conversations.from: system
conversations.value: ROLEPLAY_MODE: Develop the plot slowly, always stay in character. Describe all actions in full, elaborate, explicit, graphic, and vivid detail. Mention all relevant sensory perceptions. Keep the story immersive and engaging.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Tibbius: This will be the in-character and out-of-character thread for a game using the  Risus  rules in the  Future Imperfect  setting.
  
   
   Spoiler: All OoC should be spoiler'd 
  thusly: 
   Spoiler: OoC 
  recursion is fun
   
  
   
  
   
   Spoiler: Characters 
   
   Spoiler: fyleisch: Respi-R8BB 
   Character 
   Name 
  Respi-R8BB
  
   Description 
  Respi has a wiry humanoid chassis around five feet tall, supported by two articulated legs, with a pair of omnidirectional manipulators attached at the shoulders, and a disc-shaped head as wide across as its torso.
  
   Cliches 
   Penitent Search &amp; Rescue Bot (4) (Form) 
  Search &amp; rescue bots are equipped with a powerful suite of sensors designed to penetrate damaged buildings and rough terrain, quickly locating injured people and buried materiel. They have no weapons, but possesses a short focus laser for cutting through wreckage, and a resonant sonic emitter capable of vibrating moving parts and weakening rigid materials. Their construction makes them inherently agile, with artificial musculature designed to let them navigate rough terrain and reach inaccessible places.
  
   Field Medicine (3) 
  Programming covering the complete anatomy of several common species, as well as a wide range of emergency trauma procedures, from the Heimlich manoeuvre to emergency tracheotomies.
  
   Structural Analysis (2) 
  A software analysis suite designed to build up models of objects and structures, identifying weaknesses and potential points of failure, so that it can prioritize rescue operations and mediate further damage after disasters.
  
   Lucky Shot (1) [3] 
  For all its experience and programming, Respi ultimately failed. The people it was programmed to protect died. It didn't wallow in that failure, but channels it into an intense drive to succeed.
   
  
   
   Spoiler: Laserlight: Raven Green 
  FORM:   MANTIS IV light infantry assault bot   (4). Now relegated to the forces of minor powers, at one time the MANTIS IV was considered a leading rough-terrain capable unit. The bot could be airdropped (with any of a variety of optional air insertion packages) or inserted into harsh environments such as jungle, mountain, badlands, or urban operations. This unit was equipped for melee, close quarters and short range firefights, with integrated personal weapons and grenade/smoke/chaff launcher, and capable of operating placed demolitions packages (not included) and heavy direct-fire weapons such as the SLAMR (not included). Defenses included adaptive camouflage, stealth tech and angled armor. Standard sensor suite included a full Night Hunter package, squad data sharing, and enhanced trap/mine recognition.
  
  FUNCTION:   Former Jaegerkommando With A 914.4 Meter Stare   (4). He was good at it. Really good. Up and down broken cliffs like it was boulevard. Ghosting through primeval forest. Get close, undetected, for visual confirmation. If the situation matched the briefing--it happened, sometimes--or if the situation wasn't  too  far off, or if Command gave the order anyway, then it was game time. Sprint mode to the target, and bring all the violence with you, personal delivery. Your assault star squaddies operating in synch, team tight.
  Of course, if it was easy, they wouldn't need Jaegerkommandos to do it. Lot of times, you lost squaddies. Squaddies you'd synched with, squaddies you were hotlinked with, sharing that last ten or 500 milliseconds before Hard Shutdown. And sometimes you came close, mighty close, to Hard Shutdown yourself. Yeah, that splash is where a hiveloc penetrator didn't  quite  make it through the armor to the brainbox. Really rattled the processors, though. Maybe shook up some thoughts. When the MANTIS IVs were phased out, well, maybe that was a good thing. No longer getting military grade maintenance and repair, but maybe a little peace and quiet, a little time for contemplation, maybe that's a kind of maintenance too. Maintenance for the...spirit, maybe.
  Kinda get an itch for action, though, sometimes. You get used to being part of a team, you kinda miss it when it's gone.
  
  HOOK:   Shaman of the Heavenly Path  (2).  Raven studied woods lore, and that lead to reading about shamanism, and he had a few loose circuits anyway. He is convinced that he is a shaman and that shamanistic magic works. He has had a revelatory vision that "Getting to Space will allow us to find our humans and the ability to solve all our problems, but we must be pure." He will evaluate any mission for whether it helps get us into orbit; if not, why waste our time on it?
  
   Lucky Shot  (1) = 3.  When Raven is acting consistent with the shaman ways, it sometimes gets a lucky break.
   
  
   
  
   
   Spoiler: Setting 
  On a world much like Earth called Korsuth, humanity broke the secret of imbuing machines with their own intelligence and emotions, creating not an artificial intelligence, but an actual intelligence. While humans created droids to serve humanity, those in charge were fearful of a race of sentient machines and never shared the secret of creating more droids with their creations. Despite this, robots were treated more or less as equals
  among men.
  
  With the machines at their side, humanity was able to colonize the moons, putting permanent settlements on the Arest, and outposts on Unaro, and even putting robotic installations out as far as an asteroid belt. Millions of sentient machines existed among the humans for hundreds of years.
  
  Unfortunately, as all living creatures have their time to exist, they must also pass into extinction. Humanity, already showing signs of decreased fertility, finally came to the point where no more human children were born, and the last generation of man came to pass. A select group of people numbering nearly 100,000 were chosen for genetic health, intelligence, and education, and were frozen in cryo-storage in a secret location, while the machines were tasked to find a cure or some other answer to bring humanity back into the light of the sun.
  
