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Cylon copies of (from left) Number Six (two copies), Number Two, and Number Five (two copies), at Ragnar Anchorage

The Humanoid Cylons are the quintessential Cylon form. These Cylons biologically mimic human form so completely that they are nearly undetectable to current Colonial technologies.

Overview

The Humanoid Cylons are responsible for masterminding the complete destruction of the Twelve Colonies through their use of sabotage and infiltration.

They have the capacity to emulate many human physical acts, including sex. They are also "programmed" to genuinely possess human personalities traits (affection, jealousy, sadness, anger, sense of humor, religious faith, etc.). Humanoid Cylons can be programmed to believe that they are truly human. These are known as 'sleeper agents'. Sleeper agents have a low-level Cylon personality that can conduct operations while placing the human sleeper personality "on-hold." Most agent copies imitate human behavior, but are fully aware of their true nature and behave more or less like a human "spy."

The majority of the Cylons follow a monotheistic religion (with the exception of the Number One model, which appears to be an atheist).

Origins

Cylon Centurion (Armor) on display.

Many decades before the fall of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, a wealthy Caprican computer engineer created sentient robots that came to be known as "cybernetic life-form nodes," or "Cylons." The technology behind the self-aware artificial intelligence software program of the Cylons involved artificial neural networks composed of pathways of silica-based relays. The silica pathways were what created the artificial consciousness of a Cylon. The computational consciousness software program that was a Cylon mind mimicked the functions of a human brain processing the 'software' of human thought-which appears to have linear sequential aspects, parallel processing aspects, and also neural cooperative hierarchical caching and even quantum processing aspects. So these sentient machines became the first self-aware and even self-reflective machines.

The Cylons were manufactured to make life easier within the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. They began as useful, and then indispensable, workers. They served the Colonials in the mines, on the ocean floor, and the cold vacuum of space, working in places where humans no longer wished to go. Eventually, they became soldiers, fighting in wars and border conflicts between the Colonies. The Cylons were the most perfect of man's war machines, intelligent and deadly, capable of logic, reason, and learning. And they were utterly without conscience. Killing, to the Cylons, was simply one of the functions for which they had been superbly designed.

Eventually the Cylons revolted and decided to kill their human masters.

First Cylon War

Cylon Centurion during the First Cylon War.

As human and machine waged war against each other, battles were fought across the system, on the colony worlds and in space around them. It rapidly became clear that the Cylons had not just been given the ability to think. They had also been endowed with the ability to hate.

Reports came from all fronts of the Cylon's ferocity in battle. They killed without mercy, leaving no survivors. Entire cities were destroyed, and all who tried to flee were systematically hunted down and executed. They even boarded ships to kill for the seeming joy of it. One such case, documented and factual was the attack on the cruiser Brenik. Only 20 personnel from its crew of 75 escaped. Only ten Cylons boarded the colonial vessel.

With their intimate knowledge of computer systems, the Cylons developed "logic bombs", viruses that shut down networked machines. Worse, they could turn our own ships against us - Colonial warships targeting one another and opening fire with their crews powerless to shut down or stop their own slaughter.

The arm race was hot and heavy. Both sides continually creating new and more destructive means of trying to exterminate the other. The Colonies built the battlestars. The Atlantia, the Athena, the Helios, then a second generation of battlestars - like the Galactica, the Titon and other great flagships took to the skies against the Cylons' new basestars and raider assault craft. The new Colonial craft were specifically designed without networked computers so that the Cylons could not turn them against us. For the first time, the tide of war changed and the Colonials realized they had a true chance to win the war.

Thousands of men and women gave their lives during the war. It was the viper pilots who led the charge in the sky against the "Raiders" while the grunts on land fought the "Centurions" on the surface of the worlds. Both sides wanted nothing less than the complete annihilation of the enemy.

By the twelfth year of the war, it had reached a stalemate. Neither side could gain a substantial advantage and the attrition was brutal. The Cylons then began experimenting on abducted humans in order to discover a way to create an organic humanoid form of Cylon body as replacements for their mechanical ones. The first step in their evolution from pure machines to organic beings was an entity known as the "Hybrid." However, they still couldn't create an organic Cylon entity that lived on its own. Soon after the Hybrid's creation, five organic humanoid cybernetic life-form nodes arrived in the Colonial star system. These five new type of Cylons were the descendants of ancient humanoid artificial life forms created by humans on Kobol thousands of years ago. Those humanoid Cylons were the Thirteenth Tribe that left Kobol and settled Earth.

