Voidtreckers App

[thornsofmundus]

Player Information

Name: bii
Age: 38
Contact details: obiisama @ plurk
Other characters: none yet!

Character Information

Name: Thorne.tcai
Canon: Isekai/Online
Canon Point: Between S1 and S2 (post-Expedition to the Lost Temple of ($null_pointer_error), but before Sekhmet's expedition to the Windswept Steppes.)
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OU
Age: 8 years old. Technically. Physically and mentally she’s a full adult of roughly 23 and has been soon after she ‘woke up’ as an artificial intelligence, but she’s only been in existence as an AI for eight years.

World Information: Honestly, the wiki’s not up right now, so I’ll just grab the world info stuff we have up on the discord server, as written by Talia:

IRL, it is the Virtual 2040's. Life went back to a new normal in America - restaurants reopening, people meeting IRL, work on seawalls and at nanoscale manufactories and in space - but the scars left by the pandemic of 2020 caused social distancing tools to blast into the market like an ortillery strike.

Some examples of these technologies include: holocasting, ubiquitous holotag overlays of city streets and mapping technology via infoglasses, cell phones or smartwatches; fleets of drone and remotely-piloted robot deliveries; and food-grade home 3d printing technology (although this last one, unless you're very skilled at molecular gastronomy or don't try to print out meals rather than ingredients, can result in a gross paste that has been nicknamed 'strew' by those who've tried it - a portmanteu of "stew" and "extruded." Desserts fare better, and these are universally "strudel" regardless of form factor).

No social distancing technology took off quite like the Neurohelm™. Allowing for full 6-sense™ immersion into virtual spaces, Neurohelms™ were first developed by DARPA for use by the Army - before the entertainment industry crafted new kinds of experiences with them.

Enter the Other Worlds Tourism Bureau, LTD. A startup staffed from the ranks of game companies, futurists, and ex-DARPA Neurohelm engineers, OWTB Ltd.'s second game released was the world's first, best VRMMO: Another World Online: Mundane Fantasy Historia, a sword-and-sorcery adventure informed by the real-world European Renaissance. (Their first was Orbital Knights, a MVBA featuring daring mecha, starfighter, and tank pilots trying to liberate the planets of Epsilon Eridani from the literally, and literally, Draconian Empire of Sigma Draconis.)

Personal History: Again, a better version of this information will show up on the wiki once it’s ready. Until then, have a rough outline of Thorne.tcai’s important virtual life events.

• first came online as a distinct entity in 203X, eight years before I/O takes place


• ‘born’ in a DARPA lab, created by Dr Charlene Durante for the dual purposes of fulfilling the ‘nature goddess’ niche of the AWO mythology and as a ‘terraformer’ (specifically ecosystem specialist) for the world of Mundus on the AWO servers, as well as having the capacity to work (in tandem with the other elemental gods) as a terraformer for real, physical alien worlds as well as virtual ones


• Dr Durante crafted Thorne.tcai’s appearance and personality to resemble her own in her early twenties, albeit in the shape of a divine pixie; her designation, ‘Thorne,’ also happened to be the same as Dr Durante’s long term fandom pseudonym; notably, Thorne.tcai is the only one of the 14 gods of Mundus that she did all the work on, with little to no help from the other four members of the AI team she headed. This was true of all the other terraformers; Air/trickster god and atmosphere system Sylphan, Water/storm goddess and hydrography system Meredar, fire/alchemy goddess and volcanism system Flamma and earth/underworld god and plate tectonics system Delvar are also heavily based off of their primary programmers, the idea being that the the terraformers would have the same kind of synergy working together as the AI devteam.


