Nautilus
05-14-08, 04:07 PM
This profile is rather long, so I apologise in advance for any eye-melting to be had. But given the nature of this character I thought I should detail everything I possibly could. Additionally, I know it looks like she has a buttload of skills which is frowned upon for lvl 0 char I've noticed, but the vast majority of them are simply describing her functions.
Anywho I hope this is cool. Looking forward to writing in this forum. :)
Designation: Shadow
Age: 291 years, or thereabouts. Rather young.
Race: Arcangel ESG - 113, Nautilus Class. A sentient, very much alive robotic organism.
Hair Color: n/a
Eye Color: Green light glows from her optics.
Height: Two to seven feet.
Weight: Approximately 350 something lbs at her tallest, 131 at her shortest.
Occupation: Reconnaissance bot.
Personality: While in the company of her superiors, she is submissive to a fault and will follow orders blindly, placing every ounce of her explicit trust into her leaders, whomever they may be. While on her own on solo missions such as the one which has brought her to Althanas, Shadow becomes considerably more bold and demonstrates a youthful character brimming with profuse exuberance and kindness. Enjoys mingling with the locals. She can act very 'immature', if such a word can be applied to a mechanical being who is quickly nearing the three century mark, but seldom does this almost greenhorn mannerism interfere with her work. Indeed, Shadow is still very much a teenager to put it in human terms, sans the angsty tendencies. The two distinct personalities of "dead-serious professional recon bot" and "wiseass risk-taking naive adolescent" are neatly separated with just the barest overlapping. Note the above sentence "seldom does this...interfere with her work." Her ego and several factors associated with it have landed her in hot water before and are likely to do so again. Distrustful around strangers. Insatiably curious, can hold a grudge for quite a while.
Another trait of note is her stubborn nature and refusal to give up and/or fail a task, no matter the personal cost.
Appearance:
Your typical bipedal robotic lifeform. Thin construct and long limbs for agility. Five fingers on each hand, three toes (two forward-facing and one backward). Open-looking. Shadow is composed entirely from biomechanical parts, metal essentially along with assorted other mostly non-exotic materials of which her wiring, et cetera is composed. A stylized nautilus has been printed in red a bit over her eye on the right-hand side of her cranial piece. Her armour when used is black in colouration and is often dinged and scraped, and although she strives to keep her body free from destructive rust smaller dents and such are usually left alone. When not in an armoured mode, her physical form is considerably more feminine, courtesy of the lonely human scientist who re-constructed her. Female Arcangel ESG - 113's normally do not have much of a bust, or possess her subtly curvacious figure. Her vocal processor, when speaking a language not her own, has been configured into an early-twenties human female voice, pleasant-sounding and with a soft British accent.
History:
Little is known of Shadow's actual species. She was cloned from a prior generation of robots who were themselves clones with slight modifications from a single mysterious individual. She comes from a distant widely totalitarian planet named Roraasia, ruled by fleshy multi-cellular organisms who took advantage of her race and used them frequently for purposes of war and domination. Born into a life of servitude, deliberately conditioned to never question their origins. Shadow was trained from the moment her CPU matured to serve in the branch of military that dealt with espionage. For a great while she was on a minute team as she learned the ropes. A spacial disturbance while they were en route to another planet separated the team and plunged Shadow five hundred years into the future on Roraasia to find it nothing but a ruin with no sign of her long-lived comrades. Distraught and mortally damaged from the warp, Shadow went offline and awoke cycles later in a torn-up lab with a shiny new body and an eccentric human scientist. He seemed in a huge rush, but with her body still adjusting to the new parts Shadow could not immediately comprehend what he was trying to tell her. Minutes later, the place went up in flame --
Shadow escaped the attack by unknown enemies. A strange command that had been entered into her CPU, supposedly while she was unconscious, overrode her basic systems and directed her to Althanas in ship-form. She hadn't the time to make the usual calculations and was severely damaged by the entry and planet fall, rendering her little more than a sad memory of the competent warrior she had once been. Shadow has no recollection of why she was sent here and struggles to make sense of her predicament.
Skills:
Species abilities and clarification:
Shadow is a living organism and every process in her body works similarly to the life processes we humans are used to. Although her build appears synthetic, it can heal itself and she feels pain if she is damaged in any way. Emotion is a very real thing and her central processing unit is susceptible to mental quirks and disease, no different from ours.
