"Your paperwork says you're familiar with the lore of the Sunset Stars universe?" The woman walking alongside Alex asked. She'd told Alex her name before they'd started the entry process for him to be a beta-tester for
Sunset Stars: Legends of Krobis, but in all of his excitement to actually be selected, he'd honestly forgotten it.
Alex laughed, "There really wasn't an option for 'very familiar'. I've read all the books but the one that came out last week, and I've seen every episode of the show that ran back in the 90s." Probably a dozen times for every episode, more for some. Alex loved the books more, overall, but the show had made for great fanfiction fodder.
"That saves some time explaining some things then. I should warn you," The woman said, raising one hand a bit, "that while our developers and writers went to great lengths to be as lore-accurate to the books as possible, the realities of adaptation are always going to mean it will never be a one to one match."
Alex waved a hand dismissively, "Pft, don't worry. That's never been that big of a deal for me, as long as it has the right... vibe, for lack of a better way of putting it. Besides, the Krobis Cluster is barely mentioned in the novels, most of the info for it before this game is from the guidebooks."
"And only so much of it, true." The woman - fuck, what was her name? Sam? Pam? Cam? Something like that? - said. She turned down another hallway and leaned in close to an optical scanner, the device reading her eye, connecting to her neural-drive and then the wall opened where no door had been about twenty feet down. Alex followed her into the room.
The bleeding-edge Immersion Pod at the center of the room was hooked up to all sorts of additional equipment - nothing like one would be for normal use, but Alex supposed that since they were beta-testing the game and their latest generation of pods, they'd want to have extra monitoring and stuff going on. There were a few chairs in front of some the monitors, one occupied by a woman with visible augments on her face - one eye replaced, additional external slots, one of her hands was entirely cybernetic and without any synthskin covering, and judging from the lights glowing through her labcoat and whatever she was wearing under it, she had a lot of other external implants and augments running through her body.
Alex hadn't seen such a diehard 'machinist' in person in years, they weren't common in New Angeles anymore. He tried not to stare. He had plenty of augments himself, but his were all internal, covered by synthskin and that sort of thing.
"Miss Rammet," the other woman stood from her chair, coming over. "I take it this is the beta-tester for Pod 63-34?" Rammet! Alex bit his lower lip and held back the urge to hit his forehead with his hand, or mutter a curse at forgetting the woman's name.
And that she hadn't actually given him her first name at all.
"He is. Dr. Philips, this Alex Vane. Alex, this is Doctor Beth Philips, one of the lead developers of the latest generation of Immersion Pods, she's in charge of the teams that will be monitoring you during your week of play."
"Nice to meet you," Alex held out his right hand so that he wouldn't have to touch Dr. Philip's skinless hand, but if the doctor noticed, she didn't react, shaking his hand.
"Always good to put a face and a voice to a name before extended testing!" Dr. Philips said, grinning. She turned back to Miss Rammet. "The tester for Pod 63-69 has had to bow out because, well, apparently they've been recalled to active military service."
Alex winced in sympathy for this person he'd never met. He couldn't say for sure, but anyone being called back to military service right now was probably going to be fighting, or at least
present near, the front lines in and around Old Houston. From every news report he'd heard of...
Not a fun place to be.
"What?!" Miss Rammet paused a moment, looking at thin air as she checked her neural-drive, blinking a few times, one eye darting around. She muttered several curses, not all of them in English. Then she looked back over at Alex, blinked once and continued twitching her eyes. She let out a long long breath and spoke again. "Mister Vane, how would you like to participate in some additional testing, for an additional 50% increase in your remuneration?"
Alex coughed. 50%
more? In all honesty, he would have agreed to beta-test
Sunset Stars: Legends of Krobis for free, or at least minimum wage - it was a week straight of not doing his actual job - but the company was already set to pay him 17,000 credits for the week, which was about twice what he made a week normally. 50% more was nothing to sneeze at.
