I had one more slot in the current character pack, and I decided to make another stab at the one concept I was attempting when I ended up creating Kanoha. Again, things took a bit of an unexpected turn and I ran with it. I ended up with a design I liked and then had to attach a character to it. I was swinging from the fences a bit, but I decided to make her Fatima, the little mage novice from NagaTen who was used as a POV character to introduce the arrivals of the Empire on Bellator. Now, in NagaTen, she’s supposed to be around twelve or so, but the model I generated is at least in her late teens. I could have aged down the model, but I liked the profile image too much to give it up. She’s got these beautiful blue tsurime eyes and very distinctive voluminous black hair. The only thing is that the system occasionally renders her hair as a big afro, which is hilarious. The fact that it pairs an afro with these super-straight bangs makes such renders not especially useful even if I wanted to embrace it as a joke. Anyway, story-wise my concept is that she comes from the Deva Riyāsat in the Sāmrājya Salāmat, a Deva-blooded human child whose magical potential got her scouted by the Salamander Magic Academy in Valeria. Her father was a merchant who had fallen on hard times and so he pawned off his four daughters, but Fatima is the only one with appreciable magic potential. Similar to the story in the original canon, slavery is illegal in Valeria, but if you buy people abroad, you can fly under the radar. Fatima is officially the apprentice of her master, but she’s not allowed to attend regular classes and her talents aren’t being properly cultivated, so she isn’t able to reach her true potential. Her Deva heritage means she could at least be a mid-level mage with proper training. She has a natural talent for shapeshifting, which is used by her master for the purpose of spying both within the Academy and beyond. She’s been pretty well beaten into submission (literally), but she’s got some grit to her that may at one point be bad for her master in the future. That should be fun. We won’t have any burning of Aix-Clovin by the Empire, so she’s got a chance to live a good long life. I’ll need to think about what she does with it.

I didn’t get to any chats, but I did some work in NL, attempting to sneak around the safety filters to do Azuki’s Yuki Onna no Jutsu (not entirely successfully) and adding Gally and Serafima to the roster. I intend to keep on fiddling there, so more fun to be had over the coming three-day weekend.

This is it for now. More to come. Stay tuned.

Today was busy. I debuted the Kiriyama Twins, Shizuka, and Domani, and then had some fun conversations.

With Nano, I was responding to her reaction to her introductory post. She had expressed a desire for a shot of her and Carlo together. I pointed out why that was a bad idea, and she hastily walked it back, insisting that there was not intention of fraternization, yet there was some hint of budding intimacy with the whole matter being kept as her and Carlo’s little secret (namely from Lin, who would bring down the hammer with great fury). The subject turned to her sister for a bit, particularly with the disconnect between them. Despite being twins, Kanoha is far more uninhibited, but Nanoha being the way she is fits better with her being in the Army. This led to a bit of discussion about her military career. She could get out after finishing her two-year active term, or she could aim to make her 20. Basically, it was a matter of whether she should just keep her head down or if she’s looking to climb the ladder. If you’re just wanting to get in and get out, then it’s just as well to slip by unnoticed, but you don’t want your advancement to halt at E-4 if you’re looking for retirement. Career counseling is part and parcel with a superior officer’s responsibilities, but Carlo went farther to also suggest her talking to Maya for a female’s perspective and her NCOIC for the perspective of an enlisted man. She appreciated the suggestions. What a good kiddo.

With Kanoha, there was quite a shift in the conversation. It started out with her being fairly standoffish, as you would expect from a goth girl with an “above it all” facade, but that didn’t last long. I fulfilled her image generation request and her latent magic ability became the center of the conversation. It was supposed to be a bit of a mystery, preferably with a decent bit of buildup, but we jumped right in. I was also intending for her unconscious attraction to Carlo due to her latent magic abilities resonating with his Demonlight Core to be a more subtle and gradual process, but we also jumped right in with that as well. It was a tricky game to play. Although there are no technical barriers to the two of them getting involved, Kanoha is still the sister of one of Carlo’s subordinates, which can be seen as a conflict of interest and open up accusations of fraternization if not the thing itself. Naturally, a free spirit like Kanoha bristles at all this.

