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EMS-VSX3-A1 Neo Totuga
Model number: EMS-VSX3-A1
Thought to have been originally developed by Jovian colonial rebels roughly eighty years before the Guild War, the Totuga was a highly unconventional mobile suit designed primarily to be capable of surviving almost any attack and retaliating in spades. How the mobile suit came into use by the verifiably insane lunarian Scarth Dyoshi was never determined, but the bulbous mobile suit - allegedly referred to as a "teapot" by its operator - frequently turned up during pirate raids on commercial and military shipping throughout lunar trade lanes in the early UC 240s. At some point in UC 241, Dyoshi and the Totuga turned up in Jovian space, now under management of the Jupiter Development Group. It is speculated that the JDG, still in possession of at least some of the defunct "Jupiter Empire"'s mobile weapon technical data, was able to provide Dyoshi with sufficient development data for the mad pirate to commence an overhaul of the machine. Current hypotheses point to at least some involvement with other third parties, but regardless of whose - and how many - hands were involved, the Neo Totuga that was created became a particularly frightening example of the thin line between genius and madness when applied to mobile suit engineering. The Neo Totuga improves on the original mobile suit's combat capabilities in several areas, although most of these modifications are fairly modest in nature. The "atomic hammers" that form the mobile suit's arms were reinforced with a high-density gundarium theta alloy that offered improved cutting characteristics - the alloy was deemed too brittle to use as an armor material, but the small concentrations in the Totuga's spinning hammer tips could be sufficiently engineered to negate this drawback. Furthermore, the beam guns mounted to the tips of the Totuga's massive beam shied's emitters were improved to be able to fire in almost any direction, giving the porcupine-like mobile suit excellent coverage against an enemy from almost any orientation. The spike-like emitters could also be detached and employed as remote weapons thanks to the installation of the one-of-a-kind hybrid bio-organic computer control system; this device in turn formed the true capability - and insanity - of the Neo Totuga. The computer system allows the Neo Totuga to operate multiple "Slave Totuga" mobile suits via a combination of brainwave scanning of the Neo's pilot and integration with the "bio-control unit" installed in each of the slave units. Using Dyoshi's DNA as a starting point, multiple clones of the pirate's brain matter were hard-wired into the slave units, allowing for semi-autonomous operation as long as the Neo Totuga was within visual range. Each slave unit could thus independently process data and, by interpreting the Neo Totuga's pilot's brainwave activity, respond to combat stimuli in the same fashion as the Neo's pilot would. While similar (in operation, not principle) to a Newtype-operated psycommu system, the Neo Totuga's hybrid bio-organic computer control system did not allow for pure remote operation of the slave units - however, given each slave unit's ability to react to combat conditions on its own, this omission was not a major drawback. The bio-organic computer control system was believed to another "Jupiter Empire" product, originally devised to enhance the power of Newtype pilots over specially linked remote weapons. However, incomplete reports from that period suggest that its use tended to lead to development of extreme misanthropy and psychotic episodes in test pilots, perhaps due to mental feedback from the bio-control units. Regardless of whether or not the above supposition is true, the system has little bearing on the already-insane Dyoshi, who now has something of a full "tea set" at his disposal.
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