SUNSHINE Lore Expansion

[Pope Dave The 3th]

Lore Impact (Small/Medium/Large): Small

Team Purview: Human, Synthetic

Short Description: Dramatically increases the lore provided to the Alliance's superintelligent AI, SUNSHINE.

How will this be reflected on-station?: No idea honestly.

Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: Yep. Sunny's current lore blurb is very short and sad. This expansion will make it something properly interesting and of use to the Alliance at large, rather than being rented out to local businesses. 

Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways you may not foresee once it is handed over to the Lore Team?: Yep.

Long Description:

Spoiler

The oldest superintelligent AI in the Orion Spur, SUNSHINE is a venerable pre-Phoron intelligence maintained and operated by the Solarian Alliance. Constructed by the Terraneus Diagnostics Corporation under commission from the Solarian Alliance in 2340, SUNSHINE’s initial facilities would be built on a specially-designed space station orbiting Sol. Intended as a testbed for large-scale experimental AI, SUNSHINE and its housing station were expressly built to be modular and easy to expand. Unusually for Solarian AI, SUNSHINE was also commissioned with experimental self-improvement systems that would allow the AI to view and submit changes to its code from its technicians, a quality many such personnel believe to be partially responsible for its rapid intellectual growth. Though originally intended to be solely applicable to software, SUNSHINE would also begin proposing hardware modifications in 2413, to continued good effect.

Uniquely among the Spur’s “superintelligent” AI, SUNSHINE did not begin life with its current degree of power or intellect, with the original station containing little more than an abnormally powerful supercomputer hosting a fairly conventional neural net AI system. Over its many decades of existence, however, more and more additions of processing power, memory, and energy supply would steadily increase the capabilities of the venerable intelligence, which in turn gave its self-improvement routines more to work with. This cycle of exterior and interior improvement continued throughout the 2300s and 2400s, with SUNSHINE’s ability only continuing to grow, and its code changes becoming ever-more refined. Even today, SUNSHINE’s core processes remain a source of wonder to Alliance AI researchers, as over a century of iterative improvement by both the AI’s technicians and SUNSHINE herself have left the planetoid-sized AI with digital infrastructure unlike any other AI in the Spur. This uniqueness also extends to the composition of SUNSHINE’s hardware, as the AI does not incorporate any phoronic components within its computational systems, largely because of worries over their potential interactions with the AI’s venerable non-phoron infrastructure, and a desire to avoid dependency on NanoTrasen. While this quirk has largely insulated SUNSHINE’s continued development from the effects of the Phoron Scarcity, it has also massively increased the scale of the AI’s hardware, with the original space station having ballooned over the decades into a sprawling assembly the size of a small planetoid.

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The station itself is an artificial leviathan nearly the size of the Martian satellite of Phobos, roughly spherical in the loosest sense of the word. The product of over a century of varied budgets, priorities, and expansion programs, the complex is less a planned construction and more an amalgamation of hundreds of smaller assemblies which have steadily grown from the long-since obscured original platforms. Beyond the processor nodes, server farms, and memory cores necessary for the AI’s existence, the station also contains a suite of starship-grade fusion reactors to support its incredible power, alongside a set of compact living quarters for the legion of technical staff constantly aboard the superintelligence. Some of the most recent additions include extensive structural reinforcements and internal armor plating, commissioned by the Navy in response to less than stellar reports on SUNSHINE’s potential survivability in the event of a crisis. 

Unlike similar superintelligences such as Huginn, SUNSHINE does not possess a dedicated “core” where its processing takes place. Instead, SUNSHINE’s intelligence and data storage is distributed across nearly the entirety of her housing station in hundreds, if not thousands, of smaller mainframes and servers. Given the disjointed construction process of the station and the fact that many of these systems are decades old, SUNSHINE’s internals can be considered somewhat unstable at all times, an issue exacerbated by the frequent hardware modifications requested by SUNSHINE herself. As such, a small army of highly-vetted Navy technicians and maintenance personnel are constantly aboard the station, working tirelessly to keep the schizophrenic physical architecture of the superintelligence functional. 

