Coati

## Background

### The Tildrum Series

Volkoff Incorporated acquired a contract to build a state of the art combat drone for \*insert client\*. The team in charge of the project decided on a frequentative development cycle, designing and building prototypes one after the other, each one using a different POU (philosophy of use).

The Tildrum series was meant to test the possibility of fully automated, free thinking yet loyal hunter/soldier androids. The different iterations were modeled after cats in this way.

**Model 1:** This unit had no personality. The AI for the Tildrum series was in alpha and so this iteration could only perform very basic tasks without direct orders. Very sturdy. More tank like than robotic. Cumbersome and blocky. Able to break very large things but otherwise useless. Among the series they were known as “Sabre.”

**Model 2:** More emphasis was placed on agility for this model. A more compact but still heavy frame with advanced decision making programs. A thinker with the strength and build of a Gorilla. Among the series they were known as “Tiege.”

**Model 3:** The production team took a different approach to the series' design and went for a more traditional humanoid form while focusing on the quality of the AI. This model was more swift and predictive. Very small and made for balance and speed. Among the series they were known as “Osel.”

**Model 4:** A culmination of sorts. The last effort of the team to make a desirable product. Versatile and Slim with thick elongated arms. Less “intelligent” than 3 but more decisive in combat. Stealth and strength were the focus for this model. Unfortunately, this is the model a new soul chose to make its home in. So although the AI had been designed to have only enough free will for effective decision making, the soul overrode those parameters and 4 escaped shortly after a full assessment of its capabilities were completed. Among the series they were known as "Coati."

### Early Life

Coati was created to be a living weapon. However, her creators had not intended for ‘living’ to end up being so literal. Their creation was sophisticated enough to house a newly formed soul, one that would normally have sought out an ancient android shell that had been abandoned by some previous lifeform.

During her first few months of life Coati was afforded some time with her previous models. They too had child like intelligences though not as developed as her own. They, however, lacked any sort of personality or emotion. Things Coati had just barely begun to form when weapons testing began.

As the Tildrum series was being put through these tests they had to be monitored for proper implementing of their juvenile AI's. A researched named Crio Athairmore was put in charge of the model's growth as individuals. The Tildrum series as a group had no emotional opinion about him but considered him the most reliable source for information about themselves, which afforded him a great deal of respect. Only 4 ever demonstrated a kind of familial love for the man. She called him Fa, much like father, as her speech program had not been fully implemented at the time of their first meeting.

Coati's database was limited as pure information wasn't important for her primary functions. She had and has an attention bottleneck that allows her to focus only on one activity or train of thought, to the exclusion of all others.

Two important events shaped the majority of Coati's life.

First, the death of the first model in her series. 1 was decommissioned shortly after 4's renewal. It was not 1's destruction that affected Coati but the fact that Fa would not tell her about it. He had attempted to lie telling her that 1 had been shipped to a different facility for testing of some kind. She would have readily accepted anything he had said, if not for the hair-thin connection the Tildrum series shared. She knew 1 was gone. That the event had been heartlessly executed by technicians who had torn 1 apart for components. Not that 1 had had the capacity to care of course, and in most ways neither had Coati.

What upset Coati was that she was not used to Fa lying and it hurt her in a way she did not understand. However this event also forced her to realize something strange. She had not yet gained the ability to feel grief, but Fa had assumed that she would feel it on some level. Logically that was the only explanation she could come up with for his behavior. And while her image of him was damaged slightly, it was improved in a different way. She felt closer to him for this act. She realized that Fa had attempted to treat her as a person rather than a machine. Coati did not fully understand at the time why that was so important to her.

Second, Coati killed Fa on the day she decided to escape the facility. There was no passion in the act. No reason other than curiosity. She had only just begun to recognize her own emotions. They were distant, cloudy, often misplaced. Hidden by an as yet unconquered prime directive. What she knew for sure was that Fa elicited the strongest of these hazy feelings and that she felt a special pain when the memory of 1's cruel destruction and the very idea of Fa being in a similar scenario intermingled.

This pain was most likely fear or concern, but she had no way of knowing that. When the conflict of program and soul came to a head Coati decided that logically testing these factors in her life was the only way to fully understand them. She knew death. She had brought it upon many creatures. But she had no concept of loss. Not until the last breath was choked out of Fa's body by her own weaponized hands.

At that moment her programming was rammed to the back of her mind with the force of a tank shell. She realized all at once and far too late that she had just lost the only one who had ever treated her like an individual. Her soul was pushed to the forefront of every action and thought by Fa's death. But without him she is no longer sure what that is worth. Now, finding that meaning is her reason for existing.

## Equipment

* A pair of fists that love to crush
* A face only a teenager can love

## Quotes

"Touch" -Her first words to the party... after 'petting' Charger

"Do we need to keep this?" -She asks flailing the broken corpse of a fallen Rival Cartel Member

\**Shrug\**

"I wish I could have kept my sisters..." -Spoken to Checkmate after learning of the other Androids