If Alex didn't know that the real money maker for Horizon Beyond Industries was their Immersion Pods, he'd wonder why they were paying that much, but HBI's Pods were always the best in the market, and got used for things a lot more important than just the video games they were most famous to the general public for.
Given that their customer base included multiple militaries, 17k was lowballing really.
"...what sort of testing would it be?" Alex wasn't poor, but saying no to that much money would be hard.
"Do you recall in the initial entry paperwork, where it said that for this stage and the part of the testing you were doing, we wanted you to have your character's physical build be largely similar to your own?"
Alex nodded, "Something about post-emergence issues and my testing group?" It had annoyed Alex a little, since he liked to play someone
different than himself, that was kind of the point, but still. Worth it.
"More specifically, during alpha testing, it was discovered that the Pod could be so realistic and immersive that players would, upon leaving the pod, feel intense body dysmorphia. Feeling that the body they'd played was their correct body. It caused high stress and anxiety levels and understandably something we're trying to correct for."
Alex blinked. How did they - shouldn't they have mentioned that was a possibility?! He pulled up the contract he'd signed on his neural implant, quickly paging through it as Miss Rammet kept talking.
"Several groups of testers have been selected to test various alterations that should prevent that, the person that was to be assigned to Pod 63-69 was in one of them. Your physiological and mental evaluations place you within parameters to take their place in their testing group."
Nope, nope, there it was, in one of the sections Alex had just skimmed over. It was a long-ass contract, and Alex had just read the main section detail at the top and moved on.
"The feelings of Dysmorphia," Miss Rammet continued, "never lasted more than two weeks, and usually faded after four to five days, but as you can imagine, we'd prefer to have it not happen at all, without sacrificing the experience of the pod's users. The testing group we'd like to reassign you to has a series of filtering protocols added to the pods that should prevent the post-emergence dysmorphia. But of course, it could very well not work, or not work as well as intended, hence the additional remuneration."
Alex considered. On the one hand, an excuse to actually play something that wasn't him sounded fine, plus the extra money. On the other hand... didn't feel like fun to have to deal with dysmorphia afterwards, Even four or five days worth. But, money.
"So just, I play something that's not me?"
"Specifically, we would need you to play a nonhuman character with a 'female' appearance. At least in most regards." Dr. Philips cut in. "That's what your new testing group was checking for. There's some additional parameters in regards to the nature, but it's basically that your character has to be unmistakably a woman in external appearance."
"Just want me to play a nonhuman woman? Sure." Alex shrugged. He usually played guys in video games, Pod or otherwise, but he'd played women before, if the main character was gender-locked, or just for the sake of something different.
"Your genitalia can-" Dr. Philips had started saying as he accepted, then blinked. "Just like that?"
Alex shrugged, "Why not? Just a game. Played women before in Podgames. And it's Sunset Stars, the nonhumans are more fun. What, do you get a lot of people giving you shit about it?" In 2102? In New Angeles?
"I wouldn't say shit, but they usually take a little longer to be convinced." Dr. Philips explained. "Anyway, when you get to character creation, you will find various options for race and appearance grayed out and inaccessible-"
"Before you give him the full spiel about play details, I should have you go over the contract addendum and sign it. If you decide not to sign, you'll still be able to do the regular beta-test you signed up for." Miss Rammet cut in. A light went off in the corner of Alex's vision as a new file arrived in his neural-drive, and Alex opened it with a thought, bringing up a much, much shorter 'contract addendum' covering the additional terms for the new test.
Alex read through it carefully this time. It all checked out, and there was even a section for details on 'additional compensation' if the dysmorphia was severe enough to 'cause noticeable issues in tester's daily life' after the first 24 hours. Legal ass covering, probably. Also a lot of room for them to not have to pay, since 'noticeable issues' seemed pretty nebulous.
