Thor

The thor was a huge and powerful terran mechanical siege walker, one of the heaviest and most powerful mechanical units in the Terran Dominion Armed Forces. Named after the Norse god of thunder, it was a class of siege-walker whose pilots were referred to as "controllers." The thor stemmed from the Terran Dominion Thor Project, the same program that produced the larger Odin prototype, and despite being smaller than the Odin it remained heavily armed and armored enough to take on an entire enemy army by itself.

Design and protection#

Heavy composite neosteel-ceramic armor protected the thor. The plates were modular and could be replaced easily if damaged or exchanged for thicker versions depending on battlefield conditions. Designed to defeat high-explosive armor-piercing rounds and to disrupt the searing beams of energy-based weapons, the plating offered strong protection to both pilot and internal systems, and its innermost layer carried a heat-resistant kinetic mesh that prevented damage from shrapnel, slugs, or sheared armor fragments. ATVX developed an "immortality protocol" that allowed a thor to repair itself in the field as long as its hull remained intact. The cockpit was pressurized and protected by a military-grade steelglass canopy backed by the same composite armor, with the pilot's seat at its center shielding the operator through powerful inertial dampeners and a foam-padded six-point harness. A holographic display projected computer-generated terrain, and the canopy carried an integrated heads-up display, navigation screen, and basic targeting system as a backup.

Improving the thor became something of an informal competition among Terran Dominion engineers, a trend the Dominion's leadership was content to allow because it produced ever more powerful siege walkers. Improvements in neosteel plating and countless upgrades made the thors of the Dominion Special Forces a signature achievement in weapons engineering, while the Umojan Protectorate eventually developed its own answer to the design after years of exploration. The Defenders of Man and Moebius Corps both experimented with fitting thors with cloaking devices.

Armament#

The thor carried enough heavy weaponry to take down an entire enemy army by itself. It was armed with four "Thor's Hammer" particle accelerators, two fired from each arm. Its back originally mounted four 250mm strike cannons, since replaced by Punisher cannons, which fired 250mm anti-aircraft shells fitted with advanced electronics to minimize wasted shots and depleted-uranium cores that could punch through the plating of heavily armored aerial targets. Each shell was individually chambered by a basic auto-loading mechanism that simplified maintenance, and the cannons' rate of fire was capped to avoid malfunctions and extend the service life of the ordnance, as bypassing the limit risked melting or exploding the weapons. For aerial opponents the thor also carried Javelin missile launchers on both sides of the steelglass canopy, firing salvos of small IFF fragmentation warheads that could rip through multiple lightly armored fliers at once. A thor could optionally be outfitted with 330mm barrage cannons that emulated the Odin's Barrage capability.

History#

The thor stemmed from the Terran Dominion Thor Project, the program that resulted in the creation of the Odin. When the thor made its public debut, military analysts were stunned, and embedded reporters described it as a huge bipedal war machine armed with dorsal artillery that would not be out of place on a battleship. Thors were in field use by 2502, and during the Second Great War the Dominion used them to defend installations such as New Folsom Prison. The Odin, a particularly powerful prototype, was developed by 2503, and intelligence on it was later stolen by a Umojan Protectorate shadowguard.

Mira's Marauders long sought a thor of their own, but construction routines regularly set them back. Chief Engineer Rory Swann reverse-engineered a thor schematic by examining the Odin prototype, refining a design into which millions of credits of research had already been poured, with his own efforts focused on making it cheaper to build. Raynor's Raiders received their first thors during the attack on the UNN Studios. Swann noted at the time that the chassis still needed work but that he had ideas for further upgrades and variants, and though the thor remained unavoidably expensive for the Raiders to produce, he considered it well worth the addition to their arsenal.