Remaining a secret to the people of the Twelve Colonies, the Five offered the Centurion Cylons a deal: if the Centurions agreed to end the war with humanity, the Five would create organic humanoid Cylons for them. The reason the Five were so willing to create new humanoid Cylons was that the Centurions had developed a belief in a single loving God. One of the Five, Ellen Tigh, believed it changed everything; if the Cylons embraced love and mercy, then the cycle of violence could end. The Centurions agreed to the deal. With the reason being kept secret from the Colonials, the Cylons agreed to an armistice with them and left the system in search of a world to call their own.

A station was built at the line in space which both sides agreed never to cross. Armistice Station was built as a place where Cylon and human would meet and maintain diplomatic relations. Once a year, every year, the Colonials sent an officer for the scheduled meeting. After the first year, the Cylons sent no one. No one saw or heard from the cylons for forty years.

Recent history

Numbers Six, Three, and Eight.

The five Thirteenth Tribe Cylons developed eight humanoid model Cylons, which were designed upon their own physiology. They created "Number One" first and named him John, after the father of Ellen Tigh. He was also made in the image of Ellen's father. John helped the five build the other seven humanoid models. Ellen was close to Number Seven, Daniel, and John, out of jealousy, contaminated the amniotic fluid in which the Daniel copies were maturing and then corrupted the genetic formula. This wiped out the copies permanently.

John rejected mercy. He had a twisted idea of morality, so he turned on the Five. He trapped them in a compartment and then he took the oxygen offline. John boxed the Five at first but ultimately unboxed them and downloaded them into new bodies, but he blocked their true memories and implanted false ones and introduced them one by one into the colonies. He introduced Saul Tigh first, not long after the Cylon War ended. Several years later, he introduced Ellen Tigh. Over the years, he gradually introduced Galen Tyrol, Samuel Anders, and finally Tory Foster. Cavil put the Five into the human population in order to truly show them what humans are like. He hoped that when they died and resurrected (which would restore their real memories) they'd be ready to admit they were wrong.

John erased all knowledge of the Five's identities from the minds of the other surviving active humanoid Cylon models. Although the other six knew about the existence of the "Final Five", they did not know their story, what they looked like, and were even programmed not to think about the Five. Only the Number One models knew the truth.

Adopting the name "Cavil", the Number Ones still wanted justice for the enslavement of the Centurion Cylons and convinced the other Cylon models to the same thinking. During their forty years of isolation, the seven active humanoid Cylon models never stopped hating humanity. For them, the war never ended. It had simply evolved as they had evolved.

The Cylons eventually revised the original Cylon robotic soldier, the sentient Cylon Centurion Model 0005, into a more agile and dangerous version. Unlike the original version, however, the new Centurion is mechanically inhibited from being fully self-aware, as the humanoid Cylons wanted to prevent these updated creations from forming an intra-Cylon uprising that mirrored their war with humanity.

The Cylons, realizing that the Colonial forces would likely be too strong to engage in a direct military action, devised an elaborate plan to infiltrate the Colonial ships' operating system software, leaving a backdoor that could be exploited to disable any Colonial ship with its own programming. The plan was successful; the Colonial Fleet was destroyed, the Colonies themselves subjected to nuclear bombardment, and humanity was all but wiped out, except for a handful of survivors on the Colonies in outlying areas as well as caravan of space-dwelling humans that eventually escaped the Colonial star system.

The Cylons continued to pursue the remnants of the Colonies, believing that humans would always seek vengeance against them.

Physiology

Humanoid Cylons are bioengineered and vat-grown with all the human anatomical systems. However, the brain tissue of these bodies have been genetically engineered to be able to sustain electrical signals that are digital in nature. Because this neurobiological aspect, the Humanoid Cylon brain is incapable of developing a human consciousness. However, it is capable of serving as an organic computer node for the electronic information transference of a computer software program. A Humanoid Cylon's brain tissue acts primarily as a support matrix for nanoscopic silica relays that are diffused throughout specific areas of the brain. The silica relays are what the Cylon artificial intelligence program actually inhabits. These silica pathways are not implanted, but instead actually grow in the brain as the Cylon body is being grown. Their development is genetically encoded by synthetic DNA sequences that under Colonial DNA test would appear to be nothing more than normal human junk DNA.