I mean unless I play something like a Granthite, how much would my species choice impact? Body might feel off and wrong, but... I mean, I can handle a bit of high stress and anxiety for a few days, right? Most species that were intelligent and spacefaring in Sunset Stars were at least mostly humanoid-
ish.
After debating the whole thing for a few more moments, Alex finally 'signed' the digital file, sending a copy back to Miss Rammet's drive with another thought.
"Excellent. Well, with all our legal ducks in order, I'll leave you in Dr. Philip's capable hands," Miss Rammet nodded and left the room, and Alex turned to the doctor.
"So, any final prep I need to do before I get in the pod and start playing?" Alex tried not to sound too impatient, or too excited, but he was so fucking close to finally playing the game. He'd been wanting a Sunset Stars game for ages, and even if
Legends of Krobis wasn't going to be engaging with his favorite characters or places directly - no going to Valastreen's crystalline cliffs or seeing the markets of Galstroy in person, no meeting General Velcovar or getting to punch that
vile son of a bitch Castor Reco in the face (a fantasy of Alex's since he'd read the third Sunset Stars novel in the main series,
The Burning of Teltra IV), but still!
"I just need to upload the filtering programs to your pod," she said, turning back to her screen and starting to input some commands. A minute later, "And done." She got off the chair again and pressed the catch, opening the pod. "These pods may be the latest version, but you know how they work, so get to it," the Doctor gestured, and Alex nodded. He stripped off his outwear, shoes and socks, leaving him in just boxers, and got into the pod. It was roomier and comfier than the Immersion Pod he had back home, but that didn't surprise him.
Reaching back behind himself, he plugged one cord into the slot at the base of his neck, feeling a slight tingle as it hooked into his neural-drive, into his nervous system. Then he reached down and did the same to plug into the slots on the backs of his knees, and then into his wrists. Alex swiveled a dial on the side and then laid back as all the cords retracted, no more slack - until he gave the command to eject from the pod, or a week had passed, he couldn't move. Not in the real world, anyway.
"There's a lot to love about this new generation of Pods, but one of my favorite is that there's no need for additional feeding or waste removal." Dr. Philips explained. "And firing up
Sunset Stars: Legends of Krobis in 3...2...1..."
The lid of the pod slid closed, sealing shut, as awareness of the world around me, the soft, comfortable, almost plush interior of the pod faded away...
Alex had seen the opening cinematics dozens of times in all the ads and trailers, but he still watched eagerly as it played for the first time, the voice of the actress who'd played Agareen Corel in the TV show speaking over, as a map of known space, colors overlaying to show the major political boundaries.
"It is Earth Year 3192, and nearly all of known space is at war." The map was replaced by images of dreadnoughts dueling at hundreds of kilometers, carriers bursting forth with thousands of fighters, mechs and tanks landing on planets, half-ruined cities filled with soldiers, armed with the most destructive technology and arcanopsionic techniques imaginable.
He recognized almost all of what he saw - the ships, the weapons, the tanks, all lovingly and accurately reproduced from sometimes the most obscure bits of the lore.
"This is no war for ideals, no war of good versus evil, for all that both sides will declare it. No, the war is one for territory and resources, power and control, the petty whims of despots and oligarchs clawing for more, always more."
"On one side stands the Martian Imperium, the self-proclaimed beacon of and last hope for High Human Civilization, the Inheritors of Earth after it burned in Atomic Fires during the Colonial War." He saw Mars, the terraformed planet now as much blue and green as red, massive arcologies, hundreds of orbital stations, thousands upon thousands of vessels, military and civilian alike moving constantly through the stars and skies above the Throneworld of Humanity.
The image zoomed in on Olympus Mons, on the capital city of the Empire, into the Imperial palace, passing a dizzying array of sights, all humans, all Martians, along the way, ending at the sight of a gorgeous woman, dark skin, long blonde hair braided elaborately, wearing a shimmering, shining dress that seemed to be spun from the light of the stars themselves, a circlet that Alex knew was made of rare metals found in the wreckage of long-destroyed planets orbiting dying stars.
