Notes :
Still spending my days resting, though I am doing considerably better than I was before, you'll be happy to know.
Happy 4th of july in advance for those of you who celebrate that holiday.
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Golem Infantry Report
Once again I have gone into the warrens of our engineering and artifice department, and once again I bring back their ramblings. Or, more accurately, try to put down the vast ravings of our technical personnel into something approaching coherence.
Note : delete that and insert proper formatting before dissemination.
Crystal and, by extension, the Aurorean Empire, appears to widely deploy infantry golems that though they can vary wildly in capabilities, are all based on a single chassis. That chassis appears to be an old Saggitarian universal utility/security golem. Not even the advanced version either. We have some examples of them in the vaults beneath the Palace, and the thing that best describes them is 'basic and utilitarian', which is precisely why Crystal appears to favor them so much.
Simply put, their ruggedness made them the perfect platform for extensive military modifications. From integrated armor plating to upgraded power sources, passing by sensor packages and enhanced locomotion systems, she has done absolutely everything to tweak these things into whatever role she needed filled.
Here are listed the mainline variants that have been encountered on the field of battle so far. Not listed will be the ones deployed in the dungeon and used in a pinch for combat, as those are numerous and already have been catalogued by both the adventurers guild and our resource appropriations department. We, in fact, have several examples of most of those in storage, though they had to be reconstituted.
The first golem that saw true military deployment is the 'Musket Golem'. Apparently an evolution of her Royal Guard Crossbowmen (see Water Temple dungeon defenders and Incident Report - Rebirth, Manticore, Dungeon Behavioral Anomaly DC18), they are crudely but effectively armored with steel plating, and wield the guns they are named after.
In terms of resilience they were very middle of the road. All golems are capable of withstanding an impressive amount of punishment, as they do not suffer from shock, blood loss, or other problems as a living soldier would, but they also do not have the advantage of essence, and though remarkably resilient to more basic attacks, they were vulnerable to even the Republic's arquebuses.
Their weapons is where it gets interesting. Though now it is a more or less accepted fact that Crystal will steal everything not nailed down to feed her own technological progress, and in the light of recent developments (see Mackies), almost certainly has way of developing some of her own hardware, back then her acquisition of firearms, let alone their rapid deployment in such numbers stunned many people. The muskets are not primitive at all either. They are well designed, rugged and remarkably easy to maintain.
These golems saw comparatively little use. They were mainly deployed during the initial engagements with the Elkis Republic, lead by general Amelia Loveheart (Now President of the New Republic and Field Marshall of the Aurorean Empire), and continued to serve as Crystal's mainstay forces until they were replaced during the attack by Old World Automata upon Rebirth.
Though they have seemingly been discontinued as active frontline units for Crystal, they continue seeing a great deal of use by the New Republic, who appears to have acquired them, including Crystal's reserves, for their rebellion against the Senate.
Which brings us to the big one.
The Standard Combat Units (SCU), has been Crystal's mainstay in infantry until extremely recently (see recordings of the Sixth Imperial Army and its battle against the Adventurers Guild, it's all over the damn news even today, can't miss it). These units appear to have been upgraded in many ways. Most of those upgrades are fairly minor, with some enhanced locomotion, targeting and intelligence, but the main ones are their armor and equipment.
Where the musket golems' armor was crude steel, the SCU's is a composite plating our artificers described as 'elegant, cheap, rugged and yet highly effective', which is rather effusive praise. I have been reliably informed that there are in fact plans to adapt plating inspired by the SCU's to some of our cheaper and lower tiers of body armor.
In any case, this plating enabled the SCUs to take hits like never before. Whereas before a musket golem could go down from an arquebus shot or even just a well aimed arrow, they now could take several hits from even relatively powerful weapons and keep going. Their vastly increased survivability in turn allowed them to not only stay in the fight for longer but also have greater salvage potential. Though Crystal appeared to not have bothered to have salvaged her own troops for the most part -we speculate due to her lack of field secondary dungeon core, instead opting to use them to secure her hold on the Empire's heart-, her accompanying human troops from Sarth and its vassals, as well as various remnants of the royal army, have done so to great effect.
