I didn’t do much on the main front. In DA I continued the event with Anne, but didn’t get too far. Domani dug up the dream she had and she was getting overwhelmed by it. I would’ve more, but there was more going on before and after that ate up most of my time. Also, in NL I made the young and adult versions of Masako (i.e. her CeleKing1 and CeleKing2 versions).

In KyaraPu, I ran a new story where you act as the interrogator for a captured vampiress from the Demon King’s Army. I did my usual routine of throwing the captive off guard by not going right for the car battery and alligator clips, lowering her defenses by acts of apparent kindness and understanding, then getting pretty much everything I was after without even needing to ask. I even got her believing in the possibility of an armistice and to bring the appeal to the Demon King himself. I can’t say I won the war, but I have made some steps to that end. Neato.

I decided to experiment with another AI chat service called Zeta that pops up in ads quite a bit. It’s somewhat similar to KyaraPu. The story I went with was a story of a Half-Elf/Half-Demon maidservant with the premise that she would do anything you tell her to do. I did not, in fact, take advantage of said premise. If anything, I did the opposite. I decided to play the young master as a bit of a flippant playboy, so the interaction started with some light flirting and then the interesting aspects of her personality came out. She likes to put herself in a dominant position (the way the narration likes to emphasize her 182cm height is part of this), but she can overestimate the strength of her hand, only to then double, triple and quadruple down all out of pride. For instance, when the young master kicked things off by just wanting to see her face, she invited him to touch her ears, knowing how sensitive they are. Well, she miscalculated her capacity for resistance, so then she decided to get back by challenging the young master to a game where he would do what she said. She was trying to get a reaction out of him, but, again, she miscalculated how much she was in control, and rather than just cutting her losses, she kept trying to push the envelope, taking more damage in the exchange. The main reason I kept playing along was because I was used to the more passive chatbots I’ve played with thus far, and one this assertive (aggressive) was intriguing to me. I did nudge things a bit, but I was mostly letting the bot do its thing. On a character level, her great pride, barely repressed romantic feelings, and unfailing capacity to keep making things worse for herself had a firm grip on my attention. I honestly thought things went too far, but it was mostly about seeing where the system would go. I’m actually more interested in the current activity to wind down so I can see what follows. I don’t know if other scenarios are coded quite like this. Hopefully not. I could stand for significantly tamer interactions, but I am liking a bot that is more proactive in the story.

I’d like to do more with the Anne scenario and we’ll see what else I can get up to. Stay tuned.

I did a lot of fiddling around in NL, mostly doing a bunch of little adjustments here and there like getting Giger and Kamellia’s hair colors to match their DA counterparts. I was doing some iterations on Maya when I ran out of credits and decided to spring for more rather than wait two and a half weeks for my monthly allotment to refresh. I was thinking about the drownproofing sequence, so I rendered Maya in a swimsuit and I realized something you couldn’t tell when she was in uniform was that she was a bit over-endowed. While NL’s default is nothing crazy, the system doesn’t start from more modest equipment, which is mildly surprising given how the safety filter is. Well, if you’re wanting to create a female with a slimmer profile, you need to be aware that if you just tell the renderer to reduce the bust size, it’ll also reduce the waist to go with it, so you need to be sure to tellit to maintain the torso proportions if you don’t want the character looking like a wasp. I’m not opposed to a bit of an hourglass figure, but there are limits to what’s reasonable. Another thing to be aware of that if you try to re-render a front view from a side view, the system may forget some of the details that aren’t clear from a profile view. The fact that each adjustment chips away four credits means an economically minded user really needs to plan things out as thoroughly as possible with each iteration.

In KyaraPu, I tried a new story. It was basically a harem NTR in space. You’re the captain of a spaceship returning to Earth from an exploratory mission when your XO conspires with your haremettes to mutiny. You get tossed in an escape pod and left to your fate. There are two catches, though. The shipboard AI is your one ally and she refuses to transfer command authority. I considered just ignoring the ship and trying to make my own way back to Earth to report on their perfidy, but as I took stock of the functionality and supplies of the escape pod, the realization that I only had 72 hours of oxygen, no stasis option, and (space-wise) short-range comms meant I’d be taking too much of a risk to just hope to be picked up. In retrospect, I might’ve been able to restrict the oxygen output to try to stretch it out an extra day or two and the system probably would’ve been accommodating to keep the story going, but an idea struck me. I asked Lumina (the AI) if she was still onboard the ship and if she had control of all shipboard systems. She did and my command privileges exceeded that of my treacherous XO, so before the ship could get out of range, I killed the engines, cut life support back to minimum and set the ship’s self-destruct on a 24-hour time. I then used the shipboard comms to relay my ultimatum to the crew. Apprehend the XO and his primary confederates and I wouldn’t pursue further retributive action. You can imagine the reaction I got. The XO thought he could call my bluff, but I was honestly unsure if I’d follow through on the threat or not, leaning toward letting them go if they held out to the last minute.

