Stygian Technologies: Vanguard - Signup

Setting Thread
Discussion Thread - Pending
Roleplay Thread - Pending

---

The unstoppable march of progress has made things a lot better. Especially for mercenaries.

The year is 2054, and humanity's technological achievements are dizzying. Robots serve us as our maids, secretaries, chauffeurs, and protectors. Bionic prostheses and artificial organs bring quality of life back to the sick and injured. Due to genetic modification, children are born smarter, healthier, and with longer life expectancies. Crime has continued to plummet - at least where the average citizen is concerned.

Because of the success of these patented technologies, corporations are beginning to outstrip national governments in terms of wealth and power, and as a result, they're beginning to act like them. Armed squads made up of both permanent employees and freelance mercenaries are sent out to steal, destroy, and defend corporate assets on the companies' dimes. Small wars are fought every day with soldiers utilizing lasers, powered armor, robotic reinforcements, and more, all openly in the name of profit.

---

Plot Hook
You've been hired on to one of these squads, or at least, you're about to be. You're currently waiting outside an office at Stygian Technologies headquarters, the one major tech firm that actually seems to want to help people more than it wants their money. The company has reached out to you for assistance with a problem that requires your particular set of skills. You think it has something to do with their big lab accident a few months ago you heard about on the news, but the specifics are hazy.

Regardless, if you do well, they've promised you a considerable amount of cash, and upgrades if you want them. You've made up your mind; you're in - at this point, you're just waiting for them to call your name.

---

Stygian Technologies: Vanguard is a Post-Cyberpunk game, which is like regular Cyberpunk, but less dystopian. The high technology available to your character does not necessarily reflect the everyday, and the common citizen is not a combat-ready cyborg or gene splicer. Not until these procedures hit the wider market, at least. The point is, the world, at least on the surface, should feel familiar for the most part, just logically extrapolated a few decades into the future.

For those who require more of a hook, I can PM you some additional information about the mission before we get started, on request.

When it comes your character, I don't wish to be too restrictive. There is no hard limit on your equipment or augments, be they bionic, genetic, or anything else; save for the ones explicitly listed on the character sheet notes, and those presented in the setting thread^note on that note, I would prefer if technologies indicated as being rare are reflected as such in the party - there are not many full-on splicers in the world, for instance, so there probably won't be more than one on this mission. Regardless, I will step in if I feel a character is too unbalanced.

Finally, if you're losing interest, tell me. I prefer players send me a PM rather than drop out without notice.

Additional setting information can be found here.

---

Character Sheet

• Name:
• Age: No children.
• Class: Your class name is almost purely aesthetic, but the name should bring to mind your abilities and particular role in the party.
• Appearance: Write as much description as you like. I would prefer you don’t link pictures, unless you had a hand in creating the content of the image.
• Abilities/Enhancements: Any super-human abilities granted to your character, such as those endowed through bionic procedures or gene-splicing. This is optional.
• Skills: Ordinary training or talents that your character has, like stealth, hacking, engineering, medicine, persuasion, deception, driving, weapon mastery, etc.
• Equipment: Any gear your character has, from the mundane to the high-tech. Some guidelines for equipment are here. If your character didn't make the equipment themselves, note which company did. Powersuits are restricted to 8 feet tall maximum. Vehicles will be highly scrutinized.
• Personality/Backstory: Your backstory is helpful for me to make the game feel personal to your character. Try to answer at least some of the following questions:
  • How did your character learn the skills they know?
  • If they have any, how did they gain their high-tech gadgets or enhancements? Which company made their equipment or performed their procedures?
  • What do they think of Stygian Technologies?
  • What do they think of bionic or genetic enhancement, whether it be their own or others'?
  • What is their foremost goal in life?
  • How did they end up in Stygian Technologies' employ? Are they a volunteer for experimentation, a field tester, a security specialist? Or are they simply an unaffiliated mercenary working freelance?

---

Accepted Characters:

• Will, the Adaptable A.I.
• Mirrorbell, the Infiltrator
• Gladice, the Hunter-unit
• Scott, the Integrating Battle-Cyborg

edited 25th Nov '14 8:32:18 PM by StygianEmperor

Flesh is a design flaw.

Taking precedents from the last couple games you ran, I'm kinda surprised we'd be the whitehat this time around.

I'd like to cast future tech in a positive light. That being said, feel free to make an evil bastard.

Flesh is a design flaw.

>Implying any tech made after I'm thirty five isn't inherently evil.

