Compact AI CoreSource Pathfinder #88: Valley of the Brain Collectors pg. 62
Slot none; Weight 8 lbs.
Capacity 240; Usage 1/hourDescriptionA compact AI core is a flat sheet of semi-translucent pale blue material 10 inches wide and 20 inches long, contained in a frame of adamantine and horacalcum. One of the narrow ends of the device features a small touch-sensitive panel and several sockets to connect to external devices as needed, although the compact AI core can communicate with most electronic devices and robots wirelessly at a range of 60 feet.
The primary purpose of a compact AI core is to house the staggering amount of data needed to store an artificial intelligence without compromising or degrading its core programming. Most processors capable of storing this amount of data are significant in size, but a compact AI core is small enough to carry in one hand. An AI stored within a compact AI core loses all implicit connections to the source AI. An existing AI can copy itself into a compact AI, but once the copy is complete the new AI within the compact AI core becomes a duplicate but separate entity that may develop different needs and desires than the source. As a result, many AIs resist the idea of duplicating themselves in such a manner so as to avoid possible conflicts or competition. An AI faced with the certain destruction of its core processors, of course, may well resort to using a compact AI core as a method of escape and survival, but the unpredictable changes to personality that are possible during such a transfer may well prompt some AIs to gracefully accept oblivion instead. In a way, it’s better to view the relationship between an AI and its duplicate in a compact AI core as more akin to that of parent and child than as twin siblings or clones.
More often, a compact AI core is used to house an entirely new AI creation, either one programmed from scratch (a discipline lost to the denizens of Divinity today, and one that was thus never available to the inhabitants of Golarion), or one created by the transfer of a living creature’s mind via neurocam.
An AI can use a compact AI core to seize control of a robot to transform it into an aggregate (Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Technology Guide 59), but no more often than one robot can be controlled at a time, and the compact AI core must remain within 60 feet of the aggregate or control is lost. An AI who attempts to seize control of a robot in this manner can do so as a standard action, and the target can resist the attempt with a successful Will save (DC = 10 + 1/2 the AI’s CR + its Charisma modifier).
A compact AI core has 3 sockets capable of accepting one memory facet each. A compact AI core consumes power at the rate of 1 charge per hour, but does not suffer any memory loss or damage if all 240 charges stored within it are consumed—once the compact AI core receives more energy, the AI within immediately regains the ability to interact with the world. While without power, an AI becomes dormant—it may experience something akin to strange dreams, but it cannot be communicated with and is not aware of the passage of time.
A compact AI core has hardness 20 and 80 hit points. If a compact AI core becomes broken, the AI it contains takes a –2 penalty on all saving throws and skill checks. If a compact AI core is destroyed, any AI housed within is destroyed as well. A compact AI core that is destroyed can be repaired via a wish or miracle, or perhaps via complex technological machinery hidden deep in the most secure of Divinity’s wreckage—but restoring an AI previously housed in the core to functionality requires a second miracle or wish—such an act is beyond even the machinery of Divinity.
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