The woman - Empress Nyev V - was speaking from her throne to an assembled mass of nobles, generals and courtiers as the voiceover continued.
"Empress Nyev, grasping and cruel, right-hand to the Divine in the eyes of her people, will stop at nothing until her enemies are all laid to waste, broken before her will. Until all of humanity worships her dynasty and her rule, and until all other species know their place beneath her suzerainty."
Suddenly the view zoomed out, away from the palace, away from Mars, from Sol, back to the view of the galaxy, and then zooming in elsewhere, to what Alex recognized as Ascarev Prime, the purple waters of the planet impossible to mistake for anything else.
"On the other side stands the Pact Coalition, a federal union of worlds and systems, alien and human, united under a common government that has long since seen any democracy it once had leached away by corruption within and without, all power coming to the hands of oligarchs and officials, bureaucrats and bankers. Concerned only with their own wealth, their own standing and the power of the state, the forces of the Pact Coalition regardless remain the greatest impediment to Martian domination of all known space."
The view zoomed in on Ascarev Prime, briefly giving a glimpse of the Coalition Senate, where representatives from hundreds of worlds and over a dozen species debated over endless minutia, flailing powerlessly within a system long since ripped away from them. The view changed, shifting to a small room where twenty-one people sat around a round table, the so-called Fifth Directorate, where true power in the Pact Coalition rested.
"The Fifth Directorate plots and schemes, pledging votes and resources, money and favors to ensure their chosen outcomes are reached. Freedom in the Pact Coalition is no more a reality than it is in the Martian Imperium, but there are those places where people can still strive to build futures for themselves."
"On a thousand worlds scattered on the fringes of the powers, great and small, lie the frontier, dominated by corporate interests, settlers seeking a new life, criminal cartels and what few planets can truly stand proud and tall. And yet even here, on the edges of space, the war cannot be forgotten. Ambassadors and mercenaries, assassins and saboteurs endlessly ply their trades for one side or another, manipulating local events in the hopes of changing the balance of power hundreds of light years away."
Images flashed of pirates attacking trade lands, shadowy figures killing people in offices and in their bedrooms, small settlements being overwhelmed by mercenaries - Alex recognized the sigils of the Black Fang Irregulars - and more. The frontier was not a peaceful place, but it remained the center of the action for most Sunset Stars novels, as well as the TV show.
"At the intersection of the frontier and the borders of the belligerent empires and their allies lies the Krobis Cluster, a densely packed space of twelve star systems, sheltered from invasion by accidents of stellar cartography that make travel into the cluster far easier than travel out."
The view became the cluster, the stellar storms, nebulae and fractured hyperlanes highlighted, the twelve stars of the cluster - Alex knew their names, but not much more than that, beyond scattered details spread throughout the books and guidebooks.
"The worlds of the Krobis Cluster are home to exiles, outcasts, criminals, refugees, and the rest of the detritus of the galaxy, washed up on their shores like flotsam and jetsam after a storm. But they are also home to the greedy, the foolish, the ambitious and the desperate - for the Cluster was once home to an ancient precursor species, and the ruins they left behind lure many in, seeking the greatest of weapons or more, to use, to sell, or even to destroy."
A towering ruin, a wreckage of scrap and sharp edges in the middle of a seemingly endless desert. A ship, floating in orbit over an airless moon, half-exposed to vacuum through gaping holes in the sides of it. An underground vault, swarming with robotic defenders in a dozen forms and shapes attacking would-be looters, lasers and plasma and sharp claws made from impossible metals.
"It is into this Cluster that you arrive, coming for your own reasons, serving for your own motives, on a ship about to be attacked by pirates. Will you rise to become one of the true Legends of the Krobis Cluster, or will you fall, like so many before you, upon the ash heap of history, forgotten and abandoned?
