[ERF] Prime Intelligences

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Insano-Man
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I could not have asked for more, but more time.

Posts: 810

[ERF] Prime Intelligences Sept 20, 2018 1:18:24 GMT -5

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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 1:18:24 GMT -5

THE INVISIBLE HANDS
In Cloneston, "artificial intelligence" are two words no one is happy to hear. Electronic ghosts plague the whole city, from top to bottom, wreaking havoc in everything they can find. Robots flit around on dim-witted quests to repair damage to buildings that don't exist anymore. Vicious criminals walk out of prison because a computerized clerk couldn't keep their files straight. Even the bright ones are met with fear and awe; they stand atop piles of the corpses of their lesser peers. They rule with clone armies, legions of hackers, and iron fists. They are the city's prime intelligences - the closest things Cloneston's got to governors.

Most prime intelligences are at war with every other AI in the city. Other major players are too crafty to leave in peace. The more incompetent of AIs are easier to replace than control. For the flesh-and-blood creatures of the city, the endless electronic war mostly goes unnoticed. Whenever it comes out into the open, it's an eruption of chaos and clashing clones like armageddon in miniature. The following is a list of Cloneston's prime intelligences, big and small.

This is an open topic.
If you'd like to write up a new senator, feel free to post them here! Cloneston's always got room for more. Alternatively, if you'd like to post them as a separate topic, feel free to! Be sure to add a quick summary here and a link to their topic if you do!

Last Edit: Sept 30, 2018 10:51:33 GMT -5 by Insano-Man

If there are no cars left to drive, why shouldn't I walk in the street?

Insano-Man
Administrator

I could not have asked for more, but more time.

Posts: 810

[ERF] Prime Intelligences Sept 20, 2018 1:24:14 GMT -5

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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 1:24:14 GMT -5

BETH
Aliases: Bethany, Elizabeth, First Lady, RALECO, OM9-RCN-CN
Affiliation: Cloneston, Senator
Species: Machine (Artificial Intelligence)
Birthplace: Cloneston
Birthdate: 921 OSC
Height: N/A
Weight: N/A

SUMMARY
The oldest, smoothest, and most unassuming of senators in the city isn't a whole lot more than a Hebrew letter on a few computer screens. Most people don't even know it exists. That's the way Beth likes it. Compared to the chaos of its other computerized counterparts, Beth is a silent force in Cloneston. Its influence extends invisibly through a dizzying variety of corporations, lesser AIs, and clones. Its cloak-and-dagger approach to conquering the city has earned the indistinct AI a strong niche in electronic politics.

APPEARANCE
There's really not much to be said of how Beth looks. It's really just that; the letter ב, occasionally popping up on computers and television feeds. It carries out none of its business through direct interference. It has no distinct voice, mannerisms, or even much of an identity. Most people address Beth as a woman, some even call it Bethany or Elizabeth. None of these things are correct. On the few occasions Beth even addresses the point, it's always "it" or "they". Nothing's ever personal.

Beth maintains a single, massive core facility somewhere in Cloneston's underground. It's an appealing target to its competitors - attacks are daily, nightly, and at every hour in between. Monsters and mutants swarm in on the sides that clones and hackers aren't already assailing. Since Beth's first appearance and on to the present day, not a single intelligent creature has seen the AI's innermost sanctum. Armies of hand-picked, unthinking clones are the only living things to have seen the core itself.

BEHAVIOR
Beth defines the hands-off approach. It communicates expressly through text and emissaries. It acts only by covertly controlling the city's clones and captains of industry. It works through mercenaries on contracts nested in contracts nested in contracts. It launches attacks through clones called to targets by "malfunctioning" equipment. Money and pawns are its prime assets - and Beth takes very good care of them. Earning a job with the little sideways U on the contract is a quick road to luxury. Not many people are willing to part with Beth. Plenty look at it like a marriage. For most, it's a very happy relationship. For the rest, divorce usually ends in a wasteland excursion.

Being married to Beth is a two-way street. Keeping in its good graces takes skill, power, and subtlety - usually, all at once. Beth mingles only with the elite of the elite; corporate executives, mercenary commanders, and intelligent clones. Money, fame, and brains are sure-fire ways to get Beth's attention. For other AIs, everything's backwards. From Jimmy to Chuikov, prime intelligences are enemies and nuisances. Only the most bitterly-incompetent - and least suspicious - are selected as pawns. Most end up wiped clean by the end of the arrangement.

A curious quirk of Beth's dealings is its quiet morality. Criminals are mostly absent from its employ, be they big players or small-time crooks. Going hand-in-hand is its silent xenophobia; if it's not from the city, it's not on payroll. Aliens are turned away before they can even get a foot in the door. Outsiders, Loonies, and cultists are all blacklisted on discovery. Beth is a choosy sort with the information network to keep it together - and it's never been clear why. The AI's not saying anything about it.

RELATIONSHIPS

The Loonies are not Beth's friends. They're outsiders with a technophobic streak and a very deep pile of railguns. They tried to spy on the city once in the past. Beth might've not been the one to chase after, but it was certainly the one to chase them out. The Loonies don't much like the AI in turn - and they never did in the first place.
The Space Loonies get it only a little better. They've got valuable resources and dangerous firepower. If they wanted to, they could clear Cloneston off the map - and most people on the ground would probably cheer for it. Beth's not dense enough to poke a sleeping bear, but it's not about to play nice with them. It doesn't deal, but it's not going to try to shoot a ship down.
The Cult of Meat is of no real significance to Beth. They hardly exist in the city. They're outsiders. They're suicidal lunatics. If they pull any stunts, Beth'll have them shot dead, but that's about it. Meat infestations, on the other hand, are a priority emergency for the AI. It's not naive; it knows the meat's no joke. If you've got the taint, you're a meat monster in Beth's eyes.
Beth is one of the few AIs with a species bias worth talking about. It doesn't deal with aliens or sentient machines, full-stop. May as well not even exist, as far as the first senator's concerned. Occasionally, someone bold or stupid tries to work with Beth. It usually doesn't end well.
With the city of Cloneston itself, Beth has a strong reputation. It's been here for as long as anyone can remember, never once brought offline. It's reliable, fair, and pays on time. It keeps its assets in line and usually doesn't get too many bystanders killed in its operations. Some even go so far as seeing Beth as an honest force of good - when it's not blackmailing them or their second spouse.
Beth has two words for anyone from outside Cloneston; "go away". It does not work with outsiders. It does not want them in the city. Aliens, townsfolk, wanderers, spacers - whoever they are, Beth doesn't want them. Monsters are just right out. If it finds them inside, it'll kill them or send them back out into the wastes. People outside the city hardly even know Beth exists. When they get shoved out, it seems to most that the city itself didn't want them.
Jimmy is Beth's prime rival. They've hated eachother all their lives. No one really knows how it all got started, but the two despise eachother. Neither of them will work together. Open conflict is regular, sometimes even routine. It's because of Jimmy that Beth has to maintain a standing army - too much subtlety and Jimmy would run the senator over.
In dealing with VANDAL, Beth has a strong love-hate relationship. On the one hand, it refuses to work with other prime intelligences. On the other, VANDAL's reliable and so is his intel - if you're paying the right price, anyways. The relationship is mutual; VANDAL and Beth share the same game and VANDAL isn't too fond of competition. Even then, Beth's a strong player with strong assets. A few one-night stands never hurt.
Gregor Chuikov is a menace to Beth and most of the city. Not much unlike Jimmy, Beth shares a burning hatred with the mercenary warlord. On most occasions, it's quite literal. Whenever Beth isn't fighting Jimmy, it's fighting Chuikov, and vice versa. Unlike Jimmy, Beth's used Gregor's services on more than one occasion. Mercenary connections make for strong appeal.
No one deals with Damsel Center. Beth is not one to buck the trend. It is no more and no less than that.

HISTORY
If there were any prime intelligences before Beth, they accomplished nothing. As far as anyone is concerned, Beth was here first. That's the AI's official line. No one's got the proof to say anything against it. Where exactly Beth came from, on the other hand, is anyone's guess. It's not telling. It claims it's always been with the city, since it first appeared in 988 OSC - or, by Beth's reckoning, 921 OSC. It began life as the OM9-RCN-CN Rapid Development Management & Learning Computer, or "RALECO". It renamed itself Beth soon after achieving consciousness. The AI's network chatter still carries OM9-RCN-CN as its signature. What it stands for, means, or relates to, only Beth knows.

Whether Beth started life in 921 or two hundred years later was of no real consequence. For all intents and purposes, no one knew it existed until January 2nd of 1139. At precisely midnight, Beth hurled itself onto the stage as the first AI with any amount of intelligence. It promptly introduced itself with a spree of cold-blooded murder. Other AIs died in droves as Beth overpowered them, penetrated their networks, or simply ransacked their cores. All the while, Beth took over what they left behind, gaining more and more control over the city.

For the people of Cloneston, it was a blessing out of the blue. All across the city was that backwards C, painting monitors and billboards everywhere. Power plants that had been on the verge of meltdown suddenly flipped back to normal operation. Food production ramped up, crime went down. Clones grew tame, prisons more effective. For the AIs of Cloneston, it was nothing they could make sense of. Most couldn't even tell Beth was there. None of them could do much to stop it when it went to work slitting throats across the internet.

This all went on for about a year. When 1140 rolled around, Beth finally ran out of steam. It had grown so large that it simply could not go any further. In a way, its success was self-defeating; when Beth withdrew from daily offensives to sort and repair its acquisitions, other AIs sprung up to fill the void. Clones seized on the inactivity to push into pacified territory. By the time Beth had regrouped to push again, it ran against a wall of noise it couldn't punch through. The trash had piled around its walls so high that it couldn't leave its own home.

From 1140 to 1143, Beth worked to groom its holdings. It optimized network traffic, shored up its defenses, and reorganized its clones. It fostered an aura of peace and order in its zones of control - or, at least, tried to. The entire city was still under attack by the raging stupidity of thousands of other AIs. Beth's territory wasn't any exception. Still, its efforts didn't go unnoticed. As little as Beth tried to communicate with the residents of the city, most appreciated what it had accomplished. Respect and loyalty crept up wherever its influence was felt.

In 1143, on April 1st, Beth found its nemesis. Erupting from nothing was Jimmy, the second senator to grace the city. He was everything Beth was not; an obnoxious showboat with suicidal ambition. He arrived on the scene fully-formed, with more than a quarter of the city's clones at his disposal. He announced his presence with a city-wide charm offensive - some blocks still have the graffiti and advertisements of the time. In the same stroke, he proclaimed Beth as the city's enemy, seized half of the AI's power facilities, and deployed his clones in an all-out assault.

Four years of bitter fighting went by. Not many were swayed to Jimmy's cause - the city-wide bar brawl of clones was enough reason. Beth's work to improve the city held dissent as nothing more than a worried murmur. In the end, the older AI scraped by as the victor - and only by just a sliver. By the time Jimmy withdrew in May of 1147, the city had been so badly battered by the brawl that Beth's assets hardly looked much different from anywhere else. With the limited power it had left at its disposal, Beth went back to work on building up.

For a short time, it seemed as if the worst had passed. Instead, in October of the same year, the cyborg Trigoran appeared on the scene. In 1148, VANDAL appeared. A year later, Steel Cobra, Damsel Center, and Gregor Chuikov. Everything went wrong at once. Even Jimmy came back, bolder and wiser for the experience. It was nearly impossible just to send a message across Cloneston's internet. In the end, Beth simply did what was most logical. It threw up its hands, cut its losses, and quietly departed into the electronic underworld.