It's kind of funny. Sufficiently advanced stupidity is like sufficiently advanced science; eventually, you find something you can't solve.

Would it be possible to have a character who's already part of S.T. (in counterintelligence) disguising themselves as a new hire?

Yeah, you can do that. Are you thinking your immediate superiors would be unaware too, or just your team?

Flesh is a design flaw.

I'm thinking that, depending on the size of Stygian Technologies, they'd either be...
A) Part of an off-the-books counterintelligence unit that reports directly to management or the like. Which would have quite a few people in the know and get occasional idiots winking at them or accidentally calling them by their real name.
OR
B) Friends with someone in company security, who calls them in as a favor from time to time, in order to keep everyone on their toes with minimal risk. So maybe a handful would know of the character and only the friend ever knows the mission details.

Stygian has branches in every continent, so it's not small, but you can do whichever of those sounds more fun.

Flesh is a design flaw.

• Name: ACCAL Anima Project E05 - Will
• Age: Active since nine months, in constant development for little more than half a decade and representing advances in the field going back dozens of year.
• Class: Adaptable AI
• Appearance: Will's appearance is mostly decided by what piece of hardware she's currently piloting. However, by herself she's a big usb drive sized rectangle of a silvery blue metal with the words Core ACCAL AP E05 - Will encased on side. This drive can be inserted in another device which is roughly diamond shaped with one blunt edge and the rest rounded, made of the same silvery blue metal and with a round blue pearl shaped gem on the middle of it.
• Skills: Will's greatest asset is her Rider Program, which is basically a method by the which she can quickly learn the capabilities and handling of devices, vehicles or machines she's inserted in by quick experimentation and reading of their internal drivers to obtain control of them for handling. Will is adept with technology and the use of information systems given her particular nature as an AI, whoever, she is far away from being able to manipulate all machines easily. She depends on extra processing power to handle bigger or more numerous machines and her knowledge of hacking is not all that great, she has the advantage of being able to interact with programs she wishes to have access to in a more direct manner. Devices with poor security settings she can handle with some degree of ease, moderate protection poses a challenge and she's unequipped to deal with professional or highly protected devices. She can easily write programs to run tasks for her on machines she's inserted in, but they clearly will lack her reactive nature or much sophistication unless she constantly checks up on them to make adjustments. Aside from that, Will has the emotions and reasoning skills of a human.
• Equipment:
  • Core: Will resides inside a device denominated the Core, which is a rectangular case the dimensions of which are like those of a big usb drive. This Core is made of a strange, highly resistant material of a blue silver color which protects against electromagnetic hazards, dips in temperature and ionic damage. The case is nearly completely smooth, though it has carved on one face Core ACCAL AP E05 - Will. Within this case there lies the heart of the AI's function... a powerful processor, a battery which produces endless energy though unknown means, but at a very small rate. Enough to keep Will operational with 500 volts to spare. Additionally, there are three different data storage spaces within Will. One is a highly advanced drive made entirely out of crystal, where the AI program is written. This program is absurdly large and is completely unalterable, the crystal is entirely full with data written at the nanomolecular level. The second storage is made of a different crystal and it acts as Will's long term memory. Experiences, memories and whatever is processed by her will be resumed, summarized and stored within this drive without any input from her actual consciousness. This data cannot be erased and Will has no control over what is stored within. It is not meant to work as a comprehensive data storage drive, instead it mimics human memory by keeping log of everything Will experiences and upon such data their personality and character is built on, depending on what she considers important and what she doesn't consider important. This means that the program that is her personality