forum "And it became Human, in most ways that Mattered" // OxO // Closed

Started May 06, 2023 by @ElderGod-Icefire

tune

Alexi Shokov created the first real automatons. Robots. AIs. He was the pioneer of the industry, creating 25 different versions. He created the Abels, handymen who could do nearly anything. He created the Bravos, bodyguard models. Charlies and Deltas, and Kirins, military grade war machines. They all looked the same. Male models had either dark hair, or a bland blond color, and a fit looking body. Females have longer hair and a fit, feminine body. All have the same lifeless dark eyes. They have two basic rules: they cannot harm their owner, and they cannot harm Alexi.

Then Alexi announced he was going to stop with the model Yamaha, a musical model. There would be no "Z". Well, what if that wasn't true?

Zev. Model Z of Shokov's robots. The first to have true AI. The first to have, maybe, the beginnings of a soul. The ability to become human. But the public doesn't know of him. Has no idea he exists. He is the only one, and he has been drifting in space, alone, for years. Marooned in an accident, he has no idea if Alexi Shokov is alive or dead, or what state the world is in. You see, there was a war going on between the seven colonized planets. Four against three. The Shokov robots were being used on both sides. Alexi's ship was shot at, and while the human crew was able to get away, Zev was left behind in the destroyed hulk of a ship. He can't leave, and he wonders how long he will drift in space. Then one day, a human pilot crashes their ship into his, and they must work together to get away, while he tries to hide everything going on about him. Free thought and ideas such as he has, are very frowned upon.

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The war hasn't ended. It has gone on for years, as the robots are produced endlessly. There are humans fighting robots, robots fighting humans. Devastation and carnage everywhere. That is the world your character has grown up in.
The planets are: Earth, Corinth, Vair, Solail, Grinter, Horath, and Reyn. Earth is Earth. Corinth was the first one civilized/colonized, and is very similar to Earth. Vair is primarily a mining world. Solail is a science and engineering works. Grinter is agriculture. Horath is a lawless place, and the main center of the underworld and illegal activities. As such, it doesn't take a huge part in the war, but is counted among the four. Reyn is a "paradise", that only the rich can currently afford to live on.

The Alliances:
The four:

• Earth, Corinth, Reyn, and Horath

The three:
Vair, Solail, Grinter.

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In case it was not clear, I will be Zev, and you would be the human pilot that finds him. I'm leaving you pretty free to decide your character's backstory, so have fun with that :) also, this would be an eventual romance between Zev and your character

Rules:

• All of andrew (Our Supreme Lord and Overseer)'s rules apply
• Descriptive! I forgive most spelling and grammar mistakes pretty easily, but I really need a descriptive partner. Also, replies should be at least three to four sentences, preferably
• This will likely feature some dark themes, so please be aware with that and let me know if you have any triggers you would prefer to avoid
• Any smut will be taken to PMs or faded to black, depending upon your comfort level
• I reserve the right to say no

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Temps will be posted once someone joins

(Thumbs-up)
(Here’s the sample. My replies generally vary in length, but I try to at least have a decent paragraph. And then, sometimes I write an entire page or two, lol)

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Phalakros glanced out the window of his cottage. He was at the edge of the city, and on the edge of the floating island. It didn’t bother him though, he was actually quite fond of heights.

As he admired the distant green land below, pondering what hid within it, a knock sounded on the door. He jumped up with a gasp, looking to the door.

Cautiously moving to the window next to the door, he peeked out. He didn’t recognize the woman waiting for him.

She knocked again, and he jumped once more. Phalakros took a deep breath and opened the door.

“Yes?”

“Are you Phalakros, an initiate in the Guild of Exploration?”the woman asked.

“Y… yes.”

“Good. Here is a letter from the Guildmasters. Read it and reply within a day’s time,”the woman said, handing him a sealed note.

Phalakros took the letter and nodded. The woman left without another word.

He gently shut the door and breathed deeply again, trying hard to avoid thinking about his shaking hands. He slowly calmed down, then sat down and opened the letter.

It was indeed from the Guildmasters. They were offering him his first expedition. The expedition would be searching for a legendary treasure hidden on the surface, a lost relic from ages ago.

Phalakros breathed deeply once again, but this time to contain his excitement. He had done it! He had finally earned a place on an expedition! He wondered if Lucitius, wherever he was, would be proud.

Phalakros quickly packed his supplies, which honestly wasn’t much, and headed for the Guild’s headquarters.