Note - Reproduction and maturation will be left for another update.
In order to "eat", Shadow reveals a set of solar panels on her chest and two larger ones that lift from her back like wings. In this fashion she is able to refuel. Refueling times differ determined by how deprived her systems are and how strong the sunlight is. She needs to charge every three rotations (days) to maintain optimal efficiency, or her reaction time will be considerably decreased. If her systems are starved due to lack of sunlight or another sufficient source, such as electricity, she will offline and deactivate within the hour. Starvation occurs at two weeks.
She is mostly constructed of a unique metal-like substance that operates on a quantum level. It can expand and retract into itself, folding like thin sheets of aluminum when activated. This metal ceases to function if separated from her in any way and will just dry up into a crinkly brown substance.
Her armor consists of black units no stronger than iron at this time that have conformed to cover the fronts on her thighs, her shins, shoulders, forearms, chest and back. When unneeded it retracts into itself and is stored in small invisible subspace pockets located at various points around her body. This armor may look intimidating but it has been weakened exponentially and she has many weak spots that can be exploited, some of the more prominent including the areas behind her knees, ankles, midsection, and the area around her neck. If hit long enough and hard enough, any spot of armor will eventually crack, even shatter and weaken her further.
Surveillance - Shadow can see thermal signatures, an option that can be turned on and off at will. She can also 'zoom in' on an item twenty-five feet away and possesses sporatic night vision. Instead of ears she has a set of antennae of varying lengths protruding from the right side of her head. These have lost most of their use on technology-scarce Althanas, though she can use her electronic auditory processors to home in on a single sound or sounds among many.
Stealth - A chemical reaction within her armor allows her to hide from electronic surveillance systems when said armor is worn (largely useless here). She can put most advanced mechanical systems on temporary fritz (lasting about fifteen minutes or so) with a low-frequency sound blast emitted from units on the soles of her feet. Again, useless here but can cause a minor shock wave to undulate through the ground that might throw someone off balance if they are not paying attention.
Physical prowess - Due to her recent injuries, she is only 1.5x stronger and faster than the average human. A damaged part on her left hip joint prevents her from moving too swiftly and has endowed her with a limp.
Agility - Average, thanks again to her injuries.
Light - On each hip rests a shallow black rectangular box with three circles running horizontal across it's face. These can produce a clear white light strong enough to see by but not to harm. It seems electrical in nature when it is in fact fed off her plasma supply (her blood, if you will). The middle bulb of the right unit has blown out but the others still work. She prefers not to use them as they drain her of energy. Their reason for existence coupled with her night vision (even if it is slightly unreliable) continues to allude her.
Mechanical brain - Shadow can store information and keep it indefinitely and in perfect detail in her CPU, and as well can go through and delete extraneous files (needed as she reaches her maximum storage capacity, a point where she can no longer commit things to memory).
Toxic blood - The fluid that flows through her "veins" serves as a lubricant and an extension of her coolant system. It is essential and she can indeed bleed out from it's loss. It is a luminous white-blue that turns sticky and black when exposed to oxygen and no longer flowing. If a copious amount is ingested it can cause intense vomiting and possibly death in those of smaller body volume, such as children and animals.
The aforementioned coolant system and it's necessity - It is easy for Shadow to overheat her systems by great periods of activity. When this happens she can fall into exhaustion and like an extremely tired person will be sluggish, generally incapacitated until she must offline for a bit (the robotic equivalent of taking a nap, which allows her system to focus more of it's energies to the coolant system and restoring normal internal temperature). If no intervention is taken her circuits will start melting into one another and so on and she will sustain irreparable damage and most likely deactivate because of it. The system responsible for making sure this doesn't happen will raise the temperature of her plasma to a practically freezing level until the overheated areas start to cool. It will then gradually decrease in temperature until normality is restored. Shock and stress from a traumatic injury is another reason for overheating. If this coolant system were to somehow be disabled...well, she'd be pretty much screwed.
