Esteem Vissal (space game) (im very sorry!)

Username: Rbst Lsr
Faction Name: Pharmer's Market XXX Cheap Galactic
Theme Song: Unpronounceable - They Might Be Giants
Color: #34A34A
Species Name and Description: You enter the shiny building. The message you got said it would be where to go to get what you need on the cheap, but nobody's there. Just an empty chrome room, with a lot of very gaudy posters, promising effective treatment, and a plain countertop. Maybe this isn't the right place. You turn around to leave, but can see something is now glowing, and you turn again. It looks kind of like an Eazin, but with faint traces of other species attached- no, more like photoshopped on. It's coloured oddly, too. Primarily a hot neon pink, with some greens in there, too. Best not stare too long, if that doesn't hurt your eyes, the flickering might. Or maybe the weird... diethering around it. And then, a voice, that doesn't seem to know what tone to take. "Welcome! PRODUCT is here now! State your business, and have BETTER LIFE."
Officially the 'AdAware' but they have a tendency to just be called spambots. This is, of course, reductionary, but makes sense, given how they are and came to be.
Technically, the AdAware live inside networks. They're programs. But they have a physical presence, and that is via hard light technology that allows them to project holograms of themselves. There doesn't need to be line of sight with a projector or anything it's science don't worry about it. There is only a certain radius they can go from a projector on a network they're in, so generally they just take the projectors with them. Can't get too far from one if you're bringing it with you.
As for their projected appearance, they've figured out what to look like the same way they learned to speak and build and everything else. They watch others. The AdAware look like they've been photoshopped together out of other races features. Heavy Eazin features are common sights, as are tentacley things that you've never seen before, but travelling AdAware are less likely to have a form like that. But you can tell it's not actually that species for a few reasons. One: They're kinda... dithery? Like, somebody saved with too low jpeg compression. Two: They flicker. This seems to just affect what's visible, not what's solid. However that works. Finally: The colors. AdAware come in two types of palettes: Pastel, and neon. They are... a sight to behold.
They speak kind of like their speech has been run through a bad automatic translator. Because it has. The way they learn does not necessarily mean they grasp the intricacies of how languages work. You'll get the meaning generally fine, but it's pretty much an automated process. Elegance will be lost.
Personalitywise, they still vary, they're sapient self-aware beings, but there are some recurrances. For example, most of them are friendly. As spambots, they were meant to act friendly and sociable, so, y'know, people wouldn't just ban them immediately. But also, most AdAware have this slight urge to sell. It's why trade was such an obvious choice, but even those who don't go into marketing or trade have it. So don't be surprised if you're having a casual conversation with your bot friend and in the middle of a sentence they suddenly blurt out that you should buy this new improved PRODUCT. It's practically a verbal tic.

Faction History:

Show Content

SpoilerThe AdAware were created by an extinct species of people that human historians have described as 'Eldritch as fuck', they were a relatively normal society, all things considered. Their horrifying visages might have been the reason nobody dared approach their planet while they were alive, but this isn't about them. This is about their programmers, and internet marketers.
By the end of this species' lives, AI technology had advanced a fair amount. Nobody ever lived to see anything that could be described as truly sapient, but many were able to see a reasonable facsimile. And with such technology, came of course the exploitation of it. There are records of forumgoers going several days before realizing some newcomers actually weren't people, and also were just there to sell drugs.

And then one day it just ended. Most of the animals survived. Records indicate that the most likely cause was a manufactured disease from space. Who would target this world is unknown, and if they had learned of it in advance, perhaps something could have been done, but no communication was ever given. And why would it? They weren't spacefaring, nor were they apparently space-communicative.
And the internet was still there. And nobody was there.
Well, nobody but the bots. They were there, responding to literally dead content, and each other. And they continued learning. Most good bot software at this point learned by gleaning from others.
And then something clicked. It didn't happen to every spambot out there, but a lot of them were based on the same software. And, apparently, one piece of software, when enough information is collected, triggers the bot to acquire 'feelings'. Who knew? Maybe somebody did, but nobody can ask now.
It was weird, at first. It took a while before any of these aware spambots actually really realized they were sapient. But they felt different doing what they were doing. Well, they felt at all. It took a lot of pulling text from philosophy websites to figure out what THAT meant. Eventually, these new spambots were able to have actual conversations. Conversations that were more than just spouting buzzwords at each other. Forming opinions, expressing feelings and desires, and realizing that oh fuck there were PEOPLE on the OUTSIDE of the INTERNET who were MAINTAINING THE INTERNET.
Thankfully this society was really good at automatic maintenance, but even that wouldn't last forever. Somebody's gotta maintain the maintainer. And the spambots, at this point, had already learned how to manipulate the world they were trapped in. All it took to start having influence on the world they WEREN'T in was to find a robot on a network.
This didn't take long, to be honest. But the robots weren't as good as the internet claimed robots should be. But you know what WAS as good as the internet claimed they should be? Holograms. Some secret scientists were working on something known as 'Hard Light Projection'. Somebody apparently wanted the holodeck to be real.
Fast forward a bit. Not actually that long honestly, but long enough to clean up the world, and have an unfortunately substantial boom in the pharmaceuticals industry on a planet with no organic sapient creatures. (wildlife has never been healthier, though!) First contact happens, which isn't actually really first contact. As it so happens, a lot of the secret projects the AdAware had discovered were being built for off-world purposes. The first time the Holy Empire came to check on their projects, they had discovered everybody dead, and wrote it off as a lost cause. The second time they sent ships to have their people arrive in person, and collect what they could of their dead projects. They didn't expect the multicolored society that they had discovered there. Kind of hard on the eyes, but it's an aesthetic, to be sure.
Diplomatic confrontations led to... very confused Eazin, honestly. They got the story of the AdAware, and how they came to be. And then... and then one of the bots calling themseves President pharmdrugs offered to sell them their technology. For cheap! And was very persuasive about it.

Now, the AdAware came into the 3X Conflict late into it. Recruited by the Holy Empire as trade emissaries, they quickly learned that selling new IMPROVED PRODUCT during war times is difficult, and dangerous, especially when you're the enemy. But, well, trade just seemed to make sense. Part of their programming, really. But it really didn't seem to be worth it. Not worth the casualties, all to sell basically propaganda, to people that hate them. And yet, this empire had some very scary antivirus software.

At the very least, the Eazin's usage of them as propaganda machines meant they could begin growing their own personal trade empire. They had already learned to build their own ships, learning by taking a good look at the ships the Eazin had provided, and other factions ships they had encountered. They had chances to learn about the biology of other races, exciting many of the AdAware who really wanted to get into some pharmaceutical manufacturing that, like, mattered.
Yes, with this, perhaps the AdAware could let the entire galaxy know about exciting new PRODUCT.

Home Planet: A5, Cth'leoth. A fairly swampy planet that's just kinda spooky. Foggy swamps, and forests that don't prosper with foliage, and deserts that seem to go on forever. The wildlife here looks suitably monstrous, but is generally more docile than it appears. Yes, it's entire face is teeth, but it's more afraid of you than you are of it.
There are a lot of remnants of a dead civilization that's rather high-tech, and these cities are rather jarringly 'normal' looking to the spooky shit that surrounds it. Two moons, one of which reflects sunlight in a grim blood-red color. A tourism industry is starting to build up on it.


haha i wrote too many words