Name:
Nickname(s):
Age: (between like, 20 and 24)
Gender and Sexuality:

Looks:
Clothes:

Personality:
Backstory:
Home Planet:
Theme Song(s)(?):
Other:

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Name: Zev (no last name, but if asked would say "Shokov")
Nickname(s): n/a
Age: looks about 23; has existed for 34 years, but 30 of those were spent drifting alone on the ship
Gender and Sexuality: uses he/him pronouns, sexuality is unknown

Looks: Zev does not have the standard body model of other androids, hence why he does not at first appear to be one. He looks perfectly human, standing at 6'1", with a body somewhere between a rectangle and an inverted triangle. He looks fit and in-shape, though this more due to design than any conscious decision on his part. He has caramel brown hair, which is about three inches long all around, with curtain bangs that part in the middle. His face is almost perfectly symmetrical; just enough so that to most people, it almost sets off alarm bells, especially when combined with the flat stare that he tends to do, since, as an android, he does not have the little, physical tics that most people have. He has pale blue eyes, which, while pale enough to be unusual, are not pale enough to seem inhuman. He is white, and rather pale, without any appearance of a tan or freckles. The most unusual feature about him is a scar-like seam in the center of his left palm, where the "skin" on his hand was cut and peeled back so that repairs could be made. This seam has been made worse over the years, as he is constantly pulling it back. The wrist is damaged, and he does not have the supplies for a permanent repair, so is constantly making small fixes to keep it in working order.
Clothes: Has a limited selection of clothes available to him right now, and as a result is usually in a plain t-shirt and utility pants, and is usually barefoot, since he didn't want to wear his shoes out.

Personality: Zev is calm and thoughtful, and logical to a fault. Has a tendency to be a stickler for technicalities and the exact things, rather than approximates or inaccurate statements. As a result, he can come across as a know-it-all, especially in conversations about things that he knows quite a lot of. He has the programming basics of all the models that came before him, and so has all of that baseline knowledge on a huge variety of topics.
Backstory: Zev's earliest memory is of his "brain" being finished and hearing Alexei saying "beautiful". After that, he does not remember anything until his first true activation. He had about four years of "normalcy" under Alexei's wing until one day, the ship they were traveling in, the Daedalus, ran into trouble. The human crew, including Alexei, made it out, but in the commotion, Zev was abandoned. He has been drifting alone in space since then, with no way of piloting the Daedalus, as the ship's cockpit requires a human bioprint to enter the door, and Zev does not have a human bioprint.
Home Planet: Earth
Theme Song(s)(?):
Other: Is not visibly an android, and people can't tell he is one unless they are told that he is

(He’s cool. I like him, grin)

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Name: Amelia Emerson
Nickname(s): Captain Emma Ice-Catcher (her alias), Heartbreaker (Tricky Skippers Codename)
Age: 24 years
Gender and Sexuality: Female, Heterosexual

Looks: 5’10”, 178 lbs, has Heterochromia (right eye is grey, left eye is amber), long, thick black hair that she often keeps braided so it’s out of her face. She is white-skinned, with a slight tan from past welding sunburns. She has a curvaceous hourglass figure that is both stout and supple. She has long, athletic legs. Her bottom jaw is metal, extending slightly up into her cheeks. Her left arm and tongue are cybernetic. Her tongue can stretch to three feet long, and appears to be a strange mix of metal and flesh. Her arm, from the elbow down, is clearly mechanical, and her hand has the strength to crush bone. She’s also able to make her fingers becomes claw-like during a fight or some other stressful situation. Her left shoulder blade and the bones in her upper arm were converted to metal when her arm was being replaced, though she was never sure why. She has a prominent knife scar running vertically from just below her right ear, down her neck and collarbone, to end just below her breast.
Heroforge pic
Clothes: She typically wears a simple blue blouse, black pants, tall black boots, and a long, flowing, black coat. She also keeps two daggers sheathed on her hips, and has a pistol stashed in a boot. She sometimes carries her rifle on her back.

Personality: She’s a highly independent loner with trust issues, a ferocious temper, and a vindictive streak. However, she is actually a very shy and indecisive sweetheart that has become jaded over the years because of too much tragedy and heartbreak. All she really wants is to have someone she can trust by her side, who will support her and fight by her side no matter where they go, or what situation they end up in. She’s an excellent pilot and mechanic, and likes to fiddle with and modify ship engines. She also likes to paint in her free time, when she’s not out pirating. She has occasional nightmares about her childhood and Maxim, her ex.
Backstory: When she was a child, a fiery explosion killed her family and nearly killed her. Her jaw had been almost ripped off and she’d lost her lower left arm. She remembers a strange man taking her in and caring for her, who sent her to a hospital to get her arm and jaw fixed, and who often gave her trinkets from his travels. Among those gifts were the two daggers she still keeps with her. As an adolescent, she was kidnapped, and her adoptive father killed. She eventually escaped the kidnappers, never learning why they had taken her, and discovered that she was in a city. She wandered the streets as an urchin, until a gang of pirates that called themselves the Tricky Skippers took her in and taught her their trade. She stayed with the Tricky Skippers until her twenties, then left after having a violent fight with Maxim, the leader and her former boyfriend/lover (that’s how she got the big scar). She then went out on her own, becoming a solo mercenary/pirate and exploring the cosmos at her leisure.
Home Planet: Horath
Theme Song(s)(?):
Other: Owns a small, black ship she calls the Pygmy.
—If she gets hit by a stout EMP, it’ll short out her cybernetic parts and cause her to pass out. Though, even a weak EMP will give her a migraine, at the least.

