I just had a thought. I can't do my android character until you come up with the design on yours. Since they are from the same race, they have to look generally the same. Like height, appendages and the like. I'll work on my human here and get him up soon, but I'll be waiting for your android before putting up mine :P

Name: Erland de Miscot

Race: Human

Age: 26

Height: 5'6”

Weight: 128lbs

Hair: Chocolate Brown, mid back length, bangs are choppy and messy just above eye level, the rest of the hair is kept in a ponytail most of the time.

Eyes: Strikingly Green

Skin: Alabaster

Build: Slight, only very faint muscle definition in arms and legs from fencing.

Clothes: He wears a variety of ankle length tailcoats that flare out from the waist and move readily, made of very supple material. He wears flamboyant undershirts, the kind with frilled cuffs, with a simple ribbon bow tie of varying colors. For his lower half he favors skin tight black riding pants and high black leather boots.

Accessories: A silver cravat chain with the mark of his station dangling from the middle of it. The mark is a silver eagle those of his station from Earth have worn since the council began.

Powers/Skills(If Applicable): No powers, but he is rather skilled in fencing and has made many an enemy with his vile yet creative tongue.

General Personality: As representative of nearly the weakest race in the alliance he puts on a very strong, arrogant front. He knows that if he doesn't keep up the air of importance he's likely to be removed from his position, so he is vigilant and has never slipped up publicly. He has a sort of anti-charisma which has most other races looking down upon him personally, but also respectful of his gall causing them to have great respect for the race on a whole. When he's alone he's actually very mild mannered, having a love for music and ancient history. Also, when no one's around and he's able to relax, he startles easily and is prone to swearing when he is, which he doesn’t do any other time.

Background: His family owns a very influential interstellar trading company. He was being groomed to take over the business one day, but on a particularly long trip me and his father were forced to share a ship with some officials and there he met the then Earth Representative. They spent hours talking to one another during the week long trip, and he took a shine to the boy. Upon arrival the man and his father went into negotiations and by the end of it, Erland was practically sold to the Representative. He didn't see his family for several years after that. Instead he traveled with the man, and trained to replace him some day as Representative. Over two years ago at the death of his mentor Erland took over as the youngest ever Earth Representative, and has since fought tooth and nail to not just maintain Earth's place or respect amongst the council, but to surpass it. Because of his near constant busyness since the age of 12 he's had very little time out of the lime light and as such has never really developed a personal life. He took up reading and music as a way to pass the time, and has never stopped fencing in honor of his family's legacy.

What do you think of Erland, before I vanish off into the ether :P

Interesting fashions in the future...

Also hard for me to believe he was groomed for the job since he was that young. When I was 12 I still wanted to be an astronaut I think... But human society is basically whatever you want it to be here, so I have no complaints.

Some children, here on modern Earth, are groomed from birth for things. It's a type of brainwashing in actuality. It makes them "Know their place in the world" so to speak from a very very young age, and if done right, they won't have mental breakdowns later in life. They excel in what they are trained to be, and almost never question if they are better off the way they are.

OH! And as for his fashion, it's just him. He's a fan of ancient earth, so he wears REALLY old style clothing. The assistants wear. . . Whatever :P

I can't think of any modern day examples of that. But I do believe that it happened throughout much of history.

Of course, now many of us in the "Modern" world have infinite choices which often contributes to depression and wasting most of your teens and twenties trying to figure out what you are good at and like doing. Not saying it isn't better, but neither system is without problems.

Name: Leopold (Leo) Dendri
Race: Human
Age: 32
Height: 5'9”
Weight: 150 lbs

Hair: Short (ear-length), dark brown, parted from the side
Eyes: Hazel
Skin: Tanned gold brown
Build: muscular, but not without some fat around the edges
Clothes: Modern black suit with white shirt and blue tie
Accessories: An old style male analog watch, so that he does not have to pull out his cell phone during important meetings.

Powers/Skills(If Applicable): He's an excellent tenor and a decent pianist. He also builds and programs robots in his spare time and does other programming projects to make his life easier. He's also an excellent teacher, and when he's on Earth, he volunteers and gives talks at youth groups about the importance of staying in school, discovering your passions, learning math and science, and studying the universe.

