#in the books it mentions that it fights differently to other secunits

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endless fun to be had with murderbot

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Murderbot Reference: Character Descriptions Part 2

Fandom reference! I tried to note every time a person/thing got a physical description, as well as additional info like how augments work, etc. Please note that there may be spoilers for all five books, but especially Network Effect.

This post contains:

ART��s Senses

ART’s Crew

Three

Rami, Tapan and Maro

Tlacey

Tlacey’s ComfortUnit

Targets (Network Effect)

Barish-Estranza: Eletra, Ras, and Supervisor Leonide

Augments (what they are/how they work)

Other Human Personal Tech (Non-Augments)

Other Bots/Machines: Agricultural Bot, Pathfinders, NE Target Drones, MB’s Drones

Other posts: Part 1; Part 3

ART’s Senses

·         Besides cameras, sees ship through internal sensors, “which provided data (heat, density, angles of motions, etc.) that didn’t translate into images, at least not visual images useful to humans.”

·         MB guesses that gaps in ART’s memory archives might look like “a giant interruption in the constant incoming reports from subsystems like life support, navigation, etc. It was tricky, because for ART these are not like discrete reports from connected systems, but more like the sensory input I would get from the pads on the tips of my fingers.”

·         Does have cameras in many areas, cameras hidden enough that MB didn’t know they existed until ART turned them on and provided access via the feed in NE.

·         Likes Amena and talks to her more gently than MB or other humans—it’s more careful of Amena’s feelings. Has talked about human adolescents in a positive way. ART is, on a regular basis, a teaching vessel.

 ART’s Crew

·         Iris: augmented human. Dark brown skin, wearing a decorative woven bracelet when rescued in NE and a light blue longsleeved T-shirt. Small, shorter and slimmer than Ratthi, but not much bigger than Amena. Dark hair is the curly kind that puffs out a lot, but in NE pulled back and tied up in a band. Hair is long enough that she lifted it up so MB could see her back/neck when checking for an implant. Longsleeved T-shirt and pants and soft shoes are the casual version of ART’s blue crew uniform. Some bruises and scrapes at rescue. Seth’s child.

·         Seth: tall, very dark brown skin, “with less hair than most SecUnits,” a mostly-hairless head; earlier description from photograph (later context makes this likely to be Seth) says “no hair on the front half of his head.” Iris’s parent, she calls him “Dad.” Captain of Perihelion.

·         Martyn is Iris’s other parent (called “Dad); Seth’s marital partner; earlier description from photograph (later context makes this likely to be Martyn posing next to Seth) says lighter skin than Seth, with short white hair; he/him

·         Kaede is about the same size as Iris, but skin is lighter and her hair is yellow

·         Matteo is small like Iris and Kaede, and has a lot of dark hair that at rescue had come loose from braids. They/Them.

·         Turi is young like Amena. They/Them

·         Karime uses she/her

·         Tarik uses he/him

·         On variation of crew uniform (made for MB): dark blue, pants and jacket of deflective fabric, good quality (better than Station Security), with lots of sealable pockets for weapons and drones. Stability fabric boots, probably tough enough to jam a hatchway. Looks like what human security would wear. ART’s crew logo on the jacket, which also has a collar that folds down.

 Three

·         SecUnit, with projectile weapon built into arm

·         Armor flexes if it shifts its shoulders

 Rami, Tapan, and Maro

·         All wearing variations on work clothes, no uniform logos. Either Rami or Maro has an implant, but none are augmented. Part of a group marriage of 7 people, with 5 children of various sizes. MB thinks all are young—not far from adolescence.

·         Rami: tercera, “which was a gender signifier used in the group of non-corporate political entities known as the Divarti Cluster,” te/ter. Purple hair, red eyebrows, light brown skin. Wearing a jacket.

·         Tapan: female. Multicolored braids wrapped up around her head, blue jewel-toned feed interface clipped to ear, slightly darker skin than Rami. Wearing a flower-patterned t-shirt.

·         Maro: female. Very dark skin, silver-colored little puffs of hair, “almost beautiful enough to be in the entertainment media.”

 Tlacey

·         Augmented human female

 Tlacey’s ComfortUnit

·         Physical configuration doesn’t match SecUnit standard.

·         Lots of hair, silver with blue and purple on the ends, pulled back and braided like Tapan’s but in a much more complicated pattern.

·         Bare arms show no metal, and no gun ports

 Targets (Network Effect)

·         When fully affected: look like tall, thin augmented humans. Dull gray skin. Narrow human features, dark brows standing out against smooth gray skin. Colorless lips.

·         Not completely identical: one Target on ship is slightly taller and has broader shoulders than the other.