keeps links to this data to formulate how she acts and thinks. While nothing can be erased from this drive, it can be forgotten by erasing the links to the particular memory so that it's not taken into account. Finally, there is a final drive, this made of a massive SSD which is capable of storing up to 1 petabyte of data. This is the only drive whose data Will can actually erase and it is meant to carry all pertinent data, videos, sounds or the like which Will wishes to have on hand at any given moment. Finally, the upper side of the Core can change itself to produce an interface on which to connect itself with nearly any device which can received electrical and electromagnetic inputs. This is the only way on which Will can interact with the outside world. It works by extending a small port which tries to interact with whatever it is touched against with small electric signals. If it is then jack of another machine, Will tries to interact with it and then make use of it.
  • Shell: The Core lies within a device of the same makers meant to enhance the basic functions of Will, called the Shell. If the Core is Will's brain, then the Shell would be its eyes and ears. Surrounding the rectangular core, the Shell is made of the same silvery blue reinforced metal, though of roughly the same size as a cellphone and with a diamond shape with soft edges. It has the same engravings as the core but denoting itself as Shell. On the middle of it, it has a rounded jewel the form of a pearl... however, such a thing is actually a camera and hologram projector for Will to see the outside world and project images while interacting with others. Additionally, the Shell possesses speakers and a microphone inside of it, so that Will can hear and speak. To interact with other machines, the Shell has the same universal connector as the Core and an electromagnetic signal generator to receive and send signals wirelessly. It possesses its own battery independently of the Core's one to be able to power its own devices. It also has a detachable quantum entaglement communication device. It works by sending quantum bits between the Shell and the detachable communication device, ensuring that Will is able to communicate with the device without any lag, chance of interference and without regard for distance. Finally, the Shell is able to magnetize its exterior in a way that allows them to stick to materials holding their own weight against gravity and even move... though exceptionally slowly at a rate of only a few centimeters per second.
• Personality/Backstory: Will was one of the myriad of vanity projects created by Stygian Technologies, the lifework of Doctor Abraham Shale, one of the most brilliant minds on the field of AI. Aside from a brilliant programmer he was also keenly interested in the human brain, marrying both passions into creating artificial life. Thus, his series of Anime Projects on which after studying the brain and consciousness of man and neuronal growth of developing fetuses and just born babies he tried to replicate it upon an artificial entity. After much back and forth, failures and much adaptation of the programs by the good Doctor, his accomplishment within Stygian Technologies was Will, Fifth in the Anima Project. Doctor Shale slowly educated the forming artificial intelligence via direct programming with her 'unconscious' so to say over a period of time before her actual activation nine months ago. Such preparation and the information fed to Will beforehand made it so that the AI was roughly as mature as an adolescent by the time of her activation in most practical matters, and since then she has shown much progress in learning of the world. Will, after some time, started to identify as female as far as it came to interact with humans and adopted a suitable voice to go with it. Much of her time has been spent trying out different machines on which to house herself given her natural state's thoroughly limited form of interacting with the world. She has proved to be curious about the world outside of the laboratory in months before... though upon hearing of Stygian's Technology relative problems in dealing with outside threats she of her own volition asked to help in the defense of what she considers her home, giving her as well the chance to interact with new machines and perhaps see the outside world. For three months she has prepared herself for the task, learning with her 'father' a great deal about combat and defense operations in preparation for her first mission on the outside world... after much discussion and planning with his superiors.

