Taranis

"EH?" This article contains Fuga: Melodies of Steel spoilers, continue at your own risk.

The Taranis, shown both clean and mossy

The Taranis is a pseudo-Juno weapon featured in Fuga: Melodies of Steel. It is first found by Mei Marzipan within a mountain's cave in "How It All Began", while the in-game story instead has the children of Petit Mona find it through the radio.

Structure

The Taranis is an incredibly large tank that is capable of housing about 12 individuals at a time. It has multiple rooms that all survival basics for its inhabitants. This includes a workshop, bedroom, messroom, observation area, and a farming area that's capable of growing food & housing two livestock.

Its size completely overshadows the majority of other military vehicles that are seen throughout the Free Lands of Gasco, even almost pummeling a few tanks belonging to the Berman Empire. The caterpillar tracks have no trouble traversing through most terrains and can even potentially plow through villages.

Radio

Inside the Taranis is an old-fashioned radio that serves as a form of communication for Jeanne's other half. Through it, she encourages the children to keep moving forward and sometimes insists on utilizing the Soul Cannon.

Climbing Claws

The Taranis has claws in its treads that allow it to stick to steep surfaces and unstable terrain.

Shields

The Taranis has powerful shields that allow it to defend against attacks. They manifest as a beehive barrier in the front of the tank. Those shields can vastly reduce the damage of anything that hits them, including even the Managarm.

Soul Cannon

The Soul Cannon

The most powerful component of the Taranis is the Soul Cannon, which requires the sacrifice of a living being for utilization. It can only be used when she and her crew are in extreme danger.

To activate the Soul Cannon, a sacrifice must ready themselves into the basement's Soul Cannon Chamber which holds a single seat. When its door opens it releases what sounds like screams and cries of past sacrifices. Once the sacrifice is seated and closed in, Jeanne announces a brace for shock and activates its auto target function. Tendrils of bio-energy flow from the weapon's mount. The Soul Cannon rotates, first to assemble itself into a vertical shape, and then to aim in the same direction as the Taranis' front weapons. Once it does this, the bio-energy tendrils spread all over the weapon, which extends its fluted barrel and starts glowing, On the crew's prompt, the weapon fires a massive beam of light, with enough strength to push the Taranis backwards. Depending on the source of the bio-energy that charges the Soul Cannon, the tendrils and beam can have varied colors.

While Fuga: Melodies of Steel presents the chamber as swiftly disintegrating its sacrifice, its manga exposes the entire process to be extremely brutal and violent. Once the door shuts, sacrifices will first be impaled by multiple barbed tendrils before melting to death and ultimately disappearing within its bright light.

It's possible to instead utilize a dummy to trick the Soul Cannon into firing, saving any living beings inside the Taranis from being put through a sacrifice.

In both games, the Soul Cannon is sealed off most of the time and can only be used during boss fights. It can instantly destroy the boss if used. Unfortunately, the child sacrificed to fire it will be permanently killed in the process, leaving you with less crew for the Taranis. If all the children die due to this, the bad ending will be obtained. As his friends don't see him as a threat, the Soul Cannon cannot be used against Britz during the fight with him.

The second game adds a cruel twist to the Soul Cannon once it becomes accessible. If the Taranis suffers severe damage, Hax will randomly select one of the children except for Malt and Vanilla, and feed them to the Soul Cannon to ensure the rest's survival, triggering a 20 turn countdown that will kill both the child and the boss if the latter isn't defeated before it runs out. Fortunately, there are ways to prevent tragedy.

Teleport

The Taranis has the ability to teleport its crew to other places inside its structure. It can also be used to quickly load a sacrifice to the Soul Cannon chamber. This ability remained undiscovered by Malt and company until Jihl's hijacking of the tank. The teleportation manifests as a golden light engulfing its target. Unfortunately, it's vulnerable to failing in disastrous ways if the tank takes severe damage while someone's teleporting.

Self-Repair Systems

The Taranis is able to regenerate, but the process is slow without assistance. When Jihl stole the tank, he was able to vastly enhance the ability's strength, which makes it engulf the Taranis in a glowing golden aura and quickly repairs any damage it may have suffered.

