Actual

"I am a dead thing made alive again by a dead power, but I serve a living one."

Although outlawed alongside many other varied forms of genetic engineering, the "uplift" and "reconstruction" of various species was and still is to this day a highly sought after art form that transpires only in clandestine circumstance. While most are crude replicas with limited maximum attainable ages and mostly only visually accurate to their previous forms, not all are so basic in nature, with the most illicit being rightfully so. The most complex of these creatures, so called "sentients", are designed from the most basic of elements onward but feature dubious amounts of templated material, most notoriously using preexisting neural pathways on record - many of which are attained from documents of old. While capable of being potentially retrofitted into these otherwise foreign bodies, the sort of biological reprogramming needed in order to mesh a formerly human persona remade and that of completely different neurological functions results in near guaranteed failure; most are, before ever even being decanted, completely nonfunctional and are subsequently terminated.

Those that do survive these immense and numerable hurdles are exceptional specimens, although mostly unrelated to their original progenitors, both human and animal. In the earlier days of these techniques, pioneered for militarized use, they would be groomed further for potential until they were mature or proved ineffective, but the modern era has allowed sufficient means to do so prior to effective "birth". Now, a sentient is refined until complete and mature, allowing for compensation against unexpected errors or defects. While understandably a lack of progression exists for these creatures, they refinement process does include psychological and mental conditioning - to the point of which one can reasonably assume they could be convinced of having reached effective maturity like any other.

However, "Actual" as it calls itself, is not such a case.

Designed from a heavily modified base, more or less entirely reconstructed piece by piece, and templated several times over then revised, whoever developed this particular sentient was deeply involved in its finer, most precise elements; containing evidence of completely artificial sequences and removal of potentially defective genes, scrapping any room for error. Furthermore, his persona, while drawn from a deceased human source, is fairly accurate in its recreations with few alterations. Flaws in pathing or memory, among others, while tampered with as with all sentients, are mostly intact; once could say that of any of these reconstructions, its is not only faithful, but reliable. It does beg the question as to why and even more so how the persona in question did not diverge when revamped into a new iteration, but few answers can be obtained. Incidents in the past indicate leftover memory from the neural templates most often resulted in hallucinated and dreamlike memories, as well as an obvious increase for psychological disorders caused by the persona attempting to still be "human" or even return to form.

Again, "Actual" and its development lack these staples of defect despite extensive template usage on all fronts and an entirely reconstructed, albeit faithful, design. In most senses, it is a truly intelligent, independent member of Smilodon populator, brought back once more by some unknown force outlawed by man to live once more.

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"Actual" is my personal character and while similar in concept to Argent Fatalis, is wholly unrelated and in a different set of canon and time. The inspiration behind this character was a self reflection, whereas Argent Fatalis is a single fragment of personality, "Actual" is made up of many of my qualities of personality and is "true to form" in that he is actually an extension of myself.

Spun into a set of lore that revolves around a not-so-distant future, he exists as one of the few illegally engineered "sentients", or intelligent beasts, in a world fascinated and mostly devoted to electronics, cybertechnology and synthetics.

This piece was created by the talent of TheTigress, and there's more to come of him soon enough by her.

Artwork - TheTigress 2015 ©
Character - Argent Fatalis 2015 ©