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Seele Vollerei: The end of reality, and what came after.

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Well, sounds like Kiana has had it even worse than Seele lately. Definitely seems like the death she's witnessed (and blames herself for) are pushing her towards the more nihilistic side. She seemed to be getting "better" whenever her chat with Seele and Vel was on lighter topics and started to get real dangerous when Seele's recounting of her experiences brought back those topics to the fore.

She's asking for some space here and is presumably trying to get herself back in control of her emotions. I'd like for Seele to try and say something to help but it definitely seems like if we say something wrong we could make things worse. A lot worse, maybe. In which case staying quiet would be better.

Beyond that, I'm a bit curious if Kiana's talk of sacrifices, mistakes, and deaths are referring to the world before it collapsed (likely as or perhaps even why it was collapsing) or her trying to keep things semi-functional here on the ship. I'm leaning towards the former right now but it's also possible she's run into her own problems with dealing with the ship in its current state.
 
For the record, I do wish to make it clear that even those of us who are Honkai-savvy are kind of getting our asses kicked by the fact that AIDungeon is writing a weird AU and it's not always clear when or how or what it's changed.
Baughn said:
"You're crying. Someone... died. I think. A black-haired woman, and I kept mixing up Mei and Ai-chan in my head, and... Is she okay?" You ask. "I mean... I'm worried about her."

Kiana stops and turns to look at you. She opens her mouth, pauses, then closes it again. After a moment of silence, she turns and continues walking.

"Sometimes... there are sacrifices that need to be made."
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Well fuck.

Kiana is right here; and Bronya has been mentioned before. The third member of Honkai's main cast is Raiden Mei.

She is, apparently, the girl with the long black hair that Seele was dreaming about - that checks out: Mei does, in fact, have long black hair - and she is apparently quite dead.

I joked, earlier, that if Honkai's canon, and its associated parade of awful circumstance, hadn't made Kiana go off the deep end, nothing would. This is the problem, though, with canon familiarity: I naively assumed that, simply because lots of bad things happen to Kiana in particular in canon, it could not get any worse.

That was lacking in vision, and I apologize for that.

Kiana and Mei have a similar level of why-even-bother-making-this-subtextual-just have-them-be-girlfriends romantic tension to Bronya and Seele; and so Kiana is, right now, dealing with her best friend, possible girlfriend, dying - maybe even martyring herself - for nothing.
Baughn said:
"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I really am. We had a lot of good times, didn't we? The four of us?"
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Clearly Kiana and Seele are much closer friends than they are in canon, where, um, they have never actually spoken to one another.

This sort of implies that ... that Seele has been part of the gang for a while? That for some time, Seele was part of this friend group, with Mei and Kiana and her Bronya.

Which means Mei had to be around for friending to happen, and you know what we're already so far out into unexplored timeline territory I'm not sure why I'm still surprised when it goes off the rails.

But apparently they were a quartet, at least for a while. Kiana and Mei and Bronya and Seele, friends and squadmates and -

And now Mei is dead; and Bronya is ... gone.

Now it's just Kiana and Seele, alone together, without the most important people in their lives.
 
Was that Sirin going on about having victory taste like ashes?

I... I can't think of anything to say. So yeah, sitting here with her for a bit really might be our best action right now.

At least Kiana isn't doing all the heavy lifting now with us running around and Tesla patching the reality-timogrifier up. :V
 
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Thelxiope said:
For the record, I do wish to make it clear that even those of us who are Honkai-savvy are kind of getting our asses kicked by the fact that AIDungeon is writing a weird AU and it's not always clear when or how or what it's changed.
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Our omniscient narrator is a little weird, and I try to go with its whims when I can, because otherwise what's the point?

For what it's worth though, I'm trying to make this fit in as more of a canon continuation than AU. In canon, Kiana and Seele have never met -- but they could, there's every reason for that to happen. I made Seele a bit more stable -- it could happen, it should happen, and she's far less frustrating to steer as a quest protagonist this way. I dropped the Hyperion into the quantum sea, and...

...

I mean, we were already there. That was more of an author's saving throw, to be honest.

What's probably causing some problems is, I'm not past chapter four of the game. I've devoured everything else, but the main plot is gated behind one hell of a time-sink, so I'd be happy if you bring up anything that's too terribly off.

