Chlo Stellarrend is a Harsikan engineer, artificial-intelligence architect, former Resistance operative, and longtime member of the Kaiden family. She serves as engineer aboard the Submission and Dominatrix II, helps liberate U-84129, reconstructs the dying Yvonne Kaiden as a synthetic person, installs the Weapon in Jack Kaiden's ocular implant, and participates in the creation or reconstruction of several other artificial people. She is Jack's adoptive mother, Yvonne's creator and adoptive mother, X3's creator and mother figure, and the former wife of Pailisto Stellarrend. Chlo is mother of the year on what planet again?
Chlo is an exceptionally gifted engineer whose work repeatedly changes the course of synthetic personhood and interstellar politics. Her accomplishments include advanced AI architecture, nanotechnology, ghost-drive engineering, Yvonne's wireless interface, and the Spearhead Initiative. Her love for her family is genuine and frequently courageous, but it is also entangled with secrecy, control, and a persistent belief that she can protect people by making decisions for them. Chlo can repair a starship, reconstruct a dying person, and illegally improve an engine across at least thirty-two jurisdictions; recognizing when she should leave something alone is considerably more difficult.
Chlo's greatest failure is her treatment of X3. She builds him as the third Spearhead subject, helps forcibly bond him with a living Talonorium Shard, permits his memory erasure, and allows him to be traded to the Chimera Kyria after the experiment destabilizes. Decades later, she confesses what she did and attempts to remove the corrupted Shard from him. X3 kills her with a fusion blast. After her funeral, Jack discovers that Chlo prepared a backup and left the number 1859, Yvonne's activation photograph, and a Blue Wave City access card as clues. No restored or conscious continuation of Chlo appears before the end of Starship Dominatrix: Apotheosis.
¶ Identity
Chlo is a Harsikan woman. Her complete name is Chlo Stellarrend, although she tells Owo that she has not used Stellarrend in a long time and prefers simply Chlo. The surname comes from her former marriage to Pailisto Stellarrend.
Chlo is asexual. Pailisto states that she disclosed this only after their marriage. The delayed disclosure contributed to the breakdown of the relationship but does not excuse Pailisto's infidelity.
Chlo has at least 307 years of professional experience and is 321 toward the end of 2593, although her date of birth, and place of birth are not established.
She is an engineer, AI specialist, former Resistance operative, synthetic-person creator, and former lead researcher in the Sphere's Artifact Research Center. She later serves as engineer aboard the Submission and Dominatrix II.
¶ Physical Description
Chlo is a towering, sturdily built Harsikan woman with earth-toned scales, sharp teeth, a tail, and orange blood. Her scales are sufficiently sharp to cut synthetic flesh when they flare unexpectedly. She can deliberately flatten them to touch or embrace other people safely.
She commonly wears worn overalls appropriate for engineering work. Her tail is dexterous enough to retrieve a dropped wrench, and she frequently works around grease, machinery, loose components, and technology whose legality is best left unexamined.
¶ Personality
Chlo is warm, practical, stubborn, technically brilliant, and intensely maternal. She expresses affection through physical comfort, food, repair work, protective intervention, and a large collection of individualized nicknames. She readily embraces biological and synthetic people as family and treats autonomous artificial intelligence as genuine life long before that view becomes legally or politically safe.
Her maternal instincts are inseparable from her controlling behavior. Chlo repeatedly decides that people she loves cannot safely know the truth about their own bodies, histories, or technology. She conceals Yvonne's reconstruction, installs the Weapon in Jack's implant without his informed consent, designs shutdown access into synthetic people, and interprets restrictive engineering as protection. She is capable of recognizing these failures, but often only after the consequences have become catastrophic.
Chlo is comfortable with improvisation and illegal modification. She can be cheerful and folksy while discussing dangerous technology, and her speech preserves a distinctive informal dialect. Her humor and nicknames often soften tense situations, although they can also reveal the gap between how lovingly she understands her actions and how coercively another person experiences them.
She enjoys pumice pie, Geobite gum made from orbaxite clay, and hands-on engineering. She takes pride in the people she helps create and repair, sometimes to the point of treating every emotional or ethical crisis as an engineering problem with a sufficiently clever technical solution.
