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Description
During her tenure as the Adonis corporation's flagship Contract Rider , Mari Posada had to deal with her fair share of callous, unpleasant executives making demands of what Contract Rider Papillon's "brand" should be — but few were worse than Herman Scrugg. As the direct corporate overseer of Adonis's Rider projects, Scrugg was Mari's main point of contact with her employer: a slimy, bottom-feeding capitalist with no ideals greater than lining his own pockets, whose profit-driven directives often clashed with Mari's desire to do good as Papillon.

After Mari was fired for being caught on camera fighting against Marianne Chaumet and the Common Rider , it was Scrugg who provided Contract Rider Goo with a poison-pill upgrade... and after Goo's monstrous Geister form was defeated by Papillon and her allies, it was Scrugg who publicly decried Contract Riders as they existed, calling them dangerous and untrustworthy — both to curry favor with Golgom , and to fill the resulting void with something new under their control.

The result of their efforts was an enormous walking tank armed with an array of heavy artillery, which Adonis referred to as "Contract Rider Hephaestus". Though Golgom had by this time been usurped as the dominant power in Elysium by Ultraman Caesar , this only reinforced the fear and desperation across the city that Adonis sought to profit off — especially when Caesar declared war against the outside world that he believed had deliberately abandoned Elysium, with Adonis pledging an army of mass-produced Hephaestus units to his service.

Hephaestus is armed with twin underslung Vulcan Cannons, back-mounted Kothar Launchers, and the ability to project an Arc Razor energy beam from between the two metallic spikes mounted on its front, while its insectoid form grants it much greater speed and maneuverability than its size would suggest. As a weapon designed to counter parahumans, its Compound Inhibitors project an energy wave that disrupts zeitgeist fields, preventing hard-light projections and mahourider transformations such as Papillon's; and to protect itself, Hephaestus can both superheat its exterior and manifest a layer of "Geister Armor": a thick covering of quantum foam and half-manifested Geisters, intended to disrupt attacks at range and lash out at anyone who tried to fight Hephaestus up close.

When, during Caesar's dominion, Mari investigated Adonis activity at the edge of Elysium with her allies Wyvern and Dolmen , Scrugg ambushed them with a Hephaestus unit that he personally piloted. Using the Compound Inhibitors to prevent Mari from transforming, Scrugg gloated over the triumph of Adonis's worldview; faced with what seemed like the end of the world, fear and paranoia would spread division between people, allowing Adonis to sell their own safety back to them in the form of Hephaestus — and with a neverending war, they could grow forever. Unfortunately for Scrugg, while Mari distracted him, Dolmen was able to hold back the machine long enough for Wyvern to climb it and shatter the crystal domes containing the Compound Inhibitors, enabling Mari to transform into Papillon and pry Scrugg out of the mech's cockpit. This only granted the Riders a short relief, though — Hephaestus quickly reset, and began attacking again on autopilot.

With Wyvern exhausted by contact with Hephaestus's superheated surface and Dolmen lost to the emotional turmoil of KT Strata, Mari was left to face the rampaging machine — the embodiment of the faceless, unthinking cruelty and greed that she had been struggling against — by herself... and made a decision. Finding her inner strength, she reached out to the people of Elysium by revealing her identity as Papillon on stream, calling on them for the connection that Adonis sought to destroy for its own profit, allowing her to transform into the powerful Monarch Butterfly form . Armed with this new power, Mari demolished the Hephaestus unit with a mighty Sequence Breaker kick, freeing herself from the system's control for good.

Our game master has admitted that when he conceived Hephaestus, he was essentially just directly ripping off Metal Gear EXCELSUS from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, down to "isn't actually a Contract Rider, but is referred to as one for branding reasons". While he was vague on the description of Hephaestus beyond it having an insect-like "head", I decided to go all in on the idea of it as a "fake Rider", making it a giant mechanical grasshopper; its colours are inspired by the red milkweed locust, which even has black and yellow "hazard stripes" on its abdomen. The front section of the "head" is the cockpit, with the "mouthparts" as mechanical blast doors, while the "eyes" are the Compound Inhibitors. I was planning to make a version with the Geister Armor, but considering how huge and detailed it would be, I decided against it.

Sorry this one took so long to upload - I've had the spritework done for ages, but haven't had the time to write up the descriptions, since I've been hard at work editing episodes of my Transformers podcast where I and my cohost go back and watch the 2002-03 anime Transformers Armada/Micron Legend to analyse the differences in the dub. If you're at all interested in Transformers, I recommend you check it out — I like to think it's pretty funny!

Hephaestus was created by Kuuga_Gameing and designed by me. Herman Scrugg and Contract Rider Papillon were created by Speed_Freak01 . This pixel art is based on templates created by Taiko554 .