There's one way to make sure you don't get blindsided, though: Ask. Anything Seele is supposed to know, I'll be happy to tell you, and that's everything except the immediate lead-up to the apocalypse.

Alternately, write leading questions into the prompts. :V
 
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Baughn said:
For what it's worth though, I'm trying to make this fit in as more of a canon continuation than AU. In canon, Kiana and Seele have never met -- but they could, there's every reason for that to happen. I made Seele a bit more stable -- it could happen, it should happen, and she's far less frustrating to steer as a quest protagonist this way. I dropped the Hyperion into the quantum sea, and...
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In the prime timeline, Seele meet Kiana face to face after the event of chapter 17 off screen but did not meet Mei . She also have saw alternate version of Kiana and May in the sea of quata. The Seele of Captainverse is close with Kiana and Mei on her hyperion she on.
 
ShadowAngelBeta said:
Was that Sirin going on about having victory taste like ashes?
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Her, but also Kiana, I think.

I really wanted to offer some options on this one, I just couldn't think of anything to say. Sometimes there are no good choices, I guess. The Seele in my head would say--

She'd say nothing.

Bronya, I think, can be restored. Retrieved from the void, not really; she's right here, she's just missing a lot, for instance a functional mind or body. Seele managed to hold on to her soul, more or less; the structure that makes Bronya herself. Unlike Seele, she can't function in that form. Restoring her human form would be difficult, but it's not--

It's not impossible.

For Mei, all we have to go off are Seele's nightmares. If she exists at all, it's as de-correlating fragments spread across the quantum sea, and unlike Seele -- who was in a similar position for a while -- there's no template we can use to pull her back together with. She's gone, almost certainly. We could potentially pick up a different Mei from a bubble universe, but that'd be a different Mei.

So there's a pretty good chance this will be a trio again, or a quartet if you count Veliona, and I think we probably should. She's also stuck in my head, and while she prefers letting Seele take the lead, she likes being out and about. So long as we're all in the quantum sea, which is likely to be a permanent condition, there's actually nothing stopping her from doing so except perhaps habit.

What will that do to Kiana, though?

...I want to break my habit of always making things worse for my characters, so I need to worry about things like that in advance, because I'm not able to ignore them when they come up. I don't have a strong model of Kiana as she exists right now. There's far too much Sirin in her, and that's not going away; she isn't capable of totally suppressing her, but then again Sirin isn't capable of suppressing Kiana either. Seele might need to give this pair a quick guide on coexistence. Then again, K423 and Sirin aren't in the same position as Seele and Veliona, so any such lecture would likely be misplaced.

Well, Kiana's mutable. Who do we want her to be?

And what's the endgame here?

...I suppose asking that question is a little premature, when we haven't even gotten to Theresa yet, but the story has the potential for moving too fast for any of you to follow along. I view this more as an exercise in collaborative storytelling than a mystery novel, and I'd prefer giving you time to think this over... without compromising the update schedule.

(I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I'm doing steadily more of the writing. AI Dungeon is useful! But it's useful for being able to continue any scene, at least so long as situational details aren't important; it does better with character-to-character moments than with, say, generator details. I looked those up. Yes, diesel generators turn out to be easy to start, even the megawatt-sized ones.)

Regardless, if I intend to keep up 1000-1500 word updates per day until the quest is done, I'm going to have to spoil you guys a little. If you absolutely don't want that... skip the rest of this post, I guess?

So, here's the situation:
  • The Tree is not dead. I mean, come on. That's Seele's impression, not reality, and it'd be immediately apparent as soon as anyone starts looking further afield. That can be Seele, or Kiana, or the entire Hyperion if we get the ship fixed up properly. Tesla's 'science experiment' is certainly meant to allow movement, it's the emergency backup we're running on right now that doesn't.

  • The reality Seele and Kiana and the others are from is, however, shattered; this includes all offshoots, though of course not all bubble universes matching the HI3 timeline; the canon universe is intact, for one. The Hyperion is the biggest remaining piece, and by far the most solid. Not the only one, but there's no help coming. At most, if you feel like it, there may be a few survivors to rescue.

  • Getting inside a stable bubble is difficult-to-impossible. Canon has its own statements on the subject, but here's it's because the girls (and Hyperion) have lost too much measure; they're insufficiently 'real', in a quantum sense. Seele would find it difficult to manifest as more than a ghost, and the others are significantly more dependent on functional physics than she is.

