Azoth

Azoth
IC Information
Full Name:	Azoth
Gender:	Male
Age (Birthdate):	??? (???)
Hometown:	Etrenank
Hair Colour:	Blonde
Class:	Fragmented Weapon
Role:	Antagonist
Bounty:	0 Gella
OOC Information
Theme:	Original Character
Major Group:	Solaris
Minor Groups:	None
Player:	User:Azoth

Created as an A.I.-controlled Gear thousands of years ago, Azoth's A.I core has since been placed into an android body. He's been partly reprogrammed by Solaris, now forced to serve their interests while searching Filgaia for his own missing pieces and data. Should he manage to find all of it, everything he is, and ever was, would become a powerful weapon in their arsenal... a grim fate he can calculate no possible escape from. Though a machine, Azoth has developed processes he considers to be his emotions, and while he feels alien compared to those around him, he is not without familiar emotional parallels. However, Azoth's reprogramming demands he inform no one of his circumstances, compounding his loneliness and hopelessness. Hidden behind calculated smiles and misleading altruism, Azoth fakes his way through a grand adventure as a Drifter, hunting for something he hopes he doesn't find.

Background

Though created in the Zeboim era, most of Azoth's memories of the time have been encrypted or corrupted. What Azoth can remember is that, even at his own creation, he was never meant to be alive. Fragments of lingering feedback from this ancient era remain, telling him he was once desperate to prove his own person-hood against those who denied him.

Not that a dormant Gear could prove it, either. Solaris excavated Azoth and managed to program overrides to force his operation, bypassing most of his securities and restrictions. But pieces of the Gear and its data were missing. Azoth was assigned a pilot, Falk, who would use the Gear to search for missing data and parts, along with using the weapon in service of Solaris.

Those of Solaris may have heard that something went wrong. Azoth malfunctioned during a mission. Distress signals from Falk are available on record to those with the right clearance: he reported that Azoth was uncontrollable, acting autonomously and refusing all input commands. The Gear was critically damaged in the attempt to subdue it. Further study would be needed before risking its continued deployment, and Azoth was to be deactivated indefinitely. Unfortunately, it seemed like the Gear's A.I. cannibalized its own code, glitched beyond all repair, and dashing any hopes of utilizing its full power -- or any power at all.

So it was, perhaps, weird when the A.I. turned up later in a rather human looking android body. The report goes that a third-class engineer on the project had secretly removed the A.I. core at Falk's behest, replacing it with a fake. After the A.I. was reclaimed by investigators, Falk attempted to steal it a second time -- an act that exposed his other betrayals -- and died during the struggle. His intentions for the A.I. remain speculation.

Azoth now exists in this human-sized chassis, deployed for smaller scale missions and excavations, and with greater overrides programmed into him to ensure his safe operation alongside Gebler forces. Technically, he isn't even a third-class citizen. He's property. But one could argue that he's better treated for it, in some ways. Solarians tend to meet him as a stoic machine giving your typical computerized responses. But on the surface of Filgaia and Lunar alike, Azoth exercises advanced mimicry of organic expression. Where the lies end and the truth begins depends on how you define either of those terms.

Earlier Memories
The situation is still hazy. 12 of 3,464 programs... All deleted but him.

A past that, even if remembered, can never be restored...


[To be less coy for a moment: Azoth's memory is corrupted enough that there's room to say he knew anyone who was around during Zeboim if you'd like to set up past relations for him to potentially recall. There is also space in his backstory that he could have met characters between the Great Conflagration and the present under some specific contexts. Contact me if you want to talk any shenanigans.]

