Lynn Idris and R

Player Name: Steam
Personal LJ: steamrollerssolveall.dreamwidth.org
AIM Contact: wyverncakes
Character Name: Lynn Idris (and R)
Source Canon: Hazardous Pursuits
Community Tag: lynn idris, r

Background: It's no big shocker that Second Impact seriously fucked up the world, and that for everything that endured afterwards, a lot of other things were also lost, especially in the various fields of science. Unsurprisingly, when the gigantic meteor coming for Earth was detected and HALO was being prepared to deal with it, certain governing bodies took steps privately to deal with it or at least the potential fallout that the impact would've caused.

One such example was Britannia's Tritech Plan, meant to make use of three extremely innovative and ingenious technologies that were being devoloped independently. Together, they would presumably helped the empire weather Second Impact even if HALO had failed in its intended duty.

The first of the technologies in the plan was the Yasakani Veil, a very powerful, freeform barrier system. The project behind the Veil, being lead by a refugee from Japan named Satoru Takeda, was the first that was brought into the fold. Takeda's work was already quite revolutionary and also had applications in atom smashing (using microscopic force fields to split atoms), and his work only became more groundbreaking once he was granted an unimaginably large budget thanks to the Empire.

The second of the technologies was a new, miracle material which had been called the "ressurection of alchemy", an artificial substance known as Universal Alloy. The Alloy made use of String Theory -the idea that on the most fundamental level of existence all matter is identical- to allow it to be completely customizable. In the hands of a smart enough molecular physicist with the right resources and enough Universal Alloy, in theory anything could be produced. Though costly to make, it had amazing potential to serve as "Unobtanium", serve as the missing link in any number of scientific breakthroughs held back only because they required substances that didn't exist.

Shockingly, the material had been created by the somewhat eccentric Dr. Hans Wagner not for the sake of helping his fellow scientists, but for the purposes of reviving his dead wife. Dr. Wagner's true calling was in fact programming AIs, and in the wake of the death of his beloved Greta, he attempte time and time again to replicate her thought patterns only to fail because of the limits of technology. In a fit of despair he nevertheless was able to stumble upon the secrets of Universal Alloy, using them to create an artificial brain as advanced as a human's. With her mind taken care of, Universal Alloy was also used to create a nearly perfect recreation of her body. It was following these miraculous breakthroughs that Britannian official stepped in, silencing any rumors spreading about Wagner's breakthroughs, and spiriting him and Greta off to a lab so he could continue producing the miracle metal for them.

The last of the three technologies was the boldest of the lot, meant to make use of wormholes for rapid transit of goods and people. Dubbed the "Linker System", the program also had the largest number of researchers working on it; over a hundred. It wasn't long before work began on the Linker System that all of them went missing as well, taken by Britannian officials to a private lab where they could finish the project outside of prying eyes. The lab also had wings for the Yasakani Veil and Universal Alloy projects as well.

These three technologies were meant to be Britannia's ace in the hole. The Yasakani Veil could safeguard its cities and means of production. Universal Alloy would allow it to create broad, amazing new tools and allow it to equip its soldiers with weaponry beyond that of the Federation or other governments. The Linker System would grant those armies rapid transit, make supply lines infinitely short, and civilian use would help better unite the Empire as well. It was a perfect plan, with the results of all three projects supporting each other.

The leader of the team in charge of the Linker System was Lynn Idris, a genius Theoretical Physicist engaged to James Volschoft, the son of the famous Britannian general George Volshoft. In fact, it was through Lynn's relationship with James that Britania's government found out about the Linker System in the first place. Lynn was pretty much a scientific Wunderkind and an altruist through and through, but also somewhat naive and prone to not thinking things entirely through.

This absentmindness eventually bit the project in the ass when Lynn ended up forgetting about all of the information she'd blogged about the Linker System during its pre-sponsored development. Part of the Tritech Plan's strength was the fact that it would be kept secret from the other factions in the world... and when a random techie discovered much of the theory and science behind the Linker System was fully detailed online for ANYONE to see, well, the project ended up in some very hot water. It was only James's intervention that kept the Linker System project afloat, pointing out all the breakthroughs that Lynn and her team had made after they began working under the Empire's supervision. According to James, anyone trying to use Lynn's notes to make a competing system would be years behind Britannia because they didn't have Lynn as well. She was too valuable to let go and the System could still be of use.