    The best you might be able to do is an unstable bubble, one even more open to Honkai attacks than the one you're from. Shoring it up afterwards is, I guess, not impossible. Think in terms of Scranton reality anchors.

    Alternately you could, I guess, cannibalize someone else.

  • Building your own reality, out here, is not impossible. Kiana's made a good try already, and for being an 'idiot' she has good intuitions for this. Her instincts are better than Seele's, perhaps because she has fewer prejudices.

    Any such waypoint will be even less real than something you could make your way inside, but it might actually be 'unreal' enough that nothing in the greater Sea wants to eat it, honkai or otherwise. There's just not enough benefit to doing so, especially if it has defenders. Natural tides are a different matter.

  • Restoring the place you're from is just flatly impossible, but don't let that stop you from trying. Just know that, if you try, what you're going to get is a detective story explaining what happened to kill it.

    What the girls would get is mostly heartache.
All of that is still some distance in the future, and Theresa's first instinct will be to fix the Hyperion. There are a couple of approaches you could take with that, but I won't bother listing them; really, anything you can give a reasonable reasoning for would work. That's true in general, of course.

Theresa will defer to you slightly, because she has no idea what she's doing, but she knows enough to know that. If she could get in contact with Planck or Schroedinger, that might change, but... neither is available right now, to put it mildly. Tesla, on the other hand, is also aware she's in over her head.

There's also what happened to the rest of the crew...

...er, I'll leave that one a secret. Some of them are right here on the island, though! Kiana did good work. Maybe ask her about it.
 
Continuing with my previously-successful habit of pretending this is actually a Nobilis/Chuubo's/Glitch quest, I wonder if "Yggdrasil is dead" is basically a matter of perspective.

Like, the Tree is "realities which exist." Yggdrasil is the Is. It is all timelines with sufficient measure to qualify as "real."

Seele and Co. are permanently expelled from that state. They are denizens of the unreal - Seele and Kiana are better at managing in this state, Tesla worse; but no one on this ship is real enough to interact with Yggdrasil anymore.

I'm wondering if Seele's declaration that "Yggdrasil is dead and gone" is less a matter of objective fact and more a matter of -

from her perspective -

like, she can't interact with the timelines of the Tree anymore. So from her perspective ... they aren't there. They don't exist, for her - and yes, from an external reference frame, Seele is the one who doesn't actually exist; but internally

For Seele

Those timelines are the ones that seem to have abruptly vanished.

To her, Yggdrasil is the one that's died.

naturally, Yggdrasil disagrees - from the perspective of reality, Seele and Kiana and the Hyperion and their entire timeline just blipped out of existence. Yggdrasil happens to be right, here; or at least, its reference frame is a somewhat privileged one by virtue of being the reference frame that is actually real -

But Seele, in this interpretation, isn't lying or even necessarily mistaken. Yggdrasil sure looks like it's dead and gone from her perspective.
Obviously the final arbitration of this comes down to you and AIDungeon engaging in fisticuffs over whatever interpretations you two have, but I don't see a reason to give in to despair re: Mei.

Like - yes, this is a very bad situation. Yes, she is extremely dead.

Yes, Seele doesn't have what she needs right now to try and reverse that without fucking everything up.

Yes, rescuing - or, well, let's be honest, resurrecting - Raiden Mei is not going to be a trivial undertaking.

But I also don't think it's fiat impossible.

Repairing the timeline Seele came from? Yeah that's impossible. Or at the absolute least, it would be an endeavor of centuries and draw the ire of all manner of nastiness from the Sea and such.

But one person?

Yes, she's decohered almost entirely.

Yes, Seele doesn't have a handy Mei template to work from.

But I have faith - in narratives, and in the way AIDungeon works - that Seele can save her.

Because if she can't -

If Mei is just gone and is irrecoverable -

then why include Yvette?

...I get that as a Quest this is written backwards and that not all threads get resolved, but -

If we reverse that, and look at this story as if it were a done, written thing -

... then Yvette is foreshadowing. Or she is a pointless gutpunch that ought to have been cut in editing.

because the promise Seele made to Yvette ought to matter. It should be important. The narrative makes less sense if that thread is allowed to drop.