Healing and pain - Minor bodily injuries, external and internal, heal slowly on their own, much like a human's. She is equipped with a small arsenal of medical instruments -- including a welder implanted into her wrist (to be used strictly for medical emergencies) and vessel clamp -- to repair semi-major injuries. Shadow was given a limited medical course as are all Recon cadets. She's no master, but she knows what to do if, say, a limb is severed or if there is a gaping hole somewhere on her person. That's not to say she's immune to death from substantial injury; if the wound is nasty enough or if it destroys any important internal parts, such as her spine (leaving her paralyzed), or severs enough vessels so she bleeds to death before she can cauterize them all, or damages too many sensory clusters, or if she is decapitated (meaning instant death)...let us just say there a lot of ways in which she can perish. Plus, in order to make these repairs she cannot be engaged in battle. The longer these wounds are allowed to exist, the less energy she has for fighting or whatever else she happens to be doing and her condition will deteriorate rapidly.
Shadow has control over her pain receptors and can temporarily offline small isolated sections for repairs or if the pain is too distracting, such as shallow scratches or scattered loose parts. However, if the damage is extensive, the receptors lock in ON mode and overwhelm her sensors, making it difficult to concentrate on anything else. It is a safety precaution that has gone a bit haywire. Within minutes of this happening, if she does not attend to her wounds immediately the program overwrites her CPU and offlines her entirely. This can obviously result in death.
Her armor has limited pain receptors but again is infiltrated with ease and does not shield her entire body, leaving wide gaps between plates. She is at her most vulnerable when the armor has fully retracted.
Aquatic form - As a Nautilus Class, Shadow can morph into an animal that resembles the class namesake, three feet in diameter and a foot thick with thirty fragile metallic tentacles. Her weakened system means she can only stay submerged at a depth of thirty feet for up to an hour before she must venture back to the surface and recharge. At the moment she is incapable of defending herself in this form. Movement through the water is achieved with hydraulic propulsion.
Energy cannon - Her right arm is encased in your traditional energy-style cannon that takes the position of that hand when in use. It is currently non-functioning.
Missile launcher - Embedded in her sides, this gun is rarely seen and is also non-functional.
Archery - In an attempt to give herself a form of defense, Shadow has taken a regular wood crossbow and implemented it into her useless cannon. Using bits of her own metallic substance, she has assumed control of the weapon and made it into an extension of herself. It remains folded and hidden in her cannon chamber until needed, when it raises out and rests atop her forearm, the nose pointing over her fist. It is self-loading with twelve iron-tipped arrows. A messed up targeting system gives her only a slightly above average aim.
Holographic imagery - A detachable spider-like minibot, about the size of an apricot and smooth silver in appearance with several spindly legs can produce a hologram that Shadow controls via internal link. Once activated, the hologram can assume any form she wishes for it, normally a replica of another person/animal/whatever, but it must carry the minibot at all times. The minibot conveniently becomes a silver necklace with a small sphere pendant to hang around the neck of the hologram, or somehow become attached to it in another way. The holoform itself is solid but can do no harm, very weak and in turn can be harmed easily, either by destruction of the minibot or disruption of the frequency it is based upon (this can be accomplished with magic). Shadow sees out of it's eyes and controls it's movements. She can not sustain the link for any longer than twenty-four hours before she must recall the minibot. The holo can speak and manipulate objects.
Vacuum Immunity - Shadow can withstand the vacuum of space and can morph herself into a sleek ship-form suited for such travel and re-entry into atmospheres. She can not morph into a ship at this time.
Crushing weight - Three hundred pounds of rigid metal can hurt if she accidentally steps on a foot or falls on someone. Shadow doesn't fling herself around though, and her bad hip restricts any kicking to be had.
Communication - Shadow can learn languages very well and incredibly swiftly if given an adequate resource. She is slowly learning Common through interaction with Althanian inhabitants. Luckily her CPU is doing a fair job of translating Common words into Machina and vice versa. Layered facial plates capable of expression can come in handy when dealing with lifeforms who rely on such things. She is likewise learning the intricacies of humanoid body language.
Shadow has not developed any defenses against magic and her systems are thrown into disarray whenever she should come in direct contact with it, even apparently insubstantial amounts. It is her one HUGE weakness. She can be damaged by amateurs with little dificulty.