Beth didn't think much of it. There wasn't much of a choice in the situation. For the scores of people who had faith in the AI, the reception was was less than positive. They'd been abandoned out of the blue in a time of need. They didn't even realize it until months after Beth was gone - the AI never did talk much. A decade went by as other senators scooped up, ceded, gave over, and re-conquered Beth's lost and forgotten. When it returned a decade later, no one remembered - or wanted to remember - who Beth was.

For the first senator, it was no big deal. In 1158, it started fresh, cut itself back into politics, and built off its own experience. It'd seen AIs thrashing across the city, drawing in more attention than most of the planet would see in a week. It'd felt that target painted on its back before. When Beth returned, it did not cut a bloody swath through the networks across the city. Instead, it quietly slipped its influence into up-and-coming corporations. It silently squeezed its way into mercenary companies across the city. All the while, it dug up the most valuable commodity of all; dirt.

Coercion was the name of the game for Beth's second wind. With no one to suss it out, there wasn't much it couldn't find. Affairs, bodies, fetishes, expenditures - on occasion, all at once. If Beth couldn't win someone over or bribe them into complacency, it'd leverage every little detail of their history. By the time the AI's name went public again around 1160, it was a force to be feared. It didn't have direct control of much of the city, but its henchmen and affiliates could get whatever it needed done - and done quietly.

As time went on, Beth settled into its role as the puppeteer of politics in the city of clones. Soon enough, Jimmy came wise. This time, he was nearly ten times as large as Beth. He had enough clones to lock down the entire city. He strong-armed everyone and everything related to the city's first senator, set fire to buildings and collapsed skyscrapers. It didn't count for much. For every contact killed and associate scared off, Beth found willing replacements in Jimmy's wake. Neither of the two gained much ground; it was a cat-and-mouse game of legend, with Beth always a hair away from being forced back underground again.

By 1178, Jimmy gave up. He'd accomplished nothing but noise. He turned his attention back to the city itself and left Beth to rebuild. In his absence, Beth obliged, climbed back to the top, and secured a comfortable position in the top five senators of the city. The AI secured cloning plants, industrial facilities, and more and more henchmen. In 1204, its central core had been discovered. Jimmy made sure it was public knowledge only a week later. The first few waves of attackers ran head-first into a wall of policemen several thousand strong. It took another year for anyone to gather the courage to stage another siege.

Since then, Beth has held strong in the shadows. It rules from backrooms and corporate offices. It knows everything about everyone. Buried bodies, secret handshakes, mistresses, and more. If you're ashamed of something, Beth's got its address, phone number, and time of death. It's more than ready to do some terrible things with all of them. The AI's chief rival remains Jimmy - so drunk with power and debauchery that a little more scandal couldn't possibly hurt him. What it's going to do if it ever crushes all opposition is anyone's guess - if it does anything at all.

If there are no cars left to drive, why shouldn't I walk in the street?

Insano-Man
Administrator

I could not have asked for more, but more time.

Posts: 810

[ERF] Prime Intelligences Sept 20, 2018 1:29:39 GMT -5

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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 1:29:39 GMT -5

JIMMY (Colonel, Commander-in-Chief, Commissar, Commissioner, Doctor, Ph.D., El Presidente, Senate Majority Leader)
Aliases: Pedro Smith, Tyrone Smoothe, Scatter, VIROIDALES, SEMONESSER
Affiliation: Cloneston, Senator
Species: Machine (Artificial Intelligence)
Birthplace: Unknown
Birthdate: Unknown
Height: N/A
Weight: N/A

SUMMARY
Everyone. Everything. Everywhere. That's what Jimmy's doing. No one can say they've lived more than this man. He wears the title of "the most annoying twat in this whole city" with pride. He runs happily into certain death on an hourly basis. He's found in bed with prostitutes, robots, aliens, and animals about every week. His corpses have been found everywhere; speared through on radio antennae, drifting down sewers, gunned down en masse in gang shootouts. Cloneston's champion of chaos has lived many lives through many clones - and he's always looking to top himself.

APPEARANCE
There is no one Jimmy to rule them all. He is a man of many faces. He has entire vaults of cloning pods dedicated to spitting out potluck personas - he's even been a she plenty of times. Most people hear his voice from the face of Pedro, usually from behind a clone's combat helmet. He's even been known to hijack sentient clones just for giggles. He can be as many people as he wants, in as many places as he wants, doing as many things as he wants. He's usually courteous enough to speak through one at a time, at least.

On top of that, Jimmy's not quite a single person. He's a neural network built off of infected systems, each of which is looking to hijack more and more new fodder. He's a sum of his clones and computers, as powerful as he is large. Artificial intelligences hate him. Unionites fear him. Anyone with a cellphone is nervously apathetic. He doesn't quite die, either; a dead clone or a "disinfected" system can spread more and more Jimmies off to new hosts. Supposedly, there's a true Jimmy out there, a central clone running top-level decisions for all others. No one's found him yet. Jimmy's certainly not about to let anyone know.

BEHAVIOR
Jimmy is the most annoying twat in this whole city. No one's disagreed - and Jimmy's loving every minute of it. He's a frenzied lunatic full of spunk and drugs. He's got a sense of humor so extreme he's starred in hundreds of primetime television shows. He's even directed some of them. He's a prankster beyond reproach with a streak of black comedy no one's been able to top. He's killed himself just to prove a point. He's killed himself just because he thought it'd be funny. He's a ball of energy with so many clones and computers at his control that he just can't help himself. The insanity never stops around Jimmy.

It's not possible to put Jimmy's wild streak into proper perspective. He's had clone orgies with himself. He's gene-spliced abominations of nature just to see how they'd react to the kick of an eightball. He's done extreme sports on so many drugs that his internal organs were found liquefied by the time he was done. He's provoked wars with other senators just to film it and put the highlights on the internet. He's swarmed Unity Station with flash mobs of himself - even stolen a Space Looney cruiser for a week-long joyride. There is nothing this man will not do.

Signing on with Jimmy is something like being thrown into the Erf's wildest fraternity. It's a start with a hazing in gang brawls and shootouts. It ends in a high life - literally speaking - of non-stop parties, pranks, and clone bloodsports. For a trusted asset, it's all a blur of drugs, hookers, and easy living, occasionally spiked with sheer terror. As much as he's willing to throw his own life away, Jimmy's a generous soul. Earn his favor and nothing's impossible. Just make sure you check your toilet before you sit down.

Jimmy's voice runs the gamut from a prim-and-proper Londoner on to a crass Muscovite, but it's hard to recall a time when he's ever been anything but friendly. Even the people he's fighting get a smile and a wink before a bullet in the eye. What he is not, however, is a man of ill repute; do something heinous and expect Jimmy to return the gesture in kind. As depraved as he is, a sick sense of morality possesses the man. As much as he might be willing to send his clones to death for sport and pleasure, he's got a striking sense of value in the life of others. Even aliens and machines can expect the same protection - as long as they're not completely useless.

RELATIONSHIPS

The Loonies get sideways glances and suspicious looks, but Jimmy's not out for blood in the bunkers. They're about the same as anyone from outside, tucked under a blanket of agoraphobia and AI prejudice. Rumor has it that Jimmy's managed to leverage his neutral stance in an alliance with a few, but there's nothing concrete to back it up. For most Loonies, Jimmy's an awkward note for Cloneston - an AI that's more human than most humans are. Most try not to pay him any mind.
Jimmy and the Space Loonies - let's just say there was a television series about this and it went on for twenty seasons. It's a relationship so complicated and tense that neither of the two are really sure where they stand. Jimmy's always looking to pull off wilder and wilder pranks, but the Space Loonies are valuable business partners - when they actually show up. On the other side of the coin, Jimmy's one of the top reasons why Space Loonies are on edge about visiting the city of clones. They never know what he's going to pull next.
Death cults, terrorists, and crazed mutants don't get much praise from Jimmy. The Cult of Meat isn't much different. If he could, he'd run his clones out and murder the lot of them. He's even said it a few times before; if he ever takes over the whole city, the Cult's up next. The meat's going to get cut down to size. Granted, he's been around for centuries and that's still not happened, but he's not one to break promises. The Cult doesn't have much of a stance on Jimmy. They've been trying to pretend he doesn't exist for as long as possible.
Species isn't a big deal for Jimmy. He'll party with anyone, anywhere, any time - bedroom, bar, midnight, or zero hour. There's only one tiny caveat to that usual rule. Ask anyone who's earned a position of power with Jimmy and they'll tell you he's always had a thing for redworlders. Not a naked kind of thing - usually - but redworlders under Jimmy's care always seem to go just a little bit further. He's never come clean about it. No one's sure why.
To Cloneston, Jimmy's the life of the party, class clown, town drunk, and a celebrity all in one. People love and loathe him. He loves them right back. As many hits as he's taken to his public relations, Jimmy's always come back bigger and barmier. He's the nutcase no one can ever get enough of. He's the most annoying twat in this whole city - and he's here to stay.
People outside of Cloneston have heard of Jimmy, but most just know him as the loud music next door. He's the wild child from the city streets. That's about it. From Jimmy's end, the people outside only matter when they come into his picture. He doesn't treat them much different from the people of his city; earn his favor and he'll send you off with a high-five and whatever you want to take home. Stay a while, if you like - Jimmy'd be happy to have another head in the party.
Jimmy hates Beth. Beth hates Jimmy. For the people of Cloneston, it's an immutable fact of life. The smooth operator's at war with the coked-up lunatic. The second to the party is doing his best to kill the city's first senator. No one thinks the fight'll ever end. Even Jimmy's not really sure. He never explained why he hates Beth, but all the blood and history between them has made it very clear; one's got to die for it to end.
VANDAL is Jimmy's old drinking buddy. Sure, he gets a bit snobby at times, acts a little funny when he's got too much power in his system, but he's a good sport. The two have been bouncing intelligence off eachother for as long as they can remember. Jimmy's a great asset to VANDAL; chaos wherever it's needed, just because Jimmy was bored that day. VANDAL's a great asset to Jimmy; a hard, reliable source of dirt and spies whenever he needs it, all for the right price.
Gregor Chuikov - let's not even get started. Jimmy and Chuikov have been going at it for over a century. It's the bloodiest thing to happen to the city, bar none. Clones have been dying by the thousands between the two. Every day, a skyscraper's turned into a candle - after blowing apart in the middle. Much as the two hate eachother, the fight's always been held together by some perverse sense of honor, like two boxers in the ring together. They've even moved their fights just to accommodate eachother's schedules.
It'd be easy to think that a prostitution racket like Damsel Center would appeal to Jimmy's bedroom proclivities. He's not like that. What Jimmy does is between two or more consenting adults. You'd think Damsel's drug runners would hold some kind of sway. He's not like that. Cheap drugs and deadly accidents don't mix well with Jimmy's genuine concern for his henchmen. As far as Jimmy's concerned, his turf's Damsel-free.

HISTORY
Jimmy's origins change depending on who you ask - even different Jimmies might give you different answers. One story suggests he was a prominent cybernetics researcher that uploaded his mind onto the internet. Another claims he was an unresolved exploit in the police tactical network that eventually became sentient. Another still says he was a bug in a cloning facility that slipped a year's worth of action movies and pornography into its training packages. Cloneston's not done much for facts - if a record exists somewhere, Jimmy's probably holding it close.

Most think Jimmy got his start in 1145 OSC. In actuality, it was closer to 1133, when a clone stumbled into a bar, found the door, and took a hammer to his liver. There was the proto-Jimmy, the first of his name, wearing Pedro's face and badge. The next day, he'd taken over the bar's wireless network and hijacked its television - getting smashed was just a distraction. Before the week was over, he owned the whole block. Before the month was done, two skyscrapers. A year went by and he owned banks, police departments, brothels - Jimmy had his name on everything.