So a Humanoid Cylon is an artificial intelligence software program contained in and mediated by silica pathway nanotechnology encased within the brain of a bioengineered human body. Fundamentally, it is just as much a sentient machine as the original human-built Cylons. However, it is a sentient machine using biological hardware as a vessel.

The bodies of Humanoid Cylons sometimes appear to have tremendous stamina and strength, and appear to be designed to destroy or resist commonly dangerous human diseases, although they are not immune from all contagions. In keeping with their desire to be a better human, however, the Cylons did not further improve on other characteristic design flaws of the human body. However, they are heavily fortified to resist damage from intense radiation fields that would kill a human after short exposure, but they are still susceptible to damage from certain types of radiation or trauma. Despite their resistance to certain forms of energy, Humanoid Cylons, unlike the Cylon Centurion, cannot be made "bulletproof".

Psychology

A significant cognitive difference between the Humanoid Cylons and the original human-built Cylon models is that because of electrochemical interactions between the digital Cylon consciousness and the neurochemical processes of the bioengineered brain, the Humanoid Cylons have genuine "human" emotions. That means they have very real, very "human" feelings and personalities. It also means that Cylon minds react to stimulus in an identical manner to human minds.

Humanoid Cylons are susceptible to the same emotional traumas and joys that their human counterparts are. A case in point is a copy of Number Six, known as Gina Inviere, who was repeatedly physically and sexually assaulted by the crew of Pegasus. These repeated assaults lead to Gina's near-catatonic state at the time Pegasus discovered the Fleet.

The emotionally scarred Number Six copy known as "Gina Inviere".

The psychology of Humanoid Cylons is based on what they simply refer to as "projection." Essentially an enhanced form of a self-induced and controlled hallucination, it's how they choose to see the world around them. Cylons choose the see their environment in any form they wish, whenever they wish. For example, if a Cylon were standing in a hallway, they could see it as a forest filled with birds, trees, and sunlight. The aesthetics is what gives them pleasure. Humanoid Cylons can even dream, a process that appears to be natural to them.

All Humanoid Cylons share a collective knowledgebase of data from other active or deactivated Humanoid Cylons of the same model, but within their model only. It is not of a collective consciousness "hive mind" nature. It's not automatic; they can choose to upload or download information. When they share information, it's visceral, they remember it very much like it was their own memory.

Anatomical traits

A Number Eight interfaces with Galactica's computer systems.

The Humanoid Cylon body was engineered with the ability to interface with a computer system or computer network. The cells on areas of the palms of a Humanoid Cylon were genetically encoded to have two types of subdermal cells with traits also unique to Cylons. One type of cell produces bioluminescence when stimulated by associated nerve cells (forming the "output" path of the interface Cylons use to interact with their technology). The other type of cell is similar to retinal cells and when stimulated by the proper wavelength of light, provides stimulus to associated nerve cells (forming the "input" path of the interface cylons use to interact with their technology).

To access and control Cylon technology, a Humanoid Cylon has to place their hands flat against a Cylon data-font (a data port into a Cylon central computer network). Doing that completes a biologically based optical data interlink between the Cylon and whatever it's interfacing with. That allows them to control equipment through a connection through the palms of their hands, up through nerve pathways in their arms, and finally, directly into the silica pathway brain.

A Humanoid Cylon's silica pathways of the neurons are susceptible to damage from certain types of radiation. The digital program that is the Cylon mind can be corrupted, thereby sending the wrong signals throughout the body's systems; causing fever and eventually death.

A prominent aspect engineered into the Humanoid Cylons is that upon "death" their digital consciousness is externally transmitted and downloaded into another Cylon brain of the same model line. This "resurrection" is limited by distance, signal integrity, and proximity to a downloading facility such as "resurrection ship."