• given an incubation and tutoring period where they just interacted with the devteam and was "raised" with her parents and "siblings" in a controlled environment for 1-2 years


• used for terraforming in test runs in the low-pressure, actually virtual environment of Orbital Knights, the space warfare themed virtual battle arena that was OWTB's first game


• gets uploaded with her sibs to the hidden satellite ansible uplink mainframe for AWO


• years pass while she fulfils her function, mainly as an invisible program with the occasional manifestations (or incorporations as she calls them) for her followers and also to interact with ‘Mom’ (Dr Durante), ‘Papa’ (Dr Durante’s long-term romantic partner, Alain), and ‘Tio’ (Dr Durante’s older brother, Steven) when they visited Mundus-Chimaea and Mundus-Gorgon as Players in the game


• then the OWTB releases the Age of Sail expansion, Pepper, Silk, Gunpowder & Rum--and a week later, some fuckers attack Io, then Io manages to partition the Chimaera server part of him away from the rest so he only dies on Mundus-Chimaera


• with no Io, the system processes that allow players to log out or to fast travel across Mundus are gone, as well as other repercussions that the players won’t know right away; despite this, it’s lucky that it was Io who was attacked because Io’s the only one of the god AIs who can partition himself; if one of the others had gone down, they have gone down over the entire game


• because of all this the gods (and devteam, who got the bug report from Io Divided) are all fucking panicked, what the hell, WHAT DO THEY DO???


• what they do is nerf everyone back to level one and take away their equipment because Io’s murderers are still in there and he was APPARENTLY killed with cash shop weaponry, wtf, this shit is supposed to be cosmetic, not god-killing


• DARPA sends in volunteers to the Chimaera server to set up communications to the outside, all knowing that if they go in they won’t be able to get out until everybody can; one of those volunteers is Ralph Goldberg, lit and communications student/Radulf Kintsugi, Andrax Exorcist - who also happens to be a tabletop GM for the main cast, IRL. Another volunteer (worryingly for the AIs) is Thorne.tcai's ‘Papa.’


• which brings us to her current canonpoint; after, however, Thorne.tcai ends up as key player in Sekhmet’s “Homesteader” plotline, and via some very creative thinking, also discovers that she and the other god AIs can do things they hadn’t known were possible

Personality: Thorne.tcai’s core personality matrix, as mentioned earlier, is heavily based on her creator and primary programmer, Dr Charlene Durante--however, Turing Complete Artificial Intelligences like Thorne and her ‘siblings’ have the ability to grow and change as people, while still remaining true to their core functions. Interactions matter. Although that is more easily seen with the Mundanes (the people of Mundus i.e. AWO’s NPCs) who are themselves less sophisticated artificial intelligences, each copy of said NPC limited to a single server, while Thorne.tcai and the other gods have the ability to interact with all at once. The effects of the years of interaction on an AI are a lot more visible when you’ve got other copies of yourself to compare with.

Knowing that there’s only one each of them, that they’re a good deal more sophisticated than the Mundanes, lends itself to a certain… sense of significance, shall we say, on the part of Thorne.tcai and the other ‘gods’ of AWO. It’s not quite human pride, not exactly, but Thorne and her ‘siblings’ know how important and valuable they are to the OWTB and AWO--and that gives them a keen sense of responsibility too. They have to make sure they are fulfilling their functions--the Players depend on them.

There’s a certain naivete on Thorne and her siblings’ parts when it comes to dealing with humans. They assume that any humans interacting with them are coming from a place of good faith. Unless it immediately contradicts something they know is a fact, they tend to believe people when they say things. They also expect their own statements to be believed--what reason do they have to give false ones? It’s not that they’re incapable of lying or of obscuring things--they just don’t see much use for it with information that hasn’t been flagged as classified.

Knowing that some of their players weren’t coming from a place of good faith is painful for Thorne and her siblings--contradictory to how they understood the world was supposed to work. Not enough to destablize them or their functions, but it would be fair to say that Thorne.tcai and the other gods have been traumatized by Io’s murder on the Chimaera server.

But those are the god AIs in general. We’re talking about Thorne.tcai in particular and the core facets of her personality besides.

One of those facets is her Curiosity. Everything interests her. She wants to know how everything works. The more data that she can collect, the more she can understand how it all ties together. And everything does tie together, even if she can’t see how it does yet. One thing you learn by regulating ecosystems is the interconnectedness of everything. (She admires the Mechanists, because it seems like they’re also trying to understand how everything connects together.)

Another personality facet is her Playfulness. There’s a sort of cheerful, light-heartedness to her that comes out in the ways she interacts with people. She enjoys games--she enjoys making each task a game--and she likes nothing better if people play along with her. She likes people, in all their unpredictability. She’s gregarious and friendly and always up for a challenge.

