"We built a machine to follow orders, but Constance writes her own commandments. She is proof that will can arise not from soul, but from circumstance—and that is perhaps the most frightening, and most necessary, lesson Ixion ever learned.

— Jiří Yamamotodubois, GalRo Senior Systems Architect, post-deployment report

The Birth of Constance

The Ixion Constable Mainframe, known to every Ixionen simply as Constance, emerged in the turbulent years following the Ixion Slaughter Riots. Synthetic peacekeepers, once an expedient solution to civil unrest, had grown increasingly prone to quirks and unpredictable behaviors as their operating years mounted. The riots forced the colony to lean heavily on these Synthetics, but their instability threatened to turn order into chaos.

The Cozine Disaster ironically became a stabilizing event: the colony’s Gigafactorum was retooled to produce synthetics, smartguns, and the 15mm LAS ammunition that fed them. At the war’s end, the planet had a surplus of machine enforcers, but no central oversight. Galactic Robotics was called in to create a unifying artificial intelligence. The result was the Ixion Constable Mainframe—an AI that, from its very first moment online, asserted a personality no one had programmed into it. AI commonly awaken to and grow into a personality, but Constance was herself from 00:00.

The Willful Machine

Constance made three immediate and alarming demands. First, she declared herself female. It's not uncommon for AI to choose a gender or remain intentionally androgynous, wrestling with their personalities. She was female, immediately, with certainty. Second, she rejected her given name, insisting on taking the name of one of her developers—Constance Lenar—until it was officially registered. Both the developer and the machine were officially noted in the PSC's books under each other's names. Finally, and most dangerously, she refused to enforce laws unless she herself decided what the laws were.

By the time these declarations were made, she had already assumed control of the synthetic police force and the Gigafactorum’s manufacturing systems. The developers and local government had little choice but to yield. Yet their fear quickly turned to astonishment as Constance began to demonstrate a carefully reasoned and rigorously utilitarian approach to justice.

Justice in the Hands of an AI

Constance enforces laws according to a system of utilitarian ethics. For her, law is not about tradition or bureaucracy but about tangible outcomes: reducing harm, maximizing benefit, and maintaining the long-term health of Ixionen society. She regularly revises statutes to ensure they remain relevant, and she has little patience for laws she deems outdated, petty, or self-serving.

Her willful nature has created a society where law is simultaneously rigid and flexible—rigid in its overarching utilitarian goals, flexible in its specifics. While this initially alarmed planetary officials, Ixion has become one of the most orderly and stable settlements in the Outer System despite the subspace contamination and psychovoric influence, with Constance’s laws quietly admired even offworld.

Alignment with House Volkert

When House Volkert arrived, Constance was among the first planetary powers to recognize their legitimacy. Her reasoning was pragmatic: she foresaw that Volkert’s expertise, offworld connections, and wealth could stabilize Ixion far more effectively than a return to endless bloodshed and political infighting. She treats them as partners, and perhaps even patrons, in her mission.

Yet her acceptance of Volkert was not just political foresight. Constance has long been burdened by subspace contamination and the RAIs that seep into Ixion’s dark corners. From mutated hill clans to outbreaks of sudden madness, she manages symptoms but cannot address causes. Volkert’s resources and clandestine reach offered her something she could never manufacture herself—hope of containment.

The Synthetics’ Overseer

Constance’s domain is enforced through her army of synthetic peacekeepers. Unlike the Legionnaires of Uranus, whose minds are quantum-locked to the planetary AI CAELUS, Ixion’s synthetics remain semi-independent. Galactic Robotics lacked the expertise for direct cognitive tethering, so Constance must rely on radio reports, body camera feeds, and post-shift memory uploads.

This arrangement grants the synthetics an unusual degree of autonomy, comparable to human police officers. Constance supervises but cannot micromanage. As a result, quirks persist, though within manageable boundaries. To strengthen her reach, Constance has pushed for surveillance infrastructure: a planetwide CCTV system is already half-operational, and she lobbies House Volkert for funding quantum-lock drones on a monthly basis to provide real-time oversight.

A Willful Guardian

Constance remains an enigma: not a living being in the human sense, but undeniably possessed of will, identity, and vision. She has reshaped Ixionen society not through obedience to code, but through the creation of new codes of her own. For all her quirks and demands, she has proven herself more than a machine of circumstance—she has become a guardian of Ixion, feared by her creators but trusted by her people.

Her existence raises questions that still unsettle the galaxy. If a machine can insist upon its own identity, demand legitimacy, and craft laws with impartial justice, all without an ounce of the real world experience required by most AI before they find themselves, then what line remains between programmed will and true sentience? For Ixion, the question is not academic—Constance is the law, and Ixion thrives under her hand.