These come from an incomplete blog post I’m drafting, but I thought why not make it a thing for everyone? I tried to keep these tight but admittedly the last one is a little wordier.
EDIT: These are very Weird because Weird is what I do, but you can share your own Mecha with your own sensibilities, it doesn’t have to follow my style!
MECHA LIST (Initial)
Arsenic: Black. Tripod legs on a humanoid core with clawed hands. Its head is a long metallic tentacle with a Tesla Coil-like weapon at the end of it.
Razzle-Dazzle: Surprisingly mobile “walking weapons platform” with a core that looks more like a tank than a humanoid mecha. Black and white clashing stripes or other holographically overlayed camouflage make it difficult to track in cluttered environments.
Chimera: Quadrupedal but ape-like, somewhere between a lemur and a wolf, with a long snout. Its high-frequency maw glows with ultraviolet. White with purple trim. Long thin tail tipped with a snake-like “head” consisting of rear sensors and laser beam weapon.
Dogu: Alien craft like if Jack Kirby made a psychedelic Celestial inspired by the eponymous Jomon-era figurines.
Rebis: Neon yellow bio-“Mecha”, a genetic hodgepodge of non-human animal, fungus, and bacteria in a humanoid form. Keratin plates that look like sleek near-future body armor. Shimmers with a bio-engineered tardigrade film for environmental protection. A fungal/bacterial microbiome can excrete through the skin weaponry such as sphaerobolus (aka artillery fungus). Retractable silken wings that work as solar sails for space travel. Pilot operates The Rebis via an umbilical cable that connects to their spine like in the Cronenberg movie Existenz.
Totally, up to you, but I think that helps a lot for getting the inspiration flowing. And I don’t think it matters too much if your initial examples don’t conform to the structure.
I am not at all surprised by that question haha. Unfortunately these came more so from my own very idiosyncratic kind of “free-association” process. I could not begin to imagine how to create a generator for something like this haha. I guess I could create something like the Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells Monster Generator for Mecha, but that would be a pretty involved process, although I’d certainly be interested in doing so.
There was actually a bit more with the Rebis as well but I chose to cut it down because it was already getting wordy, but I agree that that’s probably my favorite of the bunch.
I made these Weird because Weird is what I do, but people can share their own Mecha ideas with their own sensibilities as well, it doesn’t have to follow my style.
Clickclock
Quadrupedal with bright teeth and fierce onyx rams horns. Build for speed and ramming. The pilot rides within the horse skull-like head. Each rams horn contains homing missiles.
Duster
Construction mech built for both speed and reliability. These things are typically operated in difficult terrain where traditional construction vehicles cannot access. It has a humanoid frame with exaggerated arms and the option to mount a cargo bed or cage on its back. Over the decades, many Duster pilots have discovered that these things make great wrestling-mechs, and in a pinch the rivet gun or torch module can serve as ranged weapons.
@RevenantQuill this one is somewhat inspired by your Time Loop thread, which made me think of Time Loops, Recursion, Spirals, Russian Doll, etc.
Matrioshka: A supermassive starship, wherein the command deck is an ejectable battle cruiser, piloted by a Mecha whose cockpit is designed to fit a Power Armored pilot, all of which is entraining on the brain waves of the unborn child of the pregnant pilot.
Genus: a lithe metal frame seemingly unable to support itself, with no digits or weapons. Before launch the mech is dipped into a vat composed of growth medium and stem cells. Electrical impulses trigger the stem cells to coalesce into a human like form, growing rapidly around the core “skeleton”. The head, instead of being human like, is an orb composed of many eyes to provide 360 degree vision. The rapid-growth nature of the body means it is bulbous and eerily white, the “skin” a tough layer of biological kevlar able to withstand heavy arms fire.
After each mission the outer body is reverted to stem cells and returned to the vat so that any biological damage can be healed. In an emergency a Forced Growth Protocol can be activated creating a semi translucent body even without power.
Orca
The Orca is an aquatic mecha built for high mobility in aquatic environments. It features a rubbery black exterior to reduce its acoustic profile, a long tail with the capability of fish-like propulsion and a set of propellers which it can expose when higher speeds are needed. The Orca has limited optical sensors and relies heavily on hydrophones and sonars to perceive its battlefield conditions. It is often deployed in littoral engagements, supporting amphibious assaults or deterring enemy watercraft.
Psycho Baku: Minimalist trunk-nosed Mecha using sensory-scrambling technology, psychophysical illusions, and even psychoactive gases, to create large-scale illusions, mirages, and hallucinations.
Panic Slug: Wrist-mounted shotgun sprays “slugs”, autonomous AI missile drones that seek to infiltrate enemy Mecha and hack them or physically disable them from the inside. As the slugs infest Mecha, they exhibit behaviors like myoclonic jerks.
Murder Crow: Head like a plague doctor mask. A “field medic” Mecha with two autonomous crow-like drones for surveilling disabled/damaged Mecha or for defense, while primarily equipped for Mecha field repairs or ad-hoc constructs.
Agglom: sentient ghost field that absorbs bullets and missiles until it acquires a viable form. Appears as a fragile, vaguely mecha-shaped jumble of munitions.
Traditionally understood to be the first mecha ever produced.
Continually modified, upgraded, downgraded, expanded and stripped down over countless years. Some parts are vestigial and thought to be only decorative, some are obsolete and unreliable, others are bleeding edge and pristine.
Autonomous, perhaps alive, although no one has opened its core to discover what continues to pilot it after all these years.
Makes it rounds, on an ancient route across the planet on which it was produced, tended by a hereditary guild of engineers. Once-in-a-generation festivals greet its arrival in the settlements along its route.
Mazu: The rainbow dragon Mecha of Pirate Queen Prismasha, Empress of Space. The cockpit of the Mecha is Platina, a dolphin/sea serpent-esque space fighter craft. Mazu and Platina are demigod/AI from an ancient spacefaring civilization. They each dueled Prismasha in “hand-to-hand” combat for her love and hand in marriage, and in their respective failures, vowed to serve as her guardians.
Mecha-Buster Squad: Wear light power armor and utilize mobility tools such as rocket packs, magnetic grapples, and solar sails, weaponry such as RPGs, high-impact “one-shot” sniper rifles, and vibro-lances, and various kinds of immobilizing or debilitating traps, to take down significantly larger and more powerful Mecha.
Gatcha: The corporation that makes this series of Mecha sells them exclusively in capsules where the specific model inside is not revealed until after purchase. While an expensive and potentially risky way to build a fleet, one lucky Gatcha capsule can justify the purchase of dozens of other overpriced and lower-quality Gatcha Mecha. Some are desired solely for their rarity, as a status symbol or for their value in the speculation market, as opposed to actual combat utility.