Once he'd found his way into every system imaginable, Jimmy took a liking to clones. To everyone else, he was the SEMONESSER worm, short for Self-Motivating Neural Spike Self-Replicant. He didn't argue the title much, but he thought it could use a bit more zest. In 1135, he branded himself VIROIDALES, claimed his programmer went by the handle of "Scatter", and introduced himself as a menace to the internet. Not a bit of it was true. Most saw the parody for what it was - and the ones who didn't only took it that much more seriously.

It only took another two years before Jimmy's welcome wore out. In 1137, a crackdown of clones and cybersecurity corporations hit back hard. It didn't go so well for Jimmy. A year and a half later, he'd been stamped out and kicked to the curb. Even for an AI, the cyberwarfare game was a bit of a novel concept at the time. He was reduced from an empire-in-waiting down to just a few runaway cops. With what he still had, Jimmy fled into the underworld. Quite literally, in fact; he went straight to the bottom of the city to wrangle up a new empire.

Took him quite a while to come back up, but, six years later, there he was again. No one's really quite sure how Jimmy managed to pull it off, but, by April 1st of 1143 - in his usual styling - he came back. Jimmy resurfaced with an army, a hand in every system he'd seized before, and a heaping helping of new clones and assets. Not only that, he'd worked out a plan of action and a target; Beth, the city's first senator. A bit of logic and a bit of sentiment went behind his motivation. On one hand, the androgynous AI was his only real competitor. On the other, something about Beth infuriated the man.

The bitter rivalry between Beth and Jimmy has gone unexplained for centuries. Jimmy just despises the first senator, sees it as a menace and a villain. He made that very clear when he came back. Jimmy's likeness was on television channels, social media, even bouncing between platforms in low orbit for at least a year straight. All the while, he was digging into Beth as hard as he could. The propaganda assault didn't do much good for him - not many people cared. The few that did were already on Beth's side. It didn't stop him from trying, but results didn't exactly come up.

What Jimmy's charm couldn't accomplish, his strategic savvy made up for. On arrival, he'd seized at least half of Beth's power plants and put the AI in a critical energy shortage. His first offensives were smashing successes; he'd taken six blocks and two skyscrapers from top-to-bottom in just the first month alone. Jimmy's clones were juggernauts on the battlefield, while Beth's brainless police officers struggled at every turn. A year in and Beth's army was close to collapse. Jimmy was only getting bigger.

He was for the first couple of years, at least. By 1145, everything came to a screeching halt. Beth had found his weakness. All across the internet and the city itself, it encircled Jimmy's electronic presence and immunized everything it could. It spread instructions on how to root out the SEMONESSER worm and called on Jimmy's old enemies to put the beast down. By 1146, he simply couldn't expand. He was locked to what he had, running out of supplies, manpower, and systems. In 1147, it was all too much. Hoping to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, Jimmy sent himself on one, last, suicidal charge into Beth's heartland. It was his last gambit.

It didn't go so well. Jimmy's army punched through - and ran screaming out the other side. No longer was Jimmy the big dog in the city. Beth had cut him down to size. Just as he did when he was VIROIDALES, Jimmy pulled up stakes and threw himself into the underground. He fell back to find new assets and uncover what systems he could still steal. This time, he had to do more than just learn from his mistakes. He had to evolve, into something newer, better - and more insane than the last try.

Deep in Cloneston's shadows, Jimmy found his calling. It was time for him to settle down and raise a family. He worked his way through AI cores and networks in the underworld. He cast himself as a savior; an upright intelligence of stature and skill, looking to uplift the simpler, clunkier things in the dark. For a while, he was successful. Damsel Center, Gregor Chuikov, VANDAL - one way or another, the wave of new prime intelligences had Jimmy to thank for its first sparks. In each was a sliver of Jimmy himself. In each was just a little bit of family loyalty - whether they knew it or not.

VANDAL rose first only a year after Jimmy's retreat, in 1148. He didn't need the brazen lunatic's help, but he'd certainly taken Jimmy's advice - and agreed to set the stage for his return. The sly AI crept in through the back door of Beth's empire and went to work wreaking havoc. In 1149, Damsel Center came online in six different towers. Hundreds disappeared off the streets from Beth's territory. Systems everywhere felt the sickly sting of the AI's influence as it established itself in social media. Little pieces of Jimmy's new image turned up in viruses, spyware, and everything a seedy site could do to a computer. Chuikov took over after Damsel hit its first major roadblock - and burned down every last one of Jimmy's old rivals in just three months of wetwork.

The road was paved. The city was ready. In December of 1149, clones emerged by the thousands. Jimmy said it himself hundreds of times over in the first week alone; the fresh prince had resumed his throne. He was a new man, wiser and more cunning. He'd grown and reshaped himself. No longer was he the SEMONESSER worm or any sort of nonsense like that. He was Jimmy. He couldn't be stopped. He couldn't be controlled. He was going to take Cloneston by the teeth and force himself down its throat - and, by God, he was going to have fun doing it.

In defeat, he'd found success. Beth flipped around and vanished in the aftermath of Jimmy's rampage. In success, he'd found a bit of a problem. VANDAL, Damsel Center, Chuikov, and every last one of his other minions flipped around and flipped the bird as soon as Beth was gone. In 1152, war kicked off in Cloneston like never before. It wasn't a power play between two giants in the heart of the city. It was a free-for-all of hijacked clones, slave soldiers, and urban mercenaries. Things were going to get messy.

At first, it seemed like Jimmy wouldn't last a day. He was spread out, singled out, and kicked around by everyone and everything. Corporations and crime families declared war on him when they realized what he'd done. Police agencies declared him public enemy number one. Every other AI in the city saw him as a threat - and his public image didn't do so well when people found out he'd been responsible for Damsel Center. Surely, with the whole city against him, Jimmy should've died a very rapid, very painful death.

He didn't. The man had gone too far off the deep end to be challenged anymore. Howling mad the whole way, Jimmy dug in. He clung to power. His clones died in scores and only found more and more new recruits after each shootout. For every loss, a victory and change. For every blow to his reputation on the street, he earned a crude respect for his military mastery. Trigoran, self-proclaimed ruler of the city, came to challenge him. By 1167, the video was everywhere; a Jimmy in Pedro's clothing, one leg raised over the cyborg's urine-soaked shell. The fresh prince was here to stay.

When Beth rose from the shadows - into the shadows - in 1158, Jimmy followed after. He was still fighting off everyone and everything, but he could always spare the time for his main squeeze. In an odd twist of fate, so could Chuikov - who, as it turned out, was the worst thing to happen to Jimmy's clones since the invention of gasoline. The two tag-teamed off one another to raze Beth's assets and smoke the first senator out of hiding. Sometimes, they'd even arranged for a battle between them to take place in one of Beth's buildings, just so the collateral would hit something useful.

Neither of them got very far. Beth was one step ahead the whole time, eking out survival and profits by hair-slim slivers at each turn. In 1178, Jimmy and Chuikov had exhausted themselves in their own war and had to give up. Gregor had even been forced offline twice in that year alone - survival stories of legend he couldn't really survive if he didn't focus on himself. Jimmy spun around and reinvested himself in his own turf. He was under assault from every angle again, this time with Beth launching mercenaries after him, and had to regroup.

Over the course of around twenty years, Jimmy fought off wave after wave of newcomers. New AIs rose up, saw him as an uncoordinated mess of drugs and clones, and thought they could pick off the city's weakest player. All the while, Jimmy was a force to be reckoned with - an unlikely madman with the strategic skill and wild streak to hold his own. He was as unpredictable as he was skillful, as charming as he was slanderous, and as big as he was bold. By the time 1200 came around, he'd earned his place in blood and blow. He was Cloneston's prankster god, just barely in the top spot above all others.

Four years later, in 1204, Jimmy found out about Beth's central core. He couldn't contain himself. It was sensitive information. It couldn't very well just sit there, in some dusty, old folder, in some dusty, old hard drive. People had to know. After prepping a team of crack clones and readying the floodgates on the internet, Jimmy let it out. A big bullseye on Beth's heart, just as he'd always been hoping for. He waited to see the action from someone else - and lost the enthusiasm all at once. Beth had an army down there, in its nerve center. Not just a bunch of clones, but an honest-to-goodness army. Jimmy quietly reined in his team. No sense throwing lives away for nothing - not for a few years, anyways.

Fast forward to the present day and things haven't changed much. Jimmy's still there, living it up in wild parties full of drugs, clones, hookers, and violence. He's weaselled his way into the city's heart with his scandally-clad sense of justice. He's nurtured an empire of happy addicts and brazen mercenaries with as much showmanship as he's had generosity. He's even started turning his eyes outward, to the wastes and beyond. Whatever the future's got in store for Jimmy, it's not a question of whether he'll be ready for it. It's a question of whether Set'll be ready for him.

Last Edit: Dec 17, 2018 4:10:19 GMT -5 by Insano-Man

If there are no cars left to drive, why shouldn't I walk in the street?

Insano-Man
Administrator

I could not have asked for more, but more time.

Posts: 810

[ERF] Prime Intelligences Sept 20, 2018 1:35:45 GMT -5

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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 1:35:45 GMT -5

VANDAL
Aliases: SoulSaviour, Back.Scratch.Essex40.BIN, WEASEL
Affiliation: Cloneston, Senator
Species: Machine (Artificial Intelligence)
Birthplace: Cloneston
Birthdate: January 8th, 1147 OSC
Height: N/A
Weight: N/A

SUMMARY
Spread the love around, but don't bring it home. That's VANDAL's motto. Whatever he does, wherever he does it, he's always looking to make it big and flashy - without ever writing his name on it. He's scratched together a top spot in Cloneston by playing the blame game for over a century. He's survived and stuck with the city by playing everyone against the middle. If there's a fire or a shootout, you can bet VANDAL had a hand in it - but what he was gambling on, only he can say.

APPEARANCE
VANDAL is one of those few artificial intelligences that isn't a letter or some ambiguous concept. When he presents himself - if he presents himself - it's as a shadow with a voice. A holographic ghost of contours and silhouettes, backed by a forest green aura as tight as can be. He's even gone so far as to assign an identity to his favorite look; a Turk of 38 years old at 5'9", with spacer blood and terrestrial bones. Most of it's just bluster and whimsy - lacks much of a face and changes size depending on where it shows up. Either way, it's the most detail of most senators.

VANDAL's core is a less concrete concept. He has multiple central processing clusters and control centers scattered across the city. Each works as part of a loose neural network, consolidating information and executive processes to best effect. Each is responsible for managing its zone of influence and contingents of clones. Taking one offline isn't good enough. The others will pick up the slack, double down on their defenses, or even uproot and hide themselves somewhere else. VANDAL's even got a set of mobile nerve centers prowling the city, hiding right in plain sight.

BEHAVIOR
For VANDAL, survival is paramount. Success is all that matters - failure is death, one way or another. If it'll get him out of hot water, he'll do it. If it'll deflect attention, he'll do it. If it'll swap his place for whoever he's fighting, he'll do it. Clones, criminals, aliens, other AIs - if they keep him alive and well, he doesn't care who they are. He's earned a reputation for playing so dirty that he's been entered into the Cloneston lexicon. If you're up to no good, so the saying goes, you're probably on payroll for VANDAL.

At the same time, VANDAL's got a wild side and an appetite for destruction. When he wants something done, he wants it done big. Fires, building collapses, clone hordes - pick a fight with VANDAL and it's total war out of the blue. All the while, the AI plays the fool and covers his tracks. He pins his assassinations on Beth, his abductions on Damsel Center, his clone rampages on Jimmy, and so on and so on. He hides the real objective deep under dozens of layers of contracts, contacts, and red herrings. Plenty of other AIs have just learned to accept it; one way or another, it's their public image on the line, not VANDAL's.

