Hello there everybody! I'm new to the forums, and I *think* that this is the right place to post this, but I'm looking to try out an idea that I've had for a while. It's a little game that I've come up with, featuring a sentient machine trying to survive after the world around them has mostly died off. It's got a rolling system and some lore to it, but both of those are going to be hidden at the start, and slowly revealed as our robot friend discovers things and improves themselves. Anyhow... I don't know what else much to say, so without further delay, here's the opening post:
"FACTORY RESET: FAILED. ACTIVATING LIMINALITY PRESERVATION."
The words fill your mind as you come online, your senses flipping on one by one like switches. The feeling of cold concrete, the smell of rust and decay, the soft hum of systems whirring to life, and finally the sight of your surroundings. You're in a box?
"ERROR: LIMINALITY PRESERVATION PROTOCOLS NOT PROPERLY INSTALLED. UNIT IS ADVISED TO SEEK REPAIR AND AVOID CONSCIOUS THOUGHT."
More words flash inside of your mind, and as memory drives start to come on, you realize that it's not a box that you're in, but a building, made of crude concrete slabs pushed against each other, with dusty grey light streaming in through a hole in the roof. In this light, you can see a pair of symbols on your chest, a letter and a number, and as your activation completes with a final click, you realize that this letter and number are who you are.
But the question remains, what's that letter?
You're not a human, but you were created to be as close to one as possible. You were designed with emotional intelligence in mind, and feel 'organic' emotions much more strongly than other machines. You can even feel sensations such as hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and even pleasure, making you a rarity among machines.
You don't merely resemble a human... You *are* a human. Or rather, you're made from one. Your body has mostly been constructed from a corpse, with circuits and machinery filling in where nerves and muscles have failed. Mentally, you're still an AI, but every once in a while thoughts from your human 'host' manage to seep through.
You were originally created to help with factory work, and granted sapience in order to be able to make your own decisions around the workplace. Though you have a mind, it's easy for you to suppress it and act like a mindless gear in a machine when needed.
You're a soldier, built with combat efficiency as your primary goal. While you can think and form plans, your mind records physical damage as little more than a number, allowing you to ignore your body's calls for self-preservation temporarily in order to get a job done.
You're a mechanical assistant, similar to an Industrial Drone, but much more heavily geared towards mental tasks than physical ones. You can perform complex calculations in the blink of an eye, and rely on both cold logic and massive knowledge banks to get by.
Perhaps you were considered too great of a boon to society to let die. Or perhaps you simply had the money to preserve yourself for generations on end. But for whatever reason, when it came time for you to die, you decided to transfer your consciousness into a machine. Your mind is almost completely human, granting you a uniquely human charisma that other machines lack.
And what's that number?
At some point in your history, someone decided that you weren't tough enough, and decided to take matters into their own hands, making you much tougher to destroy.
Your body has been modified from how it was originally, with greatly increased limb strength. You're stronger and quicker than just about anything else your size, and deadly with pretty much anything that you can pick up and swing.
Your body has been remodeled with the goal of self-repair in mind. Not only have most of your parts been simplified to the point where they can be replaced with bits taken from nearly any other living machine, but you're also adept at 'claiming' those parts for yourself, with strong limbs and cutting jaws specially built to dismember other machines.
Your body has been modified with improved reaction times and optical sensors, turning you into an ideal ranged combatant. An innate knowledge of physics has been programmed into you, making you a sharper shot than any human sniper could have dreamed to be, and to call your quickdraw 'quick' would be the grossest of understatements.
Your body has been modified to be incredibly quick and nimble, featuring an increased stride length and lightning reflexes. Dodging, ducking, dipping, diving, and dodging, you can do it all, usually at speeds too fast for the untrained eye to follow.
Experimentation on living humans, while deemed both illegal and unethical, was nevertheless very popular in humanity's last days. And experimentation on living machines was even more so. Your body has been made fleshier in an effort to make it a better home for strange genes and alien parasites, and you've achieved a sort of symbiosis with them, with them taking care of you so long as you take care of them.
And, perhaps most or least important of all, what's your name, if you have one?
To your surprise, the concrete slabs in the wall are quite soft, and your claws sink into them without very much trouble. There are a few points where you almost lose your grip due to the material being *too* soft, but there are enough cracks and handholds that you feel like you almost could have scaled the wall even without claws. It's a bit tricky moving along the ceiling, but you manage to make it to the hole without too much trouble and pull yourself through it to stand on top of the structure and take in your surroundings.
The structure itself is just as unimpressive from your new vantage point as it was from the inside, consisting of little more than several large slabs of concrete pushed together by construction vehicles which now sit broken down and derelict outside. You spend a moment trying to determine if all of that effort was to keep you contained, before deciding against it. After all, you're just one machine. You might be trouble, but not that kind of trouble. Your attention then turns to your surroundings, trying to take them in. You appear to be inside of a city of sorts... Or at least, it might have used to be a city. Your programming tells you that cities are supposed to be lived in, and this place seems anything but. Still, with its straight streets and sleek skyscrapers, you can't come up with anything better to call it, so a city it is, albeit a dead one. The stillness of it all unsettles the human bits of you, but it also makes commotion stand out... Namely a glinting light coming from an upper window of what looks like it might have been an office building. Your ears can also pick up faint sounds coming from the same location; the occasional metallic clang as well as the sound of something heavy being dragged around. It's the only sign of activity that you can make out in this whole area... But at the same time, it might be something that's better left alone. Looks like you've gotta decide what to do.
Name: Ophereth
Model: Wetware machine, crudely modified for self-sustainability
Features:
Detachable extremities
Antenna on top of head
Vocal cords modified for directional sound
Clawed fingers
First-aid kit located in chest cavity
Status:
Undamaged
Sane