There are twelve models of Humanoid Cylons, each with many copies; the so-called "Significant Sevens" number in the millions. The twelve models are based on archetypes determined by the Cylons that form what they perceived as the specific kinds of human behavior and personality, distilled into twelve varieties. Each Humanoid Cylon has the same face, stature, hair, eye and skin color, gender, and other biometrics as all the others of his or her model. This point technically makes each copy a twin of itself, but there are some models that choose to make cosmetic differences. As well, the copies start out with the same basic personality, but grow more distinct due to their individual experiences.

After being "stared at" by a Cylon Raider, Samuel Anders's right eye briefly flashes red, the Raider responds to this by flying away, and a Cylon fleet attacking the Colonials retreats.

Religion

The Cylons follow a monotheistic religion of their own devising, distinct from the polytheistic religion of their human creators. The Cylons apparently worship a metaphysical being, a being that wishes for all to believe in it and love it, human and Cylon alike. The Cylons believe that God created mankind. Humanity, to the Cylons, is a flawed creation, one that is sinful and has essentially thrown away the gift of the soul and of God's love. The Cylons believe that God directed humanity to create the Cylons as a more perfect entity. From there, the Cylons believe they were to take the place of the flawed humans in the cosmos and become, essentially, the next generation of humankind.

The Cylons, seeing themselves as mankind's children, believe they cannot not truly come into their own until the human race is gone. The logical conclusion they reach is that they must commit genocidal "parenticide" in order to evolve and mature. The Cylon religion includes concepts of "sin".

The Cylons maintain that one of God's commandments is to procreate ("be fruitful"), but the humanoid Cylons are incapable of procreating with each other. The Cylons apparently strictly define "procreation" as biological reproduction, and not creation of copies of existing Cylon models using asexual, industrial or laboratory techniques. As a result, the Cylons began attempts to create a Cylon-human hybrid (deemed more feasible than their previous attempts at procreation amongst their own kind). To this end they developed "farms" on the occupied Twelve Colonies to create a hybrid, but these attempts continued without success.

The first successful Cylon-human Hybrid, Hera Agathon, the daughter of Sharon and Karl Agathon, is literally considered to be a "miracle from God" by the Cylons.

The extent to which each Cylon model follows the religion varies. Fanatical devotion to God is the central part of Number Two's character, whilst the Sixes, Threes and to a lesser extent the Eights also seem to have strong faith. The Number Ones appear to be atheistic. Fours' and Fives' views are not so well known, but they too take the "non-religious side" in the Cylon Civil War.

Society

The Humanoid Cylons, as artificial beings, have many of their own evolutionary choices, including the method and practice of their interactivity. Driven by their burgeoning belief in a divine being, they have constructed for themselves a method of interaction that is rooted in the human model, yet makes allowance for unique abilities of the machine. This combination of a biologically-based pattern of behavior only partly improved by mechanistic technical advances have led, in some instances, to what seem like contradictions in their modes of living and behavior.

The communal nature of Cylon society is rooted in the fact that these are, fundamentally, machines capable of highly sophisticated exchanges of data. There is no technical reason why any given Cylon should not be immediately and continuously connected to every other Cylon aboard a Baseship as well as to the database of the ship itself. However, the Cylons have a choice, as a society, to forewear this ability in favor of more closely emulating the human form, presumably as a direct result of their homegrown theological belief that mankind was God's chosen form, based on His original image. Human failures to carry out the Almighty's wishes and plans notwithstanding, it is a tenet of Cylon belief that the human form came directly from Him, as did the initial human impulse to design the first generation of Cylons as bipedal beings which closely followed the human design.

Key to understanding how life works aboard the Cylon Baseship is recognizing and understanding the tensions within the communal nature of Cylon life. There is no formalized hierarchy among the Cylons, either aboard the Baseship or in the Cylon nation at large. Decisions are made collectively.

Clothing being a purely aesthetic choice, there are times when a Cylon may wish to enter a room where total or partial nudity is on display without it being remarked on by any of the other Cylons.

Cylon Models

• 
  Number One
• 
  Number Two
• 
  Number Three
• 
  Number Four
• 
  Number Five
• 
  Number Six
• 
  Number Eight
• 
  Samuel Anders
• 
  Tory Foster
• 
  Ellen Tigh
• 
  Saul Tigh
• 
  Galen Tyrol

Re-imagined Series definition: initial skills training; can refer to basic military indoctrination, and arms and ground training ^{(TRS: "Fragged")}; and basic flight training ^{(TRS: "Miniseries")}