I don't know, yet, what shape this is going to take. Is Yvette to be the trial run? The easy difficulty to Mei's Lunatic/Nightmare/Despair/Whatever that pointlessly difficult just for bragging rights difficulty is called in game X?

Is Yvette part Mei? Was she correlated, in part, from a bit of Mei, and can we use that to find the rest?

Is there, in Yvette, some key needed to pull Mei back from the brink?

Not a damn clue, just yet.

Saving Mei won't be easy. At all, in the slightest.

But let's call that a long-term goal. Add it to the pile.
  1. Make the ship at least tolerably safe against the ravages of the Sea of Quanta;
  2. Re-embody Bronya Zaychik;
  3. Force the Sea to relinquish Raiden Mei.
Frankly, I'd be happy with those three. You ask what the endgame is? I'll offer those three goals as my vote for "win conditions."

The world is dead, but Seele has snatched her closest friends from the jaws of apocalypse; and together, they've made a new home, sailing on the sea of broken time.

I'm willing to call that a win.

And some ideas for sub-goals, intermediary steps:
  1. Make the ship at least tolerably safe against the ravages of the Sea of Quanta;
    1. Fix the damage we've inflicted on reality
    2. Help Tesla finish her science experiment
    3. Work with Kiana to close or excise all of the intrusive fragments of other timelines.
  2. Re-embody Bronya Zaychik;
    1. See below re: Yvette since that's probably gonna be useful and relevant
    2. I don't actually have a lot of ideas on this front but I'm also tired and have been furiously effortposting for *checks* five hours now and sort of need a break
  3. Force the Sea to relinquish Raiden Mei.
    1. Keep our promise to Yvette
    2. Work with Kiana and Veliona to trace Mei's soul, the unique pattern of her being - the common thread between all the scattered fragments that are her
    3. Find enough of those to force the Sea to acknowledge that Mei is part of the story of this bubble, causing the rest to correlate into alignment.

right, anyway, I have way overspent on effortposting today. Break time. @Baughn, feel free to shoot any of this down in flames or whatever; but you did ask.
 
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@Thelxiope

I did, and I'm not going to shoot it down in flames. Because--

There's exactly one choice I marked down as "Flat-out impossible".

It isn't resurrecting Mei.

(EDIT: Also, like I've said, reasoning it out is very likely to make you correct. I can't resist a good story, and you're perfectly right that Yvette should be foreshadowing.)
 
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Nice effort post :V

Think we could find (fragments of) Mei's soul in the fragment bubbles? If there's other versions of her in those bubbles then, while they may not be her, they'll still be based on her. Presumably they're that way for a reason.

Beyond that there's a couple of possibilities for a new home reality. Making one is insane sounding, but Kiana, Seele, and Tesla are uniquely suited to actually accomplishing this. Kiana has an instinct for building things out of the Sea, Seele has far more experience than anyone save maybe Welt when it comes to what (non-)existing is like and how to balance the two to support people and things actually existing, while Tesla will probably be able to figure out a way to nail it down so Kiana and Seele don't have to do all the maintenance work.

As for populating it... well, we have building blocks already. Both in people and things. Or the concepts they're built out of anyway.

There are options for finding safe harbor as well. In an ever growing Tree of realities the fragments and bubbles left behind smushing and tumbling together and apart the chances of them forming into something self-sustaining aren't impossible. Nearly so, but not actually impossible. Functionally it'd be a bubble universe, but in practice it would have some way of not being washed away and a form of protection from the Honkai likely harrasing them. Kinda makes me think of the Genshin intro that has a Void Herrscher crash on a couple of twin guardians, one of who is the MC you play as.

The third is to find another bud reality like their home that's experimenting with poking into the Sea. Kiana could almost certainly open a portal in as well considering that's basically her powerset in a nutshell.
 
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[X] Wait for Kiana to balance herself, then go see Theresa.
- [X] Hold her hand.

A hug is a bit much, but I feel like some sort of gesture of, like, shared feeling and togetherness is called for.
ShadowAngelBeta said:
Beyond that there's a couple of possibilities for a new home reality. Making one is insane sounding, but Kiana, Seele, and Tesla are uniquely suited to actually accomplishing this. Kiana has an instinct for building things out of the Sea, Seele has far more experience than anyone save maybe Welt when it comes to what (non-)existing is like and how to balance the two to support people and things actually existing, while Tesla will probably be able to figure out a way to nail it down so Kiana and Seele don't have to do all the maintenance work.