(I'm going to start with the moment of impact, essentially)

Zev had been floating in space for 30 years, 8 months, four days, and approximately twelve hours. The cockpit of the Daedalus required a human bioprint to open, and without one, he could not get in. Without getting in, he could not pilot the ship away. So, he had been stuck, drifting, waiting, for decades. He had long ago turned off the life support and gravity in order to conserve the fuel, leaving only the bare minimum heat running in order to keep his joints from locking up. In those thirty years, he had watched, read, and listened to every piece of media stored on the ship's systems at least twice over, had explored every inch of the ship, categorized every item on-board, sealed off the damaged compartments and sections of the ship (the first year or so had been spent doing that), figured out the name of every star visible from the windows, and anything else that he could find to fill his time with.

As he was not human, he did not feel boredom, per se, but he did find that simply waiting did not…satisfy him. Though putting words to that was something he struggled to do. Something buried deep in his programming rebelled at the idea of naming whatever stopped him from simply waiting like any other android would have done.

The Daedalus, from the outside, looked like almost exactly what it was. A derelict wreck, nearly abandoned and left to drift the endless expanse of space. It had once, yes, been a big, beautiful vessel, and still carried some faint traces of that beauty, of the handiwork that had gone into the design. But now, it was a wreck. The only thing of value inside was Zev himself, which was not obvious from the outside. The ship rocked and shuddered as impact was made, another ship having come out of nowhere and slamming into the side. The sudden movement put Zev on alert, and he moved to a computer panel in order to boot the life support and gravity up; if there was a human aboard this other vessel, they would need to be able to breathe. Then he made his way towards the impact site, slowly drifting down to the floor as the gravity took effect.

(Sorry! This took a bit longer than I thought, lol. Plus, the last few days have been busier than usual)

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Amelia, or Emma, as she was currently calling herself, was cruising along a rarely used shipping route on her way to her next target. There was supposedly a large shipment of ship parts heading heading out of Solail, and Emma was in the mood to make a few ‘free’ upgrades on the Pygmy. Particularly since one of her ship scanners kept glitching. It was driving her crazy.

The route she was taking was a bit farther out than most of the main shipping lanes, but it was angled just right for her to catch her prey well before it neared the safety of the next planet. That was, if nothing went wrong on her way to her planned ambush site.

Unfortunately for Emma, something did go wrong. Her scanner decided to glitch again. With a frustrated growl, she put the Autopilot on and bent down to see if she could reach the wires connecting the scanner. As she did so, there was a loud crash just before she was flung forward into the console. The Pygmy came to an abrupt stop, and alarms started to ping, signaling that there had just been a collision. Had the scanner been working, said collision would’ve been avoided.

With a pained groan, Emma got up, wincing at the ache from a quickly forming bruise on the side of her face. Her right arm was also a bit sore, but it seemed she’d managed to avoid any serious injuries, thankfully.

She looked up, glancing at the large screen that showed her what was in front of the ship, and gasped. The Pygmy had crashed into another ship! And, not just any ship, but a derelict. Maybe this was why the shipping route was so rarely used now. Too many wrecks. Maybe…

Emma sighed and moved to the exit chamber of her ship, getting dressed in her spacesuit and grabbing a toolkit she kept specifically for spacewalks. Then, after double-checking herself, she opened the door and stepped out into space.

There were handholds along the sides of the Pygmy, as Emma often came out while in space, so she easily made her way to the point of impact. She could probably get her ship out and patch her up pretty quickly, but as she eyed the wreck, she couldn’t help her curiosity. And, conveniently, she had crashed near an entryway into the old ship.

Emma made her way to the door and used her tools to get the door open. After stepping in, she managed to shut the door, and was surprised to find the gravity and some other systems still worked.

Emma shook her head in confusion when the door to the rest of the ship opened, then headed inside. Looking around as she walked down a hall, Emma studied the design of the ship, wondering if anyone was still alive in here. A quick scan of the oxygen levels in the place proved that the life support systems were still quite functional, another surprise.

Emma still kept her helmet on, just in case. She also reached for her daggers, now fairly certain that someone was indeed alive here. She only hoped they could listen to reason, because she was not in a killing mood, and she was still curious about the ship.

(no worries!)

The Daedalus, despite its damaged parts and the wear of age, had once been a beautiful, state-of-the-art vessel, and even now it still bore the echoes of what it had once been. The lights were not all on, only every three was, in order to conserve power. Zev had gone with little to no light for years, for that very reason. If he did not need to see– which he often did not, able to navigate the ship by memory –then there was no reason to have the lights on, and waste precious power.

He could hear footsteps, but was slightly unsure as to the best way to approach this. He was not visibly an android, and chances were that whoever this was would assume he was a human…which put him in a bit of trouble. The Daedalus had been floating for 30 years, and yet his body looked about 25 at the oldest. But then, perhaps this person would not know what the Daedalus was, or how long it had been floating about. Most likely not. After all, he doubted that Alexei would have advertised what had happened.

He moved down the hallway, finally moving into Emma's vision. When he saw the daggers in her hands, he put his hands up slightly in what he knew was a universal human gesture of surrender and harmlessness. He would likely survive if she did stab him, it would just…raise a lot of questions that he was not sure he would be able to answer very well. He did not yet speak, unsure what language she spoke.