Jugger

"Jugger" is either a mash up of Jaeger and Juggernaught or maybe just a convenient shortening of Juggernaught itself. Whatever the origin of the term, it is commonly accepted as the catch-all term around the world for any autonomous construct.

Mechanics & Inner Workings

Juggers take many forms. Some could be a military vehicle that has been automated. Some could be Magical golems. Some could be a technowizard mixture of magic and technology. They do not have to be combat oriented. Some can be used for mining or harvesting or many other labor-saving employments. But one thing they all have in common is independence. They are not robots. Robots are mechanical constructs that follow an established set of instructions and given the same inputs will always produce the same outputs. Juggers, on the other hand, employ a certain level of intelligence and analysis to determine their next actions and are far more capable of handling emergent issues and unexpected scenarious in the real world that have been proven to cause robots to fail or fault. Put another way, no programmer can think of every possible scenario an autonomous robot could encounter and write instructions to deal with it. However, machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence, including even the harnessing of spiritual essence, make juggers capable of adapting to their environments.

History

During the Golden Age of Man, the application of artificial intelligence reached every aspect of life. The battlefield was no exception. After the the Russian Federation employed autonomous aerial drones and armored ground units to raze Ukranian city of Odessa, the world was horrified by the indescriminate slaughter and destruction. The result was the 2155 Baku Accords which amended the Geneva Convention to outlaw the employment of autonomous combat units. The term Jagger was coined in Eurpoean media and it stuck.
It was not until the Great Cataclysm that Juggers were employed again and sent into the invading forces for the express purpose of indescriminate destruction and slaughter.
The The Coalition States took the concept of robots to the next level when they created skelebots, which use a far more complex set of instructions with an AI module such that they blur the distinction between robot and Jugger.