Shortly before Centaurs were officially regarded as a sentient species for the first time, Ares
Macrotechnology had been catching some of them in order to better understand the working of more than 4
limbs in a brain that at least closely resembles the brain of metahumans. One of the Stallions they
cought though, had become a surprise-jackpot to them, as he was obviously somehow affected by the
strange and as of yet not fully understood phenomenon of surge, which had previously been thought not to
affect Animals, even para critters, at all. He had grown not one but two additional sets of arms for a
whole of 6 arms and 4 legs and his whole body was of an unnatural deep dark shade of black, including his
eyes. Of course, the Scientists immediately concluded that they could not be animals, if they were
indeed affected by surge. But scientists being scientists, especially scientsts on the pay roll of Ares
Macrotech, department of R&D are not going to lose such a valuable specimen just because of this little
fact . . especially, since by then the centaurs had not been added to the list of officially sentient
species.
So first they fitted him with a boat-load(huge body) of sensorics, including full simsense gear
to aquire as much data of the living specimen actually utilizing all of those limbs. For some time,
Steed, as he had been dubbed by the scientists, was left in realtive peace, so the data gathered would
be as exact as possible. After the scientists were sattisfied with the data gathered, they went on to
more . . let's say . . interesting experiments. they fitted Steed with a Stir-Up-Interface, fresh out of
developement for bio-drones to field test the gear and to see, if a metahuman mind could effectively
utilize this body. Much to their chargrain, they did not manage to be really effective . . either the
arms would hang down while the mind was concentrating on stabilizing the body on the unfamiliar set of 4
legs, or the body had to kept stationary on the 4 outward pointed legs while the rigger tried to use the
arms. this seemed to be more or less of a success, as the metahuman mind seems to understand 6 arms
somehow better than 4 legs. but as soon as everything together tried to move, Steed usually just
crumpled to a heap on the ground and the rigger got a nice migraine from sensory overload. After some
months of testing, the Scientists decided to try something else. They reasoned, that if the natural
parts were too hard to control, then why not try with artificial? and while they were on that road, they
could as well test just how good Steed would be able to wield cybernetic replacements. At about this
point of consideration, Centaurs were officially classified as Sentient and the whole Project ground to
a halt, until some execs decided to reason, that they could not stop now, as they had started before the
sentience of centaurs had been proclaimed officially. But to make sure there were no . . unappropriate . .
projects going on, the whole Project was "terminated". in reality, they moved it to another facility,
killing all other Centaurs only keeping Steed "alive" because of his uniqueness.
They had carted the whole shebang, scientists and all, over to one of their bought subsidiaries.
General Motors. And started a new project, officially as a follow up/competitor to the horseman vehicle.
Nobody would suspect a Corporation like General Motors, usually firmly rooted in the world of automotive and other machinery,
to be working with wet-ware. But not surprisingly, they were actually fitted for this project just fine.
Rigger-Ware, Walker-Drones, and last but not least, military applications of those. Of course, they
could not cart Steed off to some out and away paddock to further study his use of artificial body-parts.
So they made a virtual one, just for him. In this little virtual Utopia, the thought of Cyber-Ware was
perfectly normal to him, they kept his endorphine-levels reasonably high and basically let him dream of
his life as a free Centaur leading a happy life. When the time came for further tests including a rigger
taking over his body, they just put him under deep into a state of near coma while feeding him
artificial sensory info through his simsense gear. letting him dream of dreaming up nightmares of his
own body not listening to him anymore. the cyber-replacement was a good step into the right direction,
surprisingly. the rigger found it much more easy to use the cybered limbs, like he would with insectoid
and spider like walker-drones. so on they went, replacing after the lowest pair of Steeds arms with
steel, they replaced his front legs. now the Rigger felt almost at home, standing on 2 legs(well, 4, but
only really utilizing 2) and having 2 arms to work with as he pleased. Surprised by those results, off
went the other 2 legs, and again, the riger reported success, being able to utilize the two arms while
commandeering the 4 legs to move around. he compared it to steering a Horseman with 2 mechanical Arms.
after that comment, the scientists had the rigger practice on horsemen with 2 to 6 mechanical arms, so
Steed could get some "rest" for himself to heal up a bit. being close to full utilization of a body with
10 limbs, the scientists did not want to stop, but from their experience with cyber-replacement came a
problem. Steed now was fitted with 6 delta-grade cyberlimbs(remember folks, rules say those critters
have to use delta if i ain't wrong again) and some sensory and rigging-ware. if they went further, they
would lose him simply because they had replaced too much of his essence by machines. Meanwhile, the
Rigger sent in reports of having mastered steering a horseman sized-quad-walker-drone with 6 mechanical
arms. They reported their findings to their superiors and were surprised not to get an terminate order
for the specimen(Steed), but an order to wait for specialists to come in. Surprise was not nearly strong
enough of a word to describe what they felt, when those specialists tourned out to be magically active
to the last man. After they started to wonder about this fact, they all got a nice bonus on their pay-
check, and the whole project-team got 3 weeks of paid vacation, all expanses taken care of by General
Motors, no matter where they wanted to go.
