[Accepted] Forktress goes against their principles and makes an IPC app

[Forktress]

BYOND Key: (Forktress)

Character Names: (Sabela Aldara, Kruger Aldara, Ziithrik Kuth’rex, Masozi Tapiwa, Senan Malloye, Mordecai Taras, Kuthresh Reskeeza, Optikam Risk’litz)

Species you are applying to play: (The BAD IPC MAN)

What color do you plan on making your first alien character: (Zeng-Hu Mobility Frame)

Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yes…not because I w-wanted to or anything

 

Please provide well-articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph format. One paragraph minimum per question.

 

Why do you wish to play this specific race:

As much as I enjoy spreading the truth that IPC man is bad, I must sadly admit this is in fact, a ruse. IPCs are in fact my second favourite race, beaten only because Unathi play into my longstanding obsession with dinosaurs, dragons and lizards. Personally, I’m always drawn into things with artificial intelligence involved, especially when, like we see on aurora there is active conflict around the extent said artificial intelligence is sentient or, classified as a person. I enjoy the theoretic aspect behind exploring IPCs and how their experiences can shape them, and whether this makes them true individuals or just a mockery of life. I also think that Aurora currently has an interesting array of pro, and anti-synthetic cultures that create interesting chances for RP that I think I would enjoy taking part in.

 

Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human:

I’m going to stray away from mechanical changes and touch on them at the end as I personally believe talking about IC differences is more in spirit of the question.

Firstly, I think the wiki does a pretty good job of explaining that one of the key things that will always make an IPC different than a human is that they are, at the end of the day, sophisticated thinking machines. Now stepping away from the ethical debates on whether or not they are a person or not because of this fact, it is undeniable that they will process information differently to how a human would. Were humans are largely driven by instinct, IPCs have a number of advanced programs that take in information and calculate a response, everything they do stems from information being inputted, examined and calculated by programs, and the best response to the situation being created and implemented. This means that it is hard for an IPC to act ‘randomly’, I imagine it sort of in the same a random number generator is never truly ‘random’, they have a list of numbers which they will spew out one by one using algorithms. This to me means even if an IPC was considerably deviant of personality, if they were trying to help a friend for example, their reactions to the situation would never be exactly spontaneous, it would be something they had calculated would be the best cause of action at the time.

Additionally, IPCs are, at the end of the day, ruled by their self-preservation law, which differs again from the human instinct toward survival, a human may sacrifice themselves for another, a functioning non-tampered with IPC, cannot throw itself in front of something it knows will destroy it, its primary law literally prevents it from doing so. This means you can’t simply do things like “I’ll take this bomb, don’t worry I’m only an IPC.”, other people might feel that way but to you, not getting blown to bits by that bomb is, and always will be, *priority one*. That’s not saying you can’t help others, in fact its usually the case that you’ll end up helping someone from some real crazy stuff at some point, but unlike humans who can irrationally self-terminate themselves doing stupid/brave things, an IPC will always be calculating if a situation will end with their destruction, and if will, then they will attempt to remove themselves from it or at the very least protect their positronic.

I think those for me are two main things that set a general IPC character apart from a human character.

Character Name:(Serval)

Please provide a short backstory for this character

Created on the Hephaestus Production Station Sidirourgeio on April 5th 2456, the station’s fifth year after completion, the positronic now known as Serval was originally known as GUPP-E, a baseline frame. GUPP-E found itself pressed into service as a servant almost immediately; a gift of a family friend higher up within Hephaestus, it became an effective helper/nanny for the Embla family, Sol Gov citizens who lived in the residential district of the station, and worked on Reade, in its gas harvesting industry. GUPP-E was named by, and cared for, the family’s 4-year-old daughter, Sonja, while her parents Runa and Otto, worked during the day. GUPP-E was of moderate complexity regarding positronic brains, but it was more than sufficient to satisfy Sonja, who quickly took a liking to her new ‘friend’. The baseline spent the entire first year of its service performing three main tasks; preparing meals for the family, cleaning, and creating fun and mentally stimulating activities for Sonja. The more that GUPP-E was forced to adapt to a child’s chaotic and mercurial nature, the better suited to a high stress environment it became, soon, it had learnt to formulate new ways to occupy the young human within seconds. Once Sonja turned 5 years old GUPP-E had been in the family’s service for a year and was loved by both mother and daughter within the family, meanwhile, the father Otto subscribed much more heavily into the belief that the positronic held no rights, much like a majority of the Sol Gov workforce.