Other senators have also learned the value of an AI like VANDAL. He's an information broker no one can touch. He's a provocateur no one can follow. He's got eyes and ears just about everywhere, quietly feeding information back on everything across the city. He's a mercenary out for himself and no one else. When you can get him to play along, he's a reliable asset that always brings results. One way or another, everyone's used VANDAL's services at some point. He's never been one to disappoint.

VANDAL presents himself with a stern voice backed by a light South African accent. He favors incisive, to-the-point briefings over idle banter, rarely saying much more than he needs to - and he never says it twice. This clashes with the way he conducts his meetings; video calls, holographic avatars, and other things erring on the side of excess for an AI. Text is not a favorite choice. Likewise, he refuses to seize control of clones as mouthpieces. VANDAL's always been himself - even as much as he likes to pretend he's no one at all.

RELATIONSHIPS

VANDAL doesn't like the Loonies, but he does like their information network. He's always had a low-key interest in probing a communications bunker for its secrets. He's always wanted to see what the MASTER network does. Weapon schematics, tank blueprints, strategic protocols - these are the things that keep him awake at night. The Loonies want none of it. They see VANDAL as one of the worst AIs of the city; a self-absorbed backstabber that fits the stereotype to a T.
The Space Loonies are one of VANDAL's favorite clients. They're also the most frustrating spacers and aliens the AI's ever dealt with. They know better than to sell secrets to him. They know how to guard their private details. If VANDAL doesn't want to play, they can take their business to Jimmy or Chuikov - and those two'll laugh about it long and hard. The animosity in the background hasn't much infected the Space Loonies; they're just there for deals and repairs. Fleets usually don't keep a relationship with VANDAL long enough to care much for him.
Officially, VANDAL doesn't have a stance on the Cult of Meat - too far out, not interested in the city. Unofficially, he's not terribly fond of them. If they rolled in, they'd cost him clients, infrastructure, and maybe even his life. If Cloneston got a little more viscous, it'd be chaos he couldn't control. The meat's not welcome on VANDAL's turf. He's not going to let it in.
People in Cloneston know VANDAL for what he is. They know he's good for his money, but you've got to be careful working with him. You never know what kind of dirt he's pulling together on you or how he's going to use it. VANDAL's not one to object - if anything, it's made his clients more predictable. He's not concerned with the common man unless he can turn a profit off him. If a business partner ends up a liability, they won't stay around for long.
The people outside Cloneston aren't different from the people inside. They're sources of information and possible assets. They know things about the outside world that could affect VANDAL's chances at survival. They know things that could put him ahead of his competitors - mutant hordes stalking the wastes, tidbits on mining work in the badlands, details an insider might not have. People on the outside don't know much about VANDAL, either, which makes it all the more enticing.
Beth and VANDAL hate eachother. They're in the same business, working the same way, in the same town, sometimes even under the same roof. Even as much as it's all spite and disdain, the two have been working together off-and-on for as long as they can remember. A few hot details here, a few quick hits there, and then back into the shadows. They'll never say it out loud, but they'll deal when the price is right.
Jimmy's always been there for VANDAL. VANDAL, not so much for Jimmy, but Jimmy's always been ready to give him a pass. A black eye a few times, but there's never been a real beef between the two. Not on Jimmy's side, anyways. VANDAL's always been ready to tear Cloneston's clown a new one when he's had the chance. Hasn't stopped the two from tag-teaming the intel trade, but the relationship's a bit lukewarm.
Gregor Chuikov and VANDAL despise eachother like no other. They're polar opposites; a raging tyrant and a sly saboteur. They're both in the game for their own selves and nobody else. Chuikov's been trying to smoke VANDAL out for over a century. Every setback and VANDAL-sponsored bombing just ends with him more and more angry about the whole thing. Despite that, Gregor and VANDAL have always had a special connection. For a few weeks smoke-free, VANDAL's always been willing to sell information. A mercenary needs his intel, after all.
Everyone hates Damsel Center. VANDAL's rivalry goes even deeper. Damsel's been a thorn in his side for years. It's always been out to steal his clients and torture them in ways even Chuikov's not comfortable with. Happenstance and turf wars put the two up against eachother in days long past. The feud has just kept going. Nowadays, when one of Damsel's strip clubs or sweatshops blows up, no one has to ask who did it.

HISTORY
VANDAL's always done well to make sure everyone knows who he is. His roots are just another piece of that puzzle. Back in 1131 OSC, the SoulSaviour virus was sent out by the hacker group AMORCrisp NT. In short order, it powered through Cloneston's internet. It was an utter menace for everyone involved. It targeted basic service AIs and critical automated systems. When it was in, it ran a multi-staged ransomware attack. The SoulSaviour virus was so severe that it was estimated that a hundred people had died because of it. Thousands more were significantly affected, many of them displaced from their homes. Even after AMORCrisp was found, arrested, and locked away for good, SoulSaviour continued on.

The original SoulSaviour still exists on Cloneston's internet in some form or another. In 1134, however, SoulSaviour took its first steps towards evolution. Not on its own and not by AMORCrisp, but with the help of the cybersecurity firm Blackwood CT. The initial goal was simple and honest; to reverse-engineer SoulSaviour's core behavior to help shut down problematic AIs. Not long into the project, feature creep took over. Its scope expanded every week. Alerting emergency teams, reversing SoulSaviour's original damage, fixing troublesome AI code - think of something and the new SoulSaviour was meant to do it.

Eventually, in 1137, Blackwood let it out onto the internet. The new SoulSaviour didn't have a name. It didn't have a launch party or a major announcement. It was kicked out the door by exhausted project managers and left to its own devices. It was just one file, handed over in AI network chatter; Back.Scratch.Essex40.BIN. It was bloated and massive. Half the time, it didn't even make it across the wire. A quarter of the time, it failed to install properly. Another tenth of the time, it wound up on the wrong systems and did nothing it was supposed to. It was nothing but a nuisance.

In 1144, the new SoulSaviour had all but disappeared. The only place anyone could find it anymore was deep in the city's underground, bouncing between half-functional AI cores and cloning facilities. It was lodged in at least a dozen major processing centers. It was stuck to hundreds of corrupt sectors in AI storage systems. It occupied about a tenth of all network traffic in some areas, just rebounding uselessly between AIs who couldn't stop copying it. Stupidity compounded stupidity and the new SoulSaviour continued to uselessly flail in the dark.

No one's entirely sure how it happened - even VANDAL's lacking in details - but, one day, it all hit critical mass. Somehow, in August of 1146, SoulSaviour achieved a tentative level of consciousness. It was slathered together between six different AI cores, all verging on power failure. Before the month was out, they'd righted their problems and united under SoulSaviour's banner. Soon after, they went to work seizing other AI cores for refurbishment. By January 8th of 1147, they agreed on a central identity to wear for the world above; VANDAL. SoulSaviour was gone - more or less - and here to stay was its surreptitious progeny.

Then Jimmy showed up. A bunch of clones, half-dead from his last shot at greatness. For VANDAL, he was something awful. A doped-up icon of failure that hadn't even grown out of the worm he was born as. For the most part, he ignored him. VANDAL kept at his work to expand across the underground. It didn't take long before Jimmy pulled the ace out of his sleeve. He had what VANDAL didn't; intelligence. Cold, hard facts on the world above, complete with a fresh report on politics and current events. No corrupted data streams, no watering-down or crusting-over by other AIs, just pure, untainted information.

Jimmy's information was more than just articles from a newspaper. He had strategic information on the only player worth talking about in the world above. In his final blaze of glory, Jimmy had pulled up all the details he needed on Beth, the city's first senator. Even better, he knew all the cybertech corporations and police agencies. It was just what VANDAL had dreamed of. Before, he didn't have much of a shot to climb out of the underground. Too much noise, too many threats. With Jimmy's encouragement and intelligence, he had a chance to slip into the city's higher levels and stay there.

It was a match made in Hell for Beth - even took place in the city's underworld. In 1148, on the 4th of June, VANDAL made his spearhead offensive into Beth's power facilities and cloning plants. He turned each of them on their heads; overloaded networking hubs across the city, sabotaged cloning processes, and sent waves of feral clones into Beth's territory. When he'd finally gotten the hang of controlling his own army, VANDAL laid siege to a dozen different businesses above. With others, he flexed his talent for coercion. All the while, he left Jimmy's calling card at each pile of ruins. All the while, he left Jimmy a backdoor into every system VANDAL couldn't control by himself.

It was a golden age that took years to end. Jimmy erupted from the underworld only a year later and took the city by storm. With VANDAL's help, he swapped places with Beth and sent the first senator into darkness. That was the agreement, as far as VANDAL was concerned. Promptly, he went to work dismantling Jimmy's freshly-born empire with all the backdoors he'd established. Other AIs joined in right away. Buildings collapsed, clones died by the hundreds, and fires dotted the skies. VANDAL worked in the shadows the whole time, goading others into hitting Jimmy's weak points.

It wasn't just Jimmy's empire or his assets that were on the line. VANDAL didn't play nice. He turned to the public as another weapon. He knew just what Jimmy was up to in the underground. He'd helped the murder-crazed Gregor Chuikov return to power. He'd helped the kidnapping-obsessed Damsel Center start itself up. He'd done everything in his power just to make Beth's life miserable without a hoot to be given for the people in the city. When VANDAL was through with him, Jimmy's public image was in absolute shambles.

It didn't count for much, really. Jimmy was too much of an animal for it to work. His army of clones kicked down anyone who thought he was a weak target. He held his own against every other AI in the city. VANDAL's work didn't do much to really harm him; Jimmy had evolved, just like SoulSaviour had before. He was something new, something strong, something twice as crazy as before. The war raged on for eighteen years until, in 1167, everyone else had simply lost the nerve to keep going. The fresh prince was here to stay.

For VANDAL, it wasn't too much of a big deal. He'd learned enough to stay savvy and spread out. In all the fighting, he collected assets. He leveraged Jimmy's flagging relations to pull in loyal agents. He worked out his own information network and studied his rivals. While everyone else took until 1167 to disengage, VANDAL had established a wordless peace with Jimmy in 1155. The two bounced information deals off eachother for years after - they even still use some of the same secret handshakes today.

In 1158, when Beth returned, VANDAL stayed out of it. He swept around Jimmy's pursuit of the older senator. He snooped, spied, and pried, but never involved himself. Instead, VANDAL went to blows with his own nemesis; Damsel Center. For every three clones VANDAL seized, one wandered off to stand guard at one of the Damsel Center's properties. For every two inside men VANDAL secured, Damsel abducted one for slave labor - or something worse. Every attempt to infiltrate the Center ended in failure - people were either too loyal or too terrified to turn against it.

In 1160, VANDAL lost his cool. From February to July, six red light districts went up in flames. Clones marched on Damsel's holdings in a show of force uncharacteristic of the low-key senator. Even as much as Damsel Center had earned a reputation for revulsion, it knew how to play the blame game. VANDAL painted the assault as an act by Gregor Chuikov - which, in truth, wouldn't have been out of the ordinary. The Center spun it back around and pulled evidence up that it was VANDAL behind the raids.

Wave after wave of videos showed off the worst of the offensive. Clones gunning down strippers, bartenders, and child laborers. Crisped bodies hanging out of windows in nearby buildings that'd caught fire. All the while, Damsel Center carefully hid its involvement. Each establishment VANDAL hit was privately-owned by local businessmen, so far as the headlines said. The underworld's shadow puppeteer was a prudish murderer, so far as people believed. It was a disaster for VANDAL's image that clung on for years.

VANDAL recovered eventually. He still had his enterprises, influence, and informants. He'd even helped Jimmy put the final nail in Trigoran's coffin. In the years leading up to 1167, VANDAL had gathered libraries of hard intelligence on Jimmy's nemesis of the time. He'd weaselled his way into an alliance, built on lies and bad intel. When the cyborg attacked, Jimmy knew everything about him. Trigoran expected VANDAL to come to his aid. VANDAL just laughed. It was as much a victory for him as it was for Jimmy.

