I have been toying around with various different story ideas ever since I made Salazar prior to the adopt auction that put his current fantasy design out there.. gods that was.... forever ago.

But the modern day result of years of brainstorming has left me with 4 notable settings that all of my characters reside in as a collective. Some, however, do have places in multiple settings as something similar and true to their core character but.. altered in some way. Removing all fantasy elements from the Kobold Necromancer, this take on Salazar has him as a sort of thief, one who had become particularly skilled with stealing from high end tech companies, either for himself or to make ends meet. What had intended to be a heist to steal a new evolution to AI had ended up backfiring on him, and to attempt getting away without much suspicion, he had made the decision to insert the AI's chip into an augmented slot on his neck.

What resulted was the AI becoming a part of him, forcing itself to become a part of his boy to help control it, but also share a mental link, as it was programmed to do with whoever would 'install' it. This AI would develop into 'Shadow', an AI originally meant to be used to oversee and run core processes on a mothership, but ended up being used as a test run for a new advancement in AI tech that would allow it to work seamlessly with an organic host. While the AI itself is confined to the chip, their previous purpose does give them the ability to connect to various constructed bodies created specifically for it, and seeing as how Salazar now found himself latched onto a particular company's valuable property, where said property could force him to surrender if need be, he found himself forced to play the role of their captive test subject.. but it was far from all downsides. He was still allowed to perform most of the same actions he had been doing up to this point, just in service of the tech company he now works for. Shadow is able to discretely talk to him, inform of anything of interest, alert of him otherwise undetectable threats, and can even control his lower body if in a bit of a situation. Aside from that, they have control over a robotic body that they can live, see, hear, and speak through, with a number of features that allow them to work alongside Salazar without being detected themselves, core of which is a camouflage function that allows them to physically hide their presence from the normal eye. She is ever present, even if she can't be seen by others.

I'm sure parallels can be drawn between the two versions of Salazar and his Shadow, and that's the intention. I simply wanted to make something for a more Si-Fi orientated setting, and this came out wonderfully in that pursuit~

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A very big thanks to  Plive For taking the commission and helping to design the character. In all honesty, it's his other Si-Fi orientated pictures that helped form the desire to make a Si-Fi version of Salazar. Thank you ^^