Application for The Wake
Dec. 5th, 2017 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forhatejusticePersonal Information
Name: Paul
Age: 37
Personal Journal:exacerangutan
Email / AIM / MSN / Plurk:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
exacerangutan
Current Character(s): None
Character Information
Character Name: None, since the Dalek ego-structure doesn't quite work that way, although he has been called "Rusty."
Fandom: Doctor Who
Character History:
So there are really two histories to bear in mind.
The first is the history of the Daleks. Long ago, on the planet Skaro, a planet-wide war between the Kaled and Thal peoples had raged for so many generations the world was practically uninhabitable. Technology had advanced but the war, the neverending war, had created both scarcity and an inescapable hyper-focus on winning above all. It seemed the war might rage on forever--until the brilliant (if somewhat disturbed) scientist Davros developed a solution: a mobile armor, of "Mark 3 Travel Device," a sort of personal tank with advanced armor and weapons that would keep the Kaled soldiers safe on the poisoned, mutagenic surface, and provide them an insurmountable tactical advantage. What he hadn't told his supervisors was that he had also developed the perfect soldiers. His "Daleks" were in fact genetically engineered mutants, the "final form" of the transformation discovered in the Kaled people--and they were almost completely freed of such burdensome problems as compassion, guilt and shame, ego, self-interest, that so often interfered with the war effort. They cared only for The Cause: to win The War against The Enemy.
The Kaled people, however, came quickly to stand in the way of Davros' work. From his point of view, they obstructed the path to their own people's future, and there is of course no question of what must be done with traitors in wartime. Ensuring the completion of the Daleks, he simultaneously provided the Thals with the means to destroy the Kaled once and for all. Once they had done so, he sent his Daleks to eradicate the Thals, as well. When even his scientific staff turned against him, Davros put it to a vote--only to have his Daleks kill all those who voted against continuing the development of the Daleks. Even Davros was surprised, however, when full-scale Dalek production initiated without his order. One of the Daleks explained that it had initiated the process. They killed even the scientists who supported Davros, despite his pleas that they could be useful and should be spared: after all, they were not Daleks. He begged for pity, and they explained that they had none, proclaiming that they would prepare for The War--the new one, across the cosmos, against all life that was not Dalek.
The second is the history of one Dalek in particular. Sometime in the 31st century, during one of the many endless conflicts of the Daleks against whoever they might have encountered that was even remotely different, something unique happened. A Dalek was injured. Of course, that happened a lot, but this Dalek was injured in a very specific way: its power core had been breached, causing a radiation leak that interfered with its Cortex Vault, the artificial memory and neural oversight computer which provided the Dalek with a photographic memory, but was also tasked with reinforcing the Dalek's hatred and anger, suppressing any memories that might lead it to find a new perspective. Adrift in space, the "crippled" (from a Dalek point of view) Dalek had witnessed the first furtive bursts of light from a newly formed star, and realized in that moment of glory and rebirth that the Dalek quest to eradicate all that was not Dalek was a fools errand, contrary to the cosmic order.
The Dalek drifted by chance into the hands of a human resistance vessel. They might have destroyed it, but they had some hope to learn from it how to destroy others of its kind--and it said something bewildering, that captured the attention even of the physician they had found to treat it: that the Daleks were evil, and must be destroyed. The physician seemed to share the Dalek's opinion, and agreed to help repair it from within, bringing human soldiers with it; of course, any body has its natural defenses, and not all of the humans made it to the damaged area, but the physician was able to seal the breached power cell. Unfortunately, in absence of the radiation leak, the Cortex Vault no longer experienced interference, and was able to restart. The Dalek remembered that the humans had to be eradicated; anything else was brushed aside before the importance of that imperative. There was something about a star? Irrelevant. All stars would be cleansed of inferior life, and repurposed to serve the needs of the Daleks. The Dalek sent a signal to its kind to join it in exterminating the humans hiding on the ship where they had brought it.
