The Skeleton Brigade have long had a reputation for their ferocious firepower, raiding caravans across the Sand Sea, tearing through defenses, and slaughtering indiscriminately like a pack of rabid jackals. The people, terrified though they were, eventually began to devise countermeasures, hiring mercenaries from near and far to array shield walls in battle and blunt the brunt of their furious charge.
It was in these moments that the Bone Rovers’ weakness was exposed. Whenever they paused to recharge their Aether reserves or reload ammunition, enemy counterattacks would break their formation and send them into disorderly retreat.
Such humiliation was unbearable, leaving them ashamed even to face their comrades when it came to divide the spoils. Yet by the gods’ favor, a foreign warrior from Veck arrived and filled this fatal gap.
A Heavy Titan entered the fray in the campaigns that followed. Its speed was unhindered despite its colossal frame. With its Aether-powered Light Spear, coupled with shoulder-mounted cannons, it could tear wide gaps through enemy shield lines. When the counterfire came, it shifted into rampart mode, absorbing the rain of shellfire and shielding the Rovers as they regrouped. Battle after battle, it proved itself a force of overwhelming attack and defense, and soon tales of the “Iron Wall of the Desert” echoed across the sands.
The worsening crisis stoked fear among merchants everywhere. They had little choice but to sink fortunes into fortifications, or else seek out new trade routes. Some were convinced that the foreign warrior was a spy of the Desert Reptilis who had stolen secrets from Veck’s royal court. Yet others insisted, with equal certainty, they had seen Karstenian guild engineers smuggling cartloads of military equipment into Reptilis lands.