Christopher Jack - Jace Allens

Name: Christopher Jack / Jace Allens
Race: Novarai
Gender: Male / Male
Age: 35+ / 22+
Height: 6'3" / 5'9"
Weight: 250ish lbs / 160ish lbs (A heavier weight is due to the heavy density of the metal alloys of the android shells. Without them, Jack / Jace weighs about 10 lbs.)
TIAMAT, Civilian or Supporter: TIAMT / Civilian
Occupation: Machine Assassin, Droid-Hacker / Valet

Likes:
Loud noises, crowds, Anti-machine music, rebelling against the Machine, drinking hard liquor, vintage clothing, drunk people, fighting, Earth history pre-dating Ultimasyl's creation, telling and hearing stories (particularly stories that involve violence), colorful citizens / Quietness, solitude, things that smell sweet, nice people, dancing, history, learning new things, fitting in, children, water, breezes, vests, and hats.

Dislikes:
Machine authority, droids, government officials, Machine Supporters, tight-clothing, cold places, and those who pick on the weak. / Rude, mean, or hurtful people, cold places, watching people cry, making others upset, bullies, the Machine's rule, and droids.

Hopes:
To see the Machine overrun.
To be the one to infiltrate and destroy the Machine.
To one day no longer have the need to be Christopher Jack at all.
/
For Ultimasyl to one day feel like home.
To see the Machine destroyed so that no one else has to be hurt.
To reunite with his fellow Earthbound Novarai family.

Fears: Extreme Cold
Losing more of his family and friends to this battle against the Machine
Failing his mission and dishonoring his essence
Bonding and assimilating with another living creature
Being exposed and rejected by his friends
Being a danger to the other members of TIAMAT

Personality: It is a difficult task to try and sum up Jack / Jace's personality in a few simple words because he does in fact partake in two very distinctfully different personalities, and a not-so-different one. The assassin in this odd Novarai is more like his alter ego, and is the personality that is the furthest from his true self. Christopher Jack draws influence from old stories about pirates and heros, and thus is an energetic, enthusastic brute with a penchant for playful mockery and reckless heroism.

He behaves like a monster hunter, with the Droids as the beasts, and is happy to tell mostly elaborated stories about his valiant battles when in the safety of anti-Machine places such as the Technomancer. It is rare to see him outside of his work, however, though he has built himself enough of a reputation among rebel forces that rumors about his wild personality are often somewhat exaggerated.

While on the job, he is stealthy, swift, and usually undetectable thanks to his odd nature of being neither organic nor synthetic. He makes it a point to be noticed after a victory, before he disappears without a trace. Because very few people ever see him outside of his missions, he is elusive and hard for Supporters and officials to track, and thus far, he has never been caught.

Jace, however, is almost the exact opposite of Christopher Jack, as the purpose of this identity is to blend into his environment. One of the reasons that Jack is able to disappear so smoothly into the network of Ultimasyl is because he is able to become Jace who is, by all things considered, a forgettable, average youth with a pretty face. Working as a valet at the Technomancer, Jace is a quiet, soft-spoken, and extremely well-mannered young man who does his best to be a wall-flower and go unnoticed by the general public. He is calm, gentle, passive, and nothing at all like his enthusiastic alter-ego, though they do share the trait of both being elusive to those around them. He does not enjoy speaking about his past, because he does not enjoy lying to those who ask, but should they do, there is always a convenient cover-story to offer just in case. He seems shy and introverted, but this is just a cover to keep him out of the spotlight.

Generally speaking, the alien that beholds both of these personalities is an odd combination of both Jack and Jace, though he tends to lean more towards Jace's personality instead of Jack's. Jack is an elaborate character crafted to be as different from Jace as possible to throw off the Machine and its' officials' tracks, though part of his adventurous, playful personality still resides in the alien that crafted him. He would not be able to portray such a man so easily were this not so. Outside of both skins, his consciousness serves as his name, though he identifies more with the name Jace than Jack. As an alien, he serves his mission as his primary focus, and will do anything he can to aide in this strange, underground war of man versus Machine.

