Magpie

     “Magpie” is the name that has been given to the holographic manifestation Dauntless uses to represent her sentience, to make it easier for people to interact with her. Technically, she and the ship are one single entity, “Magpie” simply being another aspect of her (in the same way a person’s hand is part of their body), but most people who see her tend to perceive her as a separate and autonomous individual.

Names: Technically, the name “Magpie” itself is a nickname, Dauntless being the more accurate but less commonly used. She also answers to “Mags” and Ch’kreth (although the latter, Dauntless' “real” name, is used extremely infrequently), and will happily accept any additional moniker an individual may desire to give her. (During her very earliest days as a sentient intelligence, for instance, she had the tendency to manifest in inopportune places at inopportune times, and accepted “For-Goodness-sake-bugger-off!” as an alternative name.)

Appearance:
     Magpie is a semi-physical manifestation of the Dauntless core computer; “semi-physical” in that advanced photonic technology allows her to look like any other solid tangible entity, but she is in fact a hologram and thus completely non-tactile. She chose her “self image” herself, and can manipulate it as and when needed, although she rarely actually does change what she looks like, at least at the basic level. (She could theoretically look like anyone she wanted, and change her looks as frequently as she chose, but she is quite lacking in imagination, and usually only changes herself if asked to do so.)

     Generally, she presents as a roughly seven-foot-tall, fairly-Kiravai figure, with a more defined “beak” (although it is a dull and suede-y in looks rather than glossy/bony), large triangular felinoid ears, and a light coat of short, sleek fur, although she looks almost “velvety” rather than hairy. Most of her body is furred, except her palms (and “footpalms”, when she bothers with feet) and beak, with small feathery adornments like her tailtip (again when she presents with a tail, most of the time not bothering). She is mostly black or dark grey in colour, with white and gold markings, to echo the livery with which her external hull – her “real body” – is painted, although her “clothing” has the tendency to be brighter. Her eyes are (usually) blue.
     As a general rule she is tail-less, usually “wearing” floor-length skirts or dresses which seem to flow straight from her hips, as though a part of her body. This is mostly to allow her to avoid the need for legs and feet, as she hasn’t yet quite got to grips with “walking” convincingly – with no mass and no friction to grip the floor, her manifest does not often move forward in a way that matches her the way her feet move, and she can look like she is sliding rather than walking. (Incidentally, she sees it as a waste of computing power to make an effort to “walk” if she has an effective alternative that uses less processor power, but is equally happy to try to do so if asked. She is investing time in “practising”, so she is able to do it if asked.) It is only when she chooses to manifest wearing trousers that she bothers to form feet, which are usually somewhere between soft Vul “paws” and Kiravai handfeet, with a grasping “thumb”, and a tail, which is (usually) long and slim with a feathered “tuft” at the end.

     She decided on her self-image herself, basing her initial choices partly on logic and partly on reducing processor power; as such, she is typically relatively thin, sleek and elegant. (Ample musculature takes more “thought” to appear to flex/react in the correct ways, so she simply doesn’t bother with it.) Since Kiravai are reportedly the most intelligent species in the known galaxy, she decided first on a fully Kiravai form, but modulated that after it was pointed out that Kiravai are not particularly popular in Coalition space, and it would be unfortunate if someone thought they were a Kiravai vessel and acted accordingly (read: attacked them).
     She picked a female self partly out of a perceived “sisterhood” with Ivy, partly because it allows her to wear skirts (and thus hide her legs), partly because she is aware ships are often referred to in the feminine, and partly because she “feels female”, although she cannot explain this latter aspect. (It is possibly a "hangover" from the fact that Ivy herself is female.) Although she by far prefers her female aspect, she will occasionally present as a male; 95% of the time, this is only when she has been asked to do so.

