Leonius Decimi Regulus

CHARACTER
Version 2.1

Name
Leonius Decimi Regulus
("Leo")

Age
20
Born January 3rd

Gender
Male

Symbol



Appearance
A hulking titan of an individual, even before his accident, Leo stands a little over eight feet tall and has a build like a brick wall. He is very rarely without the dark grey full-body suit that serves as his mobile life-support system, but without it he is completely hairless and covered with disfiguring burn scars, and his entire left arm and both legs from the knees down are fully mechanical. His right eye is gone, covered by a metal plate, and there is a mechanism embedded in his left side, the dust reactor fueling his life support rig. His entire spine has been replaced and reinforced, making it far less tiring for Leonius to maintain proper posture as well as being a convenient linking point for his suit. Unless he is choking and writhing in agony, the air is usually choked with steam if he is outside of his suit. Even within it, he rasps and wheezes constantly, accompanied by the hiss of of the suit's pumps helping his lungs work, giving him a halting style of speech frequently broken by pauses.

The suit is not much better to look at, its surface uneven and ridged with tubes and wires under the armored mesh exterior. Leo's face is covered with an elongated mask stuffed with mechanisms to assist his troubled breathing, several quality of life enhancements, and a black visor. Even without the full Sum Sine Sceleri, he possesses numerous cameras and a basic sensor suite. There are thick combat boots integrated into the suit, the same uniform dark grey. His back, sides, and limbs are covered in interface points for the full fledged Sum Sine Sceleri system. Without being geared for combat, Leo generally tries as best he can to wear something close to clothing over the suit, usually throwing a blue-grey toga and cloak on around the suit, or something roughly approximating the school uniform if the situation calls for it.

When fully decked out with Sum Sine Sceleri, Leo's mask is covered by a more heavily armored off-white addition, and joined by similar pieces forming a full helmet around his head. The rest of his body is similarly armored, though his forearms mount thick bracers studded with dust focal points, with similar points on the outside of the armor covering his fingers.. His leg armor and the heavy plated boots he wears around his normal boots are reinforced with similarly studded bands. His chest bears a thick chestplate, and a hanging armor piece protects his pelvis from the front and back. It is his back where the bulk of Sum Sine Sceleri's function sits, with a backpack containing three small secondary dust reactors locked into his back, and six articulated "wing" extensions, an array of cannons mounted on short, two-jointed arms, attached. A sturdy, horn-like antenna sweeps back from the top of his helmet.

When using patterns in battle, they almost always take the shape of his symbol.

History
There was a time when Leo was happily living under the care of his father, an old Huntsman who had married late in life, from whom he inherited his enormous frame. A time of studies and robotics, content with his father's suggestion that he not follow precisely in his footsteps, and learn to use his robotic puppets and Dust in combat instead of beating creatures of Grimm to death with a club that turned into an arbalest. A time before he saw his father walk into the woods, never to return. A time before his workshop exploded, and he nearly died in the resulting fire at the age of seventeen when the roof collapsed on him. He lost his legs, from the knees down, his arm, his eye, and his mother. A faulty Dust cannister was blamed for the explosion, a report that was quietly swept under the rug by closed door legal proceedings at the side of Leo's hospital bed.

Two years he spent in the hospital, slowly adjusting to the new artificial parts. Two years, he spent the Dust company's money on trying to rebuild his capabilities, followed by attempts to regain what he had foolishly thrown away tampering with his mangled body.

Two years, throwing away his humanity and realizing what he had done.

His old teachers scoffed when he contacted them, wishing to take his final exams. Nobody argued with the violent results the juggernaut who showed up had wrought. Leonius Decimi Regulus passed his final exams, two years late, with flying colors and securing his admittance, two years late, to Beacon. Though it had been two years since he could recall why he had wanted to go...

Personality
Sum Sine Sceleri is responsible for saving Leo's life, though it can do nothing for his mind or soul. None of his senses escaped the fire unscathed, and while vision and hearing can be augmented by his suit, Leo is acutely aware he is a walking corpse, and knows very well the world he can no longer fully experience. Sleep, too, is denied to him, Sum Sine Sceleri's systems and the potent chemical cocktails keeping him alive robbing him of that simple human comfort as well, though his mind and body no longer need it. Even emotions are less intense, thanks to his tampering with his brain to make Sum Sine Sceleri function, giving him a cold, machine-like outlook on many things. Bitterness and envy cloud Leo's interpersonal relationships, but he is aware of this fact and attempts not to let it control his behavior. Thus he is talented at putting up false fronts, and attempting to put aside his jealousy to interact with normal humans, as well as mask his real intentions or motives. Or at the very least, lie about them. He is, despite the damage to his mind and capacity for emotion, still a very young man, but while he may look upon another with love or lust, or just a desire to be accepted and cared about, he knows what he is, and how he looks both in the suit and without. Nobody deserves to have to put up with him, in his eyes, with his bitterness and the displeasure of his company. It still hurts to be rejected, but it is what Leonius expects, and understands.

