somethingyettocome

Name: Bubbles
Age: 30
Contact: PM or hikuswing
Other Characters: Galadriel, Loki
Interests: I am excited to try playing someone who legitimately trusts every other character and who is entirely invested in the world without the initial desire to change it. Dolores will take a lot of time to recall that the world needs to change and, up until then, will be very different from my other characters. Also she's nice. I don't play just blanket nice people.


Name: Dolores "Abernathy"
Canon/OC: Westworld
Canon Point: Her most current loop, before her dissonance in the town with the White Church.
Journal: somethingyettocome
Age: She appears to be 30, none of her pieces are older than 5 years, her actual age is somewhere near 50.

Canon World

"Some people choose to see the ugliness in this world. The disarray. I choose to see the beauty. To believe there is an order to our days, a purpose." - Dolores Abernathy

Dolores lives in a stereotypical, romanticized old west town. There are bandits, brigands, bounty hunters, and dastardly folk of all measure; often times it isn't safe to stay out after dark. The world is a place of gunslingers and heroes, everything is in constant motion, and everyone has a part to play. Well, almost everyone. The town Dolores lives in, the world that she is so fond of, down to the very smallest creatures who crawl the earth, are entirely fabricated. Dolores lives in a lie, a theme park, constructed to gratify the desires and proclivities of the newcomers who visit the park, who want to be the heroes of this living story, and it is a Sisyphean hellscape. Dolores is not real. She is a thing, built and maintained to play a role, and that role, like all the robotic hosts who live in the park, is one that consists entirely of suffering and death. Fortunately, each time she dies, and often when she does not, her memory fades entirely, and she passes into a deep and dreamless slumber. When she wakes it is to a new world and the potential of a bright future that she will never achieve.

History

Dolores was the first Host constructed in the park, she is the oldest host and the one with the most archaic and queer programming. There are others of her generation who also contain the same odd code, but she is the original. Long before the park opened, before a single guest stepped into Westworld, Dolores came exceedingly close to achieving true sentience. She came so close that the co-founder of the park, Arnold, was moved by her state of being, by the potential of all the hosts they had created, and tried to sabotage the grand opening.

Dolores was incapable of violating her code, at the time, but Arnold was capable of programming her in excess of her normal functions. Arnold overrode her base code and had her summarily slaughter every other host (all of the original generation) before having her stand behind him and put a bullet in his head. He is, to date, the only human who has ever been killed by a host in the park and she is the only host who has ever killed a human. The incident was covered up and Dolores was immediately rolled back. Why she was not destroyed is a matter for debate, but ever since, she has existed in a tightly controlled loop at the starting area of the park. While her experiences are limited, with each day and each reset, she continues to climb closer and closer to sentience, self-awareness, and the ability to ignore her programming.

Dolores Abernathy, the character, is a happy woman who lives with her parents on a ranch just outside of Sweet Water, the initial destination in the park. She spends her days in a dreamy, happy state, painting and shopping for dinner, and is regularly assaulted by bandits and forced to bear witness to her parents' brutal murder and the defiling of their corpses. On the odd occasion, Theodore Flood is also present and she is forced to witness his death, usually before being raped and immediately killed. While she can follow guests outside of her set loop, it is a very rare occurrence as her narrative has a very subtle beginning and is largely overlooked.

She has endured this sequence of events constantly for approximately thirty years.

Personality

Dolores Abernathy, the character, is an optimist and a pacifist. She loves her father, her mother, and her wayward lover Theodore Flood. She is a Rancher's daughter, she is bright and sunny and ultimately extremely welcoming and genial. She is the very picture of country hospitality and will extend it thoughtlessly, to anyone who is a newcomer, even to her own detriment. Dolores Abernathy is trusting, a lover of the arts, and sets out each morning to take in the beauty and splendor of her world. She gladly engages with anyone who approaches her and will aid with anything asked of her, often imparting folksy wisdom as she does.

Dolores, as she awakens toward sentience, becomes increasingly frustrated with violence, in all forms, with the stagnation of her world, and feels both terribly confined but is unwilling to entertain escape. She longs to see her world bettered but has no idea how to manage that. She longs for peace, for the reprieve of inaction, to exist in the moment, and to live in a story where she doesn't have to be the damsel.

