Yes, you can pair-bond Myrmidons. You're expected to use it on more deadly things, though. Like, idunno, pair-bonding someone who fites as good as Achilles with someone who is also very good at fite.
The Theban Bond is a powerful effect which makes already good fighters godlike. Myrmidons are different. They're more intended to put the 'urban' into 'urban fantasy' so your tier zero commando PMC wizard can fastrope a half-dozen guys carrying machine-guns and wearing like, 40 kilos of body armor into the AO.
Probably not machine-guns this sweet, though. These are reserved for Iterators.
@EarthScorpion should get the joke.
IX-55 Squad Support Weapon
Enlightenment 3 (8 pts)
"I solve practical problems. For instance, how am I gonna stop some big mean Mother Hubbard from tearing me a structurally superfluous new behind? The answer: use a gun. And if that don't work? Use more gun." -Graffiti, Shock Corps Barracks
"What we lack in vision, we make up for in brute force." -Graffiti, Shock Corps Barracks
Bad news. Your highly elite, highly augmented commando team is stuck facing a large number of enemies and you really need to kill them all. Because occasionally you might step in the wrong neighborhood and the Reality Deviants there have friends. Hundreds of friends. All with AK-47s and RPGs. Oh and it's on Earth, so you can't use one of those really fancy weapons like the self-replicating nanoswarm missiles which melt people to make more missiles to melt people. You could use something like a wide-beam plasma cannon, but those are expensive and firing them on Earth means lots of maintenance-and worse, paperwork.
The good news, of course, is that you have the IX-55. Sure, it takes a while to spin up, but when it finishes spinning up (Time 3/Correspondence 3) to maximum fire rate, this machine gun can tear through enemies like a buzzsaw through butter. A proprietary recoil management system (Forces 2/Mind 1/Correspondence 1) makes the weapon more accurate and effective as you keep firing, and a very large capacity magazine (Matter 2/Correspondence 2) means you can fire for days.
When initially firing, it is a slow-firing but accurate medium machine gun-it fires only in three-round bursts (+2 accuracy, 3 rounds expended) but its recoil compensation negates the recoil from rapid-fire (no difficulty penalty for firing bursts). However, every consecutive turn the IX-55 fires, the firer gains an additional attack from the weapon's Time 3 spool-up effect, up to an additional +3 attacks after 3 turns of consecutive fire.
In addition, each turn the IX-55 fires counts as a turn of aiming the weapon, and because of its recoil management system this aim bonus applies to all attacks made with the IX-55. Against enemies who are not reliably immune to small arms, the IX-55 can effectively chew them apart in a matter of seconds if its gunner focuses on them-or the IX-55 can be used to quickly sweep the field of hostiles via its large magazine.
The IX-55 pairs well with enhanced mobility-whether as an aggressive weapon fired from the hip or fired from a crouched or braced position behind deployable cover. Extended magazines and threat-detecting scopes are commonly attached to make this already formidable weapon even more dangerous. IX-55s are commonly used when taking on comparably enhanced individuals-although they are effective in other mission types, such as the above mentioned attrition of numerically superior but qualitatively inferior forces. As long as teammates ensure an IX-55 gunner cannot be shut down by hostile intervention, the base of fire they lay can easily turn the tide against any foe not literally immune to bullets.
The Shock Corps has denied the truth of rumors that the radioisotopes in the weapon's proprietary 'blue-streak' tracer ammunition cause cancer. Nevertheless, IX-55 gunners have gained the euphemism "cancer researchers" from the original claims.
IX-55
Damage 8L, Rate 1-4 (see text above), Range 300, Magazine 120
Scholar
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