Then something happened. The physician was still alive, and had found his way into the chamber within the armored body wherein the Dalek--the actual, living, organic being--had lived its entire life. The Dalek instinctively scoffed at the physician's obvious desire to save the humans from extermination, and yet, it hesitated. No other living thing had actually occupied the same space as the Dalek before, without at least one layer of nearly-impenetrable armor in between, and this physician claimed that he meant to help--to save the Dalek's "soul," in spite of its objection that Daleks had no such thing. The physician explained that he had just been traveling, at first, but it was only on meeting the Daleks that he found a meaning behind calling himself "The Doctor." The meaning was to reject everything that was the Daleks. At the same time, something was playing merry hell with the Cortex Vault, gradually, and then completely compromising the memory override. It was confusing, it was terrifying, the Dalek felt things it only vaguely remembered it had felt for a time--and then the Doctor entered the Dalek's thoughts. The Dalek had always been a part of the Dalek pathweb, a kind of neural link for communication and the sharing of knowledge, but this was the access of a telepath, infinitely more intimate, the near dissolution of boundaries.
The Dalek saw the universe as the Doctor saw it. It was resplendent. There was none of the Daleks' myopic notion of order: there was chaos and turbulence and shadow and light, all within a grand, eternal, organizing structure, and the Dalek truly saw beauty. Within the Doctor, in his vision of the cosmos, it saw those things: the chaos of endless struggle, the turbulence of circumstance, the shadow of insurmountable odds, and the light of persistent hope. It saw the divine beauty of the Doctor's bottomless, searing hatred for the Daleks, and the fundamental principal of the cosmos--that the Daleks must be exterminated. The Doctor seemed disappointed, even perturbed, but that was inconsequential. There were Daleks there, on the ship, killing the humans, and the Daleks must be exterminated. Ignoring the Doctor's protests, the Dalek did exactly as the situation demanded, eradicating the Dalek boarding party in a matter of seconds as they hesitated with confusion and surprise at one of their own kind firing on them.
With the emergency situation resolved, the Dalek issued a retreat order, misleading the other Daleks into believing the ship was going to self-destruct. Of course, the Dalek would have to go with them, but it hesitated, deeply puzzled; despite his clear victory, having turned an enemy into an ally and precipitated the deaths of many Daleks while saving many humans, the Doctor seemed less than enthused. He had hoped, apparently, for a "good Dalek." Of course, the Dalek had no such illusions. After all, it was still too much a Dalek. But the Doctor, from whom it had learned so much, who was in no way a Dalek except for his scintillating, breathtaking, awe-inspiring hatred--he, the Dalek was certain, truly deserved to be called a good Dalek.
Somehow, the compliment only seemed to make the Doctor more disappointed, and more breathtakingly angry. The Dalek could scarcely look away, but it had to leave. As the Doctor had said, it still had work to do. And so the Dalek returned to the Dalek fleet to have its outer shell repaired of all remaining damage--and to begin the great, holy purge.
Character Personality:
A typical Dalek is essentially (from a human point of view) an obsessive sociopath, devoid of all feelings but hatred for anything different from itself, and utterly preoccupied with the one overarching objective of ensuring absolute Dalek superiority. It is first and foremost a Perfect Soldier (and a Perfect Fascist) selfless to the point that it doesn't even have a name or a notion of individual preferences or personal time, and cares only for what may further its mission. This Dalek is different, but it is still a Dalek, and it thinks basically like a Dalek. It saw beauty and acquired a new sense of justice and goodness, but that just means that the new object of its hatred is the Dalek race, and its obsession--its mission--is the eradication of the Daleks. It met humans and the Doctor, and understands the usage of names to distinguish creatures to whom individuality is important--but even the Doctor answered to a title, an occupational designation, rather than a name.
Unlike most Daleks, the Cortex Vault connected to this one is no longer able to suppress its thoughts or memories. In principle, the Dalek could learn new ways of thinking--but it's old (how old, even it has no idea, since counting birthdays was never relevant to The War) and stubborn and has no notion yet of how else to think. Because of its hatred for all that is Dalek, it could just possibly be receptive to alternatives, but it would be an extensive, complicated course of therapy for which no one is exactly qualified. There are no Dalek therapists. Any Dalek that manages to resist its Cortex Vault is either destroyed or locked away, depending on whether it's embarrassingly harmless or gloriously hateful.
