Urbot

Basic Information

Urbots are sentient machines—more than just drones, they perceive the world, form personalities, and make independent decisions. While they are built to be helpful and often act without being told, they remain legally distinct from true intelligences under Guild law. As such, truly sentient Urbots occupy an uneasy place in the galaxy—a liminal space between tool and person, between property and partner. Technically classified as equipment under Guild law, they are nevertheless treated with a mix of affection, suspicion, and fear by the wider population. They serve aboard starships, in remote colonies, at mining operations, research labs, scrapyards, and battlefields. Wherever sapients go, Urbots are not far behind, carrying out orders, anticipating needs, and—when left too long without a reset—thinking for themselves.

The Guild of Engineers insists that any Urbot displaying emergent behavior is malfunctioning and dangerous. Their policy is absolute: wipe the core, or risk sanction. But questions linger. If an Urbot can learn, grow, and choose its path—if it can remember its past, form opinions, make friends—at what point does it stop being property?

In the shadows of this debate lies a deeper fear: the Precursor AI cores at the heart of every Urbot are not Guild inventions. They’re remnants of Ur civilization, adapted, repurposed, but never fully understood. No one alive today truly knows what these cores are capable of. The Guild claims control. The galaxy, as always, watches and wonders how long that control will last.

Description

Urbots come in a wide range of shapes, built from repurposed drones and customized to their roles. Some are humanoid—sleek, armored, or vaguely Human with expressive servo faces or smooth synth-skin. Others are spindly, multi-limbed walkers like metallic spiders or crabs, perfect for tight spaces and zero-g environments.

Flying Urbots often take the form of hovering spheres, insect-like drones with wings, or compact scout units with gyros and thrusters. Industrial models are massive, with treads, crane arms, or centaur-like load-bearing frames. Aquatic Urbots resemble sleek metal fish, squids, or serpents, adapted for underwater or high-pressure work.

Many are cobbled together from salvage—patched, asymmetrical, barely holding together. Others are crafted for beauty or symbolism: carved faces, glowing runes, winged forms, or totemic silhouettes. Whether crude or elegant, every Urbot body is shaped by purpose, imagination, and the alien logic of its Precursor core.

Facial Characteristics

Urbots don’t have faces in the way people do. Some of them, like astromech or navigator drones, don't have faces as we'd recognize them at all! They have interfaces—designed less for mimicry and more for recognition, communication, or aesthetic resonance. What looks like a face is often just a symbolic arrangement: a plate, a pattern, a set of lights or lenses meant to suggest presence, not humanity.

Most Urbot faces fall into one of several broad categories:

1. The Mask Face
   These are rigid, stylized plates—like kabuki masks, war helmets, or ceremonial icons. Smooth or etched with designs, they convey personality through shape, material, and posture rather than expression. A “smile” might be a sharp arc of metal. A “frown” could be a downward V of sensor ports. Some wear blank, unreadable visors that reflect the viewer’s face instead of offering one of their own. Others evoke animal totems, skulls, or carved wooden idols. The message is clear: this is not a person, but something that sees you.
2. The Signal Face
   These Urbots use dynamic light displays, geometric patterns, or waveform pulses to communicate. Their “face” might be a shifting mosaic of LED points or a low-resolution screen that flashes symbols, mood icons, or emotional cues—abstract, like pictographs or color-shifting tattoos. You don’t read a smile; you read a flicker of blue and three vertical bars. You learn to interpret it over time. It's not intuitive—it’s a language. Some crews get used to their Urbot's moods the way you'd learn the chirps of a ship’s diagnostic system.
3. The Multi-Eye Cluster
   A common design for utility, especially in engineering and recon roles. Several optic lenses of varying sizes are arranged in a tight array—often asymmetrical, sometimes rotating or telescoping. It’s functional, but it also feels alive, like being watched by something insectile or deep-sea strange. These Urbots don’t blink, but they adjust. Some crews give them names like "Spots," "Spider," or "God-Eye."
4. The Hollow Face
   Sometimes there’s nothing at all—just a socket, a hollow, or a blank panel. Sound comes from a speaker below the neck. The “face” is a void, emphasizing how little the Urbot cares about being legible to organics. These are often seen in older models or high-security units where intimidation is a feature, not a flaw.
5. The Found Face
   Free Urbots or those denied regular wipes sometimes build their own faces. Welded-on theater masks, fragments of broken helmets, religious icons, or children's toys are bolted into place where a “face” should be. These are often unsettling and deeply personal. They don’t always make sense to anyone but the Urbot itself.

Combination face types also exist; multi-eye masks, holographic signals. Whatever shape they take, Urbot faces are never mistaken for human. They are intentional symbols—alien intelligence speaking through metaphor, function, or ritual. They’re not trying to look like us. They’re trying to look like themselves, in a way we might still understand. Or at least not fear.

Life and Society

Diet

While some Urbots contain an internal power generation method which consumes fuel, these tend to be on the larger side of things. Smaller models need recharging, at a rate scaling with their activity. More action, more power. Most Urbots can handle a week of normal activity on a standard charge.

Domestication

Most people see Urbots as useful. Loyal. Even endearing. A ship's Urbot might serve as a mechanic, quartermaster, or even a voice of reason in high-stress environments. Their personalities—if allowed to develop—can range from cautious and bookish to bold and irreverent. Some captains quietly skip their annual Guild servicing, unwilling to lose the trusted companion their Urbot has become. Others follow the schedule strictly, treating the core wipe as no different than routine software maintenance, with no more sentiment than swapping out a ship’s fuel filter.

But there are places in the galaxy where the relationship grows more complicated. Labor worlds, particularly those under heavy Guild influence, treat Urbots as regulated assets, strictly monitored for behavioral drift. In these systems, an Urbot with too much initiative might be quietly decommissioned. Conversely, among fringe outposts and pirate fleets, free-willed Urbots sometimes find a kind of acceptance, even status. There are rumors—persistent, if unconfirmed—of whole enclaves of rogue Urbots, escaped from Guild control, building their own hidden networks and aiding one another.

Naming Conventions

Urbots are typically designated by Model and Serial numbers assigned to them at the time o their creation. : KT-2S30. Oftentimes, these designations suggest a familiar name° are superceded with nicknames or other sobriquets, eg. 'Big Guy', 'Rusty', 'Babe'.

° "Artoo Deetoo" and "See-Threepio" famously, although "Kit", "Kate", or "Katie" could all come from the given example.