Equipment:
Besides the medical instruments which are part of her and cannot be removed, Shadow carries no equipment other than a coin purse she obtained and plans to use through her holoform, and a billowing brown cloak with a deep hood to conceal herself as best as possible when around organisms who might freak out upon seeing her.
Anywho I hope this is cool. Looking forward to writing in this forum. :)
Designation: Shadow
Age: 291 years, or thereabouts. Rather young.
Race: Arcangel ESG - 113, Nautilus Class. A sentient, very much alive robotic organism.
Hair Color: n/a
Eye Color: Green light glows from her optics.
Height: Two to seven feet.
Weight: Approximately 350 something lbs at her tallest, 131 at her shortest.
Occupation: Reconnaissance bot.
Personality: While in the company of her superiors, she is submissive to a fault and will follow orders blindly, placing every ounce of her explicit trust into her leaders, whomever they may be. While on her own on solo missions such as the one which has brought her to Althanas, Shadow becomes considerably more bold and demonstrates a youthful character brimming with profuse exuberance and kindness. Enjoys mingling with the locals. She can act very 'immature', if such a word can be applied to a mechanical being who is quickly nearing the three century mark, but seldom does this almost greenhorn mannerism interfere with her work. Indeed, Shadow is still very much a teenager to put it in human terms, sans the angsty tendencies. The two distinct personalities of "dead-serious professional recon bot" and "wiseass risk-taking naive adolescent" are neatly separated with just the barest overlapping. Note the above sentence "seldom does this...interfere with her work." Her ego and several factors associated with it have landed her in hot water before and are likely to do so again. Distrustful around strangers. Insatiably curious, can hold a grudge for quite a while.
Another trait of note is her stubborn nature and refusal to give up and/or fail a task, no matter the personal cost.
Appearance:
Your typical bipedal robotic lifeform. Thin construct and long limbs for agility. Five fingers on each hand, three toes (two forward-facing and one backward). Open-looking. Shadow is composed entirely from biomechanical parts, metal essentially along with assorted other mostly non-exotic materials of which her wiring, et cetera is composed. A stylized nautilus has been printed in red a bit over her eye on the right-hand side of her cranial piece. Her armour when used is black in colouration and is often dinged and scraped, and although she strives to keep her body free from destructive rust smaller dents and such are usually left alone. When not in an armoured mode, her physical form is considerably more feminine, courtesy of the lonely human scientist who re-constructed her. Female Arcangel ESG - 113's normally do not have much of a bust, or possess her subtly curvacious figure. Her vocal processor, when speaking a language not her own, has been configured into an early-twenties human female voice, pleasant-sounding and with a soft British accent.
History:
Little is known of Shadow's actual species. She was cloned from a prior generation of robots who were themselves clones with slight modifications from a single mysterious individual. She comes from a distant widely totalitarian planet named Roraasia, ruled by fleshy multi-cellular organisms who took advantage of her race and used them frequently for purposes of war and domination. Born into a life of servitude, deliberately conditioned to never question their origins. Shadow was trained from the moment her CPU matured to serve in the branch of military that dealt with espionage. For a great while she was on a minute team as she learned the ropes. A spacial disturbance while they were en route to another planet separated the team and plunged Shadow five hundred years into the future on Roraasia to find it nothing but a ruin with no sign of her long-lived comrades. Distraught and mortally damaged from the warp, Shadow went offline and awoke cycles later in a torn-up lab with a shiny new body and an eccentric human scientist. He seemed in a huge rush, but with her body still adjusting to the new parts Shadow could not immediately comprehend what he was trying to tell her. Minutes later, the place went up in flame --
Shadow escaped the attack by unknown enemies. A strange command that had been entered into her CPU, supposedly while she was unconscious, overrode her basic systems and directed her to Althanas in ship-form. She hadn't the time to make the usual calculations and was severely damaged by the entry and planet fall, rendering her little more than a sad memory of the competent warrior she had once been. Shadow has no recollection of why she was sent here and struggles to make sense of her predicament.
Skills:
Species abilities and clarification:
Shadow is a living organism and every process in her body works similarly to the life processes we humans are used to. Although her build appears synthetic, it can heal itself and she feels pain if she is damaged in any way. Emotion is a very real thing and her central processing unit is susceptible to mental quirks and disease, no different from ours.
Note - Reproduction and maturation will be left for another update.
