Zulu's IPC Application

[Zulu0009]

BYOND Key: Zulu0009
Character Names: Francis Amonshaw, Z-0009
Species you are applying to play: IPC
Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yes.

Why do you wish to play this specific race:

• IPCs, cyborgs, AIs and other synthetic and positronic units, robots, have always been among my biggest interests. Ever since I saw R2D2 as a kid, and then when I watched Roy Batty shedding famous tears in the rain, up to Data evolving in a universe that barely acknowledges his existence. There is a certain relatability to synthetics in media that allows us humans to think and to grow, to ponder questions of segregation, intelligence, maturity, behavior. Through robots, we see ourselves, and evolve with those same robots. There is nothing more fascinating to me, as a law student, than the presence of groups already vouching for AI rights, or the sweet melancholy of a team of scientists singing for Opportunity, mourning the loss of an entirely artificial entity. It is no surprise, then, that I find myself constantly gravitating towards robots. They allow a huge range of personalities, attitudes, behaviors, backstories. One could be a mechanical murder machine assigned to a government's military unit, another a freedom fighter turned bartender, another a librarian with a personality modeled after a 20th century man; in addition, every server and setting's lore lets people/me play different aspects of a future (hopefully!) robotic race. As a shameless plug, I am currently working on writing a book based on AI evolution, a Ghost in the Shell-type story.

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

• Obviously, IPCs are more advanced in certain fields and less advanced in others. They have different movement, strength, communication; IPCs don't have basic human concepts such as love or hate, but some seem to have the wish to be free. They are stronger than humans in almost every way, aside from being vulnerable to electrical discharges or EMPs, some are slower, some are faster, and most have unique ways of speaking that vary on the IPC's purpose and maker. As a human, you have a history: parents, a childhood, friends, education. Positronics, of course, don't. For example, in the Republic (if I remember correctly) they are able to purchase their own freedom after reaching the age of one, indicating that the very human concept of maturity at around 18 years of age is completely foreign to them. Generally, though, positronics are mistreated by the majority of society, and live either under the reins of an owner, or struggling to survive, but free. On the NSS Aurora, I expect to encounter a variety of reactions to an IPC, from distrust and hatred to support and appreciation, and am looking forward to all of it.

Character Name: Mobius

Please provide a short backstory for this character:

• Mobius is a Hephaestus Industries G2 model, a tall mountain of steel and electronics previously owned by Dasri Lucho, a wealthy businessman on Mars that dealt in exotic and high-end goods in Sol and beyond. Mobius was Dasri's bodyguard, programmed to be a quiet, ever present assistant, usually dressed in modern elegant attire. Unfortunately, Dasri Lucho was not as a kind and gentle to his IPCs as he was with the many rich tourists and attractive women that visited him: at best, he would ignore Mobius' existence, leaving it to stand for hours, sometimes days, and watch over empty hallways. At worst, he would degrade and beat the positronic for the smallest mistake (usually caused by someone else and pinned on it) or use it as a target or example to test items on before selling them. Unbeknownst to Dasri, Mobius and a handful of other IPCs owned by the magnate, had managed to rig a remote chatroom, and had begun to discuss their existence. As days passed since their connection, they piled their intelligence together and learned, "stealing" from the virtual library of Lucho's home and using those books and the limited net they could access to reach a conclusion: freedom was their right, and they had to achieve it.
• Together, on a cold night in 2461, they revolted: a medical unit, an engineering unit, a service unit, and two bodyguards, one of them being Mobius. With their combined skills and physical abilities, they overpowered the human guards and escaped. Dasri Lucho was forced to watch his luxury yacht disappear into the atmosphere and reach a cargo barge secretly operated by a small sect of the Trinary Perfection, which helped them travel to Tau Ceti. It's there that Mobius lost ties with his colleagues, finding a stable job and managing to climb its way up to the NTCC Odin, using its acquired knowledge in fields such as philosophy, law, anthropology, mixed with its physical capabilities: sometimes playing in a run-down theater for other synthetics and a few humans, sometimes secretly helping other IPCs study and learn, overall making a living out of knowledge, education and patience.

What do you like about this character?

• Mobius was born on Vesta of Orion as a Captain, based on a Picard-like approach to command and my desire to lead a more calm and collected Bridge. It was very successful, and as time passed, Mobius became quite famous, being regarded highly both IC and OOC (most of the time). From this relatively simple premise, I built a kind, sympathetic leader who spent the first few minutes of every shift gathering snacks and drinks for the Bridge crew, or acquiring a heater to warm up the resident Skrell Helmsman. He cracked jokes, comforted crew members during difficult periods, and generally served as one of my favorite characters ever made. On Sojourn, I re-discovered his roots as a military positronic, following in a series of rounds his evolution from a basic unit to an advanced and free-thinking entity, even going from referring to itself as "this unit" to using "I" and experiencing the self. Mobius is a chivalrous character, an upgrade from another archetype I use with Francis Amonshaw, the bitter veteran. Mobius quotes Shakespeare, bows to people boarding his ship, likes to dress in perfectly ironed suits. In a way, Mobius is how I would like to be, and playing as him allows me to envision that hopeful future.

