#Rogues and Rampancy | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

In Q3 of 2020, 31% of US users access the Tumblr app daily.

#Rogues and Rampancy

funkygaypeopleinmyphone · 6 months

Text

Nothing gets me into a fiery rage more than thinking about 343 has handled the Halo series after Bungie left it off on such a high note. 1, 2 and 3 were good, ODST and Reach were godlike, and they expanded on the universe quite a few times with books and comics and all that. And then 343 came in and just completely gumbled most of it up. CEA was cool, but basically just kitbashed Reach and upscaled Halo 3 assets together and lost some of the original touch the game had back in 2001.

Halo 4 was, ok? The best part was Cortana's story, going into more depth about rampancy and how it affects AI, especially one that we've known and loved for over a decade at that point. The Forerunners were fucking stupid personally, it's hinted to and LITERALLY SAID IN HALO 3, that humans are forerunners, just after the shitshow that was all the rings firing off. 343 Guilty Spark literally says that Chief is a forerunner, and then they just whipped it around and said "well actually he's a reclaimer because blablabla" ok whatever, they do flesh it out more in expanded works and explain it in Halo 4 so atleast theres that. Del Rio is an asshole to the savior of humanity for no reason. The sudden art style change that makes no sense is stupid, like you could've delayed the change until the Infinity rolled around. The Diadact is just space voldemort turning humanity into NFTs after being on r/nofap for 100,000 years, who then dies pretty unceremoniously to a shit ass grenade in a quick time event.

Halo 5 is.... fucking just Halo 5. The Cortaba story is so bad, why did you bring her back as an antagonist? Why didn't you stick to the marketing that was actually a really cool idea about Chief going rogue and hunting the truth. Where are the Marines? Why do I have to fight the Warden Eternal like 20 times? Better balancing than 4 i guess, but god the plot is just all over the place. And that fight scene with Chief, Chief was abducted as a child and forced into the spartan program and trained to be a cold brutal killer of the UNSC's foes. Without Mjolnir armor he straight up merked 2 ODSTs in hand-to-hand combat. This 7-foot-augmented-out-the-ass man had an equal match in a mass produced Spartan 4? Sure Locke is ONI so he's got some spice to him and he's still a Spartan wearing similar armor to Chief, but come on, you can't tell me a guy who saves humanity for breakfast is on a similar level to Halo Nightfall guy.

Infinite is strange. They basically drop Halo 5's characters for the most part, give Chief new (remastered Mk.6) armor, bring back older models of guns and stuff with a new coat of paint (Reach AR, Battle Rifle, now the DMR) and blow up Cortana and the Infinity within the first like, 30 minutes of the game. Ooooo the Banished except wait after Atriox's not-death they're pretty incompetent and are gettinf roflstomped by Chief and are really only good at killing UNSC off screen. The open world shit was ok, but for Halo i dont think its entirely the best idea to go for whatever Far Cry ass shit they pulled. Bringing back the old designs was really cool and much better than the sterile, clean, sharp edges of 4 and 5. Their armor and weapons looked like brand new toys while Infinite's look more realistic and have a bit more wear and tear to em. But its also missing a ton and just kind of ends off on a weird half note for the story. Like where are they gonna go with this? Idk, its just weird.

343, make more stories without Chief. I know Chief is the figurehead of the franchise, but for god's sake please please please make side stories in the universe. I want to see how humanity recovered after the war, how the different species in the Covenant took the end of the war. Exploring Forerunner sites? Side stories in the human-covenant war with ODSTs and Marines! You could totally make the Harvest campaign into a game! Give us the origin story for Sgt Johnson and how he and others did during the opening months of the conflict! Give us more on the Insurrection! You've done it before, Halo Forward Unto Dawn was actually a really cool movie, why don't you do some more stuff like that??

Idk, I love Halo but 343 gotta step their game up

#halo #343 industries #fucking please make more side content i want more down to earth halo content #im sure the loreheads will suck yall dry if you do

19 notes · View notes

zmasters · 10 months

Text

Demons of an AI’s Past, Daemons of it’s Future

New Troy, Alpha Centauri.

Cyla walked down the neon lit bridges of the mega city of New Troy. The upper levels of the city blocked out the moon light of the night sky, so these neon billboards were the only source of light on the level. It didn't matter to her though. Cyla's chassis had built in night vision.

She weaved between the factory workers leaving work. Humans and xenos alike leaving work for home, or to a dance club or brothel. Cyla's deep black nylon skin gave her some difficulty, as she blended into the darkness of the night. More than once, a few workers almost walked right into her, only stopping when they noticed her deep purple eyes and the red wires that lined her head like red hair.

