Kalran: Tales of the four nations/Hyperion relay

Tactical Analysis

 * Slaughter of million: The most powerful superweapon in the game, the beams, or the light of damnation as the Reclaimers call it, area-of-effect and damage is so high, when aimed right it could demolish an entire enemy base, with the exception of the enemy Headquarters


 * Just give up and die: The relay charges up before firing a great beam at the target. Once launched, it cannot be stopped--the only tactic in such an event is to flee, and for buildings that is not an option


 * Charging: However, despite its unrivalled destructive power, the weapon has some disadvantages. For one, it is very slow to arm and lock on, so for the duration the Hyperion relay must be protected at all costs. It also consumes large amounts of energy and material to make the weapon, so a premature explosion would be a huge blow against the commander's bank account. And it requires all of Bahlgrams superweapons to be built beforehand, meaning its an prohibitable expensive process to build it

History
The UCA Mjolnir fires six tungsten rods within a kilometre of each other which then cause cataclysmic earthquakes upon impact, devastating a wide area. The Rokhari Cascade walker can buckle steel and melt flesh in a vast area using nothing but a wave of plasma. And the Navaheim Foehn generator creates great storms that blankets the area in hail and shoots lightning that fries flesh and melts metals.

And all of these are but mere firecrackers when compared to the Reclaimers Hyperion relay.

How the Reclaimer invented this terrible weapon is unknown. The most likely theory is that Desmond found a method that created its infamous explosion, and upon his death Bahlgram stole the plans and used it. What is known is that in the nearing days of the war, the Tuatha capital of Arcadia was sudden lit up by a ring of light, followed by a beam of light coming down onto the city.

Upon the beams impact, it broke apart the surrounding atoms, thus creating fission. The surrounding atoms then broke down, and then again, and yet again, in a chain reaction that produced more energy than any conventional power plant in the world could hope to. The explosion, in a flash of light bright enough to melt the retinas of people looking at it, released its energy mostly in a blast front and thermal radiation.

The blast wave can reach 1,000 kilometres per second, which is made more horrific by the debris set on fire by the intense light. Anything within 1.6 kilometres is completely destroyed, with temperatures in the ensuing fireball reaching up to 4000 degrees Celsius. People caught in the fireball are instantly vaporised, leaving either carbon shadows painted on the walls and pavement, or even more disturbing so, still carbon statues of themselves, arms shielding themselves from the all-conflagrating heat, mouths open in silent screams. From a further range of destruction up to 6.6 kilometres, people caught in the blast will be ripped apart, due to intense pressure waves within the soft tissue. The thermal radiation, meanwhile, will ignite whatever can be ignited, including people.

In a flash Arcadia was completely obliterated. Even some distance from the detonation point, people were horribly burned by the thermal radiation and died soon after, and secondary fires started by burning debris thrown by the blast wave caused a firestorm that destroyed any remaining settlements and much of the countryside outside the city. Over the course of the next two weeks, nearly every city, town, and collection of villages was destroyed by the Reclaimers in their insane attempt to end the decades long civil war while the surviving empire soldier began making suicidal attacks to destroy the relay that controlled the satellite. Over three-quarters of the population of the Tuatha empire died within a month before the empire managed to take hold of the relay and fired it directly above the Reclaimers base while overloading the satellite to explode, crippling the Reclaimers and ending the war. But in the end they only slowed them.

Despite their hopes to end it permanently the Reclaimers had managed to salvage and repair both the the relay and the satellite and have recently readied it to fire once again, but having to scrounge up materials to make it fortunately means it takes longer then before to fire. And, due to not trusting his subordinates to not get it destroyed again, Bahlgram made it so that only he can control and fire the relay, and anyone who tries to steal the code will be executed by the gas chamber.