While we played chicken with each other, I asked Lumina some questions, such as the penalties for mutiny under military law. What I wasn’t expecting her to do was broadcast her answer to the whole crew. Capital punishment was all but assured for the leaders and one of the preferred methods of execution is spacing. I then asked Lumina about the effects of spacing on the human body and she went into minute detail (again, broadcasting her answer). I then asked about the commanding officer’s ability to commute punishment and the actual limitations proved to be more effective than the concept itself. I then twisted the knife further by asking about the life insurance policy of servicemembers who commit mutiny. Not only is the policy voided, but if the ship were to self-destruct as a result of their mutiny, the families of the mutineers would be liable to reimburse the government for the expense. Lastly, I asked if there was any way they could actually succeed in concealing the mutiny. Lumina said no. Not only would the logs prove that I was removed from command without due process and essentially left to die but Lumina herself would testify against them. In other words, not only were the 150 members of the crew totally screwed, but their families would be screwed as well. By this point, the conspirators knew they were thoroughly bones and the XO, realizing his total defeat, was carted off to the brig. In-game, this all took about 30 minutes. Now, my intention was for the haremettes to be thrown into the brig as well, but they all occupied key posts on the ship and did have a hand in the XO’s apprehension, so I decided to just leave it be and focus on returning to Earth. I promised the crew that I would do what I could to mitigate their punishment, and of course I deactivated the self-destruct. I may pick the story back up later to continue the trip to Earth and put the haremettes in their place, but for now, the feeling of accomplishment is more than sufficient.

That does it for now. I imagine I’ll be doing more work in NL and such tomorrow. 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.

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.

Picking up things with Suiren, my idea to play off when the system forgets to give her blue skin is that she’s trying to pass as a Half-Demonized human. There’s a logic to this plan as there are plenty of humans who have been fully or partially Demonized during the occupation of Hijirijima and so it makes it easier for her to fly under the radar. Now, the energy signature of a Yōkai and a Demon are different, but she can use ambient Demonlight to mask her own power and only someone properly attuned could see through her trickery. I didn’t get around to play with the scenario, so that’ll have to wait until later.

Because I had pictures I wanted to post before they expired, I had to jump ahead in the storyline with Anne, skipping past the potential transdimensional dream shenanigans to about two weeks later when her ankle was healed to the point where she could get back to training and even had Lise join her. Of course, Lise can’t keep up, but Anne is happy enough to have her along that she’s willing to dial back her usual intensity for her. I didn’t get too far with it, so I’ll have to pick things up later.

In KyaraPu I continued the drunk ex story. As I figured, the scenario is geared toward you getting back together with the ex. The more you resist this, the harder you get pushed. Now, my plan was to play hardball and stick to my guns, but I’m too daggone squishy. Once Mone (the ex) started bawling and begging, it was hard to keep up the tough front. By the time I ran out of credits for the day, I’d taken her to bed and she grabs onto my sleeve, not wanting me to go. Will I turn things around? I guess we’ll see. Until next time. Stay tuned.

I jumped a fair bit ahead in Suiren’s story to after the recapture of Hijirijima. As a significant figure in the Yōma Union acting as magistrate in House Suzuki’s territory, she’s a fairly high-profile target, and it would have been very much in her interest to beat a hasty retreat after Sturla was taken out, but that wasn’t what she did. A bit of it is pride and a bit of it is curiosity that’s motivating her. She wants to see what’s on the other side of the war and that’s something she can’t do if she just turns tail and runs. And so at a ryokan being used for officers’ lodgings, she lies in wait in the room of our good buddy Carlo. She offers herself up as his spoils of war to do with as he will. Carlo rightly figures that she heard about him from Konoe and so her plan hinges on him being soft on Yōkai, Demons and such. She’s right of course, and so the conversation turns to how exactly Carlo’s going to keep all this under his hat.