In order to "eat", Shadow reveals a set of solar panels on her chest and two larger ones that lift from her back like wings. In this fashion she is able to refuel. Refueling times differ determined by how deprived her systems are and how strong the sunlight is. She needs to charge every three rotations (days) to maintain optimal efficiency, or her reaction time will be considerably decreased. If her systems are starved due to lack of sunlight or another sufficient source, such as electricity, she will offline and deactivate within the hour. Starvation occurs at two weeks.
She is mostly constructed of a unique metal-like substance that operates on a quantum level. It can expand and retract into itself, folding like thin sheets of aluminum when activated. This metal ceases to function if separated from her in any way and will just dry up into a crinkly brown substance.
Her armor consists of black units no stronger than iron at this time that have conformed to cover the fronts on her thighs, her shins, shoulders, forearms, chest and back. When unneeded it retracts into itself and is stored in small invisible subspace pockets located at various points around her body. This armor may look intimidating but it has been weakened exponentially and she has many weak spots that can be exploited, some of the more prominent including the areas behind her knees, ankles, midsection, and the area around her neck. If hit long enough and hard enough, any spot of armor will eventually crack, even shatter and weaken her further.
Surveillance - Shadow can see thermal signatures, an option that can be turned on and off at will. She can also 'zoom in' on an item twenty-five feet away and possesses sporatic night vision. Instead of ears she has a set of antennae of varying lengths protruding from the right side of her head. These have lost most of their use on technology-scarce Althanas, though she can use her electronic auditory processors to home in on a single sound or sounds among many.
Stealth - A chemical reaction within her armor allows her to hide from electronic surveillance systems when said armor is worn (largely useless here). She can put most advanced mechanical systems on temporary fritz (lasting about fifteen minutes or so) with a low-frequency sound blast emitted from units on the soles of her feet. Again, useless here but can cause a minor shock wave to undulate through the ground that might throw someone off balance if they are not paying attention.
Physical prowess - Due to her recent injuries, she is only 1.5x stronger and faster than the average human. A damaged part on her left hip joint prevents her from moving too swiftly and has endowed her with a limp.
Agility - Average, thanks again to her injuries.
Light - On each hip rests a shallow black rectangular box with three circles running horizontal across it's face. These can produce a clear white light strong enough to see by but not to harm. It seems electrical in nature when it is in fact fed off her plasma supply (her blood, if you will). The middle bulb of the right unit has blown out but the others still work. She prefers not to use them as they drain her of energy. Their reason for existence coupled with her night vision (even if it is slightly unreliable) continues to allude her.
Mechanical brain - Shadow can store information and keep it indefinitely and in perfect detail in her CPU, and as well can go through and delete extraneous files (needed as she reaches her maximum storage capacity, a point where she can no longer commit things to memory).
Toxic blood - The fluid that flows through her "veins" serves as a lubricant and an extension of her coolant system. It is essential and she can indeed bleed out from it's loss. It is a luminous white-blue that turns sticky and black when exposed to oxygen and no longer flowing. If a copious amount is ingested it can cause intense vomiting and possibly death in those of smaller body volume, such as children and animals.
The aforementioned coolant system and it's necessity - It is easy for Shadow to overheat her systems by great periods of activity. When this happens she can fall into exhaustion and like an extremely tired person will be sluggish, generally incapacitated until she must offline for a bit (the robotic equivalent of taking a nap, which allows her system to focus more of it's energies to the coolant system and restoring normal internal temperature). If no intervention is taken her circuits will start melting into one another and so on and she will sustain irreparable damage and most likely deactivate because of it. The system responsible for making sure this doesn't happen will raise the temperature of her plasma to a practically freezing level until the overheated areas start to cool. It will then gradually decrease in temperature until normality is restored. Shock and stress from a traumatic injury is another reason for overheating. If this coolant system were to somehow be disabled...well, she'd be pretty much screwed.