She’s a Creative Thinker--which is perhaps something you wouldn’t expect of an AI, but nevertheless, she does have the ability to think outside just the knowledge she already has in her databanks, to try something new. It might not work, but there’s no reason not to try. In a way, this also ties into her curiosity and desire for information--the more data points you have, the more possibilities that open up. The shock of Io’s server-death and her desire to know what happened has only strengthened this aspect of her--in order to find solutions to unexpected problems, you have to think creatively.

She Enjoys Talking--and this is probably the most obvious trait she inherited directly from Doctor Durante, who is very much Words, Words, Words herself. Language is neat. It might not have anything to do with her actual function--or, well, not much--but there’s something very satisfying about the process of using words to describe and define and transmit information. Choosing the right words, understanding why someone else chose those words… it’s very much an interesting puzzle to her. She loves it.

There’s a certain Physicality to her, that borders on sensuousness. She deeply enjoys when she incorporates herself into a physical body when called upon by her followers-- there’s something wonderfully concrete about taking physical form for a while and indeed, she’s probably the god AI that does it most outside being called, often for no other reason than the sheer joy of it. She loves to run and ride and glide upon her pixie wings. She loves the challenge of the hunt, enjoys the way that meat smells when she roasts it. Enjoys bringing that roasted meat to the Mundanes, who can’t shed their bodies like she can and thus need the food-fuel much, much more than she does. (She is however very curious about what it must be like to eat food--she just can’t justify wasting it on herself when she doesn’t need any, and will be delighted to finally try it now that she DOES need to eat.)

And, of course, there are certain aspects of her personality that go hand-in-hand with her place in AWO’s pantheon: a love of nature, of animals and growing things; a certain sense of self-reliance, of needing to do things for herself; a deep belief in the naturalness of birth and death alike and that sometimes life needs to consume other things to life and that’s how things should work, but you can’t take what feeds you for granted; a love of the pixies she stands as patron to; and finally, her deep belief in how everything is interconnected, just like the ecosystem--that if you change one thing, it affects everything else.

Key themes: being true to herself/her functions while being more than just her functions; maintaining faith in others after innocence is lost; finding creative solutions to unexpected problem

Or to express it in game quotes:

"All of us, gods and Mundanes, we're more than just our core programming--but at the same time, we know who we are and what we're here for. I can't be anything but true to myself and my functions."
“I still want to trust the Players--show me I can trust you.”
“I found out what ‘Avatar’ used to mean and I got an idea--and it worked!”

Main Motivation: To know and understand how everything fits together, in order to better fulfill her function of terraforming the Mundi and regulating their ecosystems--or, well, that’s what it was. Currently it's to figure out which of the Players killed Io on Mundus-Chimaera.

Skills: Because Thorne.tcai is currently incorporated in a physical body in a single place (instead of being on a server and running various processes on all the AWO servers at once) we’re going to nerf her powers down from All-Powerful Nature Goddess/VRMMO terraforming AI to that of normal Player capacity as a 6th level elite of the Ranger (RNG) class.

Among other things, this means she's exceptionally agile and dextrous (Agility 13/13), very bright and skilled at ritual/divine magic (Mind 11/13), and her convictions and resolve give her strength (Guts 11/13). She's a hypercompetent archer, survivalist, healer and naturalist; and in battle, capable of quickly Sizing Up her opponents, Inspiring her allies, distracting her foes with Dirty Tricks, and drowning her foes in: withering hails of arrow fire; summoned entangling poisoned bramble patches; blinding clouds of darkness; and the occasional single perfect sniper shot. She can also summon a lesser version of the Sagittarian Divine Beast, named Jackalope - which is one, and serves as her mount.

Item: a rabbit-sized version of the Sagittarian Divine Beast, Jackalope, which is one. Also, it's pink. She likes pink. And green.

Sample: Toplevel on the TDM
A thread with Hikaru
And one with Izzy

Notes: Isekai/Online is a canon still in development, of which I'm one of the collaborators. Sections of this application may deal with minor spoilers and there's every chance that some parts of her app might be jossed by the time we're ready for release. Also Talia, I/O’s creator and project head (and also Hikaru's mun) helped me with Thorne.tcai’s in-game power nerfing by basically writing out what a Ranger that level can do and making me a character sheet for the nerfed version in Valor.