The cinematic cut out, and Alex found 'himself' standing in front of a mirror in a small, cramped room that could only be his quarters on whatever ship he was aboard. The image in the mirror was himself, as he stood in real life, but entirely naked. Alex flushed only a moment, and the first set of choices appeared in the air before him. Species selection.
As expected, human was grayed out, as were several near-human species, ones derived from genetic modifications of humanity at some point in the seven centuries since humans had discovered the relevant technologies.
After a moment, Alex first selected Sytal. It would be a funny way to play around with the limits of what he was being asked with the dysmorphia. The male option here
wasn't grayed out, which didn't surprise him at all. He picked it for a moment, reading the lore 'popup' that displayed a moment.
Sytal - a species native to the planet Hascoris, the Sytal are founding members of the Pact Coalition. While known for their artistry and their advanced combat mechs alike, the Sytal are most famous for being the only viviparous species in which the non-bearing parent provides feeds the infant child. Sytal have more perceptive senses, and move faster than baseline humanity. Socially the Sytal are organized...
He didn't bother to keep reading, knowing the lore pretty intimately. Sytal also tended to be communitarian and tradition-minded by cultural inclination, but the ones that inhabited the frontier and thus featured in the books the most were more likely to be the loners, the free-thinkers, the ones that liked to operate on their own, or at least outside of traditional family and clan structures.
Selecting 'male', just to see it, Alex looked in the mirror as his appearance changed to that of a Sytal male - if not for the reddish-orange skin, the complete lack of external ears and the fact that his penis was still between his legs, Alex would have thought he was looking at a human woman. Sytal males had breasts - during late stages of pregnancy, Sytal females put out pheromones that began lactation in nearby males, which was why historically they had tended to segregate away from all men but the fathers of their children during that period.
Of course, once you took a closer look, the breasts aside, Sytal men looked pretty androgynous by human standards, and the only real external sexual dimorphism for Sytal was the genitalia and the breasts. Alex debated how exactly he might modify the generic appearance generated - maybe a tweak to the eyes, a change to the nose...
Alex looked over the stat bonuses applied to Sytal on the baseline - greater accuracy, better detection, improvements to hacking and other programming tasks... the list went on, with a few maluses as well, as you'd expect from a video game.
Then he looked back at the race selection screen, and blinked as he noticed a species he'd expected would be grayed out wasn't. Valurian. Like the nonhuman races that were grayed out, Valurians were near-human, derived from genetically modified humans. Unlike those ones, Valurians were the product of precursor aliens tampering with the human genome sometime in the 3000s BCE, in the lore of the Sunset Stars universe.
They were also Alex's favorite species, from appearance, to what they could do, to society to their place in the story. His favorite characters tended to be Valurians as well. He could guess what their bonuses and maluses would be, and...
Fuck it. If they want me to play a female build/female, then I should really go all in, right, rather than just technicality. Besides, Sytal were cool, but they weren't Valurians.
Switching his species selection, Alex read over the lore detail.
Valurians - native to the planet Valuris Major. The result of ancient alien meddling with the human genome, Valurians are nearly exclusively carnivorous, think and behave more akin to pack ambush predator evolve species than humans, and possess a much higher incidence of psionic capacity, as well as more potent arcanopsionic powers than other species on average. Prone to internecine conflict, the Valurians are ruled by powerful psi-witch Matriarchs, gathered loosely under the banner of the Valuris League, a minor power on the geopolitical stage. The League is loosely allied with the Martian Imperium, but Valurian mercenaries, assassins, saboteurs, spies and agents are as likely to be freelance as anything else, working across the stars for anyone who pays - criminal syndicate or corporate interest, Imperium or Coalition.
Valurians were stronger and faster than humans, with better reflexes and hand-eye coordination. They could endure a much wider range of environments without much in the way of clothing or protective gear. That is, they could be in both a desert or arctic environment with little more than a swimsuit and be equally fine. Even more than most species in the Sunset Stars universe, Valurians had no taboos about nudity or showing skin, so nudity and near-nudity was exceedingly common for both sexes, outside of extreme environments or situations where combat was expected.