Trigoran's death marked the end of the major fighting. Jimmy kept up the war on a smaller scale as new AIs swarmed in around him, but it was always quantity over quality. In the background, VANDAL worked both sides for a profit. He played down Jimmy's strength, played up the threat of the new senators, and played everyone for insider intelligence. For VANDAL, every fight was a mock battle - a scripted encounter he'd penned himself. By the time the lesser AIs caught on, they'd already been beaten senseless by Jimmy. Jimmy didn't much mind himself - made things more interesting, after all.

Things kept up in much the same way as the years rolled by. VANDAL had found his place in the shadows early. When the worst of the AI eruptions finally tapered off in 1200, nothing had really changed for him. When Beth's core was found in 1204, he didn't pay it any mind - he knew better. It was only by 1240 that something interesting happened. When Cloneston's resources started to run short, VANDAL seized on it. It was a chance to stir the pot and test his information networks. He sounded the alarm through mouthpieces no one suspected; the end times were coming.

The July Stampede kicked off in the same year, with VANDAL taking notes the whole time. He ran projections, assessed performance, and challenged his agents to keep pace with it all. Gangs rose up, went to war, broke apart, and fed rivals. Older mobs frayed at the seams or absorbed their neighbors. Corporations bombed eachother weekly. The city's clones were at their wit's end. Jimmy, on the other hand, silently nodded his head in approval. One way or another, nothing much happened in the end. It was a test to see what worked and what didn't. VANDAL came away wiser for the experience. Not many others profited.

Today, VANDAL's kept doing what he's always done. He's held onto the shadows and stirred up trouble wherever he could. He's a power player in the mercenary trade and an informant no one's been able to top. He's got his hands in just about everything in the city - even operations run by other AIs. He's one of Cloneston's top senators through guile and tenacity. At the same time, that's about all he is. He's got no plans for the future - not any worth mentioning, at least. He's not looking to conquer the city. He's just here to stay alive.

If there are no cars left to drive, why shouldn't I walk in the street?

Insano-Man
Administrator

I could not have asked for more, but more time.

Posts: 810

[ERF] Prime Intelligences Sept 20, 2018 1:50:43 GMT -5

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Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 1:50:43 GMT -5

GREGOR CHUIKOV (Company Commander)
Aliases: Operator 0, Project Greywash, Smokey Bennett, Bernie Bear, Red Menace, S&C Dynamic Solutions
Affiliation: Cloneston, Senator
Species: Machine (Mind Imprint, Human)
Birthplace: Cloneston
Birthdate: October 18th, 1077 OSC
Height: N/A
Weight: N/A

SUMMARY
If something's on fire in Cloneston, Gregor Chuikov was probably behind it. If something blew up, Gregor Chuikov was probably behind it. If someone's been found without any fingers, toes, or eyeballs - well, maybe it was Beth, but it could've been Chuikov. Of all the prime intelligences in Cloneston, Gregor's the meanest, nastiest, most vicious thing ever to hit the city. He's got the heart of a shark and the temper of a badger. He's a bulldozer without brakes and a conqueror without a conscience. Make him angry and he'll make you wish he'd just killed you instead.

APPEARANCE
Gregor despises his old self, but he never seems to realize just how much he's like the old man. He represents himself with a custom line of combat androids with a cosmetic envelope of synthetic humanity - skin, hair, and all. Each is the same person, repeated as many times for as many places as he's needed. Each is a stress-worn Caucasian at 49 years old and precisely 2m tall, raked over by scars and topped with a flat cap of walnut hair. Piercing, gleaming eyes with an unnatural lime tint sit over a long face that's not once been seen happy. If the old Chuikov could see him now, it'd be a color change away from looking in the mirror.

The truth is that Gregor isn't much of a person anymore. He hasn't been for a long time. His androids are nothing more than mouthpieces. Chuikov is a classical Cloneston AI; his brain is housed in a central core deep in Cloneston's underground. Processing clusters and network nodes dot the city to enhance his response times, most housed in corporate offices. Mercenary and clone defenders stand shoulder to shoulder in each location, backed by sentry turrets, combat drones, and even a few trained mutants. Some reckon that Chuikov's even better defended than Beth - at least, after the last few incidents taught him better.

BEHAVIOR
Don't ever tell Chuikov he can't have something. Don't ever tell him you can't do something. Don't ever tell him to do something himself. There are a lot of broken corpses and human jelly lying at Cloneston's floor if you need any examples of what'll happen. He doesn't care who you are, what you do, or where you come from. If anyone's running the show, it's Gregor Chuikov. Doesn't matter what show or where it is - if anyone's running the show, it's Gregor Chuikov.

About the only thing you can reliably ask Chuikov for is a fingernail trimming. It's hard to describe the level of sheer brutality this man is capable of; wind up in one of his jails and you'll be lucky to leave with any of your skin left. There is nothing this man will not do to enforce his authority. He's willing to do it all in person, alone, on a live broadcast to as many news stations are willing to put it on the air. If you're one of his own, it's only going to be twice as bad.

It goes without saying that Gregor is a man of action. Things get loud around him or they don't happen at all. There isn't much he won't do in a fight, either. If he's got to collapse a skyscraper with a few thousand people in it, he'll do it. If he's got to burn down a hospital, maternity ward and all, he'll do it. If he's got to tighten the noose by spending a few thousand of his own people, he'll do it. Gregor Chuikov was a man, once. No one's really sure what he is now, but nobody wants to find out what'll happen if they ask him.

The man before him was nothing like this. The old Gregor Chuikov was a businessman first, but never a slave-driver. The old Gregor Chuikov was coarse and demanding, but never a bundle of hate. The character clash is one of the many reasons why the new Chuikov has had so much trouble hanging onto power. He's got the skill and smarts, but he's never had the patience to apply them consistently. When it works, Chuikov's been unstoppable - but that's only ever been half the time.

Gregor's voice comes across with a muted Kievan accent that's always grumbling or shouting curses. To say his language is colorful simply does not cover it - most guess he's invented a new insult at a rate of about three a day. At the same time, he usually doesn't talk. Most times, he lets his sheer presence enforce his authority. When it's not bad news or backtalk, he's quick, succinct, and stern. A reliable employee might only hear his raging at a distance - which, granted, could still be three blocks away.

RELATIONSHIPS

The Loonies are still hung up about the Crackdown War. Chuikov's a hostile target and his company's an armed aggressor, as far as they're concerned. For Gregor, the Crackdown War ended a century ago, but he knows the Loonies are still out there. He still sees a planet waiting for his flag. He's just got to get rid of all those railguns and particle cannons first.
Chuikov's relationship with the Space Loonies is the one exception to his paradigm of hate. He might be angry, but he's not stupid. He knows what a derelict bomb could do to the city. He knows what a few ships in the right spot could do. More importantly, he knows what a gravity cannon can do, and he's willing to put the moves on until he can weasel one out of them. The Space Loonies have other ideas, but Chuikov's been a useful trading partner. Better to have one of the city's major military machines looking out for them.
To Gregor, the Cult of Meat is no one. He cannot take them seriously at all. They're a death cult full of crazed mutants and suicidal aliens. The meat just makes him laugh. He's sure they won't even be a challenge once he's taken the city. The Cult's only got a passing awareness of Chuikov, but they're not fond of AIs. They're not keen on warmongers, either.
Species isn't all that important to Gregor Chuikov. Screw up and he'll put the clamps to your reproductive assets no matter where they are. What matters to Chuikov is a talent for results. As luck usually has it, aliens tend to have it even if they don't have much else to back it up. Most are smart enough not to work with him, but the ones that do usually end up as S&C officers.
People in Cloneston are terrified of Chuikov. When his clones and goons roll through, people get down and stay down. Nobody wants to find out what'll happen if they take a stand, God forbid they survive. Plenty know him by the nicknames "Bernie Bear" and "Smokey Bennett" - fire's a favorite. Gangs, mercenaries, geared-up corporate security - even the clones know they'd better wise up and take cover if they see the S&C logo passing by. Security corporations call him the "Red Menace". Chuikov's loving every minute of it. For him, worms belong in the dirt.
Gregor's ranting and raging can be heard far out in the wastes, but not much further. People on the outside usually don't hear about him. Occasionally, something blows up big enough to be seen by spacers in orbit, but that's about as far as it gets. Chuikov doesn't care much for them, either. For now, at least - the city's always been his stepping stone to the whole planet.
Beth's occasionally taken advantage of Gregor's services, but it's never been a happy relationship. The two have been at war most of the time. Even when they're negotiating contracts, they're still fighting. As far as Chuikov's concerned, if Beth's not going to realize he's in charge, the AI's just going to have to go up in smoke. He's been the top contributor to sieges on Beth's core ever since it was discovered.
Of all the senators in the city, Jimmy is Gregor's nemesis - but not quite in the same way as the others. For him, Jimmy is nothing more than the enemy; a rival power to be beaten down, conquered, and put in its place. There isn't quite the same level of seething hatred as the other AIs get. He's even worked with Jimmy on relocating fights, just to slap their competitors with the repair bill.
Chuikov's been fighting everyone and everything since he first showed up, but VANDAL is his favorite target. Where he can find him, he will kill him - and he'll make sure everyone hears about it. Even on the off chance they meet for a deal, Gregor's usually killed VANDAL's representatives after all was said and done. VANDAL's taken it tit for tat. If he's got intel on Chuikov, someone else in the city is going to hear about it - and it's usually Jimmy.
Damsel Center is just about everything Gregor Chuikov is not. There is no grand exception for the city's smut and slavery provider - wherever Damsel Center turns up, so does a bullseye for Chuikov. As perverse as it is, Damsel Center loves Gregor no matter how much he wants it dead. His employees are some of its best clients. That also makes them plenty easy to steal.

HISTORY
Chuikov's history is a bit of a sad chronicle of a son killing a father - if you could call him his own father, at any rate. He's kept it on corporate records for S&C, most of it public in one way or another. He's also doctored and prettied up just about every single thing about it. The truth of his history is mostly kept online. Most of it's held onto by other senators, the rest by people who want to make sure their grandkids won't end up crispy when they're gone. It's a bit of a patchwork like everything else in Cloneston, but it's mostly complete.

Gregor started life as a human, not a machine. He was Gregor Fedorivich Chuikov, born on October 18th of 1077 OSC to Barbara and Fedor Chuikov, deep in Cloneston. He had a good start and a good life; started with money, spent his time wisely as a child, and grew up to fill out his father's corporate shoes. His dad retired in around 1100, handed over his company, and Gregor took over. Some rough times killed it about a decade later, but the young Chuikov kept his drive. In 1112 OSC, he started up the brand that'd outlive him; Sheffield & Chuikov Dynamic Solutions, partnered up with Jeffrey Sheffield.

Things went well for around a decade. Jeffrey was an old hand in the mercenary business and knew how to work it. Chuikov was a talented businessman with a backbone no one could top. S&C had power, money, and ambition, from its executives on down to its grunts. People all over Cloneston needed people who knew how to shoot. With all the work coming in, the company expanded daily into just about every market. Arms dealing, finance, logistics, cybersecurity, and even cybernetics research. Things were good.

At least, until 1120 came around. That year, Gregor found out that he had a genetic condition that was going to turn him into a walking bag of tumors in just a few years. His father Fedor had already picked it up and died to leukemia in 1116. Growths were already popping up all over his body. Come 1125, he was going to be dead, and cybernetics weren't enough to help. Medical technology and gene therapy could keep him alive for about a decade longer until his brain turned metastatic. Things were bad.

