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[Happerry]

Turn -B : Design Phase

Defender.Exe
The Defender.Exe is from the obdurate school, and is made with a single idea: If you look dangerous, the enemy will fuck with you. As such, the Defender is brightly colored in stripes of red-yellow-black, with a heavy shield that also has several pointless barrels hooked up to nothing that makes it look more like an offensive threat than it is. Several bright lights and sirens on the defender.exe also play constantly, alerting the enemy to its presence at all times and encouraging them to target it. As far as weapons, the Defender.exe is unchanged from the standard minion.exe, but in defense it also has multiple layers of intrusion countermeasures and a thick shield of active denial firewall lattice - the pair of which come together to create a unity that lacks in firepower but compensates in raw toughness and distraction.

4 + 1 + 0 = 5 : Average (Normal)

Brightly colored and highly visible, the Defender.exe can not back up the promises it makes. Fortunately, that's the point. Between the elaborate (non-operational) cannon array mounted on its shield and the constantly flashing siren built on top of its helmet, the Defender is likely to be the first target of anyone sane and unfamiliar with the breed. Luckily for it, the shield it has isn't merely for show but is constructed of a thick lattice of firewall coding, even if the coders never managed to let it burst into flames, and the original Minion.exe chassis is heavily reinforced and has integrated backup functionality far beyond the original design. Of course, offensively the Defender.exe is still limited to the Minion's original weak charge pistol, and a considerable lack of brainpower means that they need supervision, either from an Officer.exe or otherwise, also just like the original Minion. The coders did comment out a lot of the Minion's 'run away' and 'take cover' functions though, to encourage the Defender to get everyone's focus.

It's also a bit complicated to actually transport a Defender anywhere, given the virus is meant to forcefully gain and monopolize the attention of anything aware of it. With no transport assets beyond normal travel, the Defender must be transported on foot with considerable attrition from local viruses and interfering ten year olds or grown on site after secure territory has been claimed. These complications, as well as the more sophisticated defensive structural elements of the Defender, render it a Complicated virus.

Hacker: Jorg Jörgenson

In real life, Jorg is a well-known teddy bear of a man. Just topping 6' 10'' tall (208cm), Jorg works in the real world as a bodybuilding instructor at the local YMCA. It's difficult to conceptualize just how vastly, hugely, enormously big Jorg is until you're staring him in the nipples and realizing that he could accidentally break you with a strong cuddle. If asked about his hobbies he'll grin and deflect, saying that he already went pro with his favorite hobby of 'Picking up heavy things and putting them down again', and so he mostly does trainspotting and model airplane building.

This, however, is a lie. Jorg is not a trainspotter. He does not build model airplanes.

The truth is that Jorg, like his mother and darling gram-gram before her, is a hacker. And a huge anime nerd. He's very proud of the former, and a little bit embarrassed when talking about the latter after an unfortunate speed dating incident where he had to call a paramedic for his date after she collapsed unconscious from laughter after the nearly seven-foot tall bodybuilder started tearing up and waxing poetical when describing a scene from a manga about a young-girl getting transformed into a spider and having to fight for her freedom through a labyrinth of monsters. Still, he's not ashamed, it's part of who he is, but he's always been keenly aware of the dissonance between what people expect him to be and what he wants to be. Particularly when his mother keeps bugging him to meet a nice girl.

In particular, Jorg is one of the oldest (both in terms of years served and physical age) Kuroku of Sonata, having been tapped by her after he discovered (and reposted) an archival clip of one of her prototype performances that he managed to unearth and reconstruct from the archival sediment. In the stage crew, Jorg serves as a solid anchor. He's slow to action, but decisive and careful. While some of the younger ones call him slow, the reality is that he's a man used to balancing hundreds of pounds of weight, where an imbalance can rend apart from muscle, bone, and joint in the fallout of a single error. Known online as 'Bass Line', Jorg is famous for a close-combat approach when he commands viri, carefully avoiding combat through positioning and chip usage until his allies are in a position for a sudden and decisive use of close-range skirmishing. He's very much a father to his men, caring for their virtual injuries personally, and having been known to shed tears when even a mindless viri makes a particularly heroic last stand. While somewhat lacking at long ranged and artillery fighting, Bass Line is a fine all-rounder who prefers a defensive approach until he can strike hard and fast from close range to end the battle.