History: Jace, like all Novarai, was born on the planet by which his species was named, Novarai. Each Novarai is created by a branch of the central consciousness, which resembles something like a spiderweb at the planet's core, and each of these branches regard themselves as a family that is known by human researchers as a cluster. Though the humans have named each of these individual clusters, the Novarai do not identify with such labels, for each cluster and each branch is connected to all the others, and as a such, all Novarai share a common bond of consciousness. It allows them to read each other's minds and thoughts, though breaking away from the branch, as all Novarai do upon maturity, separates them from the hive mentality. This is how the Novarai communicate, through streams of thought and touch rather than vocalized words or sounds, though they are capable of mimicking human speech when necessary.

Jace, if you must know, comes from the cluster Alreyna, which breaches the planet's surface on the southern hemisphere. These clusters are of a harder nature, exposed to the harsher elements of an already harsh climate, and built to endure, so naturally when those of the higher government within his society found that they could no longer ignore the possible threat the Machine posed, it was the Alreyna cluster that they chose to fight their battle. With a strong aversion to governing artificial intelligence, the Novarai do not fear technology, but only technology in the wrong hands, or those devices that are capable enough of being wrong all on their own. The Machine is not a hostile being as far as their planet is concerned, but the Novarai are ever thinking of the future, and should such a being overrun its people, should it ever become ambitious, it could be dangerous.

This is their reasoning for sending a small elite force to the bustling city of Ultimasyl, and with them went Jace. At first they were meant only to observe, to effectively blend into the society in order to act as guards in waiting, should the Machine take a turn for the worst. Equipped with android bodies, they did just that for some time. After several years living in such a domain, however, many of the Alreyna Novarai grew sympathetic to the plight of the innocent people being murdered on a near monthly basis by the reckless nature of the Droids. With their unique abilities to take over and destroy machines from the inside out, the Novarai were the perfect warriors for the disposing of Droids. Their war was waged in secret, however, picking at the factories that created such beasts while searching for the Machine itself.

They met with unexpected opposition from Supporters, however, and after an unfortunate meeting with his leader against an officer of the Order, the battle was lost. With their leader and the officer now lost to each other, the organization that the Novarai crave and yearn for fell apart. Many of them returned home, and the few others that remained fell victim to the corruption of such an elaborate city. As far as Jace knows, he is the only soldier that still holds the intention of combating the Machine. Thanks to an odd connection he made, he managed to acquire two new bodies to replace his old, out-dated shell, and thus took upon himself two new personalities to complete his chosen task. Prior to working for TIAMAT, he worked for a handful of different radical anti-Machine groups, and a few mercenary underdogs to infiltrate and destroy mechanical operations and creatures, and as far as they are concerned, Jack is a cyborg, and he and Jace don't even know each other, let alone are the same person.

The Novarai

"I'm an inconsistent stream of conscious thought made corporeal by a collection of energy and contained electricity." - Jace

Habitat : When humans first discovered the planet Novarai, they presumed it to be like the rest of the planets in their solar system; desolate and incapable of supporting human life, and for many years, it remained as little more than an interesting blip on their skyward radars. It wasn't until they actually scanned the surface that they came across a profound reading of altering energy and heat patterns that indicated movement and life living beneath the planet's crust, and upon searching the rocky wasteland of Novarai, they came across the Novarai. Novarai is a gray planet, made up of countless mountains, rocky deserts, and stone landscapes, but underneath these stones lies a network of complex cities, not unlike the chambers of an ant farm. The Novarai have their own form of technology, based solely on their ability to manipulate the gravitational pull around their own bodies.