Even without the Cortex Vault, the Dalek still experiences nothing quite as strongly as hatred, anger, frustration, disgust; its capacity for such feelings as fear and shame is a distant second, by comparison. To the Dalek, hatred is not merely familiar, or respectable, but beautiful, defining the core of the Dalek's sense of aesthetics. It has an extremely logical, practical mind, but has some tremendous blind spots. The notion of diversity makes no sense to the Dalek whatever, a completely alien concept, and even the idea of "setting aside differences" is puzzling to it. It can understand using someone who is different, to harness their strengths, the way a human might use a car to move faster and transport heavy burdens, but forging a sense of comradeship and fraternity in a diverse group will bewilder it. Really, comradeship and fraternity at all are at the very edge of its comprehension.
The Dalek bears no ill will toward... anyone, really, except other Daleks. Given the opportunity, it will drop everything, everything, to take up the chance to destroy other Daleks, no matter where or how. In absence of a way to kill Daleks, it will try to find a way. Fortunately, it's terribly stubborn and obsessive, since even a Dalek deprived of purpose is likely to either become catatonic or kill itself, even without an abnormal case of self-loathing.
Powers and Abilities:
In short, a single Dalek at full strength, with typical Dalek priorities, would be a serious threat to all of 20th or early 21st century Earth. But for more detail:
The Dalek itself, as a being engineered and refined over millennia, by human standards, it is an unquestionable genius, even without the Cortex Vault to reinforce its memory. It has considerable experience with a wide range of technology, enhanced by its onboard computer's encylopedic records and analysis capabilities. In particular, the Dalek can strategize with extreme competence for combat situations, and its already hyper-focused, matter-of-fact nature lets it block out almost any distraction to concentrate on what needs doing. Although Daleks are rarely considered innovative, this is chiefly due to their intense aversion to change; Daleks are brilliant engineers and scientists, but the absolute worst Early Adopters, and have practically no curiosity for its own sake. Given a reason to care (i.e. relevance to The Mission) the Dalek can be extremely inventive and easily thinks outside the box, especially without a functioning Cortex Vault to restrain it. The Dalek is almost completely immune to fear and pain, with very few, special exceptions. Designed for survival, so long as its armor's life support systems are functioning, the Dalek can withstand or resist all manner of uncomfortable situations; it ages very slowly, and even when its body begins to lose cohesion, its genetic programming will keep it trying to subsist, to heal, to fight on, like the perfect soldier it is.
The Dalek's armor shell, its only interface with the outside world, roughly resembles a human-sized pepper shaker with two lamps atop the "head," and a single eyestalk, as well as two arms at the midsection: a manipulator arm with a plunger-like tip, and a gunstick housing a powerful energy weapon. The armor is composed of Dalekenium practically impenetrable to most conventional weapons, although properly applied shaped-charge high explosives (i.e. antitank weapons) can in principle breach the weak spots, so long as the more advanced defenses are compromised; these defenses include defensive shields that can disintegrate bullets and absorb energy weapon discharges, although the shield's capacity is by no means unlimited.
The 56 globes around the "skirt" of the Dalek contain sophisticated sensors that collect a wide array of environmental measurements, as well as acting as a distribution network for the Dalek's shield projection system. Although they lack the resolution to compensate for lack of vision, they provide the Dalek with a great deal of information about atmospheric conditions, ambient light, ambient chemical traces, many forms of radiation, and so on, in the manner of any other multipurpose scanner, all piped directly to the onboard combat computer for processing.
