Balor

As is the case with most HORUS pattern groups, the Balor has a thousand faces. The Balor pattern group, like all HORUS PGs, doesn’t describe a single recognizable silhouette so much as it gestures toward a combination of schemata that share a role in combat. These schemata can be printed according to pilot specifications and applied to a fully custom physical scaffolding. Notably, the Balor pattern group is only stable on large platforms (Schedule 2 and up) that are able to provide the raw energy output it demands – preferably ones with multiple redundancies, in case of catastrophic systems failure.

The Balor PG was first encountered during the joint Albatross–DoJ/HR pursuit of the Maw – a Free Company turned decentralized hive-being — across Khayradin’s Blanca Desert after the end of the Sanjak Rebellion. It was there that the joint force encountered, engaged with, and ultimately defeated the Maw and its Balors – and there that Union’s CentComm hoped the nanowash outbreak could be contained. Of course, subsequent Balor outbreaks on Khayradin have proven this hope to be in vain, and the pattern group continues to terrorize Karrakin commanders throughout Baronic space.

In the field, the Balor’s neurosynced hellswarm and greywash nanites form an undulating shroud that can pour out of its chassis at a moment’s notice, swirling in maddening patterns to form both eschatologic defensive and offensive systems. A Balor in its most active state is held together more by undulating, flame-like masses of nanite swarms than any physical structure. This has the effect of distributing kinetic and coherent-particle energy out across and through the chassis – making attacks against a Balor “like shooting angry water”, as one after-action report put it.