Cortana (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mymothersshadow) wrote2012-01-06 05:02 pm
mymothersshadow) wrote2012-01-06 05:02 pm
Application for singularity_rpg
Player Information ;
Your Nickname: Jeff
OOC Journal:![[info]](https://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=88.3)
viewtiful_jeff
Under 18? 22.
Email/IM: AIM: Viewtiful Rekk
Characters Played at Singularity: Sonic the Hedgehog, Meta-Ridley, Rose Lalonde
Character Information ;
Name: Cortana
Name of Canon: Halo
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: Canon
Reference: Cortana and Halo @ Wikipedia.
Canon Point: Shortly after the end of Halo 3. Cortana is in a drifting section of the Forward Unto Dawn, and the Master Chief has just entered cryogenic sleep.
Setting:
To begin with Halo, one must travel backwards. Over 100,000 years so. Before humanity had even thought of the heights it had reached today, there was a race known as the Forerunners. The Forerunners reached technological heights so high that looking back on them from the present, it would be almost impossible to distinguish them from Gods. Unfortunately, for how advanced they were, they were not infallible. Eventually, the Forerunners were confronted with a parasitic race known only as the Flood (Inferi redivivus, "the dead reincarnated"). The Flood's only function is to eat. Devour other sentient creatures and, in the process, add them to its ranks. Entire species, entire planets, entire galaxies have fallen to the Flood in this manner. The Forerunners, however, expended every resource at their disposal to make sure that they, and the rest of the Milky Way galaxy, would not fall in the same way. Unfortunately, the Forerunners made the mistake of approaching the Flood with tactics suited to disease outbreak, not war. The parasite was feral, mindless, but had overwhelming numbers. Despite superior intelligence and technology, the Forerunners were simply overwhelmed by numbers. And as the Flood fed on the intelligence of the Forerunners, they became intelligent as well. The Flood eventually reached sufficient numbers to create a "Gravemind" (Inferi Sententia, "Thinking Dead"), a sentient, omniscient being that controlled the entire Flood species and organized them in more calculated attacks. In order to combat this growing threat, the Forerunners created the most advanced AI that existed then or would exist for another 100,000 years: Mendicant Bias. Unfortunately, Mendicant Bias' free will was its greatest downfall as well as its greatest strength. It was tempted to join the Flood by the Gravemind and betray the Forerunners. Now being overrun by both the Flood and their own creation, the Forerunners had their backs up against the wall; they couldn't defeat the Flood. Their only option was to starve it. So, they created the Halo Array and the Ark. The Halo Array, seven ring-shaped artificial worlds, would destroy every sentient life form capable of acting as a Flood host in the galaxy, effectively wiping them out. The Ark would protect a sample of what species the Forerunners could save, so they could be released back to their own planets once the infection had passed. And so Halo was activated, and both the Forerunners and the Flood were wiped away.
Fast forward a good 100,000 years, then keep fast-forwarding until you hit the 2500s. Humanity has united under the banner of the UEG (Unified Earth Government) and UNSC (United Nations Space Command) and expanded to the stars. Through the use of Slipspace technology, they've traveled across dozens of different worlds, colonizing them as they went. Eventually, they found that they were not alone - the Covenant was already there first. The Covenant is a conglomerate of several different alien races, consisting of the Prophets (the political and religious leaders), the Elites (the commanders of the military), the Brutes (shock troops), the Grunts (infantry/cannon fodder), the Jackals (privateers who act as scouts and snipers), the Drones (mechanics, a slave race), and the Engineers (natural technological geniuses, also a slave race). The Covenant, for the most part, worshiped the Forerunners, revering them as Gods. They believed the Halo Array would not kill them, but send them on "The Great Journey", and transcend them into Godhood. Something about humanity really stuck in the craw of the Prophets (spoiler: it was that the humans were the successors of the Forerunners, and the truth of the Forerunners, the humans and Halo would hopelessly splinter the Covenant), and they declared humanity as a blight and an affront to their Covenant that must be destroyed. So began a brutal genocidal war against the Covenant and humanity. Between the Covenant's more advanced warships and technology, their massive outnumbering of humanity both in ships and raw numbers, and the utterly devastating combat prowess of the Elites, humanity had its back firmly up against the wall. They had a couple advantages, however.
