You can legally buy tanks on open market. And other military vessels. You'll need to restore it to full battle readiness, but it's completely legal, and there's a market. Helicopters too.
You can't get exalted-grade equipment, however. Which means that our best bet is to stack dice on top of dice and DC reducers, and to make the best quality vehicle possible.
And Odin't primary activity seems to be low key enough that if they are using the heavy variant, something has gone very wrong. Hell, it even says so in the option "
If Monoc needs this kind of firepower things have really gone south ". Normally they operate more covertly.
To demonstrate the quality of our service we either need to build them something exotic, like an amphibious or a subterrain vehicle, or we need to build them a vehicle of the quality and capability that is simply impossible to make by mortal means. And that means not splitting dice pools.
Those military vehicles are demilitarized, registered and tracked; sometimes mechanically, because IIRC part of the process of demilitarizing a tank in the West would include stuff like physically boring a hole through the side of the barrel.
And believe me, you aint sourcing a main gun barrel.
The helicopters similarly have none of the goodies that make them war machines.
Not to mention that they only enter the market after decades of use and wear. You really dont want to be resting your life in combat on an airframe that has had twenty or more years of active duty life in the military, where it was rode hard and put away wet.
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Not so armored civilian cars.
BMW sells an armored spec series of vehicles direct from the factory: the Security series are standard models with armor and upgraded parts included from suspension and brakes to engines. There's multiple US and Canadian companies that specialize in up-armoring private vehicles, from Teslas and Suburbans to S-classes and Bentleys, for both domestic and foreign customers.
Examples(because I enjoy Throttle House, there's one of theirs at the end with a Canadian company):
Armored cars getting shot at said:
Talking about the technology and the process of building one said:
How do you make a bullet proof car? Today we are going to find out. Armor Max invited Dan and I to come shoot some of their armored vehicles, and the results...
youtu.be
This is the World's first armored Bentley Bentayga. Covered from head to toe in ballistic steel, this thing is rated at a BR6 armored level, weighs a ridicul...
youtu.be
Thats human shit, no superhuman craftsmen involved.
This is stuff they can get over the counter, no problem, just spend money. The elves could probably do it, even; its mostly mechanical work and material science. None of the electronics integral to modern war machines.
An Exalted-tier upgrade to an SUV platform is useful, dont get me wrong, but it doesnt add all that much over what they can already buy on the open market that he'd be willing to spend an Exalted favor for it.
He'll take it, dont get me wrong, but I dont think he'd spend a favor on an Infernal over it.
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He isnt hiring us for just that.
He's hiring us for war gear, when the fecal matter hits the rotary impeller and splashes on everyone in the vicinity, and One-Eye's hounds must ride chariots of death into battle.
Thats stuff you cant just buy on the open market.
No modern government is going to approve sale of a set of militarized IFVs to a private military without going over their affairs with a microscope. Hell, a lot of governments object to selling them to other governments; IIRC, the German government scuppered the sale of the Boxer IFV to either the Saudis or Qataris even when a good bunch of what they wanted it for was VIP evacuation vehicles.
The recent events in Russia(and Sudan for that matter) demonstrate why governments dont put heavy metal in private or paramilitary hands.
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HEAVY involves building Odin anywhere from a platoon(4 IFVs to a platoon) to several companies(14 per company) worth of unique mechanized IFVs to move his troops in. He canonically sent 500 Einherjar to the Battle of Chicago during Battle Grounds, which is 100x squads; even if we only equipped 25% of that number, with 20% spares, you're still counting 25 vehicles + 5 spares.
30x IFVs. Roughly a third of the IFVs in a US mech battalion. Almost 40% the total IFV numbers of the armed forces of Lithuania.
For reference, a real life Boxer IFV is around 5-25 million apiece depending on who is buying; a Bradley costs the US Army around 4.4 million to buy in bulk. Just the open-market value of 9-digits worth of military hardware we are about to build from scratch with the help of elven assistants will raise eyebrows, even before quality comes into play.
And quality WILL come into play. Our work will speak for itself, no problem.
We could make some neat foci as well. My earlier post on a fire weapon would work even better as a basis for an upgraded blasting rod to name one example.
Harry's preferred counterspelling technique is shooting things at the other caster anyway, so that sort of upgrade is even technically dual purpose.
You say blasting rod, I say plasma cannon
To be fair, wizards are supposed to outgrow most foci like blasting rods.
That said, doing for him what Ebenezar did for his own robes, where he was basically able to straight up ignore assault rifle fire at Chitchen Itza? Well within our abilities, and one of the things we should do while we're running gear uprades for Lydia and Michael.
First, who said anything about "robots"?
en.wikipedia.org