When they came back, there he stood. Steed. a Miracle of modern science it seemed.
all of his limbs had been replaced by metal, his Torso had been structurally improved
and his simsense gear had gotten a new casing, forming a head that looked like a mix of a
horses head and the head in the Ares Macrotechnology Corporate Logo. But the most obvious change wasn't
all the metal. it was the simple fact, that whoever had done this had either by mistake or for some
other reason decided to change him from being Black Beauty to a pale, boney-white horse. Most of the
team of scientists quit the project at that point, not liking people messing with their work without
their supervision. Those who stayed, including the rigger, got an allmost 200% raise in payment though.
After a short while he had mastered commandeering "Binky", as someone with a sick sense of Humor had
dubbed Steed, and was able to traverse even broken terrain while utilizing the 6 arms to hold and
manipulate things with without much trouble. Of course, all good things come to an end. Seems as if
someone had snitched on the project, and there were problems beginning to pile up. First, breach in
security, some not vital data pointing in the right(or wrong, however you want to take it) direction got
stolen. Then there were Problems getting needed utilities and the such. Documents vanished. Then some
light sabotaging happened. In the end, a Full-Scale Assault on the facility. It was a Blood-Bath. The
Rigger, being there, tried to hold them off but was mortally wounded. "Binky" got shot several dozend
times with different calibers, but was not killed or rather destroyed due to him now being mostly metal.
He was left there as scrap metal, seemingly, after he went down with some big holes in his Body and some
missing limbs. Shortly thereafter, rumors on the Matrix told of General Motors working on a new kind of
combat walker vehicle/drone made to look like a giant spider with 8 limbs. Nobody knew how they mistook
a centaur with 10 limbs for a giant spider with 8 limbs, but of course, nobody corrected those rumors
either. what they did was prepare a bad little surprise for anybody who tried something like that ever
again. the surprisingly surviving rigger practiced more and more to steer multi-limbed-combat drones
while hospitalized and the scientists armored up their project and equipped it with means of active
defense.
Inlcuding 6 Cyber-Arm-Gyromounts, 3 pairs of Spurs, hand-Razors, and hand blades, Fangs, an
articulate Arm Weapon-Mount with cyber-arm-gyro-mount extending from between the "shoulders" of the
lowest of the 3 pairs of Cyber-Arms and 2 tracking Weapon-Mounts on the sides of the torso. one pointing
to the front, one pointing to the back. They replaced his eyes with an Eye-Band to gain a 360 degree
field of Vision, they swapped out his legs for raptor legs and just to show that they could, if they
really wanted to, they modified the raptor-legs so the feet could be switched out in a modular system to
allow skimmer-discs. All of those modifications came with a heavy prize to the project, as the rigger
reported to be back to square one more or less, as he could not control the whole body anymore. either
he could controll the arms, the legs, or the weapon mounts, but not even two of those groups together
seemed to work anymore. It is as of yet unclear, how or why it happened, but seemingly in a point of
frustration and desparation, "Binky" was once more heavyly modidified. they grafted a CCU(Jar-Brain-
Interface) onto the back of the lower torso of Binky. Reasoning seemed to be, that if one mind was not
enough to propperly control the new equine hover-tank, then they would make whatever was left of Steed
at this point work together as a slave to a master-brain of their choice instead of simply overriding
his thoughts completely. they brain-washed whatever was left of his mind to only act as a biological
expert-system for general motor-control while the master-brain in the jar would do the actual
"thinking" and commanding, taking care of using sensors and weapons. But who to use in the jar? yes, who
would be perfect for such a cyborg/drone-body as complicated as this one? an unfortunate accident in the
hospital of the quadriplegic Rigger, a brain was found and installed. Sadly, it was allmost impossible
to control frankensteins Horse "Binky", so they used it for only one time and only one thing. To gather
more Data. They scattered hints at the project being in the final phase and the prototype being deployed
in a far away testing facility on the matrix, then carted "Binky" off to said place and waited. They did
not have to wait for long, and shortly after a breach of security in the testing-grounds was the
starting shot for an all out attack on the facility. The Project Steed/Binky was a huge Success in one
Aspect: they had created a monster. a highly mobily weapons-plattform, an semi intelligent tank for
allmost all kinds of terrain. In another aspect, the Project was also a success. Gathering Data on
multi-limbed bodies and the neurology of the accompanying brains of the bodies and how to work with
them. the only part that was a huge loss was the part of cost/gain ratio. the whole project was just too
damned expansive due to the needs of massive ammounts of delta-grade-ware. It was a learning experience,
and due to Centaurs now officially being sentients will probably stay one of it'S kind. "Binky" was
carted of to only Ares knows where for only Ares knows what reason.