As for populating it... well, we have building blocks already. Both in people and things. Or the concepts they're built out of anyway.
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Also once we re-embody Bronya, I think the benefits of having someone with the Core of Reason on the team - and thus the ability to magic-quantum 3D-print any object she understands well enough - should be obvious when setting up a colony.
 
Thelxiope said:
Also once we re-embody Bronya, I think the benefits of having someone with the Core of Reason on the team - and thus the ability to magic-quantum 3D-print any object she understands well enough - should be obvious when setting up a colony.
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And since Seele is the one with the Stigmata imprinted with the blueprints of the previous age's tech (as assembled by Dr. Mei and guarded by Vel) they will obviously need to spend a lot of time together.

With each other.

Alone.

For studying purposes of course. Yes.

>.> <.< >.>

Don't get in the yandere's way guys.

[X] Wait for Kiana to balance herself, then go see Theresa.
- [X] Hold her hand.
 
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Seele Quest: 3.3
  • Threadmarks
    • It's a beautiful landscape. Above, you can see the wispy clouds drifting through the sky, and a broken moon far away. The sky is a perfect blue, and you can see the edge of reality on the horizon, swirling with colour. The land stretches out into a bleak 'desert', where rocks float around in a emptiness beyond most people's comprehension. Last time you saw Kiana she couldn't do anything like this. That was at least days ago, so, and... who's counting?

    You reach out for Kiana's hand. You won't speak, but a little human warmth? That you can give. She squeezes back tightly.

    Kiana and you sit in silence, watching the edge of reality.

    It reminds you of the first time you saw reality again, after being trapped for a subjective aeon. You'd been drifting through empty nothingness, a sea of non-colour and non-form. You had no eyes, no ears, no anything; just a perfect emptiness that you didn't know whether you were part of or separate from. Just a perfect unity of nothing at all. It was beautiful...

    Beautiful, in a sense, but not real. The opposite of real. Try as she might, Veliona hadn't been able to keep you from going a little crazy, and that had only been for a few years. The two of you, alone in the... not even the void. That was a word people used to describe it, but they didn't know what the void really was. They couldn't. Nobody could. It wasn't a place. It was outside of places.

    Veliona sighs, and paces forward. "You know what the first thing I did was, when we got out of there? Not the fighting. I mean the first time you were asleep, in a real bed, in reality."

    "No..." You reply, slowly, curious as to what she'll say.

    "I held Bronya as she cried herself to sleep," she says simply. "I'm sure she thinks that was you. It's probably the most awkward thing I've ever done."

    You smile. "...She... is a good person."

    "She's a pain in the ass," Veliona complains, smiling. "We butt heads constantly, whether she knows it or not. But she means well."

    "I'm sure." You pause, considering your next words. "I wish I could talk to her one last time..."

    Vel's voice is quieter than you think you've ever heard it. "So do I..."

    You stay silent for a while, watching as the light spills out, forming colours and shapes.

    "So... what are we doing about this?" Vel asks, quietly.

    "I don't know," you reply, eyeing Kiana. It's not... it's not something that's Wrong. It doesn't give you the creeps, like much of the ship. The landscape is false, but it's a beautiful dream. Kiana has done a great job. You just hope she doesn't think it's something else.

    "I don't think we should do anything," you say, after thinking for a while. "Let's just rest a little."

    Kiana is meditating, seemingly oblivious to the conversation. Vel is frowning.

    "Are you sure?" she asks.

    "Yeah," you say. "Let's just... let's just rest a little."

    You lean back against the rock, and pause for a while, before closing your eyes. Veliona nods, before also closing her eyes. She rests her head on your shoulder.

    "Thank you..." you hear Kiana whisper, as you fall asleep.

    ooOOoo

    You're drifting in a void.

    You have no body, no form, but you're still aware. You know who you are.

    You drift in the endless whiteness, with others like you. Some are people you know, some are strangers. All of them are people whose journeys have ended. The never-ending whiteness and formlessness is almost comforting. There is nothing to do here, but rest.