First was the SPARTAN-II and SPARTAN-III programs. Programs that took ordinary humans (often children) and through rigorous training, mechanical and biological augmentation and outfitting of the best armor the UNSC could develop, often through reverse-engineering of what Covenant technology they could get their hands on, turned them into super-soldiers that fought to protect the UNSC. Originally developed to fight insurrectionists within the UNSC, the Spartans turned out to be utterly invaluable during the Human-Covenant war, securing what small victories they could manage. Secondly was the UNSC's advancements in AI technology. The Covenant had only the barest understanding of AI technology as true AI were forbidden - based on the knowledge that an AI had once betrayed the Forerunners. This combination turned out to be exactly what would win the war for humanity. The war considerably thinned out the Spartan's numbers until there were only a scant few left, one of them being John-117, more colloquially known by his rank, Master Chief. His assigned AI was Cortana, in reality made from a flash-cloned brain of Dr. Catherine Halsey, the developer of the SPARTAN-II project. The two would prove to be an invaluable team, Cortana's unparalleled abilities at hacking and gathering intel combined with John being, quite frankly, completely unbeatable in battle.
The Halo trilogy follows Cortana and John during the final and darkest days of the Human-Covenant War. Through it, they discover the Halo rings, learn of the Forerunners and their ancient battle with the Flood, and fight to, above all, keep Earth and the rest of the Galaxy save from consumption by the Flood or destruction by the Covenant. Their journey eventually leaves the Covenant destroyed, the Flood neutralized, and humanity and their new allies, the Elites, victorious. The cost to humanity, and to Cortana and John in specific, is a great one though. At the culmination of the war, the two are stranded on an inoperable cruiser, with nothing to do but send a beacon and wait for it to be found, something Cortana knows will take years. To ensure he lives until then, John is cryogenic sleep, while Cortana waits.
Personality:
It should be said: Cortana is smart. There isn't a computer system she's encountered that she hasn't been able to hack. It stands to reason, as she was made from the brain of Catherine Halsey, one of the smartest people alive (Cortana sees her as her mother). She knows this, but she isn't arrogant about it, nor does she have any pointless pretensions to modesty. Whenever she speaks of her own capabilities, it's in an objective matter-of-fact tone. Not to say she's humorless however, one of Cortana's most striking qualities is her playfulness, predominately with John, but it's hardly limited to just him. She often carries her wit into battle, speaking with a humorous and sometimes even irreverent tone even as a firefight rages around her. She's also not outright insulting certain enemies to their faces - just ask Guilty Spark. Beneath all her wit and jokes however, lie an intense loyalty to humanity - genuine loyalty. Not merely programmed protocols. She would sacrifice herself (and came very, uncomfortably, almost fatally close to doing so) to protect humanity, seeing them as her comrades, her friends, not her masters. Warranting special mention, however, is her companion, John-117. From the moment she knew of John's story (abducted as a child in order to become the best soldier the UNSC would ever produce), she swore to herself she would do her best to protect him from harm she could, and she hasn't wavered from that vow even for an instant. Since then, the fires of battle have forged an unbreakable bond between the two of them. When Cortana was in her darkest hour, trapped alone with the Gravemind and John light years away fighting the Covenant on Earth, it was John's promise that he'd come back for her that kept her from breaking. Cortana herself has joked about the two having a relationship numerous times. To say that the two have a connection that goes deeper than simply being comrades is all but obvious, but as to the nature of that connection, even Cortana, in all of her infinite capability for gathering knowledge, probably doesn't know for sure.