Jihl

A Hybrid child, who Jeanne refers as her "counterpart" in her archives, is stored deep inside the Taranis. He was only found when Jeanne sought an alternative way to fire the Soul Cannon in Fuga's best ending. He was created by Crusade as a reusable power source for the Soul Cannon so that the Taranis could fire without killing anyone, at the cost of Jihl's mental health suffering massive damage due to the experiments required to ensure his survival. His connection to the Taranis also allowed him to hijack it and brainwash its crew, setting up the events of Fuga 2.

Exo-Taranis

The Exo-Taranis

At the end of the second game's third chapter, Jihl abandons the Taranis for the Belenos and severely damages it and the Tarascus with its weapons. When this leads to Hanna's body being destroyed by the teleportation failure, Malt and his friends are so furious and horrified that their grief awakened something within the Taranis, which made it absorb the remains of the Tarascus and fused them both into an entirely new shape: the Exo-Taranis. This evolved form of the tank has all of the original's abilities, while also gaining access to the Tarascus' Managarm. Hax's AI also ends up being a part of the Exo-Taranis and gains control over its teleporter and the Soul Cannon.

History

The Era of Humanity

The Taranis was first made in the tumultuous final era of humanity. With the rise of the Titano-Machina, many nations sought to find a way to fight against them without collateral damage. This led to a secret anti-Juno organization known as Crusade creating the Taranis to counter Juno-based weapons. Per its original specifications, the Taranis was designed to be crewed by Hybrid children, many of which were victims of horrific experiments. One of Crusade's engineers, a woman known by some of the Hybrids as "Mama", created an artificial intelligence in her own image, to lead the Taranis to victory and to protect its crew. That AI was called Jeanne.

In the final days of the Third World War that destroyed the Old World, the Taranis fought Germany's Vanargand at France after the latter defeated Lares and Lemures, as a last resort to stop the monstrosity from destroying the entire country. Thanks to the sacrifice of Jeanne's creator, the Taranis defeated Vanargand with its Soul Cannon, blasting its core far from its body. Around the time this happened, Yurlungur activated the Reset, destroying the human race and sealing all of the Titano-Machina within the floating landmasses. The Taranis was also sealed, swallowed whole by a cavern.

Jeanne was split into two halves, an older, more logical voice on the radio that was nonetheless overwhelmed with the desire to kill Vanargand once more, and a younger, more empathetic hologram of light that put the lives of her crew first.

The Bringer of War

Consumed by the desire to prove herself, the Radio Woman created the legend of the Steel Devil (the Taranis) and the Lost God (Vanargand), and manipulated Shvein Hax to awaken Vanargand once more so she could kill it again, making her wholly responsible for the tragedies and catastrophes of the game. These manipulations also led to the Bermans building their own Devil on Hax's orders, the Tarascus. It then called the children together to pilot the tank and coaxed them to pursue the Berman army in order to save their families. Her true motivations were revealed once they faced the Tarascus, showing her true colors as a sadist thirsting to defeat her old enemy.

A Savior Once Again

Throughout the Taranis' journey, the Girl of Light made several appearances urging the children not to fight. However, because the children wanted to save their families, they had no choice but to keep fighting. In the wake of the fights with the Tarascus and Britz, the Girl of Light finally confronted her counterpart, forcing the latter to admit that she still cared for the children and that they were one. This finally led to the two reuniting into the true Jeanne and guiding the children in order to save Gasco.

The Taranis' final fate differs depending on the ending. In the bad ending, the Taranis is unable to defend against the Vanargand's explosion and is wrecked by the subsequent impact with one of the neighboring islands. In the normal ending, Jeanne despairs over having sacrificed one of the children and eventually collapses into dust. Canonically the Taranis rests peacefully in the remains of old Paresia and the Vanargand, with Jeanne having finally faded away, leaving the future to the children...

Alas, while Jeanne had no place in that future, this was not the end of the Taranis' journey.

The Devil of Steel

One year after the sundering of Gasco, the rebuilding government of the country retrieved the Taranis and the Tarascus from the Vanargand's wreck, and brought them both to the new capital of Gasco, Pharaoh.

Gallery

A model of the Taranis from the Quebec press conference

Countdown illustration by Kumamoto

The Taranis as depicted in the Fuga manga

Concept Art

Trivia

• In-game files reveal that the Taranis was to feature a more expansive selection of music that would change depending on which room the player was currently in. This idea was scrapped sometime in development and would be replaced with a single song in the final product.