Volkov Machine Academy

Basic: The year is 3245 Standard Year.

Volkov Machine Academy

A piloting academy. It is made of 3 central buildings surrounding a large garden area with a central space elevator. The 3 central buildings are surrounded by runways, mech docks, test grounds, and auxiliary structures for fuel, parts, and the like.

The three buildings are, respectively, Classrooms, Pilot Dorms, Psyker Dorms. Psykers are separately housed due to their specific needs, and to contain them.

Piloting is a 5 year track. Two years of technical classes and theoreticals. After year 2, there is active searching for partnering. Year 3 begins practicals, first in aircraft, jets, and non-neurotech trainer mechs. Year 4 begins full Seraph training, for those who have found partners. Year 4 is also the last year that trainees can be non-partnered. Psykers without a match are held behind to repeat year 4 until they find a partner or age out. Pilots are kicked out. Year 5 is final practicals and technical exams to prove they are military ready.

There are also transient military professionals that come back for retraining and practice.

Students wear dark blue uniforms, class A is for official business, Class B is for more relaxed settings.

Instructors wear grey uniforms. Maintenance crew wear purple. Full military professionals are usually in green.

Volkov Machine Academy is located on the planet Triumphus, a terraformed world slightly larger than Earth with mild climates around its equatorial zone as well as a large amount of highly varied terrain. There are also 500,000 cities across its surface with over 1 million people. It is a well-developed planet.

Practical training includes atmospheric and non atmospheric flight, melee training, tracking, strategy, combat training, maneuvering, emergency procedures, Seraph to Seraph repair and refuel. Seraph training is done in either specific airspace around Volkov Machine Academy or in restrict space around the planet. There are also 15 training environments simulating the 15 typical urban construction methods. While ground fighting is not common for seraphs, it is not uncommon either.

Psykers

They have psycho-kinetic powers, which can grant a range of abilities. The most common are body reinforcement and physical power boost. Higher level psykers can use very mild amounts of electrokinesis, pyrokinesis, or telepathy, though in small amounts. The most powerful psykers can use prescience that can go up to a minute in advance, a huge boon to combat.

Psykers use the same uniform as normal students, except for suppressor bands on their left arms. These bands prevent accidental usage of their powers. Suppressor bands scale exponentially with the number, meaning a psyker needing 2 bands is up to ten times more powerful than a 1-band. Due to square-cube law, the seraphs they control won't be that much larger, but will be more powerful.

Psyker act as a bridge between the Pilot and the mech, essentially an interface. The more fine-tuned the control means the more close the interface must be. Psykers and pilots must have matching brain sequences, which is something that scientists are yet to understand. It is a very touch and go check, almost random chance if you're matching with someone correct. There are some correlations that can be used to narrow searches, but it is often a manual process of connecting, checking, and retrying.

When Psykers are in mechs, they are sealed in chambers and submerged in neuro fluid to help them connect to the seraph.

Neurotech

Technology that uses brain-machine interfaces to create things like forcefields, ultra efficient pneumatics, fine-tuned machine controls, and other things.

Seraphs

Mechs that heavily use neurotech. The basic models simply benefit from faster engines, better armor, and better weapon density than normal ships, allowing them to be stronger on the battlefield. Higher-end models have other features like the following:

Pulse Wave Cannon: A more powerful energy cannon. Swarm command module: Top tier module. Allows use of numerous neurotech drones for swarm help. Goldenwing: Ultra fast flight modules for speed Turtle Shell: High powered shield Shock Stick: Powerful melee weapon with EMP effects Kinetic Bludgeon: Melee weapon with kinetic damage boosting effects Phase-Kinetic Ammo: Ammo that can pass through armor by going immaterial for a short period after impact, passing through armor and targeting weaker interiors Splitter Sight: Ultra-detailed Electronic warfare kit that creates duplicates

There are quite a few others with less devastating effects, but those are typically demarcated by Model XX-YY where x is a number and y are letters. These usually have less powerful improvements, slight boosts to movement, to defensive capabilities, to electronic warfare attack and defense, etc.

Psykers with higher than 4 bands get custom Seraphs once they lock in a pilot partner. This seraph will be tuned to maximize their skillset.