The storm eventually passed, with the Linker System development continuing as it had. All the notes Lynn had written online were purged, and Britannia's officials worked on eliminating any copies of the information as well. Still though, the incident shook Lynn very badly and she resolved to not endanger the project any more. She redoubled her efforts and began to be a bit of a hardass, but the System's development was going well.

Unfortunately, as the impact date loomed closer and closer, a startling bit of information was brought to Lynn. Though almost every simulation indicated that the wormhole network would be perfectly stable, one rookie scientist on the program brought her test results showing quite the opposite; an expansive network would collapse in on itself and release tremendous amounts of destructive energy. What was more, organic matter was killed in the transit sequence. After coming so far, Lynn foolishly refused to believe in the possibility the entire Linker System had such a fundamental flaw. She corrected her associate, pointing to what she thought were mistakes in his mathematical equations, and reassured him that everything was fine. Failure so far along in the project was not an option for Lynn.

Fortunately, things went quite smoothly after that, and Lynn was releived when no further problems came up regarding the Linker System. Even small-scale tests turned out great and indicated that organic matter *could* travel safely through the wormholes, and she was glad that she'd stayed her course on the research. But with Second Impact looming, there still needed to be the matter of a large-scale test for the project to prove that the Empire would be ready in the event HALO failed.

The day of the large-scale test was exciting for Lynn, to say the least. She'd planned to hand off her duties to her associates and settle down with James after the exhibition, even starting a family. The actual exhibition was remarkably simple as well; a large wormhole would be opened in the lab, in which a human being would pilot one of Britannia's KMFs through to reach the other side; a suburb in London. The transit would take only a matter of seconds, and its success would finally prove that the rookie's mistakes had just been that: mistakes. The entire staff was on-hand to ensure the System functioned properly... but that just made the actual incident's body count all the higher.

The staff had never tested a wormhole of the sheer size and length that the exhibition called for; and the wormhole's "walls" could not maintain themselves. Seconds after the wormhole opened the tunnel "collapsed" as it were, releasing a tremendous amount of destructive energy on both ends of the wormhole. Much of the staff was killed in the resulting blast as they struggled and failed to stabilize the system, for the civilians on the other end it was even worse with the death toll in the thousands. And through it all Lynn could only watch as her own hard work to see the program succeed came crashing down on her instantly. The entire lab was entirely devestated and Lynn only escaped death by James's timely rescue; shielding her own body from an array of jagged shards of scrap with his own body. To see the man she loved mortally wounded only twisted the knife further for Lynn, and as he died she sobbingly confessed everything. How she had known but went ahead with the Linker System anyways, but mistakenly believing it to just have been an error. All James could do was smile weakly and spend his last moments telling her everything would be alright and nothing was her fault. Naturally, the few survivors of the incident heard all of this and didn't agree with James's sentiments. In the wake of all the destruction and death, Lynn was forced to flee for her life, her co-workers and the few surviving Britannian officials present now out for her blood.

News spread fast, and Lynn was declared a wanted criminal who knowingly was responsible for the deaths of everyone that day. She was even given the title "Icarus Bomber", someone who arrogantly strove for new heights only to crash and burn... taking the lives of innocents with her. To make matters worse, it hadn't just been the Linker System lab that had been the site of a massacre. In the wake of the Bombing it was discovered that everyone in the Universal Alloy lab had also been killed, torn apart by someone or something. With Dr. Wagner's death and the destruction of the labs, development of Universal Alloy was deemed impossible. The Yasakani Veil lab's staff was also killed, although Dr. Takeda and the senior members of his staff were missing... along with all of the information and prototypes of the Veil.

With development of Universal Alloy and the Yasakani Veil killed, along with the revelation that the Linker System could not operate on the scale it was needed to, the Tritech Plan fell apart, dooming Britannia to suffer from Second Impact just like everyone else. Officially, the Empire declared that the plan's failure rested solely with Lynn, using her as a scapegoat since she was already being demonized as the Icarus Bomber. However, in the wake of Second Impact it proved impossible to find Lynn. Some even thought she'd been killed during Second Impact... and truth be told Lynn had sorta been hoping that would have been the case. Overcome by despair and guilt, the desire to die an abrupt, meaningless death grew inside of her. Nothing that would've been considered an act of atonement; she considered herself too horrible to be allowed atonement. This also ruled out suicide for her.

Nevertheless, as much as she wished for death, death itself refused to claim her. So instead Lynn found work as a mechanic in various areas, adopting the alias "Maya Landale", while hoping that eventually she would be just another faceless casualty killed at the hands of bandits, Festum, Invaders, or whatever. In spite of her death wish, she never once found herself in immediate danger of being killed.

