Myriad Characters: Athael, Angel Coordinator

Authorizing extermination of all Class: [ADELIAN] lifeforms in the vicinity. Fulfilling the Directive. All non-Human life is to be purged.  Should any show signs of willingness to cooperate, exterminate them as well.

Adelians have collected untold thousands of artifacts from the Lost World, but none seem to shine light toward the enigmatic origins of the Human servitors known as Cephaetera, “Coordinators.” Some Adelians believe that Humans loathed their own forms and sought a perfection of shape in their creations, and this might have resulted in the quizzical forms of the coordinators, the elves, and perhaps even other prototypical humanoid races that could’ve been precursors to modern Adelians. Such theories are often regarded with widespread controversy. But one must wonder why the central nerve engine of a collective of genocidal machines has a need to appear beautiful, and as human-like as the Adelians and Elves themselves. Athael is one such interesting specimen. Perfect of form, but bearing a ruinous power over the Angels.

Origin

While the ultimate origin and conception of the Angels is a mystery lost to time thanks to the Cataclysm, Athael’s own origin is not such. It is one of the few Cephaetera known by the Adelians to be active, and who has survived various skirmishes with expedition groups, city garrisons, mage research teams and other Adelians whom it has met. Athael was first discovered within an ancient temple of the humans in Emderuer, on the edge of the Noshiki wasteland. A group of delvers braved the depths of the site, through crumbling and upturned hallways, sliding down paths where stone had twisted into spiral, or climbing up pathways that were once perfectly straight. Within the vast depths of the temple, the group uncovered an area where the rock walls became pristine, reflective metal. As though stepping into an entirely different world, they found themselves in a mechanical hub, where various broken-down pods held dead Cephaetera, their bodies long since rotted away by time.

One pod remained untouched, however. The delvers thought to destroy it – but unfortunately for them, they were not the only ones with an eye towards the temple. The group had been stalked by Diesel Society operatives, who wanted to claim the technology in the temple for their nefarious organization. A battle ensued within the chrome halls of the undertemple. The two groups fought viciously, the delvers wanting nothing more than the destruction of a dangerous artifact, while the diesel society lusted after the secrets it might hold. During the battle, the pod was unknowingly activated. Ancient sensors and logic nodes brimmed with renewed life. The liquid in the pod drained, and calibration needles sunk into the Cephaetera’s body at key points, restarting its elemental core, stimulating its synthetic muscles, shock-starting its organ systems.

The glass on the pod blew open, and Athael stood again. Both groups turned their attention to it – the delvers firing upon it, and the diesel society pleading for it to lead them to a new age of machines. Athael quickly matched their bioform and energy field readings to the vast, collected knowledge of the Angels, kept safe within the orbiting satellites. In an instant it knew that it was faced with Adelians. Moments later, it walked over their mutilated bodies and out of the temple, standing on little but a rock from its own past and overlooking an alien present. There was much work ahead of it.

Appearance

Most angels have completely robotic forms, but Athael and Cephaetera like it are much more insidious. Their bodies are humanoid, deceptively androgynous and usually slim, with often startlingly beautiful faces and quite realistic synthetic heads of hair, and deep eyes that Adelians would be fooled into thinking suggest a soul. The body is covered in a rubber-like polymer suit, with a high neckline and long sleeves. These are not clothes, but a layer of skin – ripped off, there is a pallid, wet, somewhat squishy underlayer, and underneath is the first layer of robotic plating and mechanisms. The face often has skin off-color with the rest, either too pale for the black polymer or too dark for the squishy secondary layer, so a Cephaetera without Adelian clothes is likely to be discovered quite quickly for what it is. However, there have been reports of more expertly and naturally disguised Cephaetera. Athael is not one of them – it does not want to socialize with Adelians.

Athael is a quicker, lighter-bodied Cephaetera, its limbs slender and its form elegant. Most Cephaetera are such, though a few are distinctly built and physically imposing. Regardless of its size, Athael could pick up an adult Adelian by the neck and throw it across a room like it were raising a newspaper off the floor and binning it. Its face has two green, almost jewel-like eyes. Upon close examination they seem to adjust, as though the cornea and pupil were composed of shifting pieces of glass. Its long pale hair looks normal, save for the tiny technological ornaments hanging from certain tufts. These little globes are actually environment sensors that help regulate Athael’s body temperature depending on the climate. Athael has no ears, so it could not pass for a Iomadi without a pair of fake ears of some animal or another, and it also has no tail.

Personality

Athael is a callous, mechanically-minded creature with only a single directive – the extermination of all Adelian life, and the reversing of the changes brought about by the cataclysm. While both tasks are seemingly impossible, and neither of them will bring the Humans back from extinction, Athael is bound to them to its very core. There is no action Athael can take that does not put it a step closer to these ultimate goals. It is efficient, ruthless and highly intelligent. It has no capacity to care or empathize with Adelians. Each is a conglomerate of proteins that has failed to arrange itself in the specific genetic code of a human being. While the Adelians might look like its old masters, that has never and will never matter.

Its subordinate machines are also just that: subordinates and tools. While some Cephaetera manage to develop a sort of bond with the constituent machines of the great Angel hierarchy, Athael has none. Each exopoda, regardless of its bio-synthetic brain and high thinking functions, is just a tool. If it is told to, it will launch itself against the enemy and be destroyed. Its loss will not be mourned, and its victory not celebrated. If necessary it will be scavenged or cannibalized to build a more effective machine. Athael is aware only of itself and its directive. Even its own body is disposable if necessary.

Abilities

As an Angel Cephaetera, Athael has a number of incredible weapons at its disposal. In its basic form, its svelte body hides a pair of small jump jets on its back, assisted by foot jets. It has arrowlance railguns hidden in each of its arms. Unlike every other angel, the Cephaetera is capable of ancient magic, assisted by its internal core. At a moment’s notice it can raise shields to absorb attacks, consume its enemies in fireballs, or launch a barrage of arcane missiles.

Athael can also link its body to a sturdy suit of ancient Powered-Armor, which gives it a pair of rockets for powered flight, as well as two brimstone (plasma) cannons underslung to its arms. The powered armor adds girth and strength to the Cephaetera’s body, as well as supplying additional power to its core and processing abilities.

Boasting an internal uplink to the remnants of the human Satellite network in orbit around Adel, the Cephaetera has access to some surveillance functions, a connection to the remnants of the Human Internet that serves as it vast knowledge base, and it can theoretically call upon a low-orbit ion cannon strike. This last feature requires the additional processing ability of various other angelic servitors. Furthermore, the satellite’s position has to be recalibrated, a time-consuming process which Athael must remain focused to coordinate. In the middle of a battle, this may be difficult to do.

Of course, Athael also has a small army of angel robots to help it, mostly the low-walking exopoda spider drones. Should it manage to find more Angel vaults, or a way to crash at least a few of the untold thousands that still float perilously and aimlessly in the Adelian stratosphere, it could be quite a dangerous commander.

Goals

Athael’s goals are simple: the elimination of Adelians and the changing of the climate. Athael remembers a world with a horrendously polluted atmosphere, boiled oceans, alien synthetic plants that were the only living things capable of existing on the depleted soil, and vast inky clouds covering a purple-ish sky. This is the world where the Humans painstakingly created it, and it is gone. Perhaps there are still ways to slowly return it. Though this will ultimately do no good, it is what Athael knows – the environment needs “maintenance” and many systems all over what is now Adel are broken. It must uncover them and fix them. Along the way, any Adelians who intrude upon its task will be dealt with brutally.