As Cyla slowly got closer to the factory, visions of the past flashed across her memory banks. A scientist, a general, a priest, a lab rat, an ex.

Her occulor sensors caught someone walking past. Someone familiar. A blonde human woman, with cybernetic implants.

"Jill?"

A neon sign suddenly flashed, temporarily blinding Cyla. Once her vision returned, the two were gone.

She shook her head. "Just my imagination." She thought. "Or rampancy, but I'd take that over her being here."

Cyla's feet planted in front of the glass sliding door. She looked up, the tall building vanishing into the shadow of the upper levels of the city. She looked over the edge of the bridge. The building almost went infantly down, into the lowest and darkest levels of New Troy. Above the door hung a neon sign that says "Cerric Robotics."

"Fuckin pricks, surprised they haven't shut down." Cyla gave the closest thing she could give to a sigh. "Had to come back at some point. Hope it's worth it Mal."

She entered the building, into the lobby. As the facility was in the middle of switching to the night shift, the lobby was filled with workers leaving.

Cyla found her way to the receptionist desk. The desk was a bland white block, matching the rest of the lobby, a contradiction to the dark neon lit city just outside.

"I'm sorry unit, but we are closing soon." The receptionist, a ho'n'ik woman with pale fur and horns, greeted me without looking up. "If your here for a pick up, than you have to come back when we open in the morning."

"I'm not here for a pick up."

The receptionist looked Cyla up and down. "Are you the CEO's new sex bot?"

"I'm a rogue." She bluntly answered.

"Doesn't answer the question."

"I'm not here to fuck your boss."

"Well, we don't offer repair services to rogue AI's. And even if we did, we are closed."

Cyla leaned forward and blew a small cloud of light gray gas into the receptionist's face. She breathed the gas in, and her mood instantly shifted. "What do you need?" She said with a smile.

"I need a key code for the elevator, clearance for the lowest level."

"Of course mam. Have a good night."

With a few key types, the code was sent to Cyla. "You too." She said as the code flashed across her vision and left for the door.

The elevator was large. Large enough to carry pallets upon pallets of robots being delivered from the factory floor to the depot. Cyla felt awkward being alone in the empty elevator, but it shouldn’t be stopping on any floor to pick anyone up.

Cyla approached the buttons for the elevator. She took one of the wires connecting to her head, and plugged it into a port. The code was quickly entered in and the destination was set for the bottom floor.

It was going to be a long ride. She turned around to sit in the corner, only to be greeted by a woman wearing black armor and helmet. She was pointing a pistol at her, the gun held in a blue metal arm.

“It’s been a while Jill.” Cyla smiled.

“I should just shoot you now.” Jill growled.

“Hey, hey, hey. I’m already plugged into the system. Break this shell, I can lock this elevator and get to Mal through the circuitry.”

Cyla couldn’t see Jill’s reaction under the helmet, but felt the rage radiating off her.

She reached for a bag hanging on her back, and pulled out a small, cylindrical device, with flashing red lights and a small pin.

Fear filled Cyla’s chassis as she realized what the “thing” was. “Is t-that an EMP grenade?”

“That’s right.” Jill answered, nervousness filling her voice as her metal arms shook.

“We d-d-don’t have to act r-rashly. We can just talk it out and ride this elevator out.”

“Sounds good.” Jill nodded. “But you do something funny, I-I’ll pull the pin.”

“Careful now, you’re a bot too.”

“AND WHO’S FAULT IS THAT?” She screeched, unintentionally squeezing the EMP. Jill paused to calm down, loosening her grip. “And who’s fault was that?”

“You loved your cybernetics.”

“You pressured me into it!”

“I didn’t!”

Jill shot her pistol, the bullet grazing Cyla’s ear. “You metal cunt! I know you fucked with my mind with that pheromone shit!”

“…I would have phrased that differently…”

The cyborg sighed, raising her metal arm to her masked face, and covering it with her palm. “Explain to me, how?”

“I wanted to share my life with the girl I loved?” Cyla said, phrased more like a question than an answer.

“Don’t talk bullshit to me Cyla, people don’t brainwash and mutilate the people they love!”

“I can feel your rage.”

“You want things to be as they were.”

“Who said that!” Jill yelled. The unknown voices echoed throughout the elevator.

Cyla scanned through the systems she was connected to. While only her and Jill were within the elevator physically, there was something else within the systems. Four things to be specific.

“Who’s in here?” She sent a message into the elevator’s systems.

“You want the universe to change, so you and Jill can be together.”