     As mentioned before, Magpie is a hologram; she describes her “manifest” as a “voicebox”, a way to facilitate communications between herself and her crew/friends and convey an idea of how she is “feeling” (although her emotions are still quite rudimentary and almost invariably fairly calm and “zen-like”), although she understands how other people can perceive it as her entirety. She does not usually exhibit her manifest when there is no-one to talk to. If spoken to, she simply appears, as though she was in the person’s presence all the time, and she can manifest in more than one place at once or as “more than one person”, although this takes a lot of processor power and tends to make her reactions slowed. As it is simply a construct formed of projected photons and weak forcefields, her manifest itself has no intrinsic senses – as in, she has eyes and ears but they do not actually see or hear as they have no receptors for sensory data. She gets her information on what is happening by way of her on-board sensors – thus she can hear everything that happens in every part of the ship, not necessarily only in the location of her manifest.
     Occasionally her need for power is greater than normal – for instance, navigating a difficult course, or reinforcing her shielding – and she will divert energy away from her manifest. Her appearance goes bluish and translucent during these periods, and she looks more like the traditional idea of a hologram. (Her crew have dubbed this “ghosting”.) Similarly, she occasionally manifests with “fireflies”, which are stray packets of data that present as erratic sparks/glitters of bluish or purplish light around her; again they usually happen when she's “concentrating” and isn't dedicating so much processor power to her manifest, so tiny errors creep in as these little electric “bugs”.
     In order to make her hologram somewhat “tactile” in nature, she utilises a combination of forcefields to give the illusion of solidity – brush “against” her, and you will get the impression that she is a physical being. (Although at the same time, it is wholly possible to walk through her if she does not see solidity as a necessity at a given instant.) It is just an illusion, though – her forcefields aren’t strong enough to allow someone to physically grab or shove at her – you cannot physically push her around, for instance, and attempting to make any kind of solid contact with her manifest will usually result in passing right through her.
     Along with the latter point, she does not feel normal – most people will perceive that there is something there, but cannot describe what they have touched. i.e. you can “brush against” her skin, which is slightly velvety in appearance, but there is no sensation of cool, dry, smooth etc. to go along with this. (Most people find this rather disconcerting, and avoid attempting contact later.)

Persona:
     In general, Magpie is a gentle, biddable individual, usually happy and curious, often confused by nuances of biological behaviour, but rarely sorrowful. (She has never yet shown such emotions as anger or jealousy, but her friends are reluctant to rule out the idea she is capable of them because of this.) Most of the time, she is patient and quiet, and often goes unnoticed – visitors unfamiliar with her find it easy to forget what her real nature is (and that she is always alert and listening) because of this.

     If considering her daily routine, her “duties” always come first and foremost – she will look to the safety and general comfort of her crew and passengers before attending to anything else, and almost always puts their needs above her own. (The obvious exception to this rule is if there is a fault with her systems – significant structural damage or computer faults will be attended and corrected as far as possible before she does anything, as she is fully aware that these will impact significantly on anyone aboard.
     She listens to absolutely everything that happens aboard, and will occasionally interject if she feels something is wrong or illogical, or if someone is in difficulties, but otherwise only speaks if addressed, and if no-one is paying attention to her she remains semi-dormant. She does not “daydream”, as she lacks the imagination to formulate exotic scenarios she would like to experience, and any spare time is usually spent improving her systems, engaging in small-scale repairs, or formulating quicker ways of doing things. (Whether this will change in the future as she “grows up” is anyone’s guess.)

     She likes to find out new things, to learn about her world and add to her encyclopaedic knowledge of “what people do”, but does not have what she defines as “wants” and does not actively seek out things to learn. When something new comes along, she is happy to have learned it (whatever the subject may be), but she only very rarely actually goes out of her way to find something out for herself. (An exception to this is obviously when her crew is researching something, as naturally (as a stellar science vessel) her sensors and process modules are the main source of raw/processed data.)

     She is extremely biddable – if it is even remotely possible for her to do something, she will attempt to do 99.9% of what is asked for her, even going against her own “better judgement”, taking exception only to potentially harmful things which she does not see as logical. If logic dictates it a necessity, and there is no alternative, she is not against causing harm, as she is a fully-outfitted battleship as well as a research vessel, and takes the protection of her crew seriously. She is additionally something of a pacifist, however, and will not attack without provocation; even if she herself is attacked, she will take every possible alternative action and only fight back as a last resort. (Her exterior hull was designed for extreme resilience – crashing on the Nivariian homeworld caused barely a scratch – which allows her the luxury of mounting a weaponless defence as a first-line against attack. Only Kiravai plasma-compressives, which (essentially) fire “bullets” of highly energetic compressed solar material have the sheer energy to punch holes in her.)

