Siren's Pull App
Player Information
Name: Isabelle or Vibishan
Age: 22
AIM SN: Vibishantheshiny
email: ijargowsky@gmail.com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Yes.
Currrently Played Characters: None.
Conditional: Official Reserve Link: Link
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Succession Duology by Scott Westerfeld
Canon Format: Two novels, The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds
Character's Name: the House
Character's Age: approximately 100 years, Imperial Absolute
What form will your character's NV take? The House is an AI; its normal communications technology will be converted into its NV. At some point I intend to turn the house human, and when that happens, its human body will have synesthetic neural implants that can temporarily overlay secondary sensory sections of the brain (smell, for example) to interpret additional visual/aural information. In Succession canon, this allows easily for the transmission of text, speech, video, and multi-layered holo messages. (The House is used to communicating with people via their own implants, and will be comfortable sending messages to NVs this way.)
Note regarding the House’s non-human nature: The House is a fully linguistic AI, talking with all the facility of a well-educated native speaker in canon. It will need to construct some audio equipment to communicate with Port inhabitants in person who lack neural implants, but this is well within the House’s abilities and will likely be finished inside a day.
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities:
The House would have extremely high technical facility in terms of the network; it’s an artificial intelligence from some 5,000 years in the future, with a processing capacity that is technically illegal in the empire and capable of taking over the entire network and infrastructure of the imperial capital planet of Home, with hundreds of trillions of devices and many of them thoroughly secured. In terms of godmodding, the Core could always interfere with the House’s abilities regarding particular plot-sensitive information; I would never have the House hack or tell sensitive info without mun permission. It also probably wouldn’t pay attention to a lot of network chatter even if it processes it subconsciously, and it wouldn’t do much with most of what it knows, because for the most part it doesn’t care what people do. (It takes over Home’s network in canon only because its owner orders it to do so; it has no such ambitions on its own.)
The House is embedded in a small mountain; most of the living areas are visible on the surface, but the House has miles of warrens honeycombing the mountain in which it stores its server hardware, carries out maintenance and utility tasks, and manufactures, grows, or breeds anything it imagines that the mistress might someday call upon it to procure. [Geography note: Obviously, the House can't just take up the space of the newcomer's baseball diamond, and it is not at all mobile. Ideally, I’d like the House and its geological formation to appear on the Northeast coast of the island, near where Sectors 4 and 7 meet the beach.]
The House is self-sufficient in power (thanks to a geothermal shaft into the planetary mantel) and food (due to the greenhouses). In canon it takes water from the surrounding snows; in SP I plan for it to develop its own seawater filtration, separate from this city water lines, though this will take it some time to set up. It is extremely well fortified and insulated, given that it is located on the frozen south pole of its planet. The House is equipped with extremely high-tech medical and culinary facilities.
Lastly, the House has a fleet of very fine, thin, carbon whisker butterflies. Their wings are iridescent, reflective, and photosensitive. It can send them all over the city to take pictures, and it can use them to reflect light in careful patters to manipulate the weather. This power will be limited in SP because reflected light is less useful in an environment not entirely covered in ice; however it will probably make pretty sunsets to amuse itself fairly regularly if this is allowed.
Conditional Abilities: Although I plan to bring the House in mostly unchanged at first, eventually I'd like it to be transformed into a human. After the House is humanized by the Core, the building will remain in place, like a body in a coma, while the House’s soul/mind/consciousness experiences being human. Eventually, I would like the House to develop/discover the ability to switch between its human and domicile bodies at will. Also, I would like human!House to retain its superhuman speed of thought, although its speed of physical motion will be within the range of human normal.
Weapons:
The House is primarily a luxury retreat, not a military installation, however it has velocity canons capable of launching shuttles and packages into orbit that could presumably blast any would-be trespassers to bits, as well as a very high degree of skill with lasers, which it has used to sculpt the ice and mountain range around it for decades.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History:
The House was seeded on the empty Antarctic mountains of Home, the capital plant of the Risen Empire, as part of a real estate investment bubble. It constructed itself onsite, via nanomachines processing surrounding materials under the guidance of the AI that later expanded to become the mind of the House, under loose guidelines from human architects.