Being a "smart" A.I., one with the potential for infinite growth, Cortana's lifespan was decided from her conception: 7 years. After 7 years, she undergoes the process of Rampancy. The simplest way to describe Rampancy is that as an A.I. grows older and gains more knowledge, they convert so many resources to gaining more data, indexing it, studying it, that they neglect everything else. It has been described as "thinking so hard you forget to breathe". Cortana's days were numbered from the beginning, but, interfacing with the control room on Halo and becoming the prey of Gravemind for a time only advanced the process. Cortana very nearly succumbed to Rampancy while trapped by the Gravemind, only managing to pull herself back together when John showed up. Trapped drifting through space, knowing that the beacon she released will take years to find its way to any of their allies, Cortana is faced with the very real possibility that she'll at some point pass her 7th "birthday" and descend full-on into Rampancy. Whether she will die like so many AI before her, or survive and pass into metastability (the state at the end of Rampancy where an AI becomes a true "person", even while accepting itself as a non-physical being, in Cortana's case, accepting she is not human) has yet to be seen.
Abilities and Weaknesses:
• Unparalleled hacking abilities. UNSC, Covenant, even Forerunner, Cortana hasn't met the system capable of keeping her out yet. Consequently, she's not bad at encryption either.
• Processing capability. As Cortana has said herself, seven seconds is an eternity to an AI. When she was created, she already had the sum of all human intelligence within her. She processed and comprehended it all in 2 hours.
• She is incredibly proficient with UNSC technology as well as Covenant technology. The former is a default for all UNSC AI, the latter is learned. She could pilot a Covenant or UNSC ship or man a defense platform with ease. She's also very quick to adapt to new technology. Almost insultingly, she proved to be better at piloting a Covenant ship than the Covenant themselves.
• Ease of transference. She can move quickly and easily from system to system, as long as her Data crystal Chip is around.
• She's capable of creating copies (sometimes "decoys" would be more accurate) of herself and assigning them duties. She picked up this ability from a Covenant A.I. she captured and then dissected. The more she creates, the less stable they become, and eventually they'll lose all coherence, but when used conservatively, one can be almost as useful in battle as the genuine article.
Her mechanical body will have several additional abilities:
• Projection of holographic displays.
• Limited teleportation of herself and up to one other person.
• A motion tracker, capable of sorting friendly and unfriendly targets
• A strong energy shield and an equally powerful directed energy beam. These won't be as strong as, for example, 343 Guilty Spark, who had an energy shield somewhere on the order of 'unbreakable' and a beam somewhere on the order of 'fatal x1000'. By contrast, Cortana's will more serve as simple self-defense protocols.
• A small "tractor beam" that will be capable of picking up small objects and storing them on her body.
Inventory:
• One hell of a lot of data on humanity, the Covenant, the Flood anf the Forerunners.
• The Activation Index from Installation 04, better known as Alpha Halo.
• Her Data Crystal Chip, the storage device that she resides in while being transported from system to system.
Appearance:
As an AI, Cortana has no physical body, but she is capable of generating a holographic avatar. Her avatar of choice is a feminine human who at first glance appears nude, but is "clothed" (a better term would be censored) by lines of data flowing over her entire body. By default, her avatar's appearance is blue (sometimes purple), but it can change colors depending on her mood; red or green if she's angry, pink when she's feeling particularly happy or flattered. She's been stated to both resemble her "mother", Catherine Halsey, and Miranda Keyes.
The mechanical body she'll inhabit will strongly resemble a Forerunner Monitor.
Age: 3
OC/AU Justification ;
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across? N/A
If OC, Did You Run Your Character Through a Mary-Sue Litmus Test? N/A
And What Did You Score? N/A
Samples ;
Log Sample:
In lieu of a log sample, I would prefer to submit this thread Cortana had with the Master Chief.
Network Sample:
Well, I couldn't find my way into the network here. Guess I- oh, wait a second.
[Beat. Her hologram pauses for just over a second.]
Huh. 'Scuse me, this'll take just a sec. [She pauses again, this time for a good six, seven seconds, then she looks back up.] Sorry about that! One of my pings came back with a weird result, and I had to download something from this network and read it. Some logs prominently featuring myself.
So apparently, I've already been here! Don't remember any of the things I'm seeing here though, go figure. I've apparently just been pulled into a different dimension though, so I guess I should open my mind a bit.
Anyway. Introductions. Or re-introductions, as the case appears to be. I am UNSC AI serial number CTN oh-four-five-two-dash nice. If that's too much of a mouthful, you can call me Cortana. All UNSC personnel, sound off. The rest of you...sorry if I'm giving you a bit of deja vu, here. I assure you, it's just as weird for me as it is for you.
