Deviators

The Galactic State employed many kinds of robots in the old days, but the Deviators are a special brand of war crime that even other robots find distasteful. These cunning machines exist for one purpose- to kill anyone who isn't designated a friendly, and to all knowledge, nobody who might be recognized as a 'friendly' exists anymore. Self-perpetuating, highly adaptable, and utterly relentless in their pursuit of murder, Deviators will use any dirty trick they can come up with to get a chance to kill people. Killbots that burrow, that swim, that fly- some as small as a rat, some as big as warships. Some models are built to look like humanoids in order to get close enough for a killing blow. Some models forgo all pretense of stealth and are simply combat bodies bristling with more weapons than is remotely reasonable. They will eagerly try to hack other robots and force them into their cause, and androids as well if they think they can do it- those who cannot be hacked, of course, become spare parts to fuel the engines of war.

Fortunately, the single mindedness of Deviators makes them predictable, and not terribly imaginative. Humanoid disguises seldom last long, they don't tend to consider whether or not an enemy force is capable of soundly destroying them, and modern developments in firmware and coding have made it much harder to forcibly conscript unwilling robots and androids than in the past. And they require substantial resources to maintain and build more of themselves, with efforts to take over salvaging sites and wrecks easy to spot and destroy, so they are a much less common threat than they used to be.

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