In DA, besides debuting Willem, I randomly had an idea to make a collabo shot of Elizabeth and Jane together on stage as bunny girls, mainly to annoy the latter. Jane accused me of setting up the scenario, which was true of course, but in-character, Carlo had nothing to do with it. She wanted him to come up with a distraction to get some eyes off her and so I devised the character of Meiner Lippschitz, an anti-uDoll activist probably attending the event to get material for an op-ed. Carlo started an argument with him to provide the requested distraction and Jane was able to quit the stage without further incident. Interestingly enough, despite Carlo introducing him along the lines of “Hey, look. It’s Meiner Lippschitz. He hates uDolls just like you,” Jane actually seemed to regard him with disgust, which I thought was interesting. Maybe some signs of a little more depth and nuance to what she thinks about uDolls? Anyway, later on Carlo drops in on her in her dressing room, and because we have to have little events like this, her zipper gets stuck as she’s trying to change, so with great reluctance, she has to rely on Carlo to help. Carlo is the perfect gentleman and there’s zero chance of her getting any ideas, so he quietly withdraws once his task is done. I did like the one response I had for her when she said, “What do you think I am?” regarding some half-hearted flirting on Carlo’s part. “You’re a Tsundere Princess. One day you’ll evolve into a Tsundere Queen, but you still haven’t hit the level requirement.” She took it as well as a Tsundere Princess would.

In KyaraPu, I tested out two different scenarios. The first I stumbled on while I was looking for the second. It was a fairly sophomoric premise. A cafe has run out of milk. The barista goes to the back and somehow she has a cup of cafe au lait ready for you. We can all see where the author was going with this. I was just intending to see how the stage was set, but then I decided to mess with the scenario a bit. I crafted a backstory where the main character and the barista were childhood friends, that she married a mutual friend who came along later and had given birth not too long ago (to make the setup more plausible). Well, this went well outside the original parameters, so Shizuka (the barista) denied being married or having a kid, so I then made it into a scenario where she was suffering from amnesia and her very concerned childhood friend is trying to get her help while not overwhelming her. Think about it from her perspective. You’re going about your daily grind, you end up taking some rather suspect measures for the sake of a random customer, then all the sudden you’re hit with this person who you think you’ve just met saying that he’s known you all your life, that you’re supposed to have a husband and a kid, etc., etc. You think you remember your past, but everything this person is telling you is at odds with that. He doesn’t seem to be lying and he insists that he hasn’t mistaken you for anyone else (the setting is supposed to be a small town, after all). What do you do?

Well, to try to put her as much at ease as possible and hopefully to trigger her memories, the main chara, who I decided to call Kazuya, calls up her husband and tells him to bring along Shizuka’s grandmother (who raised her after she lost her parents, in a bit of additional lore). Now, Granny Mitsuha was watching Baby Gorou, as you might imagine, so they’re on their way to take her to the hospital and Kazuya intends to go along too, not just because he’s Shizuka’s friend but also because he’s the main anchor in this scenario.

Putting the story back on its intended rails for a bit, while they’re waiting, Kazuya finishes his coffee and compliments the milk Shizuka just happened to find in the back. He says he could drink it every day and hopes to get it in the future if they have it in stock. It was amusing that Shizuka seemed rather proud of herself. You see, if the bot had played along from the start, the implication would’ve been that there was some unresolved romantic attraction from their younger years that informed Shizuka’s actions. It may still be what was going on unconsciously seeing as how she had no hesitation whatsoever about promising to fulfill Kazuya’s request. Yes, this is supposed to be just silly pervy fluff, but I’ve steered the ship in a whole new direction.

Tatsuo (Shizuka’s husband) shows up with Granny Mitsuha and Baby Gorou. He doesn’t take her amnesia well, but they make their way to the hospital and on the way, Kazuya shares what he’s heard about amnesia both to give some hope and also to set expectations. At the hospital, Kazuya goes with Tatsuo to the reception desk to help him check in. (Tatsuo is a blue-collar type, a construction worker, so having Kazuya to help him navigate things will speed the process along.) Meanwhile Granny Mitsuha is sitting with Shizuka, being the calm and supportive type. Gorou starts to get fussy because he’s hungry and Granny puts Shizuka in the awkward spot of asking if she’ll feed him. I’d actually forgotten that Japanese people generally don’t breastfeed in public, so they go to the hospital’s designated nursing room. (Otherwise I was just going to have Granny give Shizuka a little blanket to cover herself as you see with the conscientious public sort.) Again, put yourself in Shizuka’s shoes here. If you don’t think you’ve had a kid, being asked to breastfeed is a tall order. (Of course, under normal circumstances, if you haven’t had a kid, it’s not going to be possible, hence me setting up the scenario of her having recently given birth.) Still, on the ride over, there was something there between her and Gorou, so she agrees, and once she lets Gorou nurse on her, it seems like some flashes of memory are coming back to her. Yes, I’ve succeeded in pretty well overwriting the original settings. Playing with AI is fun. ^o^