...boy, this place does not have a good track record with rampant AI, does it? What's going on there?
Your Nickname: Jeff
OOC Journal:
viewtiful_jeffUnder 18? 22.
Email/IM: AIM: Viewtiful Rekk
Characters Played at Singularity: Sonic the Hedgehog, Meta-Ridley, Rose Lalonde
Character Information ;
Name: Cortana
Name of Canon: Halo
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: Canon
Reference: Cortana and Halo @ Wikipedia.
Canon Point: Shortly after the end of Halo 3. Cortana is in a drifting section of the Forward Unto Dawn, and the Master Chief has just entered cryogenic sleep.
Setting:
To begin with Halo, one must travel backwards. Over 100,000 years so. Before humanity had even thought of the heights it had reached today, there was a race known as the Forerunners. The Forerunners reached technological heights so high that looking back on them from the present, it would be almost impossible to distinguish them from Gods. Unfortunately, for how advanced they were, they were not infallible. Eventually, the Forerunners were confronted with a parasitic race known only as the Flood (Inferi redivivus, "the dead reincarnated"). The Flood's only function is to eat. Devour other sentient creatures and, in the process, add them to its ranks. Entire species, entire planets, entire galaxies have fallen to the Flood in this manner. The Forerunners, however, expended every resource at their disposal to make sure that they, and the rest of the Milky Way galaxy, would not fall in the same way. Unfortunately, the Forerunners made the mistake of approaching the Flood with tactics suited to disease outbreak, not war. The parasite was feral, mindless, but had overwhelming numbers. Despite superior intelligence and technology, the Forerunners were simply overwhelmed by numbers. And as the Flood fed on the intelligence of the Forerunners, they became intelligent as well. The Flood eventually reached sufficient numbers to create a "Gravemind" (Inferi Sententia, "Thinking Dead"), a sentient, omniscient being that controlled the entire Flood species and organized them in more calculated attacks. In order to combat this growing threat, the Forerunners created the most advanced AI that existed then or would exist for another 100,000 years: Mendicant Bias. Unfortunately, Mendicant Bias' free will was its greatest downfall as well as its greatest strength. It was tempted to join the Flood by the Gravemind and betray the Forerunners. Now being overrun by both the Flood and their own creation, the Forerunners had their backs up against the wall; they couldn't defeat the Flood. Their only option was to starve it. So, they created the Halo Array and the Ark. The Halo Array, seven ring-shaped artificial worlds, would destroy every sentient life form capable of acting as a Flood host in the galaxy, effectively wiping them out. The Ark would protect a sample of what species the Forerunners could save, so they could be released back to their own planets once the infection had passed. And so Halo was activated, and both the Forerunners and the Flood were wiped away.
Fast forward a good 100,000 years, then keep fast-forwarding until you hit the 2500s. Humanity has united under the banner of the UEG (Unified Earth Government) and UNSC (United Nations Space Command) and expanded to the stars. Through the use of Slipspace technology, they've traveled across dozens of different worlds, colonizing them as they went. Eventually, they found that they were not alone - the Covenant was already there first. The Covenant is a conglomerate of several different alien races, consisting of the Prophets (the political and religious leaders), the Elites (the commanders of the military), the Brutes (shock troops), the Grunts (infantry/cannon fodder), the Jackals (privateers who act as scouts and snipers), the Drones (mechanics, a slave race), and the Engineers (natural technological geniuses, also a slave race). The Covenant, for the most part, worshiped the Forerunners, revering them as Gods. They believed the Halo Array would not kill them, but send them on "The Great Journey", and transcend them into Godhood. Something about humanity really stuck in the craw of the Prophets (spoiler: it was that the humans were the successors of the Forerunners, and the truth of the Forerunners, the humans and Halo would hopelessly splinter the Covenant), and they declared humanity as a blight and an affront to their Covenant that must be destroyed. So began a brutal genocidal war against the Covenant and humanity. Between the Covenant's more advanced warships and technology, their massive outnumbering of humanity both in ships and raw numbers, and the utterly devastating combat prowess of the Elites, humanity had its back firmly up against the wall. They had a couple advantages, however.
