Austin

Austin was activated in 1867 in the river town of Burg, two years after the famous combat robot Grant became the first hodler in history. He inherited both of his accumulator modules from a single donor, an aging combat hodler from Grant's own unit, and was given a young crab for his Enoi - housed not in his head but in a small glass capsule set into his chest plate, as is sometimes done with crab Enoi. He came to Famas as a young adult in 1875, the year Samon broke ground on the first mine, and joined the newly-formed Famas police in 1880.

For the next four decades he served the city, rising through patrol, investigations, and finally vice. He was never charismatic enough for command and never corrupt enough for the back rooms, but he was the kind of officer the department put on the cases nobody else could close, and a generation of younger officers passed through his desk on the way up.

During the civil war of 1905 - 1908 Austin served openly on Samon's side. He took the heavy hardened-steel armour plates issued to operative robots during the unrest - across the cheekbones, chin and occiput - and unlike most of his colleagues never had them removed when the war ended. He also lost his right arm in the closing months of the conflict, in circumstances he has never discussed. He never had it replaced; chipped and old, the war plates and the missing arm give him a menacing look that has only deepened with the years.

He served another decade after the war before a misstep brought his career to an end. Samon's old debt to him kept him out of prison, but he was finished in the force all the same. He was forty years in the service and out of it in a single afternoon.

His wife took their son and left within the month, and the house went for debts shortly after. By the time of the current story Austin has been living for five years in an abandoned railway station west of Famas Main Station, in the company of other homeless hodlers, drawing the occasional favour out of his old uniform. He still walks like a cop, still profiles his neighbours out of habit, and still has a nephew in the working-class quarter who pretends not to know him. Austin is dry, observant, allergic to pity, and despite everything has never blamed the city for how it ended.