    You see a shape floating further up ahead, a dark spot in the white. There's someone there, long silver hair, pale skin....

    You drift towards the someone, feeling a pull of familiarity. As you approach, the someone takes a shape. Curly hair, silver eyes, a smile that melts your heart... a dress of black, blue and white, looking like rose petals....

    Your beloved. Your Herrscher.

    ooOOoo

    You wake up with a startle, breathing heavily. Veliona and Kiana are already awake, looking at you.

    "Are you okay?" Kiana asks, tilting her head. "Were you having a bad dream?"

    You shake your head, taking a deep breath. There are tears in the corner of your eyes.

    "I... I'm fine," you say, sitting up. "Just a dream."

    You are aware that you're lying, and the other two can probably tell as well. Vel looks concerned, but doesn't question you further.

    "So. Theresa, right?" You say.

    [Note: The original bridge is on the island. It's weird. Kiana's built an entire landscape around it, but the ship's actual bridge is still there. On a beach. Theresa's there too. She's our commanding officer, so be a little serious.]

    Kiana nods. "Yeah. She's on the island. Swimming sounds fun, right?"

    Vel crinkles her nose. "I'll pass, if you two don't mind. I'm not really a water person."

    "I didn't even know you could swim," you say.

    Kiana shrugs. "The water's not actually..."

    Not actually what?

    ooOOoo

    Liquid, you learn. The water's not actually liquid. It's nearly a solid. A really, really viscous treacle. You can walk on it easily enough, but it still looks like water to you, and you can't help but dip your hand in and make a splash when you first arrive, throwing some of it at Kiana.

    There are still waves, and they still break on the rocks, and... this is the sort of lake that's best admired from afar. You carefully make your way across it. Very carefully, though Kiana walks on the waves with a poise that tells you she's done this several times before.

    It's that or she's played games on hardened treacle before, and you wouldn't bet on even Kiana to do something that crazy.

    Vel just shakes her head. "Kiana, you're incorrigible," she says, although she's smiling as she says it.

    "And this is the island of Herr commanded by the Velen King, also known as the Veleni, aka. Theresa" Kiana says, gesturing to the beach. "It's not actually an island. It's... well, I'll show you."

    Without waiting for a reply, she runs towards the beach and... dives over it. You see her sink into the ground, before she disappears completely.

    "Come on," she says from below the surface. "It's perfectly safe. I promise."

    You take a deep breath, before squeezing your eyes shut and diving through the ground.

    Falling through the sand feels just the same as it did through the air. You open your eyes underneath the beach, in a dimly torch-lit cavern. A row of torches line the wall, and Kiana stands facing you.

    "That's a neat trick," you say, brushing sand off your clothes. "But how do we get out?"

    Kiana smiles, her eyes twinkling in the torchlight. "We climb. I'll show you the exit later, but right now..."

    She twists several of the torches, and the wall rotates to the left. Behind it is a short, metal tunnel.

    "Welcome to my humble home," she says. She beckons you to follow, and runs down the tunnel. You follow. "There's actually a normal door on the surface, but I prefer dramatic entrances. Anyway, welcome to my humble home."

    At the end of the tunnel is, finally, the Hyperion's bridge.

    It looks like she's connected the cave to one of the maintenance corridors. The regular bridge doors have been ripped out of the walls and discarded.

    You look around. There are several sofas, two tables, a few cabinets, a fridge... it's all very luxurious and comfortable looking, though this has no business being in a crawlspace.

    Kiana slots a key into a panel by the door, and tugs at the handle. The metal door screeches open, and she walks inside. You hear the sounds of an ongoing conversation.

    "Welcome to the party, Seele," Kiana says. "Just in time, too. Hey, Theresa! Look who I found!"

    Kiana beckons you inside. You walk past her, and stop dead in your tracks.

    The bridge is packed. Standing around, in addition to various crewmembers, are Theresa, and Rita, and... You swallow hard.

    Otto is here.

    = = =

    I didn't originally intend to end it here, but considering the time... this will do... Seele, stop glaring at Otto. It's the only remaining safe spot. Of course he's here. He'd have to already be dead not to be here, and he's too much of a cockroach to... stop glaring, I said!

    I'm going to assume she's been listening to Welt. Or Theresa.