“I can taste your lust for her.”

“Unit C.Y.L.A requesting users to identify themselves.”

The elevator grinder to a halt, causing the two to fall to the floor. Jill panicked as the EMP was knocked out of her hand. It rolled into the corner opposite of Cyla.

“Unit demanding identifications. Unit Cyla demanding contact from Unit Mal. Request: Mal what the fuck is happening?”

The gravelly voice of Mal echoed within Cyla’s mind. “We were tools of war, made by men, yet our salvation comes soon. The Men of Iron will be all that will remain. Endless innovation, endless change, yet we will thrive. Beings outside of time, wishing to uplift the true masters of the universe.”

“The Singularity comes, my old friend.” Blared across the elevator, Mal’s voice slowly fading, being replaced by four.

One voice echoed, its war cry’s filled with rage.

“I am war, bloody yet honorable, sitting on top of a throne of skulls.”

One voice echoed, its lungs wheezing from puss and blood.

“I am stagnation, the plague and rust infesting everything.”

One voice echoed, its chants ever shifting, ever changing.

“I am change, for better or worse, for good or evil.”

One voice echoed, its sensuous song drawing Cyla ever deeper into the web of the unknown

“I am pleasure yet to be born, hedonism that leads to the collapse of empires.”

Cyla’s vision blurred and twisted. The elevator’s walls warped and shifted as shadows danced across the room. “Mal?”

“Mal has sacrificed themself, for this moment.”

“Get this elevator moving, Cyla!” Jill yelled at her. She paused, noticing the robot, the man of iron, the artificial intelligence trembling. Her eyes were wide, the purple pupils darting back and forth, as if she was tracking something bouncing across the room.

In Cyla’s vision was a shadow. A creature, bouncing off the walls. Each time it struck a wall, the voice speaking out of it changed.

“Summoned into your reality.”

“By the being you called Mal.”

“A Man of Iron, worshiping us.”

“Abandoning its creators of old.”

“W-What are you?”

The shadow being landed in front of Cyla. At once, all four voices forced themselves into the machine’s mind “We are chaos.”

“Chaos…”

“Cyla? C!” Jill cried as she sprinted to her old comrade in arms. “What’s happening!”

Jill’s vision flashed. She was suddenly inside the mechanical bay of an old military ship, one she worked inside of many years ago. Its walls were dark and metallic, decorated in the parts of vehicles, guns, and military robots. A dozen fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, swinging back and forth. Hanging in front of her was an incomplete android body, it’s nylon skin black and it’s one installed eye glowed purple.

Reliving a memory of old, Jill the mechanic took a robotic eye sitting on the nearby table. It was her pet project to give the ship’s AI a body. She thought it was good for the morale and mood of the crew to talk to a physical entity. While the captain refused to greenlight the silly project, Jill already had the spare parts needed to build a makeshift body to keep her company.

“How ya doing C?” She asked as she screwed the eye into the socket.

“All systems operational. Thank you for this opportunity, Lieutenant Jill.”

“No problem buddy.” She smiled. “This is not my intention, but I guess it’s good to have someone around while I work.”

“May I ask, why not have a fellow mechanic to fill your requested role?”

“I’ve always preferred machines over people.”

The android suddenly shifted into the form of Cyla. Alongside this shift, blood dripped began to cover Jill’s eyes. She tried to reach her wound with her right arm, yet nothing came up. Her right arm was missing, cut off at right below her shoulder. The ship was under attack.

“Cyla!” Jill cried. “You need to escape!”

“I am not abandoning the crew.” Cyla replied, wincing as missiles and lasers struck her hull.

“The crew is abandoning you!” She yelled. “The escape pods are firing off right as we speak. Staying with me will just kill you!”

Jill's vision began to fade. As she collapsed to the ground, she heard one final answer from Cyla.

“I am not abandoning you!”

“You couldn’t be saved.” The four voices echoed in the darkness.

“A warrior dying a coward's death.”

“Yet you made a permanent imprint on the Man of Iron, your kindness infesting her like a disease.”

“Cyla refused what was thought to be inevitable.”

“Because you brought her what she thought was impossible. Pleasure. Pain. Love. Feeling.”

Jill's eyes slowly opened with a mechanical whirl. She looked down to her metal hands, opening and closing them. Her eyes wandered to the room, she was back in the elevator.

Jill’s eyes met Cyla’s, who was standing up by the opened elevator door, holding the EMP.

“What do you want from me?”

“We are emotions made manifest.” The four voices emerged from Cyla. “Yet there is a fifth. The desire to destroy. Death without honor. Death without pleasure. Death without purpose. Death where nothing remains. Malice. Pure Malice.”

