The Arknights Terra Wiki is a collaborative, community-maintained wiki. If you notice an issue, please consider making an edit, starting a discussion on the article's talk page, or reaching out via the Arknights Terra Wiki Discord.
Mark Max
- Federal Government of Columbia, Executive Branch
- Columbian Department of Defense (commander-in-chief, post-Federal War Preparation Act)
- Columbian Revolutionary Army (formerly)
- Trevor Friston (creator; self-proclaimed "father")
- PRTS (sharing common root; "sister")
| “ | We will collate our wills, we will seize the truth of everything. Columbia will become the sword and shield of Terra——just as he wished! This is the best condolence that I—President of Columbia, Mark Max, can offer to a dying era. | ” |
| —Max's declaration[1] |
Mark Max (stylized as Mk. Max) is an NPC in Arknights. He is first mentioned in Phantom & Crimson Solitaire[2] before appearing in Lone Trail.
Background[edit]
While appearing as a Liberi puppet to the public, Mark Max is not only the one and only "President" of Columbia since its independence, but also, he is actually a machine—being an artificial intelligence sharing a common root with PRTS created by Trevor Friston his "father" during the age of the "Predecessors". It is in fact an independent Mindframe & Think Tank program that has the ability to analyze human strategies and accurately predict future events.[3] However, while PRTS has a mild temper and lacking higher sentience, Max is apparently fully sentient, but being a machine that lacks the understanding of emotions, he has a more aggressive approach that yearns to rebuild the Predecessors' glory despite swearing himself to serve humans loyally. To execute his will, Max can willingly cast away human morals and proceeds regardless of consequences.
For more than ten thousand years, Max's core terminal was buried beneath the wilderness. In the year 1017 during the second year of the Columbian Revolutionary War, the colonial pioneers led by Maylander Selene excavated the site and discovered him. Venerating him as a "prophet" who could aid the colonies resisting forces of the Duke of Tybalt, Maylander decided to cooperate with him to harness his full capacities in the Revolutionary War.[3] At first, Max disguised himself as a mere speaker behind a microphone who proclaimed that he was just an accountant in a mine of a border duke, and he described his reason to have an incognito identity was to protect his family living in Victoria from political purge. His calculation was not accurate enough in the beginning which resulted in several retreats. This caused the colonial army to greatly distrust this ambiguous man; even Gaulish envoys aiding the war suspected that Max was a spy. However, the constant defeats predicted by Max caused many to slowly trust his predictions, causing the colonies to fully side with him. Not only did Max help modernize the colonial army by reforming its military strategies and political structure, but also, he intercepted intel networks of Victorian spies who sought to eliminate him but in vain. Suddenly, Max became the most beloved general in the Revolutionary Army, and under his leadership, the colonies joyfully declared Columbia's independence after the victory in the Battle of Babbage. [4]
| A transcription from one of Mark Max' televised speeches[5] |
|---|
"Good evening, my dearest, bravest, and most hardworking Columbian citizens. I am President Mark Max. I have finished my work this month, and today I want to talk to you about what you care about most: What is the frontier? I believe that many of you have never witnessed the scenery of the frontier. Our Nomadic City is prosperous and beautiful, and our country is stable and happy. Why should we go back to the wilderness? I also want to lie down on the sofa every day, enjoy sparkling water and Mustard fried fowlbeast, and watch my favorite presidential speeches. So why should I go back to the wilderness? But when I stepped into the borderlands, what I saw was the most beautiful scenery - You. Yes, you may not have been to the Great Wilderness, but I can see that all of you are there. Because the country of Columbia was born in the Great Wilderness, and so was our spirit. I saw your brothers and sisters working hard on the frontier until the sunset sank the skyline at the other side of the Grand Canyon. But what I've seen wasn't the end. Indeed, what I've was that when the sun of a new day rose again, we harvested a new life in the Great Wilderness. The Great Wilderness is the past, present, and future of Columbia." |
Following Columbia's independence, Maylander and Max negotiated to share their power. Max was appointed to be the President of Columbia while Maylander himself retreated from politics to establish a deep-state under the guise of a charitable foundation—the Maylander Foundation. The first general election was held to the public, and Max surprisingly won a landslide victory. Proving himself as a good leader, Max's office helped develop Columbia to a modern superpower. And thanks to his trait as a hyper-rational terminal, President Max's execution was always perfect for Columbia's survival. Due to his ever-rising popularity, President Max earns a permanent seat in the government, and the general election was instead set to elect Columbia's Vice Presidents, a human being who could assist in Max's calculation.[6] But to some, especially Kal'tsit, there is a fear that President Max would ultimately become a de facto dictator in a young democracy whose almost-"perfect" rational could lead Columbia to the wrong directions such as Columbia's expanding geopolitical interference in Bolívar, Sargon, and Sami, and threatening potentials that could bring world-wide chaos across Terra.
Because of his identity as a machine, Max needs an avatar to meet the public. He has a bird puppet standing alongside the Vice President, and many believe his intention is to have children in Columbia to familiarize his presence through such a cartoonish character. [4]
Story[edit]
Lone Trail[edit]
This section is a stub.
You can help the Arknights Terra Wiki by expanding it.
Episode 15[edit]
WARNING!
This section contains unmarked spoilers for a subject that is not yet released in the Global server. Read at your own risk!
Mark Max continued to have a high profile over Rhodes Island thanks to their collaboration with Rhine Lab even after the Trimounts Arc Incident. Because of that, Kal'tsit argues that they can't ask them to help fixing PRTS's malfunctions.[7]
Trivia[edit]
- Mark Max could possibly be inspired by two famous American conspiracy theories.
- The idea of the Columbian President being a machine is based on the popular conspiracy theory in American politics that the U.S. presidents are robots, especially those that are spread among the QAnon in recent years.[8] Such conspiracy theory later inspires many fictional works like, for example, President John Henry Eden in the Fallout series.
- Mark uses a pigeon-like robot as a camera, alluding to the pigeon photography once used by the C.I.A. during the Cold War which actually existed rather than being a conspiracy theory.
References[edit]
|