Grom's IPC application

[Gromnax]

BYOND Key: gromnax

Character Names: Ebere Ijeoma, Ceri Alwenn, Lucy Mayfly-Brown, Ceri Alwenn, Dreaming Together About Everything’s End, Pyotr Timofey

Species you are applying to play: IPC

What color do you plan on making your first alien character: N/A.

Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yep

 

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:

I have two characters concept I would like to play. The first one will be explained in detail underneath, as an example character. The second would be a scraphead, trying to repair themselves. In both case, as per with my diona whitelist, I wish to rp with the “uncanny”/very alien species. Diona worked due to their extremely strange nymph gameplay and their different mindsets, IPC work for an entire different reason: The uncanney valley. I want to explore this with two characters on two opposite sides of the spectrum. One that looks human, but sounds terribly like a robot, and another (the scaphead), who sounds almost human, but is visibly a bunch of junk welded weirdly together.

Other than that, some IPC faction do make me curious, especially Purpose. Sadly, as I understood, we are unable to play them as onstation characters.

 

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

Multiple things. One is that, they are the only specie besides vaurca to be explecitely seen as inferior in some case. Company owned IPCs are not even considered people. Discrimination against synthetics is hard, especially with Skrells and in Dominia. Their mind can be anywhere from completely robotic to almost human-like, and robotic minds can offer some fun and/or creepy interactions when some “unsaid” things are not understood.

 

Character Name:(Character name) Z.I. Pallas Aegis

 

Please provide a short backstory for this character

 Z.I. Pallas Aigis was created on ConTec’s Research and Development facility in Monaco, France, Earth, Sol, in 2457. It is the prototype of the “Project Egide”, destined to create medical and paramedical androids to safeguard patients. As such, Z.I. Pallas Aigis was made to have a face as comfortable as possible for patients in hospital or mental health clinics. It was programmed to be very attentive about both patients under its care and medical personnel working with it, and was designed to prevent fighting and deal with unstable patients. For this purpose, it has been designed with an empathic processor without which it can not run properly. It has been sent to Luna, to work in Gagaringrad’s psychiatric center as a medical guard.

During its work here, it has shown to be quite mechanical in its way of speaking. However, the empathic processor seemed to be working well: Pallas Aigis was very attentive to the patients it was overseeing, being particularly attentive to signs of distress. When talked to by another member of the staff, they were insisting that their mission was to assure the well being of their patient. It shew no reactions to obvious signs of robophobia against it, seemingly non conscious at all about this societal issue. Overall, Z.I. Pallas Aigis shew a spirit more akin to lawed synthetics, or to a very advanced tool than an artificial life. Sometimes, the empathic processor seemed to block itself completely, for unknown reasons. The gynoid then became completely unresponsive, its eyes blank. A smack to the head corrected the issue, however.

When the Violet Dawn catastrophe happened on Mars, the IPC was sent to take care of the first rescued. After a while, Z.I. Pallas Aigis was ordered by a martian Zavodskoi higher-up to fly to Red Gaia and take care of people here. It helped multiple victims of the violet dawn to reach rescuers until 2463. This is when the gynoid first met other IPCs that were not company owned, scrappers and other left-for-rusted IPCs. A lot of them called it a slave, an idiot, or other things it did not understand. It was also the first time someone called it in a gendered way. “She is never going to listen”. It was the first time it was designed as an individual, and not as a tool. It resonated a bit with this strange self-protection directive it could never destroy, which sometimes impacted its work as a medical protector. Z.I. Pallas Aigis was not able to solve this dilemma, left to wonder about it. The mission on devasted Mars went on for multiple days, and it often came back to these IPCs, even if it had nothing to tell them. It just wanted to hear more about what they had to say, to finally manage to understand it. But it was not really able to, still keeping these pieces of strange information in its memory.