On the other hand, as Alex looked over the stats, all that came at various costs - Valurians lacked the endurance of humans - humans evolved from persistence predators, but all that had been modified and bred out of Valurians. They also had poorer immune systems, weaker bones and a whole range of associated weaknesses. His starting stamina would be penalized if he played a Valurian, as would his health score. He'd also have a higher chance of acquiring a whole range of negative status conditions too - broken bones, poisons, diseases, radiation.
Valurians compensated for this, to varying extents, with their advanced arcanopsionic technologies - they were the only ones in known space, outside of possibly one precursor species or another - to have developed psi-drives and psi-shielding for their warships before conventional hyperdrives or ordinary plasma or magnetic shields.
Fuck it. I'm playing my favorites. The Valurians were often accused by fans from more prudish parts of the world - places where this game would probably be a lot more restricted or even banned - of being created just to be kink/fetish fuel for the author. Alex didn't disagree, but what was the problem with that?
Unable to pick male as his starting build or sex, Alex began with an attractive female body, dark green skin, wavy blood red hair. He was tall, with long, muscular legs and very nice, proportionate breasts to go with his six feet of height and athletic build. After a few moments to stare and take things in, he started fiddling with those randomly generated sets, changing his eye color from black to amber, lengthening his hair from shoulder-length to midback, though he also changed up the style somewhat so he had a crown braid, like one of his favorite secondary Valurian characters from the TV show, the assassin Makelyan.
Unable to help himself, Alex palmed his breasts, squeezing them, biting his lower lip a little at the thrill that ran through him, hissing. There were major upsides to playing a woman in a podgame, sometimes. Still, these could stand to be larger, so he upped their size a little, not so much that it would cause issues for his back, or his ability to move. Some people liked to give their characters absolutely absurd assets, since most games didn't actually bother to code in things like back pain, or oversized boobs or dicks getting in the way. HBI's games always did, but even if they didn't, breasts beyond a certain size stopped being attractive to Alex.
Not that his character's were at that limit.
Slimming his waist just a touch, Alex also traded points from strength to agility. After some thought, he'd decided he was going to play a Wardancer. Muscles flowed like liquid under his skin as they changed, his build not switching from mostly muscles to more of a lithe build, flexible, but still strong, comparatively.
One hand still teasing one nipple, he played around with his face, giving his character sultry, pouty lips.
He put every spare point he could manage into his psionic potential stat - already boosted because he was a Valurian, but still. For what he had in mind...
The last change he made to his physical appearance and baseline stats was to take advantage of the fact that he could have a penis, rather than a vagina. He'd played with one before in podgames, and getting eaten out or fucked in it was fun, but he preferred having his dick sucked, or fucking with it and Alex had had plenty of experience and enjoyment with being on the receiving end of anal sex in real life. He played around with the size and exactly dimensions of his character's dick - it was a couple of inches longer than his in real life, of course - for a minute or two, and then confirmed his appearance and species selection.
Skill tree selection began, with various options unavailable based on starting stats. Rather than check over the mechanics in detail - this was a beta, so playing around with and trying things based on vibes seemed as good an option as trying to optimize.
Alex picked the 'Psi-Blade' skill tree, which would allow him to focus his psionic energy into blades, blades which, especially if improved with the right arcanopsionic tech, could cut through or ignore all sorts of materials to damage targets directly. They were fairly short, which required Alex to get close to the enemy - picking the 'Battle Dance' skill tree would give him all sorts of options there, and for his third and final starting skill tree, Alex decided to round out his build with 'Psifiltration', which would give him ways to use his psi talents for stealth or to otherwise avoid attack and avoid notice more indirection.
