The custom robotic fantasy games are usually a big deal to those who participate, but even serious participants have their whimsical moments. The results have been bots like Twin Suns, Spike, OMFG LEET Drum, and Palette, the last of which was described by its builder G-FAAACE as a moment of self-amusement:

It wasn't meant to be a star bot. It was just meant as a "Hah! I've got SEVEN!" kind of deal... Also I thought i'd make things hard for results writers, just to have a little laugh to myself. I mean, who wants to keep track of what seven bots are doing at once? Not me, for damn sure.

Drowning City member G-FAAACE is a skilled designer. The brilliant mind behind Shockwave and Endeavor is also the twisted mind of keen observation and hyperbolic parody.

People were always trying to push the limits with multi-bots, bending rules, trying to create ways for different robots to be integrated. I figured I'd design something that would put an end to the multi-bot competition while also having a little (annoying) fun.

What had begun with the interesting likes of Twist And Shout seemed to be spiraling out of control as everyone was trying to have a multi-bot, and G-FAAACE set out to depict the potential absurdity by embodying it first, with what was intended to be the multi-bot to end all multi-bots:

Usually you see robots entered in a competition with, at the most, three, four if you wanted to push it, but seven? It sounds a little ridiculous to some people, wasting all those good points on way too many bots for one arena, but I liked the idea and thought it would be worth it going for it.

And go for it, he did. In a move that some designers would consider putting the cart before the horse, the idea for Palette came from the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. With the variety of colors used in making the bots look aesthetically pleasing came a variety of weapons to make the bot an interesing foe.

I used variety. One of each type--[full-body spinner], horizontal spinner, vertical spinner (drum), wedge, spike (ram), lifter, and hammer.

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With all those cleverly chosen weapons, surely came a clever way of putting the weapons in their array, right?

Nah. Whatever came to mind first, although I did try not to put two similar weapons at adjacent colors, like my FBS, vertical spinner and drum are not adjacent.

Despite the somewhat haphazard way in which Palette was designed, making them as good as possible was still one absolute in G-FAAACE's mind for the multi-bot.

Although I wanted to make a multi-bot statment, I didnt want to push TOO many boundaries and make each bot worth less than [a] cardboard box on wheels.

While the combination was a deadly one, it turned out to a less than fruitful season of play, as Palette disappeared quickly from competition after a loss in a league that fizzled out before completion.

But Palette has not been the end of multi-bots, and in fact, not even the end of multi-bots for Team Fire-And-Ice. Soon to come would be a three-part multi-bot called Theta, and even an improved Palette 2. Sadly, Palette 2, while built more strategically, never saw the light of day.

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As for G-FAAACE, he continues to design bots that are serious, and other bots that are just whimsical, and he continues to look to the future of his designs, some of which he might like to see brought to life, Palette not being one of them.

To build Palette wouldn't be rocket science... I mean it's just seven really simple bots, but I don't really know if you want to spend that much money on seven bots. To keep in weight constraints, they have to be pretty small and use lightweight parts, making them pretty much useless, so they're best kept to fantasy.

Palette was an exercise in creativity, which in the Drowning City community is often an end unto itself. In a league where just seeing a roleplay come to fruition is a field trip, and innovation draws from a myriad of sources, this exercise in creativity has a story to be told, one that must be told, and one that has now been told.

With the growing robotics community you can always expect there to be bigger and better, but I hope people will always know the leap I made in multi-bot progression... And I just want to throw it out there that Palette 2 does exist, it connects a lot nicer and has much more strategy behind it. Doubt I'll ever use it though.