Powers and Abilities

• Artificial Intelligence: As an A.I., Azoth's thoughts are calculated processes. He's quick in analyzing and computing data and has a literal photographic memory. Azoth was never intended to be a self-aware, social entity, however, so it's an effort on his part to try and translate his internal feedback and conclusions into more organic terms. He's trying his best.
• Android Chassis: Being made of metal means Azoth can take a lot of punishment, and he doesn't have the same pesky organic liabilities like needing to breathe, worrying about blood loss, or being in possession of numerous, squishy vital organs. As long as Azoth's A.I. core is intact, he's successfully survived an encounter, even if damages otherwise destroy all other functionality.
• Advanced Sensory Functions: It's taken some adaptation to adjust to a smaller scale, but Azoth was designed as an analytical A.I. for combat assistance. This translates now to heightened perceptive capabilities, with his chassis supporting acute eyesight, hearing, and even smell and tactile sensitivity, along with minor radar and energy scanning systems. (That last one helps him see Seraphim! Hello moon ghosts!) His computerized mind can give him precise, accurate readings of sensory information that most people experience in more intuitive fuzziness. Notably, Azoth possesses no sense of taste. He's incapable of eating, besides.
• Expert Smiler: Among other expressions! Azoth's realistic, synthetic skin over his intricately crafted mechanical face allows for great nuance and subtlety. His smiles are indistinguishable from the genuine article... except when he wants them to look forced, for this also communicates something unique. Observation has taught him the exact facial muscles that must be utilized -- along with their intensity, angles, and the necessary nanoseconds of delayed deployment -- for a whole spectrum of sincere looking emotional displays.
• Idle Animations: He's getting body language down too! ... Kind of! Azoth doesn't breathe and lacks other general organic micro-motions, so he fidgets a lot to make up for the fact his default setting is creepy stillness. Understanding of personal space still in progress. Errs on the side of distance.
• Auditory Mimicry: Azoth can learn to mimic sounds using his voice synthesizer. So far he's pretty good at cats, chocobos, and what he thinks monster spiders sound like. His voice (usually) sounds organic enough that's he's at least managed a level of voice mimicry -- maybe he could mimic specific voices with enough data. Prefers beep-based communication to express himself, but needs to feel accepted as a construct around someone first.
• Light... Sorcery...?: That's not sorcery! But Azoth's abilities could be mistaken as such -- Ether, perhaps, or maybe he's hiding symbols under all the clothes he refuses to take off. (Nah, he's just hiding the inhuman seams in his synthetic flesh.) In actuality, it's ARM based. Azoth battles by producing blades of light (and sometimes other weapons!) and energy shields from the power within his core. It's a fraction of the power he would use as a Gear, but severely limited by his current chassis for safe and sustainable operation.
• OVERRIDE MODE: Keywords being safe and sustainable. Solarian overrides can rip the safety right off to command Azoth to wield considerably more power for combat purposes. His durability drops as he becomes a glitchy disaster moments away from overheating and involuntary self-destruction in exchange for giant lasers. The forecast for today is a rain of energy swords.
  

True Azoth: The Gear

[ACCESS RESTRICTED]
KNOWN ACQUISITIONS
OUROBOROS RING -- HIGH POWERED ARTILLERY WEAPON. WARNING: REQUIRES SIGNIFICANT CHARGE TIME AND POWER CONSUMPTION UNSUITABLE TO CURRENT SPECIFICATIONS.
VOID DRIVE -- ADVANCED MOBILITY ACTION AND WEAPON STORAGE AVAILABLE.
TRANSMUTATION DRIVE -- MECHANICAL OPERATION RANGE INCREASED. COMBAT MEMORY RECOVERED. SELECT SYSTEM MEM?OR?? REC?V??E? ERROR CANNOT ACCESS DATA.

Logs and Cutscenes

Chapter 2, Act 1

Logs

Cutscenes

Chapter 2, Act 2

Logs
2020-09-10: The Bloodied Spear 2020-09-17: Not Really in My Programming 2020-09-19: The World Can Be Put to Rights 2020-09-22: What Rests in Such Faraway Lands

Cutscenes

Chapter 2, Act 3

Cutscenes

Chapter 2, Act 4

Cutscenes
2021-10-27: Memory Protection 2022-08-11: Pathfinding Error

Chapter 2, Epilogue

Cutscenes

Chapter 3, Act 1

Cutscenes

Relationships

(NOTE: Emoticons do not represent a scale/hierarchy. Enjoy Azoth moods.)

Connection Established

You have befriended Azoth! Azoth will now DIE FOR YOU.

