Materiel Asset Identification

Each Tread of the 139th is a battle forged engine of venerable years. Each defect accrued in its manufacturing or inherent to its design has long been discovered and tested to its limits alongside the crews within them. Faded olive green camouflage covered in scratches and burns is visible beneath the mud that adorns their metal hulls, the insignias of squadrons destroyed during the War of Wonders standing side by side with the ad hoc 1 3 9 stamped on the front of each vessel. Some still bear the scars of that terrible conflict, the esoteric devastation wrought by the Glass Cities armies still visible despite attempts to repair it.

Though the roll of battle honors each vehicle bears is lengthy indeed, the list of repairs and replacement parts needed to sustain them are equally as long. As casualties have mounted over the years, either from combat actions or the tender ministrations of the Grey, the 139th continued to do what had birthed in the first place. Fallen Treads are stripped of parts, or filled with ones sourced from elsewhere. Two dead become one living, and the fight continues on.

With the number of modifications and creative adjustments necessary under such a methodology, the crews of the 139th are inevitably seasoned hands at maintaining the metal lifeline that ensconces them. In this way, each one of the 139th’s tanks is bedecked with various quirks of function or incongruities with its original design.

Under Article.6, Subsection.A3, Quarter1.366, among a number of other important stipulations lies the regulation that governs what can and cannot adorn a Class 13 Armored Domicile. The list of Cant’s is much longer than the list of Cans, and as such most Treads of the DMV-9 are uniform creations, monolithic blocks of grey steel and Calcrum coated by as little paint as required to optimally protect against weathering. The only other adornments permitted under Article.6, Subsection.A3, Quarter1.366 are the required warning labels, safety notices for hazardous materiel or ammunition, and FAQ’s for recipients of DMV intervention. While this may seem utterly uninteresting upon first inspection, the application of each of these warnings comprise nearly eighteen volumes of overlapping, redundant, or can be generously applied in dozens of different situations.

Despite the efforts of the DMV-9 to bind the wills of its representatives to the perfect execution of bureaucracy, among the veteran civil servants that serve on Treads deep within the Shattered Continent, or plumb the depths of Wonder spread across the world, these warning labels have become something far more. While a new crew may only include one or two factory included labels, veteran crews add more and more to their Tread as they grind ever on against the enemies of Section 9. Those who fought in the War of Wonders, for example, might include a Restricted: Qualified Personnel Only warning above hatch to their Tread, or a crew known for precision shots might add a Caution: Falling Rocks warning to the barrel of their main turret. Such labels are often not so straightforward in their meaning, and it would take far too long here to describe the significant difference between a DMV Tread displaying Hazardous Cargo: Lift Only and Hazardous Cargo: Lift Never.

Nonetheless, these personalized touches represent perhaps a failure of control at the fringes of the DMV-9’s domain, but as of yet no action against this small act of individuality has been taken. Of course, it may simply be that it's on the docket, and that it's only a matter of time before more stringent codes are to be implemented.

At the peak of the War of Wonders, the forge-laboratories of the Glass City echoed ceaselessly with the arcane energies of the Doctors mad genius. Arcing lightning danced amid generators of terrifying potency, fueling the power hungry process of Recombination as the click and whir of calculating machinery filled the air with their unending postulations. The Treads that emerged were alien and unsettling in equal measure, their construction guided not by human hands but the sublime science of war. These Treads, beyond a shadow of a doubt, were the pinnacle of not just the Glass City’s war machines but the whole of the Shattered Continent.

There was no steel or Calcrum here, no rivets or weld lines marring its pristine facings. Instead, these Glass Treads were dressed in a dark blue that seemed to glow softly from some inner luminescence, more similar to crystal lattice than inflexible metal. These weapons were the backbone that drove the DMV-9 to the brink of destruction during the Battle of Redsector, and may well have brought the world itself to heel had they gone beyond it. Instead, with the fall of the Doctor, the secret of Recombination was lost, and despite the efforts of Khan and the remaining Glass City loyalists its finer points are still a mystery, though not without making some inroads to the complex process.

Today the Glass City’s forge-laboratories, now under the auspices of the Democratic Republic of Germany, improve upon other designs to meet the immediate need of security. The Glass coating is now applied over or into the facings of existing Treads, advanced energy weapons taking the place of whatever inferior armament was there before.

Technically, there exists somewhere the official Peace Corp color scheme. Such is the corrosive will of the powers that be behind the puppeted organization that, inevitably, their true colors begin to bleed through the inoffensive baby blue and harmless white meant to disarm potential inquisitive investigators. Gold trim here, a flag there. Custom parts and gleaming improvements no one had bothered to cover up standing out like a sore thumb amid the supposedly cash strapped non-profit.

That is to say nothing of the Freedom Tours whose opulence speaks to the mind-boggling lucrativeness that awashes the exploitation of the Shattered Continent. The Army of Righteous Freedom spearheaded by Cedrick Smithstopher, for example, is a boisterous calamity of purple, gold, and red, bearing titanic banners emblazoned with the stars and stripes. Others are inscribed with the long tallies of victories (real or imagined) won by the Treads eccentric captain, or bedecked with frescos and embellishments that have taken place on the battlefield. Such is the depths of the pockets behind the metal facade these impracticalities do little to stand in the way of their desires.