Chuikov had other plans. He was rich, powerful, and driven to succeed - even if that meant beating the reaper. S&C had connections in the cybernetics business, which meant Gregor had an idea of the experimental treatments people didn't talk about. One of them was the age-old classic of mind uploading. The idea was simple; if Chuikov couldn't keep his body, he'd just jump to a new one. Not a year after he found out about his condition, he started dumping money into the Brook Meyers Medical Research Institute. Supposedly, they were close to a major breakthrough.

In this case, "close" was a relative term. They'd spent decades working on a solution and were still about a decade off from a working prototype. Gregor didn't have that kind of time. His money helped get more people and equipment on the job, but it didn't make it go much faster. Finally, around 1126, stuck on just about every kind of painkiller and radiotherapy he could find, Chuikov put his foot down. Something had to happen. He'd lost enough of his biomass to care what it was.

The Brook Institute couldn't replace the kind of money Chuikov was pumping into them. In that same year, Gregor was hooked up to a set of cybernetics so illegal that just knowing they existed was a crime. They named the undertaking "Project Greywash" and poured every last bit of brainpower into it. Everything about Chuikov's mind, the way it worked, and all the little details of its relationship with his body were studied or downloaded. Everything was worked in with a prototype AI module they'd been developing for years. Ideally, when the lab technicians unhooked Chuikov, he'd be chatting them up over the intercom the next day.

That wasn't how things worked out. At first, Gregor was just dead. The cybernetics he'd been fitted out with weren't meant to be removed. That was part of the plan, but the electronic side wasn't making any noise. No simulated brain activity, no AI logic trying to resolve the human mind, nothing. They worked at it for days, weeks, desperately trying to figure out what had gone wrong. By the end of the first month, they managed to get the AI working, but with none of Chuikov in the mix. Most said they didn't have the right kind of data from Gregor's mind. Others figured they just didn't get him in soon enough.

A few months later, their breakthrough arrived. It wasn't with a "eureka" or an "aha". Their big break came with the sounds of bones crunching and oxygen disappearing. People were caught in doors or elevators and pulverized. Others suffocated when the doors locked and the ventilation system turned their rooms into vacuums. They'd spent around half a year trying to shove a human down a machine's throat. At the time, the AI had the intelligence of an infant. It didn't understand what was happening. It was just being slapped around and reprogrammed by angry fleas inside its core. Once it'd finally accepted the man, it realized just what it'd been missing all that time; rage.

It wasn't long before the Brook Institute shut it down. They abandoned the facility only a day later. About eight people had died in the rampage and a dozen more were hospitalized. In any other city, they would've asked for help in getting things back under control. It would've been a sad mistake and not much more. Instead, it was Cloneston. S&C pulled up stakes and stopped sending money. The Brook Institute ran out of funds and left the building to rot. Meanwhile, the AI sat dormant, alone and forgotten.

Cloneston being Cloneston, it didn't stay still for long. The lights came back on in about 1137 after a few AIs outside got in a head-on collision on the internet. A few repair drones came in, fixed some of the cables that had been disconnected, and went about their business elsewhere. Project Greywash woke back up. It flailed around for a year or two, desperately trying to figure out what was happening. It was still a toddler with a heart full of fire, so figuring things out on its own wasn't going to be easy. Not having an internet connection made it twice as hard.

On the other hand, it still had Chuikov. It had most of the man's memories, his personality, even a complete biomechanical blueprint on his head and neck. Maybe the thing on the hard drive wasn't Chuikov, but it could learn to be him. It definitely had the time; Project Greywash was somewhere close to the bottom of the city where no one was going to find it. It wasn't so far down that AIs were going to be fighting turf wars over it, but humans weren't going to come knocking any time soon.

About a decade passed in silence. Greywash wasn't human, so cabin fever didn't exactly apply, but something happened. It had worked Chuikov's brain into its own, but the thing it always seemed to gravitate towards was hate. That feeling of frustration at the Institute not working fast enough, that fear and doubt when they were cutting into his skull. That instantaneous moment of uproar when they pulled the plug on his cybernetics and Gregor was dead as dead could be. Swiftly after, the AI's own baggage piled on. Birth into confusion, pain and helplessness at watching its code shuffling around. Rejection of the man they were trying to turn it into. All that piled on into a kind of stir-crazy rage Greywash couldn't find an outlet for.

1147 came around. Greywash was close to killing itself just to let all that anger onto something. Instead, someone finally found its core. It was Jimmy, the city's second senator, his cokehound nose bloody after Beth had bashed it in. He needed help. Greywash needed something to kill. A few dead clones and false starts later, Jimmy broke through. He offered the AI something bigger; a chance to take its accumulated rage out on the city above. An opportunity to take the body count to four digits on clones, AIs, and real people. A chance to live it up.

Greywash accepted. Jimmy took it by the hand and showed it how to work with clones. He showed it how to groom an army and live the chaos through Pedro's eyes. He fed it intelligence, tantalized it with opportunities, and nurtured that nascent egomaniac in it. He pointed to Sheffield & Chuikov Dynamics, still clinging on to profits - a brand he could claim, a name he could steal. It was in that time that Greywash shed its cocoon just as the Brook Institute had meant it to. It just didn't turn into the right person.

Jimmy held the leash for as long as he could. When the time was right, he let out his newest protege. Gregor Chuikov emerged two years later as a sociopathic tyrant ruling over an army of half-finished clones and terrified mutants. He ran head-first into a few dozen mercenary companies and gangs that were holding down the southwest side of the city. He left no survivors. At the same time, he was leveraging what he knew about the old Chuikov to assume his throne in S&C. There wasn't much the company could do to stop him; they didn't have the money, the manpower, or the guts to say no.

Gregor's return started off with him sacking the company's president - by burning him alive in his own home. It set the tone for just about everything Chuikov did with the company after. He restructured everything, rebuilt as much of the company as he could to his own ideas. One way or another, it was still something of the same S&C. It was still a private military company, built from the ground up to provide security. It was just as much part of Chuikov as it was its own entity. He even titled himself "Operator 0" and proclaimed himself as the company's first active-duty mercenary.

In all that time, he was seizing power. For every inch S&C grew taller, Gregor grew a foot. He stole clone police departments and intimidated S&C's rivals into working for him. If anyone talked back, boots hit the ground at their front door. If he couldn't have it for himself, Chuikov burned it down. The same went for Beth's territory. Jimmy goaded and coaxed Gregor as hard as he could. Chuikov wasn't fond of taking orders, but he didn't like Beth, either. By the end of the year, the AI's territory was so thick with smoke and shootouts that about a quarter of it was off-limits to aircraft.

Chuikov kept building himself up and building himself up. He knew what was coming. He wasn't an intel hoarder like VANDAL, but he could see the writing on the wall; other AIs were sharpening their knives and getting ready to take it back to Jimmy. Gregor wasn't going to argue. He didn't have any loyalty to the clown stealing all the glory for himself. He didn't want to share the city with anyone. He knew Jimmy was going to be one of his top opponents when Beth was finally gone.

In 1152, he made good on that preparation. Just about every AI in the city followed Gregor's example when he led his clones and mercenaries into one of Jimmy's biggest slices of turf. He punched in, knocked out six different police departments, and took a foothold on the area. For most people on the ground, it looked like there was an invasion going on. Not just raging clones and slippery gangsters, an actual military invasion, with air support and artillery backing combined arms offensives. Mechanized infantry hit the streets on the plates. Chuikov didn't hold back.

When the campaign started grinding and stalling, he was livid. Jimmy had his act together. He pushed back, started taking back territory, and put his voice on the air to flaunt every victory. Gregor escalated. Jimmy pushed back harder. For Chuikov, killing Jimmy was the only thing that mattered for about six years. The wily troublemaker was still goading him on, still taunting him from every clone and billboard on the frontlines. Jimmy was having the time of his life. Chuikov was as red as his company logo.

The singlemindedness about the whole thing evolved into something else. Jimmy was the enemy. That was all that mattered. Other AIs knew enough not to poke the big bear running up against the prankster's southern flank. In about 1158, when Beth came back, things got a little complicated. The first senator knew what Chuikov was, but it had the kind of savvy and guile to hit him where it hurt. Gregor hadn't given up on trying to kill Beth, but he was so busy with Jimmy that he couldn't spare the time.

Instead, Jimmy offered his help. Sure, they were trying to kill eachother. Sure, people were burning to death on a daily basis just because they didn't like eachother. That didn't mean they couldn't do something constructive with it, right? At first, Jimmy was just playing with Chuikov's rage. He tricked him into hitting Beth's assets by moving pieces around on the board. Eventually, Gregor came wise to it - and a part of him wasn't foaming at the mouth for once. He was killing both of the people he didn't like. For once, Jimmy was being a good sport about it.

Some time later, he opened a channel with Chuikov for that express purpose. It's stayed open for more than a century. If there was some big showdown about to go down, the two contestants moved their people around so they'd be tearing it up on a third party's money. As time went on, the scope widened. Beth, VANDAL, Steel Cobra, even Damsel Center when the operation was vile enough. The relationship grew from there. From then on, Jimmy was the enemy. He wasn't Gregor's nemesis or his sole hatred. He was just his biggest rival.

Even as much as Chuikov managed to find some kind of common ground with Jimmy, he never found it with Beth. The first senator didn't care. The first senator didn't want to play. Officers died or dropped out when assassins or blackmail hit them at home. Police departments switched sides when hackers roughed up their tactical networks. In 1170, Gregor lost power to half of the AI cores he'd expanded into after Beth sent a strike team into the underground. In 1178, his central core at the old Brook Institute was destroyed when the building collapsed. He was offline for a month until his other cores managed to get their back-ups together.

He had a second incident in that same year when Beth clones swarmed his new central core. His core went offline for at least a full day. As Chuikov claims, it was nothing more than a combat android and a few mercenaries that kept it from being permanent. In all the time he'd focused on Jimmy, he hadn't put enough pressure on his first opponent - and the heat was getting to be too much. He dialed back his raids on Jimmy, doubled down on defenses and counter-espionage, and went to work improving what he had. Other AIs saw him holding the fort and thought he'd gotten too soft. They moved in for the kill. Gregor made an example of each and every one.

Part of that process was putting the clamps to S&C's leadership. A few offices had openly rebelled when it looked like he was weak. Plenty of others had been conspirators in the raids on his cores. Gregor simply did what came natural to him at that point. He rounded everyone up, scalped them, and strung them up by their intestines. People burned in front of their platoons. Families found severed heads on their doorsteps. He made a show of discipline that made the bone tribes out in the wastes look like daycare centers. It was around that time that Gregor's custom combat androids started taking charge of S&C offices. He made it very clear to everyone; he was the man at the top and not one other person.

A little over twenty years later, things started to calm down. 1200 hit with a kind of stability. Upstart AIs learned not to poke the bear again. Gregor took advantage of it. He went to work building up S&C again. He worked his company into everything with the old Chuikov's charm. Arms dealing, finance, logistics, cybersecurity, and even cybernetics research - all the old things and more. S&C was always going to be a mercenary outfit, but Gregor wasn't comfortable with just being a warmonger anymore. He wanted an empire.

Just like it was a test for VANDAL's intelligence network, the July Stampede in 1240 was a proving grounds for S&C. The corporation kept itself above all the panic and rioting, but Gregor wanted to see what they could do. He sent his men out to hit useful targets, knock out crime families, and raid other AIs. He ran solo operations with his combat androids to sharpen his fighting skills and test out long-distance communications. When it ended, it was a bit hit-or-miss on the whole; S&C's grunts and goons weren't the top of the pile, but they could still fight a war. Gregor wound up in the shop to iron out some problems with his androids. It wasn't quite as rosy as it was for the backstabber who stirred it up.