Diet : The Novarai do not feed as most creatures do, and do not require physical nourishment of any kind, though from their historical records, it would seem that their ancestors once preyed upon lesser energy beings. Now, however, they have evolved and adapted, able to draw energy from the very air around them to sustain themselves, so long as they have adequate heat. In a cold environment, a Novarai will lose the ability to maintain the constant movement that keeps them whole, and once they are no longer able to hold themselves in a tangible form, they will fall to pieces and cease to exist. A dead Novarai leaves behind no body, and merely dissipates into the air around it.

Behavior : Every Novarai is different, though most of them do in fact share the pacifist, non-interference views as the rest of the consciousness. As a people, they are intellectual, reserved, and hesitant, and even when they do become involved in the matters of other species, they tend to do so as privately and secretly as they can possibly manage. However, they are also a very intimate species when it comes to other members of their consciousness, sharing a belief of unity, honor, and respect between each and every Novarai. This is most readily observed in the way they greet each other, which is through the touch of their hands, which allows them to briefly meld their consciousness with another's, so that they temporarily share one mind.

Physical Attributes : Physically, all Novarai look remarkably similar, with the only difference being subtle, inconsistent shifts in their color schemes that do not serve as adequate identifiers, for the color of a Novarai is frequently changing depending on their energy levels. Novarai are, by default, golden humanoid-shaped beings of light and smoke. They appear as a compact, liquid cloud of glowing substance that is constantly wafting glowing, golden smoke and dripping drops of their strange, molten substance, and while their shape is generally humanoid, they are capable of taking any shape at impressively large or minuscule sizes so long as the parts of their body remain intact in some way shape or form. They are essentially creatures of raw energy, and are warm to the touch.

Physical Description of Jace leaving one of his android bodies:

"It was eerie, actually, like watching the last glimmer of life leave a human body, and soon the molten, golden liquid spilled from his chest. It quickly solidified, however, turning from a smooth, undefined shape to a series of jutting, geometric pillars, like crystals in a cavern that swiftly stacked and built upon one another from the growing puddle on the floor. In a seconds, the alien was fully-formed, bright enough to illuminate the entire room on its glow alone. It was man-shaped mostly, though bore no mouth, and its fingers seemed to more like suggestions imprinted on a general hand-shape. He could separate them, but when they fell together, they merged and dripped. Golden, glowing, colorless smoke seemed to waft about his form, churning to the natural gravity he provided. Large, flame-bright eyes opened on the undefined features, turning to look at Xak with their strange, almond shape."

Physical description of Jace's Touch and movement:

"Every movement stirred the smoke, curled the swirling light that made up his body, but he was not burning to the touch. In fact, his 'skin', for all its inconsistency, was surprisingly firm and supple. It was soft to the touch, smooth, but warm, like heated stones. Wherever Xak touched him, the glow seeped into his skin, filling his hand with warmth. "Mercury would be an adequate description, I think," he said, but his voice was odd and warped, hard to understand. It was like listening to Jace and Jack's voices at the same time, but overlapped with several other copies of their speech at different speeds, echoing and doubling."

Abilities: One of the Novarai's unique abilities is the ability to merge with another being, be it organic or non-organic, thanks to their liquid-like form. If there is a crack or a seam in a machine's design, the Novarai can seep into it and swell to within it to take over its circuitry, effectively enabling them the ability to either control it, or to destroy it from the inside out. This takes practice, however, and requires some knowledge of the machine they are infiltrating in order to ruin or control it. It is easier to destroy a machine than it is to control it, particularly if the machine has artificial intelligence that they must combat. Merging with an organic creature is harder, and much more dangerous, because the brain is perhaps the most complicated machine of them all. When being invaded by a Novarai, an organic creature can mentally repel the assault, though this is difficult thanks to the nature of the merger. You see, when a Novarai merges with an organic being, it is a merging of their consciousness, which is basically their thoughts and personality. The longer a Novarai remains merged with an organic being, the more their consciousnesses unite, and eventually, it will be hard to tell where the Novarai begins and the organism ends. They will no longer be able to separate what thoughts and personality traits are theirs or not theirs, and thus the two beings will become one permanently.