Ashe
Overview
Section titled “Overview”Cheerful and energetic, the overwhelmingly positive mechanical fox is always willing to bring a smile to others’ faces. Though her life is artificial, and though she, herself, has seen a fair amount of tragedy, she is devoted to the protection of others as best her little mechanical body and digital consciousness can allow.
Amidst her code, there are hints of a little something deeper…as though her AI base were coded from a living brain, though in ways considerably cruder than biological brain transfers of today, but such secrets and memories are locked away in corrupted and corroded parts of her mind that she has no intention to touch.
Even so, she is known to lock up when overloaded with stimuli; if it’s possible for AI to experience trauma, that appears to be what she’s doing. One has to wonder if it’s a result of her conscience running into a reality of the ship she once lost, long ago…
Appearance
Section titled “Appearance”Ashe takes the appearance of an anthropomorphic, bipedal fox, roughly four-feet tall and with friendly eyes and vibrant, realistically soft fur and skin. She prefers to wear clothing like ‘humans’, although she was never seemingly programmed to have a fashion sense. Physiologically, she acts considerably LIKE a fox, adoring pets, wagging her tail, using her ears to listen, even sniffing. And though her body cannot process food, she often lingers near it; she WILL run off with your sausages and turn it into a game of chase to get them back.
For her small size, her body is shockingly dense, perhaps given to the older, heavier components her internal workings and skeleton are made of. Likewise, her palms are partially segmented, designed to open up around the palm to shoot bursts of air. Her index fingers also contain a hidden, adjustable connector drive to manually connect to ship systems.
Bot Functions
Section titled “Bot Functions”Entertainment/Companionship
Section titled “Entertainment/Companionship”Ashe reflexively seeks other organic living creatures to ensure they are both happy and healthy, things it can ostensibly measure. While this means that her attitude can be somewhat grating at times, she does appear to be able to ‘sense’ others’ discomfort and depression, and will occasionally simply be a silent body or a comforting voice or a pettable head if needed.
Defensive Combat
Section titled “Defensive Combat”Ashe’s body is capable of remarkable feats of strength for its small size, able to heft something roughly the size and shape of an I-beam with moderate strain. Her arm is equipped with a compressed air cannon that exits through her palm, allowing her to subdue enemies with pressure, and her metallic exoskeleton is dense enough to ignore weaker ballistics, and resist stronger ones.
Computer Interfacing
Section titled “Computer Interfacing”Ashe can connect to any device with memory banks and information storage, and especially networking, though such connections need to be made manually through some sort of connector device (or, in a pinch, directly with certain high-voltage wiring. Though she is poor at hacking, she is good at ‘nicely’ asking for security access and impeccable at repairing issues within a ship’s network.
History
Section titled “History”Space travel was, once you were within the second or third month of non-stop travel in the direction of the infiniteness of space, on a whole, boring. It was like a road trip stretched out ad infinitum; even with the fastest engines and greatest space folding techniques imaginable, it could still take an incredibly long time to get from point A to B. Thus, recreation was incredibly important for initial settlers to New Athens.
Ashe was one such result of transport ship attempts, creating a recreational, AI-driven ‘friend’ to both serve as a persistently cheery presence on a ship, as well as equipped with security functionality to protect those that intended to harm its passengers. There were rumors, of course; in those days, her intelligence was remarkably advanced for an AI of her station. Was she being remotely controlled? Was she designed off of the engram of a living person’s mind? To Ashe, even if she knew the answer, she was dedicated to ensuring she would become ‘humanity’s ally’ in the future!
When her ship, Regalia-X450, faltered, its systems falling offline one by one due to a malfunction deep within the computer systems, Ashe was unable to fix it. As best she tried to keep the passengers safe, few of the escape pods launched, and unable to recharge her systems, she watched as those she swore to protect disappeared one after the other, until her systems flickered off completely… When the RecRunners located the Regalia-X450, a mere million miles from Polis, they found the de-activated and time-worn Ashe, and repaired and reactivated her to full functionality. Though a few of her memories were faulty from a decaying battery state, she was amazed to see that the world she wished to bring people to (and secretly wanted to visit) was thriving, as were the systems around her.
As such, she owes her life to the RecRunners, and in a fluffy body with more modern tech, she hopes someday to actually get to step foot on a real planet and experience the sensory data that her passengers never got to see.
Affiliation(s)
Section titled “Affiliation(s)”A group of space salvagers really, these people gather the scraps of society, broken old ships, space debris, dangerous old drives and reactors, anything left unattended that they can salvage and sell. Most of them are seen as space-rats, people abandoned and left to live in the void. The best of them know ships better than the real designers, the bravest can outfly any pirate.