Hydraulic KnightReport
English：Hydraulic Knight · Characters
The last unit the Second Empire left standing in the Ashlands. There are five of them in the entire game, all inside Ashland Dome III, still waiting on an order that is never coming. Toughness and combat 70, dodge 8, perception close to blind.
Hydraulic Knights are members of the Second Empire's military order, built on the Skeleton Log-Head MKII chassis. Five exist in the whole game, all of them in Ashland Dome III out in the Ashlands, under General Jang.
Who they were
Cat-Lon's empire raised the order to deal with threats from outside: pirates, and the Cannibals. The item description on General Jang's CPU carries the rest of the story. The label "pirate" was applied more and more loosely, until in the end more of the Empire's own people died on the knights' blades than ever died at the hands of actual pirates.
The Cannibals kept their own half of that memory. Their legends hold a Skeleton warrior who could not be killed and could not be eaten, the Inedible One, and he is almost certainly one of these five. The reason Cannibals still react to any machine body that walks onto their plains traces back to fighting this order more than a thousand years ago.
The empire is gone. The order was never rescinded. The five are still standing where they were put.
What fighting them is like
Figures are taken from FCS, are still multiplied by the racial modifier, and NPCs level up in combat like anyone else.
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Strength | 50 |
| Toughness | 70 |
| Dexterity | 10 |
| Perception | 1.2 |
| Sabres, Hackers, Heavy Weapons, Blunt, Polearms | 70 |
| Katanas | 56 |
| Melee Attack / Melee Defence | 70 |
| Dodge | 8 |
| Martial Arts | 10 |
| Precision Shooting | 84 |
| Turrets | 70 |
| Assassination | 35 |
| Athletics, Swimming, Field Medic | 70 |
Three numbers matter in practice. Toughness 70 means they are hard to put on the ground, and melee 70 in Specialist-grade ancient samurai plate means a mid-game squad trading blows with them will not enjoy the exchange. Dodge 8 and Perception 1.2 say the other half: they neither evade nor see much of anything. Their weapon is a Nodachi from Skeleton Smiths and Edgewalkers.
Death item: take it and they die
Each Hydraulic Knight carries one Old CPU Unit, average price 600 Cats. It is a death item, so pulling it out of a body that is only knocked out stops that body permanently.
Which means looting the part and cutting them down are the same outcome. Five units come to roughly 3,000 Cats, which does not pay for a trip to the Ashlands. The money on this run is the five AI Cores the dome spawns as guaranteed loot, plus General Jang's own CPU at 72,000 Cats.
Before you get to them
The Ashlands has no acid rain. The environmental threat here is falling ash and toxic gas, which Skeletons and animals ignore and organic characters do not. On the way to Ashland Dome III there are also Skeleton Legion patrols and packs of Old Machines Iron Spiders. Dome interiors and rooftops are safe from the environment, so the hard part is the walk.