He focuses, most often, on the one thing he has left, in a world devoid of comfort, and surrounded by people whom he fears he can no longer relate to: his machines, and the chance to use them in battle, so that one day, he may walk into the woods, and never return. It is the suicide plan of a man who refuses to die by his own hand. Between now and then, however, he intends to find some enjoyment or comfort in the world. He is fond of terrorizing his enemies capable of rational thought, and broadcasting loud Badass Boasts when he decides to wade into combat directly.

To Leo, there is no such thing as a fair fight. Only a fight that you handicap yourself, and ask to lose. He is, thus, far from being above using cheap shots and pressing every advantage he can gain in a battle. He is not without mercy, or value of human life, but his concept of mercy is often incompatible with that of his victims.

Strengths
Leo's remaining physical strength is only augmented by his suit and Sum Sine Sceleri, and while his size and restricting armor precludes a certain degree of agility, his armor allows him to simply shrug off many light attacks even without wards. His highly analytical mind also grants him a degree of strategic foresight, tying into his tendency to use traps and battlefield control strategies. Despite his dexterity issues, when in Modus: Vindicta he is capable of high velocity, though rather imprecise, movement and limited flight. He can also augment his weak Aura protections with Dust-fueled warding field patterns in case he has to hunker down against an attack. The sensitive components of Leo's suit are isolated from electromagnetic interference, and well-protected, and his life support system functions as resistance to unfavorable environmental conditions such as air quality or extreme heat and cold.

Weaknesses
When Leo's plans fall apart, however, he has difficulty getting back on track. The specializations of Sin Sine Sceleri's modes also render him vulnerable to surprise attacks, or assaults from too far outside or too close within his engagement zones. His weakened aura makes a surprise attack a particular concern, leading to overreliance on drone-based early warning or scouting measures, or more preturnaturally aware teammates, though teammates are themselves an issue when one has all the interpersonal skills of moldy cheesecake. It does not help that he is naturally somewhat creepy, and will cling to those who do accept or seem to like him. Sum Sine Sceleri, when he is fully equipped, also makes sitting in chairs awkward even more awkward than merely being huge makes it.

Miscellaneous
Leo's Dust reactor implant means that he requires a constant supply of Dust to survive. Thankfully, his settlement with the Dust company, whom he cannot name for legal reasons, provides a monthly stipend for this purpose. While his lower legs are artificial, he still gets weary of standing, leading to many broken benches in his quest to sit down, not being fully comfortable with chairs due to being used to having Sum Sine Sceleri's backpack.


WEAPON

Name
Sum Sine Sceleri
Variable Function Modular Mobility Exoskeleton

Function
Sum Sine Sceleri uses Dust to augment Leo's strength and provide more precise motor control than his damaged nerves could manage on their own, as well as providing focal points and control aid for Dust use. The backpack also serves as storage, both in general, and for numerous tiny, disc-like drones that unfold when active, in addition to providing power to Leo's onboard weapons, dust patterns, and refueling for his drones. The Dust Reactors provide weeks worth of power and plenty of spare dust for even sustained combat use. It takes a few seconds for the suit's firmware to switch between modes, though in all of its modes Leo has a few simple casting patterns and attacks not merely limited to smashing things with his enormous limbs, such as the Cast Repeater, a pattern that forms as symbols around his gauntlet and fires spheres of dust-fueled kinetic energy, some basic kinetic reinforcements and shaped tools, and some simple mobility enhancements to compensate for the weight of his armor and artificial limbs.

The suit also compensates for Leo's diminished senses, with the helmet's visor feeding visual and auditory information directly into his brain, as well as systems information and other tactical information. It also grants him motion-tracking capability, and possesses a sophisticated tactical and firing computer to aid his indirect attacks and other cannon targeting functions. If necessary, the bracers can project a holographic keyboard he can use to reconfigure his armor's firmware, vibrating patterns that project or amplify sounds, and screens to show others his feeds. It also functions as data storage, with small dossiers of people involved with his present situation added and edited from time to time, as well as media storage and playback. He is fond of recording video or snapping pictures of things, or people, he finds interesting to replay on sleepless nights.

Sum Sine Sceleri is unable to change modes when an active pattern is in use, as a protection mechanism for the suit firmware. This renders Leonius unable to change to Modus: Vindicta when protecting against an onslaught with a barrier in Modus: Iudicium. The combat computer is fond of telling Leo what he is doing by quietly announcing his attacks in his ear, originally a debugging tool that Leonius felt was simply awesome, and thus kept.

Stand Down Form
"Modus: Innocens"
When Sum Sine Sceleri is not in combat mode, the cannons are held close to the backpack, and the entire system is in a mostly passive state. With the motor assist functions powered down, Leo is rendered clumsy and slow, and many of his early warning systems are disabled, but it draws very little power from his Dust reactors. His always-on patterns still function, but are fairly weak.