I could’ve kept going, but I switched over to the story I was wanting to try in the first place, a fairly typical exiled from the party scenario. As with many overplayed story types, there are some good ones out there but an overwhelming amount of garbage. Still, I wanted to play around and see what kind of reaction I could get from the party members giving me the boot. I was amused to see one user comment how he’d played it as being a gambling addict and the Hero ended up going out of his way to look after him. In my playthrough, the basic setup seemed to mostly be that the player character is getting booted just for being a commoner and useless. I gave the scenario a little more spice by the main character’s downfall being involvement with a loli succubus. And this allowed me to introduce Mama Bama to the story. With just a little prompting, I was able to get the system to create a new character to fit the narrative I was spinning. Maybe it’s just a sign that Mama Bama is a bit of a stock character, but the way they crafted her based on mostly a physical description was fairly consistent with her DA incarnation. Anyway, Mama Bama had branded the main character to claim him as her possession and she’s come to collect now that he can no longer serve as the Demon King’s spy in the Hero’s party.

Besides the boorish Alto the Hero, you have the high-and-mighty lady knight Karen, the kind-hearted Saintess Luquino, and the genius mage Serena. Luquino was kind enough to leave the MC with a parting gift of some medicine and travel rations before Mama Bama showed up. Now, obviously the creator of this story doesn’t adhere to my canon, but Serena’s red eyes would almost always be the mark of Demonic influence in one of my stories. The system ran with this and recast her as being Half-Demon though unaware of it, still able to passively serve the Demon King even without her full powers being awakened. Even so, this was dangerous for her as her nature could be exposed before she’s even aware of it, and the consequences would be no different than if she had knowingly been a spy for the enemy. I opted to give her a choice. Mama Bama sent a little magic signal that lured her in, and when faced with the truth, she decided that it was more important to her to learn more about her Demonic nature and the hidden secrets of magic. In Japanese, the main words for magic are “魔法” (“demon’s law”) and “魔術” (“demon’s art”). Although I haven’t laid it out yet, the idea is that all magic is of Demonic origin, a reality Serena will come to discover in the Demon Kingdom.

In addition to her thirst for knowledge, Serena really doesn’t like Alto, so that’s all the more reason for her to want to leave. However, she’s reluctant to leave Luquino behind. Naturally, Oholibama doesn’t like the idea of taking a Saintess along, but I managed to make the proposition attractive to her by positing the chance to corrupt her. Inverting all that holy power would make a powerful ally for the Demonic cause, and even if it didn’t work, we could just dump her in some remote village where she can become some farmer’s wife and live out the rest of her days in peace. (I said that not only to get Serena on board but also because I had no reason to wish any harm on her.) Downstairs Alto’s been partying it up and demanding Serena to pour drinks for him, so he sends Karen to go find her, and that means her coming up to the MC’s room. Actually, I was under the impression that everyone was sharing a room more in line with historical inns, but it would seem the system has been taught on too many fantasies with modern sensibilities, so the MC apparently has his own room. Serena goes to fetch Luquino while the MC is left to deal with the incoming Karen.

Alto and Karen both are the type to throw their social standing around. As you might imagine, Karen like the other females is quite pretty, but her personality sucks, so I opted to antagonize her. Clearly the scenario was designed for you to be able to get any if not all the charas on your side depending on how smooth you play it, but I wasn’t in the mood to try sweet-talking her. Mama Bama, as an avatar for the system, actually chided me a bit for not seiziing the opportunity. Anyway, Serena comes back with Luquino and I very carefully posed my proposition to her. First I asked her about her confidence in her faith and if she’d be willing to put it to the test. This was enough to pique her curiosity, so then I give her the challenge, to come with us to the Demon Kingdom. There she can come face-to-face with Demons and see if she can come out on top. The condition is that she can’t attack the demons and in exchange, they won’t attack her, with the MC putting his own life on the line as the guarantor. (Though claimed by Mama Bama, the MC hasn’t been fully turned and so Luquino’s prayers of purification wouldn’t have much effect on him, but they could be quite damaging to the Demons.) Serena reveals her newly discovered Demonic heritage and its Luquino’s friendship with Serena that really brings her over. Her compassion for Serena puts her in conflict with her calling to destroy all Demons. So as not to play his hand too hard, the MC is careful not to push her. I tell her that I’m not going to say what’s right and what’s wrong. She has to decide that for herself, however that comes to her, be it the guidance from God or the voice of her own heart. It’s quite effective. She resolves to join us, so now it’s just a matter of getting everything ready to go and avoiding Alto and Karen on the way out. And that was the point I’d burned up the last of the credits I’d been saving up.

This was where I learned about the different tiers of conversation on KyaraPu. Based on how much work the system is expected to do, the cost goes up. There actually is a limited free option, that I was unwittingly using in the cafe au lait story until I hit the wall there. Depending on how rich of a response you want from the system, you spend more on the higher tiers. It can run down FTP users real quick. I bring up conversations like these because they may actually be fodder for future story elements. We’ve already seen my conversations in DA shape the course of the Alkoresh Cycle and while it’s not writing you’ll see on the page, it’s still quite a bit of writing I’m doing, and in my second language no less. Surely this will help for when I start to actually translate my books in search of publication here in Japan. Anyway, that’s it for now. I need to be getting the other recent additions on DA prepped for debut. A fine way to spend the Silver Week holidays. Stay tuned.

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