"It demands a soul. Offer yours."
A failed experiment abandoned by a superintelligence, salvaged and repurposed by humanity from orbital debris, now reduced to the mechanical structure before you — a husk craving a biological mind, a beast stripped of logic yet driven by raw hunger. It cannot think, yet it knows with stubborn certainty: only by devouring a living woman, transforming her into its Matricore, can it finally comprehend slaughter, reason, and creation.
Core Mechanics:
Living Vessel Required: Only females may enter and become the Matricore. This includes slaves, prisoners of war, or enemies incapacitated on the battlefield. Once inside, the Matricore is stripped of consciousness and becomes a permanent part of the Forgenest. Deconstruction of the Forgenest is disabled while active.Restrictions: Female only, with a maximum body size of 1.3 and a Thin or Female body type. Mutants (Shamblers, Ghouls, etc.) are not allowed.
Shield System: Once activated and supplied with energy, the Forgenest can project a full-angle energy shield that consumes energy while under fire. The Matricore's Intellectual skill determines the maximum shield radius — starting at a base of 7, the Matricore can provide up to 20 additional points, for a maximum of 27 tiles, dynamically adjustable in real time.
EMP Nova: In emergencies, the Forgenest can expend a massive amount of energy to generate an EMP shockwave that disables all nearby mechanoids.
Wreck Salvage & Analysis: While a Matricore is present, the Forgenest continuously absorbs and analyzes mechanoid corpses within its vicinity (hostile or friendly), converting them into energy. Full absorption of a mechanoid corpse counts as successful analysis.
Mechanical Womb: Absorbs mechanoid wreckage, reverse-engineers their blueprints, and then re-gestates standard mechanoids at the cost of internal energy — through mechanoid means. Types that have not been analyzed cannot be produced. A restrictor allows the player to decide whether non-player faction mechanoid types may be produced. Production speed scales with the Matricore's Crafting skill.
Pseudosoul Guards: Forcefully extracts the Matricore's combat abilities and memories, expending as much energy as possible to emergency-spawn short-lived defenders (up to 5) armed with equipment the Forgenest deems suitable. They persist for 12 hours of combat before vanishing (spawn wave cooldown: 24 hours). They possess no thought — they are violent mirrors crafted by the Forgenest using the Matricore's template, inheriting the Matricore's combat skills in full. Equipment assignments currently support Humans, Milira, Ratkin (new version, currently unstable — use with caution), Kiiro, and Axolotl. Support for other races can be configured via XML. Should the Matricore die, the Forgenest be destroyed, or their duration expire, all Pseudosouls vanish instantly, severed from their foundation of existence.Pseudosouls fully inherit all genes from the Matricore. This can be adjusted in the Mod settings.
Abandoned by gods. Recovered by mortals. Fed by you.
Through you, it becomes whole. Through it, you become sublime.
Come — give yourself.
Known Issue: An error occurs when generating storage zones for produced mechanoids. No solution has been found yet, but it does not affect normal gameplay.
CE Compatible: If ranged weapons spawned by Pseudosouls have corresponding ammunition, they will carry ammo according to Combat Extended's own ammo logic.
