long-distance mech pilots don’t need to worry quite so much about traveling light. when you’re walking around in several tons of metal, especially one built to wander, you aren’t quite to the point of needing to choose which of two keepsakes you have room in your bag for— there’s plenty of space for both.
Things are different for interstellar knights.
You see, whether wandering alone or setting off on some quest for their lord, a knight’s only home is their armor. Anything they bring with them, they must carry within that armor, even through battles— and as such, every gram and every cubic centimeter can make the difference between life and death, and every calorie chosen to replace a keepsake can make the difference between survival and starvation. As such, a knight’s inventory is heavily optimized— and so is their armor itself. What matters more, the heating system or the EVA boosters? The extra fuel storage or the emergency release mechanisms? Pick one, and you’ll have no room for the other unless you can cut corners somewhere else. Every single element of a knight’s armor is there because they made the conscious decision to put it there. Every weapon they’ve attached to their shell had to replace some traditional aspect of a life support system. Every inch of their shells are packed full of every system that can fit until it’s tight against the pilot’s skin to leave them bruised whenever they exit their shell.
it doesn’t take long for them to realize which superfluous components are the weakest link.
They start small, at first— often as simple as a haircut to help a tighter helmet fit better. Some try to lose weight, but quickly regret it when they find themselves near starvation on some distant moon. The ones that survive past their first year are the ones that are willing to take things a bit further— the toes on both feet, to make room for a slight jump booster. One of their ribs, perhaps— replaced with a battery that connects to the armor through a cable that winds around bones and muscles. It’s only a matter of time before they do something about those bones and muscles too.
those who have only heard the stories will say that a knight’s armor is their home. Those who have met one, seen them exit their armor and seen just how little is left of the body inside— they will say that a knight’s armor is a part of their body. Integrated into them until they cannot survive without it. Both are wrong. Even some knights cannot pin down the true answer— what they really feel as they connect their armor to the components of it that they have placed inside of them. The best ones do, though. They know it well.
A knight’s armor is not a part of their body. Their body is a part of their armor— their home, to be renovated and optimized as they see fit. To be replaced, improved, amputated and eviscerated so that it can be remade into the glorious works of art that the heroes of the galaxy become as they charge into battle and become a story worth remembering.
As the armor learns to reach into your veins, pulling oxygen from the carbon dioxide you exhale and weaving it back into your blood, the space once taken up by inefficient organic lungs becomes the home of the heating system, warming you from within no matter what part of the void between stars you find yourself in. As it recycles amino acids into proteins again and infuses them back into what tissues remain, you’re free to remove your old digestive organs and find a home for your armor’s main computer, kept safe at the center of your shell. Many knights choose to put their own organic brain down there next to it, incidentally making room for more optical systems in their skulls.
Your armor is no longer simply “a part of you” and you are no longer simply “a part of it.” It is you. You are it. Your bones, its power cells, your organs its systems. You are its brain and its CPU in equal measure and its beautiful exterior plates, painted with the symbols of the lord you serve or simply the cause you stand for, will inspire others to take up arms themselves and let themselves become part of it.
your body, your home, your masterpiece