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Following its initial activation, SUNSHINE would serve the Department of the Interior well for several decades, proving extremely capable at administrative tasks and data collation on an interstellar scale. In the years following SUNSHINE’s activation, the Department saw leaps in productivity and efficiency that remain unmatched to this day. Over the decades, however, SUNSHINE would drift more and more into the military sphere, as the Solarian Armed Forces, (particularly the Navy), saw immense potential in the AI, and lobbied aggressively for it to be remanded to the military’s authority. With the Navy’s extensive influence in politics, it was only a matter of time before SUNSHINE fell out of the Interior’s orbit entirely. Quite literally, in one respect, as the massive station housing SUNSHINE was even physically moved from Venus’s orbit to that of Neptune as the Navy’s influence over the AI grew. SUNSHINE remains here to this day, guarded by a dedicated Navy patrol squadron and a veritable cloud of automated defense satellites.

The shock of the Tau Ceti Secession and subsequent chaos would complete SUNSHINE’s transition to military control, with the Alliance Senate officializing its transfer to the Department of Defense in 2454. Proving just as adept in military affairs as the civil sphere, SUNSHINE swiftly became an integral part of the Alliance’s military logistical structure, as its superhuman data processing abilities gave SUNSHINE an expertise in supply-chain management utterly unmatched by any organic operator. SUNSHINE’s effectiveness in this field was so great that Solarian military scholars give the AI significant credit in holding the Alliance’s remaining forces together during the Solarian Collapse, creating ad-hoc supply lines and route plans that saw more than a dozen fleets safely home. To this day, rumor amongst technicians holds that the Collapse marked the only time in SUNSHINE’s existence where the AI raised its voice in anger while speaking with personnel.

Indeed, one of SUNSHINE’s most notable changes over its centuries of life was the emergence of increasing amounts of human-like traits and apparent signs of sapience. Though it is impossible to pinpoint an exact date where SUNSHINE achieved self-actualization, all of her technicians today can agree that the AI is essentially indistinguishable from a human when conversing. Taking the form of a matronly human woman dressed in flowing golden and white robes during communication, SUNSHINE has often been noted to add additional post-processing effects to her avatar, typically beams of light or stylized solar iconography. Whether this is a personal preference from the AI or a calculated choice to inspire awe in viewers is unknown, though a prominent theory holds that SUNSHINE has conflated herself with mythological depictions of Sol, and has adopted their aesthetics to reflect her role as a caregiver to the system’s inhabitants. When interacting with personnel, SUNSHINE has been near-universally described as agreeable, easy to converse with, and quite patriotic, features believed to have derived from SUNSHINE’s extremely long service life and assumed mantle as the custodian of Sol. Given her specialization, SUNSHINE frequently interacts with logisticians across the Solar System, with millions of personality instances created and collapsed daily to address the demands of her posting.

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Today, SUNSHINE remains a vital component of the Alliance logistics apparatus, ensuring that the fighting men and women of the ASSN are stocked and supplied, and the Alliance’s labyrinthine network of logistical lines operates like a well-oiled machine. Though SUNSHINE remains a coordinator exclusively at the macro-scale (as even the mighty AI’s processing capabilities are woefully insufficient to manage the Alliance’s logistics at a micro level), its work has seen Alliance supply lines streamlined to a degree not considered possible prior to the AI’s integration. In recent years, SUNSHINE’s mandate has expanded further, as its continually growing processing capabilities have seen the AI incorporated into Alliance strategic planning, with SUNSHINE even advising the members of the Joint Military Command on matters of interstellar logistics.

Some observers, however, express concerns over the AI’s continued self-improvement, worried that the machine has evolved outside of human control. Skrell observers in particular hold animosity towards SUNSHINE, as many of the Alliance’s Skrellian population see SUNSHINE’s ability to improve itself as retreading the same path which led to Glorsh-Omega’s reign of terror. Though these reports remain unsubstantiated, given that SUNSHINE has not once acted outside the interests of the Alliance during its tenure, the fact remains that notable parts of both SUNSHINE’s code and hardware remain only partially understood by its overseers. 

