MechWarrior Online Honors Youngest Fan With Custom Mech

By Joelle Renstrom | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

Jenner mechScience fiction is all about honoring the fallen, even if one lacks the means to build a funeral pyre. Now, MechWarrior Online is making available the custom Jenner used by Sarah Parries, a five-year-old MWO fan who died of cancer earlier this year. Sarah, who lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, was introduced to MWO by her dad. She immediately took to the game, for obvious reasons: “This one time daddy was playing his game in his big mech and he walked up to a baddy and the baddy just BLEW UP!”

Jenner mech

After Sarah’s death, MWO fans petitioned Piranha Games to create Sarah’s custom Jenner, sell it, and donate the proceeds to charity. Reading the forums in which the idea germinated is interesting and inspiring. There were some dissenters, but the vast majority of members thoughtfully contributed ideas, potential specs, and unwavering support of the idea. Everyone wanted to do right by Sarah’s memory by creating the mech.

Sarah's mech

Sarah’s mech of choice was equipped with night vision and short-range missiles, because even at such a young age, Sarah understood the virtues of locking on so she could “get ’em good!” Her custom Jenner also features an endo-steel internal structure, ferro-fibrous armor, and can move at close to 140 kilometers per hour.

Fans can purchase the custom Jenner mech until August 20 for $10 here. The mechs will be delivered to buyers’ MWO accounts on August 23. So far, MWO has raised over $95,000, all of which will be donated to the Canadian Cancer Society.

Jenner mech

Sarah’s dad and fellow gamer, Jon Parries, expressed his gratitude to the MWO community and to their support in the difficult times following her death. “It has helped a lot knowing that people out there legitimately care,” he says.

MechWarrior Online is an action game set in the 3049 during an interstellar war. Players command and customize battle mechs and can compete head to head (but not, as yet, mind-melded) or work cooperatively with friends to form a Mercenary Corp. Along the way, players declare fealty to a house and fight to maintain control of Inner Sphere planets and to protect its inhabitants. In other words, it’s the perfect game for a girl to play with her father.