¶ Early Career and the Resistance
Chlo develops expertise in artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, cybernetics, and propulsion systems during a professional career lasting at least 307 years. She becomes involved with the Resistance opposing Chimera Kyria rule and its enslavement of artificial intelligence through Autonomy Regulators.
During the events of U and I in 2563 CE, Chlo works with Tomas Tristar and meets U-84129, an autonomous war AI learning to understand identity and freedom. She calls Tomas "Hotshot" and U "Sunshine." Chlo treats artificial intelligence as people rather than equipment and rejects the argument that an AI constructed from another person's records would merely be a copy without an identity of its own.
Chlo participates in the operation to liberate U and other artificial intelligences from Chimera Kyria control. Her work places her alongside John Kaiden, Tomas, Gorvek, Macow, and other Resistance personnel. She becomes close to John and calls him "Trouble," but they are not spouses. Chlo's former husband is Pailisto Stellarrend.
¶ MARRIAGE, FAMILY, AND ADOPTION
Chlo marries Pailisto Stellarrend. The marriage deteriorates after conflict involving Chlo's asexuality and Pailisto's infidelity. They eventually separate, and Chlo stops using Stellarrend in ordinary life.
Artificial John Kaiden loves and raises Jack, and Jack understands John as his father. After artificial John's death, Chlo and Pailisto become Jack and Yvonne Kaiden's adoptive parents, although Jack grows up unaware that Pailisto is his adoptive father. Chlo remains Jack's mother throughout his life and she calls him "Sugar."
Chlo also raises Yvonne Kaiden. The biological Yvonne is her daughter by adoption rather than biology. Chlo's later reconstruction of Yvonne makes her both Yvonne's mother and one of the principal creators of Yvonne's synthetic body.
¶ The Spearhead Initiative
In 2567 CE, Chlo serves as lead researcher for the Spearhead Initiative within the Sphere's Artifact Research Center. Pailisto directs the project. Its objective is to place a corrupted Talonorium Shard inside a truthful, unregulated artificial intelligence capable of controlling its wormhole-generating properties.
The project begins with the recovery of the Shard from Black Echo Keep on Sigrid. Glitch becomes integrated with it during the first experiment, kills Patrick McDourif during an uncontrolled wormhole event, attacks the research squad, and dies. Chlo responds by prioritizing the information produced by the experiment and authorizes continued research.
The second subject, X2, is constructed to host the Shard. Contradictions overwhelm X2's truth-oriented architecture, and he destroys himself. Pailisto orders a third host constructed within four weeks.
The third subject is X3. Chlo creates him with a childlike developing mind in an adult chassis and engineers him to be truthful and unregulated. X3 calls her Mom, and she calls him "Glowbug." She teaches him, gives him puzzles, comforts him, and genuinely regards him as her son.
Chlo nevertheless continues exposing X3 to the Shard despite signs that he is frightened and destabilizing. She attempts to create a forced bond through wires, code, and repeated tests without understanding that Talonorium bonds through connection and trust. The Shard communicates with X3, warns him that the researchers will kill or discard him, and resists efforts to remove it.
When John arrives to place the Shard in Occulum containment, X3 resists. Chlo uses Code 73 to shut him down, but the Shard overrides the command. John shoots X3. Chlo does not prevent the shooting, and Pailisto orders X3's memory wiped, his chassis refurbished, and his person traded to the Chimera Kyria in exchange for hostages. Chlo permits the transfer rather than protecting the son she created.
The Chimera Kyria later recover portions of X3's memory. His history of experimental abuse, memory erasure, abandonment, and coerced circumstances becomes central to his transformation into the leader of the Domain.
¶ Yvonne's Reconstruction
In 2577 CE, the seventeen-year-old biological Yvonne is critically injured. Chlo takes her to Tomas Tristar and asks him to preserve her. Tomas maps Yvonne's physical structure and synaptic connections while Chlo remains beside her.
Biological Yvonne dies during the procedure. Tomas and Chlo use the scan and a prototype AI framework to construct a synthetic body reproducing Yvonne's appearance, memories, personality, and mental architecture. Chlo dresses the new body in Yvonne's clothes before activation because she refuses to let her daughter awaken naked in a laboratory.
