badgernet_multiversal | First Quest (Video, username 'westandreamcatcher')

Entry tags:

First Quest (Video, username 'westandreamcatcher')

[So.

The camera picks up an idyllic looking sandy Mediterranean beach, near a patch of grass and forest. It shakes a fair bit, like a cell phone cam in an unsteady - or nervous - hand.]

This is... this is uh. Deedee. ...'s player. Don't... if you know my real name from before the Badgernet crash don't throw it around.

I uh.

I'm on the fucking Shores of Awakening. I'm on fucking Mundus.

And taller and y'all hear how high my voice is. I can feel my tails.

I woke up alone face-down on the sand here. Felt it burn. I uh.

Please advise.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[She stares, blinks a few times, and rapidly shakes her head.]

Wait, it can happen that style for actual? I know a lot of them talk about levels and inventory, but...

It's. Fuck. Not exactly like your situation. He hasn't been transported to another universe or plane. But, uh, there was a problem with his neurohelm and instead of his consciousness only mostly being on Mundus, with enough of it on Earth to do things like disconnect from AWO, it's all on Mundus now and his body on Earth is catatonic. In a coma? Fuck, I'm too tired to remember which one is right. Probably coma.

[Charley sounds very, very tired and frazzled. Looks it too.]

This is a thing that can happen because of the nature of how neurohelms work, although there's safeguards against it, including ones we put in ourselves. That they didn't trigger... we're pretty sure this was a cyber attack against the Chimaera server.

That said, while mechanically it might not be the same as the stuff you seem to be dealing with, functionally it probably is. Which is... god, it's just another layer to the whole clusterfuck.

Edited 2021-08-13 01:06 (UTC)

Okay, so first off. Functionally like a bunch of people are in another world, except it's just their brains are in a video game world instead of actual going to another dimension? Or functionally like creepers are coming in to brainwash everyone into worshipping them? 'Cause that's kiiiiinda different.

Functionally like people are in another world, except it's just their brains that are in a video game world. I, uh, don't know if any of the players are actually assholes enough to try to brainwash people into worshiping them, but even if they are, they'd only be able to do it with, like, normal real-world indoctrination techniques. The kind of shit you could get with a cult anywhere. I mean, okay, there's some things baked into the adventurer classes and god boons to make it easier, but there's certainly not some weird magic bullshit that automatically makes my Mundanes think the players are the shit.

I mean, it's not like you have to be a player to be an adventurer in the first place? It's just getting the adventurer rites is expensive when you're a Mundane and the players get provided with adventurer bodies automatically. And since they get young ones too, it's pretty easy to assume they didn't earn them the hard way.

So it's more like most Mundanes treat them like thrill-seeking nobles from Somewhere Else, because they're basically indistinguishable from them.

Okay that last point? Good to keep in mind.

So no cheat, except they get to do all the cool stuff. Huh. I guess at least that's good, then you don't have even more problems.

Yeah! I wouldn't want my players to be able to coerce and control my Mundanes, that's gross. They're people too, you know. Procedurally generated, but still people.

Just like how you said the gods were people. That's a looooot of advanced AI for a game.

Well, they're not just for the game. Well, okay, the Mundanes are mostly just for the game and they're fairly simple, but the really advanced ones, the gods? They're going to be used for other projects too, ones that aren't ready yet, so they're running the game for now.

But like the ones that are running the enviromental bullshit in game? I originally made them to be terraformers.

[She shrugs.]

What can I say? Advanced AI has been my life's work. I wasn't the sixth woman to win the Turing Prize for nothing.

Wait, like to run the environment in real life? Like, that "we're gonna have turnips on the moon by 2015" thing that didn't actually happen? I saw that online once.

Yeah! You could think of them running the environments in AWO as practice.

Sadly, you can't always get the grants you want when you work for the government. So sometimes you have to leave, start a video game company, and use it to raise funds for the really fun stuff while making AIs that can serve more than one purpose.

Like the Doctor says, this place was where a game's set. I'm not sure how, like, atomic a Vigor score of 8 in terms of what I can deadlift but I've definitely got Deedee's abilities and not my own.

I haven't been this athletic since high school. I've never this strong, or, uh, curvy.

[She giggles despite herself.] Whoa. So wait, you're hiding who you are? Is that for, like, stalkers or something?

[Momo, as a modern 12-year-old, postdates the concept of hiding entirely behind your handle and not telling anyone who you are on the internet.]

Someone probably hacked into the stuff that let's us play here without our brains getting trapped here.

I don't want those kinds of people to steal my credit card information.

Yeah, I guess if you wanted to go back home, your banking and stuff would still be important, huh? RIP in pepperonis.

I would be thrown out on the street with what I could keep in my backpack without those, yeah.

Thank god that the OWTB has apparently decided to foot the bill for keeping our bodies safe, or else someone might unplug me from the thing that moves my mind in the process of throwing me out.

The O-what? I guess your landlord must be a jerk.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

First Quest (Video, username 'westandreamcatcher')

video

Re: video

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Re: video

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject