ROARING BEAR ARTILLERY PLATFORM

ROARING BEAR ARTILLERY PLATFORM

(Artifact 5, Repair 3)
This powerful weapon is essentially a four-legged, two person warstrider that is 30 feet long, 20 feet wide and 18 feet tall. It looks roughly like a giant bear made from one of the five magical materials
Activating this weapon requires the driver to place a single level-3+ hearthstone in the artifact’s
hearthstone socket and to commit 12 motes to this device. The driver controls the weapon’s four sturdy legs and also operates its two arms. The artifact’s four legs are capable of moving it quite rapidly. In addition, because the driver can sit down and must only move a pair of foot pedals and
a lever to operate the four legs, operating this vehicle is far less exhausting than controlling an ordinary warstrider. This vehicle can march at speeds of up to 20 miles per hour and can cover up to 300 miles in a day. Unlike two legged warstriders, this vehicle can jump only a quarter of the distance its Strength would indicate. Also, because the driver operates it by pedals and levers and does not actually wear it, he cannot use any Athletics Charms to augment the vehicle’s mobility.
This artifact carries a Medium implosion bows that extends out of a rotating turret on the artifact’s back, slightly in front of the vehicle’s middle. This weapon is operated by a gunner who also sits inside the vehicle in a separate compartment from the driver. This weapon cannot be operated by the driver unless the driver shuts off the vehicle, climbs out of his hatch, opens the hatch to the gunner’s seat, climbs in and fires the weapon.
This artifact’s front legs are specifically designed to be able to rip down the toughest walls, tear open hulls made of First Age materials and, if necessary, move earth and rapidly construct large-scale earthworks. Because they are designed specifically for this purpose, all attacks made by these arms
against inanimate objects such as walls, gates, ship hulls or statues first halves the object’s soak (round down), making these arms exceptionally powerful tools for breaking sieges and destroying walls. Also, one of these artifacts can build up to 5,000 cubic feet of earthworks—such as a wall 10 feet tall, 10 feet thick and 50 feet long—in one hour. Alternatively, the artifact could create a trench or moat of equal size in the same time

Speed: 10 (dash 3) / 20mph

Manoeuvrability: -6 (Lore 1, Ride 2)

Endurance: Requires two level 3+ hearthstones, one to power movement and another to power the weapon systems.
Because of the inherent stability and simplicity of four-legged locomotion, this artifact requires maintenance only every 100 hours of operation. Every hour of combat counts as two hours of operation, however. Every 10 hours that maintenance is in arrears, the ordinary penalties caused by lack of warstrider maintenance begin to accrue.

Weapons systems:
2 paired medium implosion bows:
Medium (Artifact 4, Repair 3): Common in the First Age and now limited to several dozen copies fielded by the Seventh Legion, these massive cannon emplacements are roughly the size of a small wagon with a two yard barrel terminating in a muzzle rimmed with glowing banks of capacitor crystals. The weapons require a level 2+ hearthstone set in the controls to function at all. These weapons need maintenance after 100 shots.
  Type    Speed   Acc.       Damage                     Rate       Range   Minimums

Medium     6      +2         4 motes: 24L/30B;          1          750      Archery ••, Lore •••
      10 motes: 40L/50B; 7-yard radius

Siege claw
   Name                    Speed Accuracy Damage Defence Rate

Siege Claw                6       +0        +12L*       +0        2

*This damage is treated as piercing damage against all inanimate objects.

Crew: 1 Driver, 1 Gunner.
Cargo: Personal kit and light maintenance tools.

Armour: 24L/24B (hardness 26L 16B)
Health Levels: U x 10/ M x 5/ C x 5/ I x 5/ D

Other Notes: The siege strider possesses a Strength of 20
and hand-to-hand combat.