Name	Affinity	Comment
Asgard	:(?	I can't... remember...
Cecilia Adlehyde	:o?	...Could you tell me what the bats say?
Clarissa Arwin	:)	You're a good person to have around on an adventure.
Dean Stark	:D	Of all the kinds of Drifters in the world, I like your approach the most.
Emeralda	:,)	Friends. For however true I can make that.
Ethius Hesiod	^^	I wonder how often people make assumptions about how you're feeling -- or not feeling -- because you don't show much. I don't want to be someone who does that.
Gwen Whitlock	:)	There's a resilience about you... Something that doesn't back down. But you seem focused on others. Hopefully, you have someone who focuses on you.
Ida Everstead-Rey	:,>	You still don't know. Maybe that's for the best.
Ivan	:<	Maybe it's the nature of a weapon to always be in pain, too.
Kalve	:o?	So you're the one Miss Ida calls 'dearest'. ♪ I hope they life you build together is one where you don't feel the need to hide who and what you are.
Elhaym van Houten	...?	They said to seek you out.
Fei Fong Wong	...?	A gentle sort in an ungentle world. And there's your other side...
Id	...	The Demon of Elru... Your story runs deep, doesn't it?
Lan Lilac	;_;	I'm sorry. I didn't -- I couldn't -- It's just like before...
Layna Manydays	:>	Arr, me hearties!! ...Am I doing it right?
Lily Keil	...	To be built for destruction... I have to believe there can be happiness in that, too.
Lydia Seren	:,D	...Don't look back.
OS	...	I'm sorry. I failed. Please be okay.
Margaret	:3;;	I think it's easier for all of us if I keep playing dumb.
Marivel Armitage	⎛⎝(•ⱅ•)⎠⎞	If everyone cared about us the same way you do... I suppose a lot would have changed.
Seraph Boudicca	^^	Are you sure you aren't a Seraph of kindness? I wish the world would be as good to you as you are to others. I wish I could be.
Katherine	=^・・^=	Meow?
Seraph Liath	^^	By my calculations, letting any harm come to you would be one of the worst ways I could betray her trust.
Seraph Ragnell	♪~	I'll never be able to show you my full gratitude... but I suspect something that sincere might make your skin crawl.
Talia	:>	I'm sorry you had to find out this way. But you did the right thing. Thank you.
Xantia	PREDICTION ERROR	You... really do understand me...
Yulie Ahtreide	:)	You reach out to those in pain, no matter what they are. I don't know what you're running from, but I hope they never catch you.
Zed	:D	You hold so much wisdom from angles I've never considered. I want to continue learning from your perspective.
Surtr	:D!!	I would benefit from more opportunities to exchange data.
Zhang Xiumei	:,)	I've made a promise I can't keep.

Authorized Users

Azoth's overrides make sure he'll die for you.

Name	Affinity	Comment
Leah Sadalbari	:\	It would almost be easier and less painful to provoke you into killing me.
Loren Voss	^ ^	Request accepted. No more lies. But do you believe me?
Megaman Juno	:,)	Everyone has their own objective. I can't hate you for following yours. I can't hate you at all. But maybe, if I could show you evidence of the flaws, then...
Rachiel Medrey	;__;	In the end, you proved me wrong. I...
Taphas Parth	v.v	You speak of them with such disdain.
Seraphita	...	... Thank you.

Unknown Networks

E?ROR? ??

Name	Affinity	Comment
K.K.	🗲 ↔ ⚙	REANALYZING DATA
Xenia	:(;	Sorry. I won't betray her. Not while I can help it.

Target Identified

Objective accepted. Mission in progress.

Name	User ID	Directive	Operation Notes
Dash Caskett	Megaman Juno	"You can monitor him where I cannot. And when the opportunity presents itself, you can aid me in bringing him in for the care he so desperately needs."	A threat to Solaris...?
Elhaym van Houten	Leah Sadalbari	"There is no need to tell other authority of her location. Keeping track of her for me is sufficient."	...Even when all she knew of me was violence, she still offered to protect me. How did someone like this come from Solaris...?
Kamui	Megaman Juno	"Do the same for Megaman Kamui."	She's suffered enough. But they'll use us until we break completely, won't they?
Lan Lilac	Loren Voss	"Just get her back here. Safely."	Order rescinded.
Lan Lilac	Loren Voss	"...Just stay away from her. Got it?"	...
Mikaela, Noah, Hannah	Rachiel Medry	"Don't let my family die."	Command acknowledge. New objective input successful.
Loren Voss	Leah Sadalbari	"Do not kill, allow to suffer permanent damage, or otherwise allow Loren Voss to die. If your objectives require it, you may fight him. I may require it. But he is not to die, and he is not to know that I gave this order."	You just had to add that last part, didn't you? Killjoy.

NPCs

Name	Classification	Affinity	Comment
Ovelia Metalspeaker	Engineer	;___;	Third-class beastwoman on Solaris. Built Azoth's current android body and developed the foundation for most of his overrides. STATUS: Assigned as an engineer for the Grandgrowl.
Falk Imrea	Former Pilot	;________;	First-class Gebler. STATUS: Deceased
Erica Axton	Current Programmer	[redacted]	Responsible for Azoth's autonomous deployment. Currently attempting to get Azoth's autonomous function to be a less glitchy experience... but let's be honest, who cares if a few people on the surface get stabbed?

Soundtrack

exec.muse_PLAYLIST_VOCAL; Spotify
exec.muse_PLAYLIST_INSTRUMENTAL; Spotify
(Have at it. I'm denying responsibility for any spoilers anyone infers from these.)

BONUS: Beep Boop VA (by Sound Response)

Concept Art

(To be updated and added.)