Heaps are modified Howitzers infused with powerful solar magic. They trade volley fire and wide area denial for greater single target anti-armor potential, their shells unleashing directional lances of solar energy. A group of Heaps, like a group of Howitzers, is known as a battery or a stonk, and the two puppet types frequently mix in combat units.

Howitzers - Heaps - Haulers

Heaps are Howitzers who have been spawned by Solar Archons, and like other solar puppets, they wear their siblinghood on their sleeves. Standing at slightly shorter 5' 3" (160cm) with a squatter build, Heaps fairly closely resemble their siblings, with a natural artillery orifice making up their defining trait. However, whereas Howitzers have multiple orifices at askew angles, Heaps have a single, heavily reinforced orifice with large vents near the base. This accommodates for the fact that Heaps cannot generate and sustain the raw gas pressures that Howitzers can; instead, Heaps launch their shells using a magical primer. To this end, a Heap's orifice is lined with small outcrops of horn material, allowing them to conjure their chosen ammunition and fire it.

Heaps are specialized artillery units, acting as a sort of mirror to Howitzer's area of effect attacks. Heaps much prefer attacking point targets, for a variety of reasons: Their single orifice is slower to reload than the Howitzer's fully optimized gas transport and shell deployment systems, it takes a Heap far more energy to create and launch a shell, and (most importantly), a Heap's shells are designed to directionally release large cascades of solar light, puncturing thick defenses with startling accuracy even out to similar ranges as a Howitzer's maximum area target range.

One particular point of difference, however, is the Heap's lack of an equivalent to a Howitzer's Heralds. Instead of relying on Heralds for spotting, a Heap will instead control its shells directly, allowing a shell to precisely unload its energy content according to the Heap's will. It is assumed this completely replaces Herald-spawning behaviour, particularly as Heaps seem to display a very weak psionic field, even compared to Howitzers themselves.

While Howitzers display a great delight in blowing things up with their shells, Heaps take it to another level. They vastly enjoy acts of destruction, with little regard for the vital state of whatever they're shooting at. As such, they're rather enthusiastic miners, to the point where they will even assist Perditioners in vast-scale landclearing purely out of love for the acts themselves.

It is not particularly often that this happens, but Thresholds will volunteer themselves as willing targets for Heaps so long as they are in good condition, allowing more magic to cycle back into more constructive uses in a puppet clan rather than being wasted on senseless violence. This does appear to stress the Thresholds' upper limits, however, usually leaving visible damage that requires imminent repair.

Heaps, of course, share quite a lot of triggers with Howitzers. However, the exact permutation of horn mass that allows them to conduct magic appears more similar in nature to that underpinning Anchorage antlers, with a similar capacity to conduct magic without directly bursting it out as a spell.

The Heap's name is a bit of an odd one, and I'm quite proud of figuring it out. H-words for artillery pieces are already tricky to come by, but I did know one other: HEAP, or "High Explosive Armor Piercing". Yes, Heaps follow the gimmick of being named after an acronym. I think it works quite well for their purposes, reflecting in both their effect on target (heavy materiel penetration) as well as their appearance (their orifices look more like massive heaps of body mass rather than slimmer, refined stonks).

The dichotomy they share with Howitzers is one of those splitting hairs sort of things that defines a lot of the variant puppets, but I do like that it fleshes out their niches. I think they feel the most like a true "variant" rather than being something very new with a similar form factor.