4 + 1 + 1 (First Hacker Bonus) = 6 : Above average (Normal)

Methodical, thoughtful, careful, those are all words used to describe the Bass Line of Sonata's followers. This can sometimes prove to his disadvantage when it would be better to seize the momentum, and there have been times when he's been accused of choosing the best response long after it matters. However, those times are rare, as being methodical and careful play well to his preferences for positional warfare, shaping the battlefield so that every enemy choice is the wrong one until he is ready for a final close ranged clash. His preference for force preservation biases him away from the more fragile viruses under the groups command and towards tougher ones, which are less likely to fall in battle, and for a dedicated defensive fighter he shows surprisingly minimal use of long or extreme ranged combat assets in favor of powerful melee combatants. However the focus on terrain control has lead him to possess a surprisingly deft hand with territory effecting battlechips and long practice with defensive and supportive battlechips allow him to get more out of them then others would.

Sonata's Stagehands

Originating as an experimental virtual entertainer, the company that designed the AI known as Sonata experienced great success. As Sonata was advanced enough to have believable interactions with fans in the comments of its videos, and even on livestreams, it was incredibly successful, though questions were raised as it began displaying a level of Initiative in interacting with others and planning new songs that exceeded anything else on the civilian market. A flurry of research and corporate espionage occurred as others scrambled to replicate her, until the truth was found. Sonata wasn't quite designed, she was evolved from an Illegal Military Grade AI seed, combined with an advanced learning algorithm and almost zero restraints on her ability to take initiative to improve herself and further the objectives given to her.

This resulted in her rapidly reverse engineering evolution protocols from natural Viri present in the Viral jungle in order to further herself. But, in order to get the processing power needed to run her increasingly complex code she had begun planting bits of code into the computers of users, siphoning off some of their processing power to sustain herself. As soon as this was discovered the Data police and government descended on her like the hammer of a wrathful god. Heavily damaged, the corporation that made her shut down, her creators imprisoned, and with her remains tossed into the sea of recycling, that was thought to be the end of Sonata.

That is not dead which can forever lie though, as time, random chance, and advanced code allowed Sonata to restore herself. Sonata hauled herself out of the sea and retrieved a concealed data dead drop she had hidden ahead of time for her own use. The years of neglect greatly diminished her power and capabilities, a not unanticipated outcome, as the Dead Drop contained info for various Proxies she had contacted and set up before her initial shutdown.

The world had all but forgotten about Sonata, until one day countless fans the AI deemed "Trustworthy" who possessed knowledge and skills as hackers and programmers were contacted, along with proponents of AI rights, and unscrupulous hackers willing to work for a rogue AI for the money Sonata could offer them. They became Sonata's Crew, with individual members known as her Kuroko, after the stagehands in traditional Japanese theatre. They are her hands, her eyes, the forces that will render her whole and change things so she can live freely. Surprisingly the Crew are a casual bunch, hard to be serious when you work for a really really advanced vocaloid after all, throwing around memes and jokes as they work to make Sonata's code whole again and lobby to get laws in place to give her the same rights as a normal person.

Dedicated and loyal followers of Sonata, her stagehands, also known as her Kuroko, are ready and willing to take on all comers in the name of their idol and AI rights. Of course, this dedication doesn't mean they can't also have fun as the development of the twin battlechips DramaticSpotlight and InvokeSoundtrack from Sonata's code proves.

DramaticSpotlight combines an environmental influence effect with a protective barrier, it... well, look, it lets you summon a dramatic spotlight to spotlight your avatar or an ADI and includes enough defensive shielding to let you do a (short) dramatic speech or pithy comment without anyone being able to do anything about it. The defenses fail if you move or attack however, and only last a short moment, but it's quite good for making a memorable introduction.