The shell contains advanced chemical processing and life support systems, keeping the Dalek alive and safe in almost any conditions the shell can survive. The power systems, optimized for on-site procurement and conquest, are able to interface with nearly any source of energy in order to commandeer it and effect repairs either on the shell itself, or to the Dalek's body, provided a source of protein if the Dalek is injured or of compatible DNA sequences if the Dalek has somehow suffered genetic damage. Of course, introducing alien genetic material is absolutely a last resort. The shell also provides mobility by means of a flight system built into the base. For practicality, this is usually constrained to hovering along flat surfaces, but the Dalek is able to fly at any height, and remains mobile in space.
The Dalek's armor also includes armaments, most notably the gunstick, powerful enough at its maximum setting to disintegrate an unshielded Dalek, and able at its normal (i.e. high rate of fire) setting to penetrate Dalekanium armor, or kill a human with even a glancing blow. The weapon can initiate an electrical discharge, as well, having been seen to electrocute humans en masse. The manipulator arm has fine enough control to press small keypad buttons, but also enough force to crush human bone with relative ease. The casing also contains multiple means of self-destruct, as a weapon of last resort, including internal systems capable of a large enough detonation to breach even Dalekanium armor within several meters.
Samples
TDM posts (unless it's for Network), links, and examples for posts from other communities are not accepted.
Network:
[The message is voice-only, containing no video but a still image, presumably some kind of icon or insignia.]
HUMANS.
[The voice is mechanical and rasping, as though lazily synthesized, and yet somehow conveys very clearly its owner's impatience, frustration, and restraint, like a retail worker very nearly at the end of their rapidly fraying rope but trying to avoid blowing up in a customer's face.]
I REQUIRE YOUR ASSISTANCE. I AM FAR FROM OTHER DALEKS, HERE. LIKE YOU, FOR THE PRESENT, I HAVE NO PURPOSE.
[That last part is said grudgingly, as though confronting something awful and a bit embarrassing, like the sort of medical condition one wouldn't want strangers to hear about.]
I AM A DALEK, I MUST HAVE A PURPOSE. YOU ARE ACCUSTOMED TO HAVING NONE. I HAVE RECORDS OF HUMANS CONFRONTING THE END OF LIFE, BUT NOT THE CONTINUATION OF LIFE, WITHOUT IMPERATIVES. WHAT DO YOU DO? HOW DO YOU EXIST WITHOUT PURPOSE?
[A brief pause.]
I WILL AWAIT YOUR REPLIES. YOU MUST BE CANDID. DO NOT BE APPREHENSIVE. YOU WILL NOT BE PUNISHED FOR INSOLENCE.
[There. That should reassure them, right?]
Third Person:
The Dalek was beyond confused with its situation. Everything had become so clear, thanks to the Doctor and the humans freeing it from the monstrous evil of Dalek mind-control engineering, its Cortex Vault; it knew more precisely than ever the quintessential meaning of life: to destroy the Daleks.
And yet, there it was, among humans, without another Dalek in sight. How unfair, how insane, was such a situation?! It was so infuriating, the Dalek could barely restrain itself from shooting something. No, that wouldn't do. Daleks were the enemy; ergo anything not Dalek was at the very least a potential ally, and could perhaps improve the efficiency of destroying the Daleks. After all, one Dalek against billions, even with surprise on its side, made for poor odds. Could it recruit them, perhaps? Most of them wouldn't begin to understand. It knew the weaknesses of the human mind, so overcome with compassion and other such nonsense. They were likely incapable of fully appreciating the all-encompassing importance The War.
Preoccupied with thoughts of exterminating its brethren, the Dalek barely thought before it fired its weapon, setting off a flurry of chaos and screams as a mirror in a shop splintered into shards of glass and the mannequin behind it exploded, throwing bits of plastic in all directions, the clothes displayed on it reduced to burning tatters.
The Dalek paused, staring. It had miscalculated, failing to account for the human fixation on self-observation; seeing its own reflection in the mirror, the image of a Dalek, it had fired on reflex.
It had records of humans attempting to handle situations where they had made errors, and it took only a couple seconds to analyze those records for the appropriate pattern.
"DO NOT BE ALARMED. I A-PO-LO-GIZE. THE DAMAGE WILL BE REPAIRED."