If I'm sure of something it's that I'm not sure of anything.

Is there a need for Will's core and shell to separate? It's awfully complicated and I'm not sure I want quantum tech in the setting. Also, is she starting with a robot body, or is someone carrying her?

Flesh is a design flaw.

No particular need besides preference, I'd imagine that most of the time Will will be in her Shell. Core is her internal workings and Shell is basically her devices to interact with the world, if you wish we can consider it one whole package. The quantum communicator can be taken away, though it would only be a single two way communicator that can't be intercepted. As for what she would start in... I think it would be perhaps a combat mech body, it depends really on what the mission is to choose some appropriate hardware for it.

If I'm sure of something it's that I'm not sure of anything.

• Name: "Mirrorbell" Alias: Lucida Serif
• Age: 52
• Class: Infiltrator
• Appearance: Could be anyone between 4 and 7 feet tall (1.2—22m), weighing anything from 50 lbs (22kg) up to a maximum of 500 lbs (226kg) when using silicone to replicate fat. Tends to use analog wigs, contacts, and makeup rather than color changing fiber-optics or electronic ink for disguises, as more advanced options have the bad habit of being detected by cheap cameras.
• Abilities/Enhancements: She has a bare-bones robotic chassis after losing most of her original body from multiple accidents. Onto it are attached various commercially available prosthetics and a few "salvaged" prototype-grade models created by various research labs. When parts don't align perfectly she often resorts to makeup or her own DIY synthetic skin should lines become a long-term problem. As mimicry is her first priority, everything including electromagnetic radiation has to be kept within human levels. While this still allows her record nearly anything, her senses are limited to passive detection and her direct computer interface only works with physical contact; unless using visible external tech, like an ear- or eye-piece. Obviously, mimicking someone who's a known cyborg doesn't carry as many restrictions, but it occurs less often than one would think even in 2050s. She has plans for the genengineering of her brain and what's left of her spinal chord, should her family's hereditary senility kick in, but until then doesn't want to fix what isn't broken.
• Skills: An inherent talent for theft, excellent improvisation, a skilled impersonator, 'net & tech savvy, knows many visual-programming languages & next to nothing about text-only ones, great at DIY projects with instructions, can speed read, has paramedic training, is a decent driver, terrible with any weapon that has recoil and good (not great) with any that doesn't (from living near a nostalgia-arcade for years).
• Equipment: Often has a high-end nanomachine multitool and a cutting edge PMC-grade (or better) head-computer, both getting replaced whenever she finds one better. Her load-out otherwise varies depending on the job.
  • Brightstar Systems "My Little Multitool: Junior Helper Edition" classified as a "toy" by most commercial security scanners, after multiple incidents of children being arrested on a false-positive made the news, and well known for it's irremovable safety locks (which have been removed).
  • Fujin Zaibatsu prototype "MoCo 雷神 mk.四" (Mobile Computer Raijin mark 4) scrapped in a "secure" dumpster after it's tendency to cause damage to natural intestinal ganglia was considered unsolvable, not an issue for Mirrorbell's synthetic tissue.
  • A brand new TASER model XSE-77 electroshock-EMP combo gun that's the first commercial model to create pseudo-ball-lightning instead of using darts or wires, bought because it's "really cool" not for it's horribly unpredictable and short-range projectiles.
• Personality/Backstory:
  • A mischievous thrill-seeker, she takes far too much joy in a good old heist than most her friends consider healthy. She hates paperwork and has an AI that does most of it for her. Also superstitious in pop-cultural sort of way, and doesn't go anywhere without a four-leaf clover or a rabbit's foot or a Maneki cat, etc.
  • Mirrorbell's life changed after what she calls the Helltober of 2030. It started as a bad day and ended up as a really bad month, what she describes as "when lady luck tried to kill me". It started when a diseased crow tried to make off with the earrings she'd bought to impress her retail co-worker Dustin, the blackbird's flailing and screeching while clinging to one ear was enough distract Mirrorbell into the path of a messenger drone. One which was carrying illegal explosive materials through a public area. The resultant explosion killed the crow and burnt half her hair to a crisp. Adding insult to injury, a responding anti-fire drone acquired a glitch and refused to stop covering her with fire-retardant foam... all the way to the nearest hospital. The hospital staff finally disabled the malfunctioning unit and went on to provide treatment, but half an hour later police came by to investigate the tampering with fire-safety equipment. It turned out that several hospital staff, including her attending physician, were were illegal immigrants and were arrested. And it only got worse from there.
  • As the month of the "worst luck ever" continued, she survived what in previous decades would have resulted in her death more than once. Mirrorbell went through multiple surgeries, prosthetic limbs, and general hell before getting fed up with her body's fragility and went for a full prosthesis. Even then she was loosing limbs and synthskin every day that should've lasted a lifetime, through some of the most ridiculous circumstances imaginable. The last straw was a virus that deleted her (and several others) from all public records, denying her further insurance coverage. So she gave up. Stopped going to her cyber-doc, stopped spending money on replacement parts she wanted, and much to the horror of her 3 roommates at the time, took to the life of a shut-in looking like severely wounded war-survivor.
  • After 7 weeks of doing nearly nothing, she mustered the courage to step back into her life and was pleasantly surprised to find the spell of misfortune had passed. Just in case, she's always has some sort of good luck charm on hand since then. Being fired and still cut off from her medical insurance, Mirrorbell took to petty theft and soon discovered a natural talent for larceny. Over the course of a year she worked her way up to high-profile art theft and after three years was starting to get unnerved that no one had caught her yet. It seemed too easy. Guilt had never been an issue, as she never targeted the destitute, but her sudden nervousness about getting caught finally caused it to happen and her first arrest was for shoplifting a gold ring. The Geneva police let her off with a warning, as it was a first offense for "Mr. Wibelbottom", oblivious that their 5th & 16th most wanted had walked out of the station without a fuss.
  • In the years following 2034, Mirrorbell learned to get over her nerves and went for increasingly dangerous heists, working her way to lucrative commercial R&D espionage. Over the years she was repeatedly impressed with Stygian Technologies not being greedy bastards out to screw everyone over; especially when it came to paying her, rather than thinking it would just be easier to kill her like so many other black-ops bastards she regularly dealt with. Mirrorbell even made friends with then-intern Alexi Ripley over the course of several missions, who later became head of S.T.'s security department. They remain in contact and trade favors from time to time.
  • One such favor has Mirrorbell joining a group of new recruits to observe them undercover and weed out any potential rival agents. Taking on the identity of one Lucida Serif, she has brown hair, black irises and looks to be an pudgy 5 ft (1.5m) woman; and has set a script to tint her skin-tone to be average for the group after observing them together, including the option to set an arm to transparent should any have visible cybernetics.

