Artifice

Artifices, is a synthetic lifeform originally created by the Ancient Race, eons ago. They are fully blended into Ancient culture and the only way to dinstinguish them is by knowing the visual cues and where to find their Ancient Core.

## Origins

Artifices rely on Artifice Cores.

Artifice Cores enable Artifice life and were originally intended to grant the Ancient with immortality as a technology breakthrough. Eons ago, it is said that Épiphanée was against that idea, pushing the Ancient to find a new use for these Artifice Cores. Thanks to its incredible density and information storage, it is able to replicate a lifeform in appearance, while running all biological processes within the Core, thanks to complex Ether technology.

An Artifice's consciousness is created and pulled from the Collective Unconscious, definitely making them different from robots and other forms of artificial lifeforms.

The Ancient thus created the Artifice race, whose appearance would follow pre-existing lifeforms, allowing them to perfectly blend in with organic lifeforms. This race enabled the Ancient to live in prosperity for billions of years, thanks to having companions.

## Process

For an Artifice to come into life, a host must make resonance with an Artifice Core, allowing it to be imbued with consciousness and various life data such as DNA and Ether information.

Resonance : A host activates an Artifice Core, allowing the Artifice to appear. This creates a Meister-Artifice bond, which can only be severed through a wilful transfer of Meister, or the host dying. An Artifice can find their Meister through the Ether field, regardless of distance, and know approximatively its status. An advanced Meister can do the same for their Artifice. A strong bond can enhance these communicative powers as well.

Reset : If the Meister passes away, the Artifice undergoes "Reset", which wipes their memories and the bond with the Meister, allowing for a clean slate Resonance with the future Meister.

An Artifice may keep its appearance, Ether data, personality and consciousness through a Reset, the details are not clear, as some Artifices are able to reminisce their previous lives (in dreams, a traumatic event, or before undergoing a Reset).

## Physical Attributes

An Artifice does not age. Upon Resonance, an Artifice's appearance is set and rarely change through its iterations of Resets, influenced by their passing Meisters. All vital functions of an Artifice are located within their Core, which acts as both brain, heart and organs. The body is merely a physical projection of the stored Ether/DNA data inside the Core.

Their appearance is always based on pre-existing races. Most of them are modelled after Ancient subspecies, but in the current day it is not uncommon to start seeing Miktam, Humankind or Matterkind based Artifices.

An easy way to spot an Artifice is to look for the following attributes:

* unnatural hair dye;
* Ether imbued body parts: mucous membranes (eyes, tongue, nails etc..), appendages (if any)...
* Artifice Core;
* Ether lines;
* unusually round ears;
* suspiciously fast regeneration (they can repair any damage to the body, as long as the Core is intact.);
* can generate a "blade", which is an item that acts as an extension of their physical body;
* A Serial Number.

An Artifice can effectively heal up on any wound inflicted, as long as the Core is not damaged. A damaged Core will sustain permanent wounds and pain like organic injuries. This does not mean that Artifices are not immune to pain, as they do possess pain receptors.

They cannot reproduce by default. An Artifice Core before its first Resonance can be manipulated to add reproduction data so its incarnation can have that attribute. It is highly difficult to do so and is not seen with the best regards in Ancient society. Artifices however can have a non-working reproductive body part in normal circumstances.

## Protocols

The Ancient put into place simple protocols to make an Artifice's life cycle possible, which are points mentioned prior. Some protocols are disobeyed and enforcement is usually overseen by the Ancient Federation Council.

* Appearance: All Artifices must bear attributes of an already existing race;
* Consciousness: the Core cannot store a consciousness that already exists (preventing someone transferring themselves into an Artifice);
* Humanity: Artifices are people, they deserve same treatment and rights as their organic lifeform counterparts.
* Creation: Artifices may not be mass-produced for unethical reasons such as conflicts. Prior to GalaxyTravail, this Protocol also mentioned that all Artifices must be created by Ancients.
* Procreation: Artifices shall not procreate. They naturally have the ability to create Cores the more cycles they go through, but cannot mimic organic reproduction.
* Meister: all Artifices are bound to a Meister. An Artifice without a Meister should have its Ether depleted eventually. A Meister shall not abuse its Artifice
* Resonance: Only strong-willed individuals can activate an Artifice Core and resonate with it, becoming the Meister in process.
* Reset: After a Meister's passing, An Artifice goes back to its Artifice Core undergoing reset, which normally wipes memory and allows the Artifice to grow with a new life cycle.

## Derivatives

Due to a power dynamic between a Meister and its Artifice, one can end up abusing and over-relying on an Artifice. An Artifice however, is not physically forced to stay within the perimeter of its Meister and can even leave. The weaker connection may even allow an Artifice to get a new Meister, or survive without its original. A Meister may even purposefully awaken an Artifice only to sell it later, though this should clash with the principle of Resonance, some are able to avoid it.

It isn't uncommon to see a Meister with multiple Artifices, as it isn't uncommon to see an Artifice with multiple Meisters, the two are not mutually exclusive and it happens more often lately. Marriage between the two is not uncommon either, as many Meister-Artifice bonds are very strong enough for the idea to come later on.

### Meisterless Case

An Artifice can outlive its Meister, or Resonate without one necessarily, although highly uncommon. It's an extremely rare case, as the Meister-Artifice bond provides an Ether exchange of information and energy that is lost when the Artifice unbinds to a Meister. They may not be able to correctly gather environment and surrounding data, and picking up on social cues as well. Their personality is strongly beholden and influenced by their Meister, which means an Artifice may not even have a reason to live past that bond.