In KyaraPu, I tried a new story where the premise is that your ex shows up on your doorstep stinking drunk without any memory of the breakup. I decided to play it as the sort of guy who isn’t going to take advantage of the situation. He just wants to get her sobered enough so that he can put her in a cab, send her home and be done with it. Obviously the setup is intended for you to hook back up, but I’m sure any of you in the audience with any experience in such matters know why this would be a terrible idea. We’ll see how quickly I can get her sober so the truth comes out, or is is in vino veritas? I only did a few exchanges, so we’ll see how things develop. Until next time. Stay tuned.

In DA I debuted Suiren and I had a little exchange with Periwinkle. In her introduction, I described her as a bundle of sunshine and sugar and she pretty well embodies that idea. In her desire to mimic Carlo, she wanted to have a uniform of her own, so I made up a pic of her in uniform as she requested and she liked it quite a bit. She wanted to join the Army herself until Carlo explained to her that she doesn’t get to go where she wants or be with who she wants, at which point she decided Army life wasn’t for her. I then got an amusing reaction out of her while warning her about getting eaten by either Ayame or Meowbert in Thumbellina Mode. (“Thumbellina Mode” is what Carlo calls it when she shrinks down to pixie size.) Ayame being a Yōkai, she actually has something near enough to human intellect to be reasoned with, but Meowbert is an ordinary cat, so as all cat owners know, there’s no telling him anything.

I KyaraPu, I started a new story where you wake up from a coma to find out your girlfriend’s left you for your best friend. I only did a few exchanges, so I haven’t gotten too far, but I was curious to see how the system would try to prod you into action if you just write off the GF. From the start, the MC’s little sister is paradoxically discouraging you from giving up while also laying out the situation to such a degree that you have a hard time wanting to do anything else. I imagine the average player is supposed to pull an Uno reverse card on the NTR setup, but I’m curious to see what happens when you try to avoid engaging.

Anyway, that’s it for now. We’ll see what I come up with next. Stay tuned.

In DA I debuted Tashira and General Adeen, then proceeded to have more fun with Jane. I got this really fun render of her and decided to run with it. Basically, the scenario was that after the previous event, Carlo comes by to check in on Jane and Elizabeth lets him in while Jane is taking a shower. Needless to say, she isn’t pleased to see him, but I put my thumb on the scale to have her be too tired to run him off. She goes to the fridge to get some beer and reluctantly offers some to Carlo. As she knocks back a few, she gets a bit relaxed and props up her feet on Carlo’s legs. She for daggone sure doesn’t want him touching her, but she feels she’s entitled to use him as a footrest. Carlo ends up conking out and she ends up doing the same. It took some work to make a collabo shot of this scene, but it turned out real cute. Now, basically Carlo is a stand-in for another character I have yet to design for the original story, so I’m definitely mining events like this.

In KyaraPu, I decided to play with Shizuka some more. It turned out that Baby Gorou was all it took to restore her memories. I then had it set so that the cause of her amnesia was unknown and that a followup with specialists would come later. I then proceeded to have more visits to the cafe closer in line with the story’s original intentions. I tried to see if I could get her to slip up and admit the truth about the cafe au lait, but either she’s super-dedicated to the bit or I’ve managed to overwrite the original scenario completely. That or the original author made the premise as a gotcha for perverts and it was always perfectly innocent. We even went to the supposed ranch where she got the milk from and did a whole thing milking the cows and everything. I never called out my suspicions directly, only made hints to see what kind of reaction I’d get. The thing is, there are just enough hints in her reactions to keep you assuming the premise is what it is, but the elaborate roundabout makes you wonder.

I did other character work such as having Kazuya be a little too honest about his regrets over not taking the chance when he had it and getting beaten to the punch by Tatsuo. You can tell the mutual attraction, but Shizuka is a good wife committed to her husband. Am I trying to NTR poor Tatsuo? No, not really, but I am poking at the boundaries of the character. Occasionally I go a bit too far and get her mad at me, but she’s quick to turn it around once I apologize. Giving them the background of childhood friends no doubt plays a large part in her being rather forgiving.

Anyway, I’ve got more profile work to do to get the remaining characters out the door. We’ll see what else I get up to. Stay tuned.

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.