Post by Lambda on Oct 26, 2013 22:31:30 GMT -6
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Species: Bioroid
Affiliation/Occupation: CEO of Carnifex Industries
Hunter Rank: N/A
Physical Description: Slender but shapely, Lambda holds herself with a quiet strength that suffuses her entire being. Despite her sallow face, despite the obvious pain that wracks her every so often, despite her loneliness and sorrow and weakness, she exudes an aura of certainty and absolute confidence that gives the merest hint of her relentless pragmatism and drive. She does not speak loudly, nor does she walk with the stride of a king, but there is a certain quality to her voice that ensures that when she speaks, others listen - and when she acts, others take note.
While often expressionless and in the habit of cultivating an actively neutral expression, the warmth of her character bleeds through despite her best efforts, Lambda's endless affection for her sisters and pride in her coworkers is never far from the surface. She loves them all in different ways, so much as she is able, and treats their well-being as a matter of importance. While not particularly physical or prone to bouts of spontaneous obvious affection, when her gaze lands upon one of her sisters she cannot help but smile, much as she revels in the accomplishments of her coworkers.
Lambda is generally in one of two outfits, both visible in her primary image: a surprisingly short bodysuit useful for unencumbered movement, generally for sleeping and exercise, and an outfit that is somewhere between a dress and a military uniform, which she wears the rest of the time. Her third outfit is not so much an outfit at all as a result of her power; six wings, as black as night, are joined by a network or glowing sigils that snake across her entire body, even as her uniform morphs into more of an overcoat. Not even she has seen the third outfit. Yet.
Equipment: A small semiautomatic pistol, only effective against unarmored targets. Used for limited self-defense. She practices regularly at the range, but is at best an above-average shot.
Skills/Techniques: As both bearer and incarnation of the Lambda Driver, she possesses immense destructive power, though much of it is locked behind a series of barriers for her own safety. Each successive barrier is unlocked via a code, known only to her. Even Without any limiters released, she is capable of wide-area destruction on a local scale, utilizing Disintegration- and Obliteration-axis abilities.
Obliteration is in fact the ability to excite particles on the subatomic level, producing heat and light as an ever-growing chain reaction smashes nuclei together in a manner loosely resembling a nuclear reaction. The explosion consumes all in its path, but is sustained by her power and quickly fades when no longer sustained by it - thoroughly unnatural, a phenomenon completely flaunting the laws of physics enabled by the terrible power of the Lambda Driver, it does not produce radiation but is also severely limited in scope by her current power levels. Denser materials are much less easily excited and thus inducted into the ongoing reaction, Titanium X being perhaps the most prolific example, but the concussive force and unbelievable heat produced by the reaction are certainly hazards of their own - even if a Reploid is not consumed by the reaction, they would do well to avoid the explosion.
While terrifyingly powerful and difficult to dodge, the initial reaction takes time to get going - each orb of destruction is essentially a delayed explosion, which is fine against inanimate object but not entirely optimal against opponents who can walk away. This issue is only exacerbated against opponents quick enough to do so with ease. Secondly, this power requires conscious effort on her part - she must gaze specifically at the location she wishes to use for the reaction, examining and analyzing existence with inhuman eyes, though this process is faster the closer and/or more easily visible it is to her. Third, it is an extremely complex process and thoroughly exhausting to boot, meaning that repeated use puts extreme stress on her mind and risks igniting the spark at the core of the Lambda Driver, a reaction that she would not likely survive.
Disintegration is far less flashy, but all the more terrifying in its simplicity: rather than exciting particles, that which lays before her is simply torn apart, absolutely and utterly annihilated from existence. The Lambda Driver is an engine of null existence, not of carnage; only once it consumes all that exists will it, and she by extension, have completed their original task. Unlike her other axis of power, the effectiveness of this ability rises exponentially with proximity to her, only approaching extreme danger in melee range of her - it deletes particles of matter and energy alike layer by layer, and the only way to do so with enough speed to even kill an unarmored human instantly is to do so at such close range that she can analyze and delete them with no time between the removal of each particle. To put it another way, this power entirely ceases to be a serious threat at all to a mobile opponent more than a few meters away, though each use will still remove a tiny fraction of the matter facing her - easily repaired by any Reploid - and immobile objects will bear the brunt of this power at a much slower rate.