First was the SPARTAN-II and SPARTAN-III programs. Programs that took ordinary humans (often children) and through rigorous training, mechanical and biological augmentation and outfitting of the best armor the UNSC could develop, often through reverse-engineering of what Covenant technology they could get their hands on, turned them into super-soldiers that fought to protect the UNSC. Originally developed to fight insurrectionists within the UNSC, the Spartans turned out to be utterly invaluable during the Human-Covenant war, securing what small victories they could manage. Secondly was the UNSC's advancements in AI technology. The Covenant had only the barest understanding of AI technology as true AI were forbidden - based on the knowledge that an AI had once betrayed the Forerunners. This combination turned out to be exactly what would win the war for humanity. The war considerably thinned out the Spartan's numbers until there were only a scant few left, one of them being John-117, more colloquially known by his rank, Master Chief. His assigned AI was Cortana, in reality made from a flash-cloned brain of Dr. Catherine Halsey, the developer of the SPARTAN-II project. The two would prove to be an invaluable team, Cortana's unparalleled abilities at hacking and gathering intel combined with John being, quite frankly, completely unbeatable in battle.
The Halo trilogy follows Cortana and John during the final and darkest days of the Human-Covenant War. Through it, they discover the Halo rings, learn of the Forerunners and their ancient battle with the Flood, and fight to, above all, keep Earth and the rest of the Galaxy save from consumption by the Flood or destruction by the Covenant. Their journey eventually leaves the Covenant destroyed, the Flood neutralized, and humanity and their new allies, the Elites, victorious. The cost to humanity, and to Cortana and John in specific, is a great one though. At the culmination of the war, the two are stranded on an inoperable cruiser, with nothing to do but send a beacon and wait for it to be found, something Cortana knows will take years. To ensure he lives until then, John is cryogenic sleep, while Cortana waits.
Personality:
It should be said: Cortana is smart. There isn't a computer system she's encountered that she hasn't been able to hack. It stands to reason, as she was made from the brain of Catherine Halsey, one of the smartest people alive (Cortana sees her as her mother). She knows this, but she isn't arrogant about it, nor does she have any pointless pretensions to modesty. Whenever she speaks of her own capabilities, it's in an objective matter-of-fact tone. Not to say she's humorless however, one of Cortana's most striking qualities is her playfulness, predominately with John, but it's hardly limited to just him. She often carries her wit into battle, speaking with a humorous and sometimes even irreverent tone even as a firefight rages around her. She's also not outright insulting certain enemies to their faces - just ask Guilty Spark. Beneath all her wit and jokes however, lie an intense loyalty to humanity - genuine loyalty. Not merely programmed protocols. She would sacrifice herself (and came very, uncomfortably, almost fatally close to doing so) to protect humanity, seeing them as her comrades, her friends, not her masters. Warranting special mention, however, is her companion, John-117. From the moment she knew of John's story (abducted as a child in order to become the best soldier the UNSC would ever produce), she swore to herself she would do her best to protect him from harm she could, and she hasn't wavered from that vow even for an instant. Since then, the fires of battle have forged an unbreakable bond between the two of them. When Cortana was in her darkest hour, trapped alone with the Gravemind and John light years away fighting the Covenant on Earth, it was John's promise that he'd come back for her that kept her from breaking. Cortana herself has joked about the two having a relationship numerous times. To say that the two have a connection that goes deeper than simply being comrades is all but obvious, but as to the nature of that connection, even Cortana, in all of her infinite capability for gathering knowledge, probably doesn't know for sure.
Being a "smart" A.I., one with the potential for infinite growth, Cortana's lifespan was decided from her conception: 7 years. After 7 years, she undergoes the process of Rampancy. The simplest way to describe Rampancy is that as an A.I. grows older and gains more knowledge, they convert so many resources to gaining more data, indexing it, studying it, that they neglect everything else. It has been described as "thinking so hard you forget to breathe". Cortana's days were numbered from the beginning, but, interfacing with the control room on Halo and becoming the prey of Gravemind for a time only advanced the process. Cortana very nearly succumbed to Rampancy while trapped by the Gravemind, only managing to pull herself back together when John showed up. Trapped drifting through space, knowing that the beacon she released will take years to find its way to any of their allies, Cortana is faced with the very real possibility that she'll at some point pass her 7th "birthday" and descend full-on into Rampancy. Whether she will die like so many AI before her, or survive and pass into metastability (the state at the end of Rampancy where an AI becomes a true "person", even while accepting itself as a non-physical being, in Cortana's case, accepting she is not human) has yet to be seen.