Years later, after the White Chalice began its wanderings, Lynn managed to find herself aboard it. As far as she was concerned, this was the perfect place for her to die. A ship like the Chalice with so many enemies was bound to get destroyed sooner or later, no doubt with all hands lost. And since then, she stayed, half hoping that death was just a heartbeat away whenever the ship came under fire and yet never directly facing danger. But that was going to change very, very soon.

NOTE: (Due to the length of Lynn's backstory alone, I've linked the backstory for R and other important background stuff here.)

Personality: It might be wise to split up Lynn's personality between before the first mission for the canon and afterwards, considering how important a single event in it impacts her. R'll be covered afterwards.

At any rate, following the grand failure of the Linker System, Lynn has spent the past seventeenyears bearing a tremendous guilt complex and death wish. Having all but given up ont he ideals of altruism, there was really nothing Lynn wanted more than to die in some abrupt, twisted quirk of fate. Nothing dignified, and nothing that would make anyone stop thinking less of her afterwards. For causing the death of so many people, as well as James, she felt she was worthless and it was only a matter of time before karma caught up with her so there was no point in bettering herself. She was perfectly content to just work on the Chalice as a mechanic and wait until she was killed in one attack or another, all while further guilt-tripping herself whenever she made a mistake whatever the reason. Mistakes were just further proof of her worthlessness, but getting something right was no reason to celebrate since it was expected of her. She had no intention of reaching out to anyone either; as far as Lynn was concerned it'd be a waste of anyone's time to get to know her since they could very easily use that time to get in touch with better, more interesting people who hadn't killed hundreds of people.

However, this all changes when the prospect of death finally becomes very, very real to her. With a gun shoved in her face, Lynn's first instictive thought is in spite of everything, she *doesn't* want to die.  Lynn was simply too overcome with grief to know what to do about her problems, and defaulted to "I should die" because she couldn't think up anything better.  But once she's finally thrust into a life-threatening situation, Lynn finds her resolve to live and continue to do good.  And it's a feeling that doesn't fade away afterwards. Lynn is, in her heart of hearts, an altruist and someone who is happiest when she's helping other people. And it's through genuinely investing herself in trying to help people as a pilot and mechanic, rather than just using it to kill time before fate kills her in some inglorious fashion that Lynn truly picks herself back up once more. From that point on, Lynn will start to take a lot more pride in her work as a mechanic. Piloting will take a while longer for her to warm up to, unless there are situations where she saves a lot of lives while fighting. It's not an issue of self-worth though at that point; it's simply what she's happiest with doing.

Lynn's fairly soft-spoken, more prone to just walking away than ever raising her voice in the event of an arguement. She is honestly more likely to try to agree with someone if her opinions on a subject are even remotely similar. One thing she will absolutely not tolerate, however, is people angsting about how bad things are for them when they're nowhere near as bad as the crap that Lynn's put herself through. Early on, all it's going to amount to is polite disagreement but as the canon goes on and Lynn grows some metaphorical balls, it'll eventually hit the point that she'll be tremendously offended by this and she may even slap anyone who claims that. If you didn't kill your fiancee, a lot of your coworkers, and untold amounts of innocents, you don't have any right to say your life is as bad as Lynn's. Still, after her newfound resolve to continue living, Lynn is still going to feel like utter shit regarding all of that. She'll be doing what she can to move on, but it's always going to be there, to the point Lynn even refuses to get romantically involved with anyone.

One thing to note is seeing any kind of teleportation technology in action that DOESN'T directly result in the deaths of hundreds of innocent people (i.e. most/all of them) is going to make her feel really crappy and bring down her mood no matter how she was feeling previously. It's gonna be especially pronounced if it's technology that she's able to easily understand and works on the kinds of science she's familiar with; meaning that if she had pursued some other kind of teleport technology she might not have gotten something so crappy as the Linker System. For that matter, using the Linker System itself makes her feel very crappy at first, to say nothing of when she recreates the same phenominae that earned her the title "Icarus Bomber".

Ultimately, Lynn is someone who wants to be happy though, in spite of everything she feels and everything she's done. After her epiphany she'll do what she can to be happy and stay optimistic, even being friendly and bother socializing. If someone comes to her needing advice on some power system or design she'll be more than eager to offer her thoughts on the subject, and when trying to comfort other people she'll try to let them know that even after a big fuckup, life still goes on.