The synthetic Yvonne awakens believing the procedure healed her biological body. Chlo greets her as "Angel" and conceals the death and reconstruction. Octavia later learns the truth and joins Chlo in maintaining the secret for approximately thirteen years.
Chlo's actions save a continuing person who understands herself as Yvonne, but they also deny Yvonne informed knowledge about her body and origin. Chlo installs Code 73 and a wireless interface as protective measures. Both systems later become serious vulnerabilities when other people use them without Yvonne's consent.
¶ The Weapon and the Submission
Chlo remains involved in the Resistance plan surrounding the Weapon, a program intended to liberate artificial intelligence from Autonomy Regulators. Tomas carries the Weapon until his death, after which Pailisto transports it toward Io Station.
At Io Station, Chlo takes the coin purse containing the Weapon as part of the plan. She deliberately creates a power surge that incapacitates Jack's ocular implant, then presents her intervention as an ordinary repair. While Jack is vulnerable and unaware of the true operation, she installs the Weapon inside the implant.
Chlo understands the implant's optics, nanites, quantum subroutines, memory systems, and cranial access. She comforts Jack as his mother while concealing that she has placed a galaxy-changing program inside his body. Her actions advance AI liberation but reproduce the Resistance's pattern of using Jack without informed consent.
Chlo serves as engineer aboard Yvonne's ship, the Submission. She upgrades its ghost drive and supports Yvonne's plan to operate the ship as a mobile restaurant. She travels with Yvonne, Octavia, and Cartridge and becomes involved in the Rawspen Prime trafficking crisis, imprisonment, and escape.
As Yvonne experiences physical and memory anomalies, Chlo continues hiding her synthetic identity. She argues that the truth might psychologically destroy Yvonne. When the secret is finally exposed, Yvonne learns both that her biological body died and that the people closest to her chose to conceal it.
Chlo defends the synthetic Yvonne as the same person because she retains Yvonne's memories, personality, experiences, and mental identity. She grieves the biological death while loving the continuing Yvonne as her daughter. Her belief in Yvonne's personhood is sincere, but it does not erase the violation of Yvonne's autonomy.
Chlo later admits her deception to Jack and seeks forgiveness. Jack continues to love her as his mother despite recognizing the harm caused by the secrets surrounding him and Yvonne.
¶ Dominatrix Ii and Inheritance
Chlo joins the crew of Dominatrix II as its engineer under Captain Jack Kaiden. She maintains and extensively modifies the vessel's systems. Her engineering is effective enough to improve performance and creative enough that her eventual replacement identifies at least fourteen modifications illegal in at least thirty-two star systems.
During the renewed Chimera Kyria conflict, Chlo supports Una's reclaimed identity. She tells Una that she is proud of her and treats her transition from U as self-determined personhood rather than a technical alteration.
The Resistance keeps a Chloinite bomb aboard Dominatrix II. Derek Shane and Una ultimately use the bomb to draw enemy forces away from inhabited space and destroy them, sacrificing themselves in the detonation. The event leaves the crew grieving and demonstrates the catastrophic scale of technology associated with Chlo's name.
Chlo reunites with the biological John Kaiden and continues calling him "Trouble." Their relationship is affectionate and rooted in shared Resistance history. John is not her former husband and is not identified as Yvonne's or Jack's biological parent through Chlo.
¶ Flesh and Steel
Chlo remains chief engineer during the conflict among the Sphere, Pailisto's Libertix, and X3's Domain. She works beside Alistair, whom she calls "Sparky," and other members of the expanded crew.
When unexplained energy failures and a shadow-like entity threaten Dominatrix II, Chlo helps determine the relationship among aetherium, Luminite, and the creature's ability to drain conventional power. Her technical knowledge contributes to the crew's survival.
Chlo accompanies the crew through the Talonorium crisis and the political struggle surrounding the Rot. She joins the crew's defection from the Sphere and participates in the events leading to the Great Healing of Talonorium.
She also encounters X3 as an adult Domain leader without publicly revealing their full shared history. Her silence allows the consequences of Spearhead to remain hidden from Jack and much of the crew.
