Overview[]
Ship's Avatars are ship's Artificial Intelligence representation, such as an on-screen image or hologram, and Android bodies created using the programming and appearance of the Core Artificial Intelligence as a model. Ship's Avatars are typically female as it has been shown that female avatars usually get better acceptance by crew members.
During a freak accident aboard the Andromeda an Avatar was created modelled on a dead crewman named Eddie Aldrich who was from the original pre-long night crew. The Eddie Avatar was partially unstable, as it had been created from the scan of a dead human brain. It was highly disorientated and irrational, believing it was still 300 years before the Long Night.
As the Commonwealth considered Artificial Intelligence's as sentients, after the introduction of Android Avatars, unknown numbers of them gained rank aboard their ships, such as the Pax Magellanic's Avatar, whose avatar was Lieutenant Jill Pierce. Often, this allowed the avatars in question to integrate further with their crew.
Rommie, after the restoration of the Commonwealth as the New Systems Commonwealth, did not follow in these steps to gain an official rank aboard the Andromeda Ascendant, despite being quite different from her ship' self, independent from rather than an extension of the ships' Artificial Intelligence.