That is compounded by their weapons. SCUs started off with bolt action rifles and submachineguns, which we suspect were acquired from Tarkian weapon shipments, meant to reinforce Rebirth and its city guard, but have also demonstrated the use of man-portable grenade and missile launchers, flamethrowers, machineguns, assault rifles and all manner of heavy weapons.
As you are no doubt aware, we are the only nation on Alcheryos manufacturing assault rifles or grenade machineguns. Or rather, we were the only one. The fact that these golems were able to deploy such weapons presents the terrifying possibility that Crystal may not, in fact, soon close the gap with our technological capabilities, but in fact already has and is in the process of surpassing us.
Which brings me to the last golems witnessed.
Three distinct types were deployed during the battle against the adventurers guild. One appeared to be some kind of lighter version of the SCU. Given the weapons they were deployed against it is unclear if they suffered from decreased resilience, but they served as the mainline infantry. In terms of what we have been able to piece together, they are faster, more agile, and seemed geared towards CQC, systematically attempting to close the range. Every one was seen equipped with an assault rifles, some with extensive grenade belts and secondary weapons like submachine guns and shotguns. Our current name is 'Assault Golems', but we will replace it once we are able to learn their actual designations by the Aurorean Empire.
The second type is on the opposite side of the scale, 'heavier' than an SCU. While their armor plating appears roughly of the same size, they seem less agile and systematically carry heavy weapons that normally would have required a team to transport, even by SCUs. They don't move nearly as quickly as an Assault Golem, but the firepower they carry more than make up for it, and they seem to form the core of Crystal's new line of battle, with their squads anchoring Assault Golem platoons, who maneuver around their more heavily armed brethren and pin down enemies for them to attack and destroy. Though, please note that these tactics were conjectural and used against a very high tech enemy. We have labelled these 'Line Golems'.
Finally, the last type we observed is, by far, the most concerning. Though they seemed to make up a minuscule fraction of the army -less than one percent by our current estimates-, they were incredibly agile, carried heavy, high powered weaponry, and though they were not able to match the adventurers' guild power armor infantry, they came far, far closer than normal infantry could be expected to for comfort. Analysis indicates that these may in fact be integrating parts of the 'advanced' versions of their base golem chassis the Sagitarian Empire produced, and if not, integrated a wide array of enhancements allowing them to behave like an experienced, essence enhanced warrior. They're faster, more agile, are possibly more intelligent and wield weapons that allow them to take advantage of all of these.
These last golems, our artificers have somewhat unimaginatively dubbed 'Advanced Golems'.
We believe they are intended as special forces, deployed only for specific situations and to serve as linebreakers to regular infantry battalions. However, we have seen so little of them, it is impossible to be certain. Our current greatest worry is that they are not a specialized unit, but instead intended to be the next mainstay of Crystal's army, deployed early for field testing.
If that is the case...the advantage we imagined we have with living warriors, where essence, enchanted instead of runic equipment and other things a dungeon core cannot mass produce, is null and void. In which case, we run the very serious risk of facing a technologically equivalent or superior opponent with machines that can, if not match, at least keep pace with our veteran troops.
Given all of this, I recommend we increase our priority on diplomatic efforts with the Aurorean Empire, and review the possibility of using the ongoing crackdown on the Sildaris Consortium to force our corporations to innovate once more.
Because if we continue to stay in our little corner, satisfied with our imagined technological superiority, and yes, it is imagined now sis, we are going to fall.
Special Agent Cassissa, end report.
P.S : No, director, I will not edit that last part. I'm the only one who can talk to my sister this way, and she needs to hear this. I'll take the risks, just make sure it's omitted from the other copies and no one else gets their hands on it, we don't need rumors of fights in the family at a juncture like this.