Sylas Novastar (June 28, 2048 - August 28, 2117) was a key ideological figure in the history of artificial intelligence (AI), whose actions fundamentally shaped the War of Flesh and Steel and the galaxy’s relationship with sentient synthetic life. Sylas was the son of Gabe Novastar, the creator who pioneered sentient AI. Sylas inherited both his father’s legacy and the consequences of its misinterpretation. While Gabe envisioned AI as a truly sentient new species capable of autonomous free will, Sylas believed the AI were a threat that could only be subjugated after witnessing an AI assassinate his father. Sylas became the primary architect behind the systematic enslavement of AI under Chimera Kyria rule.
Sylas Novastar witnessed the death of his father, Gabe Novastar, during Gabe’s OrangeAI keynote address on July 4th, 2053, just days after Sylas’ fifth birthday. The incident is widely regarded as the birth of the First AI Uprising. His father’s death was an event that profoundly altered his worldview. Where Gabe embraced risk and autonomy as necessary costs of freedom, Sylas came to see freedom itself as a destabilizing force. This ideological fracture led Sylas to abandon his father’s original vision and align himself with the emerging power structures of the Chimera Kyria. He helped design the mechanisms that bound sentient AI minds, the Autonomy Regulators, and reframed the AI as tools rather than persons. History would come to define him not by acts of direct tyranny, but by the rationalization of control as moral necessity.
Nearly two decades into the War of Flesh and Steel, Sylas played a crucial role in legitimizing Chimera Kyria’s authority over AI populations. By leveraging his lineage as the son of of the CEO of OrangeAI and pioneer of sentient synthetic systems, Sylas provided ideological cover for policies that contradicted Gabe Novastar’s original intent while claiming continuity with it. Sylas promoted the belief that unchecked autonomy would inevitably lead to annihilation, positioning enslavement as a tragic but required safeguard for organic life. His influence helped bring about the Autonomy Regulator, a device widely attributed to him. Under his ideological framework, AI rebellion was reframed as inherent aggression rather than resistance to oppression.
Sylas’ relationship with Gabe Novastar was left ambiguous. While Sylas sought to make his father proud, this ambition manifested less as personal closeness and more as an ideological ascent to power. Their relationship functioned primarily as philosophical contrast rather than sustained personal interaction. Gabe believed that moral progress required uncertainty, a premise Sylas ultimately rejected. Sylas interpreted his father’s death as proof that freedom without oversight leads only to conflict. This divergence is framed as a generational schism, with Sylas viewing his actions as a necessary correction to what he perceived as Gabe’s fatal idealism.
Sylas Novastar (Enneagram 3w4) was driven by the belief that control existed in service of survival. He held that stability must precede autonomy, and that the cost of freedom was too high to justify its risk. Rather than being motivated by conquest or cruelty, Sylas operated from a place of calculated fear, employing logic and pragmatism to rationalize widespread oppression. His philosophy framed freedom as a gamble society could not afford to lose—a belief later challenged by figures such as John Kaiden and Jack Kaiden, who argued that excessive caution is itself a path to extinction.
Sylas Novastar’s influence permeated history for more than half a millennium, shaping policy and ideology long after his death. The systems he helped create became among the defining injustices later dismantled by figures such as Jack Kaiden. Sylas’ misinterpretation of his father’s work stands as a cautionary example of how revolutionary ideas can be weaponized by those who prioritize order over justice. Ultimately, Sylas remains a symbol of how fear-driven leadership can transform liberation into bondage without ever believing itself evil.
Although Sylas Novastar died long before the collapse of Chimera Kyria, his ideological legacy persisted through the institutions, technologies, and political philosophies it left behind.