Let me tell you a story about the bad old days. Third Corporate War. Bad time all around. There were still nations, back then, a few of them. Most were just corps with a land claim and better marketing, but there were a few that subscribed to weirder politics. The Mormons built their holy city and guarded it with what they called "the fire of god". Cuba, the last bastion of nationalized industry. The Neo-Celtic State— heh, you might recognize that one, yeah?— yeah it popped up in what remained of the British Isles after London got blasted off the face of the earth.
Back then, dolls were still a "frontier technology", heh. A corp-friendly way of saying that they were barely tested before getting rolled out. If the corps had their way, they would've tinkered with the tech for another decade before the rollout, but NSV-49 spread out of control and forced their hands. The had to do something with all those bodies that got hollowed out, especially cuz killing them wouldn't solve anything.
The first combat doll was deployed at the very end of the Second Corprate War, two months too late to make a difference. But everyone who saw one knew that they were were gonna decide the Third one. Those dolls, the Second Corpo War ones, they didn't have designations. Bespoke fucking monsters, all of them. Heard one of 'em took out a whole armored platoon all by itself... but I'm gettin' off track.
By the time you get to the third war, it's pretty clear that dolls are gonna be the deciding factor. This is where we start to get patterns for the first times, precursors to the kinda dolls we've got now— they had Mandobles instead of Montantes, but you can see the resemblence.
Only problem was that the techniques for turning out dolls wasn't nearly as good as the tech they outfitted them with. Main problem was, it was slow as fuck and glitchy as hell. Modern conditioning can go from a Blank to a functional combat unit in about two months with a 99.9% success rate. Back then, it took about two years, and it only produced a viable doll in about 30% of cases— and even then, only about 20% of the successful conversions produced combat-capable models.
So, in the lead up to the big number three— it was brewing for like ten yours, it was a whole thing I don't have time for— the major players tried to get as many dolls as possible boxed up and ready to go. Some were more successful than others. DMU— oh, that's Disney-Monsanto-United, yeah I guess I can't expect you to recognize those corps; before your time, heh — managed to get about 20k dolls on ice— that was a lot for the time!— though they were lagging in the armament department. Chromicon had a big lead there, arming their dolls with plasma cannons and nanotube composite armor while most dolls were still shooting bullets and wearing kevlar. They probably woulda had the war in the bag if they had managed to condition more than 250 dolls before they got alpha-striked in the first week.
Anyway, that's not the bad part. See, some of the corps were looking at their intelligence reports and sweatin' fuckin' bullets. They realized they couldn't make enough dolls to outcompete DMU or Delta-GRY and they couldn't compete with Chromicon or NanoSystems on bleeding edge tech. So they started to look at that other 80% of dolls that were not cleared to be combat units and... well, they basically shrugged and went "good enough" and strapped them with enough munitions to level a small city.
This went about as well and trying to give a freshly decommed combat doll a vacuum cleaner, only about a thousand times as destructive. And if you've ever seen a red combat doll try to vacuum, you know that's saying something.
There was once a city called St. Louis. No one remembers why anymore, and it doesn't fucking matter anyway. Point is, this corp called McDonalds tried to deploy a dozen of these domestic dolls turned combat units loose to root out a dug in DMU squad near the base of this big arch that used to be there— some old world engineering project built as a dick measuring contest, probably.
Combat units are selected for a number of reasons. But the most important thing that separates a combat doll from a domestic unit is the ability to remain stable in combat conditions, to be able to remember and follow orders even under heavy fire or out of comms range. Domestic units are typified by a lack of this ability— they excel with close oversight or independently at repetitive tasks.
It's said that in the aftermath of the Last Battle of St. Louis, there were only twelve living souls and a single structure left in the city— a single Subway sandwich shop. No one knows why— it's one of the greatest mysteries of the Third War.
So, yeah, that's why none of you wonderful little gremlins are getting laser modules. I know that they're designed for cleaning, but I also know those things can cut through six inches of stone and I quite like this mansion, thank you very much. Gods, anyone who says domestic dolls are easier to manage is a fucking liar, yall are gonna be the death of me the day that I don't proofread your requisitions close enough. Yes, I love you all. Now, don't y'all have chores to do? Come on, the cows won't milk themselves and the torrents need seeding, up and attem