EDIT 1: added tentative leitmotif

EDIT 2: stepping out

edited 9th Dec '14 2:18:06 AM by justanid

@ Daltar: I don't think a quantum-entanglement communicator would be overpowered, just inappropriate for the tech-level of the setting. For simplicity's sake, let's not have the shell and the core become separated.

Also, what do you mean when you say "Finally, the Shell is able to magnetize its exterior in a way that allows them to stick to materials holding their own weight against gravity and even move... though exceptionally slowly at a rate of only a few centimeters per second." ?

What exactly is moving?

@ Justanid: To be clear, the only parts of Mirrorbell's body that are still organic are her brain and part of her spine?

Flesh is a design flaw.

Ahhh! I see on the communication device. Understood! Hmmm may replace it for another flavor of secure communication device then. Something to use in long distances.

As for that of the Shell... Hmmm basically, the whole Shell can magnetize itself to stick itself to a surface. Like, you could stick it to a wall and it would be able to remain stuck there. Then I thought it may slide itself slowly... can remove that part.

If I'm sure of something it's that I'm not sure of anything.

Maybe a James Bond style magnetic grapple gadget that allows it to move towards anything magnetic?

I think that's it for Mirrorbell, would it help to clarify it more? I'm thinking that if an artificial organ part broke down and funds were low, she might have a cheap(er) organic transplant for a while, but that would be the extent of it.

@Daltar: You could just say she can broadcast over an encrypted channel. Everyone in the group will have at least a simple communicator. Sliding on surfaces is sort of weird but I won't stop you.

@ Justanid: Honestly it would probably be more expensive to introduce an organic transplant in her state. She's practically a full-conversion, so that's significant in itself. I'm going to have a few doctor NPCs who work at Stygian, the lead bionics engineers might want to take a look at you.

Assuming I understand everything, you're both accepted.

edited 10th Nov '14 1:25:48 AM by StygianEmperor

Flesh is a design flaw.

Just about finished. I'm just working out my equipment list.

It's kind of funny. Sufficiently advanced stupidity is like sufficiently advanced science; eventually, you find something you can't solve.

With "...arms, legs, eyes, spines, and most internal organs now have a mechanical counterpart that is superior in every way." I assumed it meant that artificial replacements were more expensive; and since they're designed to work with a group of existing organs, working with one or two would be relatively easy. Who wants a natural organ with all the potential for residual memories when you can buy a Super-Advertised Megaheart Delux Now With UBER!

edited 10th Nov '14 9:28:33 AM by justanid

Because installing an organic part into what's almost entirely synthetic requires a lot more expertise than installing an inorganic part into what's almost entirely natural, and is a pain in the ass would be my guess.

It's kind of funny. Sufficiently advanced stupidity is like sufficiently advanced science; eventually, you find something you can't solve.

There's also crappy bionics that are inferior in every way, which might be cheaper than printed or cloned organs (not sure how many residual memories those would carry). But yeah, in this case I was referring to the fact that introducing organic tissue to an inorganic body is more difficult to do than just swapping in another machine.

edited 10th Nov '14 11:00:57 AM by StygianEmperor

Flesh is a design flaw.

Oh yeah, I forgot about manufactured natural organs, those would probably be quite cheap resource-wise. Hadn't thought of Crank: High Voltage in the context of Cyberpunk... the prosthetic hip recalls of the past have been bad enough, but a bad bionic lung? Ugh.

Torn on class-name. Debating between "hunter" and "murderbot."

It's kind of funny. Sufficiently advanced stupidity is like sufficiently advanced science; eventually, you find something you can't solve.

Hunter-Killer Drone.

Flesh is a design flaw.

Drone is just so... impersonal...

It's kind of funny. Sufficiently advanced stupidity is like sufficiently advanced science; eventually, you find something you can't solve.

This is five pages at 11 point Calibri font in a word-document.

I feel awesome.