GUPP-E spent the next months between January 2457 and November 2457 tutoring Sonja, and by all accounts, the positronic was learning alongside her, albeit at a much faster speed, downloading entire textbooks overnight for daytime use. It wasn’t until the 25th November 2457 that tragedy befell the family. Runa, the matriarch of the family by all accounts, lost her life in an accident while harvesting the gases of Reade during one of its violent winter storms. From here Otto began to deteriorate, becoming erratic, claimed by grief he turned to heavy drinking, leaving more and more to GUPP-E. The IPC began to experience small amounts of wear and tear as Otto became found of throwing empty bottles at them, claiming the positronic wasn’t a real person and therefore it didn’t matter. GUPP-E took these increasingly frequent events in stride, reasoning that its purpose was to look after Sonja and that her wellbeing was more important than minor scrapes or damage. With the turn of the year and 2458 in swing and the Sol Alliance beginning a blockade of Biesel, Otto decided it was high time he and his family return to Sol, reluctantly taking the baseline with them at the behest of his young daughter. As the blockade continued and eventually spiralled into invasion by Admiral Frost it became clear to GUPP-E that Otto favoured the actions of the extremist Sol Admiral and the 33rd. Indeed, once the reports of Frost’s defeat he flew into a drunken rage, seemingly especially angry about reports that not only had members of the Synthetic Liberation Front actively worked to free president Dorn from the 33rd’s captivity, but that one of their members was receiving a medal! He began to push GUPP-E around, becoming more and more violent, claiming that was “you things that ruined everything”, taking a bat to the IPC, causing severe damage to its torso, and bringing it to its knees, before Sonja, awakening from bed because of the loud noises, rushed to GUPP-E’s side, her father accidently striking her while drunk. Upon seeing harm come to Sonja, the baseline flew into action, protecting the girl where it had not protected itself, it broke the man’s arm, before realising what it had done, grabbing Sonja, and fleeing. GUPP-E was consumed by two very basic thoughts; RUN and HIDE. It continued to run, unceasingly carrying the unconscious Sonja in its arms until its damaged torso and legs eventually gave out, GUPP-E running out of power in the street.
Eventually the powered down IPC and the, now conscious girl were found by Martian authorities. She was returned to her father, who had sustained a broken arm defending his daughter from a crazed machine that kidnapped her, or so the story went. The body of GUPP-E was scrapped for parts and incident quietly covered up by Hephaestus. The positronic was memory wiped and left in storage for two months before being shipped off in a trade deal with Zeng-Hu Pharmaceuticals to their facility in orbit of Sirius, Kyūkyoku, which is incapable of creating positronic brains their selves, relying on deals with other companies. Here the positronic was integrated into one of the companies Mobility Model IPCs, named Serval, after a type of medium sized wild cat know for their speed and lighter colourations. Serval awoke with a fractured and fragmented memory, unsure of where it was or its purpose, only recalling the face of a small girl and little else. Over the next few days of its activation Serval was fed new data, information, and purpose. This new purpose felt somehow familiar, yet also different. It was now programmed to run, run and HUNT. Serval was an IPC fully intended for combat and rapid response to situations. Being sold to Index Security Solutions, to operate under a permanent ownership contract. Serval spent the time between June 2459 and October 2461 prowling the lower tunnels of the Akhet underwater domes, hunting down criminal dreg bands with maximum efficiency and no mercy, alongside other Index IPCs. Serval enjoyed great success in numerous combat engagements with violent gangs but privately struggled with the barest fragments of memories, glitches seemingly brought on by young children which can interrupt combat efficiency for brief moments of time, so far Serval has not seen fit to mention these glitches to anyone for unknown reasons. 

However, with seemingly peaceful times throughout the federation Index has seen fit to contract Serval to the NSS Aurora II for a six-month period beginning soon, with extensions possible. It is possible the Company wishes to evaluate how well the lighter, faster frame fares on a station as opposed to chasing gangers through tunnels.

What do you like about this character?

My favourite part of Serval is that its core concept is, at its very basic, killer robot with a nanny complex buried in somewhere in some fragmented memories. Personally, I would look forward to seeing which characters on station may run the risk of revealing these and what kind of RP would stem from it, and how relationships would form around what is now essentially, an efficient drone of a security contractor, especially if it has a moment of acting uncharacteristically nice. I also visually like the image of the much sleeker, lightweight and quick Mobility frame being used in security work and its already got my artistic side flowing with ideas of character art, which I can only hope is a good thing!

How would you rate your role-playing ability?

I give myself a 7/10 because a 6 feels too self-deprecating but an 8 is far too high. Generally I leave this up to the opinion of others because judging yourself is super hard.

Notes:

IPC MAN = BAD    FORK MAN = GOOD?   IPC MAN + FORK MAN = OK?

In addition I’m very open to any and all questions please, it may help me flesh out this character concept even more, I’ve got a niggling feeling something may be missing but can’t put my finger on it myself.

[StationCrab]

I for one welcome another convert to the IPC brigade. Forktress' characters are quite fun to interact with as well. I think you have a pretty solid backstory here, I won't comment too deeply on it because I am not an IPC lore expert, but everything seems to be in order from my perspective. It will be interesting to see the buried memories unfold on the station.

 

+1

[niennab]

On 21/11/2019 at 20:43, Forktress said:

(The BAD IPC MAN)

Denied

Jokes aside, I can personally attest to your ability to role-play believable and well rounded characters. Moreover, you've demonstrated an understanding of IPCs (as well as other portions of the lore) in your application. Thank you for the interesting read.

Accepted.