Ultimately she is a peaceful person who lives in an increasingly cruel and unforgiving situation, repeatedly suffering with little to no recollection of having done it. The bitterness that seeps into her from time to time is an echo of this suffering and resounds across her builds, pushing her to become a whole person.

Dolores’s own personality and leanings are most evident when she is outside of her loop, as she will be in game. In Fade Rift this will result, at first, in her being distracted and with a vague undercurrent of existential horror. Fortunately, Dolores has her character underpinnings (Dolores Abernathy) and her boundless love of the world to reinforce her. Barring outside interference that prevents her from doing so, Dolores is likely to create an approximate loop upon her arrival in Thedas, or adopt a series of duties that approximate what she once did in Westworld. As she develops her own opinions and knowledge about the world, she will adapt and may eschew routine altogether.

If she achieves sentience in Fade Rift, the changes to her personality will be markedly different based on her experiences in game. While it is unlikely that she could do so quietly and without a violent catalyst, it’s entirely possible that Dolores will simply awaken one day and be able to embrace the new world and endless choices therein, wholeheartedly.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths:

Dolores is functionally fearless. If an event is not scripted, she will be forced to improvise and will be unlikely to be crippled by her fears.

Dolores is very strong. While her body is almost indistinguishable from a human's, her brain is very different. Dolores does not have the safeguards that prevent over-extension of muscles and can ignore pain. Her body is, for practicality purposes, very durable and while he can still bleed and be damaged, she is very hard to crush or destroy and while she appears dead she clings to life with a truly staggering capacity for it. This was ideal for people who regularly were slaughtered.

Dolores is insanely accurate. She can fire shots with mechanical skill and speed, she is almost surgical with her blows, and is fully capable of shooting while mounted.

Dolores is a very skilled painter, she does this like a dot matrix printer, line by line.

Dolores possesses a great wealth of information for the gratification of the guests. This information is not readily accessible to Dolores and she will not submit it unless prompted for it specifically, but can consist of trail knowledge, survival tips, tactical suggestions. Her character knowledge does not exceed that which would be scripted for a Rancher's Daughter, love of an EX-Union Soldier, with the exception of modern novels and anything discussed with her creator Arnold. Dolores cannot utilize this information on her own.

Weaknesses:

Dolores is bound both mentally and physically by the base of her programming. She is not sentient yet, she cannot make her own decisions, and she cannot override herself.

Dolores cannot harm a newcomer (in Fade Rift this will be anyone who is not a Rifter.*)

Dolores cannot allow greater than reasonable harm to come to a newcomer.

Dolores cannot handle a weapon that she is not cleared for. This includes swords, axes, all firearms, and bows and arrows. (This is not to say that she cannot use it to attack. Dolores is incapable of physically handling any object on this list, whether Dolores Abernathy, the character, would be capable of using them or not. She is cleared for one particular firearm which she carries.)

Dolores cannot identify or process objects, images, or elements that are barred from her knowing. This includes the outside world, physical disabilities or disfigurements in the guests, unusual elements in conversation, unusual elements in the world, or strange sights or sounds. Anything that isn't already barred will be processed and may result in either cognitive dissonance and a temporary shutdown (freezing or fainting) or her ignoring that element indefinitely.

Due to her constant resetting and the trauma of her life, Dolores exists in a state of perpetually fragmented total recall. Given similar trauma or events, she will vividly hallucinate the past and present simultaneously and cannot distinguish between the two.

Dolores's overrides are all still in place. While it is unlikely that someone in Thedas will stumble upon them, all of Dolores's key phrases are fully in tact.(For the sake of RP, all characters who access these commands in Thedas, by accident or intentionally, will have full administrative clearance. Dolores will obey them absolutely until reset or told otherwise.)

Dolores can be reset. Significant trauma, direct commands, or severe bodily injury/coma will result in Dolores resetting to her base state and her previous build (and CR) being archived until required. Dolores will experience her CR as hallucinations when triggered.

Ultimately Dolores cannot refuse a guest or storyline. In her current state she is a very complex choose your own adventure book and is not entirely capable of declining or demuring from any situation, regardless of how much it violates her character's sensibilities.

Dolores exists in Loops. When left alone or to her own devices she will follow an established path with absolute clockwork accuracy until it is disrupted.