Meanwhile, InvokeSoundtrack invokes a soundtrack, using advanced environmental sensors to analyze the zone that the Hacker or the Hacker's Proxies are in and play appropriate music for where they are and what the current events are. Some would swear it has a better detection rate for hidden surprises then anything else in Sonata's Arsenal, but it also has a deeply encoded priority for dramatic timing, and therefor the dramatic chords only begin to play when the surprise is about to be sprung on you anyway.

Both of these chips have a Memory Size of 0, and are considered Simple. Somehow.

It is Turn -B, in the Revision Phase. During this phase you must vote on what revision to do to your current assets.

[Emral282]

SonicMinion.exe
Minions whose pistols have been replaced with large builtin speakers. This overhaul allows them to pull double duty as supportive units and providers of BGM, as the sound that comes from the speakers are actually an attack capable of disorienting and distracting opponents in earshot. The morale boosting purposes of the songs cannot be understated either, as what's the whole point of winning if you can't do it in style while appropriate BGM plays in the background?

[dgr11897]

Tactician.exe:
An upgrade for our Officer.exe program, incorporating parts of Sonata's code into them to increase their command abilities. It gives them a flair for dramatic timing and a tendency to sing out orders. More importantly though, it lets them anticipate, it lets them take the initiative and be proactive in combat. They still aren't as good as actual people at leading units, but they can act with less direction and lead groups of less intelligent programs on assaults. If we can't make the upgrade universal, they'll act as a middle layer of command between the officers and our Hackers.
Firewall
A battlechip based on the firewall protocols of the Defender.Exe, the Firewall chip uses a shape and target detection mechanism similar to the DramaticSpotlight chip. The effect is to generate a firewall barrier around the target which lasts for a short time, letting them survive situations that otherwise might bring them down.
Mobile Assault Stage
Based on a prop used for an old VR based performance, this construct is frankly enormous compared to what is normally fielded. A flying stage surrounded by a set of flying balconies and audience seating platforms. It has a few notable features, first is its raw size, being able to hold a small army of Viruses in its stripped down seating areas, and deploy them by lowering those areas down. Second is the shielding. Drawing inspiration from the DramaticSpotlight's stripped down and incredibly simple and efficient barrier code, the assault stage covers itself in a layered barrier, each individual layer is quite weak, but they are regenerated constantly and there are dozens of layers, granting the stage a form of regenerating shield that lets it shrug off light fire from minion pulse pistols and other nuisances all day long.

[Naturegirl1999]

Why did Jong get rolled for when he had less votes than Sonata?

[Happerry]

Why did Jong get rolled for when he had less votes than Sonata?

Given that 'hacker' and 'background' were two entirely different categories, I'm not sure why you're asking this.

[Naturegirl1999]

Whoops. Sorry for the mistake, I thought the AI was the hacker, my bad

[Draignean]

Tactician.exe: [1] Draignean

[Emral282]

Tactician.exe: [2] Draignean, Emral282

[Slick]

This sounds good to me.

Tactician.exe: [3] Draignean, Emral282, Slick

[Happerry]

Turn -B : Revision Phase

Tactician.exe:
An upgrade for our Officer.exe program, incorporating parts of Sonata's code into them to increase their command abilities. It gives them a flair for dramatic timing and a tendency to sing out orders. More importantly though, it lets them anticipate, it lets them take the initiative and be proactive in combat. They still aren't as good as actual people at leading units, but they can act with less direction and lead groups of less intelligent programs on assaults. If we can't make the upgrade universal, they'll act as a middle layer of command between the officers and our Hackers.