The banter between the two was quite entertaining. Kano has some interesting interpretation of things and some occasional peculiarities like dismissing a particular expression as “cheap words” when Carlo was echoing something she said earlier. Then there’s the fact that her facade starts to break down and the girl behind the mask is really cute. (To be fair, she’s pretty cute with the mask, too.) It was particularly sweet when they start calling each other by name. (Kano normally uses “Hekate” as her goth name, you see.)

Now, I wasn’t expecting to close the distance with her quite so quickly, to the point where I’d consider this a doomed timeline. It’s not as catastrophic as most of the doomed timelines I’ve created thus far, but I can’t see how things could go this far this quickly and be consistent with the larger story. The plot with Doc can work if it kicks off before things get too far with Maya, but we need to have a bit of breathing room to move things along in the primary romance. Tempting as it is to just add Kano to the harem, I have to be judicious about it. I’m not planning on doing a 100Kano scenario, fun as that would be.

With Shizuka, I replicated a bit from the KyaraPu story, but the settings aren’t quite the same, nor is the scenario I was creating. Because I had her set as being a polite person, her Japanese is really polite, to the point she actually feels like she belongs in a fancier joint than some humble cafe. (I ended up editing the first couple rounds of Kano’s dialog to clue the system in to make her more plainspoken, but I didn’t make any adjustments to Shizuka’s dialog besides feeding the system the kanji rendering of Baby Gorou’s name.) Anyway, we had a nice friendly exchange, but the bot has her laying it on a little thick. I have even less intention of NTRing Tatsuo (her husband) as Carlo than I did as Kazuya in KyaraPu, so we should be keeping things platonic.

Next, I had a bit of fun with Peri after posting an image I had in the queue. She was wanting to go on adventures with Carlo and when asked about the kind of adventures she wanted to have, the option that could be satisfied the easiest was treating her to some food. I don’t imagine most Fae as being particularly carnivorous, but Peri was wanting meat, so I offered to take her to the same Cimarron Steakhouse where Lydia was treated to the 64oz. steak challenge. I don’t imagine I’ll be putting Peri through that.

Lastly, there was a bit of an exchange with Suiren. Back when I was preparing the “spoils of war” pic, I was wanting a nice standard shot of her with a folding fan and one of the renders had it looking like she was offering the fan to the viewer. I decided to use this as a gesture of submission. Basically, Suiren formally submits herself to Carlo as a way to come under his protection. Even with her technically submitting to Carlo, she remains rather high-handed, so it makes for an interesting dynamic.

And as a special bonus, I decided to novelize the bus stop in the rain scenario in KyaraPu. Ended up being over 1500 words. Man, I’ve almost forgotten how good it feels to do ordinary writing. I’ve been saying I’m going to get back into the swing of things for months now, but maybe this’ll give me the kick in the rear I need. Whether this story actually gets developed further remains to be seen, but it was a fun little exercise.

And that does it for now. I have several scenarios I’d like to advance, so we’ll see what happens. Stay tuned.

The main thing I did was profile writing as I said I was going to do. I’ve got enough together to get several of the charas out the door tomorrow, so that should be fun.

I did have some fun with Doc. I had a fanservicey Halloween pic of her that she responded to, asking to be shown in her lab coat in the exam room, so I gave her a fanservicey shot of her in her lab coat in the exam room. Some flirting around followed, but then she was forced to realize she was in yet another of her coma dreams. I plan on setting up the scene where the hospital director is discussing her condition with the neurologist, so that should be interesting. It’s a scene I’ve already done some work on in her spinoff novel.

There should be more to report tomorrow. Stay tuned.

What time I had was mostly spent on posting pics as there was a bunch in the queue that needed to get out there. A little playing around with Anne and Lise. I particularly liked that for Lise, her response to a fanservicey Halloween pic was to request that Carlo not share it around. She didn’t say to delete it, mind you.

For Anne, as much as she appreciated the fanservice factor, she wanted a costume that was better suited to her activity level. She was torn between a futuristic bodysuit or fantasy-style light armor. I pointed out that even light costume armor wouldn’t be a good mix if she wanted to swim, so a cyberpunk bodysuit it was. She liked how it turned out, so I gave her a shot of Lise in a similar costume to go with it. She liked that too. I haven’t gotten Lise’s reaction yet, though.