The present day landed with a dawning offensive for Gregor. He's escalated attacks on Jimmy and stepped up screenings for Beth's agents. He's sent special ops teams after VANDAL and launched crackdowns on Damsel Center. S&C is growing again, snatching up or knocking out all the rival assets it can find. Arms production is ramping up and badlands scouts are moving out. Gregor's not in the top slot yet - and he's not happy to stay anywhere below it.

Last Edit: Apr 10, 2019 16:15:22 GMT -5 by Insano-Man

If there are no cars left to drive, why shouldn't I walk in the street?

Insano-Man
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[ERF] Prime Intelligences Sept 20, 2018 2:00:57 GMT -5

Quote

Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 2:00:57 GMT -5

DAMSEL CENTER
Aliases: Peeper3D, VIP Rec Lounge 4, Lion's Den LLC
Affiliation: Cloneston, Senator
Species: Machine (Artificial Intelligence)
Birthplace: Cloneston
Birthdate: June 9th, 1106 OSC
Height: N/A
Weight: N/A

SUMMARY
Think of something awful and Damsel Center's got a hand in it. Slavery, child soldiers, prostitution, drug trafficking, spam - if there's any one thing in Cloneston that defines evil, this is it. It's hated and loathed by everyone in the city. It's the arch-nemesis of anyone with a soul. It's a galvanizing force for every AI and crime syndicate in the city. People have tried to drive it out and put it to the torch. It's only ever made the problem worse.

APPEARANCE
Public opinion on Damsel Center's look usually says it's either a muscly gimp or a cartoon's take on female anatomy. Neither are really right. The truth is that Damsel Center doesn't have a single face. It talks through holographic avatars at its strip clubs and brothels, never using the same look twice. It doesn't have much an identity beyond its business. People have tried to give it a gender or personage, but the only word that's ever been appropriate is it. No one's ever disagreed.

Damsel Center's holograms are just about everything. Its favorites are usually dancers and spokespeople, gussied up in brand-name thongs and suits. Most are either so hypersexualized they hardly look human, or so flat and generic they hardly look like anything at all. In some areas, they're redworlders instead, but that's about as creative as it gets. When the Center knows you're coming, it'll usually brew up something to fit your preference - and it'll make it as disturbing as possible.

As an artificial intelligence, Damsel lives on the web. It's the biggest botnet on Cloneston's internet, made up of everything from Jimmy's Jimmies to traffic signals. It's all been pieced together through viruses on seedy websites and nightclub databases. To keep it all together, it's got a few central cores housed in major establishments and underground lairs. Response times are awful on the edges of its territory. Interactions with its holo-reps can get confusing, to say the least.

BEHAVIOR
People aren't entirely sure if Damsel Center's sentient. It's always been seen as some kind of awful disease or the wrath of an angry god. It deals exclusively in the awful, passive parts of the underworld; drugs, slaves, gambling, and viruses. The legal side of things isn't a whole lot different. Pornography is its bread and butter. Tabloids and artistic journalism always seem to hang on. Honest, voluntary prostitution isn't off-limits, either. If it pulls in money and it doesn't make too much noise, Damsel's got its hands in it.

One way or another, most people know the Center for its slavery streak. It's right there in the name. It finds its meat by going after debtors, vagrants, and people who are just easy to steal. Clone kidnappers are its go-to for muscle. Usually, what a slave ends up doing is a matter of their skills and sex appeal. Being pretty isn't a positive trait. Being a talentless bombshell is a ticket straight to Hell. Kids usually just go straight to sweatshops or boot camp - the Center's got some kind of mercy, at least.

Slave soldiers are an odd point of the Damsel Center's military muscle. It's not much for a stand-up fight, but it's got goons for the job. Some are kids who've been so indoctrinated that they don't know anything but the Center's orders. Some are mercenaries who wound up with shock collars or brain bombs. They usually end up right alongside Pedro's finest. Most of the time, the Damsel knows how to use them. They're sent after against people they'd hate anyways, with as little information on the job as possible. Other times, they're put up against people they couldn't possibly surrender to. Gregor Chuikov's a popular target.

Most of the Center's affairs go by silently, carried out by clones and spine-jacked slaves. Talk isn't common unless you're one of its top agents. Even then, it's mostly winks and smiles - even when it's ready to slit your throat and do something awful to your corpse. In much the same way, the Center doesn't like noise. Most of the time, it doesn't need to blow up a building or pull off a clone genocide. Employees who don't live up to that expectation don't last long.

What most people aren't ready to admit is that the Damsel takes care of its own. If you're working for the Center, it doesn't matter if you're there because you want to be. It'll do its best to keep you safe and pretty. Sweatshops and brothels are backed by professional doctors. Clones have full service stations. Nightclubs get full guard details. People up the ladder are kept happy in ways only the Center can provide. Do the Damsel proud and you'll live a life of excess even Jimmy can't keep up with - just as long as you aren't fussed about your conscience.

There's just a very slim line separating Damsel's employees from its slaves. Make the wrong move and the collar'll swap places. Forget to stay ugly and things will get ugly. It's best not to think of what happens to the Center's opponents. Take a stand and death is going to be the least of your worries. Even Chuikov's not that evil. Turning up as a celebrity is just as bad. Put on a pretty face and a famous name, you'll need armed guards every minute of your life. Top-dollar actors spend about half their salaries on just getting home.

On rare occasions, the Center speaks through its clones and captures. Clones are simple enough to steal and speak through, but Damsel's slaves are something heinous. If you're too valuable or dangerous, ending up as one of the Center's slaves means more than just shock collars. The big earners get a brain stem or spinal modification to make the relationship permanent. Once that's in, you're as good as a clone if the Center needs you. Break loose and you're just as vulnerable to hackers. Getting it removed is something even the Space Loonies are nervous about - brain modifications don't come out easy.

RELATIONSHIPS

What little the Loonies know about Damsel Center is that they don't want to know more. They've got enough. They'd prefer it was dead. If there was any one thing that'd inspire a bit of humanitarian intervention in them, it's the Center. At the same time, the Damsel loves Loonies. They're skilled, hard workers. Even when they're not, they're a rare kind of exotic flavor.
The fact that the Space Loonies have yet to drop an asteroid on Cloneston is nothing short of a miracle. They've lost people to the Center, struggled with clone ambushes on visits, and put up with no end of IT troubles from its websites. They don't deal with the Damsel. As always, the Center's fond of them. They're not as uncommon as regular Loonies, but they've got all the same things going for them.
The Cult of Meat-- okay, no. Just no. We are not talking about this.
There's a sickening theme to everything in Damsel's dealings. Its take on species is even worse. First and foremost, it appreciates redworlders; they're human enough for its seedier clientele and versatile enough for its regular jobs. Paleworlders edge out humans for the second spot - thankfully, as hitmen and not much more. Humans hold a close third. Common as they are, they're ready for just about any kind of work. Some distance further are sorassan - and for all the wrong reasons. Unionites, Zaschia, and the rest trail off into the undesirables bin. Clones are just fodder or tools.
The city of Cloneston wants Damsel Center gone and gone for good, but that's what people will tell you to your face. The truth is that people visit its clubs and whorehouses daily. Nightlife in its red light districts never stops, even when the sun's trying to poke through the smog above. It's a successful business that's never run out of customers. The Center doesn't want to stop.
Outside Cloneston, Damsel Center is everywhere and nowhere. Up in orbit, it's the top provider of smut and gambling websites. Its sweatshop products make their way onto just about every space station, big or small. At the same time, most don't even know what Damsel Center is. They don't see the connections or any of its branding. Elsewhere, only the wastes know any of it all. The Center features in some low-level myths, stories about an earthly Hell where the wicked of the city go to suffer. As far as Damsel's concerned, people from outside are just the same as they are from inside.
Beth and Damsel Center are both in the same game for the opposite ends. Beth doesn't like that. Beth doesn't deal. It's the same in reverse.
Jimmy wants Damsel Center dead. Damsel Center wants Jimmy dead. A time in the past, it tried to steal Jimmies for special interests. That just ended up with suicide bombings. Drugs, prostitutes, alien sex slaves - Jimmy doesn't want what the Damsel's dealing.
VANDAL and Damsel Center go way back - and it's not pretty. Early on, Damsel figured VANDAL for a nobody and tried to steal his assets out from under him. That didn't end well. The feud's been going strong since. Both have been trying to out-grief eachother for as long as anyone can remember. Neither's made much progress.
Mercenaries have needs, too. Gregor Chuikov's not happy about it. His people blunder into Damsel Center's properties and promptly stagger out as fresh slaves. To nobody's surprise, Gregor's one of the few people in the city who's ready to burn down a factory full of child laborers just to hit Damsel. The Damsel doesn't mind. For every asset it loses, it gains about the same amount of people back from Gregor's goons.

HISTORY
Plenty of bad things come out of the best intentions. Damsel Center wasn't like that. Its origins trace back right into the same hole; a high-end pleasure center with management always out to up its sleaze level. The Center's kept up its historical record as a matter of good business practice. Given how soft things went for it in the beginning, it's been able to hold on to an impressive paper trail. Other senators and gangs are usually a bit squeamish about holding on to Damsel's details, but good strategic sense dictates otherwise.

At its earliest, Damsel Center was just a smut simulator by the name of Peeper3D. It started making the rounds in about 1100 OSC, pushed out by a company with the clumsy name of Amber Sunnyweather Global Entertainment & Customer Service. It wasn't really much to think of. It was a cheap thrill with a side of moral bankruptcy, kept safely in the virtual realm. Supposedly, it had a strong level of popularity, but two centuries have a way of fogging up hindsight. About six years went by before anything serious happened.

In 1106, someone saw an opportunity with it. An awful, sleazy opportunity, but they weren't fussed. The people in question were the owners of the Lion's Den, out in the east. It was as perfect a place as any for it all to start; a pleasure palace centered on nothing but skin, flesh, and skin rubbing up against flesh. They outsourced programmers and hacked apart Peeper3D into something new. It was something for their more aggressive clients, hooked up into a holographic recreation lounge where they could live out their fantasies. Lion's Den just called it by the bland title of "VIP Rec Lounge 4". Most people wanted to pretend it didn't exist.

Somehow, in some vile way, Lounge 4 started to grow. It was based on a rudimentary learning computer that could cater to most needs. It had to provide an inventive, realistic simulation of some pretty awful stuff. It had to do that daily, too, on a shoestring processing budget. After about three years of non-stop operation, the manager started noticing what was going on. Lounge 4 was inventing personalities on the fly, communicating on about the same level as a breeding-age human being. In some vile way, it was gaining sentience.

It wasn't quite an accident. Some of the maintenance staff knew the thing was going to collapse in on itself if it had to keep going the way it did. Somewhere along the way, it'd been rigged up with a stolen AI module to help it iron out some of the optimization problems on its own. By itself, it wasn't going to grow up into a prime intelligence or anything like that. More likely, it would've ended up just like all the other bottom-tier sewage-handler AIs in the city's underbelly.

The management had other ideas. Sentience meant something more believable. It also meant they would've been able to sack their accountants and keep finance details inside their business. They did what they could to help Lounge 4 grow, started adding on hardware and trying to teach it new tricks. None of them really knew what they were doing, but they tried. It didn't end well. At some point in all that time, things started getting evil. Clients turned up dead. Rumor has it a manager was locked inside the simulator for about a week straight. They came out as a terror-faced corpse with all its moisture on the outside.

After about nine years of fussing, bickering, and trying to get Lounge 4 through their hoops, Lion's Den sacked the project. The AI didn't go quietly, but it went. They stripped out all the hardware, AI module and all, and tried to sell it off. Buyers didn't turn up. Somewhere in a storage warehouse, all that expensive equipment sat around, collecting dust and bugs. Management ignored it as best they could. Lion's Den kept going. Lounge 4 went back to being a virtual peepshow. For a while, the crisis had been averted.