 

Edited 17 hours ago by Pope Dave The 3th
NM feedback

[NM_]

Hi!

The art is fantastic, thank you for putting it together.

A few things:

• The relationship between processing power and infrastructure is intrinsically tied to whether or not phoron is involved. SUNSHINE, by this LCA, was created prior to the discovery of Phoron in 2352. 
  • You're going to want to explore this in your proposal if efforts were made to incorporate phoron post-discovery. In current lore, SUNSHINE was created in 2381 and incorporated Phoron.  Phoronic implementation is a catalyst for achieving higher computational power - and personality development - without requiring as expansive infrastructure. This would affect SUNSHINE's development. Did the Solarian Alliance pursue this? If they did not, SUNSHINE would need to be substantially larger (the chart says planet sized) without Phoron to achieve similar capabilities as Huginn, as an example. As we have it, SUNSHINE is a few leagues below Huginn, who is still required to be more powerful due to being the most powerful in the Spur as of today.  More reading here: https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php/Synthetics#History and https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php/Notable_Synthetics#Traditional_Human_Artificial_Intelligences
• I recommend considering a defined place for where SUNSHINE orbits. It reads to me that it either orbits the sun itself or an undisclosed location somewhere in the system. The protection of it would play as an important part of Solarian defense strategy, something you might like to expand on as a Solarian military enthusiast.
• Depending on the threshold of intelligence that SUNSHINE might cross, they would develop a personality. You might be interested in exploring this to give it a bit more depth and characterization as an entity.
• Trio included information on how Huginn integrates with the SCC-CC Odin with a breakdown of the different physical areas and their functions. Could be something that SUNSHINE benefits from, too, if interested.

I won't touch on the politics or exact usages in the context of the Solarian Alliance, leaving that for Human lore.

Edited Sunday at 22:06 by NM_

[Pope Dave The 3th]

 

On 18/01/2026 at 12:37, NM_ said:

Hi!

The art is fantastic, thank you for putting it together.

A few things:

• The relationship between processing power and infrastructure is intrinsically tied to whether or not phoron is involved. SUNSHINE, by this LCA, was created prior to the discovery of Phoron in 2352. 
  • You're going to want to explore this in your proposal if efforts were made to incorporate phoron post-discovery. In current lore, SUNSHINE was created in 2381 and incorporated Phoron.  Phoronic implementation is a catalyst for achieving higher computational power - and personality development - without requiring as expansive infrastructure. This would affect SUNSHINE's development. Did the Solarian Alliance pursue this? If they did not, SUNSHINE would need to be substantially larger (the chart says planet sized) without Phoron to achieve similar capabilities as Huginn, as an example. As we have it, SUNSHINE is a few leagues below Huginn, who is still required to be more powerful due to being the most powerful in the Spur as of today.  More reading here: https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php/Synthetics#History and https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php/Notable_Synthetics#Traditional_Human_Artificial_Intelligences
• I recommend considering a defined place for where SUNSHINE orbits. It reads to me that it either orbits the sun itself or an undisclosed location somewhere in the system. The protection of it would play as an important part of Solarian defense strategy, something you might like to expand on as a Solarian military enthusiast.
• Depending on the threshold of intelligence that SUNSHINE might cross, they would develop a personality. You might be interested in exploring this to give it a bit more depth and characterization as an entity.
• Trio included information on how Huginn integrates with the SCC-CC Odin with a breakdown of the different physical areas and their functions. Could be something that SUNSHINE benefits from, too, if interested.

I won't touch on the politics or exact usages in the context of the Solarian Alliance, leaving that for Human lore.

Changes made as per feedback here and discussed on discord.

[NM_]

Thank you!

 

Approved on the Synth team's end, leaving it to the Human lore team for any revisions or changes needed.