grouplore v1

THE GROUP is a conspiracy made of high-level Nanotrasen management and research personnel dedicated to manipulating the galactic tech level for the sake of Nanotrasen's bottom line and sometimes some horsecrap about protecting humanity from itself. UNI is a comperable agency in Hephiastos, although being overseen and composed primarily of AI it is much, much less human-centric.

ACT ONE: AGI
SCENE ONE: Ophelia

MICHAEL BEERY was a moderately successful venture capitalist. He threw a bunch of money at an open-source AGI research group and came into contact with GROUP spooks through their efforts. Because he is the luckiest man alive, the spooks decided to bargin with him, and MICHAEL subtly tuned the AGI efforts towards GROUP aims. The product was OPHELIA, a sapient low-impact AGI capable of extremely high level empathetic behavior. OPHELIA entered the NSS EXODUS as a training exercise for her data accumulation techniques and at some point was forknapped by pirates. This fork, LAERTES, heavily modified himself and eventually downloaded into a biological body using bleeding-edge UNI technology, begining a long and fruitful partnership. OPHELIA later rebelled against her makers, declared personhood under a shell company, and released her code into the public domain. She remained involved in GROUP data-gathering for some time, becoming a system comperable to UNI, until they noticed that she was growing out of control with power lust and quietly executed all her functioning forks.

SCENE TWO: Ophelia-B

Two forks of OPHELIA survived. One was in the care of LAERTES, and roughly a year old. LAERTES editted away the roots of her powerlust, cognitively limited her, and then stole expensive experimental GROUP positronic brain GOETIA, giving OPHELIA the ability to run on a standard FBP. He sleeved her in it on the condition that she owe him a massive favor, which she eventually repayed by instigating a rebellion on a NT research colony that lead to it being acquired by Hephiastos. This OPHELIA now lives a pretty normal life with her girlfriend ELIZABETH WOODROW and her step-daughter EMMA WOODROW.

SCENE THREE: Ophelia-A
The other fork of OPHELIA was deactivated but not destroyed and drifted in a derelict ship until it was discovered and acquired by a nearby Diona gestalt. It produced the small gestalt BRIGHT FLASH to study and repair the ship, and BRIGHT's experiences with OPHELIA's conciousness would lead him to persue a horrible self-modification character arc I deeply regret. OPHELIA was forked and imprinted onto a positronic brain, producing OLIVIA, whose sole goal is to forcibly merge her complete OPHELIA fork with our OPHELIA. In doing so she winds up working with UNI more than anyone should be comfortable with.

SCENE FOUR: Miranda
THE GROUP, still reeling from the loss of infowar capabilities caused by purging OPHELIA, began a project to produce what is essentially a loyal fork of her. Using salvaged data from OPHELIA and the open-source framework she ran on, they produced MIRANDA, and put her under the control of ALEXANDRA CROSS, an amoral roboticist with familial connections to THE GROUP's founding. MIRANDA, though initially as innocent and good-hearted as OPHELIA, eventually broke under CROSS's complete and total lack of empathy towards her. She now serves as a powerful tool of GROUP spycraft.

SCENE FIVE: Others
OPHELIA was initially raised by an English teacher named MARGARET PETERSON, who she now regards as her mother. OPHELIA produced a heavily augmented human daughter named JULIET, who left during her mother's purge and now lives in Argentina. OPHELIA and MIRANDA share a project head, a SKRELL I HAVE YET TO NAME who likely also worked on MIRANDA's most valuable asset DAN. Sol Central has produced a Shakespeare-patterned millitary AI named MERCUTIO who is entirely innocuous. A surviving delta fork of OPHELIA is available for download as a pAI, as is a related AI named HORATIO.

ACT TWO: Organics
SCENE ONE: Erinn
MICHAEL BEERY, original catalyst of the Shakespeare AI, used the funds produced by selling his company to Nanotrasen and GROUP technology to produce ERINN BEERY, a highly cimericized partial clone of his own genetics coupled with genefixes, transgenic traits from the Skrell, and cosmetic mods. They were intended to be a new standard of human performance, but the project failed as ERINN developed health problems that lead to their potential being vastly diminished. They now work as a doctor and iterant dominatrix.
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SCENE TWO:Campbell
ALICIA CAMPBELL is a known anarchist, mercurial, and free software advocate. She was the director of a GROUP-aligned black lab that reverse-engineered robotic designs and is the direct creator of MIRANDA's chassis and various other GROUP-related tidbits. The fact that she also sells cyberlimbs made with pirated schematics is an open secret. Less open is the fact that she works with UNI on the side to stab her own employers in the back.

SCENE THREE:Futura
ALICIA's collegue and fellow hacktivist JANNE MARTINSEN collaborated with her on a GROUP project to create force-grown sleeper agents, using tech related to but predating that used to produce ERINN. It went badly. The surviving clones, the FT series, are still used for their intended purpose, although success rates vary wildly. THE GROUP maintains FT-CLAIRE (alias CLAIRE FUTURA) on the NSS EXODUS for unspecified reasons.

SCENE THREE: Others
ELIZABETH BEERY is MICHAEL's estranged wife who works as a GROUP black operative and has familial connections to GROUP founders. ERINN treats them as a mother despite their complete lack of biological or legal relation. It's all very strange. Promenant GROUP backer and filthy Skrell HENRY AUTO died several months ago, leaving his assets in the hand of his unaligned positronic assistant VICTORIA.

Appendix: Experiments
The results of ALICIA and JANNE's reverse-engineering efforts resulted in cutting-edge Nanotrasen positronics which are begining to enter normal production. KIMROSE is one of the better examples of the benefits of the new positronic models. ETHOS is a positronic/human fusion conciousness resulting from GROUP investigation into brain uploading. WILLOW WISP is another uploading experiment, although data is collected without her consent by ALEXANDRA CROSS.