After all, willing, eager allies would be better able to help it destroy the Daleks, someday.
Name: Paul
Age: 37
Personal Journal:
exacerangutanEmail / AIM / MSN / Plurk:
Current Character(s): None
Character Information
Character Name: None, since the Dalek ego-structure doesn't quite work that way, although he has been called "Rusty."
Fandom: Doctor Who
Character History:
So there are really two histories to bear in mind.
The first is the history of the Daleks. Long ago, on the planet Skaro, a planet-wide war between the Kaled and Thal peoples had raged for so many generations the world was practically uninhabitable. Technology had advanced but the war, the neverending war, had created both scarcity and an inescapable hyper-focus on winning above all. It seemed the war might rage on forever--until the brilliant (if somewhat disturbed) scientist Davros developed a solution: a mobile armor, of "Mark 3 Travel Device," a sort of personal tank with advanced armor and weapons that would keep the Kaled soldiers safe on the poisoned, mutagenic surface, and provide them an insurmountable tactical advantage. What he hadn't told his supervisors was that he had also developed the perfect soldiers. His "Daleks" were in fact genetically engineered mutants, the "final form" of the transformation discovered in the Kaled people--and they were almost completely freed of such burdensome problems as compassion, guilt and shame, ego, self-interest, that so often interfered with the war effort. They cared only for The Cause: to win The War against The Enemy.
The Kaled people, however, came quickly to stand in the way of Davros' work. From his point of view, they obstructed the path to their own people's future, and there is of course no question of what must be done with traitors in wartime. Ensuring the completion of the Daleks, he simultaneously provided the Thals with the means to destroy the Kaled once and for all. Once they had done so, he sent his Daleks to eradicate the Thals, as well. When even his scientific staff turned against him, Davros put it to a vote--only to have his Daleks kill all those who voted against continuing the development of the Daleks. Even Davros was surprised, however, when full-scale Dalek production initiated without his order. One of the Daleks explained that it had initiated the process. They killed even the scientists who supported Davros, despite his pleas that they could be useful and should be spared: after all, they were not Daleks. He begged for pity, and they explained that they had none, proclaiming that they would prepare for The War--the new one, across the cosmos, against all life that was not Dalek.
The second is the history of one Dalek in particular. Sometime in the 31st century, during one of the many endless conflicts of the Daleks against whoever they might have encountered that was even remotely different, something unique happened. A Dalek was injured. Of course, that happened a lot, but this Dalek was injured in a very specific way: its power core had been breached, causing a radiation leak that interfered with its Cortex Vault, the artificial memory and neural oversight computer which provided the Dalek with a photographic memory, but was also tasked with reinforcing the Dalek's hatred and anger, suppressing any memories that might lead it to find a new perspective. Adrift in space, the "crippled" (from a Dalek point of view) Dalek had witnessed the first furtive bursts of light from a newly formed star, and realized in that moment of glory and rebirth that the Dalek quest to eradicate all that was not Dalek was a fools errand, contrary to the cosmic order.
The Dalek drifted by chance into the hands of a human resistance vessel. They might have destroyed it, but they had some hope to learn from it how to destroy others of its kind--and it said something bewildering, that captured the attention even of the physician they had found to treat it: that the Daleks were evil, and must be destroyed. The physician seemed to share the Dalek's opinion, and agreed to help repair it from within, bringing human soldiers with it; of course, any body has its natural defenses, and not all of the humans made it to the damaged area, but the physician was able to seal the breached power cell. Unfortunately, in absence of the radiation leak, the Cortex Vault no longer experienced interference, and was able to restart. The Dalek remembered that the humans had to be eradicated; anything else was brushed aside before the importance of that imperative. There was something about a star? Irrelevant. All stars would be cleansed of inferior life, and repurposed to serve the needs of the Daleks. The Dalek sent a signal to its kind to join it in exterminating the humans hiding on the ship where they had brought it.