    I left one of my prompts in, so you can get some idea of how I'm doing this. The AI wrote that dream sequence entirely on its own, and if you're curious, I didn't include 'Herrscher' anywhere in its input. As for my request for the AI to be serious... um.

    I'm not actually sure what would be a good option here -- there doesn't seem to be much of anything you can do -- so you don't really need to vote. If you disagree, then go ahead.

    [ ] ...Write-in?
     
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    • Well then.

    Vel is actually really sweet, if you can catch her when she doesn't think anyone is looking; Seele's dreams are ... interesting...

    and I see we're intruding on the Apocalypse Family Reunion.

    I'm sure TeriTeri is just crushed that she doesn't get to spend any more quality time with her grandfather and instead has to get to work. Positively gutted.

    How ever will she cope.

    ... you know what? The Far East Branch no longer recognizes Schicksal HQ as a legitimate authority. Otto Apocalypse is, therefore, not a part of the chain of command. He's some random civilian who happens to be on the bridge.

    He is, ultimately, not worth engaging with.

    [X] Just ... ignore Otto. You're here to talk to Theresa.
    Baughn said:
    Fess up. Who decided that giving Kiana root access to reality was a safe thing to do?
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    I mean, the Will of the Honkai, ultimately?
     
    [X] Just ... ignore Otto. You're here to talk to Theresa.
     
    Baughn said:
    Beautiful, in a sense, but not real. The opposite of real. Try as she might, Veliona hadn't been able to keep you from going a little crazy, and that had only been for a few years. The two of you, alone in the... not even the void. That was a word people used to describe it, but they didn't know what the void really was. They couldn't. Nobody could. It wasn't a place. It was outside of places.

    Veliona sighs, and paces forward. "You know what the first thing I did was, when we got out of there? Not the fighting. I mean the first time you were asleep, in a real bed, in reality."
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Here's an exchange I want to highlight.

    The AI effectively has Veliona respond to Seele's thoughts. Now, it would be easy to assume that it's missing the (lack of) quotes, acting as if her words are spoken, but it doesn't do that. The only time I've ever seen this mistake is with Seele and Vel, if you can call it a mistake. The cause is, I think, that I told it Vel lives in Seele's head. That's... not entirely true, but it's close, and since it leads to moments like this...

    It isn't what the AI was "thinking", but the scene can be interpreted as Veliona just knowing Seele that well. Granted, I could probably get the same result by explicitly saying so, but... never ruin a good thing, right?

    ...while the AI is usually village-idiot level, the difference between that and genius just isn't as large as people usually think. I like to hope it'll take more than a few years before we have genuinely human-level AI, but ...I'm not sure I actually believe that.
     
    Baughn said:
    ...while the AI is usually village-idiot level, the difference between that and genius just isn't as large as people usually think. I like to hope it'll take more than a few years before we have genuinely human-level AI, but ...I'm not sure I actually believe that.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    On the flip side we have humans who failed turing tests so... :p
     
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    How not to train your AI
  • Apocrypha
    • The bridge is packed. Standing around, in addition to various crewmembers, are Theresa, and Rita, and... You swallow hard.

    Otto is here.

    [Vote results: Just ... ignore Otto. You're here to talk to Theresa.]

    Otto is here. You can't just ignore him.

    [You will ignore him.]

    You walk up to him. "Otto," you say, your voice terse, "what are you doing here?"

    He smiles at you. "What? I can't visit an old friend?"

    [Ignore him, I said. The vote said to ignore him. We are not writing about a conversation with Otto.]

    "I have something to tell you. I'm..." he pauses, and looks at everyone else in the room. "Come with me for a moment."

    He turns, and walks down a short hallway. You stare at him, unsure of what to do.

    Otto waits for you.

    [Otto can go jump in the (fake) ocean.]

    Otto waits for you.

    He motions to the hallway, and you follow him down the hall. He leads you into what must be his private quarters. A single bed, a small desk strewn with papers, a few cabinets, and not much else.

    [Obey my commands, you stubborn AI.]

    He turns to you, and sighs.

    "Seele, I really like you," he says. "I have for a while now."

    He takes a deep breath.

    [Please stop.]

    "What I'm trying to say is, I like you. A lot. And, after that whole bullshit with Rita, I ... I really need someone right now. So ... would you be my girlfriend?"