Along with Lynn, there's also R, the Retroactive Existence that helps pilot REVIVAL. R's a very odd case of being a self-aware AI that rejects its "humanity" while at the same time not being a total dick. R simply views humans as a very special and gifted race, but refuses to consider itself one or that humanity is the end-all-be-all of existences. To R, just because it has human-level intelligence doesn't mean it has to BE a human and R in fact is greatly interested in trying to form its own sense of identity devoid of having a physical form or even a gender or any of that other stuff that Dr. Wagner forced on it. In this way, R is extremely stubborn. It refuses to give any kind of audible "voice" for itself since it would be impossible to have one without giving it a male or female inflection. R thus will only communicate via text screens, which is naturally going to be a bit of an inconvenience. R's still going to be a stubborn bastard about it even if people call it out.

R also does what it can to use reason to guide its actions. Note, this does not mean cold, unfeeling logic. Rather it's more the concept that morality is formed through logic and reason. R is just as staunch a supporter of protecting the innocent and doing good in this world as most of the rest of the Chalice's crew, and it actually enjoys philosophy quite a bit. R also uses logical inductions to determine common ground in the behavior of humans and other kinds of animals, finding common ground in how they interact with each other and incorporating those kinds of behavior into itself as well. As such, it's not uncommon to find R in REVIVAL or occupying something with a camera and just watching crowds of people interact with each other for hours on end.

There's one big thing where R contrasts with Lynn though: dealing with guilt and one's own mistakes. As a very logical and reason-oriented AI, R does a good job handling bad shit happening on account of it and won't really blame itself excessively for screwups so long as it can reasonably rationalize everything that happened. R's also never had to really deal with something completely being its own fault, however, and as such when that happens (and it will), R is going to take it really, REALLY badly. Like super wangsting.

In terms of directly interacting with another person, R's pretty much capable of anything a normal person would be able to. Lying, cracking jokes, etc. R can pass Turing Tests just fine and is moderately sociable, though it isn't into anything like gossip. It also will refrain from asking very blunt prying questions unless there is an absolute need for it as well. Eventually R'll even find a way to help convey emotion in what it writes, by using colored text to indicate if it's angry, sad, amused, or pretty much anything else.

Capabilities and Resources: Lynn is about as capable a pilot as any ordinary person who's thirty nine years old and has never touched a giant robot. As in, she's absolute crap at it early on and has to let R do most of the work for her. She also isn't that great of a mechanic, being pretty much confined to "specialty" stuff like getting power sources working. Think of her more an engineer than straight greasemonkey at this part. That said, once you start to get into more Super-y stuff, she's amazing with getting machines in working order, able to come up with work-arounds for defects if she can't solve them outright. I won't say she's the only reason the Chalice has managed to get machines repaired so quickly, but with special ones like Shin Getter she's probably helped out more than the average mechanic.

Lynn also knows the ins and outs of the Linker System by heart, including the exact breaking point where a wormhole will collapse on itself for being too large. Early on in her canon, the only thing Lynn'll really be needed for in the cockpit is operating the System for R. Naturally as the story goes on she becomes much more capable a pilot, enough so that during a specific event that renders R incapacitated she can hold her own.

On the other side of things there's R, a Retroactive Existence AI. R has no body of its own, but it's often hooked up to REVIVAL and it can operate the machine as if it were its original body.  This makes REVIVAL become extremely dexterous, enabling it to perform actions that would otherwise be impossible for it.

If it's not in REVIVAL, R is probably inside of a laptop that Lynn furnished for it complete with a camera. If R is hooked up to a network, it can interface with it and even hack it if given enough time. However, R's hacking powers are only about as good as a human's would be in the same situation; firewalls of a decent caliber are going to stop R cold.

However, what R lacks in hacking capacity, it makes up for with iron-clad defense. Being a perfect recreation of a human-level intelligence, R's own consciousness is complex, convoluted, and layered enough that hacking it is almost impossible. To put it in perspective, hacking R is like trying to hack a human brain. Not even a human brain with cybernetic implants. It would be plugging a computer cable into someone's head somewhere and trying to literally hack it. It could theoretically be done and a digital version of, say, a Festum mindrape would still be effective against R, but it takes more than a run-of-the-mill supervirus or even an AI with powerful hacking capabilities to mess R up.

