*cackles*

*cackles*

Finally

Heehee hoohoo Theriandroid design :)

TOP SECRET - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

Ravus Industries product- Unique Frame AEBER model, serial no. XXXX1069

Status: Decommissioned. Missing, assumed deactivated or scrapped. [OUTDATED - SEE ADDENDUM FOR FURTHER DETAILS]

Model is pictured here with artificial skin removed and hair pulled back to examine eye socket after last authorized maintainence. Please note that artificial skin affixed to the neck upwards is not removable to protect sensitive sensory and motor components.

The AEBER model was constructed in secret to conduct information and asset retrieval on behalf of Ravus Industries. Purposes they have been successfully utilized for include: stealth, espionage, theft, assassination, and information gathering. The android was given highly advanced artificial intelligence with a focus on visual cognition and quick decision making in order to facilitate this purpose. Identity formation is a known result of AI tuned past a certain threshold, and as a result the unit self-identifies as 'Therion', and should be referred to with 'they/them' and 'he/him' pronouns.

Physical features include a unique lithe build and highly maneuverable joints as well as extra artificial muscle and ligaments in order to provide maximum flexibility, agility, and speed. Fingertips, palms, and the soles of the feet are padded with specially textured carbon fiber and fitted with electromagnets that the AEBER model can activate at various intensities. This is to ensure optimal grip and balance at all times. All extremities are also fitted with individual adjustable counterbalances for this purpose.

Unit was decommissioned April 301X due to disciplinary issues and obsolescence.

ADDENDUM

Addendum 1: AEBER unit, aka 'Therion', has refused a programmed assignment. The unit's ability to refuse tasks is a new development and will need further study.

Addendum 2: After reconditioning, unit is no longer refusing tasks. Unit expresses great distress when given assignments involving assassination. Due to reasonable conflicts with ethics programming, concerns can safely be ignored.

Addendum 3: Unit is refusing orders once more, reconditioning unsuccessful. Due to development of newer AEBER model ('Gareth') and conclusions of Ravus Industries Artificial Intelligence Ethics Board, 'Therion' is scheduled to be decommissioned and placed in long-term storage.

Addendum 4: AEBER unit 'Therion' has been lost after a break-in of the Ravus Industries long-term storage facility, along with several other non-intelligent assets. Unit has deactivated or damaged their internal GPS and cannot be located by satellite. Proprietary technology and the top-secret nature of this unit dictate that location and re-acquisition are a priority.

Addendum 5: Unit has been located in the Cliftlands area after checking in to a Ravus Industries authorized engineering location for repairs. Unit seems to have taken heavy cosmetic damage and lost one visual sensory component. Diagnostics indicate that they are otherwise healthy.

Addendum 6: Search of the Cliftlands has turned up no trace of 'Therion', and unit has not been seen or recorded in any locations for the past six months. Human testimony has also turned up no leads, with no sightings within the same 6-month time frame. Unit is currently listed as missing, assumed deactivated or scrapped as of August 302X.

Addendum 7: Unit has been sighted in the Riverlands as of March 303X, six years after being listed as missing. Retrieval is once again considered a priority for this unit after the loss of 'Gareth'.

atsv dialogue is so queer coded it's not even funny like. it's about being spoken about like a villain about people who don't know and it's about being viewed as a liar when staying quiet is about keeping yourself safe and it's about "i thought about telling you but you see why i didn't want to tell you-" "how long have you been lying to me?". it's about "how much longer can i keep lying about who i really am?". it's about the terrified thought of "we love you and accept you even though you have lied to us for years!" "...maybe [they'd accept me] in another universe". it's about "maybe if i told them-" "don't. trust me on that". it's about "how many people can you really talk to about this stuff?" when you're with someone who's like you and gets it. it's about "you and me... we're the same". it's about "they can only know half of who i am, so i'm completely on my own". it's about "and i know you know i've been lying to you, it's because i thought if you knew you wouldn't love me the same". do you get it do you understand

sitting here rotating ideas like rotisserie chickens 

Consider: Farmer Therion / Werewolf Alfyn au

“why is Alfyn always a werewolf” I liek doggeh

ANYWAY it’s basically the narrative I got into when I make Therion to be my player character in Stardew. -w- more rambling under the cut

SO Therion comes upon an abandoned farm- the weather is bad and getting worse. He arrived in town on a motorbike that has broken down (he doesn’t just leave the next day because it’s not a simple repair job and getting everything he needs might take a while and money he doesn’t really have)

The farmhouse is small, but functional and decent enough shelter. He uses it as his home base while he figures out just what he’s going to do. The farmland is overgrown, but he does find orchard trees with some in-season fruits. He’s also able to find some old tools, and if he really wanted to he could start fixing things up. He also goes into town to gather information, and learns that the farm he’s squatting on has been abandoned for several years now- nobody knows what happened to the last farmer. He was just gone one day, no goodbyes- no body- the general consensus is that he died (some people say the farm is haunted and that they’ve seen signs of life at the farmhouse at times- but never signs of any people actually there)

Frankly it makes Therion want to stick around less, but he still needs to fix his bike. He’s able to sell and trade fruit to get essentials to living and start working towards getting what he needs for bike repairs. 

He starts working the farm, clearing paths around the orchard and gathering materials etc. typical farm sim protagonist stuff. He notices that there’s a dog on the property- something that none of the townspeople had mentioned on any of his trips into town. It keeps its distance and runs off if Therion turns his attention to it. One day during a bad storm he finds the dog curled up on his porch, and feeling bad for it he lets it inside and shares his food. The dog warms up to him quickly after that.