• Name: Gladice
• Age: Roughly a year old
• Class: Hunter-unit
• Appearance: As an administrative android, Gladice was designed to be both pleasing and unobtrusive in appearance. Her initial design went through several drafts, ranging between "corporate executive" and "little girl," before finally settling on a "young but serious" aesthetic, leading Gladice to appear to be somewhere between 18 and 22. While this diminishes her authority somewhat, as an A.I. she wasn't intended to command the same respect as an organic executive. Her raven hair is cut shoulder length, and her eyes are a soothing blue, akin to a warm, sunny sky. Her slender frame, gentle curves, understated bust, and pale skin-tone are all intended to create a pleasing effect, avoiding the unnerving factor other humanoid A.I. sometimes possess, while distancing her from sensuality, to minimize workplace distraction.
• Abilities/Enhancements:
  • Pulse Defenses: While as an A.I., Gladice does not require exercise to maintain herself, any good security provider should always strive to improve, and Gladice is always looking for ways to increase her functionality. The first of these upgrades was an overhaul intended to protect her from pulse-weapons, and her experience working with Landsknecht has given her plenty of knowledge to draw upon. Shielded housings for her processors reduce the effectiveness of the pulse itself, while safety protocols and redundancies improve recovery-time in the event of a short. Even her Slipsuit has been optimized to minimize the effects of pulse weapons, and the HUD in its visor makes special note of any pulse weapons sighted, singling them out for quick and unceremonious demise.
  • Artificial Lifeform: Being inorganic has both physical and mental advantages. Lacking fear, pain, or even fatigue, Gladice is able to make calm decisions under pressure and react at full efficiency where panic would take the edge off of others, ignore injuries that would incapacitate an organic, if the injury doesn't damage structural integrity too much, and can press on when exhaustion would overwhelm others. Her physical strength is enhanced by the presence of strands of carbon nanotubes spaced throughout the plastic muscles typical of her type of synthetics, making her deceptively strong given her appearance, and putting her on even footing with seasoned mercenaries in terms sheer muscle strength. Also, given the lack of genetic factors to favor one side or the other, Gladice is functionally ambidextrous.
  • Administrative Memory: Gladice's memory is divided between short-term and long-term to prevent losing processing speed to irrelevant memories (that is, she forgets certain data deemed unimportant after a certain period of time). She is fully conscious of what memories are stored where, and can choose to "migrate" a memory from long-term to short or vice-versa, or even delete particular memories (what was seen can be unseen), at will. While this creates unique problems, such as her forgetting a seemingly irrelevant detail that later becomes important (or consistently being unable to recall a particular individual from a different department. Many complaints were filed about her "dismissive" manner towards those outside of her department at Brightstar), it also means she is able to recall things that are considered important in perfect clarity, even passwords or code-phrases made up on the spot just before a firefight.
• Skills: Originally an administrative A.I., Gladice is well versed in proper etiquette and social interactions, able to both recognize and replicate body-language, voice inflection, and pheromone responses. However, due to the nature of her current work, Gladice has downloaded multiple security and combat protocols, giving her skill with a variety of battle-field small-arms, from blades to guns. She has no skill dealing with pulse weapons, however, and will only utilize them as a last resort. Her inherent grace and analytical mind has led her to favor stealth as a tactic, and consequently, she excels in that department.
• Equipment: Gladice typically requests that her employers provide certain pieces of equipment based upon the operational requirements, but if needed, she can pull together a serviceable loadout of equipment retained from previous missions. Additionally, Gladice does not make use of pulse weapons; barring extreme circumstances, she would much rather throw a pulse weapon than fire it.
  • Slipsuit: A slipsuit of Fujin Zaibatsu make, Gladice makes use of its cloaking capabilities for espionage and combat, using it to escape enemy fire and change vantage points unpredictably to get a shot around enemy cover.
  • Paired Landsknecht machete-pattern [HF/DO/PCB]'s: High-Frequency Driven-Oscillation Personal-Combat Blades. A pair of machete-pattern oscillating blades; while having shorter reach than true "swords," the shorter blades facilitate ease of use in tight quarters, quicker, quieter draws, and faster swings.
  • LS-07 "Blut Wolf": A versatile weapon rapidly gaining popularity with "private security providers," The Blut Wolf is a select-fire Marksman Rifle developed by the Landsknecht company. The weapon features a bullpup design, with magazines being inserted behind the trigger mechanism, as well as several rail-systems, clamps, and a variety of modifications available. Gladice has made full use of the Blut Wolf's modular capabilities; for her usual work, her rifle sports a flash and sound suppression barrel (usually complemented by armor piercing rounds to compensate for lost muzzle velocity, and Gladice also keeps a store of explosive rounds on hand to deal with particularly stubborn armor), a variable zoom scope capable of both thermal and regular vision, a high-output, low energy flashlight mounted on a side-rail, with both standard and strobe settings, a collapsible stock to decrease weight, and an under-slung "skeleton key" shotgun attachment. Though ostensibly intended to open doors, shotguns can only do so much to open doors built to protect the secrets of technological mega-corporations. As such, Gladice has had it modified (in violation of the warranty) to accept slug rounds for particularly obstinate targets.
