The Broken
Sarna News
The Broken was a secret Capellan experiment to mimic Star League era Caspar technology. This would take the form in the form of a DropShip-mobile mainframe designed to direct an unit of drone BattleMechs. It was intended to augment elite CCAF commando forces. The experiment was only partially successful and some Capellan engineers proclaimed the AI a broken chess master claiming that its tactics were simplistic and basic, however the AI was listening, and—in its own way learning.
The experiment was conducted on Necromo. In 3071 the Forty-eighth Shadow Division’s raided the planet and pulled off a quick raid of a hidden scientific facility known as Outpost Aberdeen, escaping with programming specs and other technical data during the chaos of what appeared to be another blitz against the CCAF.This proved to be a missing piece of the technology that allowed the Word of Blake to produce and use robotic drones in the final defense of Terra. [1]
The attackers,their haste, overlooked the quite operational AI construct. Its inventors were killed during the Blakist attack, and left to its own devices, it continued to carry out its last directives, to defend its base installation against non-Capellan forces on the planet and to preserve itself by launching in the event of capture. The AI began to suspect all of the remaining Capellans on-world of treachery, and refused all further directives coming from them. Thus, the Broken began to wage war against its previous masters. Though the AI remained far from self aware, its responses were based on a complex and convoluted logic, its security measures evolved to the point where it would actually lay traps, ambushes, and even offer potential alliances to its enemies, in order to lure them into its kill zone.
The Broken has a small army of drone BattleMechs and access to fixed defenses established around its protective perimeter—including the weapons mounted on a modified, K1-class DropShuttle it was installed within. It directs its defenses via sensory input provided by the drones and the fixed sensor suites of Outpost Aberdeen. Unless noted otherwise, most of these fixed defenses were automated and were not negatively affected by ECM.[2]