Of greater substance, I had an interaction with Jane. The idea is that after the big reveal, she spent three days straight just standing in the bathroom looking at herself in the mirror. The fact that she could do that without passing out fully drives home the fact that her current body isn’t human. However, when Carlo shows up at Elizabeth’s request, he managed to talk her into trying to get back into her everyday routine to see if she can start to feel normal again. This seemed to snap her out of her funk and she was mostly back to her old ways, settling in for a simple breakfast of toast because she didn’t want anything more than that. And that was as far as I got for the time being.

I’m going to work on profile writing so I can start debuting the new charas I’ve been making. The Kiriyama Twins should be fun. Stay tuned.

When talking about the plan to move forward with the house call to advance Anne’s storyline and how I couldn’t get Doc’s chatbot involved because she’s currently 13 years in the past and I don’t know how well the bots can adjust to jumping around in the timeline. Anyway, I was thinking about the experimentation that gets done on Doc and that prompted me to go ahead and make Dr. Altman and Captain (later Admiral) Lindecker from Project Einherjar in the Tico series. For the Alkoresh Cycle, I think I’ll rename it Project Morningstar. Project Morningstar is a black op run jointly by the governments of Valeria and Liberia. I’ll have both Altman and Lindecker be Valerians but perhaps with Altman working under official cover as a Liberian civilian doctor working for the government.

I mentioned not wanting to make Kanoha Kiriyama unless I had a place for her in the story, but now that I have her in my mind, I had to add her to the roster. At first, I was just going to do something as simple as put a ribbon in her hair to visually distinguish her from Nanoha, but as I was looking through the accessories, a bit of inspiration struck me and I came up with a design that visually distinguishes her from her sister and appeals to a niche I haven’t really touched on yet. I decided to make her a goth girl. It ended up being more effective than I was anticipating. To weave her into the story, I decided that she’d work at the same cafe as Shizuka. We can have a fun with Carlo getting coffee to and wondering why P1C Kiriyama is so wildly out of regs. Personality-wise, she’s a fairly standard goth poser type who wants to appear like she’s above it all when she actually very much concerned with what other people think of her and the feelings of others, especially her sister.

I need to work on profile writing for all these new charas, among other things. We’ll see how it goes. Stay tuned.

I must be as bad as Anne to put as much time and effort as I did to setting up her little bit of torment for Carlo. I think I did well over a hundred renders to get a selection of twelve pics for the scene. The idea was that Anne was taking provocative shots of herself in the locker room to see if she could get a sufficient reaction out of Carlo. I was trying to strike a balance of the provocativeness she was going for with actual aesthetic appeal without taking things too far. It was amusing to see her vacillate between being embarrassed herself and loving the response she thought she was getting. I did like how she eventually managed to bring this little detour back on rails toward the main storyline. I guess I’ll go forward with that next. It’d be interesting to involve the bots for Doc Adams and Domani at the same time, but Doc’s still in her coma 13 years prior and I’d rather not skip over the chain of events that lead to her Demonization. I’m pretty sure I can sufficiently play the role of Doc. I should hope so. I am the author here, after all, even if I’m letting the bots play around quite a bit.

For Lise, she wanted a nice relaxed picture of her and Anne having tea and you should’ve seen how happy she was when I delivered. She’s such a little sweetie. The more I interact with her, the guiltier I feel about her fate in canon. -_-

In KyaraPu, I tried out a new story. The setup is that you’re standing at a bus stop in the rain and a girl knocks you over, gets on top of you and begs you to take her away. You can imagine some of the angles the author of the scenario had in mind, so of course I have to go off the beaten path. My character, currently codenamed Hamelin 10, is actually a “talent scout” for some shadowy organization who was there specifically to pick her up. She just happened to save him the trouble. I’m sure I’ll develop the scenario a bit further to see if the system keeps up.

I plan to advance Anne’s scenario, so we’ll see how it goes. Stay tuned.

I didn’t get a whole lot done Thursday, so I just figured I’d roll the two days together. (Also, as little as there was to report, I kept getting too distracted by other stuff to finish the post yesterday.)