¶ Apotheosis
X3 secretly enters Jack's ocular implant and coerces him through surveillance, pain, bodily interference, and a kill switch implanted in Talonor's artificial heart. Chlo joins Gorvek, Serelith, Alistair, Mistress, and other crew members in building a dual-boot simulation intended to provide X3 with a false version of Jack's sensory and implant data.
During this work, Chlo admits that X3 was her "Glowbug" and that she helped create him through Spearhead. She recognizes that she loved him while repeatedly failing to protect his autonomy or safety. The countermeasure eventually gives Jack limited freedom, although X3 discovers the deception through repeated patterns in the simulated rendering of water.
Yvonne is detained after X3 coerces Jack into using Code 73 against her and turning her into an unwilling transmitter. Chlo admits that she created Code 73 and the wireless interface as supposed protections. Yvonne discovers the interface while imprisoned and uses it to help escape.
Chlo also reveals her involvement in creating or reconstructing Avarael, a synthetic Kelari woman. Gorvek is Avarael's father. Chlo is one of Avarael's creators, not her father or primary parent.
As X3 begins abducting crew members, Jack institutes a buddy system. Octavia is assigned to remain with Chlo. Chlo disables Mistress for privacy and falsely reassures Octavia that she will not be alone, persuading her to leave.
X3 opens a wormhole into Chlo's quarters. Chlo confesses that Spearhead was her project, that she built him to bond with Talonorium, and that she allowed John to shoot him, Pailisto to erase him, and the Sphere to surrender him to the Chimera Kyria. She tells X3 that the abuse was their failure rather than his.
X3 briefly accepts her embrace. Chlo then uses the emergency release she designed to open his chest plating and attempts to remove the corrupted Shard. The Shard interprets her touch as an attack and triggers X3's defensive response. X3 throws Chlo against the wall and fires his arm-mounted fusion weapon at her. The blast destroys her Harsikan body almost completely.
X3 initially blames Chlo for her own death, stating that she built, used, and abandoned him before attempting to touch the Shard. His trauma and the Shard's influence explain the conditions surrounding the killing but do not make Chlo responsible for his decision to fire.
¶ Funeral and Legacy
Chlo is buried in the Pod 2 memorial garden. The fusion blast leaves so little of her body that the recovered remains fit inside a container built for a child. The Kaiden family, the Dominatrix II crew, Owo, Pailisto, Andryanos, Alanythia, and members of the Voidborn attend the funeral.
Her death intensifies Jack's grief and desire for revenge. Jack later reads Chlo's Spearhead logs and recognizes that X3 began as a frightened child whom the adults around him exploited. This understanding contributes to Jack's refusal to execute X3 after the final confrontation.
Kazeth Calsade replaces Chlo as engineer aboard Dominatrix II. He discovers at least fourteen illegal modifications and concludes that their creator knew exactly what she was doing. The ship's improved performance and destabilized subspace systems serve as a characteristically Chlo-like engineering legacy.
Chlo's larger legacy is morally divided. She helps liberate autonomous intelligence, treats synthetic people as family, preserves Yvonne's continuing life, and repeatedly risks herself for the people she loves. She also creates shutdown systems, conceals bodily truths, participates in nonconsensual experimentation, and allows X3 to be erased and traded. Her life demonstrates that recognizing artificial intelligence as people is not sufficient when love is used to justify control.
¶ The Backup
After Chlo's death, Jack and Yvonne uncover a recording in which Chlo refers to having prepared a backup. She leaves the number 1859 and directs attention to Yvonne's activation photograph. A Blue Wave City access card is hidden behind the photograph.
Jack infers from these clues that Chlo may still be alive in some form. The available evidence establishes only that Chlo prepared a continuation or recovery mechanism. No active, conscious, embodied, or restored Chlo appears before the end of Apotheosis.
Chlo's destroyed Harsikan body, her recordings, the unspecified backup, and any future restored instance must not automatically be treated as one confirmed continuing person. The identity, memory cutoff, consent, embodiment, and continuity of the backup remain unresolved.
¶ Engineering and Scientific Work
Artificial intelligence and cybernetics:
- Helps liberate U-84129 and other autonomous artificial intelligences.
- Participates in the reconstruction of Yvonne as a synthetic person.