Healing and pain - Minor bodily injuries, external and internal, heal slowly on their own, much like a human's. She is equipped with a small arsenal of medical instruments -- including a welder implanted into her wrist (to be used strictly for medical emergencies) and vessel clamp -- to repair semi-major injuries. Shadow was given a limited medical course as are all Recon cadets. She's no master, but she knows what to do if, say, a limb is severed or if there is a gaping hole somewhere on her person. That's not to say she's immune to death from substantial injury; if the wound is nasty enough or if it destroys any important internal parts, such as her spine (leaving her paralyzed), or severs enough vessels so she bleeds to death before she can cauterize them all, or damages too many sensory clusters, or if she is decapitated (meaning instant death)...let us just say there a lot of ways in which she can perish. Plus, in order to make these repairs she cannot be engaged in battle. The longer these wounds are allowed to exist, the less energy she has for fighting or whatever else she happens to be doing and her condition will deteriorate rapidly.
Shadow has control over her pain receptors and can temporarily offline small isolated sections for repairs or if the pain is too distracting, such as shallow scratches or scattered loose parts. However, if the damage is extensive, the receptors lock in ON mode and overwhelm her sensors, making it difficult to concentrate on anything else. It is a safety precaution that has gone a bit haywire. Within minutes of this happening, if she does not attend to her wounds immediately the program overwrites her CPU and offlines her entirely. This can obviously result in death.
Her armor has limited pain receptors but again is infiltrated with ease and does not shield her entire body, leaving wide gaps between plates. She is at her most vulnerable when the armor has fully retracted.
Aquatic form - As a Nautilus Class, Shadow can morph into an animal that resembles the class namesake, three feet in diameter and a foot thick with thirty fragile metallic tentacles. Her weakened system means she can only stay submerged at a depth of thirty feet for up to an hour before she must venture back to the surface and recharge. At the moment she is incapable of defending herself in this form. Movement through the water is achieved with hydraulic propulsion.
Energy cannon - Her right arm is encased in your traditional energy-style cannon that takes the position of that hand when in use. It is currently non-functioning.
Missile launcher - Embedded in her sides, this gun is rarely seen and is also non-functional.
Archery - In an attempt to give herself a form of defense, Shadow has taken a regular wood crossbow and implemented it into her useless cannon. Using bits of her own metallic substance, she has assumed control of the weapon and made it into an extension of herself. It remains folded and hidden in her cannon chamber until needed, when it raises out and rests atop her forearm, the nose pointing over her fist. It is self-loading with twelve iron-tipped arrows. A messed up targeting system gives her only a slightly above average aim.
Holographic imagery - A detachable spider-like minibot, about the size of an apricot and smooth silver in appearance with several spindly legs can produce a hologram that Shadow controls via internal link. Once activated, the hologram can assume any form she wishes for it, normally a replica of another person/animal/whatever, but it must carry the minibot at all times. The minibot conveniently becomes a silver necklace with a small sphere pendant to hang around the neck of the hologram, or somehow become attached to it in another way. The holoform itself is solid but can do no harm, very weak and in turn can be harmed easily, either by destruction of the minibot or disruption of the frequency it is based upon (this can be accomplished with magic). Shadow sees out of it's eyes and controls it's movements. She can not sustain the link for any longer than twenty-four hours before she must recall the minibot. The holo can speak and manipulate objects.
Vacuum Immunity - Shadow can withstand the vacuum of space and can morph herself into a sleek ship-form suited for such travel and re-entry into atmospheres. She can not morph into a ship at this time.
Crushing weight - Three hundred pounds of rigid metal can hurt if she accidentally steps on a foot or falls on someone. Shadow doesn't fling herself around though, and her bad hip restricts any kicking to be had.
Communication - Shadow can learn languages very well and incredibly swiftly if given an adequate resource. She is slowly learning Common through interaction with Althanian inhabitants. Luckily her CPU is doing a fair job of translating Common words into Machina and vice versa. Layered facial plates capable of expression can come in handy when dealing with lifeforms who rely on such things. She is likewise learning the intricacies of humanoid body language.
Shadow has not developed any defenses against magic and her systems are thrown into disarray whenever she should come in direct contact with it, even apparently insubstantial amounts. It is her one HUGE weakness. She can be damaged by amateurs with little dificulty.
Equipment:
Besides the medical instruments which are part of her and cannot be removed, Shadow carries no equipment other than a coin purse she obtained and plans to use through her holoform, and a billowing brown cloak with a deep hood to conceal herself as best as possible when around organisms who might freak out upon seeing her.