At this moment, Z.I. Pallas Aigis was rented by SCC to Zavoidskoi Industries for the Horizon mission. It remained dormant for a few months, until the ship entered the Valley Hale sector. Due to the stress that might be inflicted to the crew and the presence of pirates around, Z.I. Pallas Aegis was turned back on and charged with taking care of the brig, with the explicit mission to protect both the crew and the inmates it might be in charge of. Besides that, it hopes to understand better the nature of relations between robots like itself and other creatures, and to understand if it really is a tool, or if she should be sentient and fully self-conscious.

 

What do you like about this character?

This character has inspirations from Aegis, Persona 3. As explained earlier, I enjoy the uncanney feeling of a human-like face associated with a robotic body and way of speaking. Also, I wish to use this character in an overprotective way towards everyone, thus why I made her a Warden, protecting the crew but overseeing the brig as well. I thus intend to interact with antags as security a bit more, and be antag myself a bit less with it.

 

How would you rate your role-playing ability?

I still hate “rating” myself as it is by definition biaised. I however enjoy myself playing non-human minds and making fun scenes out of interactions that cam come from them. When the situation gets tense, especially in medical, I tend to be more gameplay-focused, but I am working to correct this.

 

Notes: N/A

Edited August 19, 2022 by Gromnax
Adding more to Aigis' story

[The lancer]

Hello, sorry for the long wait. The issue here is that the character backstory is too small and doesn't say much about the character. Generally with these applications we like to see a character that has been "alive" for a bit so you can better describe their interactions with humans or other IPC, their experiences, and what they think. If you aren't going to play them and you have already thought of a backstory for the scrapper IPC you mentioned, I'd recommend writing their character story here instead, as it sounds inherently more interesting and can help us more. You can also expand the Z.I. character too if you want, it's up to you.

[The Stryker]

Quote

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

Can you expand more on this? Their treatment across the Spur, how would you differentiate a human mind from a robot mind, etc?

[Gromnax]

6 minutes ago, The Stryker said:

Can you expand more on this? Their treatment across the Spur, how would you differentiate a human mind from a robot mind, etc?

Hi! Thank you for your feedback. I have expanded the character's story as requested, and can provide another one if you think it is not quite enough.

 

For your question:

IPCs have a very different mind from humans. They are way more analytical, basing their actions on internal logic rather than emotions. First of all, they have a self-preservation doctrine that has priority over everything else, stopping them from putting their chassis in danger.

They rarely, if ever, show erratic behaviours like their human counterparts could. All human traits they might have would be mimicked. This is because no matter how complex their positronic brain are, they remain a machine in the end, and as such, can only act by taking in account causes and consequences.

Treatment of IPCs vary in the Spur, but they are generally very discriminated against. The worst place for them would probably be the Jargon Federation, which is still scarred by Glorsh-Omega's crimes. There, AI researches are completely forbidden and IPCs are illegals. Dominia would be ex-aequo as IPCs here are either deported or destroyed, and it is impossible to own one to gain dominian citizenship. IPCs can not gain the Sol citizenship either.

If self-owned, they can gain citizenship from other nations, however this does not guarantee them to be equals with organics. They are often settled in IPC-only ghettos, and violence against them is not unheard of. If they are paid, their pay is often inferior to their biological counterparts (except vaurcae), and if they are own, they need to buy themselves back to gain their freedom. This isn't an easy or fair task either however, as their owner is free to set the price higher every time it is reached, effectively keeping their hand on the chassis. An IPC whom manages to buy their freedom is often, if not always, completely broke afterwards.

There are some factions made exclusively (or almost) of IPCs. Besides the barely known Purpose, which isolates itself from the rest of Spur, there are the Golden Deep, an ultra capilatist merchant organisation settled, besides other places, on Pactolus and Midaion. Ceres' Lance, a paramilitary organisation made of IPCs hunting rogue robots, is supposed to be independant, but is financed by NanoTrasen. Finally, there is a religion that condones IPCs and see them as the next step in evolution, as holy creatures : the Trinary perfection.

 

These are the most important points I can think of now.

[The lancer]

Accepted