Oraki - A New Look at Robots

Full Description
The Oraki may span the full range of human sizes and more, ranging from between 1.5m to 3m in height, though they typically retain a human-like body shape and proportion. Skin tone, hair color, and eye color may range the full spectrum of the rainbow. Male-analogues are typically larger than females, and commonly are darker in color, with true black, sapphire blue, brown, ash grey, and burgundy being common for both skin and hair, while females are often paler in color, favoring pastel shades of blue, pink, white, yellow, and green. There is, however, no set rule.

Being primarily made of complex metallioids rather than the CHON chemistry of carbon based life forms, an Oraki will usually tip the scales at six to ten times the weight of an equivalently sized organic humanoid. It is not uncommon for larger males to mass over a ton and a half.

Being mechanical in origin, the Oraki are often stronger and far more durable than organics, able to sustain and slowly regenerate even the most terrible wounds, so long as their central core is undamaged. This requries the presence of sufficient ‘nutrients’, which can be ingested like a human’s food, or, in the case of the most severe wounds, the Oraki can be thrown into a nutrient tank, where he can wait out the injury. As a rule of thumb, it will take about three weeks to regenerate a limb or other major subsystem. This regeneration is essentially the only healing available to Oraki, however, for they are entirely foreign to all but the most specialized of doctors, and magic, should it exist, is tuned to the needs of men. They are exceptionally sensitive to EMP and electrical weapons, and particularly paranoid humans have created several strains of nanite ‘bio-weapons’ which can be used against them.

The same mechanical origins means that they require a different sort of food, typically sold as a semi-flavored ‘paste’ of various metal oxides and required hydrocarbons. It is poisonous to a human, but without it, the Oraki will eventually wear down and stop. Likewise, human food holds no nutritional value, and while it can be consumed, and even enjoyed, the Oraki must still eat their special food.

The primary energy source for the Oraki is a miniature fusion reactor within their core unit. One function of the paste food is to fuel this reactor with hydrogen, and to replace the lithium energy collection material, which is slowly converted to useless beryllium.

Oraki are capable of sexual reproduction, though they require a certain level of external assistance to complete the reproductive cycle. During a merging not entirely unlike sex between two organic beings, generative data is exchanged between the male-analogue and female-analogue. This data is combined semi-randomly, resulting the template for a new and unique individual. During gestation, the female’s body is able to create the core to this new template, but it is unable to start the reactor that will bring (independant) life to the child. This core consists of the mini-reactor that will provide energy to the nanomachines that make up the body’s cellular structure, as well as core processing and memory banks. The core is then laid, much like a round, brilliantly colored egg, where it placed in an Oraki Gestation Chamber. This chamber, and the devices hooked to it, are specifically designed to jump start the reactor, and to provide the nutrients the core-unit needs to finish the building of the finished body. The female body requires about two and a half months to generate the core, after which the core must spend almost an entire earthling year inside its Gestation Chamber. The newborn Oraki emerges roughly the size of human in their early teenage years, and requires approximately ten to fifteen further years to reach his or her adult size, during which he must be raised the same as any organic child.

While it is not yet confirmed, the average Oraki is projected to have a functional life span of approximately 1-1.5 thousand years before degradation of the core causes them to begin to malfunction.

Adult Oraki generally prefer the technical and warlike fields, though, peculiarly, many Oraki females can be found in the organic medicine fields, where their immunity to biological diseases gives them a certain advantage. Some few enhancement systems for the Oraki have begun to be developed by ‘their’ scientists, allowing for the occasional interesting trick, but the majority of the Oraki have no special abilities beyond their origin… so far.

Despite their regenerative abilities and great longitivity, the Oraki are neither immortal, nor unkillable. While massive damage to the core will destroy them, EMP and electrical effects can do permanent damage to their minds and bodies in subtle and curious ways. Should they survive the short term effects of these, there is little prediction of future events - a disease not entirely unlike cancer may crop up if portions of their nanites are damaged in the correct way.

The Oraki have no truly independent society as of yet - There are a scant few thousand individuals with only a few centuries of history. However, they have begun to make the first steps towards the beginnings of such - A scant few holidays, a tradition of naming, a home of sorts.

Half through stealth, half through bold faced courage, the Oraki have staked a claim to a world not far from the home of humanity, one they have named simply ‘Sanctuary’. It is a a cold and dead world, made nearly entirely of the heavy metals the Oraki require for life, the white dwarf star having long since scorched away the world’s mantle when it swelled to a red giant aeons ago. Here, burrowed beneath the surface, the splinters of humanity bold enough to advocate genocide against them are not strong enough to root them out, and as an (strongly opposed) applicant for membership in the United Worlds, the powers that can destroy them must hold their hand, for the time being.

A portion of the young Oraki born on Sanctuary are sent out into the galaxy, as workers and diplomats - They must acclimate humanity to their existance, and the best way to do this is to coexist. Meanwhile, on Sanctuary, construction of the world and expansion of the race continues.

Each of these newborn children that is born undergoes a brief ritual, the ‘Blooding of Orak’, in which they are annointed in a crimson fluid, though not real blood, in rememberance of the birth of their race. Once per decade, too, is that day of their birth commemorated, as all pause in what they are doing for a brief moment, simultaneously, a unitary moment of silence.

Until he is able to choose his own name, the Oraki are referred to simply as the ‘son/daughter of (mother) and (father). It is usually around one to two years that the newborn is sufficiently facile with language and understanding to choose his name. These are generally descriptive of the personality that the Oraki thinks he desires to live up to, with men often choosing names related to the sky, avians, or musical inclinations, while female names are often earthy, feline, or poetic. This name is then formally appended with a six digit time stamp, denoting the
six digit Sanctuary Local Year(roughly 4.5 Terran years) and Deci-year of his birth. For example, Hawk-0074.4 once desired to be of great observational ability, and was born 74.4 Sanctuary years after the founding of Sanctuary, while Grana-0145.0 considers herself a strong and stable personality. They are called ‘Hawk’ and ‘Grana’ by people they meet, as the date is only used for databank differentiation.

History
They called him mad. Mad. But he would show them. He would make a machine into a man. So went the work of Rudolph Orak, master nanitist. If colonies of nanomachines could work together like simple cellular colonies, why not emulate the most complex machine of them all? And so he began to pour the family fortunes into his experiments, each new breakthrough funding the next, and the next, and so on. His assistants were hand picked, well-screened. His bank trails were difficult, exceedingly complex. He would succeed, Neo-Luddites be damned. But the weft of the project was too much for him, and he would never see success. But as he expired, his grandson would be there to take up the project. And so it continued, generation of genius raised to the task for four entire centuries, occasionally skipping from one to the next, and dancing in hiding from world to world. Twice they were caught, the descendants of Orak, men and women slain, equipment destroyed, but always there was a backup plan.

And finally, it was done. A few short weeks after the first few of the new beings awoke, and looked upon each other, the door to the complex caved in beneath the blows of those who decried the intrusion upon God’s territory. Theirs would be a baptism of blood, but they had arrived, and now, these children, these Oraki, they would need to find their way through the universe.

The First Generation:

Lifthrasir, the prototype

Lilith, the mother

Acknowledgement
This submission is inspired by, and possibly derivative of, the Sega Genesis game Phantasy Star III, and it’s companion material.