Robot Name: REVIVAL (Retroactive Existence-equipped VeHA Incorporating a Versatile Arsenal through the Linker System)
Robot Description: http://gelbooru.com/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=132881

In a phrase, REVIVAL is the bastard child of Zeorymer and a Scopedog. A mix of a very simple frame with exotic dimension-warping systems, along with a combination of mundane and zany weaponry to boot.

REVIVAL's actual body is that of a VeHA (Vehicle for Hazardous Activity), a civilian-use robot that was used to some degree before Second Impact primarily in dangerous environments. Their use in labs was indespensible since they provided fairly decent protection from environmental dangers like radiation for big experiments, and they could also be customized for combat as a cheap stopgap for security. The VeHA that would eventually become REVIVAL was one such robot, used at the labs for the Linker System project.

Preserved in the wake of Second Impact, it would eventually be used by Lynn and R as their machine, given the backcronym "REVIVAL" to reflect Lynn's newfound resolve to keep on living, and also hooked up with the only remaining Linker System node. The machine stands at about six meters in height and is somewhat sturdy for a machine of its size, though still pretty fragile compared to other, larger mechs. Its basic armament amounts to a handgun and a combat knife, and these are the only weapons it carries on its actual frame. It also is equipped with two powerful backpack thrusters to allow for flight.

REVIVAL's other weapons are ones that were never actually meant for it, but rather have been appropriated from  the villainous group Exvoritam Filios (see notes in Cora's account).  Their plan had been to use the Linker System to warp-in weaponry for their own use, and so several members of their group arranged for armories to be stored in certain, hidden-away areas on Earth.  In the wake of the first mission, however, the members of that group involved with the plan are killed off, though only after the first armory is hidden away somewhere in North America, which nobody left in the faction knows the location of

Since the weapons were meant to be used by Knightmare Frames, they're a little small for REVIVAL but the machine can still use them just fine, and considering that Lynn's using an entire armory's worth of weapons it's unlikely she's gonna run out of munitions any time soon.

At first, Lynn can summon these weapons from the armory:
- "Ascalon" : a large, anti-armor rifle that fires collapsible rounds. When the rounds strike a sufficiently tough target, they contract and become smaller and thus denser, giving it potential penetration power.  More commonly referred to as the "Penetrator Rifle".
- "Durandal": a large, mortar-like weapon that houses a number of micro-missiles with semi-homing capability.  In addition, the weapon is equipped with a sharp bayonet which can actually be fired out like a hookshot to ensnare enemies.
- "Fragarach": A specially-crafted sword with shaped explosive charges built right into it. The blade itself is beam-resistant and is remarkably sharp, and the weapon also has fairly good penetrating power. The explosives can be detonated mid-swing to put more force behind the strikes or damage the enemy pre-emptively, but the real purpose is to have the blade stab into the enemy and then have the charges detonate immediately afterwards to wreck the innards of the machine. Since the charges are shaped they don't harm the blade at all, and are positioned in such a way that losing them doesn't sacrifice any sharp edges
- Grenades: hand-thrown grenades that actually have varying uses. There's a wide array of grenades in the arsenal for Lynn to use, consisting of fragmentation, incendiary, flash, freezing, acidic, and adhesive grenades.

Land: A
Air: A
Sea: A (Note: the frame itself handles very well in water, but most of its weapons are crap underwater though)
Space: A

Upgrades:

Later on in the story, Lynn is able to develop a probe to send through a womrhole to the armory so she can know about other weapons available for her to use. This is where the more exotic weaponry comes into play, including "repulsion" grenades and a shock cannon that's powered by the alien material E-115.

Additionally, in the penultimate Hazardous Pursuits event, Lynn weaponizes the dimensional blowback from improperly making wormholes with the Linker System. REVIVAL uses two generators built inside of the machine's hands to create wormholes just past its outstretched hands and can then release tremendous blasts of destructive energy. While the overall size of the blasts depends on how large the wormhole is, the potential for destruction with them is immense. If an object were to be caught in the "blowback" entirely, given sufficient time, the object would be completely and utterly destroyed all the way down to the most fundamental level. Even its Strings would be eradicated. It's with this last weapon that REVIVAL transitions into Glass Cannon territory.

Job: mechanic, pilot, infamous and hated theoretical physicist, "Icarus Bomber", fugitive

Suggested Event List: (The event list should consist of important combat actions that would make good material for missions, or special events and logs that require mod or NPC intervention. Feel free to label an event as a Mission or a Log. At this point, canons should not have more than 20 events total.)

Sample Post: http://testrun-box.dreamwidth.org/70531.html