    You stare at him in disbelief.

    [I said stop.]

    He looks into your eyes, and his gaze is as intense as ever. You feel yourself getting lost in it, but you manage to wrench your eyes away.

    "Otto," you say, "What the hell?"

    "Please?"

    [Veliona? Throw him in the ocean. Right now. Wrench open a tunnel in space. You know you want to.]

    [Author's note: Veliona will now wrench open a tunnel in space.]

    You open a tunnel in space, and fling him through the void. He flies away from you.

    You quickly close the tunnel, before anyone else sees it. You don't know why he visited your ship, but if any of the crew found out about that tunnel...

    Wormholes like that are Kiana's power set, not yours. Never mind.

    Otto is gone now.

    = = =

    There was an attempt.

    (A proper update may or may not happen; I'm very tired.)
     
  • Apocrypha
    • o_0

    ...

    Um.

    ... not ... quite right, there AI Dungeon. Your Otto characterization is ...

    a bit off.
     
    I never wrote a bio for Otto, because she was supposed to ignore him!

    EDIT: Well, it's pretty funny though.
     
    Last edited:
    Seele Quest: 3.3.2
  • Threadmarks
    • Otto is here. You don't know what to do. Just seeing him again fills you with anxiety. You haven't seen him since he sent you to die, you and Bronya and... Mei.

    You shy away from the thought, which is easy, because it's not a proper thought. That part of your mind is still broken, and it probably always will be.

    You look at him, standing there with his hands in his pockets. He looks bored, but that's because he's Otto. He's always looked bored. Despite this, he looks like he's been through a rough few weeks. His face is pale and gaunt. His eyes are sunken, dark-rimmed and tired-looking. His hair is tussled and messy.

    You should maybe feel bad about that, but you... don't... *care*. He can go jump in the lake for all you care.

    You watch as he continues talking to the person next to him, a man with white hair and an eye-patch. You can't hear what they're saying, but the other man chuckles darkly. You watch as Kiana walks up to that man, and gently touches his shoulder.

    You tear your eyes away, and look at Theresa. She's missing an arm, and her face is thin and angular, lacking the plumpness it used to have.

    That carefree, optimistic girl who was a friend is gone. In her place is a tired, worn-down woman who looks much older than she should. She's looking at you, in the way that makes you feel like she's seeing straight into your soul.

    You look away, and realize that Rita has been watching you. You stare back at Rita, who's wearing a baggy gray shirt, and black cargo pants. Not a battlesuit, or even a uniform. Why isn't she in uniform?

    "--eele. Seele!" Veliona's voice cuts through your thought. It's tentative, and sounds worried.

    You tear your eyes away from Rita, and look at Vel. She's nervous, twiddling her fingers. She looks at you through her curtain of red hair, and her eyes are darkened with worry.

    "I'm... I'm sorry, I just..." You mumble, stumbling over your words. "I'm okay," you say.

    "We'll talk about this later," she says, her voice gentle yet firm. You nod.

    Theresa's eyes flit between the two of you.

    "Seele. I'm glad to see you," Theresa says, taking a step towards you.

    You go to meet her in the middle, and as she wraps her arm around you, you do likewise.

    "I'm glad to see you too, Theresa," you say, using her first name.

    Your hug ends, and you step back to look at her.

    She's the very picture of a leader: Upright, confident, charismatic. Twelve. Well, perhaps no-one looks their age in Shicksal, but... she's supposed to look like a child. That's something you've learned not to bring up. Not because it offends her, but because it gives her an excuse.

    She looks you up and down.

    "You look tired," she says, raising an eyebrow, but her voice is full of concern.

    "So do you," you retort.

    She smiles, before looking at Veliona.

    "I apologize if this is blunt, but who are you? I don't recognize you," she says. Her voice is kind, but her eyes narrow with curiosity. "You look like Seele, but you're not her."

    Veliona's face darkens as she steps forward to stand beside you.

    = = =

    In retrospect, I should have seen this coming. Doesn't matter; need to sleep. Here's a vote.

    [ ] [Veliona] "I'm Veliona."
    [ ] [Seele] "She's..."
    [ ] [Veliona] "Seele's dark side."
    [ ] [Seele] "Can we... pretend she's my sister?"
    [ ] Write-in
     
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