The 'TC48' Pioneer was developed by the Opus Institute as a scavenging Mech designed to endure the harsh, freezing, conditions of the Frozen Gulf. Initial builds were bought en masse by Stefanus when they moved their Arco to the Forgotten Tundra, following global rises in temperature that made cooling their vast data centres unfeasible elsewhere.

As with most Opus Mechs, its blueprints are open source on the corpo-net. As a result, it is often scrapped together by wastelanders living in arctic regions or salvagers delving into the ice.