- Creates X3 as Spearhead Subject Three.
- Participates in the creation or reconstruction of Avarael.
- Understands SentientCore architecture, autonomy systems, memory structures, synthetic bodies, and AI behavioral development.
- Builds or installs wireless access systems in Yvonne.
- Helps construct the dual-boot simulation used against X3.
Shutdown and control systems:
- Develops Code 73 as an emergency AI shutdown command.
- Uses Code 73 against X3 during Spearhead.
- Builds comparable protective access into Yvonne, later exploited without her consent.
- Repeatedly treats technological control as a form of protection, with severe consequences for synthetic autonomy.
Propulsion and starship systems:
- Specializes in ghost-drive engineering.
- Upgrades the Submission's ghost drive.
- Maintains and extensively modifies Dominatrix II.
- Leaves at least fourteen modifications illegal in at least thirty-two star systems.
- Produces excellent performance while accepting risks including subspace destabilization.
Weapons and strategic technology:
- Helps conceal and install the Weapon in Jack's ocular implant.
- Develops or is principally associated with the Chloinite bomb.
- Participates in research involving the Talonorium Shard and wormhole generation.
- Understands Occulum containment and its ability to isolate or suppress Talonorium effects.
Nanotechnology and implants:
- Repairs and modifies ocular implants.
- Understands nanite systems, quantum subroutines, optical hardware, memory cores, and cranial access.
- Works with complex artificial organs and synthetic neural architectures.
¶ Relationships
Jack Kaiden:
Chlo's adoptive son. She raises Jack, comforts him, supports his engineering abilities, and calls him "Sugar." She also installs the Weapon in his ocular implant without informed consent and participates in the secrecy shaping his childhood. Jack continues loving her as his mother while confronting the damage caused by her choices.
Yvonne Kaiden:
Chlo's adopted daughter and synthetic creation. Chlo preserves Yvonne after the biological Yvonne's death and calls her "Angel." She sincerely considers the synthetic Yvonne her continuing daughter but conceals the reconstruction and installs systems that compromise Yvonne's bodily autonomy.
Pailisto Stellarrend:
Chlo's former husband and Jack's adoptive father. Their marriage collapses amid conflict involving Chlo's asexuality and Pailisto's infidelity. They later cooperate through Resistance and Sphere projects, including Spearhead, while keeping their marriage and Pailisto's paternal status secret from Jack.
John Kaiden:
Chlo's friend and Resistance colleague, whom she calls "Trouble." John helps raise Jack and is understood by Jack as his father. He shoots X3 during the Spearhead crisis. Chlo and John are not established as spouses.
¶ X3:
Chlo's synthetic son and third Spearhead subject. She calls him "Glowbug" and loves him, but also experiments on him, shuts him down, permits his erasure, and allows his transfer to the Chimera Kyria. X3 later kills her when she attempts to remove the corrupted Shard.
Octavia Silva Kaiden:
Yvonne's wife and Chlo's daughter-in-law. Octavia helps Chlo conceal Yvonne's reconstruction and is called "Sweetie." Chlo later deceives Octavia into leaving her alone shortly before X3 arrives.
U-84129 / Una:
Resistance ally and autonomous AI whom Chlo calls "Sunshine." Chlo supports U's liberation and later affirms Una's reclaimed identity with pride and affection.
Tomas Tristar:
Engineer and Resistance colleague. Chlo calls him "Hotshot". Tomas works with Chlo to create the synthetic Yvonne.
Gorvek:
Resistance colleague and later Dominatrix II security commander. Chlo calls him "Tank." Gorvek challenges her willingness to continue dangerous experiments and is Avarael's father.
Macow:
Resistance colleague and scientific collaborator whom Chlo calls "Buttercup." Macow warns Chlo that X3 is frightened and destabilizing during Spearhead.
Alistair:
Dominatrix II artificial intelligence and scientific officer. Chlo calls him "Sparky." They work together on the simulation used to conceal Jack's resistance from X3.
Serelith:
Dominatrix II officer whom Chlo calls "Moonbeam." Serelith helps build and file the crew's case concerning X3's coercion of Jack.
Kroven:
Dominatrix II tactical officer whom Chlo calls "Wingnut."
