Gluk, Stock, and Two Smoking Lasers
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: A pocket droid buddy for getting past optical scanners without removing some guy's eyeball. Also, commemoration of The Mirror Looking Back, a Darkwire/Mando Union skirmish that destroyed a human replica droid factory. Also, a submission to the Factory Lore Challenge.
- Image Source: Mike Hill - Agent K's portable Voight-Kampff scanner from Blade Runner 2049
- Canon Link: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Darkwire
- Affiliation: Darkwire
- Market Status: Closed-Market
- Model: ALXS ('All-access')
- Modularity: No
- Production: Limited (available to Darkwire PCs/named NPCs)
- Material: Electronics
- Classification: Second Degree
- Weight: Extremely Light
- Height: Very Small
- Movement: Repulsorlift, but mostly carried in a pocket
- Armaments: None
- Misc. Equipment: Scomp link with protective socketguard, tiny manipulator arms, basic datapad functionality, face-impersonation holoprojector
- Resistances (Optional): None of note
- Advanced non-invasive equipment (including a variant of a multiconfiguration HRD eyeball's internal mechanisms) for fooling retinal/facial scanners and similar security systems
- Socketguard to protect against slicing
- Very difficult to slice
- Decent slicer-in-a-pocket
- If held up to a retinal or facial scanner or anything along those lines, it will almost always grant access
- If that functionality isn't enough (i.e. for a very-high-security scanner), the ALXS can scan an eye (e.g. from a prisoner or corpse), reconfigure its internal structures and optics, and often defeat the scanner that way
- Can pass for a basic datapad, and actually functions as one in a limited way
- Teeny tiny manipulator arms make it terrible at sabacc
- Can't speak Basic - communicates only in bleeps and blorps
- Repulsorlift suitable for moving around to scomp link terminals or security scanners, but not keeping pace with a speeder, gaining any serious altitude, or carrying more than a few ounces of cargo
- All the durability of the average datapad and, apart from its core functions, not a whole lot smarter either
- Extraordinarily illegal
DESCRIPTION
Around 863-864 ABY, a faction within the Corporate Authority of Denon's Direx Board began using new biomechanical human replica droids to impersonate and discredit certain Darkwire operatives. The secret project threw a wrench into the decision-making of both organizations. Tensions came to a head when Darkwire and some of their replicas discovered the plan and converged on the HRD factory - while Direx Board member named Marlene Starlight hired Mandalorians to protect it. Tragedy and violence erupted, culminating in the brutal death of a replica of the young Shadowrunner named
Daiya
. The confrontation leveled the bulk of the factory.In the aftermath, scavengers stripped the formerly-high-tech site. One of the interesting doodads they procured - and later sold to a certain enterprising Ithorian with Darkwire connections - was a decent supply of half-assembled, unconfigured HRD eyeballs. The advanced optics and reconfigurable eyeball whatnots therein became the core of the ALXS project. Admittedly, 'project' is kind of a grandiose name for something assembled in the backroom chop shop of Quekko's Choice Ship Emporium.
The resulting droids are friendly, loyal, helpful, not hugely intelligent, and absolutely fabulous at tricking optical scanners. It's not uncommon to find one of these 'datapads' in a shadowrunner's pocket, bleeping away - sometimes at inopportune moments. Most wind up getting named Alex, Alexis, or Al. Jerec calls his ALXS 'Bubbles,' and it might be his best friend in the universe.
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