Category:Fourth Officio
"As Iron Without, So Iron Within"
Contents
Officio Summary
The Fourth Officio Assassinorum, specializing in making things and breaking things. Insular and aloof towards outsiders, the 4th's technology is unmatched, rivaled only by the 16th and beaten only by the 13th bio-engineering; at the same time, the 4th's xenophobia means that it has very few friends. Visitors to the 4th's walking headquarters, the 'Olympia', often describe the Officio as being wondrous and alien in equal measure.
4th Officio girls are (in)famous for fully exchanging their flesh-and-bone bodies for completely synthetic ones known as Ironforms.
Officio At A glance
- Officio Nickname = The Machines (by outsiders), The Iron Circle (within the Officio)
- Location = Mobile Headquarters 'Olympia' (currently walking across the Sahara Desert)
- Specialty = Mechanical and cybernetic engineering, arms manufacture
- Incubator = Quartus
- Current Warmaster = Petra Dammekos
- Disposition = ~400 Magical Girls
- Personnel Distribution = Entirely Eversors, Vindicares, and Callidus; no Vanus, Venenum, or Culexus
Officio Organization
The Dodekatheon
The Fourth Officio is unusual in that the vast majority of its recruits are derived from transfers from other Officios--technical aptitude is the primary factor for being allowed a permanent spot in the 4th, but every aspirant is also expected to know how to defend herself. These and other considerations means that the Officio does not recruit Venenum, Vanus, and Culexus.
Instead, many of the functions served by Venenum, Vanus, and Culexus in other Officios are performed by Officio personnel. 4th Officio girls are divided into a system of twelve Orders called the Dodekatheon; in addition, each Order serves to both hone the Magical Girl's skills in a particular field and fulfill and important administrative or logistical role within the Officio. Certain Orders hold contests to try and engineer healthy competition among its girls, though this policy sometimes backfires.
Recruitment
The Fourth Officio's recruitment methods are unusual--instead of the Incubator going about convincing young women into becoming Magical Girls, instead the Officio headhunts Magical Girls around the world who show promise in handling technology. Magical Girls may also send applications to the Fourth, though again, they must be technically adept to be accepted.
Once accepted, the aspirant is brought to the Fourth Officio's mobile headquarters and are housed, fed, and trained for a period of one year--if the girl is found to be compatible with the Officio, and if she demonstrates an acceptable level of technical aptitude, she is given the option to fully join. Current members may transfer to other Officios if they wish, but there is a great deal of pressure for Fourth Officio girls to remain with the 4th.
Officio Culture
An Iron Circle
An important part of 4th Officio culture is its philosophy, imparted unto it by its Warmaster, Petra Dammekos. At its core is the idea of self-improvement through mastery of the machine, to make oneself faster, stronger, and better through knowledge of machinery--to supplement this, Petra encourages a degree of competition among the 4th's girls to stave off complacency. This ideal serves to unite an Officio that otherwise shares no cultural, ethnic, or national common ground.
Several negative consequences have arisen due to the 4th's wholehearted (perhaps fanatic) embrace of this philosophy, however. One unintended result is the manifestation of extreme elitism, particularly by girls with Ironforms against girls unable to get Ironforms. Another is that 4th girls frequently express active dislike to anyone they see as being weak or stupid--sympathy and mercy are rare commodities on the Olympia.
Skitarii
Those incompatible with Ironforms yet still elect to remain in the 4th Officio are put into the Skitarii division. In theory, Skitarii are members in equal standing with everyone else in the 4th Officio...in practice, they are considered second-class citizens by girls with Ironforms. Because Skitarii members are stuck with, at best, augmentations rather than fully synthetic bodies, they are looked down upon as being slower and weaker, and the Fourth Officio does not abide weakness. All too often, the unfortunate girls of the Skitarii are bullied and ostracized, left with no one but themselves in an Officio that despises them.
Officio Technology
Fourth Officio technology is very advanced by modern, "mundane" standards. Prosthetic limbs that can do everything that a real limb can do and more, efficient directed energy weapons, even one of the few teleportation devices that exist in the world--if it involves cybernetic or mechanical engineering, the Fourth Officio has no equal.
Ironforms
Augmentations
Augmentations, also known as "bionics", are advanced prosthetics and other artificial body parts implanted into a flesh-and-blood body. Most commonly, these are replacements for damaged limbs or other body parts (such as eyes), though people simply desiring to "upgrade" their bodies are not turned away, either.