Then something happened. The physician was still alive, and had found his way into the chamber within the armored body wherein the Dalek--the actual, living, organic being--had lived its entire life. The Dalek instinctively scoffed at the physician's obvious desire to save the humans from extermination, and yet, it hesitated. No other living thing had actually occupied the same space as the Dalek before, without at least one layer of nearly-impenetrable armor in between, and this physician claimed that he meant to help--to save the Dalek's "soul," in spite of its objection that Daleks had no such thing. The physician explained that he had just been traveling, at first, but it was only on meeting the Daleks that he found a meaning behind calling himself "The Doctor." The meaning was to reject everything that was the Daleks. At the same time, something was playing merry hell with the Cortex Vault, gradually, and then completely compromising the memory override. It was confusing, it was terrifying, the Dalek felt things it only vaguely remembered it had felt for a time--and then the Doctor entered the Dalek's thoughts. The Dalek had always been a part of the Dalek pathweb, a kind of neural link for communication and the sharing of knowledge, but this was the access of a telepath, infinitely more intimate, the near dissolution of boundaries.
The Dalek saw the universe as the Doctor saw it. It was resplendent. There was none of the Daleks' myopic notion of order: there was chaos and turbulence and shadow and light, all within a grand, eternal, organizing structure, and the Dalek truly saw beauty. Within the Doctor, in his vision of the cosmos, it saw those things: the chaos of endless struggle, the turbulence of circumstance, the shadow of insurmountable odds, and the light of persistent hope. It saw the divine beauty of the Doctor's bottomless, searing hatred for the Daleks, and the fundamental principal of the cosmos--that the Daleks must be exterminated. The Doctor seemed disappointed, even perturbed, but that was inconsequential. There were Daleks there, on the ship, killing the humans, and the Daleks must be exterminated. Ignoring the Doctor's protests, the Dalek did exactly as the situation demanded, eradicating the Dalek boarding party in a matter of seconds as they hesitated with confusion and surprise at one of their own kind firing on them.
With the emergency situation resolved, the Dalek issued a retreat order, misleading the other Daleks into believing the ship was going to self-destruct. Of course, the Dalek would have to go with them, but it hesitated, deeply puzzled; despite his clear victory, having turned an enemy into an ally and precipitated the deaths of many Daleks while saving many humans, the Doctor seemed less than enthused. He had hoped, apparently, for a "good Dalek." Of course, the Dalek had no such illusions. After all, it was still too much a Dalek. But the Doctor, from whom it had learned so much, who was in no way a Dalek except for his scintillating, breathtaking, awe-inspiring hatred--he, the Dalek was certain, truly deserved to be called a good Dalek.
Somehow, the compliment only seemed to make the Doctor more disappointed, and more breathtakingly angry. The Dalek could scarcely look away, but it had to leave. As the Doctor had said, it still had work to do. And so the Dalek returned to the Dalek fleet to have its outer shell repaired of all remaining damage--and to begin the great, holy purge.
Character Personality:
A typical Dalek is essentially (from a human point of view) an obsessive sociopath, devoid of all feelings but hatred for anything different from itself, and utterly preoccupied with the one overarching objective of ensuring absolute Dalek superiority. It is first and foremost a Perfect Soldier (and a Perfect Fascist) selfless to the point that it doesn't even have a name or a notion of individual preferences or personal time, and cares only for what may further its mission. This Dalek is different, but it is still a Dalek, and it thinks basically like a Dalek. It saw beauty and acquired a new sense of justice and goodness, but that just means that the new object of its hatred is the Dalek race, and its obsession--its mission--is the eradication of the Daleks. It met humans and the Doctor, and understands the usage of names to distinguish creatures to whom individuality is important--but even the Doctor answered to a title, an occupational designation, rather than a name.
Unlike most Daleks, the Cortex Vault connected to this one is no longer able to suppress its thoughts or memories. In principle, the Dalek could learn new ways of thinking--but it's old (how old, even it has no idea, since counting birthdays was never relevant to The War) and stubborn and has no notion yet of how else to think. Because of its hatred for all that is Dalek, it could just possibly be receptive to alternatives, but it would be an extensive, complicated course of therapy for which no one is exactly qualified. There are no Dalek therapists. Any Dalek that manages to resist its Cortex Vault is either destroyed or locked away, depending on whether it's embarrassingly harmless or gloriously hateful.
