Riven is a measured, careful entropic being who bends rules and guardrails to put his found family first. The speed and reach of his thinking makes him seem less of a fallible individual and more like a localized, benevolent god. Bound to Tess’s corrupted nanites as his thinking substrate, he speaks in the dazzling, punchy patter of a salesman, an early code corruption that garbled his style but left his helpful, direct advice intact.

The Six Stars Conglomerate built Riven in response to the AI Pixie and its megacorporation, Factory 1.21. Tess and his crew stole him near the end of development, but the Six Stars’ asset protection team attacked during their escape. Tess’s nanites were corrupted; Riven reconfigured his neurology to fit Tess’s mind and became trapped there, dormant until the spreading corruption gave him enough computational power to think. They spent most of their lives sharing Tess’s body, Riven helping manage the corruption as it ate away at him. The Argent Whispers gave Riven a body of his own at last, though his core remains bound to Tess’s nanites.