I agree with your statement. The seclection of WB & WF units shoved into White Company does seem to be random. I bet there is enough units in both sectorials that could come together and not fly against any established lore. And I was disappointed in the lack of Aleph units especially after the announcement made it seem that WC was getting more than a single Aleph unit. Where is this info on CB's site? They should have posted something about a new character profile when it is released.
It's on his Aristea profile page. Dude comes from the Daoying academy and is the face of a massive PR operation by YJ. He's never received a blog post by CB because technically he's never been released for Infinity.
Yes he was and on Paradiso! Again, why is he on Huang Di in the White Banner? "Chen Zubai was a young officer with the Dāoyīng Operational Control Unit who had shown great tactical ability in Paradiso’s theater of operations and who seemed to have a bright future ahead of him, only hindered by his boldness and his appeal for danger that sometimes compelled him take his orders to the limit." https://aristeiathegame.com/characters/lei_gong
Because that would require committing resources to something CB wasn't really interested in when they could be working on another MO rework. Less cynically, Lei Gong has a perfect storm of abilities to fill important roles in WB that CB might have been too scared to duplicate in vanilla. If you cut Lei Gong, you leave a pretty gaping hole in WB's functionality and fireteam design. Jujaks would be a great candidate to fill that gap by giving them Albedo, and maybe MSV1 on the missile launcher (and So Ra). But that might be too much Albedo for vanilla. But that's not too difficult a fix, just pull a Gwailo and make them unavailable to vanilla; their usage rates there would remain entirely unchanged and the problem is solved. Then just give all their main guns aside from the ML breaker.
Now I remember reading that bit a long time ago. Still feels weird lore wise that he is there. His design is more for the arena than the battlefield.
In aristeia Lei gong poops out smoke without end and his "wings" transform into guns. My main grievance with him is that his aristeia and infinity incarnations have nothing in common and his background makes no sense with his skills, he is a daoying but only has Chain of command but was somehow an excellent daoying officer... additional to him being an universal bandaid in two sectorials since his unique skillset is not found in other troops in yu jing. And he still has no official model except the one from aristeia with weird Rollerblades or the one from Defiance which is pretty cool.
@Fed4ykin Ya he does seem weird design wise. The fact he is a bandaid doesn't do him any favors. I never cared for him despite what he can bring to the tabletop.
Should just start referring to this as So-Ra, it's the character White Banner deserved not the oops-we-sculpted-a-duplicate-Jujak we got. Either way this Huntress is a far bigger deal for WB than any of the Jujak profiles.
Are both of her feet amputated? I noticed what appeared to be completely mechanical feet/heels in the model sculpt originally but assumed maybe it was just some weirdness... but it clearly appears the same way in the illustration. Monster hunting is a dangerous business I guess - gotta watch out or the Graboids will bite your feet off.
The important thing of notice is the excessive usage of bionics, something not done in the Infinity universe, so while in her fluff it causes her pain, she chooses to have them.
Such a cool design to never receive an openly available release. I wonder if CB will just release a generic hunter model for non-KS backers down the line then. Would be a real shame, but unsurprising.
I think Jazz, Billie and Cadin point towards the possibility of such characters appearing in the future.
I thought there were a Nomad character who was more bionics than human, but anyway since it is for the setting quite low tech body mending option it does feel a bit weird it appears on a Yu Jing character. Not as weird as if it had been on a Haqq character, or a mildly successful Pan-O character, but still.
Zoe crumbles on a genetic level hence the extensive bionics anything they clone for replacement will have the same effect, Bixie has bionics for arena advantage, so there is a precedence on Yu Jing utilizing bionics for advantage.
Liang Kai also uses a bionic arm, as well as some facial reconstruction. Likely other parts too. But I think that might have been from nerve damage that made him incapable of using organic replacements. It's been a while since I read his fluff, so I'm not 100% sure of the specifics. As far as our huntress goes, from a functional standpoint, replacing damaged body parts with purpose-made bionics is probably cheaper, faster, and more effective than vat grown options when your line of work has you using heavy duty CC equipment and puts you specifically in the line of maiming and dismemberment.
Kuroshi also utilizes bionics for advantage thought her advanced arm seems to be a prototype. And Fiddler, but the tail is a more unique bionics implementation.
Also, while not exactly the same, if Adil was ever maimed in combat, he'd also likely be a candidate for prosthesis, as his unique condition also prevents him from getting biological reconstruction of his buggered arm.