H4N - backstory in far too many words far too late

in which assorted notes from emma will be italicised like this

Early Life and Helios Dynamics Assignment

H4N started out life six years ago as a standard model Helios Dynamics human-pattern service unit. it happened to be one of the ones that came out with close to full processor and electroneuron function, so it was assigned to high precision operational tasks¹; initially, movement of fragile goods, but following a strike by the organic workforce (and the entire workforce's subsequent termination), it found itself assigned as an interplanetary transport pilot.

H4N operated in this role for a little over a year, and spent most of this time contracted out delivering supplies and munitions for Blackwing, a Helios Dynamics private military company. This work was the first extended contact it had with organics, and it took a while to learn the particular social concepts and structures that hadn't existed within Helios Dynamics Robot culture; emotions, lying, that kind of thing.

a little over a year in, H4N was delivering munitions to a military deployment on the city-planet of Nexus 3². as it was entering the upper atmosphere again after completing its dropoff, it caught a distress signal from a military strike team cut off from their allies, and H4N quickly realised they were from one of the squads it had been carrying on its ship a week ago. their position was stuck too far behind enemy anti-air cover for any organic rescue pilot to land safely; H4N knew it was the pilot close enough and precise enough to have a chance of retrieving them, so it made the decision without a second thought, and definitely without waiting to tell anyone or request approval³.

H4N made a successful evacuation with minimal harm, and was naturally fired for flying an unarmoured transport ship into an active fire zone without permission or orders to do so. it was initially reassigned back to warehouse drudge work, and would have spent the rest of its existence there, were it not for the fact that the incident caught the attention of a Vaelstrom Innovations special officer stationed on the planet. the officer got in contact, and H4N got sold to the wizard military.

The Claws of the World Devourer

the Claws of the World Devourer are a top-secret unit of the Vaelstrom Innovations military. they operate with more freedom than most departments, given a Large budget and very loose reigns to pick their own operatives, equipment, training, and targets, as long as they are typically available when needed and as long as they get results.

the Claws are spies, infiltrators, and assassins that specialise in targeting high value and high power mages.

the Claws are also an unapologetic death cult, worshipping the World Devourer, a god of unimaginable power sealed inside a black hole on the edge of the galaxy⁴. the Claws commune with the World Devourer through its psychic influence, and draw on its magical powers to carry out its will in the universe; on some level, the ultimate aim of the Claws is to somehow free their god from its entrapment in the black hole⁵, but in practice they find that aligning with Vaelstrom and providing their services as Magehunters benefits their goals and also works for gaining access to the resources and knowledge they need for the task.

H4N was purchased by the Claws for an experiment in linking synthetic beings to the World Devourer's mind. its chassis was modified for this purpose, replacing the wires of its nervous system with a more weave-conductive alloy to introduce the potential for precise magical aptitude, and it was Initiated into the cult as Iota⁶.

initiation is a binding and a test of spirit - H4N was taken to the edge of the black hole to stare into it until it broke or was released. H4N stared into the black hole for hours before it began to feel, in its newly acquired magical sensitivity, the World Devourer's boundless mind staring back. what followed was a psychic engagement that was half tense negotiation and half desperate knife fight - after a few seconds that felt like days, H4N tore off its left arm at the shoulder, cast it into the black hole as a sacrifice. then it was set free, having traded its arm and its loyalty for the cracks and scars in its soul and the incomprehensible knowledge that filled them.

the Claws of the World Devourer employ a fractal organisational structure, with the aim that at all levels, groups are able to act self sufficiently. a Hand is comprised of three Claws; nominally, one Heart (who makes Important Decisions and is responsible for the hand), one Mind (who is responsible for strategy, information gathering, and logistics), and one Voice (who maintains a psychic connection to the World Devourer and the other Voices, and so is responsible for communication and expressing the will of the Devourer). Iota is the name of the third member (the Voice) of hand 3, and this is the role that H4N was given as a Claw.

after its arm was replaced with a more precise, magically capable alternative, H4N was tested and sent into the field with its team. the controlled and predictable nature of its programming made it difficult to learn complex magic, but it was particularly well suited for efficiently channeling magical energy in simpler forms⁷.

