Welcome to Titan Garden!

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Alright, so this is Greg. Greg's a Europan Steelframe pilot, which is different from your typical Europan mechanical suit-piloting skillset for a couple of reasons, but we'll get to them in a minute. Greg's name is actually just Greg, it's a perfectly normal Europan name, like Slug or Brem or Grup or Chulp or any of them. Inner Belt people get hung up on this surprisingly often. "Why's their name Greg?" I dunno, man, it just is! Sheesh! So, anyways, Greg is an engineer, but they're also kind of an awkward, overconfident romantic. They think very highly of their own exploits, and imagine everyone else sees the same greatness in themselves that they do. "You are seduced by Greg, yes?" Odds are you'll say no, but that won't tip the smile off of their face. They will just laugh their funny, tiny little chuckle and rest their hand on their hip. "Then perhaps you must pay closer attention." This is the kind of thing you get when you're on a job with Greg. Steelframe pilots are something of a rarity. They might be on that job because no one else is equipped or available to tackle it. Make sure their part of the job is finished before you stuff them in a bin or a locker or something. And don't worry if your only available container is too small: they're squishy. They'll fit.

So, about the suits. Most of the Europans you'll encounter in the Sol system are trained and capable of operating a standard EVO suit, a self-contained mechanical body that stands about the height of an average Terran and contains a breathable atmosphere of water the Europan can bring with them anywhere they need to go and protect them from whatever environmental hazards they'll encounter when they get there. EVO suits are handy, and they're only a bit larger than your typical Europan, so keeping one upright is pretty easy with a bit of training. Where Steelframes differ from standard EVO suits is they are much, much larger than the Europan, so the usual balance issues that stem from being locomotive in a towering hunk of metal require the use of a neural implant. Harnessing the pilot's own innate and subconscious sense of balance, these implants direct all the Steelframe's gyroscopic motor coordinators to make constant micro-adjustments to servo motion and weight distribution in order to make movement at that scale feel natural to the pilot without them tipping over, and that same limitation applies to Europan technology as much as anyone else's. But as you can imagine, Europans had long developed their own way of building things, and they did so with extremely high, crushing atmospheric pressures in mind. It was only recently that Europan mecha technology began to see integration with Steelframe neural bridges to allow them to operate at larger and larger scales, and you'll never guess who has been spearheading that effort to grow the humble EVO suit. That's right, it's Greg. You are charmed by this, perhaps?

Europans have plenty of their own heavy industrial machinery they use to both build their colonies on the underside of their homeworld's ice and also exploit the mineral-rich thermal vents of the Bountiful Warmth. Navigating the Great Below is an area they're still exploring, and while they're well-equipped to colonize frozen or aquatic moons, land- and space-based development still relies heavily on the standard EVO suit for Europan workers to operate the heavy machinery they need to build and maintain structures in these environments. What Greg seeks to achieve is upscaling that suit and cutting a step out of the technological chain between pilot and project, allowing Europan civilization to expand further beyond the waters and take advantage of all of what the Great Below has to offer. And who better to learn from than the species who spend all their time down there, breating their nothing, their feet stuck to the soil beneath them. Surely they must know something that is of value to Europa. It turns out that something is wiring your noggin into the machine itself so it doesn't tumble forward onto the ground when you stop running in it. A bit impractical, but it seems necessary to operate machines of this scale quickly and precisely.

At their heart, Greg is an engineer, but in their mind they are a true pioneer of their people. Applying this bold new Steelframe tech to proven Europan EVO design is going to require a lot of trial and error and a lot of hands-on experience, so Greg sought to undergo the rigors of proper Steelframe pilot training and roll the dice on receiving a neural implant. It was a peer of Greg's, named Wrep, who studied Inner Belt cerebral regions and mapped the corresponding insertion and network points to a Europan brain, and in an effort to impress Wrep, Greg volunteered to be among the first batch of Europans to undergo the procedure. It was a success, and Wrep was very impressed, but Wrep was more impressed in the outcome of their own study and calculation than in Greg's individual bravery at going under the knife. Oh well! Greg has their own work to do. In order to test their designs, Greg and their fellow Europan Steelframe pilots venture out into the Great Below and work as mercenaries of sorts, networking with other pilots and offering their services for a range of jobs that are looking to employ the temporary service of a Steelframe. Greg, being an engineer, has a strong baseline degree of industrial competence, and while they're professionally something of a generalist, they're financially backed by Europan engineering institutions, so they can do a job for cheap- it is the experience and the field-testing they're after, not so much the credits. This is why you might sometimes find yourself on that odd job with Greg from Europa, the romantic little Steelframe pilot. Greg's work comes cheap, but their skills are priceless. You are impressed? No? Look closer. Greg will show you what Europan engineering can achieve.


Titan Garden




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