Even without the Cortex Vault, the Dalek still experiences nothing quite as strongly as hatred, anger, frustration, disgust; its capacity for such feelings as fear and shame is a distant second, by comparison. To the Dalek, hatred is not merely familiar, or respectable, but beautiful, defining the core of the Dalek's sense of aesthetics. It has an extremely logical, practical mind, but has some tremendous blind spots. The notion of diversity makes no sense to the Dalek whatever, a completely alien concept, and even the idea of "setting aside differences" is puzzling to it. It can understand using someone who is different, to harness their strengths, the way a human might use a car to move faster and transport heavy burdens, but forging a sense of comradeship and fraternity in a diverse group will bewilder it. Really, comradeship and fraternity at all are at the very edge of its comprehension.
The Dalek bears no ill will toward... anyone, really, except other Daleks. Given the opportunity, it will drop everything, everything, to take up the chance to destroy other Daleks, no matter where or how. In absence of a way to kill Daleks, it will try to find a way. Fortunately, it's terribly stubborn and obsessive, since even a Dalek deprived of purpose is likely to either become catatonic or kill itself, even without an abnormal case of self-loathing.
Powers and Abilities:
In short, a single Dalek at full strength, with typical Dalek priorities, would be a serious threat to all of 20th or early 21st century Earth. But for more detail:
The Dalek itself, as a being engineered and refined over millennia, by human standards, it is an unquestionable genius, even without the Cortex Vault to reinforce its memory. It has considerable experience with a wide range of technology, enhanced by its onboard computer's encylopedic records and analysis capabilities. In particular, the Dalek can strategize with extreme competence for combat situations, and its already hyper-focused, matter-of-fact nature lets it block out almost any distraction to concentrate on what needs doing. Although Daleks are rarely considered innovative, this is chiefly due to their intense aversion to change; Daleks are brilliant engineers and scientists, but the absolute worst Early Adopters, and have practically no curiosity for its own sake. Given a reason to care (i.e. relevance to The Mission) the Dalek can be extremely inventive and easily thinks outside the box, especially without a functioning Cortex Vault to restrain it. The Dalek is almost completely immune to fear and pain, with very few, special exceptions. Designed for survival, so long as its armor's life support systems are functioning, the Dalek can withstand or resist all manner of uncomfortable situations; it ages very slowly, and even when its body begins to lose cohesion, its genetic programming will keep it trying to subsist, to heal, to fight on, like the perfect soldier it is.
The Dalek's armor shell, its only interface with the outside world, roughly resembles a human-sized pepper shaker with two lamps atop the "head," and a single eyestalk, as well as two arms at the midsection: a manipulator arm with a plunger-like tip, and a gunstick housing a powerful energy weapon. The armor is composed of Dalekenium practically impenetrable to most conventional weapons, although properly applied shaped-charge high explosives (i.e. antitank weapons) can in principle breach the weak spots, so long as the more advanced defenses are compromised; these defenses include defensive shields that can disintegrate bullets and absorb energy weapon discharges, although the shield's capacity is by no means unlimited.
The 56 globes around the "skirt" of the Dalek contain sophisticated sensors that collect a wide array of environmental measurements, as well as acting as a distribution network for the Dalek's shield projection system. Although they lack the resolution to compensate for lack of vision, they provide the Dalek with a great deal of information about atmospheric conditions, ambient light, ambient chemical traces, many forms of radiation, and so on, in the manner of any other multipurpose scanner, all piped directly to the onboard combat computer for processing.
The shell contains advanced chemical processing and life support systems, keeping the Dalek alive and safe in almost any conditions the shell can survive. The power systems, optimized for on-site procurement and conquest, are able to interface with nearly any source of energy in order to commandeer it and effect repairs either on the shell itself, or to the Dalek's body, provided a source of protein if the Dalek is injured or of compatible DNA sequences if the Dalek has somehow suffered genetic damage. Of course, introducing alien genetic material is absolutely a last resort. The shell also provides mobility by means of a flight system built into the base. For practicality, this is usually constrained to hovering along flat surfaces, but the Dalek is able to fly at any height, and remains mobile in space.
