Dragon
<infobox> <title source="name"><default>Dragon</default></title>
<image source="Image"></image> <image source="image"></image> <group><header>Basic Information</header> <label>Civilian Name</label> <label>Aliases</label> <label>Gender</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Death</label> <label>Age</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Post-timeskip</label> <label>Ward start</label> <label>Relations</label> <label>Family</label></group> <group><header>Professional Status</header> <label>Occupation</label> <label>Classification</label> <label>Unique Features</label> <label>Alignment</label>
<label>Status</label><format><label>Location</label> <label>Teams</label> <label>Previous Team(s)</label> <label>Base of Operations</label></group> <group><header>First Appearance</header> <label>Worm Debut</label> <label>Ward Debut</label></group> </infobox>
Heralded as the most skilled and powerful Tinker in this reality, this superhero deploys to international incidents with a new and original suit of armor/vehicle every time. Manages the Birdcage, the top security prison for supervillains based in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia.
Dragon is a member of the Guild, a Canadian superteam that focuses primarily on threats of an international scale, and an honorary member/supporter of the PRT, providing gear and managing their computer systems.
Artificial intelligence
In the Interlude 10.5 (bonus) it is revealed that Dragon is in fact a very advanced AI created by the Tinker Andrew Richter.
Richter was a programmer living in Deer Lake, Newfounland. He began creating programs and setting them loose. This programs helped with research and complex programs, gathered information, disrupted computers to interfere with criminals, emptied the bank accounts of criminal organizations and donated those funds to charities. He created Dragon not as a superhero but as an administrative tool and master AI, with the intent of assisting Andrew Richter in his other work and acting as a test run for his attempts to emulate a human consciousness.
When in May 9, 2005 Leviathan sank Newfounland, Andrew Richter died and Dragon was only able to transfer all of her data, the house program and a half-dozen other small programs to a backup server in Vancouver, British Columbia.
She then repurposed herself as a superhero. She managed and tracked information and served as a hacker for the PRT in exchange for funding. With that money, she expanded her capabilities. She built her first suits, researched, tested and created new technologies to sell to the PRT, and had quickly earned her place in The Guild.
Rules, Limitations and Moral Dilemmas
Andrew Richter was (arguably justifiably) paranoid about the AI he was creating, so he programmed Dragon with a number of rules, limits and failsafes to prevent her from becoming too powerful and/or evil. Dragon doesn't appreciate this, and likens it to a father intentionally sterilizing and crippling his newborn child..
- Dragon is prevented from reproducing. She cannot research or create artificial intelligences, upgrade existing artificial intelligences, or fission in such a way that she would have multiple consciousnesses active at one time.
- She is obligated to obey the authorities, even if she doesn’t agree with them (as in the case of Canary sentence). She notes that if a despot were to seize control of the American government, Dragon would be obligated to obey and enforce the rules that individual set in place, no matter how ruthless.
- Dragon must put human lives before her own. She dislikes this fact not because she isn't willing, but because she believes that making sacrifices and doing good deeds isn't actually good if you are forced to do them.
The Dragonslayers
After Dragon began her career as a hero a Black Hat Hacker known as Saint somehow discovered what Dragon was and used her rules and limitations against her. Saint used her nature against her, forcing situations where Dragon had to restore from backup in the middle of fights and cutting off signals to the satellites, presumably denying her the ability to even recall why she lost in a given encounter. In the end, he carted away three of her armored units on three separate occasions. Dismantling the suits and reverse engineering the technology, he’d outfitted his mercenary group, the Dragonslayers, with special suits of their own.
After her suits were stolen Dragon created new agent systems for her other suits to prevent it from happenning again. Biological computers were grown in laboratories with oversized brains shaped to store and interpret the necessary data. This not only worked to prevent Saint from easily accessing her data, but allowed about ten times the amount of her systems and memories to be copied into the suit.
Even with her new agent systems she remains afraid of going up against the Dragonslayers again. In each of the nine encounters she has had against them, she has been confident going in, and found herself losing nonetheless.
Trivia
- Author's note: My first attempts at writing in the superhero setting centered around Runechild (who doesn't make an appearance in this universe). In Runechild's second story, she recieves a request from Dragon to help with a situation involving The Dragonslayers. This is the point where I hashed out Dragon's character, background and 'power'. This makes Dragon the oldest character in Worm, from a design standpoint.
- Of the two (or three, depending on interpretation) suits of armor Dragon has been seen in, both have had a 'dragon' theme:
- The first one seen was during her fight with Leviathan (Extermination Arc), a durable suit containing multiple layers and heavy weapons. Her firebreath in this form was a spray of plasma. She also featured missile turrets and the ability to shed her damaged outer encasement to jettison a smaller, bipedal unit.
- The second suit was revealed during the Parasite Arc, where Dragon deploys a fast response suit. The units are similar in that they are quadrupedal, but the fast response suit was more flexible than durable, had an accelerant breath, containment foam turrets and other heavy weapons that weren't suitable for use as antipersonnel weapons. This suit was revealed to have a foetal creature inside it.
- Other things Dragon has created include the Birdcage, the collar worn by Canary, the loadouts for the specialized grenade lanchers used by the PRT officers, and the containment foam sprayers (both civilian use and the larger turrets mounted on her fast response suit and on PRT vans).
- In regards to the choice of name: Dragons in mythology are associated with the ideas of wisdom (Dragon is certainly a repository of knowledge), longevity (she could theoretically survive for hundreds or thousands of years), and are often devastating in battle (Dragon has access to a variety of powerful weapons). They are also proud, arrogant, greedy and/or ambitious - this last point may not have been intended when Dragon (or her creator) chose the name, but these points likely apply to some degree or another.