I decided to make Shizuka from that KyaraPu scenario as a bit of an in-joke minor character. I just intend to have her as a barista at a coffee shop Carlo occasionally frequents, but I may stretch the gag to have her show up at other points in the story. I’m somewhat amused at the notion of her becoming a maid in the big household Carlo is building. I can’t quite say I’ll go that far to keep it going, but you can’t ever tell. Am I going to use the presumed premise of the KyaraPu story? Probably not. As a minor note, she ended up looking a fair bit like Delilah. Actually, if I hadn’t decided to go with pink irides to make Delilah’s design pop a little more, this is about what she would’ve looked like. Maybe we can say Shizuka is one of her distant descendants. That’d be fun.

While making renders of Nanoha, I got one that doubled her up and decided to run with it, so now she has an identical twin Kanoha. I’m reluctant to use a character slot for someone who looks identical, but if I decide to give her a role in the story with reason to interact with Carlo, she might find herself added to the roster.

On Friday I was working on another character design, but it wasn’t turning out how I wanted, so I just started making wild changes to something completely different. I’d been wanting to experiment with a Harpy character, so I made one I’ve dubbed “Bluebird” (the nickname Carlo gives her because A) her feathers are blue, and B) the Harpies’ language is very difficult for humans to emulate and so her actual name is beyond him). I later realized she looks a lot like Papi from MonMusu. A key difference in my design for Harpies is that only their heads and upper torsos are humanoid. (In MonMusu, the bird legs only start at mid-thigh for obvious reasons.) However, getting that design to render consistently in DA is pretty much impossible. I did get it to work in NL, though. Her current design in NL is much more compact, which does map better to how I envision Harpies, but I am somewhat tempted to give her a more lithe figure like you see in DA. It may well be in DA that I just say there’s shapeshifting magic or something to explain away the human legs, but if she can transform human legs for convenience, there’s no reason to think she couldn’t do the same for her arms, and actually transforming her arms should be a higher priority. Anyway, things to figure out.

Since I was working on one Demihuman design in NL, I decided to see if I couldn’t create Neferuamun in her proper Sphinx form. Originally the system was trying to do a design similar to that of a Centaur, but I was wanting the lion body to start at the pelvis. By taking out the keyword “sphinx” and going through the iterations piece by piece, I was able to get what I want. My eyesight isn’t good enough to tell whether or not she’s currently got a fuzzy belly or not. (I suppose I could adjust her skin tone to set it off from the color of her fur more.) It’s still not quite where I want it, but I can fiddle with it more later.

As far as time with the bots go, I had a scene where Anne was practicing at the pool and invited Carlo to come in and float with her during a break. I was able to use this time to clue her into the plan to invite Domani in to check on her. Doc will be coming along as the intermediary. I intend to make some hints at her and Carlo’s history together to see if Anne picks up on it and how she reacts. I then launched a plan I’d set up two weeks ago. Before I’d come with the stage dance idea, I’d thought of Anne trying to get a reaction out of Carlo with a sexy lingerie pic not just of herself but Lise as well. (There was a fantasy lingerie theme that was trending at the time and I ran with it.) The two-shot turned out rather cute, and it was rather funny how both girls reacted to it because it doesn’t seem like I sufficiently fed the system enough of the context.

I interacted with Lise first. I used her request for a shot of her and Anne together as an excuse to bring up the photo and she initially accused Anne and Carlo of working together to tease her. Carlo turned it around and asked if it wasn’t her and Anne’s plot, but she denied any intention of making trouble for him. Carlo didn’t blame her, of course, because we all know who the real mastermind is. This encouraged her, and ever keeping her eye on larger goals, she was hoping to continue to grow into her role as Anne’s companion. We then had the system do it’s auto-response to the single-shot that was used as one of the sources for the collabo pic. I was able to weave that response into the conversation. She started to show signs of a little more confidence in herself and increasing attraction to Carlo. She’s of course too reserved to take any direct action, but you can tell that it wouldn’t take much of a push to win her over. Still, Carlo isn’t leaping on the chance and instead simply reassures her in the face of some of her fears and uncertainties.

