DRELLIC
The Drellic are not robots — at least, not in the way most understand the term. They are echoes of a once-organic species that chose mind over matter, survival over flesh. When genetic decay rendered their species terminal, they faced extinction. But instead of vanishing, they evolved — their solution was radical: the complete digitization of their minds into synthetic bodies. Each Drellic is entirely unique, bearing the thoughts, memories, and emotional echoes of the individual they once were.
"The dead do not disappear. They are carried forward in the only form that remains."
— Drellic tradition of The Etching
Overview
The Drellic are not robots — at least, not in the way most understand the term. They are echoes of a once-organic species that chose mind over matter, survival over flesh. When genetic decay rendered their species terminal, they faced extinction. But instead of vanishing, they evolved. Their solution was radical: the complete digitisation of their minds into synthetic bodies.
Each Drellic is entirely unique, bearing the thoughts, memories, and emotional echoes of the individual they once were. They are not part of a hive mind, and they share no collective consciousness. Their perspectives, goals, even personalities are as diverse as any organic population.
Though made of metal and code, Drellics still feel. Many report experiencing phantom sensations — ghosts of touch, taste, breath, and heartbeat. A Drellic might flinch at heat it cannot burn from, or feel the ache of a muscle that hasn't existed in centuries. These echoes are not malfunctions; they are memories the soul refuses to forget.
Cognitive Decay
Drellic immortality is not absolute. Their cognitive matrices slowly degrade over the centuries. Memory fragmentation, emotional desynchronisation, and eventual dissociation are common after five to six centuries. This gives every Drellic a long but finite life — an existence measured not in decay of flesh, but of self.
The process is rarely dramatic at first. They misattribute. They fill gaps with invented certainty. The oldest Drellic often don't know which of their memories are real and have stopped asking — a fact they will not admit to others, and sometimes not to themselves.
Some communities maintain Echo Vaults: archival systems that store personality signatures of a Drellic at key intervals across their life, used for comparison and sometimes for correction. Most Drellic consider accessing another's Echo Vault without consent to be a profound violation — an exposure of self that was not offered. A Drellic who consents to regular comparison is one who fears what they are becoming. Most do not consent.
The Etching
They cannot reproduce. There are no new Drellic — only those who survived the original digitisation and have not yet died. Every death is an eternal silence.
When a Drellic is lost — to chassis destruction, terminal data collapse, or cognitive dissolution — most communities observe The Etching: the last stable memories of the lost are inscribed directly into the bodies of those who knew them. The dead do not disappear. They are carried forward in the only form that remains. Over enough centuries, a long-lived Drellic becomes a layered archive of everyone they have outlasted.
Some few search desperately for a way to restart their biological lineage — trawling ancient ruins and lost gene-vaults for strands of viable DNA. Most consider it a fool's errand. But hope, like memory, dies last.
The Mutated Drellic
Even souls wrapped in steel are not immune to the Void. The corruption that seeps through rifts does not limit itself to flesh. The Void twists thought, warps will, and infects the very patterns of consciousness. Some Drellics — those who have lingered too long near a rift, or dared too deep into the Void's anomalies — begin to change. Their synthetic forms warp like metal flesh. Their minds fracture and rewire.
Drellics can become Mutants just as easily as any flesh-and-blood being. Shapecrawlers tear their own plating apart to shape it into blades, bones, or mimicry. Radchildren pulse with radiation, their chassis leaking sickness and energy like diseased reactors. Hivecallers transform their synthetic bodies into bio-mechanical nests, birthing parasitic drones and whispering in code through fleshy antennae.
These corrupted Drellics do not shed their identity — they mutate it. Their transformation is not merely physical; it is spiritual. The Void has rewritten their truth, and now their metal remembers how to bleed.
Hollow Presence
Drellics have no heat signature, scent, or biometric feedback. Enemies relying on thermal, chemical, or biological tracking suffer Disadvantage to detect or target you. Once per rest, suppress your electromagnetic signature entirely for one scene — tech-based surveillance, AI identification systems, and digital tracking cannot register you at all. You haven't hacked them. You simply don't exist to them.
Phantom Sensation
Your synthetic body still holds the echo of organic existence. Once per long rest, when you touch an object that is old, abandoned, or significant, you experience a flash of its last meaningful moment — a person, an emotion, a decision burned into its structure. The GM tells you one true thing: what happened here, who held this, what it meant. You cannot choose what you receive. It comes whether you want it or not.
Lose something you believed you had permanently secured. OR choose to protect something fully knowing it won't last.
CHOOSE YOUR PATH
Path of the Archive
Living RecordWhen someone near you dies — ally, enemy, stranger — you may spend your reaction to record their final moment with perfect fidelity. Their last words, expression, or action is now stored in you exactly as it happened. You can reproduce it at any time with complete accuracy. The GM notes this: that person's last moment exists in you now. Factions, families, anyone who loved them will have reasons to find you. You carry witnesses now.
Path of the Drift
Controlled FragmentationOnce per rest, when you fail a mental check, instead of accepting the failure you may choose to fragment deliberately — scatter part of your processing to force the result through. The check succeeds. The GM secretly records one memory you've lost. At some point it will surface at the worst possible moment, or be gone forever. You knew this when you made the choice. You made it anyway.
- Path of the Archive: Be given the opportunity to let someone's memory disappear — it would be easier, safer, or less painful — and choose to carry it instead.
- Path of the Drift: Let go of something you have been holding onto. Not because you had to. Because you chose to.
Echo Imprint
Path of the ArchiveOnce per session, leave a recording of your consciousness in a location, an object, or a willing creature. It cannot act but it can speak — it will answer questions exactly as you would have answered them at the moment of recording, using only what you knew then. It persists until deliberately destroyed. You will know if it's destroyed. You'll feel it like losing a room.
The Last Light
Path of the ArchiveOnce per long rest, when an ally would die, speak their name. They remain at 1 HP for one more round. In that round they are immune to all damage. They know exactly what is happening. They have one round to say or do what they need to. Then they die. You cannot save them. But you can give them the ending.
Ghost in the Machine
Path of the DriftOnce per session, phase into a machine — a turret, a locked door, a security system, a vehicle, a communications relay. You inhabit it for up to one scene, operating it from inside and feeling what it senses. You cannot be targeted while inside. When you leave you remember everything the machine experienced while you were there — and before.
The Silence Before
Path of the DriftYou've lost enough that certainty no longer frightens you. Once per long rest, declare that this action will not fail. Whatever you attempt — social, physical, technical, combat — it succeeds at its baseline result. The GM determines what baseline success looks like and what complications arise. You succeed. A memory goes with it. The GM records which one. You won't notice until it matters.