Shatterware
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Shatterware | |
| Player: @Kelenar | |
| Origin: | Technology |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Defender |
| Security Level: | 50 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Project Shatterware, Unit 0 |
| Known Aliases: | Veronica |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 2 years |
| Height: | 5' 3" |
| Weight: | 115 lbs. |
| Eye Color: | Brown |
| Hair Color: | Brown |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Librarian |
| Place of Birth: | Paragon City |
| Base of Operations: | Confidential |
| Marital Status: | Engaged to Petkau Effect |
| Known Relatives: | None |
| Known Powers | |
| Radiation Emission | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Mediocre engineer | |
| Equipment | |
| Combat Suit | |
| No additional information available. | |
Contents |
History
Project Shatterware was created to produce the next generation of police robots for Paragon City, intended to appear human and be just intelligent enough to make serviceable beat officers. Unfortunately, it was a low-bid project, and the winning proposal was put in by the Sverson Robotics Institute. By the contracted delivery date, the institute had not only failed to make a robot that performed adequately in combat, but the prototype model took several tries to start up successfully and couldn't remember its own name during field evaluations. The institute went bankrupt shortly afterward--this wasn't their first abysmal failure of engineering--and thus the project was never finished. The one extant prototype was too self-aware to simply destroy, but too expensive to finish. She was simply activated and allowed to go free for lack of a better option.
With thorough moral programming, Shatterware quite easily fell into the life of a heroine. She was still incredibly buggy, prone to catastrophic software failures and memory losses, but scavenged parts from villain gear were enough to keep her running, if not actually fix any of her problems. Toward this end, she also took up the occupation of librarian. After all, the money for all those upgrades had to come from somewhere. Once she had been in the crime-fighting business for long enough, she eventually met several technology-oriented metahumans who helped her with her maintenance and upgrades. Most notable among these was Amelia Gently, the criminal Petkau Effect, who fixed most of her memory issues and gave her the nickname of Veronica, which the robot took to eagerly.
Veronica had always been interested in learning how to act more human... and her time with Amelia just made it more and more obvious that there were just some things she could never learn about while remaining a robot. Though it took help from almost every contact she'd built up in two years of heroism, she arranged to have a human body vat-grown and for her consciousness to be magically transferred to it. Her original body, she hollowed out and turned into a power armor suit with Amelia's help, letting her continue fighting crime (mostly) unhindered. With some of the parts she stripped out of the inside, she has made a crude engagement ring and presented it to Amelia.
Appearance and Characteristics
Veronica is, to all appearances, a perfectly normal girl, somewhere in her late teenage years and short and scrawny to boot. When suited up, this changes a little--her combat suit is a good twice as heavy as she is, not to mention bulky and loud. Her speech is fairly unnatural-sounding, simultaneously too exciteable and too precise at the same time, and her expressions kind of match, rarely displaying an emotion between ecstatic and heartbroken. It's also fairly obvious to anybody who pays close attention that she's overwhelmingly clumsy outside of her suit.
Personality
Originally programmed as a crime-fighting unit, Veronica remains very law-abiding and helpful to a fault. Only recently has the idea that somebody can be both a criminal and a not-horrible person really dawned on her, and she's still sort of getting used to it. While she fortunately no longer has software defects to worry about, she's still fairly ignorant about human culture as a whole, with no sense of humor and very little concept of fear or anger. About the only thing that raises the latter in her is blatant disobedience of the law or threats against her friends, and even those are usually just met with stern warnings.
Veronica has very little in the way of hobbies--only recently has she grown enough from her crime-fighting robot roots that she can even consider spending time for herself when she could be fighting crime. The closest thing to a pasttime she can really be said to have is learning more about humans, which includes everything from people-watching to trying new foods just to figure out why people enjoy them.
Weaknesses
Outside of her suit, Veronica is less useful in a fight than most humans--in addition to being fairly scrawny, she's never had much of a reason to throw a punch in her life. She's also not too bright and far too trusting, so it's fairly easy for most people to talk her into just about anything if she doesn't have a friend around to set her straight.