Eventually Therion either overworks himself, or has an accident, on the farm and passes out. When he comes to he’s at home in bed, any wounds tended to and water/food prepared for him. (Either he meets Alfyn at this point, or it’s just the dog in the room with him. Spoilers: Alfyn is the dog and former farmer.)

Eventually Alfyn gets busted- and Therion learns that years ago he got attacked by a werewolf and cursed. (what happened to the other werewolf? I guess Alfyn eventually succeeded in chasing it off for good?? idk) Unable to control the transformations, and worried he might harm the other villagers, he ran away into the wilds. By the time he realized he wasn’t a danger just because he was a werewolf, it had been so long he didn’t know how to face his old community again, so he didn’t. Alfyn has been VERY lonely and depressed in this au.

@gemmielf had the idea that Cyrus could be the wizard in this scenario, and I’m thinking he’s the first one they go to concerning how to start. Fixing. The whole mess Alfyn has found himself in. At this point Therion has also (begrudgingly) become part of the community himself. 

that’s about all I’ve got/remember for the time being -w- it’s an Alfion ship au so they wind up together eventually.

revisiting pokemon GO has me revisiting Let’s Go Eevee and I don’t have all 8 badges yet but I DO have a max IV level 100 Nidoking named Butternut so I think I’m ready to sweep the rest of the game owo;

Aaaaah I have so many questions for the Android Therion AU. Ravus Industries has def used Therion for Less Than Legal activities and I wonder how much of their treatment of him skirts on the rights of an android as well (honestly in a capitalist hellscape I'm surprised they have any at all as much as there's a sense of 'we made you we own you forever unless you can afford to buy yourself outright')

That aside, I am *very worried* for Alfyn's safety as Ravus Industries tries to get Therion back. Like... they don't have issues killing if they use androids for assassinations. owo;;

Well, even in a capitalist hellscape there's civil rights lawyers. How far the rights of artificial lives go is...up in the air, at this point. Can they vote? Can they own property? Are they considered citizens? Do anti-discrimination and labor laws apply to them? Unclear, and probably varies between jurisdictions. Either way, androids have at least been around long enough at this point that they're not like, a chattel slave class outright. Also not super common, maybe one out of every 50 or 100 people is an android, but enough that it's a sizeable population, enough that they cannot be considered property outside of specific circumstances, and Therion happens to fall under that legal category.

Therion (and by extension Gareth) are officially and legally, despite having just as much going on upstairs as any human being, property of Ravus Industries. The paperwork was all filed beforehand, he's made with a specific purpose in mind and 'would pose a danger to others' if not under the control of the company, or they claim that he has no true intelligence and is therefore not sentient enough to qualify as a citizen, or something. I'm not gonna pretend I know enough about civil rights law to make up what those exceptions are, but just know that Ravus either fudged most of em or paid off some politicians to let them keep the whole thing hush-hush or both.

There's probably a good few sympathetic scientists and engineers who consider him fully human but unable to really do anything about his situation without jeopardizing their own. There's clearly others, like whoever wrote his file, who look at Therion and only see a tool. One that's helped Ravus Industries take down competitors and acquire their tech and research illicitly, but in this case one of the benefits of Therion being private property is that responsibility lies on the company, not him. Legally speaking, at least. I'm sure some of the less-sympathetic caretakers threaten to reprogram or scrap or replace his parts every time there's a mistake, because he's not a person, he can't learn, he's a machine who has defective parts.

At any rate, uh...Alfyn is definitely in trouble, lol. Like luckily he's still a country boy who can handle himself (Still has swarthy carpenter genes and experience with an axe, probably has a shotgun or whatever the 31st century equivalent would be), and magic is probably still a thing in the 'sufficiently advanced science' way (still thinking about how osvald just does math so hard it makes fire. baller), but ultimately the one thing that's keeping him safest is the fact that all of Therion's remote activation and tracking parts were disabled or removed after his initial escape. That's it. Ravus wants to turn Therion into a Homing Murderbot so bad so they can just retrieve him very easy so they can make him. idk. steal whatever the Wyndhams are doing or murder union organizers or something. The Fantasy Pinkertons are absolutely on his ass.

Luckily Alf at least has his trusty repair van and mobile engineering kits, as well as his usual irresistible charm that nets them allies wherever they go. Ravus Industries is a well-known company that employs a lot of people, but, uh. So are Nestle and Apple, if you catch my drift here. And it's not like they're alone, either! Tressa knows enough about how businesses and boards of investors work to predict what Ravus is gonna try, Olberic and Cyrus together have enough practical and theoretical knowledge of tactics to make for very effective planners, H'aanit knows how to live off the grid and hide your tracks and is the only member of the party who can wield a shotgun with more precision than Alfyn. Ophilia and Prim are also there, idk what they do, Prim is better with diplomacy and has less qualms with muder than Therion and Ophilia is probably very good at finding them allies or places to lay low (what are you going to do, say no to a bishop???).

I have MANY thoughts. some of them related (Cordelia may or may not be a C-suite at Ravus and is very conflicted on what to do about the situation bc she thinks the robot is hot and should go free but knows the practical use he has to the company. either way therion doesnt like her) some of them not (prim has her own goals and possible beef with Ravus but keeps getting distracted by h'aanit who is a lethally hot butch lesbian) but. im having a lot of fun thinking about the whole thing. heehee hoohoo funny sci-fi au