“Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make..” ~ I.J. Good, cryptologist

Syntelligence Tabernacle Zero Two 02-98563276 is a player character played by Born-on-board.

Preferred Plots:

1. Vance Bridge Road

• Height: 7 Feet, 3 inches
• Mass: 1200 lbs
• Measurements: NA

Build and Skin Color: Armored ball with squat, yet powerful legs. One set of weapon arms hang from the left and right sides of the ball (armament varies) , and a smaller set of arms hang under the large, red mono-eye in the center-front of the 'ball'. These smaller arms are shaped like human arms and possess about the same dexterity. Tabernacle's chassis is painted an olive drab. Several antenna stick out from a backpack unit that protrudes from the rear of the 'ball' body.

Eyes and Facial Features: Giant, red, lense, with an armored shutter that can be used to primitively simulate emotion, like 'narrowing' the unit's singular eye. The armored shutter also acts as an eyelid, and Tabernacle will often 'blink'. Several smaller red lenses are scattered about the front of the unit as redundant visual inputs or alternate vision modes.

Ears: None. There are speaker grills on the sides of the 'ball' for receiving auditory input, and a speaker grill on the front for auditory output.

Hair Color and Style: None.

Distinguishing Features: Body is covered in stickers, warning labels, and graffiti, with strange totems hanging from it at various intervals. Several large bags and pouches hangs from its armored form as well, allowing the unit to carry things that it deems interesting enough to save.

Personality: Tabernacle is described is a narrowly focused, driven individual. Oftentimes so consumed with mental calculation and thought (not an inconsiderable task, given the processing power of a Type Four's Think Tank) the freespacer will seem catatonic. When Tabernacle does speak, it is clipped, mechanically monotone, and brusque to the point of being rude. Anything that divert's Tabernacle's attention unwantedly is considered a nuisance at best. Its desire to think, create, and ponder is so great it will often network pieces of technology near it in an attempt to boost its processing power, often causing odd technological phenomena like computers suddenly displaying vast fields of incomprehensible text scrolling faster than the human eye can follow, printers vomiting out sheafs and sheafs of code decipherable only to Tabernacle, and nearby automata to begin to scribble equations onto any surface they can physically reach.

Its ability to process, collate, interpret, and act upon vast quantities of data make it invaluable in its job as a weapons researcher, where it has contributed to several high profile Nepleslian weapons programs, such as the Maximus RUSE ²⁾ and the Partizan rifle ³⁾.

Despite its machine-like desire to learn, process, and evaluate, Tabernacle is strangely sentimental, often collecting geegaws and trinkets from areas it visits and dedicating considerable time in placing them just so around its abode. Tabernacle is also fond of what it refers to as 'analog, visually transferable mediums' such as photographs and paper books, and will obsessively collect such items. It is not uncommon to see the massive, armored form of Tabernacle actually physically 'reading', using it's fine-manipulation arms to delicately turn pages on paper books. Although capable of digesting the information contained in such books instantly, it appears as if the unit enjoys taking its time when it can.

Tabernacle's greatest fascination is with thought itself, and it finds itself often contemplating intelligence and self-awareness as abstract concepts. For this reason alone Tabernacle will break itself from its reverie to talk to the people around it, oftentimes remotely controlling a more maneuverable synthetic body as a proxy, since its actual form looks more like a war machine. This often leads to confusing its 'proxies' as its actual body. Indeed, most of the business it conducts at NAM is done with long-range control of proxies, making Tabernacle a very useful employee, capable of literally being in several places at once.

• Likes: Pondering things, solving engineering problems, information, reading as if it were organic
• Dislikes: Distraction in all forms.
• Goals: Learn everything it possibly can.

Tabernacle was created in YE27 in a typical Freespacer enviroment, aboard a ship. Its creators, noting the new mind's incredible appetite for sensory input and knowledge, as well as its extremely rapid growth, commissioned a Type 4 chassis for the entity known as Tabernacle to be mounted to, where it served the traditional Type 4 role as a ship syntelligence backup for two years. During this time, Tabernacle developed a reticient, introverted personality, often dedicating large amounts of time studying and pondering his fellow freespacers, asking open-ended and hard to answer questions about the nature of thought and life.

It spent much of its time consulting the vast quantities of information stored in the Polysentience, before deciding that its life as a computer core backup just wasn't enough for it. It left its homeship, wandering nomadically among Freespacer colonies, seeking answers to questions that never seemed to be satisfactorially settled in its vast, cavern-like mind.

The Polysentience

Nightraider Piat Baker 95-1809-0103 ⁴⁾

Eventually, Tabernacle encountered Project Nightraider, a well-meaning, but misguided attempt to create a Neko-like soldier for the Free State's nepleslian benefactors caught the Type 4's attention, and it sought out the other members of the project.

Before Tabernacle, Project Nightraider had been a loosely organized band of 'idea spacers', full of plans and inspiration but with little ability to actually implement it. Tabernacle, with its considerable knowledge and ability to voraciously learn, turned it from a loose coalition of nobodies with a dream to an actual weapons program, creating several prototypes within months and the final result, a new, sentient Type 3 freespacer that served as the ultimate culmination of the program.

Tabernacle was incredibly proud of its creation, and lavished affection upon the being, spending hours, even days the other members weren't willing to spend teaching the newly created Spacer how to walk, talk, use her implemented systems, both verbally and through direct data transfer. It even bestowed a name upon its creation, Nightraider Piat Baker 95-1809-0103.