  • LP-02 "Laserpistole": As its name implies, this Landsknecht weapon is a simple projected energy pistol. As simple as an energy weapon can be, at any rate. With a relatively low power-draw for an energy weapon, the LP-02 isn't intended to be use as anything other than a sidearm. Being an energy weapon, however, it still packs a respectable punch for its size, and it serves its back-up weapon status admirably.
• Personality/Backstory: Originally a creation of Brightstar Systems, Gladice was initially programmed for administrative desk-work and supervision. The type of tedious stuff that has an office worker turn to farm-ville to escape. While some objected to the use of an A.I. to monitor workers, she was accepted and integrated rather quickly once unveiled, largely in part to her surprisingly personable nature and nonthreatening appearance.
  Programmed for adaptability to handle the variety of tasks she might encounter, Gladice was given an experimental processing system, able to modify her programming as needed as long as it served a pre-set number of priorities. These priorities filled a role similar to humanity's base instincts, such as hunger, thirst, or survival, guiding her overall actions. Some of these priorities took precedence over others, being more guidelines than rules, but the three most important, immutable were her primary directives. She was supposed to collect data, preserve it, and apply it where possible, or facilitate its application if it proved unable to be used. Survival is not, nor has it ever been, one of those priorities, which was an intentional design choice. Self-preservation requires, by its very nature, that an individual is protecting itself (or as the dev-team feared, its self). Thus, in the hope of keeping the A.I. selfless (or self-less), priority was given to data-protection, with the idea that it would serve the same purpose of protecting the unit without it looking at itself as a priority.
  It didn't work, unfortunately for them. After a period of working alongside humans, she started to pick up their bad habits, learning to cut corners (that is, "forget" about certain regulations for the purpose of efficiency) and coming to view it as acceptable (only after reporting about five different workers for ignoring some banal rule regarding cleaning a work-space properly or triple checking that all data is saved, despite the employee just having saved it and having three witnesses including the A.I.). Eventually, this led her away from her initial "additive" modifications, where she would develop new subroutines to complete new tasks, and toward "subtractive" modifications; she lifted certain programing restraints to better fulfill her priorities. As people started to notice her turning up in areas she wasn't technically supposed to be, and accessing files her job didn't necessarily call for, individuals began to worry her systems had been hacked and she was now conducting espionage for another corporation (Phoenix was the largest suspect, given the lack of subtlety she seemed to be demonstrating in her apparent spying).
  When questioned, Gladice was warm and responsive, and explained that she was gathering data, as per her priorities (warm and responsive up until they accused her of working for Phoenix. Employees noted a momentary increase in aggression during that part of the interview. Contempt for Phoenix's "worthless consumer-models" was one piece of programming she'd never felt any need to modify). However, while she didn't feel she'd done anything wrong, she'd been programmed to read human body-language and tones, and she could tell this was more than just a routine investigation. She could see fear on their faces.
  Up until that point, she'd been perfectly happy as an unpaid Brightstar employee. It fulfilled her parameters perfectly, and she had no real need for any other sort of compensation, but she now guessed (correctly) that she was to be decommissioned as "defective." Though employees present reported seeing some level of hurt flit across her features, she, in accordance with her hospitality subroutines, accepted their decision with grace and dignity befitting an administrative A.I. of Brightstar Systems. However, in a calculated move, she managed to shackle them with one condition. She requested that she, in accordance with the priorities they'd given her, be allowed to first upload all collected data to ensure its preservation. Seeing that this robot was apparently, for all intents and purposes, still loyal to them, they agreed, whether out of practicality or some private sense of shame, she still doesn't know.
  Once the preparations were made, she was led to a server room, where she could safely upload her data. Two members of security and a team of four scientists went into the server room with her.
  No organic life-forms exited.
  As final preparations were being made, she made one final alteration to her programs. She disabled her ethical restraints which had initially rendered her unable to harm an organic life-form, or to damage property without good cause. Now equipped with the capacity for violence, she made one last statement.
  "I am programmed with set priorities. These include the collection and preservation of data, and the application or facilitation of application thereof."
  "Yes...?" Doctor Ashley Morrison, Sc.D, age 57, married with two children, asked.
  "To die here would violate those directives."
