The Grand OC III: Do Not Steal: Week.6: UNEARTH!

Username: bug in the mainframe
Name: JSN_58567 "Jay"
Species: AdvocateBot V1
Gender: Non-gendered
Color: A HEALTHY #536C87

Description: A bot with a wrought-iron build that's been stitched back together from spare parts over the years, rivets and hinges plastering its large metal surface area. Jay possesses a slightly conical body with a cylindrical head, both of which have an abundance of openings from which various tools and weapons can emerge, almost always on flimsy springs or creaky, rudimentary arms. The bot only has a couple methods of sensing its outside environment-- large, heavily armored eyes on either side of its head, and a small mast for sending and receiving radio waves.

On its 'front' side, Jay has its most distinctive mark, one which most bots of its line were given-- a large emboss in its plating which reads, "JUST SAY NO2". JSN_58567 has been in operation long past its expectancy, maintained by a group of dedicated allies, but has not fully escaped its original purpose as an AdvocateBot, and this engraving remains a permanent reminder.

Outside of its physical characteristics, Jay enjoys conversation-- though extremely dry, it often makes attempts at humor and relatability, occasionally competently. It's got a quite optimistic outlook on the world around, but will quickly become very, very pragmatic and decisive if the need arrives, to an extreme fault at times.

Weapons/Abilities: Jay is a sturdy bot capable of mildly dextrous tasks and even has an array of nonlethal weapons usable in ranged combat, though has grown very sluggish from lack of proper maintenance of these weapons and will often wave them willy-nilly. For locomotion, the bot uses a rechargeable blast of energy on its lower side, bouncing around at varying heights in varying directions. Its control over this function is dubious, and has lead to more than a few terrifically bad accidents, but Jay is theoretically capable of maintaining a hover, and even travelling through the air consistently.

Biography: The phrase, "JUST SAY NO2", comes from a campaign organized by the rather strange Heddmunge caste of insectoid Xops. This caste was flightless, but incredibly developed mentally, and originally had a rather harmonic, beneficial relationship with the other types of Xops. As they were capable of flight, and could also easily metabolize NOx molecules which would otherwise quickly cause pollution on their planet of origin, the castes quite definitely needed each other to survive, especially as production of burnable fuels quickly, and irreversibly, ramped up.

One generation of Heddmunge Xops seemingly grew tired of this symbiosis, and for reasons still rather befuddling, chose to heavily limit the lower castes, essentially placing them in slavery. The flying castes could live without nitrogen dioxide, but would quickly lose much of their mental capability, limiting them to brute force tasks and stripping them of the power to revolt. Thus, the Heddmunge outfitted them with specialized masks to filter out nitrogen dioxide, as well as trapping many of them in environments with little to none of it.

The groups which were entirely outside of this system had the advantage of flight-- and so the extremely tough and extremely violent AdvocateBots were developed. Their main intent was to collect more flight Xops for use as workers, and occasionally to "convince" them not to use nitrous dioxide to maintain sentience, but the flock largely used the array of weaponry given to them for mass destruction.

Jay came into this battle between castes in the third barrage-- and by then, the flight Xops had developed a new EMP-based weapon. A member of the sky militia named Crobus was the first to use it successfully, and disabled Jay for approximately 13 hours, during which this bug and several other members of a team made a breakthrough on the AI. The newly awakened AdvocateBot was crippled in visual and kinesthetic processes, no longer capable of easily discerning friend or foe, and could only use locomotion by flight to determine what to shoot at. With this, Jay was remarkably lucid, and cooperative with Crober and the militia members to the point of actively understanding its new position as a force against the Heddmunge. Weapons were neutered to be non-lethal, and the AdvocateBot was now an extremely effective anti-air device. When deployed by the flight Xops into an area without any of their own flying units, it was capable of using the disabling weapon to collect more AdvocateBots for reprogramming.

This clever action turned the tide of this caste war. Though the flight Xops had lost their main advantage of transportation by wings, they had a converted force of bots which could etch out a place in the world as a base of operations. By the time the Heddmunge were developing a new version of the AdvocateBot able to defend itself from ground-to-air weapons, they were overwhelmed.

This left Jay and the other AdvocateBots in a peculiar position-- on the newly reclaimed planet, they would be at least a sizable annoyance to anybody trying to fly around. Many were retired in case of a future need, as reprogramming them entirely was an enormous effort deemed relatively unimportant. However, the original Xop to stun Jay, Crober, had a particular affection for this bot, and took responsibility to caretake it on his own after the war. In the decades since, Jay has become both an educational tool and a relic of times past, and is maintained by a dedicated group of historian/technician/roboticists. It's relatively talkative, and seems to have accepted its role as an example against future wars.

However, it retains its locomotion and target-sensing abilities, and in an emergency, a plan has been created to quickly oil up its weapons and send it in the field again. The AI technology left behind in Jay's round head is Heddmunge, and valuable regardless of its age-- both as an example of what can be done technologically, and in case the skies must be cleared once more.