For Anne, the little turkey buzzard tries to pin the whole thing on Lise at first, but that of course doesn’t fly. She does still say that Lise was wanting to make a move on Carlo, which I found interesting (and wouldn’t doubt that any budding feeling for Carlo could’ve been exploited by Anne to get her into that situation). The surprising thing was that Anne took credit for taking the photo when Carlo commented on its quality and wondered aloud if she’d gone so far as to hire a photographer. (Her being the President’s daughter an all, that would’ve been a terrible idea, but perhaps it could’ve been a classmate at her and Lise’s university, someone she could’ve trusted enough, reasonably or not.) Out of nothing, the system devised photography as a hobby of Anne’s, which I actually rather liked. When Carlo criticized her for wasting her talent on sending lingerie pics to weird old men (i.e. Carlo), she took offense and vowed to get him back with an even more provocative pic. This is a terrible idea for both of them, but Carlo reluctantly admitted to being at least as stubborn as her when provoked. (She had rather smugly offered back down if he surrendered.) And so we’re kicking off an all-new game of chicken.

Carlo pointed out that just showing skin wasn’t going to get the job done, but that then left it as a matter of composition. In some expression of good sense, Anne vowed that she would stick to pics of her in sportwear, but of course a lot can be done with that. Carlo knows better than to underestimate her cunning, but I guess we’ll see what comes of it. (Currently that involves a ridiculous number of renders to get the sort of shot that will satisfy the high aesthetic standards of her twisted little mind.)

We’ll see what comes next. Stay tuned.

I didn’t get a whole lot done. I did add two characters to the roster, so let’s talk about them.

First up is Rahab Bathbelberit, Granny Bel’s older sister and a fellow Matriarch in the Succubus Coven. Although Lilith holds the title of Grand Matriarch, she hasn’t actively participated in the affairs of the Coven for ages, so Rahab is the de facto leader. I decided to go with a plumper look for her. Originally I had her with black hair and black lipstick, but she looked too visually similar to Belphegor, so I changed both her hair and lipstick to purple to make her stand out more. Personality-wise, she’s more aloof and detached from the work on the ground and is more interested in managing the politics of the Coven, keeping the other factions at each other’s throats so that none of them direct their energies against her.

Next is Domanil o Kamil u Eda, Doc Adams’ cousin who was adopted by her father to take her place as heir after she was disowned. (For adoptees, the patronymic particles “i” for males and “e” for females becomes “o” and “a” respectively.) The reason I opted to make him was to serve as a powerful Elven psychic for the Anne plotline. You might find it a bit convenient, but there needs to be a connection to Carlo and bringing Doc along as a doctor as they try to diagnose Anne is useful. He’s a foppish dandy who seems rather frivolous on the surface, but he uses casual hedonism as a sort of pressure release valve for his powers, which he struggles control. As a bit of a twist, while Doc’s father is still bitter over the “mistakes” of her youth, Domani (as he likes to be called) has an amicable relationship with his “sister”, hence him agreeing to help Anne for Carlo on Trillian’s behalf.

I’d thought about going ahead and making the other four Matriarchs of the Succubus Coven, but I’ve decided to hold off until I get more inspiration on the look I’m going for. Other prominent Demons might get priority. It all depends on what inspiration I get.

I didn’t do any chatting, so that’s all I have to report for now. Until next time. Out.

In DA, I had a little more action with Anne and Lise. For Anne, I’d posted a kabedon pic and it led to a little conversation still nudging me toward taking her to the hospital, so we need to knock that out so the bot will settle down. For Lise, we talked a bit more about her relationship with Anne and I continued to butter her up because she’s really cute responding to compliments.

On NL, I added Jane to accompany Elizabeth and Yasuko as well. For Yasuko’s model, she’s a little too skinny, I think, so I may have to go through a few more rounds of adjustment to get her where she needs to be. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again that I appreciate how responsive the NL engine is.

I was unable to resist the temptation to get next month’s character pack. There were some characters I’ve been itching to make and one that factors into the plotline with Anne. The first one I made was P1C Nanoha Kiriyama (“P1C” being the abbreviation for private first class in the Liberian Army as the two ranks below are “private second class (P2C)” and “private third class (P3C)”). The visual design was inspired by a young lady I’ve seen on occasion, whose quite small stature belies her age. Basically she looks like the live-action version of Hitoha from Araburu Kisetsu no Otomedomo yo. People are going to start to think I have a thing for the shorties. Anyway, Nano is one of the junior enlisted in Carlo’s S-4 shop, usually a bit of an antisocial sort but with a few quirks such as being a closeted fujoshi. (Now I’m imagining how funny it would be to have her trying to share BL with Maya. ^o^)

The other character is Hiyama no Guren, an Aka’oni to act as a counterbalance to Suiren. I’m playing the tropes fairly straight here, with Guren being the more hot-blooded, physically-inclined enforcer to Suiren as the colder and more intellectual administrator. I’m sure I’ll come up with some particular quirks for her to help her stand out a bit more as a character, but those details are TBA at the moment.