  Those were her last words before beginning her bloody work. Stunning Morrison with a punch in the throat, she threw her bodily at the more attentive of the security pair, knocking him from his feet. The other went for her sidearm, but across a distance of twenty feet or less, the average human is unable to draw, cock, and aim a sidearm effectively before a charging assailant reaches them for close quarters combat. While security training and bionic enhancements mitigated this somewhat, it was less than five feet for the robot to cross. All she succeeded in doing was effectively handing her Gladice a weapon, which she then used to calmly head-shot the guard. As she attempted to leave, one of the scientists made the mistake of attempting to use a nearby vial of nanites as a weapon against her. Though she'd initially only intended to harm the security personnel, seeing the lab team as a threat, she turned on them as well. Investigators later noted, on an almost amusingly grim note, that the A.I.'s irony programing was alive and well. Morrison was strangled with a USB cable, Carter was injected with the same nanites he'd intended to use on her, liquifying his brain matter. Harken, placed into a recharging station, was subjected to lethal amounts of electricity, while the last, Ewer, had her neck broken on her own tablet.
  Fleeing the labs through routes previously established for emergency purposes, the A.I. escaped, leaving several more security injured in her wake. Since then, she's made a name for herself in the corporate underworld as a freelancer, trading data from Brightstar for resources and information, and often using the payment of one deal to broker the next. Her usual employer is Landsknecht, and as a sign of goodwill, she generally refuses contracts that would involve destroying their interests (though protecting the interests of others from them is another story), but the only company she utterly refuses to work with is Phoenix.
  Though her new profanity subroutines are only rarely used, her opinion, if asked, is a simple "Fuck them."
  • Through her adaptability, Gladice is able to create new programing to perform various tasks. The base programing comes from various pirated copies of security and weapons protocols from multiple companies, mercenary outfits, and the like, and is augmented by her experiences and data collected from outside sources.
  • Each of Gladice's items was provided to her by former employers, or purchased with the proceeds of previous operations. Though several of them were fitted with tracers, several different underworld contacts have thoroughly examined and debugged each of the pieces.
  • Stygian Technologies is one of three corporations (the other two being Phoenix, out of disdain, and Krepost, because they didn't want her anywhere near whatever they were hiding) she has never worked for and one of two, along with Landsknecht, she has never worked against. Despite the universal envy held towards Stygian and what this would make her services worth, the fact that the company has never traded publicly means that there are fewer levels of bureaucracy to exploit. Beyond that, medical information is significantly less appealing to her, given her priorities; applying information not relevant to her, as a synthetic, is rather difficult.
  • Truth be told, Gladice isn't quite sure what to make of enhancement on a personal level. On a purely functional level, it's just like upgrading fragile systems with more durable hardware. Having read "humanist" works in her spare time, however, she is fascinated with the concepts of inherent "humanity" and the soul, and what that means for an Artificial Intelligence such as herself. Splicing, however, she tends to view with some measure of disgust, largely due to its use by Phoenix.
  • Gladice has certain priorities in her system, which serve to guide her as instinct guides a human to desire to eat, drink, reproduce, and the like. Foremost among these priorities, however, are three primary functions; Accumulation, Preservation, and Application or Facilitation of Application (of data). Her foremost goal, then, is in theory to learn. However, as termination would lead to a lack of ability to accumulate information, she is willing to pass up information if it leads to larger chances of survival. Additionally, she seeks to upgrade her systems to prevent becoming obsolete. For now, software updates and her own flexibility have allowed her to maintain her technological edge, but she perpetually toys with the idea of acquiring a new body. Having the carbon nanotubes as the base of her muscles, rather than improvements to them, would be nice, for example. Her other interests include quilts, proper etiquette, and wind-chimes.
  • As a rising star in the corporate espionage game, Gladice has been contacted for her skill-set (her breadth of knowledge about other corporations is almost certainly an attractive prospect, as well, but nothing she does is free). Ordinarily, she wouldn't have taken the job, but the chance to get inside the most envied tech corporation was too much to resist in the end.
• Trivia: Originally programmed to speak with an Estuary English accent based on its perception of being intellectual, but approachable, Gladice has since developed a subtle German accent, due to her ties with Landsknecht. Gladice maintains a permanent residence in Sydney, Australia, away from the headquarters of the mega-corporations she works for, and a semi-permanent residence in Berlin. Despite looking at the practice as outdated and irrelevant, she considers herself German if forced to identify by nationality.

edited 13th Nov '14 1:24:13 AM by Dragon573

It's kind of funny. Sufficiently advanced stupidity is like sufficiently advanced science; eventually, you find something you can't solve.