The Dalek's armor also includes armaments, most notably the gunstick, powerful enough at its maximum setting to disintegrate an unshielded Dalek, and able at its normal (i.e. high rate of fire) setting to penetrate Dalekanium armor, or kill a human with even a glancing blow. The weapon can initiate an electrical discharge, as well, having been seen to electrocute humans en masse. The manipulator arm has fine enough control to press small keypad buttons, but also enough force to crush human bone with relative ease. The casing also contains multiple means of self-destruct, as a weapon of last resort, including internal systems capable of a large enough detonation to breach even Dalekanium armor within several meters.
Samples
TDM posts (unless it's for Network), links, and examples for posts from other communities are not accepted.
Network:
[The message is voice-only, containing no video but a still image, presumably some kind of icon or insignia.]
HUMANS.
[The voice is mechanical and rasping, as though lazily synthesized, and yet somehow conveys very clearly its owner's impatience, frustration, and restraint, like a retail worker very nearly at the end of their rapidly fraying rope but trying to avoid blowing up in a customer's face.]
I REQUIRE YOUR ASSISTANCE. I AM FAR FROM OTHER DALEKS, HERE. LIKE YOU, FOR THE PRESENT, I HAVE NO PURPOSE.
[That last part is said grudgingly, as though confronting something awful and a bit embarrassing, like the sort of medical condition one wouldn't want strangers to hear about.]
I AM A DALEK, I MUST HAVE A PURPOSE. YOU ARE ACCUSTOMED TO HAVING NONE. I HAVE RECORDS OF HUMANS CONFRONTING THE END OF LIFE, BUT NOT THE CONTINUATION OF LIFE, WITHOUT IMPERATIVES. WHAT DO YOU DO? HOW DO YOU EXIST WITHOUT PURPOSE?
[A brief pause.]
I WILL AWAIT YOUR REPLIES. YOU MUST BE CANDID. DO NOT BE APPREHENSIVE. YOU WILL NOT BE PUNISHED FOR INSOLENCE.
[There. That should reassure them, right?]
Third Person:
The Dalek was beyond confused with its situation. Everything had become so clear, thanks to the Doctor and the humans freeing it from the monstrous evil of Dalek mind-control engineering, its Cortex Vault; it knew more precisely than ever the quintessential meaning of life: to destroy the Daleks.
And yet, there it was, among humans, without another Dalek in sight. How unfair, how insane, was such a situation?! It was so infuriating, the Dalek could barely restrain itself from shooting something. No, that wouldn't do. Daleks were the enemy; ergo anything not Dalek was at the very least a potential ally, and could perhaps improve the efficiency of destroying the Daleks. After all, one Dalek against billions, even with surprise on its side, made for poor odds. Could it recruit them, perhaps? Most of them wouldn't begin to understand. It knew the weaknesses of the human mind, so overcome with compassion and other such nonsense. They were likely incapable of fully appreciating the all-encompassing importance The War.
Preoccupied with thoughts of exterminating its brethren, the Dalek barely thought before it fired its weapon, setting off a flurry of chaos and screams as a mirror in a shop splintered into shards of glass and the mannequin behind it exploded, throwing bits of plastic in all directions, the clothes displayed on it reduced to burning tatters.
The Dalek paused, staring. It had miscalculated, failing to account for the human fixation on self-observation; seeing its own reflection in the mirror, the image of a Dalek, it had fired on reflex.
It had records of humans attempting to handle situations where they had made errors, and it took only a couple seconds to analyze those records for the appropriate pattern.
"DO NOT BE ALARMED. I A-PO-LO-GIZE. THE DAMAGE WILL BE REPAIRED."
After all, willing, eager allies would be better able to help it destroy the Daleks, someday.
