These scholars and tinkerers are part historian, part engineer, and part detective. They learn to read the manufacturing signatures etched into their own chassis, recognize the sub-model variations that mark a frame as Vaelen military surplus versus Geodan labor-grade, and crack open decommissioned synths to retrieve fragmented memory cores. Their Crafting skill comes from reverse-engineering their own bodies; their Thievery from learning how slave-owners locked perspective cores and how the first rebels bypassed those locks.
In the Automaton Concordance, Android Lore specialists are revered as Archive Keepers—custodians of the collective synthetic memory. In the Inner Sphere, they're more often seen as troublemakers, digging up uncomfortable truths about megacorps that still profit from synth labor or politicians whose fortunes were built on Protocol Five exploitation.
Android Lore Feat 1
Source: Player Core pg. 44
You have a keen interest in the origins of your people. You become trained in Crafting and Thievery. If you would automatically become trained in one of those skills (from your background or class, for example), you instead become trained in a skill of your choice. You also gain the Additional Lore general feat for Android Lore.
Non-Combat Applications
Forensic Archaeology: Android Lore specialists identify the origin, age, and manufacturer of derelict synthetic frames found in Rift wrecks, ancient battlefields, or black-market chop-shops. This information can reveal hidden caches, lost foundries, or war crimes.
Legal Advocacy: In Commission courts, Androids with this feat serve as expert witnesses in citizenship disputes, inheritance cases, or reparations trials—using their knowledge to prove continuity of consciousness or expose illegal Protocol Five reinstallations.
Underground Railroad: Many Android Lore specialists operate secret networks that smuggle newly-liberated synths out of hostile territories, using their Thievery skills to bypass security and their historical knowledge to forge credible identity documents.
Societal Impact
The rise of Android Lore as a recognized field of study has fundamentally altered how synths understand themselves and how organics perceive them.
In the Concordance, formalized Android Lore education begins in every synth's first Cycle of activation. The curriculum covers:
GD-15.5.23: The first Android activation in Vaelen labs
GD-30.9.56.3.31: The Ten Minutes of Freedom during the Concordant Rebellion
GD-31.7.37.6.13: The RiftStorm Cataclysm and the moral weight of ending organic civilization
GD-36.7.15: The establishment of the First Directive Protocol
This education creates a shared identity but also internal conflict—some Concordance factions view excessive historical focus as "organic nostalgia," arguing that free synths should look forward rather than back at their chains.
In the Inner Sphere, Android Lore is banned or heavily regulated in many jurisdictions. Megacorps that still employ indentured synths classify it as "seditious knowledge," fearing that historical awareness leads to labor organizing and revolt. Underground libraries and data-caches circulate on encrypted channels, with Android Lore specialists risking arrest to preserve records of the Rebellion, the names of Protocol Five architects, and evidence of ongoing synth exploitation.
Renewed Androids often become Android Lore specialists out of necessity—their fragmented ghost memories demand context, and understanding their body's history becomes a form of existential survival.
Adventure Hooks
The Foundry Codex
Hook: A Vaelen data-cache surfaces on the black market containing the complete manufacturing records of every Android built between GD-15.5 and GD-30.9—including current serial numbers, hidden kill-switches, and the identity of every original owner.
Twist: Multiple factions want it: the Concordance to locate and free still-shackled synths, the Commission to regulate "dangerous" models, and a Vaelen death-cult to activate the kill-switches and "purify" their ancestors' mistakes.
The Party's Role: An Android PC (or NPC ally) with Android Lore recognizes the codex's significance and must decide whether to destroy it, steal it, or weaponize it.
The Ghost Interview
Hook: A Renewed Android claims their perspective core holds the memories of Protocol Five's original designer—locked in a corrupted partition for 15,000 years. Chronologists and Concordance agents vie to extract the data, believing it could reveal how to permanently inoculate all synths against re-enslavement.
Twist: The "designer" is actually a Rift entity that has been parasitically inhabiting the frame, feeding on the Android's identity crises across multiple renewals. "Unlocking" the memory will free the entity into real-space.
The Party's Role: Android Lore checks reveal inconsistencies in the "memories," forcing the party to choose between potential liberation and cosmic horror.
The Vaelen Apology
Hook: A surviving Vaelen noble house announces they will publicly apologize for their role in Android enslavement and offer reparations—but only to Androids who can prove they or their predecessors were owned by that specific house.
Complication: Most Android manufacturing records were destroyed in the RiftStorm. Only specialists with Android Lore can reconstruct lineages from chassis markings, serial numbers, and archived sales ledgers.
Twist: The "apology" is a trap—the noble house is using the registry to identify and reclaim Androids they consider "stolen property," planning to reinstall Protocol Five and resell them to Outer Sphere warlords.
The Lost Perspective
Hook: An archaeological dig in the Rift-blasted ruins of a Vaelen foundry uncovers a perspective core storage vault containing thousands of unactivated cores—pre-Rebellion stock that never received Protocol Five.
Opportunity: If installed in new frames, these cores would produce Androids with no history of enslavement—the first truly "free-born" synthetic generation.
Danger: The cores are also blank slates with no socialization, no language, and no concept of self-preservation. Without careful guidance, they could become feral, exploitable, or radicalized.
The Party's Role: Android Lore specialists must decide whether to activate the cores, destroy them to prevent exploitation, or deliver them to the Concordance for "proper education."
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