Race Designation: Tezlan
Universal Range: Milky Way
Original Habitat: Tezla 1
Lifespan: Immortal
Sex: Male/Female
Size: None (depends on their host body)
Diet: None (depends on their host body)
Communication: Vocal
Notes: Approximately 8,000 years ago, the tezlans were among the most advanced of civilizations. Over the millennia they had been around, they had developed a thriving metropolis on their homeworld of Tezla 1, a city that spanned across the entire surface of the planet. They were especially advanced with computers, capable of creating entire digital worlds, to the point where their children grew up on interactive, digital media called holofilms. However, their world faced an imminent crisis. The Sun of their world's solar system was about to go supernova. To survive, the tezlans built a starship equipped with a network of supercomputers, Tezla 2.0. One billion tezlans transferred their consciousnesses into the supercomputers, which contained an entire virtual planet for them to inhabit, Tezla 2.0, for the duration of the crisis. With a purpose-built AI piloting the ship and maintaining the virtual world, the tezlans departed their home system and began a millennia-long sojourn across the galaxy. In 2185 CE, the Tezla 2.0 entered the salarian-inhabited Antilin system. The starship's AI sought help as the energy source keeping the ship and the virtual world running was dwindling. When the "ghost ship" was first detected by the salarians, it was initially thought to be the vanguard of a geth attack because it emitted strong AI heuristics. Contact between the galaxy and the AI was first established by the famed human exobiologist, Dr. Jordan Detweiler, who boarded the ship to communicate with the AI, learning both of the virtual world and the energy problem. The Citadel Council, wary of the threat posed by the AI, was prepared to rule against aiding the ship, placing Tezla 2.0 and the lives of it's inhabitants in jeopardy. Alarmed, Detweiler entered the virtual world to warn the tezlans. Detweiler returned with an offer to the Council: the tezlans would trade their advanced technology in exchange for help. A veil of secrecy was immediately erected by the Council, and matters involving the ship were classified top-secret.
One month later, it was revealed that a representative of the tezlans, Ambassafor Sygan, had been using Dr. Detweiler's body to visit the Citadel to speak with the Council. After explaining the situation in a press conference, Sygan asked for asylum from the Council, stating that she is one of the many of her race who wish to leave Tezla 2.0. When the question of what would happen to Dr. Detweiler, whose mind remained in Tezla 2.0, arose, a volunteer offered to take on Sygan's mind in Detweiler's place. After this was announced, some 400 individuals from various races also stepped forward to swap places with other tezlans.
Character Notes: Cleeo is what you get when you give a girl who was raised on bounty hunter holofilms access to a robot body with all the bells and whistles. Despite being over a millennium, her consciousness was uploaded into Tezla 2.0 when she was only sixteen. Because of this, her consciousness never matured past her teen years, not helped by the fact that she spent the vast majority of her time in Tezla 2.0 acting out her bounty hunter fantasies. When the alliance with the Citadel Council was finally made, she swapped places with a human girl. However, after having spent years in a virtual world, being constrained by an unfamiliar biology and the laws of physics was more than a little underwhelming for her. Disappointed, she uploaded herself back into the virtual world, where she stayed for a few months, revitalizing herself in her fantasy world. She would eventually attempt swapping with other races, more humans, asari, and even an elcor once, but none of them fit her. She began to believe that the real world just wasn't for her and decided to once and for all surrender herself to the vastly superior lifestyle of fiction. That would all change with a new development. As organic body donors became less common, the tezlans came up with a new plan. With the help of a team of scientists from across various races, they were able to develop robot bodies that the tezlans could upload themselves into. Of course, for some, it was no replacement for flesh and blood, but like they always say, beggars can't be choosers. While disheartening for some, the prospect of a robot body was enough to pique Cleeo's interest in reality once more. After two weeks of consideration, mostly spent in the holofim Outlaw side of the Moon, she decided to try out one. After her first test run, she was already in love. She certainly felt heavier, but the strength in her new limbs made it easier to run and jump as if she was still in a holofilm. It was a dream come true for her. Just a few years later, she had already made her mark on the galaxy by becoming a bounty hunter. She nearly died countless times in the beginning, her robot body being the only thing that kept her alive, but, after awhile, she was able to take what she'd learned from years of holofilms into the real world. With the Milky Way is disarray following the Reaper Wars, there was no shortage of people willing to hire her to take care of their problems. Her business brought her into contact with some fairly shady people who were more than happy to help upgrade her body full of weapons, for a reasonable price, of course. Unfortunately, Cleeo's actions ended up bring her into conflict with some powerful figures. Most notable was Aria T'Loak, the de facto leader of Omega, who sent countless soldiers after her after she accidentally shot and killed a high ranking member of the Blood Pack. After months of avoiding assassins and mercenaries sent to kill her and repairing her body the best she could with the money she had, she was, quite literally, on her last leg. In a last ditch effort, she came up with a plan so crazy that it just might work. In what seemed like a stroke of luck, she was able to upload her consciousness into a maintenance robot. She intended to simply lay low for awhile before slowly upgrading her technology again, but, in her haste, she forgot to completely override the machine's programming, and she found herself compelled against her will onto one of the arks of the Second Andromeda Initiative by a powerful A.I. She wanted nothing more than to escape, but all she could do was watch as she departed into dark space on a six hundred year voyage, with no holofilms to help pass the time. For centuries, Cleeo followed the orders of the ark's A.I. After just a year of cleaning the same hallways over and over again, she was close to killing herself, but the A.I. wouldn't even allow her that. Centuries later, she had surrendered to her fate, almost to the point where she would occasionally forget aspects of her previous life and have to think very hard to remember why she was even on this ship in the first place. Then, six centuries later, a strange twist of fate occurred. The ark came under fire by a kett fleet, and the recently awakened crew were unprepared. The enemy fleet was relentless, and their assault eventually crippled the A.I. This opening was all Cleeo needed to finally break free. All around her, she heard voices ordering her around, but she ignored all of them in favor of following her own goal. Grabbing a couple of weapons from storage, she fought her way across the ship and headed straight for the escape pods. It was a bumpy ride, but Cleeo managed to escape the kett assault and crash land on a barren planet. Taking in the dry, arid scenery around her, she was unsure of what her next move would be, but she was just happy to finally be off of that ship. However, her relief was soon shattered when she found herself under attack by the machines known as the remnants. Her body wasn't made for combat, but, using the weapons she'd grabbed, she was able to fight them off. After making sure to completely remove the A.I.'s influence from her mind, she decided to study the machines she'd just slaughtered. After months of experimentation. She was able to upgrade her body with the foreign tech, even using assembler technology to create miniature copies of her body. Eventually, she had upgraded herself to such an extent that she was able to take control of the remnants stationed on the planet. Now, with an army at her disposal, she declared herself boss of her own bounty hunter guild. Instead of taking orders, she'd be the one giving them. It was a rough ride, but as she sat in her own private mansion, created by her new "staff", she knew it was all worth it.
