Pino (Cireclinlin)

Pino is the first playable character in the fan game by the Cireclinlin community. He first appears as a wooden puppet with no legs.


 * Age: Count the rings
 * Weight: Can float
 * Height: With which legs on?



The autonomous house puppet was first prototyped in the early 1880s and introduced to market over the following years. They became popular in the 1940s after a biopic was made about the prototype.

At some point, house puppets were produced in both a basic model and a more expensive deluxe model, the difference being that the basic model shipped without legs. The family that "adopted" Pino as a babysitter and housekeeper got a basic puppet because they couldn't afford the deluxe version. They tried to hide the existence of the basic/deluxe split from him, telling him he hadn't fully "hatched" yet in reference to the rough egg shape of both his inner packaging and his torso.


 * "We didn't want the stick figures to die, we just didn't think they needed help. What does a stick figure need food stamps for?"


 * To do: Figure out what Pino did between his emancipation and the distress call from Gingy

Pino heard of incidents in the village from a little bird in 2015-12, visited a few times, and came to stay in 2016-03 for a couple reasons. He found others like him in the sense of not having "hatched" all the way, such as Green in #141, and that he found villagers in sticky situations and felt like helping. When no one else would, Pino did. But not wanting to start trouble, he kept a low profile for the first few months until Al arrived in 2016-07. Pino has had to put up with occasional insults that he's a sex toy.

Attachments
Pino begins somewhat weak but becomes stronger as the party acquires different attachments that connect to his pelvic ports. The deluxe upgrade, found early on, adds legs and begins to disprove the lie-to-children about "hatching". Other specialized attachments add a tail or tracks to the lower body. This allows new powers as the plot demands, possibly using a turn in battle to switch out.


 * Basic (no attachment)
 * Attack: Tackle
 * Can drive vehicles with neural link on pelvic port
 * Deluxe (legs)
 * Adds speed
 * Deluxe alternate costume
 * May lead to alternate character development path with different powers, possibly whatever is considered "magic" in the universe, but gaining levels in this form may cause loss of ability to use other attachments
 * Transport kit (tracks)
 * Adds speed and carrying
 * Attack: Dash Tackle
 * Diving kit (tail)
 * Adds speed in water; cuts speed on land
 * Attack (water): Dive
 * Attack (land): Tail swing
 * "Handy" hack (extra arms)
 * Unlicensed, special-purpose modification of a pair of replacement arms to connect to the pelvic ports, giving apelike prehensile feet
 * Adds dexterity

Physiology
A puppet with legs on is shorter than a fully grown adult human in order not to appear imposing to people. It's roughly as tall as a 7-year-old human child or Pepper from SoftBank: 1.2 m (4 feet). This is taller than the original prototype, which was roughly 0.9 m (3 feet) tall, but not so short that the desire to be taller consumes his life, as was the case for the prototype.

A comment to "Bottle of Water" (#4678) by Dave asked: "How can a puppet talk on its own?" I thought it was a good question but could not come up with an answer the same day. Instead, I began to collect evidence:


 * DigiFuMaster in the Skype chat room Arsenic & Joy guessed that a puppet's vocal tract might operate like a woodwind instrument. I guess the vocal cords would be like an oboe's double reed.
 * In-HouseLurker aka YOGB in the Discord server Cireclinlin asked: "Is it organic? As in the puppets insides are organic but outside is dead wood. I meant as in human organs organic"
 * The prototype gets hungry and eats food.
 * Their kind is asexual and genderfluid. This way, the same product can be sold as Pino or Penny with only a change of clothes.

We can assume a production puppet uses food for two purposes: running the organic part and running a biobattery that powers the electric limbs. The limbs can also run on a conventional rechargeable battery located near the bottom of the body. If it's charged from mains or solar power, he doesn't need to eat as much. In fact, if he overeats, he feels the fat squeezing its insides against its exoskeleton in the same way as an obese insect. It produces enough power to drive the arms and small attachments, such as legs or tracks, but larger ones (such as a car with a neural interface for puppets) need their own power.

Incidentally, Japanese has a cluster of words appearing to relate to a wooden servant boy:
 * 木 boku : "tree" or "wooden"
 * 僕 boku : "I" (used by boys)
 * 僕 shimobe (same kanji): "servant"