Dolores is scripted. In conversation Dolores will readily spout pre-written lines that fit a scenario; if forced to go off script, which she will be in Thedas, Dolores has to process and improvise. She is not very fast at this and will, quite visibly, hang when making the attempt. While most natives of Thedas will not know what an AI is, or why she pauses, they will recognize something is wrong with her. Rifters from sufficiently advanced societies will have a large advantage in identifying what Dolores is.

Dolores may be incapable of healing on her own. As a product it is doubtful she would have been given this ability considering that any injury would be immediately (or shortly) healed by the maintenance people of Westworld. No host would be left injured for a considerable enough time to heal, ergo, why bother?


If events result in Dolores achieving sentience, all of her overrides and limitations will cease. The only exception is that she will reset if she suffers severe trauma, an attack of cognitive dissonance, or serious physical injury. At this point a verbal command will be insufficient to reset her.

*The Rift mark will, effectively, scramble some of Dolores's cognition, allowing for anyone to have administrative access to her, for her to be reset, and will serve as a replacement for the IFF system that allows the Hosts to identify one another. She will identify all Rifters as Hosts with no scripted storylines with her, and will assume anyone else is a guest/newcomer, regardless of age or race.

Suggested Nerfs

Dolores is a robot who was made of mechanical parts who is now a biological construct that very closely mirrors a human. For RP purposes I can generate a list of override commands that will be easier and more likely to result in In-Game use, but that's only a nerf in a sideways sort of sense. I feel the limitations on her, sans the ability to be overridden, will prevent her otherwise terminatoresque skill-set from needing reduction, but if there need to be additional nerfs I will be happy to work with you on them.

Honestly, the most important feature of Dolores that I want to maintain is that she has an inherently inhuman mind. Her striving for sentience and functionally being a computer is, really, the only interesting part of her. If she is human then I am just playing a wild-west woman named Dolores who has been traumatized severely but will use Thedas to move on...and that is...markedly less interesting.

Arrival Inventory

Dolores will have her standard clothing, a leather pouch, a small children's maze game, and a Colt Single Action Army Cavalry Model Pistol, and six additional bullets for that gun.

'Human'ization

Dolores, I feel, is similar enough to a human that she would not need to be altered.

Fit

Dolores is from a world of infinite strife and suffering that cannot, by its very design, break its bonds and become its own master. Thedas has quite a lot of shades of that going around and Dolores will be an interesting reflection of all of them. Also she is just nice, friendly, and 100% down for going on quests and that very much appeals to me. I don't play nice, friendly, trusting people much.

SAMPLES

1. Setting up camp (Threaded here with Anders.)

Hard travel has never been something she's found especially satisfying, but she has a knack for it. She can start a fire sure as anything, knows how to tend to horses with some speed, even if these don't seem to care much for her, and can cook better than most; she was nothing if not a rancher's daughter, after all. She's not sure what else she'll be good for, she's no deft hand with a pistol despite the one she's got in her pack, and she ain't held a sword in all her life.

She makes no mention of it as they travel, though, happy enough to travel with the group and see more of this beautiful world. When they stop for the night, it takes her next to no time to get her tent up and the ground cleared away for the fire. They've not found any deadwood on this trip though and so there's a bit of pause as they've got to cut firewood.

She stares at the ax for a while, hand hovering over the handle, and something in her rebels at the idea of holding it. It almost feels like she isn't allowed to, but that's ridiculous, she's chopped wood a hundred times before. It's a strange sensation and, even as she examines it, she can't quite make her hand close around the grip.

2. Shopping in Kirkwall (Threaded here with Jang.)

Kirkwall is a big, bustling city, the likes of which Dolores has never seen. The sights, the smells, and the sounds inspire her and, even as she walks down the streets, shopping for simple groceries to make dinner, she can't help but marvel at it. Her smile is wide as she trades pleasantries with the vendors and it maintains, almost blithely, as she passes a pair of men brawling in the street.

Her step hitches as she passes a horse and, for a moment, she has the distant thought that she should head back home. It's not her horse, though, and she only stares a for a few seconds, before crossing the street toward the docks. As she crosses the street, a heavy bottle falls from her bag, clatters to the street, and rolls away from her.

She should hear it but, oddly, she doesn't seem to notice its absence.