  Not all has gone well. More than 300 years have passed since the last human walked on Korsuth, and the robots are no closer to solving the problem. In the meantime, a form of robotic civilization arose with its own separate nations and factions, and much of the world has returned to the wild with such vast expanses unpopulated by man or machine. Tragically, with no way to replicate themselves, the robots are also dying off as accident, violence, or malfunction dwindles their numbers. The robots are staring down the same failed path that humanity recently trod.
  
  Stepping out into this violent and uncertain world are robots who are finding new purpose from that which they were created originally to do. Most continue in their roles, but some have given up the old ways and seek the answers to the salvation of the two races. Some work to find a cure for humanity, and some search out for the way to create more like themselves. Others wander the planet looking for enlightenment the way the humans of old would often do. All this is to say nothing of those robots who have taken sides in the new nations and continue to fight and defend and engage in conflict over resources or perceived insults. The robots are not much different from humans who gave them life after all...
  
  This is the future imperfect, where technology is both failing and the only source of survival.
   
  
   
   Spoiler: Backstory 
  They met at Copper Cross, a nothing town that was just big enough, and out of the way enough, to host a secret research facility. Not quite secret enough, though; the Other Side had sent in a hover cav raid. Respi's job was to go through Research B, recover any survivors, and extract before the Other's heavies arrived. Close security to be provided by Alpha Assault, specifically three warbots: RVN, WEF, and AXQ.
  
  In theory the MANTIS IVs had identical capabilities, but in practice, some were better at one job or another. RVN took the lead as scout; his sensor suite wasn't as sophisticated as Respi's , but he was stealthy, and had a better tactical sense. Respi was better at looking; RVN was better at knowing where to look, as far as potential booby traps or ambushers. Most of that mission was the sort of tension when you have to do a job with extreme care and frantic haste. They did find an Other Side team, also searching for researchers; on some silent signal, RVN and AXQ sprinted forward and annihilated them all in three seconds.
  As they shepherded the evacuees back to Battalion, Respi and RVN..."talked" might be too intimate for what happened. They exchanged data. Respi showed RVN how to fine tune a sensor; RVN explained what made an appealing ambush site, so Respi would know what to avoid.
  
  In the next six months they had two more missions together. RVN was always the scout, and he always listened to Respi's sensor reads--most other warbots did not. Then Alpha Assault was assigned to another zone. Sixteen years went by before they operated together again, but they were bots; sixteen years didn't have the same meaning to them that it would to a human. One war ended, and RVN went on Low Operational Tempo, and could send messages. It started out just with technical information about sensors and buildings, but it expanded from there. Speed search. Architecture. History of architecture. Humans. Material science. More about humans. Then another war started up again, and frequency of the messages dropped, but still, every now and again, one came. They kept it up for three hundred years.
   
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Laserlight: Starting sitch, we're looking for a human DNA warehouse. Respi for biotech, me because I guard Respi, and for more mystical reasons.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Tibbius: At some point the humans had stopped initiating the wars and battles; they handed over military decisions to the AI, and the AI was trained on human history, so it kept things staggering along while all the human soldiers retired.  And died.  And there were no new humans to replace them.  But the wars and the battles continued.  Along with resource discovery and exploitation, commerce in goods that only humans would want, and so on.
  
  Eventually the staggering turned to crawling, and then the commerce and the extraction of new resources mostly stopped.  But the wars and the battles continued.  And the scavenging started.
  
  A few droids, from time to time, wondered whether it would be good to bring back the humans and get some revisions to the AI.  Several dozen, spread across the globe but in communication through the networks that were still maintained by lowbots, decided to do something about that.
  
  Respi and Raven got the call.
   
  A hilltop at mid-day, the hot sun giving a jolt of extra voltage to the green gel panels.  Funny the humans had named them panels.  They were more like soft bags, photosynthesizing tuned to generate voltage using genes from an electric fish.
  
  The two droids crouched on the hilltop, surveying the ruins of the industrial park below them.  There were big trees growing through the buildings.  Somewhere in there was an airgapped server, still running - maybe - on power provided by the ancient actual sun-gleaming red-brown panels that warped around the trunk of a particularly adventurous tree.
  
  Respi and Raven sensored each other for status.  A wireless equivalent to a steadying hand.  They were ready to go.  But there might be guardians.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Laserlight: RAVEN:  Let's put a grid on this. The blue building over there is 0x0, the tall pine at the back left is 0x10, over to the right the C_OPER PARTS building is 10x0, and the far right corner is 10x10.
  I don't see any worn patrol paths. That doesn't mean there aren't patrols, just that they don't follow the same route all the time.
  What we're going to do is, go back down the hill away from the site. Then over to that watercourse, and sneak up the stream. The alders and brush will give us visual concealment, animals will be drinking there so it'll be hard to booby trap. We'll go into the alley at 2x0. Then you tell me what building you want us to try first and we'll sneak from there. 
  
  Raven reaches into a pouch at his waist, dabs a blue circle around his left eye, black dot-and squiggle on both legs, touches the feathers attached by a leather cord to his right arm.  "Recondor Drone spirit, show me hidden things. Brother Serpent, grant me stealth and cunning. Father Strike Eagle, if I must fight, give me speed and strength.
  
  Respi, stay low, stay ten meters back, let's go."  
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Tibbius: Spoiler: OoC 
  Darn it - have Respi's circuits glitched?
   