At point-blank range, however, she can completely obliterate an unarmored human in an instant, or rapidly deal repeated instances of severe damage to armored opponents. Titanium X and similar military-grade alloys are even more difficult to annihilate, their denseness and durability a natural barrier against her power, but given time even they will give way. Motion of any sort is useful to keep her from being able to focus on a single point for long, and as mentioned distance is also a very strong counter. Weapons, often even more durable than Titanium X armor, are relatively safe in a fight - dense and durable, they will not take serious damage. Weapons made of replenishable particles, such as energy blades, can simply replace that which has been destroyed - while it will drain charge much more quickly, as they are not as resistant to the ability, they too are essentially unscathed by it.
While Obliteration taxes her consciousness, Disintegration taxes her mind and spirit - the intense willpower it takes to focus this tremendous power burns away her existence, meaning that each successive use is more and more difficult to perform and painful to her.
Reinforcement is not so much an actual power as simply the applications of one or both axes to her own form or the immediate surroundings - disintegrating or obliterating attacks grants her extreme durability against energy weaponry of all types and the simple fact that proximity to herself enhances her power ensures that she can essentially perform a poor man's version of kinetic deflection by striking solid-state weaponry with a concentrated burst of power; even if she is unable to actually disintegrate the weapon, she can certainly exert enough power to force it back.
Strengths and Weaknesses
+Power: Lambda can bring tremendous power to bear at any range, even augmenting her decidedly-average physical capabilities to the point of keeping up with the strongest of opponents. Disintegration nearly qualifies as a strength of its own - even the toughest of armor will disappear before her eyes eventually.
+Durability: While her natural body is easily the most fragile among the sisters, in a fight she possesses tremendous durability born of her power. She is nearly impregnable to any assault she is aware of and can prepare for.
-Speed: Already underwhelming agility slows to a crawl when controlling her power, much of her concentration spent keeping it under control. She does not often have the luxury of dodging, much less the ability to do so.
-Stamina: While the Lambda Engine provides her with an endless flow of energy, it is an exhausting task to bend it to her will. Even when not using any she is plagued by regular headaches; actually using her power invites crippling pain and potentially severe neural damage.
Hyper Mode: Locked behind a code she does not yet know, Lambda's Hyper Mode is in fact a gateway to the highest-level codes in her repertoire, culminating in the Extinction Protocol. While in Hyper Mode, six enormous wings forged of shadow erupt from her as arcane sigils cover her body, all helping to channel her power such that she does not disintegrate under the force.
(we can argue about the details later once I've worked out a proper progression route for her, but I'm affectionately terming the combination of this + bioroid super mode as ROID RAGE. Hue.)
Backstory: Her earliest memories are of destruction, uncaring and absolute. She never saw her creator's face before he was swept away in the whirlwind of annihilation, but the memories of equipment, walls, and the air itself being flensed from existence about her were burned into her mind as an eternal reminder of what even the slightest loss of control can mean - she had already composed herself and exerted control of her abilities by the time the rest of the building's staff responded to the emergency, but the damage was done.
Fortunately for her, Carnifex rapidly proved to be more interested in her abilities than the destruction. Friendly employees escorted her away from the devastation, welcoming her to life with casual ease as though it was a regular occurrence. And perhaps it was, she discovered; Carnifex was in the business of building Reploids, and the thoroughly illegal business of building Bioroids like her to boot, and a million other things that ranged from barely legal to thoroughly illegal. And yet they were friendly, open with her, as if she were more a new member of the family than a dangerous experiment gone awry. Certainly there were tests and experiments in the following weeks, but an attempt to discover what she was alongside her. Not cruelty.
She learned quickly, absorbing information with a mind that had been designed to do so. She learned of the world, and discovered quite quickly that individuals like her were not welcome. She learned of Carnifex, of the sprawling laboratory complex that had spawned her... and welcomed her. She learned how to present herself to be accepted as a human or cyborg in the outside world, and one night she learned of the evils of the world. She learned many things, but above it all, Lambda came to realize that even she could see that the world was imperfect, broken, and cruel. She could not be herself, but neither could a great many other people, people who did not hold within them what she held within her. As her sisters began to awake, one by one, she learned that they could not be themselves either, lest they be culled by the Hunter's Guild - Reploids who killed and killed and killed and killed in the name of "Absolute Justice."
She also learned that to those with the drive to enact change, the impossible became possible.
So Lambda decided to change everything.
But as she was, she could change nothing.
So she changed herself. She learned how to make herself useful to Carnifex, to the people who had welcomed her where the world would not. She learned how to make Carnifex useful to her, and when the Board of Directors attempted to stop her assuming direct control, she already knew how to stop them. She learned that night that her power was a useful tool, not a horror to be avoided at all costs. Lambda learned that change was a very difficult word indeed, an empty concept, a null set that could mean different things to different people - but she also learned that a leader could take those different definitions and make them all mean the same thing to everyone.
