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Prime Fabricators are massive self-replicating construction robots of unknown origin. They operate like gigantic walking 3D printer nozzles, with many small compartments and internal manipulators that can mine raw materials, and then can cast entire new mechanical components whole. Despite operating independently and seemingly reasonably intelligent, they are purely interested in building space megastructures, replicating themselves, and only occasionally creating new components for those that serve them, altogether making them extremely cryptic ancient machines who's personality and intentions can be difficult to understand.

Regardless, they are championed by the gekozen, who aid in maintaining and spreading the Fabricators from system to system with excessive admiration and devotion.

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Generally, the form slightly resembles a large alien statue squating down in a meditative pose, or perhaps a very tall tank with lots of cameras and four long cable-arms emerging from the 'turret'. It does not have legs, but instead slides around on a massive pair of gravatic motors beneath it's lower skirt.

Despite bearing a functional resemblance to the Junkers, a small self-replicating spider drone of the freespacers, it is unclear whether the Prime Fabricator shares some kind of common ancestor, or if it is some kind of example of technological convergent evolution. The original example was found in a destroyed and derelict state by the Gekozen in YE 36, before being repaired back to working status, which also suggests that they may have assembled the machine incorrectly, or with bias towards making it Junker-like.

The chief difference is that the Prime Fabricator operates completely independently and seems to be adapted to working at the peak of society, serving its own personal industry, rather than being a slave or drone to others. The Gekozen accepted this trait fully and willingly set up a nomadic economy around them, serving their every whim and accepting components that directly link their cyborg bodies to the Prime Fabricators. In many ways, it could be said that the operations of these large machines are at the very core of the culture of the Gekozen.

Ships of the organisation are currently very few in number, but it is almost a given that such vessels would be constructed around transporting these holy machines over themselves.

• Government: gekozen
• Type: Multipurpose Construction Robot
• Designer and Manufacturer: None (Self-replicating)

• Length: 8ft
• Width: 8ft
• Height: 12ft
• Mass: 6 tons

• Range: Limited by local resources and regional permeability (see Systems)
• Lifespan: Limited by local resources

Basically a Lead-Cooled Fast Reactor with a coil gun mounted directly to the coolant valve, this 'nuclear hot glue gun' can either rip through solid objects with a solid high pressure stream, or bond surfaces together with the metallic medium instead. Despite not technically being intended as a weapon, it is incredibly destructive and basically like being next to a small nuclear meltdown. Even standing next to it without protective gear is not recommended.

• Location: Underbelly
• Primary Purpose: Construction, Salvage
• Secondary Purpose: Anti-Armour Weapon
• Damage: Heavy / Tier 7 Anti-Mecha
• Range: 0.5 meters (direct damage), 30 meters (radiation damage)
• Rate of Fire: Constant
• Payload: Limited only by metal reserves. It will switch to molten sodium if low on lead.

See Damage Rating (Version 3) for an explanation of the damage system.

• Hull: ( Tier 7 ) Titanium, bismuth, quartz glass and boron carbide construction with a boron wire mesh substructure. Some examples use salvaged Durandium Alloy or Yama-Dura ( Tier 8 ), which makes them rather more durable.
• Shields: None.
• Extremely thick radiation and scalar shielding.

A massive fission reactor designed to run off a great many fissile materials. It may use lead, sodium, hydrogen, or even water as a pressurized medium, all with different levels of efficiency and safety.

The arms of the Prime Fabricator are five foot long and tree-trunk thick, yet quite flexible appendages covered in thick repeating metal scales. They each end in four rather large fingers, useful for both gripping onto hulls in empty space, as well as manipulating fine objects within them.

Operating in a similar fashion to a standard ship's gravity plating (or indeed, created out of salvaged examples of as such), the Prime Fabricator can float slowly about under low gravity environments. This aids the basic mobility greatly in space, giving it about the same movement speed as a conventional STL shuttlecraft. It is limited to slowly lumbering a few feet above the ground in 1G.

The machine's torso module is covered in dozen of small cameras and sensors all over it's body, not really having a proper 'head' as such. These fine-scale cameras are capable of microscopic, magnetic and heat-based vision, but are not really suited to scoping or looking at things long-distance.

Primitive Polygon created this article on 2020/06/29 01:28.

🚧 This article is a work-in-progress. Is it not currently approved.