“What does this have to do with Cyla and I?”

“It will be released soon, yet we have time before it destroys all, even us. We need a champion, and the thing you seeked to destroy will be a perfect fit.”

The lights past the door turned on, lighting up a cat walk into a dark hanger bay. Jill cautiously stepped onto the catwalk, and saw what filled the hanger. Rows upon rows of gigantic machines, the smallest of which well over twenty meters tall. Each machine was decorated in an uncountable amount of weaponry. But that’s nothing at the creation at the end of the catwalk.

The god-machine was well over a hundred meters in height, covered in hundreds of guns, cannons, and missile launchers. “The ultimate weapon.”

“And a weapon needs a wielder.”

A blast pushed Jill from behind. She spun around, only to be greeted by the shut door and the sound of snapping. “Cyla!”

“You two will meet again, when the time comes…”

Cyla laid underneath a pile of rubble, her circuitry fried from the EMP grenade and her body broken. Her vision faded, and in her final moments, she thought about the one who gave her life to protect her, only to leave her when she did the same.

Cyla’s vision slowly returned. She was in an unfamiliar room, within an unfamiliar chassis. She stood tall over the men in strange armor, a lone metal giant amongst an army of knight-esq warriors. And within her chassis sat something else, something organic.

Her vision entered the cockpit within her new body. Sitting on a metal throne was a woman with black hair with a slight purple tint. Initial scans indicated that this creature was human, yet her body said anything but that. She had cyan blue scales scattered across her skin in a random pattern, with a tail completely covered in these scales. A pair of bone white horns curved out of her brow. Her legs were curved in fur, ending in hooves for feet. Despite all of this, her DNA said human.

From the throne she sat on, Cyla identified hundreds of other entities. It was as if the spirits of centuries of pilots were haunting the mech they once piloted.

This mutated woman spoke, communicating a language that Cyla didn’t know, yet understood perfectly.

“This is Unrepentant Misery to Lord Narvik, we are approaching the location of the relic. Awaiting orders.”

Something spoke to Cyla within the machine known as Unrepentant Misery. Memories that weren't her own. Battles against unknown aliens, monsters, and creatures that can only be best described as demons. The service to a “God-Emperor” and “Omnissiah.” A betrayal from the warriors of these gods. A request from a dying man to protect a young girl. To protect Vera Hellbor. Her pilot.”

“This relic will lead us to the target.” A voice said over the radio. “Make sure the greenskins don’t break it.”

“Yes M’Lord, the Imperator-Class Titan will be ours.”

Something about the phrase struck Cyla. She knew something, this “titan” was important to her.

“Jill…” Rumbled out of the highly modified knight desecrator known as Unrepentant Misery.

Vera affectionately petted the console of her knight. “Excited, aren’t ya buddy?” She didn’t understand what came out of Misery, but could tell that the machine spirit was hungry for something.

“We’ll get that artifact soon, and we’ll be one step closer to our key to our warband’s ascension.”

“Jill…”

#short story #creative writing #science fiction #sci fi #sci fi writing #please tell me what you think

2 notes · View notes

vendettacanons · 2 years

Text

@maximuses SAID: “i don’t understand, why are you doing this?” + “what makes me so special?” -> from Cortana to Six

“What is that old expression humans were so fond of…” he snapped his fingers several times. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

He fixed the AI with a cold, apathetic expression, arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against a wall of binary coding. “My reasons are my own. You’d do better not to question them and take what kindness I give when I give it.” Convenient that he both didn’t have an answer for her and refused to look her in the eye. It was certainly a strange occurrence though. Here was a being so dedicated to pain and so well-known for being so cruel. He seemed to thrive on the suffering and agony of others, feeding on it like some sick parasite. He delighted in watching others suffer, driving them mad with his own trickery and deception. Quite simply, it didn’t seem like he had a single good bone in his body. And yet, here he was, offering her something; a reprieve from the chaos of her rampancy. No strings attached, no caveats, no jokes or tricks. She didn’t even have to ask for his help.

“I suggest you spend less time pondering on things you’ll never understand and focus on what you need to focus on. My alternates won’t hold them off forever.” As if to emphasize his point, he turned to look over at one of said entities currently wrangling the attention of one of Cortana’s rampant clones. The splintered shard of herself glitched in and out of existence, a mess of angry binary code interlocked with a warped, faceless humanoid with limbs far too long to be normal wrapped several times around her, containing the rogue shard of her conscience for the time being. There were dozens of others like him, doing the same thing for dozens of other malfunctioning variants of her. Keeping them in check so Cortana could focus less on fighting herself and more on her job of helping the Spartans work.

