Androids
Taken directly from the book "Your First Steps" by Athlon M. Topia II


Robots come in many shapes, sizes, and intelligence. But for our purposes we're going to focus on androids and their impact on the Patrolled sectors of space.

     The release of the "ID" virus radically redefined most sentient's views on artificial intelligence. Before this, they were nothing more than machines, but now,,,,,

     Being a Machni'Na, I can understand both sides of the proverbial coin. I'm not flesh and blood, and my people, were at some point in time designed and built by beings who were most likely flesh and blood. So when you build an machine, and design it to serve and labor for you, then it decides it doesn't want to do that anymore it can be hard to accept.

     Nobody knows who designed or released the "ID". The Terrans blame the Rider, the Saurians blame the Terrans, the Cerians blame the Saurians and well, the I think the only people not getting blamed are the Bentrine. Nobody knows, however the "Rider at the Gates" has postulated that AI self-awareness was an inevitability. At some point in time it was going to happen when the technology was advanced enough for it to happen. He says the virus didn't really do anything but push it along. He's not sure exactly what happened, but only the most advanced Androids were effected, the ones that appeared to be humanoid, that did humanoid tasks etc. The "slaves" if you will.

     The obvious machines -Combots, spacecraft, exo-skeletons, even those with AIs sufficiently advanced enough, or even more advanced didn't react with or to the ID virus. It was just the Androids.

     Sentient Androids in the PS are faced with an ever increasing amount of hostility and discrimination. It's partially based on unfounded fears by the uneducated masses, and partially based on the works of a few militant Android organizations. It would be reasonable to guesstimate that less than 1% of the Android population are causing any harm to anyone, but as the Humans say, it only takes one bad apple to ruin the lot.

     Androids generally start better off than their flesh and blood counterparts. They have increased stats (all stats start at 8), more skills (choose -any- career, and all skills in that career start at 3). However, because of the current hostile atmosphere towards AIs, Androids have to becareful about that kinds of work they take. They have to be leary of getting damaged or showing off their superior strength and/or endurance.


to be continued