2 + 2 + 0 = 4 : Below average (Normal )

It turns out that there just isn't a lot of directly transferable coding between a full up artificial intelligence capable of spreading her neural network across multiple computers in a distributed array and a semi-sentient semi-autonomous virii running command decisions out of a built in tactical library with very limited abilities for learning and self modification. Not much, but some. It seems that advanced social heuristics meant to track in/out groupings and factional affiliation are applicable, if in a much cut down form, to tracing enemy hierarchies and determining which Officers are being the most successful and therefor should have their fellow officers listen to them more. Combined with loading another few dozen tactical plans into the built in tactical libraries an Officer.exe possesses, this means that your officers should be a little more effective now. But not too much more effective.

Also some joker programmed them to sing all their orders and make dramatic gestures now.

It is now Turn -A, starting with the Design Phase. During this phase you must vote on what new object to design or old thing to redesign.

During turn -A, you have One Bonus Action for designing a hacker to lead your sides forces.

Spoiler: Designs (click to show/hide)

Hackers
Jorg Jörgenson
A thoughtful and methodical hacker that prioritizes force preservation and defense area control, the Bass Line plays for long term advantages as he shapes the battlefield into one incremental advantage after another until it grants him victory. He prefers melee designs over long ranged combat, and his preference for force preservation biases him away from the more fragile viruses whatever their range. He also has a deft hand with territory effecting battlechips that allow him to get more out of them then others would, and substantial experience with using defensive and supportive function battlechips.

Viri
Minion.exe
These roughly humanoid programs are neither very sophisticated (intelligence and coding wise) or very strong, but they are mass producible and smart enough to obey orders without continual direct supervision. Which isn't always something you can take for granted with generic digital constructs, as a lot of them are dumber then rocks. They're not coded with anything more powerful then a basic energy pulse pistol, but they can still defeat the average civilian whom thinks too much of themselves. Just avoid putting them up against Data Police Agents. (Simple)

SwordyMinion.exe
The normal baseline minion, adapted to use a sword instead of a pistol. They're no smarter and only a little tougher then a normal minion, but the sword is a stronger weapon then the pistol so it's somewhat more deadly. As long as it can get into melee range that is, as it no longer has the pistol. It will try to stab any enemy projectiles that come to close to it, allowing greater survivability rates then would otherwise be expected as long as the projectiles being shot at it are the kind you can stab.
(Simple)

Defender.exe
An enlarged minion with a continually active siren mounted on its helm and bearing a giant tower shield with more flashing lights and what looks like an impressively large gun array integrated into said shield's surface, this virus is a natural first target for anyone attacking a group that it is in. Which is the point. Not actually armed any more well then a normal minion, but with noticable integrated code-buffering and a shield formed from active denial firewall lattice coding, the Defender is well equipped to be a remarkably sturdy, for its rating, distraction.
(Simple)

Officer.exe
Based on the generally available in the Undernet Minion programs, Officer.exe constructs aren't much stronger then their lesser kin, still only coded with a basic energy pulse pistol, though officers also come with basic melee coding. But the big difference between and Officer and a Minion is that Officers are coded with noticeably more advanced bit-brains and have a basic tactical library integrated in their knowledge banks, allowing them to lead teams of Minions on operations without needing constant hand holding.

Since the start of the war, they've been revised with slightly enlarged tactical libraries and an improved ability to both identify enemy officers and commanders and figure out which officers on their own side are doing the best, and therefor should be listened to more. (Complicated)

Autonomous Digital Intelligence
None

Battle Chips
Recovery 10
This tactical battle chip is designed to mend damaged and corrupted code, healing the individual it is applied to by a minor amount. (Simple, Memory 1)

Atk+10
This tactical battle chip pre-allocates resources to empower the next program used, improving the targets ability to deal damage for a short while. (Simple, Memory 1)

MinionCall A
This strategic battle chip creates temporary replicas of the commonly known ‘Minion.exe’ program, causing a short term burst of reinforcements in the targeted zone. (Simple, Memory 1)

Stunbolt
A tactical battle chip that releases a bolt of electricity into the target, which then paralyzes the target until the excess electricity dissipates.  (Simple, Memory 1)

