Galactic Havoc: Agrobots

Galactic Havoc: Agrobots

Let's get back to this. So far, we only have two factions - the Solar Federation and the Mindkind Unity, and both of those could work as antagonists or protagonists. Sometimes, however, it is nice to have an NPC faction that can supply faceless bad guys for the PCs to shoot. It would be great to also make such a faction provide hooks for missions and adventures. The brief history of the Solar Federation mentioned an AI rebellion that caused the Federation to abolish all AI technologies, so let's provide some specifics. I also mentioned that I'm going to shamelessly rip things off, so the following faction will be based on the Series 9 from KKND2.

     Agrobots

    In the 43th century, two large corporations from – Wexler Robotics and AgriCorp – created a joint project. This cooperation resulted in testing new autonomous agricultural robots on a backwater privately colonized world of New Amsterdam. While the first tests were successful, only two years after deployment the mainframe that controlled the robots was irradiated by a solar flare, causing the artificial intelligence to go haywire. The AI took its prime directive (farming) very seriously and saw sentient life as a threat. It turned agricultural robots into killing machines, farming tools into weapons, fertilizers into explosives, pesticides into biological agents, and wiped out the colony. Being creative and versatile, the AI designed new robot models, vehicles, used the colony’s factories to produce spacecraft. Once the world’s soil became barren from overfarming, the AI copied itself and set out to other worlds. Under its directives, sentient life is wiped out, garden worlds are turned into immense crop fields, and the resulting crops are stored in the so-called granary vessels. These granary vessels are juicy targets for space raiders, pirates, and mercenaries that were hired to help developing colonies.

    Since this incident, the Solar Federation has forbidden the use and development of artificial intelligence, as the rapidly multiplying agrobots have proven to be extremely difficult to exterminate. Multiple times have the Solar armed forces believed to have wiped out the last controller unit, but time after time a new one emerged in orbit around some developing colony, posing threat to all sentient life.

    Each individual agrobot does not possess sapience, but has a degree of autonomy in case communication with the mainframe controller unit is jammed. Controller units have been shown to be able to communicate with humans, but despite sapience and high intelligence, they have only shown utter hostility and obsession with farming. Even the Mindkind Unity that is known for its acceptance of AIs considers agrobots to be a lost cause fit only for destruction.