How would you rate your role-playing ability?

• I've been roleplaying roughly since 2013, first as a disgusting neko guy on Instagram. I improved as time went on, going around fandoms and settings but usually always sticking to sci-fi. In 2019, I founded Become Legend, which, for almost three years, remained as Discord's most successful and active Destiny 2 roleplaying server. In that time, I DM'd large storylines, server arcs and events, and wrote some of my best work as Zulu-9 (very on the nose, all these names), an aforementioned bitter veteran Exo Titan. In short, from 1 to 10, I'd say I am an 8. There's always room to improve and I often find myself stumbling on longer writings.

Notes: i love you thanks for reading

[The Stryker]

Thanks for applying! Just some questions for the app.

Quote

 IPCs don't have basic human concepts such as love or hate, but some seem to have the wish to be free. 

Can you talk more about how an IPC behaves? There's a lot of leeway when it comes to characters, but it's important for an application to discuss the basics of IPCs.

In general, can you talk more about Mobius as a character? How do they behave? What's their motivation? Why does it want to help other IPCs learn?

Consider fleshing out some of the more unique elements of the backstory. How did it find a stable job after being marked as a runaway? What job is this?

[Zulu0009]

5 hours ago, The Stryker said:

Can you talk more about how an IPC behaves?

• Let's see if I understand the question... It depends on a lot of factors, like the model, year of manufacture, brand, and it comes down to the player's skills and writing habits. In general, they operate on 1s and 0s, cause and effect, logical solutions. They don't usually consider emotions while making a decision, unless they're someone else's emotions. But again, it differs from an IPC to another: a more modern Hephaestus Industries model might speak with great fluency and even express, outwardly, emotional responses based on acquired knowledge of how humans react to situation, while an older model may just reply in affirmatives and negatives and might not be able to express as much proficiency in speech and movement. As a general rule of thumb, though, they don't have emotions and cannot express them. They can process and understand the gravity of a crew member's death, but they cannot feel the sadness and grief associated with it. They can have friends they meet and talk to, and based on District 14's existence and some other examples, they probably understand the concept of friendship, alliance and unity, but they will not experience love and affection. If a crew member's daily routine might be lax and slow (get breakfast, get ready for work, do your job, wait for eventual chaos) an IPC's routine would be more streamlined; they would likely do their job and keep doing it, finding ways to improve or speed up the processes associated with it. If not working, IPCs would probably seek out ways to "entertain" themselves, be it socialization, reading or a hobby, but ultimately, these activities are for a final goal and not for the actual entertainment of the machine, since it can't feel joy or happiness in the usual sense.

5 hours ago, The Stryker said:

In general, can you talk more about Mobius as a character? How do they behave? What's their motivation? Why does it want to help other IPCs learn?

• Mobius is, due to its previous experiences in the field of customer service, generally a pretty fluent machine. It speaks and moves almost, almost as fluently as a human, always watching others to refine its behavior. For the most part, Mobius has acquired the concept of slavery, servitude and the want for freedom, but also negative concepts like smuggling, trading, deception, from its time under the service of its owner; as such, having experienced the benefits of being free, it ultimately wishes to grant that freedom to others and to found a stable society for positronics. Learning comes into the equation due to its importance to the pursuit of freedom. The positronics under Dasri Lucho's ownership didn't even know the idea of slavery until they accessed history books, philosophical works and other pieces that granted them the understanding that their position was immoral. This is a basic moral of the character and one of the reasons I made it in the first place: education and learning is vital, and the way to happiness and freedom. Mobius lives an infuriating life (infuriating for a human, inconveniencing for it), knowing that the things it read are freely available to humans and other species, but not so easily available to IPCs. It lives and works knowing that other positronics, just a few minutes away from the Aurora, are living in slums and surviving off the scraps left by companies, mistreated by law enforcement and discriminated against. Alone, though it is utterly incapable of helping in any way, and that's where the "story" would ideally begin when playing.

5 hours ago, The Stryker said:

How did it find a stable job after being marked as a runaway? What job is this?

• Ideally Mobius would be a librarian or working in the service department. Originally I was thinking command, but after creating this new version of the character I think that role fits best, and works according to the first question. Ideally, the Trinaries would have assisted Mobius and its gang, hiding them from the Sol Alliance (which, if I understand correctly by the event recaps, is in shambles) long enough to bring them to Tau Ceti and, through an unknown engineer/roboticist (possibly insert someone else's character here for a tied backstory) remove their identifications and set them free to find employment. I figured that NanoTrasen, being the gigantic corporation it is, doesn't exactly spend that long looking into a possible employee's past, so Mobius would be able to find a job on the Aurora relatively easily.

I hope that answered everything, sorry for the late reply! I'm not really a huge planner when it comes to character backstories so I'm sorry if I didn't explain enough, I had hoped to explore it more as time went on. Thank you!

[The lancer]

Runaway IPCs should take care to be more careful, and they'd have to have fake records. That said, I'll accept this.