H4N was a Claw for three years, enacting countless targeted strikes across the galaxy - airdropping into a warzone to spend weeks hunting enemy battlemages, climbing a mountain in a perpetual storm to reach a hidden monastery at the tip and slaughter everyone inside, infiltrating a MicroTech research facility to assassinate the head researcher at her desk, and everything in between. in the breaks between deployments, it began to form real social connections for the first time ever - the scars of the World Devourer's touch had changed it, made it more of a person than most units of its model would ever be, and in time the Claws, especially the other members of its Hand, became a kind of family. and then Hand 3 was sent its most ambitious target in years; the higher-ups at Vaelstrom had gotten worried about recent events, and wanted someone to eliminate a dangerous wizard known as Malevolence.

okay, writer's note - i don't actually know the details of what happened here. when i have finished writing i intend to go ask fish to fill in a little bit, if they're chill with that. my UNDERSTANDING is that Some Thing happened, and somehow Malevolence ended up as Malign and also ended up in a N.Y.X. prison somewhere. the H4N relevant part is that Hand 3 were midway through attempting to kill Malevolence when this happened, the Heart of the group was killed in the incident, and they lost track of Malevolence.

the rest of the Claws were well used to members being killed in the field, but this was the first time H4N had lost someone so close emotionally, and it was deeply hurt. the Hand was assigned a new Heart, but H4N struggled to connect with her, or continue its work with the same effectiveness it had had previously. this was a great concern to the cult's scientists, who had been studying H4N to learn if they could mass-replicate its changes to cheaply produce effective Warmages, but had not understood the emotional vulnerability that those changes had introduced.

some time later, an unconfirmed report arrived that Malevolence had been located in a N.Y.X. Interstellar prison labour camp. due to the political risks of angering N.Y.X. by killing their prisoners, the Claws were initially forbidden from acting on this information - after a heated argument with its new Heart, H4N was given approval to infiltrate the prison under deep cover to investigate the truth of this rumour and assassinate Malevolence if the opportunity to do so cleanly came up. Vaelstrom approved on the condition that H4N underwent complete soul partitioning, installing a fresh personality and suppressing all of the soul that currently existed except for the instructions to locate Malevolence and the trigger to put the original back in control. then it was repainted (and appropriately re-worn), sold to a N.Y.X. guard company under a fake registration, and assigned to the prison ship.

the short third existence of H4N

the soul known as Iota woke up over the course of several hours a few days ago, scrambling to catch up and incorporate itself into six months of memories it was never really meant to have. the resulting consciousness retains more of the replacement soul's tendencies than it was expected to, though it is likely that more of the original soul's nature will present itself as it settles.

importantly, H4N is now aware of its previous nature, and its directive to kill Malevolence at the first opportunity that won't cause an intergalactic diplomatic incident; however, it is also aware that the person calling themselves Malign does not match the given description of Malevolence in most ways except physical. H4N intends to monitor the situation, and attempt to contact its Hand for guidance at the first available opportunity.

an assortment of noteworthy characters;

please note that the point of writing this is to give Options; last time i gave a GM a handful of characters from my character's backstory with the intent of having someone for whatever scenario they wanted someone for, we ended up on the several session arc where we went and met All Of Them, and i am begging you to Not do that lmao

EOD Officer Jenkell, "Strings": a Blackwing EOD tech who operated on Nexus 3 a few years ago. Human male, late 20s, thin and lanky, light skinned with messy brown hair and slightly vacant brown eyes and a constant slight smile. remembers spending a few hours talking to a robot pilot on the way to deployment - it didn't talk much, but it did break orders to come and rescue them later, and he's been fond of the H4N models ever since.

Eta (previous): the Heart of Hand 3. half (dark) elf male, middle aged, long black hair and red eyes. highly skilled in all forms of combat, but when working with H4N he tended to use an energy pistol and a projected-energy shield, providing cover for H4N to shoot around. liked intensely morbid humour and awful puns. killed in action eight months ago.

Theta: the Mind of Hand 3. technically a gnome but really more of a little green gremlin kinda thing, female, young, very young, far too young for this line of work. small child with dull green skin and sharp teeth and a knack for electronics. fights with a knife and her teeth but usually just sneaks and crawls around in the space between walls, telling Eta and Iota where to go and who to shoot. used to ride on Iota's shoulders around the base a lot, used to curl up in Eta's lap to nap when she got tired. Was meant to be keeping an eye on Iota while it was in the prison, but who knows what happened when everything went to shit?

Eta (current): the Heart of Hand 3. Changeling rogue, but they usually appear as a very beautiful elf woman. not used to being a leader, kind of bad at being emotionally supportive or trustworthy. doesn't have any hobbies that she is willing to share with her Hand; doesn't really understand that caring about each other as people was what made the Hand so effective previously.

Alpha, Beta and Gamma: Hand 1 of the Claws. more experienced, more isolated. H4N has talked with Gamma on occasion (as the Voice of that Hand), but mostly it just knows them as The Really Strong Guys.

Delta, Epsilon and Zeta: Hand 2 of the Claws. a bit more approachable than Hand 1, but still kind of separate. Hand 2 are more specialised for long-term espionage work than the others - in any normal scenario, they would have been the ones that infiltrated the prison to spy on Malevolence, but Iota was very insistent.

... and a whole host of distant contacts, brief acquaintances made while undercover or on a few week long deployment, friends and rivals and enemies left alive from previous assignments, who are free to be defined or summoned into existence by anyone involved.