But the world would not change simply because she said so. The Hunter's Guild would not stop hunting Bioroids because she said so. It would not hunting Mavericks because she said so. Mavericks would not cease killing because she said so. To change the world, she needed power. She needed control. She needed Carnifex's vast network of contacts, its wealth of resources, both material and human. She needed the brilliance of its scientists, and that of those who were not a part of it. She needed the assistance of her sisters. She needed her own power.
So Lambda used that power. She used her power and her sisters' power and her organization's power. Carnifex already competed with other major laboratories and companies to gain control of Lost Technology as well as relics from the last war, and all the ones before that; she pushed them to win, not to simply compete, regardless of the cost in Reploid lives - or those of human bounty hunters. When difficulties developed, they were solved with pragmatism, whether by force or diplomacy. Lambda hurled herself into it, using her own powers despite the cost to herself. Always onwards, always towards her ideal - ever onwards through the deepening pool of blood that stained her hands and her mind and her heart. She could feel their pain, and she cried for them in private, but she moved ever onwards, for it was all she could do.
More than once, Lambda wished to stop, to give in to her guilt, but she did not. Could not. Would not. The difference between could and would no longer existed - with a will that went beyond absolutes, that went beyond "could" or "could not," she decided that she would not stop, for to do so would make the sacrifices of those who had died meaningless. She would bear their burden, the weight of her sins, but she would never, ever stop until her ideal had been realized, until her sisters and the people she cared for could live in a world where none of what she had done would be necessary.
Then she would stop, and she would allow herself to be swallowed by her sins. She had no place in that world, nor in the memories of those who had believed in her, for that world would have no need for monsters whose hands were stained so deeply with blood. But they would be happy, and that was all she needed.
Personality: Leadership is loneliness, they say, and Lambda knows the truth of that more harshly than any other. A monster even among her sisters, a Bioroid in a world terrified of their mere existence, and the bearer of the Lambda Driver all too aware of what she was built to do - she hardly needed to take on yet more responsibility, for her family as well as the human members of Carnifex, to know an all-consuming loneliness that has shaped her more than anyone she knows.
While loneliness encompasses her, she refuses to let it define her. Lambda holds to her ideals through tremendous willpower, the same indomitable will by which she suppresses her own abilities, the Driver, and even her true nature. She always presses onward, always obsessed with finding the [correct decision] that leads to a better future with minimal casualties... but that belief is as terrifying as it is idealistic, as that same characteristic grants her relentless pragmatism that propels her forward through bloodshed and cruelty as necessary. Lambda is no stranger to death, having disintegrated her creator at birth, butchered Carnifex's board of directors when they moved against her meteoric ascension, and disposed of rival Reploid and human bounty hunters alike in expeditions to recover lost technology or investigate destroyed Bioroid bases from the last war.
Her hands are stained, but while she cries inside, she continues relentlessly down her chosen path. Carnifex's experiments have only accelerated under her vision, her band of sisters growing with time, and while she shows respect to the fallen she will not spare those she deems a threat. It is a brutality born of necessity, not of cruelty, but Lambda bears the burden apart from her sisters as she attempts to protect them from the worst of it - but use them she must, hurling them as well into the cauldron of horrors of the endless shadow war between the corporations of the city and the world as they compete for resources, for technology, for existence. She holds no grudges, but neither is she willing to throw away that which she has accomplished, nor her dream, for anyone else's sake.
In the end, it all boils down to her nature. Lambda knows what she was built to do, what her power is capable of, and she repulsed by it. Built a destroyer, she searches for meaning as a creator; by bringing order and life to a broken world, she hopes to find meaning in her own existence, to gift her sisters and friends with a world in which they can no peace. She does not believe there is a place for herself in it, but that is a trivial concern at most - if she can make them happy, what remains of her is irrelevant.
Additional Information: Lambda is the CEO of Carnifex Industries, a research and Reploid development laboratory with a significant array of industrial and military contacts throughout Abel City and beyond... and a list of thoroughly illegal and occasionally unethical experiments a mile long. She is one of them. There is just enough evidence - "evidence," rather - of a past before Carnifex to leave a trail of bread crumbs hinting at a woman who was off the grid for much of her life, but that trail is a red herring, enabled by her position, designed to draw attention from her true nature as a Bioroid and birthplace at Carnifex.