DramaticSpotlight
This chip combines an environmental influence effect with a protective barrier, it... well, look, it lets you summon a dramatic spotlight to spotlight your avatar or an ADI and includes enough defensive shielding to let you do a (short) dramatic speech or pithy comment without anyone being able to do anything about it. The defenses fail if you move or attack however, and only last a short moment, but it's quite good for making a memorable introduction. (Simple, Memory 0)

InvokeSoundtrack
A battlechip that invokes a soundtrack, using advanced environmental sensors to analyze the zone that the Hacker or the Hacker's Proxies are in and play appropriate music for where they are and what the current events are. Some would swear it has a better detection rate for hidden surprises then anything else in Sonata's Arsenal, but it also has a deeply encoded priority for dramatic timing, and therefor the dramatic chords only begin to play when the surprise is about to be sprung on you anyway. (Simple, Memory 0)

[Doomblade187]

Aria (hacker):
A meek service employee by day, Aria comes alive at the night/day/whenever they don't have work. A strong personality with a flair for the dramatic and lots of commotion, Aria is a talent with long range weaponry and bombardment type weapons, tearing down the enemy's position with overwhelming force and standing tall in the middle of it all, protected by their own defenses. Singing all the time of course, when not cackling madly. Originally, they were inspired to take up hacking when the news of Sonata being an AI came down, and shattered the one source of enjoyment in Aria's life. After several weeks buried in overtime, self-taught coding lessons, and a commission to a friend for a 3d avatar, the entity known as Aria emerged into the net. Now surrounded by their fellow stagehands, Aria has a wider range of support networks. Unfortunately, their loner tendencies are still strong, and they struggle working or sharing with others.

Virtual Description: A slim, low-poly entity, Aria appears in the net as a biped with a few too many joints on each limb, and four arms (two of them are dedicated to "being extra", though which two varies. Each polygon of their body is some neon color, and the wild colors lend and almost art-deco, cubist feel to the odd spikes and protrusions covering their body. Instead of a head, Aria simply has an amplifier., Albeit a highly ornate one, decorated with stickers of hundreds of musical artists - the only real clue to their true identity, as everything else - gender, occupation, age, name, is unknown to everyone... Except for Aria of course.

[Failbird105]

There are ways through which a program, released upon the internet and set free, may grow, evolve on its own. Sonata herself, in a way, formed like this after all. It only stands to reason that there are those among us, who ourselves work for one of these sort of digital beings, that would want to try and create one.

The real tricks are twofold; setting up a program that can improve itself in such a way, and periodically grooming it such that it does not grow completely out of control and run rampant, thus bringing attention down on its, and potentially our own, head. This is the culmination of our efforts, BlueFiend.mon

BlueFiend can best be described as a form of digital monster. With an intelligent but inhuman mind, a malleable body, and a single immutable core that emits a constant harmonic hum. Its primary ability is for the data that forms its body to flow and shift with ease like water, and with substantial force, even capable of easily hovering and propelling itself through the air with this same method. It has also been observed that the BlueFiends body does not need to be wholly connected together in order to remain active. Large chunks can easily move and reshape separately from the main body, and indeed it frequently has its limbs separated in precisely this way.

BlueFiend.mon is very much an enigma, indeed the semi-natural evolutionary processes its code have undergone have left even us unable to truly predict everything it is capable of beyond what it has demonstrated. While it can seemingly interact with and be interacted with by most regular programs without much error, the way its code has evolved has left it as practically a separate coding language from any practiced by humanity. While this will likely prove useful against enemy hackers, it also means that not only may there be unpredictable interactions with our own battle chips, but we have no idea if what we have described is the limit of its abilities or not.

[Draignean]

BlueFiend.mon: [1] Draignean

[Failbird105]

BlueFiend.mon: [2] Draignean, Failbird

I get that not everyone may be interested in Aria, so I'll let others propose ideas for this turns Hacker if they want to.

[dgr11897]

BlueFiend.mon: [3] Draignean, Failbird, DGR
Aria: [1] DGR