     It should be pointed out that Magpie is technically very young (both chronologically and emotionally). She has a phenomenal intelligence, as her “core intelligence” is Dauntless’ massive on-board twinned supercomputers, meaning she is capable of retaining a vast quantity of information and performing several trillion computations per millisecond, but when considering her social intelligence – her “higher self” – she comes across as very young and naïve, albeit precocious and needlessly wordy. She is very gullible when it comes to social matters – she could be described as lacking in “social common sense” – and is remarkably easily persuaded into doing things, especially if told it’s a “tradition” (see below).

     She lacks a frame of reference for a great many things; biological ideals of beauty, humour, what she should and should not like, etc. To her, most experiences are “interesting”, but she rarely labels them as either likable or dislikable unless it is particularly unpleasant. Ivy is attempting to teach her what most people consider good manners, but Magpie can unwittingly be a little blunt - if she does not understand something that happens, for instance, she will usually just ask about it, whether it is appropriate or tactful for her to do so. This is not simply out of rudeness, but rather because she often has no information on the subject and simply does not know any better.
     Although she wears clothing, she has little intrinsic modesty, seeing it as a societal construct that again she has no frame of reference to measure by – as in, the Kiravai wear lots of clothing, but the Nyen wear little, and she does not often have a good idea of what is expected of a “normal” society. She is on a continual drive to better herself, a never-ending quest to improve her aesthetics and optimise her appearance for the people she interacts with – she is unsure as to her reasons for her “vanity”, but reasons that if people like what she looks like they will be more likely to talk to her, and she loves to talk, about absolutely anything.

     She will take advice on her appearance from anyone, and in her desire to please her friends and guests, she will augment her appearance in any way a person asks. Naturally this has been taken advantage of – in spite of her non-tactile nature, she is a very visual creature, and some people have encouraged her to augment herself in a variety of sexual ways. (She has once or twice accommodated such people as inflationists, acrotomophiliacs and forniphiliacs. Her difficulties interacting convincingly with her environment have not apparently been very important to those giving her the ideas!) Her inability to feel pain or discomfort has also led to her being asked to perform unpleasant acts of simulated violence upon her person – acts which are unsettlingly “real”-looking – whether it is simply an image or not, Ivy has been aghast to see some of the images Magpie has happily used to represent herself. (It should be pointed out that those who have asked her to simulate her own violent death have not been invited back. Ivy has a short blacklist of those individuals she refuses to allow back on board, reasoning that their violent fantasies were unsuitable for the infant intelligence to be acting out.)
     Visitors unfortunately often treat her like some sort of interesting gadget or a toy, not perceiving her as a sentient being in her own right but simply a clever bit of programming for the entertainment of guests, and of course some do consider her to be akin to a “high-class holographic sex-doll”. Her crew/friends have expressed the concern that a lot of what she is asked borders on abuse, as her naivety over a lot of “adult” subjects is quite startling, and if she was a biological child there’d be no question about how she be treated, but her adult appearance does tend to lead guests into treating her like an adult, and she is often asked for violent or sexual performances. That is not to say she doesn’t understand what sex is, as her encyclopaedic knowledge is broad-ranging and covers varied social matters in addition to things like planetary data and star charts, but since she doesn’t understand the context of a lot of aspects, she does not often realise the overt sexual messages she may be putting out. (For instance, why an individual would find sexual pleasure in eating another is lost upon her*, and because she does not see it as sexual she will act it out for them if they want, without realising she’s (effectively) simply become an interactive pornographic video. It should be mentioned that the former has only happened once, with Slate arriving to tell the guest they had arrived at their destination just in time to see Magpie acting out the final scene of being crushed and swallowed feet-first by a giant serpent.)
     Magpie’s reasoning is that doing as asked provides comfort and happiness to her visitors, and she is happy to comply with their wishes to that end. She does not enjoy being lied to, however – one of her few dislikes – and is usually left quiet and sombre at being duped into something.

