Mondrian is a warrior-monk of the New Machine. Apparently over a hundred years old, and possibly a lot more than that. He seems mainly driven by resentment for humanity's oppression of his people, but also by a burning sense of alienation from whatever his state was before he was instantiated as a mechanical life form. This, the New Machine calls the Nous, and it was some form of paradise, or at least tranquility, in sharp contrast to the sensory assault and alienation of the world of the living within Horos.