4th Officio bionics, especially limbs, are stronger, faster, and tougher than the organic parts they replace. They can also come with additional features, such as hidden weapons, armor plating, and sensory equipment.
Realistic synthetic skin can disguise exposed augmetics, but doing so costs a very great deal of money.
Powered Combat Armors
Although the bulk of the 4th uses Ironforms for combat, the Officio nonetheless creates body armor for non-Ironform humans. Part of this is because Officio novitiates lacking Ironforms still need protection in combat; another part of this is because the Officio regularly exports advanced armor to outside customers.
The current production line of combat armors manufactured by the 4th are all powered exoskeletons-—that is, each suit uses an internal energy source to perform certain functions, such as augmenting speed and strength, providing multi-spectrum sensor data, and more. All 4th Officio production combat armors utilize a mixture of nanofiber weave and plasteel plates for flexibility and lightweight yet sturdy protection.
High-Explosive Gyrojet Weapons
The HE Gyrojet Weapons were developed by the Warmaster in conjunction with the Lyssatra. The Lyssatra made two observations:
First: Exploding shrapnel weapons cause tremendous damage to soft tissue, but are easily stopped by armor.
Second: Armor-piercing rounds are effective against armor, but against soft tissue have a tendency to overpenetrate and not disrupt as much tissue as softer rounds.
The solution to this conundrum developed by the Lyssatra was the High-Explosive Gyrojet Weapon. Each round of ammunition—-a “bolt”--consists of an armor-piercing cupronickel tip attached to a metal casing filled with high explosives. Upon encountering an object of sufficient mass, a pressure sensor ignites the explosives after a split-second delay; the result is a round that reliably penetrates up to and including Class III armor, while detonating inside the target for extreme stopping power. The entire round itself is propelled by a small amount of liquid rocket fuel, which is activated after an initial propellant charge moves the “bolt” out of the weapon's barrel, providing a flatter trajectory.
However, since each round is resource-intensive to manufacture, most HE Gyrojet weapons are relegated to higher-ranked members of the Officio. Furthermore, since each round is relatively weighty and the recoil is immense, only Heavy Ironforms or specially modified Light Ironforms can properly wield a HE Gyrojet weapon.
Materials
Ever since discovering the Golden Hammer, the 4th Officio has synthesized a variety of new compounds and materials. Of note are two materials in particular.
Matter-Disruptor Weapons
Matter-disruption weapons represent some of the most cutting-edge technology available to the 4th. They arose as a by-product of research conducted to understand the Warmaster's mysterious golden hammer, “Forgebreaker”. Each matter-disruption works by emitting either a field or a pulse of electromagnetism that heavily disrupts the molecular bonds within a piece of matter (with the exception of Forgebreaker-—see relevant entry); the result is that these weapons practically ignore all but the very densest and heaviest armor.
Matter-disruptors can broadly be divided into two categories: those that emit a matter-disruptor pulse (MD pulse), and those that emit a steady matter-disruptor field (MD field).
Furthermore, matter-disruption weapons are rated on two different attributes: Disruption Factor (DF) and Focus Factor (FF), each on a scale of 1 to 5 (1= lower, 5 = higer). The former typically refers to how large of a disruptor-pulse or how large the volume of a disruptor-field is, while the latter refers to how powerful the weapon's MD Pulse or MD Field is. A weapon with high DF will displace more matter on contact with a weapon with lower DF, while a weapon with high FF will penetrate denser matter more quickly than a weapon with lower FF. In short, DF refers to how “damaging” the weapon is, while FF refers to how well it penetrates armor.
Miscellaneous Information
- Young Misaka studied at the Olympia for some time. Despite being an outsider and never having gotten an Ironform, the little Russian arms dealer is remembered fondly.
- An informal term for the Fourth Officio, used within the Officio itself, is "the Iron Circle".
- Officio personnel tend to be paid less on average than other Officio girls, but in exchange most construction/art material and tools are provided for free. Given that most Fourth girls' hobbies tend to involve engineering or the visual arts, the lower pay tends not to be such a problem.
- Interestingly, the Fourth Officio likes to refer to Warmaster Petra as the "Warsmith".
Pages in category "Fourth Officio"
The following 2 pages are in this category, out of 2 total.