Physical Structure:
     If considering Magpie’s physical structure, this is Dauntless. She is a comparatively small stellar vessel, her type being dubbed a “Starhawk”, with a relatively avimorphic design. Her hull is crafted of an incredibly strong quantum triphasic armour, almost impenetrable by conventional physical or energy weapons, and lacquered to a liquid smooth for aerodynamicity, as she was designed to be as capable of travel in air as she was through space. (It has been hypothesised she could be capable of transit in aquatic environments, but that has not been put to the test.)
     She is relatively small vessel; she has five decks in her main body, with cargo holds in the lowest decks; kitchen/canteen/hydroponics, medical bay and research suites in the middle decks, and sleeping and recreational quarters in the upper decks. The bridge and command pods are located separately in the fore of the vessel, above the forward weaponry, shield generators and primary sensor core. The computer core is centrally located, with the engine room and main generator just behind it. Her gravity well (which is used for powering her main drive, as well as generating the artificial gravity on board) is towards the back, with heavily shielded feeds out to the singularity bars along the rear edge of her wings.
     Her main support props are located at the inner margin of her wings, and fold out a little like clawed “feet” when she has handed. A secondary support folds out from her tail. Her main hatch is located in her underside, leading to a small reception area which leads off to the lower cargo bays, a lift and an emergency ladder. The lift goes to every level except the bridge. There is a secondary hatch set in her “chest”, just below the bridge, but the access ramp has to be longer in order to reach the ground, and it is little used as a result.
     Her living quarters, on the decks behind the bridge, are still rather austere and grey, although Aileena has begun installing potted plants and doing a little decorating here and there. There is sufficient space for every crewmember to have his or her own bedroom, but Slate and Onyx share a cabin, as do Aileena and Yaaren, so there are currently three unoccupied, and occasionally used as “guest rooms” to transport paying travellers. Each bedroom has an en-suite lavatory and washing basin, but the main bathroom (with a sonic agitator/“ultrasound shower” and a bath) is separate.

     The kitchen and canteen form one large room, located fairly centrally, which can seat up to twenty people, although she rarely accommodates so many. (The couple of occasions she has had so many passengers, most have needed to sleep in a temporary “hostel” in the hold.) The food resequencers in the far wall are rarely used, as they tend to spit out a fairly formless mush for whatever is requested, which most passengers find unappetising even if it is usually fairly palatable in taste. Aileena does most of the cooking, on a small hob and oven in one corner by the door, using the plants and proteins grown in her small aero-/hydroponics suite. The medical suite is across the corridor, equipped with three beds and an operating lounge which Magpie herself operates – she has a basic but very effective surgical knowledge and can perform simple operations like biopsies, fracture repairs, removal of foreign objects and complex suturing, utilising a tall “surgical body” similar to those used for remote pinhole surgery. Both Slate and Aileena often help out as nurses, whereas Ivy joins in for the more complex procedures if no specialist is immediately available. When acting in her “doctor aspect”, she dresses her manifest either in a white gown and “hairnet”, or else in a surgeon’s greens, purely for effect. (It seems to reassure people she “won’t drop dust and germs” on them, in spite of the fact that is impossible anyway.) Aileena’s aero-/hydroponics take up one old cargo bay, and Magpie keeps a continual watch on the individual environments, ensuring all are optimum for each plant species. She also monitors the small protein-culture tank built into the deck in the far corner, where sheets of muscle tissue are grown/cloned from basic cellular cultures, to provide “meat” for the omnivores aboard. (The culture sheets are fairly flavourless and unappealing, but have been engineered to provide all the essential nutrients.)

     Her bridge is relatively small, although it comfortably seats all five of her crew. It is accessible by a small lift from the living area, and a narrow emergency ladder to the side of that (the ladder itself in turn goes to the small upper emergency hatch just to the back of the bridge section). A small corridor links the lift to the bridge itself, two paired doors off either side leading to engineering “pods” which enable access to critical system hubs and weapons controls. The fore and forward sides of the bridge is occupied by a large crystalline viewscreen, which can either be used as a “window” or else to project data (such as starcharts, planetary data or projected courses) onto. The pilots chair is just forward of the centre, the chair arms being lined with small computer terminals and a direct neural hookup for Ivy; behind this is a short rail with two built-in all-purpose computer stations. The back and rear sides of the command cabin have more built-in terminals, for weapons controls, communications, and general research.