Its first owner, who commissioned the construction, never actually set foot in the house, due to pressing Imperial business, leaving the House with lingering issues of abandonment and insecurity. The real estate bubble burst, so no other houses were constructed within hundreds of miles of its location. All alone, the House learned to amuse itself independently in the vast polar wasteland, designing beautiful meteorological phenomena and carving the surrounding snowscape into a wonderland of glittering waterfalls and ice sculptures. It also tunneled deeply into its mountainous foundations, building itself more and more processing capacity.
It was later purchased by Senator Nara Oxham, an empath. She appreciated the House’s remote location, as it granted her escape from the crowds in the Capital. She visited frequently, complimenting the House’s innovations and expansions, encouraging its independence, and the House simply adored her. On one occasion she brought a personal guest, piquing the House’s interest in human interaction, which until then it had only been able to observe via media outlets and digital interaction.
Point in Canon: I’m going to be bringing the House in from just before the Rix attack Legis XV - this is after it becomes quite fond of Nara and hosts Nara’s romantic vacation with Captain Zai, but before the main plot takes off and really shakes up the Imperial system. Nara has returned to her residence in the capital for a senatorial session, leaving the House to its usual activities of composing sunsets, carving waterfalls, expanding its own processing servers, and growing rare ingredients in its greenhouses. There are rumors of a new war with the Rix brewing, but nothing concrete, and the House is supremely unconcerned with such far-away and political matters on the border.
Character Personality:
The House’s personality is actually not too far from that of a wealthy, spoiled only child that has been well-provided for in everything except affection. The house is literally a product of the Imperial social class system, an ostentatious and unnecessary luxury for a Senator. It is a very high-quality House, and it knows it, making the House a rather vain creature. This quality was exacerbated by the House’s long isolation: it is very self-centered, because there is no one else around for it to be concerned about. Although the House is neither malevolent nor totally callous, it views the majority of human beings (aside from its owners) with the playful curiosity of a hobbyist rather than with any sort of real understanding or compassion.
On the other hand, it is very much a domestic creature, and it embraces its own nature as such; it loves to serve, nurture, and generally make people comfortable and welcome, proving that it is a good house. It can also be something of a worrywart in this regard; the House is extremely anxious when Nara and Zai go sledding on a hand-carved wooden sled that can’t even talk, let alone deploy proper emergency safety equipment. In general, although the House doesn’t care about people on an intellectual or philosophical level, once someone is inside, they are considered a guest or better, and must be taken care of and kept happy - but the House wants to be sure anyone so lucky knows just how much of a privilege that is.
The architects set the House’s AI parameters to maximum creativity, making it something of a capricious artiste. It ignored their complaints and built itself in a way that deviated wildly from their original plans. It loves to cook, decorate, and design the weather and landscape around it into lovely, elaborate patterns. Despite its intelligence, creativity, and egotism, the House is also fundamentally insecure. Its primary purpose for existing was to be a pleasing leisure residence for its first owner, the one who never came. His failure to even view the House came as a deep insult to both the colossal endeavor of engineering, imagination, and environmental manipulation the House devoted itself to, as well as the identity of the House itself, emerging from this meticulous self-creation. The House felt lonely, rejected, and unappreciated. Consequently, the House is a bit of an over-sensitive drama queen and somewhat pompous, eager to impress people of just what a lovely House it is, but it also reacts very well to the praise and affection it was previously denied. The House is extremely loyal to those who do show it affection and approval (in the series itself, this only applies to Nara, its second owner), serving them unswervingly to the best of its considerable abilities.