General Personality: Leo is a fairly laid back guy, but he can be a skilled negotiator if he has to be. He's talented, but he does not care for politics, and is not skilled at the “cloak and dagger” method of politics that the Diplomatic Council requires for promotion. That being said, he mostly got into the ambassadorial service to see the world and interact with other species, and he is wholly unconcerned with advancement now that he's at a place where he can travel. Sometimes his friends and family ask him if he minds being a subordinate to someone younger than he is, but the honest answer is that he really doesn't. Erland's position at such a young age is unusual, and Leo's own is only slightly less unusual. He thinks that the Ambassador worked hard to be where he's at, and really has no designs on the job from here on out. He is not quick to anger, and will often try to diffuse a tense situation with a joke, where he can appropriately get away with it.

Background: Leo grew up in a middle class family in a suburban area. His mother was a computer engineer and his father was a programmer. He loved technology and had a talent for it. For many years, he was set on becoming an engineer. But as he grew older, he realized that he wanted to see the universe, to meet people of other races and learn their stories. Humanity is still in a tenuous state with other races, and mostly keeps to itself on it's own terrformed worlds and colonies. He believes in what humans could learn from other races, and decided he would make his goal in life to help their relations. He's gotten as far as he has in the ranks of the Diplomatic Corps despite being one of the few there who did not act “like a politician.” This is because he is consistently honest, mostly hard-working, and owns up to his own mistakes, traits that many found refreshing in the Corps.

I don't hate him at all, he's very entertaining, and looks fun to play! Also, the shared love of music will help our two characters get along I think :P

I'm glad you like him! I should make some more progress on these rps soon, and hopefully pick up the pace a little. I have a lot of rps right now, and some real life stuff going on as well.

No problem. I'm patient. Just ask me 18 other RP partners :P

I'm having some trouble with the Android's background, because I'm trying to do his racial background and abilities as well.

I'm thinking that the Androids were created by a race that used them originally as laborers and soldiers, doing the most dangerous and difficult work. But that race killed themselves off in a brutal war. I'm also thinking that they can connect telepathically and transfer their memories on their own homeworld. But then I realized that would make them essentially immortal.

Do you have any ideas to add since you have a character from this world too?

As laborers they could have parts of their designs that are adaptable to whichever job they undertake. Like, your guy could have extra memory space so when he contacts all the other races he isn't in danger of forgetting anything. This would make is so that he's a little less "Tough" I guess you could say since, if they wanna keep the same all around shape, the memory banks would take up space that would otherwise be used for "Muscle" or "Weapons" or stuff like that. Your thoughts

We could go this route: They can connect with one another over long distances since it made work easier, but once a droid "Dies" the only memories they can leave behind are ones recorded externally. This was to keep them in line. Each android can remember interaction with the dead droid, but any shared memories are erased. They kept the feature to help those left behind to move on and not dwell on the shared memories. What cha think?

That makes some sense, but an android would already have the memory capacity to remember everything, as computer storage space is already pretty cheap. There would be no reason to do that.

I imagine it would have been like that originally... but if you could have immortality, to just transfer your memories into a new body, and all of your friends could too... why wouldn't you?

But that's what I'm saying, they CAN'T share memories. It, in my mind, would add a a bit of mortality that would make them more sympathetic in the eyes of the council.

And making it so that the androids are basically perfect without some sorts of modifications would be kinda boring, don't cha think? So maybe not storage space, something else that a guy like him would find useful in the job.

I'm thinking about it in terms of what's already possible in computing and robotics now. Cloud storage, centralized computing of connected machines, extremely fast calculation times, all of that. It seems like androids would have all of that built in, to me. Hell, we even have computer programs that can create art now.

The immortality aspect of it would still be a natural result. If their memories can already be stored in computers, then just as you can do with computer files, you could transfer them back into a new body later. Hell, the only thing stopping us from doing that now is that we don't understand enough about the brain to encode the data from our organic computers into binary ones. But keep in mind, immortality has its issues too. What do you do to avoid overpopulation, for instance? There would have to be laws in place that prevent more than a few thousand new androids from being created each year. But then you have a society without much in the way of "new" generations and the new ideas those could bring. Why not explore those kinds of issues instead of just ignoring the natural logical conclusions of their origins?