Despite all of this effort, when the results of Project Nightraider's work were shown to the Nepleslian government, they immediately denied it, citing that relying upon purpose-built soldiers had nearly driven the Nepleslian race extinct in the past - they had no desire to repeat what they had called 'the ID-SOL mistake', nor did they want to rely upon beings that had not chosen of their own will to defend Nepleslia. That made them, in their words, little better than the 'Yamataian slave state.'

The members of the group were disappointed, some even furious that their hard work was wasted. Piat herself was devastated that she had been rejected, and sank into a depression that was total, refusing to move or talk for even days. Project Nightraider was a failure, and they left the care of their only working prototype in the hands of Tabernacle, the one who had put the most effort into creating the new life they had so cruelly abandoned. With this, Tabernacle began to feel many emotions it had only read about before, sadness, guilt, worry; among others.

It had created life, and now it was at a loss. Piat's condition grew worse and worse by the day, and despite everything Tabernacle tried, it couldn't make the being it had created and come to love like a child snap out of it. Piat had been denied her purpose, and she wasted away under the gaze of Tabernacle's glowing red monoeye.

Having tried everything to snap her out of her fugue, Tabernacle took drastic measures - it accessed Piat's memories, downloading them to its Think Tank and wiping her brain. This left her with nothing but her name and the things it had taught her, without the knowledge or memory of who, or where they had come from. It removed the memory of the failure of Project Nightraider, its members including sadly, itself. Tabernacle's greatest creation would never again know who had made it, or why it was made - she would get a fresh start. It later put the girl up for adoption at a Nepleslian orphanage, hoping that someone would come along and give her a life Tabernacle never could.

Those memories are perhaps Tabernacle's most prized possession, kept safe in the event that Piat should ever want them again, and constantly replayed and remembered, to make sure the data stayed readable - at least, that's what Tabernacle tells itself.

It wasn't all bad though. Tabernacle applied for a job at Nepleslian Arms and Munitions, and the company, noting the Type 4's incredible technical prowess and work on Project Nightraider, hired it on the spot. Tabernacle now works there, at a facility on planet Vanderberg. using its incredible knowledge to improve and create Nepleslian weapons.. Although the Type 4 still feels regret over what it had to do, it takes solace in that its creations contribute to the defense of Nepleslia and The Free State, just as Project Nightraider had originally intended.

Tabernacle is no exception to the rule of thumb that freespacers are good with ships, and can pilot a staggering variety of vessels, both large and small. It has not had much opportunity to use these skills in recent times, but the knowledge lay available within the archives of its mind.

Even by the high standards of a Type Four Freespacer, Tabernacle is incredibly adept with its Mindware, capable of near instantaneous parsing of information, as well as eidetic recall capabilities, of which it often uses to its fullest potential. It uses these abilities constantly, giving it precise control over the incredibly capability Mindware provides.

Despite not living in a traditional Spacer enviroment, Tabernacle has found plenty of ways to use the innate networking capabilities it possesses in new and interesting ways, often benignly hijacking nearby technology to boost its already significant processing power, or using this to control proxy bodies to allow for more convenient communication and travel.

Tabernacle is skilled in the design, creation, and manufacture of weapons, mostly as a byproduct of its chosen occupation and experience gained during Project Nightraider.

Though it carries the typically pacifist attitude of the average freespacer, Tabernacle will not hesitate to defend itself if attacked, and indeed, its size, weight, and native armament makes it a deadly foe indeed, if a little clumsy.

Tabernacle can speak almost any language, and use most any communication device thanks to its ability to access the vast stores of data sequestered in the Polysentience and its Think Tank. It uses this frequently for communication with sentient beings it comes across, due to its innate interest in them.

Its physical body is large and ponderous, but very, very strong. The weapon arms it uses can mount, lift, and stabilize most power-armor scale weaponry, and its chassis can take incredible punishment. However, Tabernacle is physically very large, and often prefers to control smaller bodies by proxy in order to make moving around easier.

Tabernacle has the following items:

'Baba Yagas' ⁵⁾ x3 - Tabernacle often uses this trio of affectionately named Militant-class automatas to represent it in areas where it either cannot fit, or where a 1200 pound armored synthetic body would be considered rude. The bodies contain no actual intelligence, instead mounting simple digital storage devices that Tabernacle can transfer part of its consciousness to, allowing them to perform tasks that Tabernacle dictates. They are each armed and configured according to NUv1.1a “Militant” variation standards. The processing power of the Freespacer type 4 is such that Tabernacle can control one, two, or all three automatas at the same time, with plenty to spare. These Baba Yagas are kept near it all times, and are often used to represent it on the same planet that Tabernacle lives on.

- Numerous other proxy bodies or vessels spread throughout NAM worksites, allowing Tabernacle a physical presence far away from where its body is physically located. These bodies are usually semi-disposable, of varying designs, and are of simpler construction than the Baba Yagas. Wherever NAM goes, there is usually some Tabernacle presence.

- An eclectic collection of books and trinkets too numerous to mention.

- Two 'Rude Gesture' autocannons that it usually mounts on its weapon arms. ⁶⁾

-Type 4 chassis ⁷⁾

- One apartment. Said apartment has an array of powerful antennas and communications equipment on its roof, allowing connection with far flung 'Spacer ships for access to the Polysentience.

Tabernacle currently receives a regular paycheck from Nepleslian Arms and Munitions. Most of the money goes into its rent, maintenance and upkeep of its chassis, and personal spending.