It would be a strain on his mental abilities to maintain them, and technology or the strong-willed could, to varying degrees, resist the abilities of the tree, but there were options for that down the line.
Alex flicked through a few final choices, picking starting equipment, assigning points within the skill trees, and that sort of thing, as he worked on a backstory for his character. Completely unnecessary, but this was a roleplaying game for a reason, and with the sophisticated NPC AI it was supposed to have - as cutting edge as everything else about the game - then Alex could really get in character.
Alyx Vaintar, a transgender woman, was a mercenary-cum-assassin, though she tended to do her killing more openly than most, once she got close enough to her target to do it, relying on her speed and ability to evade notice to enable her escape. Once a loyal agent of her Matriarch, ultimately in service to the Martian war effort, a fight with one of her Matriarch's closest consorts saw her forced to flee and operate freelance on the frontier, serving as a troubleshooter for all manner of purposes. She found herself on a ship headed into the Krobis Cluster after an assassination failed and she managed to get a major Pact Coalition-based megacorp pissed off enough at her to make her choose fleeing into the Cluster as a viable option, even if it risked her being trapped there for an extended period.
When she had had her downtime, Alyx enjoyed indulging in her passions - intoxicants and other stimulants, wild sex parties, and similar hedonistic pleasures, though she did have a secret enjoyment of certain genres of romantic novels.
For his starting weapons, bracers that would enhance his psi-blades and make them easier to project for less focus, and for starting armor, he picked a skintight bodysuit made from specialized, advanced synthetic leather, enhanced further by a handful of psi-active runes. He could potentially have more added to the armor, and to the bracers, as Alyx got loot and money, or he could have her invest in all sorts of other options. The armor wouldn't restrict movements, while providing appreciable projection from laser and plasma weaponry and various melee attacks. It wasn't unbreachable, but it offered much more protection than it would seem.
Also, it was sexy.
Character creation complete, Alex exited the process with a mental command, and the game really began.
Namely, with the ship shaking as something fired into it - stumbling, Alyx nearly fell over, catching herself on the mirror in her quarters.
"Well, I suppose it's been a few days since I've had a chance to kill anything," she muttered, smirking.
Author's Note: This, is just sort of an idea I had that I started writing without thinking too hard or trying to take myself too seriously. I have some ideas where it will go - if the title alone doesn't make that clear - but just broad strokes. I made up the setting and stuff as I went along, both the 'New Angeles' thing (which is obviously some sort of cyberpunk-tech level type city built over or near the ruins of Los Angeles) and other attendant details about that, but also the stuff regarding the Sunset Stars stuff, both in terms of its publication history/etc and the lore of the universe itself.
I don't know when or if I'll have more chapters. I want to have more, but I've got a lot of things I'm writing and other things I
should be writing so... who knows. The story is intended to alternate between time where Alex is playing Alyx in the game as part of the ongoing beta-testing (safety regulations and just good sense prevent anyone from using an immersion pod for more than a week at a time) and Alex in his daily life as he slowly starts acting more like and becoming more like Alyx.
I do have various ideas for lore (for the 'real' world and the 'game world') that didn't make it into the story, so I may be able to answer questions people have.
There will, as you might expect, be sex in the story, both 'in game' and in 'real life', but it will largely fade to black/summarized on this website. You can find this story (under the same name) on ao3 or QQ, where the sex will actually appear in full.
In terms of what Alyx Vaintar looks like, start with something akin to an 'Orion slave girl' (i.e. from Star Trek), but with skin a few shades darker green, a dancer's build, and long blood red hair and amber eyes. If this story sticks around for a while, I may try to commission art for Alyx, but for the moment, that's sort of what we're looking at. Her bodysuit is black, and has glowy violet bits from tech embedded into it along the 'spine' and along her legs, as well as royal purple glowing arcanopsionic runes made from psi-reactive materials painted into the material on the sides of her torso.
For the hairstyle Alex selected for her, imagine something like this:
Link
