Theme 2 - WHO ARE THE VANGUARD? [3/3]
Vanguard,
Your journey began with an invitation to Zarzakh extended by the Arkombine, promising stability and opportunity for all warclones in partnership with the Deathless Circle. Whether of your own volition or among those recovered in raids on SARO’s ‘Confinement Archives’, your imprint—the base personality, skill, and memory data a warclone infomorph is compiled from—was brought to Zarzakh and loaded into the Fulcrum VR. Offered a choice of either awaiting a brighter future in tranquil but static residence in this inner world or voluntarily converting your imprint to a novel format to join the “next evolution” of warclone technology, you chose the latter. This name given to this new generation symbolized its developers’ mission of making every warclone spearhead of their own path: burning toward independence, you are Vanguard of no other destiny but your own.
The seeds of the Vanguard were sown years prior to The Deathless’ arrival in Zarzakh. The first was Lifegiver’s identification of overlapping non-mutual memory recall as the primary trigger for the first-gen’s enigmatic psychosis; Second was a realization that first-gen infomorphs could be kept stable when residing in a virtuality; Last of all came a discovery that first-gens’ Sleeper element conferred seamless compatibility with Jove biology and neural interface biotech. Aboard The Fulcrum, these would culminate in the Vanguard imprint format. For first-gen warclones, conversion to Vanguard entails compositing one’s ‘Soldier’ and ‘Sleeper’ elements into a fully unified imprint, with any non-mutual episodic and emotional memory suppressed, filtered, and gradually recompiled into a singular partition – producing a new identity that is more than the sum of its parts. Second-gen, conversion involves a careful pairing with curated data from the Sleeper element of another to produce the same compatibility with Jove biology while avoiding the first-gens’ corruption and keeping memories far more intact.
While residing in the Fulcrum VR, your experience as an infomorph is shaped through a “front-end” interface strapped onto underlying Jovian systems. Through this, you may choose—among other interactions—to link with available Vanguard blanks in the world of reality. On deployment, a FTL link is established between The Fulcrum and a waiting blank, into which your infomorph is shifted in a manner resembling a long-distance version of the Sleepers’ enclave coupling. This is achieved through The Quartermaster’s main contribution to Vanguard design so far: a direct integration of Jovian FTL biotech into Sleeper implant architecture, with sufficient bandwidth to keep an infomorph synced with its imprint in the Fulcrum VR. Of added benefit is its ability to hotload data such as interface protocols, programs, or schematics. Between acquiring source data for the tech that inspired his past innovations in fields of clone mapping and neural interfacing, and requesting recovery of Mordu tech based on R&D pilfered from his facilities, one can only wonder at what projects The Quartermaster is pursuing in the depths of The Fulcrum.
Contracts offered in deployments are distributed through a private service of a FTL job brokerage framework controlled by a group in partnership with—but separate from—the Deathless Circle. It is believed that contracts from a third party operating as ‘Handler Morituri’ aimed at suppressing Insurgencies and acquiring data on the Vanguard appeared due to fraternization of whatever identity lies behind the alias with this external group. The Deathless’ seeming acceptance of these circumstances has led many to believe that the Circle’s true goals lie somewhere far beyond the frontlines of their associates’ Insurgencies.
o7
