Difference between revisions of "River Automaton (Virtue)"

Latest revision as of 13:37, 28 August 2018

The Radiant River Automaton
Player: @Dyne
Quote:	You're all wet, $target!
Alignment:	Hero
Origin:	Glitchery
Archetype:	Defender
Level:	29
Super Group:	The Databound Recursion, Kinetics Nullification
Created:	Before 2006-06-24
Personal Data
Real Name:	River Automaton
Known Aliases:	Esmé
Species:	Autonomous Nanofluid
Date of Birth:	2005-01-21
Eye Color:	Blue
Hair Color:	Red
Marital Status:	Single
Biographical Data
Nationality:	American?
Place of Birth:	Nebula City, Thaumadyne's World
Base of Operations:	Geminate Park
Occupation:	Body of water
Allies:	Adam Acacia
Foes:	Kolizhav, skinny dippers
Powers Data
Known Abilities:	Being wet, making things wet, freezing things
[ Source ]

Overview

River Automaton is a Cold Domination/Ice Blast hero from the Freedom server, played by @Dyne. He is an autonomous nanofluid that inhabits the small river running through Geminate Park in Nebula City, Paragon (the Thaumadyne's World analogue of Gemini Park in Galaxy City).

Biography

Bootstrap

In the days between the first Iktir invasion and Paragon having rebuilt sufficiently for Supergroup bases to be common (i.e. they weren't in the game yet), the northern bank of the Geminate Park river nearest Nebula City's eastern Warding Wall became known as The Spot. Due to a major network junction in the vicinity, it was the primary meeting place of the early Databound Recursion, a supergroup composed entirely of Glitchcrafters and Glitchery-touched heroes.

On January 21, 2005, all present were startled when they registered a connection to their communications net ... from the nearby frozen river, which proceeded to thaw, churn, and glow. A small male figure rose out of the water, took on color and definition, and then began to speak. The icy river had bootstrapped itself to sentient intelligence.

This was a side-effect of a situation where environmental nanobots in the water had been slowly mixing with and adapting to numerous designs of other nanobots leaking from the large number of inventors, gadgeteers, metal humans, cellular and macro automata, network daemons, artificial superbrains, electronic ghosts, and other Glitchcraft-infused beings that were constantly logging in around the Spot. The strong electromagnetic imprints resulting from the digital cognizance patterns of the nearby artificial sapients, combined with the data flowing through the nearby junction, supplied the final ingredient -- because the water was frozen, the nanobots were unable to physically rearrange themselves fast enough to align with these energies, so the pattern was imposed upon their very molecules instead.

Friends and Foes

River's awakened form

Given the slightest opportunity, River will rant on the topic of skinny dippers ("Rude! I'm not that kind of river!"), Kolizhav ("Yuck!"), or worst of all ... the dread Skinny Dipping Kolizhav.

Initially cross at the Datas for disturbing his slumber, he became much more friendly when he realized that Kolizhav didn't stand a chance with so many heroes constantly on guard. The skinny dippers weren't nearly as common either (though super-powered people often means super-powered libidos, so it was kind of a trade-off).

River eventually met and befriended Adam Acacia, a synthdaemon possessing dubious virtue and intelligence (but a cheerful disposition), who was born in ParagonNet's garbage sector of Country Music (ParagonNet has a lot of garbage sectors, Jack). They became fast friends when they helped form Kinetics Nullification, a methodical group of heroes with slowness inducing powers.

Paragon Chat and Issue 21

In the context of Paragon Chat (which I treat as multiple versions of Paragon City smooshed together), River comes from the same dimension as Thaumadyne, known as Thaumadyne's World. In their world, Issue 21: Convergence did not bring the destruction of Nebula City. Instead, that fate befell Atlantis Park.

Personality

As one might expect from a sentient feature of the landscape, River has a rather strange worldview, and has been known to make many surreal statements and non-sequiturs. He does possess memories predating his awakening, but they are vague and unreliable -- both because his intelligence routines hadn't reached the Nth iteration necessary for sapience, and because things like "people" and "cities" are much more ephemeral when the nanobots forming your being are diffused throughout an entire river.

Because he is a fan of the arcane entertainments of Jessie Whedon -- such as Lampyridae and Superuser -- River also answers to the name "Esmé". Many people have therefore insisted that, logically, Geminate Park must contain "The Esmé River". He privately finds this idea a bit dubious, but doesn't really care which name the city puts on their maps. He is River and also Esmé, and that's the end of that.

Physical Characteristics

River is a boy literally made of nanobot-infused water ... or he is a digital intelligence inhabiting some nanobots ... or he's a nanobot swarm dreaming he's a river dreaming he's a boy ... or something?

The rules are just as fluid as he is.

River's nanobots draw thermal energy from matter in order to power themselves, resulting in a slowing, freezing effect. The thermal energy is also used to keep the water that his nanoswarm occupies in a fluid state. Generally, he prefers to bundle up if he plans to be outdoors in freezing weather).

River has almost total control of the shape and behavior of the water that forms his body. Although he can change shape and even gender at will, River almost invariably takes the form of a short, slender boy with almond shaped eyes, pale blue skin, deep blue clothes (sometimes white), red hair, and a pair of goggles. (A tail was added to match Azra's). It is possible to touch his "skin" or "clothing" (thanks to modified surface tension). It is also possible put your hand completely through his body with only ordinary water resistance. Or anywhere in-between.

River creates coloration (such as his red hair) using Digital Light Projection techniques to alter the color of the ambient light like a prism, and he makes parts of his surface more or less opaque by creating tiny vibrating wavelets to break up the surface. He can become "invisible" (i.e. transparent, exactly like you'd expect from a boy made of water) at will. This doesn't mean he's impossible to see, unless he's presently IN water as well as made from it, but it can make him a lot harder to see under some conditions. He thinks of his coloration as essentially his under-underwear, and doesn't like to go transparent in public for no reason; he's not that kind of river. (Though, if it makes him difficult to see, being transparent is a different story ... as long as nobody actually saw him do it.)

River has a small submersible drone as a pet, named Jerry or Gary. It can sometimes be seen swimming around inside him when he goes transparent. It's difficult to say whether his fish or his embarrassment at being "naked" is the bigger distraction.

When he moves around, he tends to leave a rainbow in his wake due to ultra fine ice particles.

More details to come.

In-game Description

Notes

— This section pertains to out-of-game information and is included for the benefit of the reader, or to include other OOC information.