*Seraphita and Sirène are classified as "Meisterless".*

### Ether Therapy / Ether Eater / Artifice Eater Case

A brand new development in humankind technology has been to implement unresonated Artifice Cores into their own body, so they can finally have Ether Response (humankind do not possess any Ether Response naturally).

**Artifice Eater**: It creates wildly different and inconsistent side effects, since the technology hasn't been proven and tested properly. Some are able to have tremendous Ether response upgrades, while some don't have any significant changes while it can kill others. Because the Core already has a consciousness, it will clash with the one of the host body and create serious side effects as a result. Humankind Echelons use this technology that temporarily incorporates Ether into one's body through a Core as a power source, possibly killing them on the long run, which is why they incorporate the Cores directly into the body so the Echelons may perform better with a higher tolerance.

**Ether Therapy**: a more down-to-earth approach created by the Ancient recently, in order to help terminal disease holders the potential to live a better life. As Ancient possess deep knowledge of Artifice Core technology, they know how to properly cleanse it in order to use the Core as a power source. Converted cores are named "Ether Cores", and then implanted into people that need this operation. The results aren't very well known, but more consistent than humankind's version and it's a more conservative approach that doesn't put the patient in life danger. Grace by example, is an Ether Eater close from birth, as her family was running into an unknown genetic disease, which the Core failed to heal.

Humankind stole this technology and without knowing its actual inner workings, resulted in the Artifice Eater technology mentioned above.

## History

### Home Colony

Artifices started on Nanuetta-HF in Ancient Time Calendar 1966 (A.D. -16.000.000.000), and have expanded to Earthfall, just like regular Ancients, as the two are usually one and the same civilisation-wise.

"First Generation" Artifices were made at the very beginning. The first host of Épiphanée was a first generation Artifice.

"Second Generation" Artifices were made eons ago, when Artifices started to be mass produced before the final Eternal Occurrence trigger.

"Third Generation" Artifices are newer Artifices from the GalaxyTravail era that haven't necessarily been made by the Ancient themselves, such as Seraphita, Ampoule, Sirène and Myyah. It is also the generation that has lived outside of the home colony of Nanuetta-HF.

#### Miktamkind Astoltia War

The Ancient, who have been in contact with every alien race except for the humans, have warned the Miktam of an imminent threat ; they sent Artifices in order to defend the Astoltia and Miktam planets, in case the battle could become overwhelming to them. Artifices helped fight off human civilisation that tried to invade the Miktam Area. The Artifices were successful at pushing back the invasion on Miktam, however a dramatic event leads to Astoltia falling into the hands of humans, which ends up getting destroyed.

A particular Artifice, called Sirène, was capable to couple its powers with the Apocrypha, which was stored within the Orbital Ring of Michtam-04B at the time. That Artifice in particular was tasked to protect the relic at all costs, and successfully did so. This popular Artifice died in a surprise attack on the Miktam Orbital Ring by the Earth Federation a couple years later. This part of history is shrouded in mystery as no one knows details about this event, with only the information that the Orbital Ring successfully defended the place but that the Echelon Siren was destroyed doing so.

After the war, the Artifices were not sent back to the Ancients as they insisted that they will help them in the long run. Each race within miktamkind ended up having 5 Artifices each, to this day they are presumably still alive and serve their respective peoples. However, the traces of Sirène in particular cannot be found, as it is speculated that the Apocrypha may have done something to that Echelon in particular, if not destroyed it during a conflict.

#### Earth Federation Conflict

Once the Earth Federation established itself, it designated which races and species are deemed human and would receive human rights. Most Meisters have made sure that their Artifices are in good conditions and protected but the Earth Federation claimed that it will not let Artifices take advantage of their technologies and systems, which is creating a rising conflict between the Ancient civilisation and the Federation.

Ampoule was created during a conflict in order to protect the Ephraim family, which consisted of Conn'el, Praxis and Yurielle at the time. After Yurielle's graduation, Ampoule along with Hannah, one of Yurielle's friend, establish a trio to uncover a mystery going on in their planet. By doing so, they find a secret Earth Federation base that was operating in the shadows of many local governments. Being outnumbered, Ampoule lets the two escape while she gets captured by the Federation. Ever since, Yurielle and Hannah have adventured to look for Ampoule, not knowing what has happened to her.

The Earth Federation stole Artifice and Ether Therapy technology, in order to strengthen their soldiers and build more destructive Echelons.

Seraphita built a couple years prior to the events of GalaxyTravail in 2922, has been giving the burden of representing the Artifice race within the Starfall Programme, a project that includes almost all intelligent species that exist. Not being aware that she is an Apocrypha contact, she was taken into Starfall, to train with the next generation of leaders. Seraphita initially does not know who her Meister is which frustrates her, but she helps nonetheless the Programme in their ambitions.

## Trivia

* Artifice refers to artificial lifeform.
* Artifices are one of the only mineral-based lifeforms in the KOSMOS Universe, alongside a few subspecies of the matterkind.

## Characters

The following list includes all known characters that belong to this species.

*(Artifice Ancient/Nymph)*
*(Artifice Ancient)*
*(Artifice Miktam Borealis)*
*(Artifice Earthfall Ancient)*
*(first incarnations)*

characters that have undergone Ether Therapy.

*(Ancient C)*
*(Ancient C)*
*(Ancient C)*
*(Ancient Machina)*
 Praxis Ephraìm
*(Ancient A)*
*(Ancient B)*
*(Miktam Borealis)*

characters that have undergone Artifice Eater technology.

*(Humankind Arian)*
*(Miktam Borealis)*
*(Humankind Arian)*
*(Humankind Earthian)*