (The New Imperial Order [x])
- Affiliation: Prefesbelt Command and by extension the New Imperial Order [x].
- Model: The Naraka I Model Automated Worksuit.
- Modularity: Yes. Cybernetic reinforcements can be added dependent on limb loss. Can also be modified to fit the user depending on their physiology.
- Production: Mass Produced
- Material:
- Classification: Fifth Degree
- Weight: Heavy
- Height: Dependant on ‘Passenger’ but typically 6’0 even.
- Movement: Bipedal
- Armaments: None inbuilt.
- Misc. Equipment: Contains inbuilt, sensor, scanner and receiver for a Central Control Processor, and droid brain for fine motor control.
- Resistances:
- Energy: Average
- Kinetic: High
- Lightsabers: Very Low
- Other: Average
- Exo-Skeletal Structure: While most exo-skeletons don’t require a wearer, the Naraka I actually needs one. The Exo-Skeletal Structure needs a body to form around and keep in place.
- Central Control Processor [x]: The Naraka I requires a droid central control computer to operate. Given these units are deployed en masse for industrial purposes, a centralised computing system is necessary to provide instruction and metadata.
- IFF Transponder: Kept in the spine of the suit is an IFF transponder used by security and workers alike to keep track of the ‘passengers’ and be able to address them appropriately.
- Environmental Seals: While it does seem to look like a typical environmental or hazmat suit, the Naraka I is in fact meant to be sealed as so the ‘passenger’ does not contaminate the outside world, rather than protection for it.
- Droid Brain [x]: Unsurprisingly, the movements of dead people tend not be particularly graceful. Ergo, the need for a droid brain to assist in ensuring optimal mobility.
- Protein and Nutrient Recycler: Politely put, the Naraka I recycles non-essential proteins and vitamins from the ‘passenger’ into the muscular structure. Organs such as the brain, liver, stomach, eyes and lungs are deliberately corroded to their base nutritional value and intravenously injected into the bones and muscles used for motor control. Eventually this is done to the skin, until the muscles have atrophied too far and the rest of the body is swapped for a fresh ‘passenger’.
STRENGTHS
- United Labour: No better workers exist than ones which; 1, don’t talk back. 2, work in surprising unison and efficiency.
- Ad Hoc Combatants: The Naraka I while not designed for combat situations, does have protocols in case of attack to take arms and defend facilities.
- Extreme Conditions: Dead men don’t have a pain tolerance, they don't tire and they don’t breathe. The Nakara can be dispatched anywhere to any environment and work shifts for days on end without recharge.
- ‘Passenger’ Required: Plainly put, for the Naraka I to work, it requires a corpse or crippled individual to operate. Not a rotted one, but one reasonably fresh body with its muscle mass intact. The entire droid is based around supporting the structure of such a human, without a body, it doesn’t work.
- Dead Men Tell No Tales: The Naraka I doesn’t have a vocaliser, and given its ‘passengers’ are dead, there is no way for the unit to verbally communicate much to the chagrin of guards, and the horror of fellow workers.
- Simple Labour: While they can operate some machinery autonomously, the Naraka I cannot effectively use terminals and requires constant supervision.
- Solid Disguise: While countermeasures such as an IFF transponder have been added to ensure security, the Naraka I still remains a security risk. The visor is tinted heavily to disguise the ‘passenger’, and control of the suit can easily be wrested from the exo-skeleton.
The Naraka I model began as a proposed answer to a simple question. “How do we get people to keep working past their prime?” And by prime, they meant death. The question was posed after a disastrous month where Prefsbelt Command failed to reach quotas and saw a series of deaths caused by incidents of industrial ineptitude and sabotage. These instances all amongst the prisoners given to Prefsbelt Command by IMPCOM and now labouring in Prefsbelt IV factories. Initially the Naraka I was designed for use on civilian workers who may have been injured in the course of their work, with the initial plan being to rehabilitate civilian contractors as quickly as possible. But this, under the guidance of Stossjäger Captain, Mariah Janus and later the Prefsbelt Office of Labour soon took a different turn.
Janus, a medical officer was put in charge of autopsies of the dead prisoners and found that the bodies of the deceased labourers were, besides a missing limb or two, in remarkable shape. Death aside of course. They retained a suitable muscle mass thanks to the excellent work of the triage team. Curiosity got the better of Captain Janus who fitted one such subject into an therapeutic exo-skeleton and through stimulating portions of the brain, found the body could still move, and retained remarkable strength. This was then reported and taken to superiors and the Prefsbelt Office of Labour who began to develop the concept further.
The Office of Labour saw the creation of an industrial exo-skeleton, one which could work as a frame for such bodies and be able to control and guide motor control. While the Naraka I does have an exo-skeletal structure, the real strength of the droid comes from the ‘passenger’ or corpse, whose muscle mass is used for the structure and strength of the droid. To increase long term longevity, the suit is sterile, and furnished with materials designed to foster embalming. Machinery was also added to steadily harvest organs now non-essential to continued living and use them to keep the muscles working overtime.
They next attached a receiver to it, to a central command processor, allowing ‘passengers’ aboard the droid to receive orders and operate en masse and in unison. With all this prepared, the Naraka I was dispatched to the Prefsbelt shipyards to be tested. The opportunity came for a large scale test, after the liquidation of a rebellious cell block in a riot.
Now with a unit of 43 new ‘passengers’ able to be dispatched, a measure was taken of performance. The units were found to excel in regards to manual labour, and certain mechanical tasks, perfect for the manufacture of weapons and assisting in shipyards. Where the design fell down was in technical tasks such as staffing terminals and wiring circuitry. However in spite of this, the Office of Labour was satisfied. They had found a new way to keep their convict labour force in check, and working well beyond what they perhaps expected. The convicts were invaluable in life or death, toiling their mortal coil away in a darkened corner of the Galaxy.
