ANDIS-147

ANDIS-147, Android Mechanic
Player: Gibert

Description
ANDIS-147 careened into Absalom Station near space several years ago on a small nearly-destroyed ship. After unloading their injured crew, they slipped away into the press of Dock 24 into a life of anonymity. After spending several years as a deck hand on station, ANDIS managed to scrape together enough credits to lease a dry dock on level 23 where they founded ANDISCO Engineering. With their apprentice Nezumi, they provide quality service for fair prices to discriminating customers. Nezumi is learning quickly, and these days ANDIS finds less and less need to step in. As the years creep forward, ANDIS considers their next step, renewal, with a mix of excitement and regret. Maybe the next inhabitant will find true adventure in this ancient frame. Or perhaps, there’s still time yet.

Backstory
“I do not know, but whatever it is, I hope to never meet it.”

An errant sliver of memory in the being known as ANDIS-147 often comes up. Sometimes it manifests as random firing between their Android brain and their Exocortex, sometimes ANDIS simply says the words aloud as a mantra. It is the end of a joke they had told in another life, when their frame hosted another soul. Somehow, every so often these memories would flare up. The fragments were and were not theirs.

The android known as ANDIS-147 has been concerned with memory since they can recall. Their memory begins in the year 248 AG. External forces seemed to have erased the first 30 years of ANDIS’ memory, both a boon and a hindrance, as when they awoke they found themselves bound in servitude, doing slave labor for a mining corporation on a world far from the Pact System.

The labor camp was home to dozens of their Android cohorts, and ANDIS, since they can remember, have permanently captured the faces and vocal patterns of all those met in that time. Many of them left their bodies, dying in that time of hardship, but not ANDIS. They were stubborn, and pledged that their life would not be so easily erased as their memory from the universe.

Of that time ANDIS has a full recollection. The rock they were forced to mine was designated RBG-17692, though the miners scrawled the words “Depthis” on the entrance to the camp. That is how ANDIS recalls the place, speaking to their time on Depthis. They remember taskmasters come and gone. They remember the service engineer Jugon, a ill-tempered Human that drank intoxicants like water, ANDIS remembers well how Jogun died. Accidents happen in the mines all the time, usually it was the Android slaves that take the damage, but that day Jogun was too drunk to avoid the falling equipment. ANDIS thought he looked rather small lying beneath the main carriage of the extractor, his blood was absorbed into the porous stone bedrock of Depthis. Jogun ordered ANDIS to remove the equipment, a task well within their capabilities, but ANDIS did not comply. It was the first command they ever disobeyed.

There were others too though that were worse still. ANDIS recalls the one designated as Darius whom they met many years after Jogun. Darius thought of himself as a scientist, and often experimented on the Androids under his command. He rewrote the slave’s memory to store pain received in long term recall instead of short term. Darius was too smart for his own good and was promoted off-planet. While decades have passed since then, ANDIS is sure that they would like to repay Darius should their paths ever cross again.

A half a century passed in that place. In that time many died. The geological read-outs suggested that only 1/3 of the mineral deposits on Depthis had been mined. ANDIS realized that they would expire on that rock. So when a Vesk task force attacked Depthis, ANDIS and 4 others disobeyed the command to stay and fight, and took a small skiff and floated away. One compatriot suffered damages and expired, while the remaining three opted for renewal, and left their bodies behind choosing to not remember any of their time on Depthis. ANDIS remained. They stored everything they saw in their Exocortex and waited several months before a Steward transport picked them up and took them to Absalom Station

It is here that ANDIS has remained since, in the city at the center of the Drift, Absalom Station. Their expertise in repairing equipment their whole life turned into a profession servicing ships from a leased dry-dock. Preparing for their own renewal, the Android known as ANDIS realized that before their time expired that they would take one last look at the Universe, and took notice of the Starfinder Society’s open call to adventure…

Design Background
When I first spoke to Gibert about making a Starfinder character he had a lot of ideas. When we were all talking about what kind of characters we were going bring to the table, I don’t think that we had someone that wanted to play a Mechanic. We didn’t know too much about the class then, but when we got the Paizo class preview I think that put the class over the top for Gibert. The option to have a little robotic buddy was there, but the very interesting Exocortex was too tantalizing.

Next when Gibert settled on the Android race I was excited. I had read a little about their ancient origins in the Pathfinder universe, and was excited to read more about their future selves. The backstory and concept for ANDIS came naturally, almost all from Gibert’s brain, and a lot of the ideas about memory, history and the ghost in the machine that you find in a lot of great Sci-fi are things that we can explore through ANDIS.

Vital Statistics

 * Android (Themeless) Mechanic (Exocortex)
 * HP: 10,    SP: 7,    RP: 5
 * EAC: 12,     KAC: 13  (Flight Suit, Stationwear)
 * STR: 10, DEX: 15, CON: 12, INT: 18, WIS: 10, CHA: 8
 * FORT: +3,  REF: +4, WILL: +0