Renegade Rodian
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To provide a personal stealth device for the employees, associates, and customers of the Helix Syndicate.
- Image Source: Stealth field generator from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
- Canon Links: Personal cloaking device, Stealth field generator, Shadow Stormtrooper Armor
- Restricted Missions: You Can Drive My Carida - Acquisition
- Primary Source: See canon links.
- Manufacturer: Helix Syndicate
- Model: HS Personal Cloaking Device
- Affiliation: Helix Syndicate / Closed Market
- Modularity: Yes (solar cells, batteries)
- Production: Semi-Unique
- Material: Plasteel, electronics, titanium, stygium
A thin titanium casing protects the stealth device from general roughhousing. You never need to worry about it breaking if you happen to trip and fall on it. If someone shoots or stabs it, though, you’ll be out of luck. One of the titanium panels is hinged, opening up to reveal a fancy set of high efficiency solar panels. Standing under a light source of any kind will help work a charge back into your device. Just don’t try to charge it while it’s activated. You’re more likely to short it out completely and ruin the device.
At full charge, this device can remain active for a continuous period of around two hours.
STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES
- [Strength] This cloaking device renders the user, for all intents and purposes, invisible to both the naked eye and cursory scanners. Unless a facility contains the expensive equipment necessary to specifically detect stygium devices or gravitic sensors, this should allow a user to pass through undetected.
- [Weakness] The HS is one of the bulkiest and most inconvenient stealth device on the market. It takes some getting use to when moving stealthily, meaning special training is required to use one effectively.
- [Weakness] There are no sound dampeners included. If you sneeze, cough, or stomp around while wearing an active device, people will hear you. And they’ll probably want to beat you up and take that cool stealth device you have.
Not long after a horrific hit-and-run accident left no one of particular interest dead and a blue-collar worker richer than he ever imagined he would be, the Helix Syndicate began designing a personal cloaking device for its employees. While these two events may sound like they are somehow related, they are most certainly not. They just happened to transpire very, very close to one another.As a stealthy and clandestine organization, the Helix Syndicate has had need for a stealth device for a long time. It just hadn’t gotten around to producing one until after a Sith Lord was killed on impact with a landspeeder traveling at a hundred and forty kilometers per hour.
It’s not a very impressive looking piece of equipment. The HS Personal Cloaking Device is essentially a large box on a heavy belt. It can either be worn around the waist or as a bandoleer, if you’re feeling fancy.
The Syndicate mostly drew from already existing and well-documented personal stealth technologies that have been present in the galaxy for quite some time. Mindless replication was never much their style, so they made some changes based on the needs of their employees. Given the frequency with which their mercenaries find themselves embroiled in combat even during stealth operations, the Syndicate elected to design a special titanium case for the cloaking device to help protect it from blunt damage and the like.
As one can also imagine, a cloaking device takes up quite a lot of power. The HS Personal Cloaking Device has two key features to prolong its ability to function even in the field. The first is a special solar panel unit that allows the device to efficiently charge from any available source of light. The batteries are also easy to replace, so a prospective infiltrator could simply carry a few with them. Charging the device requires it to be deactivated and taken off, however, so it is often best to find a secure location to do so.
While the HS can render a user invisible to the naked eye and basic scanners, it does not include any sound dampener technology. That means any noise the user makes while wearing the device carries just as loudly as if they weren’t. Owing to design efforts to make them durable and give them longevity, it is noticeably bulkier than similar devices. This makes it somewhat more difficult to move around stealthily and comfortably without first getting used to it.