Description
During her tenure as the Adonis corporation's flagship Contract Rider , Mari Posada had to deal with her fair share of callous, unpleasant executives making demands of what Contract Rider Papillon's "brand" should be — but few were worse than Herman Scrugg. As the direct corporate overseer of Adonis's Rider projects, Scrugg was Mari's main point of contact with her employer: a slimy, bottom-feeding capitalist with no ideals greater than lining his own pockets, whose profit-driven directives often clashed with Mari's desire to do good as Papillon.

After Mari was fired for being caught on camera fighting against Marianne Chaumet and the Common Rider , it was Scrugg who provided Contract Rider Goo with a poison-pill upgrade... and after Goo's monstrous Geister form was defeated by Papillon and her allies, it was Scrugg who publicly decried Contract Riders as they existed, calling them dangerous and untrustworthy — both to curry favor with Golgom , and to fill the resulting void with something new under their control.

The result of their efforts was an enormous walking tank armed with an array of heavy artillery, which Adonis referred to as "Contract Rider Hephaestus". Though Golgom had by this time been usurped as the dominant power in Elysium by Ultraman Caesar , this only reinforced the fear and desperation across the city that Adonis sought to profit off — especially when Caesar declared war against the outside world that he believed had deliberately abandoned Elysium, with Adonis pledging an army of mass-produced Hephaestus units to his service.

Hephaestus is armed with twin underslung Vulcan Cannons, back-mounted Kothar Launchers, and the ability to project an Arc Razor energy beam from between the two metallic spikes mounted on its front, while its insectoid form grants it much greater speed and maneuverability than its size would suggest. As a weapon designed to counter parahumans, its Compound Inhibitors project an energy wave that disrupts zeitgeist fields, preventing hard-light projections and mahourider transformations such as Papillon's; and to protect itself, Hephaestus can both superheat its exterior and manifest a layer of "Geister Armor": a thick covering of quantum foam and half-manifested Geisters, intended to disrupt attacks at range and lash out at anyone who tried to fight Hephaestus up close.

When, during Caesar's dominion, Mari investigated Adonis activity at the edge of Elysium with her allies Wyvern and Dolmen , Scrugg ambushed them with a Hephaestus unit that he personally piloted. Using the Compound Inhibitors to prevent Mari from transforming, Scrugg gloated over the triumph of Adonis's worldview; faced with what seemed like the end of the world, fear and paranoia would spread division between people, allowing Adonis to sell their own safety back to them in the form of Hephaestus — and with a neverending war, they could grow forever. Unfortunately for Scrugg, while Mari distracted him, Dolmen was able to hold back the machine long enough for Wyvern to climb it and shatter the crystal domes containing the Compound Inhibitors, enabling Mari to transform into Papillon and pry Scrugg out of the mech's cockpit. This only granted the Riders a short relief, though — Hephaestus quickly reset, and began attacking again on autopilot.

With Wyvern exhausted by contact with Hephaestus's superheated surface and Dolmen lost to the emotional turmoil of KT Strata, Mari was left to face the rampaging machine — the embodiment of the faceless, unthinking cruelty and greed that she had been struggling against — by herself... and made a decision. Finding her inner strength, she reached out to the people of Elysium by revealing her identity as Papillon on stream, calling on them for the connection that Adonis sought to destroy for its own profit, allowing her to transform into the powerful Monarch Butterfly form . Armed with this new power, Mari demolished the Hephaestus unit with a mighty Sequence Breaker kick, freeing herself from the system's control for good.

Our game master has admitted that when he conceived Hephaestus, he was essentially just directly ripping off Metal Gear EXCELSUS from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, down to "isn't actually a Contract Rider, but is referred to as one for branding reasons". While he was vague on the description of Hephaestus beyond it having an insect-like "head", I decided to go all in on the idea of it as a "fake Rider", making it a giant mechanical grasshopper; its colours are inspired by the red milkweed locust, which even has black and yellow "hazard stripes" on its abdomen. The front section of the "head" is the cockpit, with the "mouthparts" as mechanical blast doors, while the "eyes" are the Compound Inhibitors. I was planning to make a version with the Geister Armor, but considering how huge and detailed it would be, I decided against it.

Sorry this one took so long to upload - I've had the spritework done for ages, but haven't had the time to write up the descriptions, since I've been hard at work editing episodes of my Transformers podcast where I and my cohost go back and watch the 2002-03 anime Transformers Armada/Micron Legend to analyse the differences in the dub. If you're at all interested in Transformers, I recommend you check it out — I like to think it's pretty funny!

Hephaestus was created by Kuuga_Gameing and designed by me. Herman Scrugg and Contract Rider Papillon were created by Speed_Freak01 . This pixel art is based on templates created by Taiko554 .