The main setbacks that come through in my androids are often social and conversational issues, making them more human, which are proving to be the major difficulties in robotics. If these androids were built for labor, especially with the ability to just share knowledge and memories, there would be little need for social skills and conversation, and they also would not have developed it much since the Reawakening because they don't need it. Additionally, the "muted" emotions would also hinder this. So what if we made them have more difficulty with that and those types of things? Our characters could have improved subroutines for social skills for diplomatic purposes, but they would still be less skilled than organics.

I wasn't going to base the androids off of human tech at all. So, to me, it doesn't matter what we as humans can do now, here , in this reality. My suggestions were for a completely different universe.

I was saying that their memories CAN'T be stored in computers. Something they themselves kept from their original designs to avoid immortality. Something as smart as an android would understand how foolish ever lasting life would be, and take steps to ensure that they do not become too robotic. If all a being is is the sum of their memories, then what makes them different from robots? I would like the idea that even these artificial beings have the equivalent of a soul, so the idea that they don't have life expectancies and the urge to have children regularly makes them more robotic than anything else. I wanna stay away from natural conclusions, and come up with stuff far outside the realms of what were here in our reality have come to expect.

Again, I don't want them to be able to share memories and knowledge, it's too robotic. Sure, an internal communication system, but only for talking, not for downloads. It would, yes, give them socializing issues. I like the idea of bad social skills. And what do you mean "Reawakening"? Are you saying you want to do a thing where they were once mindless drones or something? If so I really think we may have a little mix up when it comes to defining things. In my mind, Androids are built to NOT be mindless. Those are robots. Robots are the computers with limbs. Androids have true AI.

So, I had a very specific idea on the background and development of the Android race, but the truth is, I don't think you would like it. I've been putting off explaining it because it's a long explanation and well, you just aren't going to agree with me and I don't want to argue. So I'm willing to go with whatever you have... for the most part, within this one limitation.

I cannot, and will not, write any kind of technology that is limited for story sake alone. If we already know some amazing things that are possible with computers, I won't write an android race that has less than what we have now, or really what we will likely have in 20 years. It just makes my engineering senses hurt. The fact that they were not made by humans doesnt matter... it's a matter of what we know is physically possible now. So you can't use limitations like "memory constraints" or "processing restraints" when it's clear that computer-technology based limitations would not be a thing here. Instead, I'd really prefer you think about the development of technology and computers, and focus on limitations that a computerized society would have in those terms. Things like emotional arguments, social skills (in 2014 still can't program a robot that can effectively navigate social circles).

I just have one simple request when it comes to these guys, other than that I would not presume to take control of the development of our joint project her: I do not want them to be immortal. I do not see androids as needing to be a "Computerized society" and I have talked to a few computer nerds who came up with plausible ways for the memories and such to be unable to live forever as to not let any android live past a certain age, with the level of technology we have right now, however since you have turned down all my ideas thus far I would like to hear your ideas for making the race mortal. It is the only thing I ask for, and the only thing I feel like putting my foot down on, so if you wanna pose your history feel free. I will vow now not to outright reject anything that has nothing to do with the mortality of the race. *Raises hand* I swear. I'm not as selfish as I seem, i simply tend to have very strong feeling over the oddest things, and my stubborn side tends to nag at me until we work out something that we both can agree upon that gives the least amount of compromise on both sides.

Alright, I am fine with them not being immortal. I think that when it is time for their bodies to die, then their memories and knowledge gained could be uploaded into another storage device, but that's not the same as being immortal.

Anyway, would you mind if we put just this story on the backburner for a while? Real life is getting quite busy at the moment, and I'm still in about 14 other stories, including our other two. So I figure we could just preserve this idea for a time down the road when we both have a little less to do? We have two awesome stories going, and I want to be able to focus more on the ones I have instead of feeling overwhelmed. I'm going to stop watching the thread if that's ok, but we can just restart it if we decide to rekindle this idea in a few months?

Okay, consider this ||ed