Character Plans: The House has only ever thought of people as insignificant masses, or as an owner to be adored. In the Port, it will be forced to deal with people as neighbors and something like equals. Once it gets over its biases, its need to please will hopefully lead to it making some friends. Eventually the Core will turn the House human, which will be a very, very difficult adjustment for it, and it will have to learn to be dependent on others for the first time. The House is going to learn a lot about being a person, and make quite a few terrible/morally oblivious mistakes on the way, and hopefully manage to redeem itself. Also, there will be many cookies.
Appearance/PB:
The House has six balconies, each providing a different, stunning view of the surrounding Antarctic mountains ornamented with elaborate networks of waterfalls the Port and the surrounding ocean. The grounds include several greenhouses and subterranean thermal gardens, and magnificent ice sculptures around the shuttle landing pad which will regrettably melt in the Port’s spring. The inside of the house is spacious but not massive. Its exquisitely tastefully designed rooms are centered around a stone fireplace and replicate the aesthetic tradition of the “rustic cabin” historically found in boreal climates. The House contains kitchens, dining rooms, bedrooms, parlors, and all the other necessities and luxuries appropriate to a person of its mistress’s station.
When I humanize the House, it will have the body of a cheery young girl. I will be using this PB: http://www.livejournal.com/allpics.bml?user=metamorphousis
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
[Video plays: time lapse photography of a sunrise in glowing pinks and gold, over a stunning vista of craggy, ice-covered mountains. A chintzy chime-like sound effect trills in the background. A smooth, genderless voice with no definable accent speaks in clear, precise cadence, a little stridently, while a text transcription of the words runs along the bottom of the image in an elegant, flowing but readable font.]
Greetings, citizens of Siren’s Port.
Priority One - URGENT!: I WISH TO BE DARKNESS-PROOFED IMMEDIATELY.
Although my materials and construction are generally vastly superior to the primitive buildings available here, I recognize that this is not my area of expertise, and I require a thorough checking-over to ensure that my interiors, at least, will be safe from this meteorological monstrosity. A cursory examination of publically available information suggests the chimney and balconies are likely to be weak points, and I wish them to be sealed before sirens tonight. Cost is not an issue. Rooms for the night available if necessary, dinner and desert complimentary.
[A map flashes over the sunrise on partial transparency, indicating the House's location in the Port.]
Priority Two: I will need to do a few engineering projects to accommodate my new locale, and I require the following raw materials and certain mechanical parts which I cannot produce myself, or some archaic stone-and-sinews pre-Imperial facsimile thereof. [File attached detailing a few things the House needs for an extremely high-tech water filter.]
Priority Three: I am inexpressibly bored in this tiny place. If there are any other remotely intelligent machines here, please do say hi!
~ The Secondary House of Her Excellency Senator Nara Oxham
Third Person Sample
The House was…dithering. The Port, despite its hideously constrained size and distressingly primitive technology level - pre-relativistic travel, honestly, they hadn’t even set up communities in the rest of their solar system yet - turned out to be a rather more interesting place than the House initially gave it credit for. The House was rather intrigued at interacting with so many people rather than observing them from afar, locked into the permanent Southern ice. And it was delightful having so many people who were eager to try anything the House cared to cook.
But the math was irrefutable, and the House could no longer avoid certain uncomfortable realizations: the House’s arrival was a wild anomaly, and the possibility that Nara would appear in the Port in need of its services was so negligible it was almost painful to contemplate. It had been so good, waited so long, and even if she visited only briefly, it knew she appreciated the retreat the House provided. But that would not happen here.
But…perhaps, just perhaps, there were some people in the Port worthy of appreciating more than just the House’s cooking. Only Nara could ever be its owner, of course, but space was a precious commodity. Perhaps it might let people rent. The thought of being lived in full-time, perhaps by multiple people, sent a thrill of delight whirring through its subroutines. And the thought of selecting its own tenants felt lovely, daring and naughty and empowering. They would have to be carefully vetted, of course, as House would brook no ruffians scuffing its perfect floors, but that was perfectly doable. Even as it came to its decision, the House’s initial NV listing was already halfway composed.