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WHEN THE SAINTS COME MARCHING IN//O, SWEET FEVER!

Etherlite Heart, Wandering Tower. Do you see them dancing? the future is inderminate. 314 Eschatologies Corrected. 1.5 Remaining.

Compendium

Rani VI
Source

Alignment: True Neutral
Age: 2 (Homunculus)
Likes: Purpose, Attention, Praise
Dislikes: Aimlessness
Talents: Mathematics, Flagellation
Natural Enemy: Rani VII
Image Colour: Purple
Day of Decisive Battle: When the Saints Go Marching In

Information

That's you. A failure. Ah. You need more than that for these, don't you?

The Atlas Institute exists to stop the end of the world. Its members see myriad possible apocalypses, and so too do they construct myriad methods of preventing them from occuring, though the result is often just as dangerous as the event it was designed to stop. Amongst these endless ends and counters to those ends, one of Atlas' foremost alchemists, a scion in which the institute's entire future had been invested, undertook a project to prevent a potential end they saw, a future where "one man's wish for endless war is realized". However, it was not a weapon or a tool they built to stop that future-- well, not in form, at least. In purpose, the homunculus they constructed was surely a "tool to be used", and not a person.


However, the alchemists had no knowledge of when exactly this end would occur, the how, the why or the where. All they knew is the means by which it could be stopped. As such, the one homunculus, named Rani, became a lineage, new bodies built when the old ones died in order to ensure that a countermeasure against that prophesized end would surely exist. Rani VI -you- is the sixth of those models to be made. However, you are not like the others-- or, well.


In truth, you are identical to the others. However, the order was given that Rani VI was not suitable to prevent the foreseen apocalypse from coming to pass. There was no reason given, no explanation for why your existence was now valueless. Once the pride of your creator, nowadays you're of such little use to Atlas that they didn't even bother to get rid of you once your replacement was ready-- you don't know why. Perhaps your existence was entirely outside of their field of study, and so outside the sphere of their awareness. Maybe they needed you alive for some unspecified future they desired to bring into existence.



Ultimately, you are still a tool of Atlas, and that's what you have allowed yourself to be used for. They point you in directions, and you go. It doesn't matter how pointless the journey, nor how cruel the outcome. You do as they command, because that's what you know.


You possess the knowledge expected of all Atlas Alchemists, hardwired directly into your brain-- no, your body. Perhaps that's what makes you different to them. The partition of your mind and the acceleration of your thought processes is second nature to you, though your poor constitution holds you back in its usage. Of course, you're a child of that Pit through and through-- your capacity for the kind of Magecraft that affects the world is close to zero, and you have no training in it besdies. At the very least, your capacity as a "Processing Unit" is second to none-- at least, when it actually works. One of the uses proposed for you when your failure was discovered was as a component in Atlas' experimental supercomputers.


--The last secret your body holds is that of Etherlite. It's woven into your body like a lattice, and your heart is built from it, carrying data in your artificial bloodstream along with the oxygen required to sustain your flesh. The pride of your creator's family, it is a nanofilament designed to carry the "data of the soul"-- all the information that makes up a human, the thoughts, the feelings, the memories. Most of it's processing power is dedicated to maintaining your own consciousness, like the hard drive in a ordinary computer, but when you touch another human it's able to take a snapshot of that same data in them-- to create a record of their soul within your own. Just a record, but even that is an incredible thing.

if you believe souls matter, anyway. Yours is artificial, after all. Steadily unspooling tape in a record that isn't playing any sound.