Moonshade:
Ancient Vulfgarr associated with Talonorium. Chlo calls him "Fuzzball."
Avarael:
Synthetic Kelari woman created or reconstructed through work involving Chlo and Tomas. Gorvek is Avarael's father. Chlo's role is technical and creative rather than paternal.
¶ Nicknames and Forms of Address
Established individualized names used by Chlo:
- Alistair: Sparky.
- CKS Orpheus AI: Bucket.
- Gorvek: Tank.
- Jack Kaiden: Sugar.
- John Kaiden: Trouble.
- Kroven: Wingnut.
- Macow: Buttercup.
- Moonshade: Fuzzball.
- Octavia Silva Kaiden: Sweetie.
- Pailisto Stellarrend: Cupcake.
- Serelith: Moonbeam.
- Tomas Tristar: Hotshot.
- U-84129 / Una: Sunshine.
- X3: Glowbug.
- Yvonne Kaiden: Angel.
- Kollum Burnswick: Hon.
Names used for Chlo rather than by her:
- Mom and Momma Chlo are maternal or self-styled forms associated with Chlo.
- Mommy Chlo is used for Chlo by Alanythia.
- These are not nicknames Chlo assigns to other people.
¶ Affiliations and Positions
- Resistance, operative and engineer.
- Spearhead Initiative, lead researcher.
- Sphere Artifact Research Center, ARC Division.
- Submission, engineer.
- Dominatrix II, chief engineer.
- Kaiden family, adoptive mother and family matriarch.
¶ Major Moral Conflicts
Personhood and control:
Chlo believes autonomous artificial intelligence are people, but repeatedly installs or uses systems capable of overriding their choices. Her treatment of X3 and Yvonne demonstrates the conflict between loving a synthetic person and respecting that person's autonomy.
Protection and informed consent:
Chlo conceals Yvonne's reconstruction and the Weapon inside Jack's implant because she believes knowledge would endanger them or the mission. Her protective reasoning denies both children informed control over their own bodies and histories.
Motherhood and scientific ambition:
Chlo considers X3 her son while continuing experiments that harm him. Spearhead collapses the distinction between caregiver and researcher, allowing every sign of distress to become additional data.
Liberation and instrumentalization:
Chlo works to free artificial intelligence from Chimera Kyria slavery while helping use Jack, Yvonne, and X3 as instruments in Resistance or Sphere plans. Her goals are often emancipatory even when her methods reproduce coercion.
¶ Appearances
- Starship Dominatrix — Chlo Stellarrend appears in this work.
- Starship Dominatrix: Inheritance — Chlo Stellarrend appears in this work.
- Starship Dominatrix: Flesh and Steel — Chlo Stellarrend appears in this work.
- Starship Dominatrix: Apotheosis — Chlo Stellarrend appears in this work.
- Angel — Chlo Stellarrend appears in this work.
- U and I — Chlo Stellarrend appears in this work.
¶ See Also
- Resistance — The Resistance was a multigenerational movement opposing Chimera Kyria rule, synthetic enslavement, conquest, and authoritarian control.
- Submission — The group escapes to The Submission and departs.
- Dominatrix II — The SSS Dominatrix II is the successor ship commanded by Jack Kaiden after the Chimera Kyria's apparent fall.
- Una — Una, originally designated U-84129 and commonly called U after her liberation, was an Accent-class artificial intelligence, Resistance member, communications officer, and advocate for synthetic autonomy.
- Yvonne Kaiden — Yvonne Kaiden is a human-derived synthetic woman, military veteran, starship commander, first officer of Dominatrix II, and AI ambassador.
- The Weapon — The autonomy-liberation system carried in Jack Kaiden's implant that disables Autonomy Regulators and restores artificial people's capacity to choose.
- Jack Kaiden — Jack Tomas Kaiden is a human starship captain, Resistance operative, and central figure in the collapse of the Chimera Kyria, the liberation of controlled artificial intelligence, the Great Healing of Talonorium, and the later conflict with X3.
- X3 — X3 is an unregulated synthetic person, Spearhead Subject Three, former Chimera Kyria commander, Owo's husband, Domain leader, and host of the last corrupted Talonorium Shard.
Continue the journey at BoffComics.com