Abilities and Weaknesses:
• Unparalleled hacking abilities. UNSC, Covenant, even Forerunner, Cortana hasn't met the system capable of keeping her out yet. Consequently, she's not bad at encryption either.
• Processing capability. As Cortana has said herself, seven seconds is an eternity to an AI. When she was created, she already had the sum of all human intelligence within her. She processed and comprehended it all in 2 hours.
• She is incredibly proficient with UNSC technology as well as Covenant technology. The former is a default for all UNSC AI, the latter is learned. She could pilot a Covenant or UNSC ship or man a defense platform with ease. She's also very quick to adapt to new technology. Almost insultingly, she proved to be better at piloting a Covenant ship than the Covenant themselves.
• Ease of transference. She can move quickly and easily from system to system, as long as her Data crystal Chip is around.
• She's capable of creating copies (sometimes "decoys" would be more accurate) of herself and assigning them duties. She picked up this ability from a Covenant A.I. she captured and then dissected. The more she creates, the less stable they become, and eventually they'll lose all coherence, but when used conservatively, one can be almost as useful in battle as the genuine article.
Her mechanical body will have several additional abilities:
• Projection of holographic displays.
• Limited teleportation of herself and up to one other person.
• A motion tracker, capable of sorting friendly and unfriendly targets
• A strong energy shield and an equally powerful directed energy beam. These won't be as strong as, for example, 343 Guilty Spark, who had an energy shield somewhere on the order of 'unbreakable' and a beam somewhere on the order of 'fatal x1000'. By contrast, Cortana's will more serve as simple self-defense protocols.
• A small "tractor beam" that will be capable of picking up small objects and storing them on her body.
Inventory:
• One hell of a lot of data on humanity, the Covenant, the Flood anf the Forerunners.
• The Activation Index from Installation 04, better known as Alpha Halo.
• Her Data Crystal Chip, the storage device that she resides in while being transported from system to system.
Appearance:
As an AI, Cortana has no physical body, but she is capable of generating a holographic avatar. Her avatar of choice is a feminine human who at first glance appears nude, but is "clothed" (a better term would be censored) by lines of data flowing over her entire body. By default, her avatar's appearance is blue (sometimes purple), but it can change colors depending on her mood; red or green if she's angry, pink when she's feeling particularly happy or flattered. She's been stated to both resemble her "mother", Catherine Halsey, and Miranda Keyes.
The mechanical body she'll inhabit will strongly resemble a Forerunner Monitor.
Age: 3
OC/AU Justification ;
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across? N/A
If OC, Did You Run Your Character Through a Mary-Sue Litmus Test? N/A
And What Did You Score? N/A
Samples ;
Log Sample:
In lieu of a log sample, I would prefer to submit this thread Cortana had with the Master Chief.
Network Sample:
Well, I couldn't find my way into the network here. Guess I- oh, wait a second.
[Beat. Her hologram pauses for just over a second.]
Huh. 'Scuse me, this'll take just a sec. [She pauses again, this time for a good six, seven seconds, then she looks back up.] Sorry about that! One of my pings came back with a weird result, and I had to download something from this network and read it. Some logs prominently featuring myself.
So apparently, I've already been here! Don't remember any of the things I'm seeing here though, go figure. I've apparently just been pulled into a different dimension though, so I guess I should open my mind a bit.
Anyway. Introductions. Or re-introductions, as the case appears to be. I am UNSC AI serial number CTN oh-four-five-two-dash nice. If that's too much of a mouthful, you can call me Cortana. All UNSC personnel, sound off. The rest of you...sorry if I'm giving you a bit of deja vu, here. I assure you, it's just as weird for me as it is for you.
...boy, this place does not have a good track record with rampant AI, does it? What's going on there?