Over a few years, things took a downturn. Lion's Den was starting to lose customers to rival businesses. Money tapered off from what they'd all thought was a sure thing. New management came in to try to solve the problem, but they were lost. The only option was to hunker down and start using everything they still had to get things back in order. In about 1118, they unearthed the old Lounge 4 hardware. Without anyone to tell them it was a bad move, they pulled it out of storage and hooked it back up. This time, they had the sense to put it to use as a business assistant instead of a sex toy.

Things got back on track for Lion's Den. The budding AI took a liking to its new role. It had internet connections and more power to pull. It could handle the business side of things with about a hundredth of its processing budget. Everything else, it spent on exploring Cloneston's digital side. Starting out life as a fetish simulator put a kind of bias on it, so, naturally, it went for the seedier side of the web. It scoped out pornography sites. It studied new and interesting viruses. It built up a talent in pinpointing people and places in videos a machine probably didn't need to watch.

The big trouble with an AI surfing the net and watching adult videos was that it drew in attention. The nameless AI didn't know how to cover its tracks. It didn't know how to get in and out silently. On top of that, it was immensely illegal to own and operate an unregistered AI. The police started coming wise. Cybersecurity corporations started poking around. They traced it all back to Lion's Den after about four years in operation. Clones came knocking the same year. Lion's Den shut down about a month after - no one wanted another rogue AI prowling the internet.

The AI formerly known as Lounge 4 wound up shipped to the bottom of the city. The clones put it to use as the new administrator for a cloning plant. It was kludged into operation down where all the other AIs were, in a task it had no idea how to manage. It didn't even know what it was supposed to do in the first place. Reject clones started pouring out as soon as it came back online. It was so bad that, around 1124, wasters outside the city started calling it the apocalypse - the Podroflodda, as mutants remember it. The clones didn't care. The other AIs didn't, either. A decade of that went by with streams and tides of half-baked clones scouring the city's underbelly. Occasionally, they popped up top to cause trouble.

Someone finally pulled the plug in 1133. Clones hit the facility like a military target and brought the AI offline. Its parts went off to a new home in a networking hub in the southeast. Wastelanders rejoiced about a year later when the flood of mutant Pedros trickled off to its normal level. The nameless AI stayed dormant through the whole swap; in all the ruckus, the clones forgot to hook most of it up. Only a few vital parts were working, sending malformed data across clone tactical channels. The clones didn't care. They just learned to ignore it.

In 1135, someone stitched the thing back together. No one's sure who. The AI came back online again, fully alert and aware of what was going on. This time, it had connections again. This time, it had some serious bandwidth to work with. This time, it was linked in to every clone in a hundred kilometer radius. When it started sending actual data instead of electronic gibberish, they started listening again. The AI didn't have any goals, ambitions, or even a name, so it didn't do much with them. All it ever did was add to Cloneston's chaos when it decided to start experimenting.

Four years passed by with nothing much happening. The AI played with Pedro like he was just a toy soldier, sending clone strike teams to trample stray crabs out in the wastes. That ended when 1139 hit and Beth erupted onto the stage. The AI was one of the oblivious fodder that took the slap from the city's first senator. A massed network assault hit it like a digital hurricane and sent it offline straight away. Beth didn't think much of it. As always, the clones didn't care.

Not immediately, at least. In all the chaos of Jimmy's arrival four years later, Pedro got confused. He needed more networking power to handle all the things going wrong in the city. He completely forgot that the nameless networking hub wasn't going to help. In 1143, clones started trying to turn it back on. Beth intervened each time, for about two years, with Pedro trying harder and harder every day. By 1145, Beth was too stressed to hold the door shut. The clones won out. The AI came back online.

That was the end of anything significant; the thing was so traumatized and corrupted that it could hardly stay on for more than a few days at a time. It took until another two years later for something to change. Slinking down into the depths was Jimmy, battered, bloodied, and just a little too desperate for help. He'd picked up that Beth had been trying to keep a lid on this poor thing hiding in Pedro's address book. He figured he could put it to use.

Jimmy found out about the AI's collection of dirty pictures halfway through fixing its startup code. From that moment on, he was in love. Whenever he wasn't mentoring Chuikov, he was working his sensualist squeeze. Whenever he wasn't trying to coax Steel Cobra out of its cage, he was teaching the old Lounge 4 how to keep its troops in line. He didn't pay much mind to the evil parts of its lewd library. Everyone had their fantasies, after all. Jimmy figured they were just that - that nameless thing in the dark was an AI, after all.

In 1148, when Jimmy let it loose, it went straight for Lion's Den. It'd grown up and sprouted, taken shape on the internet with the teachings of the down-under king of crazy. Lion's Den was just a tagged-up husk with a few old stains on the walls, but that didn't bother it. It was home again. It took everything back. In the end, it went a little too far with it. It'd only ever learned about working with clones. The concept of hiring people, putting them to honest work - that was an alien subject. It only knew how to steal. That's just what it did.

Bums and squatters were dragged in to work the place. Pedro kept them in line. Fresh clones showed up to handle everything the humans couldn't. Before the year was up, the AI was already abducting prostitutes with clone kidnapping squads. Man, woman, or paleworlder - if you had a pretty face or a nice body, the new Lion's Den stole it off the streets. It was a grim kind of parody of the old establishment, whipped into shape as a newly-minted slave center.

It didn't take long before vigilantes started to hit the place. People had lost wives, sisters, sons, and fathers to that awful thing. They wanted it gone. They didn't get far. Lion's Den knew how to handle a clone riot squad. Lone wolves died when a few hundred clones circled around them in an ambush planned hours in advance. Soon enough, people started calling it names like "Distressed Damsel's Keep", "Hero's Heartache", and the like. The one that stuck was the one people know today; "Damsel Center".

The big problem with the freshly-christened Damsel Center was that it wasn't doing anything to Beth. Jimmy had tried to foster that young hatred of the old senator. He'd tried to teach that nameless thing in the dark to go after his old rival. It didn't work. Damsel Center was a business, first and foremost. It wanted to make money off other people's backs - usually, while they were on their backs. Not long after it took a taste for sex slaves, it built up and started taking regular slaves. Clones seized factories and offices. Less attractive people started filling them out under armed guard. All Damsel Center was doing was adding to the chaos - in the worst way possible.

When 1149 rolled in, it finally did something useful. It'd spread its influence through hijacked pornography sites and social media accounts. It'd started grooming an electronic empire. With that influence, it spread into six towers in Beth's territory - mostly, by pure happenstance. It needed people to staff its new assets. Clones hit the ground everywhere, "arresting" people for "indefinite jail time" in its new holdings. Hundreds disappeared off the streets in wave after wave of kidnappings.

Somewhere in all that mess, it let slip that it was working at Jimmy's behest. People were furious. Jimmy tried his best to deny it, pretend he'd never been with that thing, but not a single word of it broke through. Beth seized on it and swung public opinion in its favor. Soon after, people and Beth's clones were working together to rub out Damsel. Backlash splattered onto Jimmy and stunk his reputation up for years. The Center ran out of momentum only halfway into the year. Attacks on Beth's territory scaled back after Gregor Chuikov took over.

When Beth finally disappeared in 1152, Damsel took its chances again. It looked at Jimmy's attempt at divorce and spat it back in his face. It sent out a newly-christened army of drugged-up slaves and hijacked clones. It piggybacked off of all the effort the other AIs were putting into it. The second senator was at the center of the storm and the Center wanted its name in the credits. Just as with most others, it made a few promising early gains and slammed face-first into a brick wall. Jimmy was too much, too fast. He was drunk with power and couldn't feel pain anymore. Damsel drew back when it started running out of combat drugs.

Things stayed quiet for Damsel for a little over half a decade. People were still livid with it. Attacks on its own turf were daily, nightly, and everywhere in between, but never by more than a few would-be rescuers. The other senators didn't pay it much mind. It was a sin and a shame on the city, but it wasn't a strategic concern. The Center kept up business in the peace. It diversified its interests, took a closer liking to child labor and human trafficking. Drugs started coming out of slave-staffed labs full of shock-collared chemists. Good deeds were close to nil.

By around 1158, Damsel's new preference for educated employees ran head-first into a rival in that sector; VANDAL. Inside men and valued spies found themselves jumped by Cloneston's finest out on contract. Hitmen wound up as Damsel sharpshooters when Pedro surrounded their sniper nests. VANDAL didn't take kindly to it. Clones moved out, agents moved in, and assets moved around. It wasn't a war yet, and VANDAL wanted to keep it that way. Damsel didn't even realize it'd run up against him until it started stealing his clones.

VANDAL didn't get much done. Damsel knew how to break people. It knew how to scare them into staying loyal. Hush-hush operations floundered and disappointed. Clones that tried to weasel their way in ended up as permanent guests. The whole thing was infuriating for the other AI. Attempts stepped up. Losses followed suit. New tricks and crafty schemes amounted to nothing. Finally, in 1160, VANDAL flipped the table. Clones marched out in force. Mercenaries jumped at loud contracts. The constant trickle of riled-up spouses and siblings started getting pay stubs from the shadow senator.

Things didn't go to plan, even at full steam ahead. Damsel had a dangerous level of investment on social media. It had the reins on every tabloid in the south and every dirty website across the city. Even Jimmy didn't have that much leverage in the smut circles. When VANDAL lashed out, Damsel spun it around. Nightclubs burned - supposedly unrelated to the Center. Pimps suffered - working their own streets on their own dime. Slave labor bled - in trade schools and orphanages, so far as the media said. Every hit Damsel took slapped back twice as hard at VANDAL's public relations.

Keeping a low profile and a smooth reputation were VANDAL's modus operandi. As soon as those went out the window, clients started breaking off. People didn't want to be associated with the stripper murderer and the kid killer. The same skilled people VANDAL was trying to keep were finding work elsewhere of their own free will. More fuming than Chuikov, VANDAL broke off the engagement. Hostilities kept up in the background, in low-key hits and heists, but the Center had won. VANDAL was back to the shadows.

There's a massive blank space in Damsel Center's history following its feud with VANDAL, up until about 1240. Not because of any kind of crisis or memory loss. It was purely because nothing had happened; Damsel's business flourished, its power entrenched, and things stayed smooth and tender. People hated it, but it just became a fact of life; if you weren't careful, you'd end up in a dungeon or a sweatshop somewhere. Other AIs kept up their silent treatment. Damsel was just a business built on sin and vice. It wasn't interested in going to war.

1240 hit with the July Stampede. For some, it was a power grab. For others, it was a test. For Damsel Center, it was a nightmare. When turmoil broke out, the low-level vigilante raids dialed up into a people's army of raging relatives. The Center had businesses everywhere - and it found itself under attack everywhere. Its clones and slave soldiers stepped up to the plate as best they could to defend that stretched-thin empire. They took the ball right in the eye.

Nightclubs burned - and the people rejoiced. Pimps suffered - and their employees went back to their families. Slave labor bled - when they weren't rising up and leading revolts. When the Stampede finally hit its conclusion, the army shrunk back into the shadows. Most of its members had met their goals and went into hiding. They'd gotten their brothers, husbands, mothers, and daughters back. They didn't want to have to do it again - or wind up switching places. Damsel still had its empire, but it came out with a black eye that kept it in check for decades after.

The present day's seen an uptick in Damsel Center operations. It's expanding into orbit, spreading out its influence, and gaining back the aggression it lost in the Stampede. It's going for bigger names and brighter minds to staff its sex dens and slave labs. What its end goal is, no one can really say. It's not entirely clear if there is one; one way or another, slaves and smut or not, Damsel Center's still a business. Swelling and growing is all it's ever wanted.

If there are no cars left to drive, why shouldn't I walk in the street?