Tanner has always had a gift for code. Anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder may have left the rest of his life a shambles but it left him very well suited to writing code. People were difficult, unpredictable and messy. Computers though, they made sense and they didn't get annoyed if you checked the same thing 14 times. Tanner was involved in writing the code for the innovative Proxy Alternate Reality hardware that Dragons of Alnia was written to run on. He had access to the game from Alpha testing onward to ensure proper integration of the game software with the Proxy AR hardware. While the game will run on any compatible VR hardware, Proxy AR and Dragons of Alnia were working closely to provide a streamlined, optimized plug and play Alternate Reality experience.
At first Tanner simply dropped into the nascent world and tested various features to ensure proper functionality. Over time he came to a realization, while he was in this world he didn't care how many times he latched the door (14). It didn't matter if the dishes were stacked in ascending alphabetical order (a a a b c d e e h i l l o p r r t) and sorted by
color (Also Alphabetically.
Blue,
Green,
Orange,
Red and
Violet).
'This isn't me, this isn't real.' He found that he could just interact with the world and not worry about the details.
noun. plural noun: details. 1. an individual feature, fact, or item.
That turning point saw Tanner register a personal Beta account and begin anew as a player. He found a world that he could interact with normally without constant fear of panic attacks. The tics were quiet, he could simply be. And it was glorious. Outside of time spent working Tanner immersed himself in the growing world and reveled in time spent simply interacting with others in a normal fashion.
When the Eclipse class track was introduced tanner took Thorne through the entire track and found an issue with the Darklord capstone. While the power was intended to enable a variety of special senses the UI began displaying the code of certain aspects of the world directly to the user in the manner made popular by The Matrix. As the Dragons of Alnia devs worked hard to correct this issue the player base voiced their love for the visual. The direction of the bug fix changed and the bug became a feature. The issue allowing the viewing of the actual code was fixed and players were instead shown the runes and patterns of the digital reality of the world when utilizing the senses granted by the Darklord capstone ability.
As part of the patch fixing the issue, the Capstone Quest Chain was introduced. All capstones in the game were deactivated which allowed all the old abilities to be shut off and replaced with the new code. Players now needed to complete a detailed, involved quest chain built by the AI and incorporating past choices made throughout the character's career. The finale of the Capstone Quest Chain was closely tailored to the combination of classes each player had chosen. For those who had the option to ignore the ravages of age the story included an option wherein the character was trapped in an alternate timeline and forced to live an entire life there, providing access to the increased mental acuity and wisdom earned through living a full and active life.
For Thorne this provided him the opportunity to view the runes and magics the AI used to build reality from multiple perspectives. True to expectations the AI was consistent and the runes could be deciphered just as any unfamiliar computer code could be. As his understanding grew, Thorne found that he was able to apply his magics in ways that were not strictly coded by the human programmers by utilizing the runic 'code' the AI had used to write the graphical representation of the Darklord Capstone senses. This allowed him to develop capabilities to do things such as affecting time in relation to characters, change the weather of the world by altering the underlying runes and teleport great distances without need of the Waystones that each city used for such travel. This confirmed a deeper, consistent system in place. At first glance it appears that the AI involved in the game world had evolved beyond the code provided by the Devs and was creating things independently.
For the Code is Dark
and full of Terrors
Re: DM & Players required for a Custom Tristalt PF.5 game in an Overlord-esque world
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