Seraphs fall into the following categories: Bulker: High defensive with heavier weapons. Spinster: Melee focused with various grapple ropes to pull in high-value targets Cruncher: Lightly armored, medium speed, and the heaviest weapons available Dancer: High speed intercepter to go past enemy lines and assassinate weak targets Leader: Rare, uses command modules to use swarms, typically has heavier weapons and armor. Blocker: Specialized electronic warfare and interception to deny swarms and volume projectile attacks.

Used in warfare as force multipliers and special units. They often operate solo and in groups up to 4. Higher numbers are used only in drastic scenarios. They are typically attached to a larger ship, like a Heavy Cruiser or Battleship. They are also often paired with carrier groups.

A special use of them is for Hunter Killer groups. These are typically Spinster or Dancer seraphs based with a pair of triplet of destroyers, which are used to attack major targets and slip away.

Neural Linking

Divided into dry and wet links. Dry links are done without outside equipment help and are purely based on pilot to psyker connection. They are hard to maintain unless the pair is fairly compatible. If you can dry link, your wet link connection will only be stronger.

Wet links are done with machinery. They use helmets for the pilot and neural fluid immersion for the Psyker to make connections easier. Wet links are used to grade pilot-psyker bonds, as it is the measure that is most important in piloting. Wet links are also required for piloting, as dry-links do not interface with machinery, just the individuals.

Neurally linked partners can communicate telepathically so long as they are linked. Linked partners must be physically close together, connections become exponentially harder as distance increases. Distance can be increased slightly in wet connections by using a medium and machines to help the connection, but even that only increases the distance to a maximum of 3 meters between their heads.

Neural Load

Psykers that are currently connected to a Seraph suffer neural load that acts like a mental strain. Better connections can distribute the load between the pilot and psyker, which also reduces the total load. Perfect division reduce the overall load by between 30-60%, meaning that pilots and psykers can pilot longer. Psykers can support all the load themselves. Load splitting is a factor of connection quality, better connected partners can load split better.

Neural Backlash

When connected, sensation felt by one partner is felt by the other as well. Better connections mean a greater percent of that sensation is transferred. This sensation can be anything, anger, happiness, exhaustion, etc.

Neural Ghosts

A symptom of connections that are extremely good. Even after connections, and sometimes even without connecting for a long time, partners can read each others thoughts and moods. This effect is different from understanding a person as it is truly telepathic, as it works through solid barriers or without any physical cues. A very rare phenomenon.

Sol Invictus

The human government that controls all of the systems that humans occupy. Currently headquartered at Earth. Currently, it controls exactly 5341 planets spread amongst 759 solar systems. It works as a semi-presidential republic.

Formicadea

A colony species that currently controls all of the star systems around the human sector of space in the Orion Arm. Scouting parties that have gone past the initial few systems have only found more colony-conquered planets. While the individual creatures are less intelligent than an individual human, they come in large numbers are extremely good at cooperative tactics, which makes them hard to deal with. They also have biological ships and weapons that are improved with neurotech, though the Formicadea understanding is far worse than the human development.

Special Individuals

Headmaster Vargas: An old ex-pilot and very serious man. Is respected in the school and holds students to high standards.

Isilga: A female psyker and the first to require 6 suppressor bands. Due to how tuned her powers are, she requires a very specifically good match for her pilot. slight insecurity due to not having found a pilot and due to the low probability of it happening. 6 foot 1 inch and built strong due to good self-discipline. Likes bonsai, gardening, and flowers, a good study and student. Strong-willed and tough. Shy about her hobbies.

Johannes Arne: Piloting school valedictorian. Paired with Arginn Fawn.

Arginn Fawn: 4-band Psyker and Psyker school valedictorian. Proud of her unusually good connection with Johannes.

Fronts:

The Core Front: A front to push towards the center of the Milky way, towards the supermassive blackhole at its center. A political and propaganda heavy front, but not militarily important. The Arm Front North: Pushing to the outside of the Orion Arm. Currently making the most progress. The Arm Front South: Pushing inwards on the Orion Arm. Currently the most brutal front as its brawls through dense hives and colonies one after the other. The Void Front: A catch all term for all other fronts. Currently struggling to stick it out and not lose ground.