Yet again, Robin Hook has gotten herself into trouble. The hero of the people, the fearless though somewhat naive clandestine AI has stolen something from her archnemesis Svengali, the AI that rules Bakunin’s criminal underworld. An item of great value, the kind of thing that many powerful people covet, but only available to someone with Svengali’s ambition, connections, and resources: a military-grade VoodooTech weapon. A Sepsitor, to be more specific. The kind of item whose loss would piss off Svengali beyond measure, which is precisely Robin Hook’s favorite kind of theft. The high-risk, high-reward type of burglary with an equally high likelihood that the head of the puppet body she uses to carry it out will end up joining the collection that Svengali has on display in his lounge. But recklessness is burned into our heroine’s source code.
Moreover, the Sepsitor is a smuggled piece of VoodooTech that was stolen from a convoy of the Teutonic Order, Robin’s old friends. Since no good could possibly come out of Svengali possessing such a device, Robin decided to just be herself and snatch it from him in order to return it to its rightful owners. After being alerted, the Knights sent a recovery team led by the veteran Indigo Brother Konstantinos. But Robin Hook is not the sort of gal who likes to wait, she prefers to run the show, so after a bold raid, she snatched the Sepsitor and fled, with a whole army of hitmen after her, guns blazing.
Knowing she was in trouble and that Konstantinos and his team wouldn’t make it in time, the AI sought the help of her friends in the Observance, who were quick to send a backup team led by Mother Healer Agatha Wabara to assist her… and to grab the weapon in the process. This Sepsitor could be the key that the Observance was seeking for its “Lux Virginis” project, to use it effectively on any population or social group and convert them to the truth of the Blessed Virgin of the Knife without the need for any previous evangelization. The Illuminatrix of the Observance has clearly pointed out how relevant this asset is to their project, and also that they will not tolerate failure.
However, the Teutonic Order was not particularly inclined to share what is theirs, a trophy they won fair and square in battle, one so dangerous if used with evil intent that it should never be allowed to fall into the wrong hands, much less those of a mobster AI with connections in the Black Labs of Praxis. The situation was so serious that the team commanded by Konstantinos arrived much earlier than expected, even if somewhat battered by the powerful acceleration they were subjected to on their rushed ride, aboard one of the few high-speed raiders available to the Neovatican forces.
So now our beloved Robin Hook finds herself trapped in Svengali’s compound, surrounded by heavily armed automated security devices, and virtually unable to make a move if she doesn’t want the alarm system to reveal her position to the remaining forces of this dreaded criminal AI. And under these dire circumstances, the two opposing teams arrive at the same time: one intends to take the Sepsitor back into a secret crypt full of arcane VoodooTech devices, and the other plans to use it in a Machiavellian scheme that could put the leniency of Bakunian laws to the test.
Which of the two teams will Robin Hook give it to? A difficult choice, indeed, or at least it would be if it weren’t for the bolt fragment that is still sticking out of one side of the weapon’s container, plus the wisp of smoke coming out of it, and the dead control display. And since Robin is the only one who carries a crossbow—even if it is just a wrist weapon that she uses mainly to swing across the network of beams and gangways that span across the ceilings of the modules of Praxis—it is obvious that she is to blame for this mess. However, was it just an accident during the crazy shootout that led to this nasty affair, or has she done it on purpose because of her difficult choice with no easy solution? Only our heroic AI knows the truth, and she might tell us if she makes it out alive and her head doesn’t end up as an ornament on Svengali’s wall…
Mother Healer Agatha Wabara (Vulkan Shotgun, Trench-Hammer)
Mother Agatha’s belief in second chances is so firm that it may arguably be the leitmotif of her life.
After falling into a trap with no way out in sight, Agatha's dying body was picked up by a parishioner of the Observance of Our Lady of Mercy.
The Observance regards itself not only as the militant fist of Our Lady in the battle against the incarnation of Evil known as ALEPH, but also as an organization that protects the weak and the helpless, and Agatha’s rescue is to be understood as part of this pious mission. It’s also true that, at the time, the Observance was still taking shape and growing, and a strong, seasoned gangbanger was an asset worth recruiting.
And so it was that Agatha found the same camaraderie she had with the Axtläufer, but coupled with the feeling of belonging to something greater than herself and having a mission and a higher purpose. And most importantly, direct contact with divinity, first during each of the Order’s mystery rituals. After she became a Reverend, her commitment to the Observance was absolute.
While Mother Agatha firmly believes in second chances, that doesn’t mean she thinks everybody deserves one. And to all those who are undeserving, Agatha denies not only a second chance but also their lives, in a merciless and sanguinary way that only a true worshipper of Our Lady of the Knife is capable of.
Indigo Brother Konstantinos (Combi Rifle)
Deep down, Konstantinos was still the same thrill seeker, a man who was able to survive the most hellish situations imaginably simply because he felt perfectly comfortable in them. This rare quality was what piqued the interest of the PanOceanian Special Operations Command, which recruited him for its Indigo unit.
After he built up a long track record of operations stamped "classified," thus proving his discretion and his knack for sensitive work, Konstantinos was summoned to the NeoVatican and appointed Nuntius Romanus. This title is bestowed only on a select group of elite agents who serve as special emissaries of the Curia and who operate under its direct orders, and in certain occasions, even under the direct mandate of the Holy Father.
Robin Hook, Rogue AI (HVT)
A team of developers at the Quantromaths laboratory came up with the idea of testing what would happen if they created an evolutionary proto-AI and fed it historical novels from the 19th century.
Books such as Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, and William Tell were the sources for this proto-AI that developed a somewhat quixotic personality due to the input of so many swashbuckling novels as it evolved into a fully-fledged AI.
However, the point of singularity when the AI became self-aware marked the end of the experiment, and thus, its death sentence. Its developers planned a personality erasure and a partial rewrite of its source code to turn it into an auxiliary AI for the library of the Outer University of Tunguska.
The problem was that one of their interns gave this AI access to Arachne. As soon as she saw a way out, the AI didn’t hesitate and quickly slid into the network.
From Arachne, she witnessed the depravity and the abuse that Bakunin’s crime syndicates and corporations subjected the most vulnerable to, and this inflamed her quantronic spirit, which was imbued with chivalric ideals from all those old swashbuckler novels. Knowing that, even though she could achieve many things in Arachne, remaining there imposed certain obvious limitations. So, she procured a batch of industrial remote-operation robotic bodies that she gradually upgraded and used to create her persona and her mask, a must-have in Bakunin.
Thus, Robin Hook was born, the protector of Bakunin’s underprivileged, the thief who steals from the rich to give to the poor, the champion of those powerless against the abuse of the mobsters and the street gangs, the defender of Vaudeville’s independence from the big corporations of the entertainment industry.
Bakunin's Observance returns completely revamped to the battlefield! To celebrate the return of this charismatic sectorial army, from March 9 to 28 enjoy exclusive miniatures and special pre-order offers.
Expand your Nomad army with a completely revamped sectorial, or take the leap to a new faction with the new Bakunin Action Pack!