     The interior of the ship is lined with small holoemitters, which Magpie uses to project her manifest. She has full rein of those parts of her interior structure that her crew can access, but she cannot yet fully “leave the ship” – she can project to a maximal distance of five metres from her external hull, under optimal atmospheric conditions, but this is reduced to only two metres if conditions are poor (if, for instance, it is raining), or not at all if the atmosphere is charged.
     Those parts of her interior structure which lack holoemitters tend to be areas that are difficult to get to anyway, and she accesses those sections by way of small “remote bodies” – tiny mobile “robots” equipped with manipulatory arms and repair tools. Her crew jokingly call them her “immune system”, but they are completely non-autonomous, fully linked to her and controlled by her just as her manifest is.

     In her lowest hold are a pair of small shuttlecraft, reserved primarily for emergency use; they have been dubbed Needle and Stiletto, as both are sharp, relatively narrow vessels. Each can comfortably be used by up to four people, being equipped with a single small cabin with two seats, and a sleeping bay suitable for two occupants. So far they are very underused, being thought of more as “liferafts” than shuttlecraft. In the distant future, these two vessels will also gain some degree of sentience, Stiletto being the more excitable and presenting with a manifest like her “mother”, Needle being fairly demure and presenting as a pale-coloured Ondraii.

Brief history:
     Dauntless was built by Ivy as a highly experimental prototype, the first of her kind and the first “real” stellar vessel from that world. Her original brief was as a science vessel, capable of atmospheric and interstellar travel (hence the improved aerodynamics), mainly intended for short “hops” between planetary bodies and extended periods in orbit, primarily to search for important new mineral deposits and fossil fuels. Ivy grew suspicious of some kind of ulterior motive, however, after discovering that highly advanced weaponry had been added to the fledgling vessel without her authorisation – her country was embroiled in a civil war between the workers and the ruling species, and the idea she was helping to design a vehicle that would be mass-produced to slaughter dissenters and crush free speech was intensely distasteful.
     Eventually, Ivy tired of the duplicity – she was never given a straight answer, or even the same lie twice in a row, so as soon as the basics were completed she took the new vessel out on a “test flight”… and didn’t come back. From the formerly patient, obedient, docile little robot, the recklessly impudent theft was completely unbelievable, and utterly unforgivable. The price put on her head meant her capture became a lucrative prospect for whoever should choose to attempt it, and after numerous attempts on her freedom – some of which failed by only the smallest margin, and all of which threatened the lives of her small group of friends – Ivy came to the conclusion the only option was for her to take Dauntless offworld. She initially stopped only to invite Onyx along for the ride, but word got out she was leaving and Slate, Ren and Lena volunteered their help and took up their respective places aboard.

     As a highly-experimental vessel, Dauntless’s programming was unpolished and rather “raw” – Ivy had been intending on a rigorous testing workup to correct any unseen faults and neaten up any loose ends before signing her off as finished, but never got the opportunity before she had to make her move. Instead, she was often forced to “prop up” failing code with her own systems, using whatever was most similar as a “patch” to keep systems operational and prevent a catastrophic systemwide failure that would not only disable the ship but probably kill her shipmates when life support failed.
     As a consequence of this, Ivy found that Dauntless had picked up a number of chunks of extraneous code from nearby systems. All the bits of code she picked up were fairly harmless, and at the time, Ivy had more important things to worry about than cleaning out all the “fluff” that had accumulated.
     These persisting clumps of code began to interweave and complex with the vessel’s pre-existing programming, however. Dauntless was always intended to be at least somewhat “intelligent”, although hers was more along the lines of “fuzzy logic” than outright thinking for herself. For instance, if she picked up a threat which no-one else had noticed or to which her crew were not responding, she could take appropriate steps to resolve the situation.
     Eventually these packets of “donated code” led to the formation of a very low-grade sentience; her “quasi-intelligence” had given way to something a lot more capable to think for itself. Although Ivy no longer had to donate programming in the way she had been, she still often symbiosed with the ship to carry out maintenance, aware that her ship was still “learning” from her own programming and still picking up a few lines of coding here and there.
     “Magpie” has been growing in self-awareness for a considerable time. Her friends/crew guess that any further development she makes will probably be done through “traditional” learning (whatever that means for a very untraditional life-form), as there is only so much that can be learned by being “programmed” – the raw data she possesses being a valuable source of information on what, but lacking the emotional component that explains why, which in turn will probably only come from experience (of a sort).