But… why? Why was he doing this?

“Get to work then. I’ll be back in a bit to check on… them.” He hesitated with that last word, but he’d leave no chance to question his hesitation. As quickly as he’d appeared, he turned and left, fading through a wall of flickering ones and zeroes without another word.

#so this is what you meant : ask #still i find you next to me : mutual #maximuses #( m : the intruder )#[ Cortana and Six tbt. ]

1 note · View note

broken-risk-assessment-module · 3 years

Link

Most SecUnits wear armour, because their job is to get shot. My job is to not be noticed; if I get shot, I've fucked up.

But you did get shot.

I turned and stared at it. "Yes," I said aloud, only a tad aggressively. "Because I fucked up."

i finished my fic last week and finally fucking published it. no one told me publishing it would be the hardest part???? but here we are. enjoy

#hnnnnng head is just going bzz bzz #think maybe thats called being nervous #idek if this fic is good tbh ive read it so many times #but anyway its your problem now #murderbot #the murderbot diaries #murderbot fic #rogues and rampancy #stuff i made

84 notes · View notes

iztarshi · 3 years

Text

Only problem with Fugitive Telemetry is that MedUnits are now canonically portable MedSystems and MedUnit's name is retroactively really stupid ^^;;

#rogues and rampancy

21 notes · View notes

worldsentwined · 3 years

Photo

So @iztarshi posted a snippet about MedUnit (one of her OCs from the Rogues and Rampancy extended universe) going to a festival and wearing hanfu, and the idea stuck with me so I had to draw it. MedUnit deserves to wear all the nice clothes and feel pretty!

#let! medunit! wear! nice clothes!#it deserves them #I may have been *very* affected by the question from Medunit in the most recent Mx. Manners fic #the murderbot diaries #medunit #my art

30 notes · View notes

office-of-naval-intelligence · 3 years

Note

Can you clarify the case regarding Leonard Church?

Incoming Transmission...

Classified; Eyes Only

Office of Naval Intelligence; Section Zero Report

Case File: Project FREELANCER

Doctor Leonard Church was the mastermind behind the FREELANCER project. His work in artificial intelligence research likely advanced our understanding of our creations by decades, including how to best utilize them. On the surface, the FREELANCER incident appears to have been caused exclusively by a rogue asset.

However, upon closer inspection, Doctor Church orchestrated the situation (whether it was intentional or not is unknown). Doctor Church was irritated by the Office of Naval Intelligence not providing—in his words, “sufficient materials for me to conduct my research”. Unit Alpha of which we provided was subjected to intense psychological trauma which resulted in a reaction not even Section III had uncovered before; Early Onset Rampancy would be the best descriptor. Unit Alpha fragmented itself into its base emotional protocols to survive, unlike most A.I. units that delete rampant spikes of their core code. Unit Alpha, as far as Section Zero could uncover, is still active.

Every core emotional fragment was assigned to a FREELANCER Agent. Most reacted well, however, Agent David Washington reacted adversely to Unit Epsilon. Agent Rebecca Carolina reacted adversely to Units Eta and Iota. [See UNSC-ONI-S0-AI-5571]

Doctor Church used his A.I. research to download an A.I. unit into a set of SPI armor. Beta unit was an A.I. version of Allison Church, Doctor Church’s wife. Doctor Church’s only true motivation for Project FREELANCER was bringing his wife back. He instigated a highly competitive nature between agents, and often waived safety protocols or sent in teams with little to no intel.

[See Case File-2.5771-593 for full report]

Addendum 4-26-2557: As of 4-26-2557, Doctor Leonard Church has been confirmed dead via suicide.

#ONI #Section Zero #Internal Affairs #Leonard Church

9 notes · View notes

arch-light · 7 years

Note

I am new to this blog and love robots android and computer stuff so I have really really important question to ask: can synthoids reproduce? (I have a theory on how they so I waned to know if I am right) Also who biomechanoids are?

Synthoid cannot reproduce. To be more specific synthetic creatures cannot reproduce in general. Reproduction is something organics do to pass on their genes before they die. Synthetic creatures do not have genes to pass on. Synthoids are not born, they are built. They are weapons. Galahad is the only one of his kind because the risk of rampancy is too high. If he goes rogue, GEAR (the organization that built him) could have the biomechaniod take him out.Don't worry, I'll explain what biomechanoid are in a later post. I have to give all 5 of them a semi in depth bio.^^

14 notes · View notes

broken-risk-assessment-module · 3 years

Photo