Book 7. Chapter 34: Relic armor
It was designed with too much focus on keeping the user safe. The entire chassis was built from the ground up to resist immense external crushing pressure and keep the user alive for days trapped in rocks. Its strength was deeply weakened by dozens of safety features that would let the user escape catastrophic situations compared to its competition. Its onboard AI was made to calculate safer sections to navigate through rather than more profitable ones.
A suit able to handle any situation, rather than specifically made for one. And ultimately deemed cost-ineffective compared to cheaper, more dangerous exosuits of the time.
The creators of the armor went bankrupt, unable to sell their vision to any company. Only one prototype was ever built as a showroom model before the company was shuttered.
It should have been part of an auction bid, sold off for scraps. Instead, it was left to rot in a landfill due to one person’s pride. Someone that would rather no one own his life's work, than to watch it be eaten by vultures.
That man’s rash decision had been the only reason this single exosuit survived to the modern era.
Relinquished had ripped apart and deleted any possible schematic that would assist humans. All weapons, armors, vehicles, anything she could get her hands on. Military grade exosuits, industrial ones, even civilian ones built for recreation were taken by her hand and kept safe in the most permanent manner she could do. All that was found in landfills were hollowed out husks, the parts that couldn't be salvaged.
She never managed to get absolutely everything humans hid. A few things managed to slip her grasp by sheer coincidence of their situation, such as airspeeders and the Icon, but the important items she’d gotten to first.
All except for this one prototype, which she could never find. The man never disclosed what he’d done with the prototype, or who he’d sold it to. He died before he was sued for the information, taking the suit’s final resting place to his grave.
Outdated as it was, the suit still contained a treasure trove of robotics and engineering from that era. It had been a work of art for that time. And completely obsolete by the decade that followed it.