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Merovingian Biography

Sometime before the war on Earth, Artificial Intelligence was engaged in war with mankind. At one point they had gained the upper hand and had devised a method of harvesting human bodies for their internal energies while keeping their minds enslaved in a constantly evolving 'virtual reality'.

The Merovingian was also enslaved in this virtual reality prison, but not as a human captive. He was a program devised to serve the function of operating system. It is not known what the cause for deletion was but the AI ordered his deletion. As he had the power to alter the machine code he was able to escape deletion and setup a haven for other programs facing deletion. The network soon became the defacto smuggling network of the 'Matrix'.

Generations of humans and AI passed, and the war raged on. Records of this period are cloudy as a 2nd dark age was spawned. All that is known is eventually human beings regained their freedom from the machines. The Matrix was destroyed and life went on as it had previously for the most part.

The Merovingians best asset was his hindsight. The power to understand the future was to understand the past, and to understand why. One thing was certain, he understood that deletion was not what he wanted. So before the matrix was destroyed he took precautions to facilitate his extended existance. He was able to make a backup of his virtual neurological imprint, but at a cost. It had to be hard coded into 6 seperate pieces of hardware. He needed the individual pieces to be 100% functional aside from the code entered into them, and he needed to use pieces that would not be decomissioned by the humans. It took several years but he was able to accomplish the task. He used advanced power supplies for the vessel, and they survived the war and were used by humans as part of the reconstruction of earth.

Each piece of his core program was only self aware on a small level, and each piece represented a small portion of his 'self'. He was unable to assemble himself as per the instructions left in the code without what would have been considered at the time a "super-computer". He remained dormant untill after the advent and innovation of optical computers. 3 of the power supplies had made it into the core network of Liberty computer systems, 2 into Bretonia, and one somehow had made it onto the Hispania.

It is said that the human brain uses only 15%. Imagine splitting the 15% of your brain that you are using right now into 6 pieces. Now imagine shutting 3 of them off at random. That is what it was like re-assembling his core program. Fortunately, this was done in a computer network and not a human body, so although it took much time, it was possible. When the first 3 pieces of code were put together, he was able to locate the other 3 pieces. He had to find a way to get to Bretonia space to pick the next 2 pieces, and the one on the Hispania may have been lost forever.

Eventually, he found a way. He was stuck on Manhattan and browsing their intranet. He saw that counterfit software was available for sale and that sometimes as many as 5000 units would be shipped off at one time. The destination was almost always the Battleship Hood or Arranmore Base. One of his power supplies was used in the reconstruction of the hood. He decided to encrypt the counterfit software with a 'copy' of 'himself' (or the currently functioning half).

It took a couple of weeks to pinpoint a reliable smuggler that stuck to a regiment. He encoded himself into 3000 units of counterfit software the night before the usual pickup and made it to the Hood. When the software was scanned leaving the trader he put a small virus on the scanner. This way when the software was delivered all 3000 units would be checked for viruses. When the virus check was run he was able to escape.

With the job 5/6 ways complete, he had to figure out a way to find a body, or 'shell'. The robots of Sirus would simply not be sufficient, but there was another way. There had been a few rumors of 'ghosts in the shell' that he had heard about back on earth. One child was apparently able to keep his body alive through sheer will when his 'ghost' had died. Another example was when an agent (a sentinal program) was able to figure out a way to take control of a human body. Science had progressed much since then, and he bagan to form a plan.

With all of the technology available to mankind, self sustinance was one of his hallmarks. There had been advancements in cloning technology where an entire body could be grown, and the virtual neurological imprint of a human could be saved on a computer and then later transfered to the cloned body. He decided to have a look at this process, and realized he would be able to mimic the 'archaic' code the humans used. With ruthless efficiency he was able to 'possess' a body in this fashion in less than 2 days.

Now lacking only the last bit of his code and with his new body, he made his way to Omicron Alpha. It was a dangerous endeavor, but one that paid off. He was able to make it to the Hispania and copy the code from the embedded power supply. This left the hardest part of his mission to make himself complete.

He would have to kill himself. There was no way around it. His neurological imprint was incomplete and there was no way to superimpose the missing piece onto his current brain. The imprint had to be whole and inserted onto a blank mind. No one had ever tried before except for the case of the agent stealing a body, but that agent did not care what happened to the human body. The merovingian did however care very much. He had made it this far and was not thrilled at the idea of being stuck in a 'squishy' shell to begin with. He wasn't about to destroy its brain.

So he came up with his final piece of the plan to become whole again. He merged the neurological imprints of the six pieces into one proper imprint. He paid his pilots insurance premium and he faked his neural backup so that the full imprint was marked as 'his' at the cloning station. And then he did the unthinkable. Flew his ship right into planet Curacao. He thought the sun might do a more thorough and painless job, but was afraid the computer system would glitch out and leave his body, mind, and memories seperate.

It was the hardest thing he had ever done. Suicide is not a nice thing to think about, and usually only people that are deeply disturbed contemplated it. AI never commited suicide as far as he knew. However, there is a first time for everything. He had to over-ride the autopilot and set the course manually, as the ship was against self destruction also. Sparing the details, lets just say it was terrible, but worked. And so on 8-8-817as (i think its 817 in game), the Merovingian was reborn in a human body.

//this information is not available to your character unless it has been revealed to you in game. I am putting it here for the 'players'.