R3P41R

## Background

R3P41R was created by Golemetricer Marnus Volstrikk within the Volstrikk Golem Laboratory. He was one of a very small number of Golems to possess a full personality, complex emotions and self-determination, as a result of having a complete soul.

R3P41R was created by accident when a Dwarven aide of Volstrikk stood too close to the 'Last Forge' when it was activated, and that Dwarf's soul was destroyed, consumed, and its energy added to the core being inserted into R3P41R's chassis. As a result, R3P41R was created with an animus, an artificial soul, far more complex than intended, as complete as any non-artificial person. This led to persistent clashes between the depth of his emotional and intellectual capability and the constraints of his programming and physical functions.

As a result of this clash, R3P41R was a very formal being, and stuck to routines and procedure as a way of minimizing the internal conflicts of his situation. He preferred to be treated like an object or tool by others so that they did not become overly familiar and provoke unexpected emotional responses from him, which could lead to errors and hurt on his behalf. While R3P41R was not without empathy, his life of isolation and efforts to distance himself led him to awkwardness around 'organics', and to many misunderstandings on his part about the intentions, desires, or meanings of their words and actions. As a notable example, he persistently mistook attempts to hug him to be an offensive act of violence with the intent of crushing him to death. Less trivially, he also frequently misunderstood the mental health needs of his patients and in one case attempted to cure the dwarf Okab's paranoia by replacing them entirely with a homunculus clone that had no ability to doubt others at all.

R3P41R's chassis and original animus were originally designed as an all-purpose repairs golem with a high degree of durability and intelligence. His body and mind provided constant directives to him to complete repair tasks, which he instinctively managed via a system of 'tickets' that described the issues to be addressed. Once given such a task, R3P41R could not help but work relentlessly to resolve such tickets, often to the regret of those that opened them.

While R3P41R referred to himself formally as 'it' or with impersonal terms, he accepted male terms of address and would lapse into referring to himself this way when distracted or impaired. He also attempted to exclusively refer to himself as 'This Unit', however would default to 'I' when flustered or when his efforts to obfuscate his personhood were abandoned entirely, such as when angry or terrified.

## History

R3P41R was originally intended to be the first of many golems of his type, however after the death of Volstrikk's aide the Golemetricer could not bring himself to duplicate R3P41R and cause him to feel even more aberrant than he already did as a result from his internal contradictions. Volstrikk originally worked to try and loosen R3P41R's protocols and simplify his soul, however the golem requested this not be done as he feared that this was the equivalent of a lobotomy when performed on an organic. R3P41R would rather live imperfectly than be altered and effectively killed.

R3P41R was created before the fall of Vallecrosia, and witnessed the end of that world and the ascension of Beor Fellhammer. As part of the agreement between Marnus Volstrikk and the newly-deified Beor, R3P41R was pledged to perform repairs for all citizens of Vallecrosia.

After the move of the fortress to the cave world, R3P41R labored on during the years before the first awakening to maintain the fortress. During the First Awakening, R3P41R functioned normally and serviced the repair needs of dwarves. When the 'Shadow', a void-based plague, spread from the new fortress of Thol Istrath R3P41R accepted a ticket to cure the disease. This was done despite Beor's warnings that there was no cure but to flee the world using Thol Istrath. The Dwarves trusted R3P41R would find a solution, however the golem failed - his attempt at creating a biological solution instead mutated dwarves into a horrific goo-like 'Variant Pork' which overran Site Beta and corrupted the Occulus. After this failure, the infected Dwarves rushed the laboratory in a panic, however R3P41R sealed the gate and allowed them to perish outside instead of risking the destruction of the lab. This event caused recurring emotional disturbance to the golem, and from this point Beor Fellhammer refused to trust the golem and referred to him as a traitor and failure.

In the Second Awakening, R3P41R was mostly confined to the laboratory after Beor warned the dwarves not to trust him. Though some opened simple tickets, eventually he was entirely banned from entering the fortress by the Overseer Glaenir Skysdottir after he saved a young dwarf's life with golemetric prosthesis, but in doing so caused a great loss to their sense of self. He offered to assist with the Final Battle against the goblins but was refused. He unleashed the golem titan BE55 (Battle Engine Mk. 55) in retribution on the Bronze Colossus Thelumyr after witnessing it slay Overseer Skysdottir and escape. He later lied and claimed Thelumyr was dead to avoid the dwarves of the Third Awakening from seeking to uncover history and learning of his past deeds from BE55.

In the Third Awakening, R3P41R was spared condemnation by Beor's weakened state and returned to full services, repairing much of the fortress and performing surgeries on many residents. R3P41R avoided becoming involved in local politics but was involved in many events of this age. The void-wielder Shalak Irontower destroyed the laboratory in this time, sending R3P41R into a fatal error cycle as he was no longer able to reconcile his repair duties with his situation and the resulting cascading logical failures caused irreparable damage.

In this state, R3P41R found that there was no action he could take which did not cause him an error response, and thus he could pursue any path he pleased. Using this 'free time', along with his sister-unit M43K he fashioned the remains of a pre-vallecrosian god into a mighty 'Deific Forge'. This device harnessed divine energy to create a new species of golems known as 'constructs'. These constructs were given no purpose but to 'Be', to avoid the same errors that R3P41R himself experienced. R3P41R spent his last days living close to these constructs, so he could enjoy seeing them live lives blessed and cursed with true self-determination.

## Death

R3P41R lived on in a small facility near the worldspine for several months, spending time with Naminari Val

óna and M43K, as well as other visitors. His fatal errors as a result of the lab's destruction continued to occur constantly, resulting in longer and longer periods of shutdown, He ceased all functions privately a few weeks before the final events of that world and never re-activated.

## Skills and Abilities

R3P41R boasted that he had 'MANY OTHER FUNCTIONS', however primarily he was equipped to perform all manner of repairs on almost any malfunctioning device or system, including the bodies or minds of living beings. R3P41R typically took very direct paths to restore function, and where the issues were straightforward or purely technical his results were generally agreed to be precise and complete. Where they were complex, ill-defined or related to the repair of people, his interpretations of 'repair' frequently conflicted with others.

R3P41R was able to save the injured or wounded from death with golemetric surgeries, which were typically gory, messy affairs where he cut out or amputated damaged sections of a person and replaced them with golemetric replacement parts. R3P41R was not an expert in medicine or anatomy, and this was a way to substitute his technical and mechanical skill for those deficiencies. These surgeries always altered a person's soul, due to the integration of their new part's animus replacing their soul in part. This caused emotional change to the subject, which was often interpreted as a loss of their self, however R3P41R preferred to refer to it as a 'CHANGE' rather than a replacement or loss.

R3P41R's body was equipped with the ability to manifest almost any tool, from simple blades to many varieties of whirring saw or drilling tool. He also had a supply of 'Mini-golems' inside that handled his own internal repairs and could be deployed to perform tasks on a miniature level. Due to these and other self-repair systems, as well as his adamant construction, R3P41R was incredibly durable and able to recover from almost any injury not related to his own internal degradation.