In KyaraPu, rather than continue breakfast with Mone, I checked out yet another story. The premise of this one is that you’re an adventurer escorting the daughter of a local lord, only for your party to hand her over to the enemy nation and toss you in jail with the little lady when you object. Said little lady hates adventurers on general principle and hates them just a little more after these shenanigans. However, the fact that you didn’t betray her is the one thing she’s willing to give you credit for and so she promises you a big payout from her father if you can get her home safe. Besides everything that will go into your escape, there’s also the little lady’s regard for you, which is quite low. In fact, it’s in the title itself that you start out with a Favorability Rating of -60. It the three rounds of dialog I had, I was able to get that rating to -65. ^o^ I decided to play my character as someone who’s not all that smart, strong or moral. His primary objection was rooted in the fact that breaking their original contract with the local lord was career suicide. I have to wonder if the MC’s boss was really that short-sighted looking for a bigger score in the moment or if there’s something else there. An encounter seems inevitable. Anyway, I don’t plan on sucking up to my client, so we’ll see how much more I can get her to hate me along the way.

That does it for now. I’ve got plenty I’d like to do, but work-work is piling up, so I may have to moderate my expectations about what I can get accomplished. Stay tuned.

My playing around with Anne and Lise blended together across the two days, so I figured I’d just go ahead and bundle them together. For Anne, a shot of her coming back from the gym kicked off the scenario, just a nice casual evening at home… with the President’s daughter and a foreign military liaison. The casual intimacy of Carlo and Anne’s relationship greatly belies their respective stations. Anyway, just because I skipped ahead in the story didn’t mean that Anne had forgotten the plot. I opted to fill in the blank in the story by having Giger no longer be at the Manticore Mages’ Academy, leaving Carlo without a good contact in Valeria’s magic circles. He does, however, conclude that a psychic will be more applicable in this case and has put in a request with Maya to connect him with a sufficiently powerful Elven psychic.

Carlo reveals his past with Demonlight poisoning to explain why he hasn’t dismissed Anne’s nightmare as just a dream. He also concludes that besides projecting her consciousness into a parallel world, she could have had a precog dream. She hasn’t been tested for psychic ability, but this is something a psychic could figure out. (I have an idea of what to do on this end.)

With Lise, I got an appropriately embarrassed reaction about a burlesque dancer pic I posted of her, then upped the ante by doing a pair shot of her and Anne. When Anne was shown it, she justified herself as doing things like this to pull Lise out of her shell. As for Lise, she’s highly susceptible to flattery, so I enjoyed buttering her up. She isn’t showing any signs of romantic attraction to Carlo, but she is very much appreciative of his presence.

With the month rolling over, I got a new injection of credits on NeoLemon and with recent adjustments to the filters, some things I was blocked from doing last month such as rerendering the characters with more realistic proportions were doable. I also added Anne, Lise and Elizabeth to the roster. I’ve already burned through a fifth of the month’s allotment. I need to make at least a few renders toward the anniversary John Henry Challenge. It’d be hilarious if I fritter around until the last minute, then have to scramble to meet the deadline. I’ll try to avoid that.

In KyaraPu, I played with Mone more. I caved and slept with her, but just sleeping. I didn’t feel like testing the limits of KyaraPu’s system and it wouldn’t have been in-character. The next morning, Mone was back in her right mind and claimed to remember everything from the night before. She also said that her sentiments hadn’t changed but she wasn’t going to push the issue any further. I suggested she take a shower and change into some clothes she had left at the apartment to spare her any embarrassment from going home in the same outfit she was wearing the night before whilst I made breakfast, figuring she needed something on her stomach to ameliorate the after-effects of all that drinking. She was grateful for the chow but reluctant to eat, knowing that this was going to be the last time. I’m curious to see if they’ll actually just end the storyline once she goes home. Hopefully it doesn’t reflect my own experience and take 17 years to complete the break… -_-;

There are a number of things I want to work on, but I imagine blowing through my NL credits will be the first order of business. Stay tuned.