So since people have been asking a bit about Lucien’s species, and I do have quite a bit of lore worked out for them, I thought I may as well go for it and make the species… Well, a species.

They’re semi-open, meaning here that you can make one without needing to ask, but if you want them to be a super-duper-official part of the species, you need to run the design (and a ‘lil bit of lore to justify any particularly severe design changes) by me first. When they’re approved, you get a serial number assigned to them and then they’re an official part of the species! Hooray!

General Design Notes:

R.P.T.R (pronounced ‘raptor’) units are primarily robots, even if they do have some organic components, and as such have no organs (beyond a brain, in the case of the old style units).

Technically speaking, they don’t have genders, or even the concept of such, but hanging around species that do teaches them the general principle pretty quick.

Similarly, they don’t start out wanting to be in relationships and whatever, but they can certainly be taught.

Eye arrangement and horn style are used to distinguish individuals, since their colouring would depend on what kind of camouflage is most effective.

Although the new style units have ears, their hearing isn’t particularly good - much like their progenitors, they rely mostly on vision to operate.

Unlike the old style units however, the new style units do have a sense of touch, since the organic parts of their bodies do have nerves.

Both old and new style units are too heavy to fly or swim - their bodies would need to be entirely redesigned to allow that.

PLEASE NOTE: this species should not be used for sexual purposes, whether the character is approved or not.

Old Style R.P.T.R. Units

Officially, this first wave of R.P.T.R units were fitted with an AI that could learn from their ‘recycled’ human brains. Unofficially, an AI that could do that didn’t exist - what the computer pieces in their heads were actually doing was monitoring the health of their brains.

They were mostly sold under the radar as 'AI weapons' at first, but given that nobody seemed to care, they dropped the euphemisms pretty quickly. The real trouble came about when a photographer got footage of a dead unit with its brains all over the place. The public outrage eventually ended the run of old style units, with the companies that made them destroying what they still had (several units fled at this point, but were marked 'destroyed' anyway).

New Style R.P.T.R Units

Given the desire for robot soldiers was still there, the new style units were created with 100% artificial brains. Their bodies however, were a different story altogether - since the older units had massive issues with overheating, research had been put into growing at least partially organic wrappings for their mechanical skeletons. The debacle with the human origins of their parts happened long before it could be of much use, but the technology had all but been perfected by the time the new units were created.

Although they lacked attributes their predecessors had - true opposable thumbs, speech - they were generally received as far superior things.