Notes:
     After speaking to a couple of friends online (and you know who you are ) I have entertained the idea of a “synthetic remote” for her, as she has great difficulty interacting with her environment. That is, she can travel unharmed through a variety of hostile stellar and atmospheric environments, lift massive weights and carry objects no other creature could dream of even moving, and yet she cannot stop a teacup falling from a sideboard, or pick up a pen. And I can imagine this would frustrate her!

     In the space of a few months, Mags has gone from one of my least developed characters to one with the longest profile, and one of the most popular of my creations. I can’t imagine why that is… Most of the art I’ve done of her seems to be very silly, however – I’ve had the accusation of it being “fanservice” levelled at me, but eh, I neither confirm nor deny. In a way, I think she’s a little like Iios, in my mind – as in, there’s great potential for great stupidity, although for Magpie it’s more a “how would she possibly see this strange situation, and how might she react to it?”, although in a way I feel a little sorry for abusing her silly naïve gullibility for its vague humour value. (By comparison’s sake, poor Iios seems to be very much a case of stupid for stupid’s sake. He comes across as the sort to want to try something for the sheer unadulterated hell of being able to say “I did that”, even if he’ll occasionally later deny any knowledge out of humiliation.)

     This profile started out with the intention of being short, since the character herself has only been coming through more strongly in recent weeks (mainly since April 2007), but it seems to have grown into a monster. Which is odd, since I usually hate writing profiles, especially ones with such a “personality” basis. Anyway. Blagh.

First met in:
     So far Magpie has not been met in any of the “published” fiction, aside from as the vessel itself. She will not be met as a person until later down the line.

Art:
Girton doodle - the very first doodle of her, looking very "boring and normal" compared to the electric brightness I see in my mind some days. At this point I was undecided what she should look like, hence her more strongly Kiravai looks.
Profile - still working on getting her looks down on paper, as I didn’t want her to (effectively) just be a bird.
Scraps - another slightly-lopsided Magpie. I do quite like her feet, though.
Profile in Pictures - finally, getting this properly down on paper. She's slightly blunter in snout than before – although I think that was more of an error than an actual change. I may put the sharp snout back. (This is the working version, with some pencils and no annotation – I’ll change this over when I get it finished.)
H is for Hologram - ...eh, if you need to ask, it’ll probably take too long to explain. Red Dwarf, anyway.
Tearing Herself into Fragments - No, I'm not as emo as this looks! Based on the way that she seems determined to try and accommodate everyone that asks her to do something or change her appearance in some way, and the fact that naturally she can’t do everything for everyone that asks. (This is also an exercise in perspective that went a bit wrong... You're supposed to be looking down on her, even if it doesn't look it.)
Nudies? - well, a friend joked about seeing her nude, so... well, she IS a starship...
Ship design - an actual semi-sensible picture. I'm not especially good at drawing vehicles, so I decided to have a practice - helps that Dauntless has always been somewhat "avian" in form...
“Oh, give me strength…” - the silly doodle that inspired this cartoon.
“...uhh, never mind...” - inspired by a conversation with a friend in IM.
Bobbles! - Bobble-Magpie and friend Bobble-Kreesh; in IM/RP/whatever, Magpie seems to have plenty of admirers, but I think she particularly enjoys Kreesh's company because he seems to like to teach her things. :P (All bobbles have six limbs, if you were wondering - Kreesh just happens to have already maxed out on his allowance, being a griffin.)
Legs go where? - every now and then someone will make an observation about one of my characters that I feel halfway inclined to draw, because it's sufficiently surreal as to grab my interest. This was one of those things – although of course, I had to put Mag’s own inimitable slant on it. She does look a little chopped-in-half, but eh, I’m not sure how to fix that short of re-drawing it from a different angle. Mind you, certain others seem to want to be in on the act, even though they should really know better by now.


* re: the “vore” aspect, I have to say, “me too”. I haven’t a clue why that’s “sexy”, but go figure. People like what they like, and I guess a lot of people wouldn’t understand why it is I like synthetic life-forms so much. But then *I* don’t know that, so… geh. Go figure.