·         Targets on ships: wearing formfitting protective suits and partial helmets that initially left a lot of their faces bare. One on the B-E explorer wore “more casual human clothing:” dark green-black pants and jacket, black shirt with a collar. Shoes had heavy treads, designed for rough planetary terrain. Hair looked more normal, with reddish brown tight curls cut close to the head.

·         Targets and colonists: gray skin is a progressive condition, not natural or cosmetic effect, some still look like humans who were altered rather than aliens. Not all who still looked somewhat human were fighting on the same side. Most of fighting group wore “the kind of rough work clothing normal for colonies or mining, a cheaper, more battered version of ART’s environment suits with hoods but no breathing gear, or a mix of clean work clothes, plus a random collection of what looked like old uniforms and protective gear.”

 Barish-Estranza, Eletra, Ras, and Supervisor Leonide

·         B-E uniforms are red and brown with corporate logos

·         Eletra and Ras both wear B-E uniforms that are disheveled and torn.

·         Eletra has brown skin and dark hair that reaches at least to her shoulder blades.

·         Supervisor Leonide has “mid brown” skin “that was common to a large percentage of humans,” with an artificially smooth, even tone that indicated cosmetic enhancement. Dark hair wrapped around the top of her head and she has small metallic and gemstones set in the rim of one exposed ear.

 Augments

·         According to MB, are “supposed to help humans do things they couldn’t do otherwise, like interface with the feed more completely or store memory archives.”

·         Augments that aren’t feed interfaces are meant to correct physical injuries or illnesses.

·         Augments are meant to be helpful. Implants are different (MB compares implants to governor modules, something the person has little to no control over)

·         Normal augment would have filaments extending directly into the human nervous system. Some augmented humans may have dataports/plug-in interfaces in the back of their necks, since MB is able to pass off its dataport as one of these often.

·         Normal augmented human (augmented with feed) has interface built into brain; non-augmented humans have removable interfaces (excluding implants, which seem to be regular interfaces just not removable without surgery).

·         Augments and constructs work with “machine-readable code written into human DNA”

·         Augmented humans can work more fully in the feed; MB thinks that the drugged-up GrayCris assassins wouldn’t be possible to control with a removable interface, so the controller must be augmented (and this proves correct).

 Other Human Personal Tech

·         Un-augmented humans can’t access the feed unless their interface is working and attached properly. Tapan’s in-ear interface was taken out while ART’s MedSystem worked, and she had to put it back in before she contacted her partners.

·         “Normal external interfaces for humans were designed to look like all kinds of things, from carved natural wood to skin tones to jewels or stones or enamel art pieces to actual plain metal with a brand logo.”

·         Human voices on the feed sound like their physical voices, and can show emotions. Humans (and augmented humans) usually subvocalize when talking on the feed.

·         During killware attack in ES, Pin-Lee, Mensah and two crewmembers each has portable manual feed interfaces they used to shore up SecSystem; allowing them feed access without using their personal on-body interfaces.

·         MB says in AC that killware and malware can’t do anything to humans or augmented humans; the killware attack in ES hurts augmented humans enough that one needs rescue breathing. This could be MB’s lack of knowledge, or it could be because the ES killware is rare, essentially a disembodied bot and an extremely uncommon/unheard of tactic.

Other Bots/Machines

·         Agricultural bot: almost 10 meters (~32 feet) tall, covered with spikes. Lower body has 10 long spider limbs for moving around without crushing anything, upper part is a long curving “neck” with a long head also covered in spikes

·         Pathfinders: like drone for space. Active scanners that can zip around a planet collecting environmental information and terrain imaging, plus looking for comm signals, possible energy sources, and hostiles. Can relay audio as ART uses it to threaten Targets. Very expensive.

·         Drones used by NE Targets: model MB is unfamiliar with. Round and as big around as MB’s head, any holes for cameras or weapons hidden despite size. Made of stealth material (or pattern) that can’t be spotted by camera, but regular vision OK.

·         Drones used in ASR, pulled from the hopper: “They were the small kind, barely a centimeter across; no weapons, just cameras.”

·         Also in ASR, MB mentions that there also exist drones that aren’t much bigger than the hopper drones but include a small pulse weapon (but as far as availability through the company, you have to get an upper tier package)

·         MB’s regular drones: small enough that it can have a flock (at least a couple dozen?) land on it and not impede movement in an EVAC suit. MB mentions technique where it can have drone accelerate a drone straight at a target’s face, and if hit an eye or an ear it goes straight to the brain, so probably fairly small. They are also easy to visually overlook when perched in a room recording people, or sneaking through a doorway. They’re also easy to store in MB’s many pockets.