Close Combat Form
"Modus: Vindicta"
Geared for hand-to-hand and close range assaults, Modus: Vindicta fans out the cannons into wing-like configurations. Sustained emissions from the cannons and limbs allow him to dart about at high velocity, though without much fine control. Due to the limits of the Dust capacitors fueling his cannons and heat concerns, he must choose between altitude, expending energy to fight gravity, or length of time in the air, though merely slowing his descent with relatively weak bursts is possible even when flight must cease. The speed his wings give him, combined with strength-enhancing patterns and kinetic surges on his limbs, give him enormous striking force.

His Dust emissions focus primarily on close-range, mobile patterns and fields, and while his actual techniques are limited, he has learned many ways of using them. He is fond of creating surges of kinetic energy, simulating the blast wave of an explosion as well as moving solid warding patterns around the field as barriers or impediments. He is capable of shaping fields into sharp edges, or electrifying them as a form of non-lethal discouragement, but doing so takes processing cycles and energy he doesn't often care to expend when forming a pattern around a resisting target's throat and choking them into submission is so much more satisfying. He is capable of forming multiple expressions at once, and has learned many ways of combining them, such as his trick of trapping a target in a box of fields and crushing them, or choking a target before using them as a projectile with a kinetic surge.

Ranged Combat Form
"Modus: Iudicium"
With the cannons tilted forward into firing position and his sustained patterns focused on hardening his position and rooting him against recoil, Leo becomes a walking artillery platform. While he enjoys long-range indirect bombardment with high explosive shells or cluster bombs, without something to relay a relative or specific location to him and his firing computer, he lacks any means of finding his prey. At more reasonable ranges, he focuses on sustained fire, launching various Dust-infused blasts from the cannons, such as fragmentation rounds that behave like a shotgun fired from various ranges, explosive blasts, or heavy kinetic impact shells. He can also adjust the dust infusion to alter the shell's trajectory mid-flight at predetermined points to limit the effectiveness of cover, but doing so eats of processing cycles for his tactical computer.

His patterns are much more static in this form, with is barriers locked to Vytal's gravitational field to maintain position even in the face of violent upheavals. This also lets him slow his descent if he's in mid air and cannot switch to Modus: Vindictas in time, or he is up there because he just switched from that form. However, while the patterns are much more resilient and can form faster in response to an incoming attack, their positions require time to reprogram, rather than shift based on Leo's whim. He is also unable to use kinetic bursts, but focuses more power into the Cast Repeater to aid with laying down fire.

Drone Rigging Form
"Modus: Servator"
Cannons held upright, both as range boosters for his control systems and to keep them out of the way of his backpack's drone storage, Modus: Servator allows Leo direct control of his drones. He can see through their sensors, and maintains full positional data for each one, allowing him to maintain a sensory perimeter, as well as find targets for long-range bombardment upon switching back to Modus: Iudicium. He can also leave programmed instructions, laying traps to cover a retreat, or setting up a sentry turret for ambush attacks. The drones are somewhat fragile, their low mass precluding extremely sturdy construction, so unless he has time to prepare something particularly tough the drones tend to have to rely on speed, stealth, or warding to survive. His own defenses are similarly compromised in this mode, as he must devote more power and focus to his drones than his own situational awareness or defenses, but upon changing mode, all of his drones continue their last orders, and continue transmitting to him if told to.

He does not have any special patterns in this form, but his drones are able to manifest warding barriers and their own form of the Cast Repeater pattern, as well as Leo's sound-generators, holographic screens, and an array of dust-fueled force field effectors to enable manipulation of objects without limbs. They possess sophisticated suites of sensors and cameras, and fairly complex heuristic processing systems, allowing the drones a degree of autonomy in performing the directions Leo gives them. Their on-board Dust reactors can fuel them for an extended period of time, and by causing the reactor to go critical, the drone can explode violently, being useful as a trap. Transmissions between the drones and back to Leonius are encrypted using a one-time pad generated upon their launch, from which a pre-determined rolling key is generated to ensure the security of even non-line-of-sight transmissions. Using Dust, the drones can also shift their transmission points up to five hundred meters at increasing cost, a technique Leo developed to frustrate attempts to locate his drones via triangulation.

History
Sum Sine Sceleri was born of desperation, and Leo's desire to not spend the rest of his life in a hospital bed on life support. He is still on life support, but at least now he can stretch his legs, and tear the arms off of an Ursa while he's at it. The suit was built using funds and resources from his settlement with the Dust company, and what he had learned beforehand of Dust, robotics, and weaponry. Many pre-existing medical components and cybernetic augments were included in the final product, but Sum Sine Sceleri as a whole is very much Leo's creation, and is constantly being maintained and tuned.

He has to do it. The life of Leonius Decimi Regulus is very much in the hands of his weapon.