AI-Assisted Apocrypha for the Ultraviolet Grasslands

In the last two posts, I discussed some of my attempts to explore the RPG setting Ultraviolet Grasslands using the GPT-3-powered game and story-writing sandbox AI Dungeon. In a bit of a detour, at the weekend I tried to investigate whether AI Dungeon was any good at remixing and riffing on the fragments of myth and history that the UVG contains. 

'In Lieu of Histories', 'Fragments of a Glossary' and 'Travel Quests' in the UVG sourcebook all contain (contradictory) hints about what has occurred in the world and how it might motivate characters to investigate the many strange sights on the way to the Black City. I had the idea that with a bit of set-up AI Dungeon might be able to mesh these appendixes (which I believe are intentionally fragmentary to prevent the setting from having a definitive canon) into new apocrypha about the world of the UVG.

I put the blurb from pages 6 and 9 into the pinned Memory. Using the Author's Note I asked the AI Dungeon to write in a literary style, within the dying Earth genre. The AI is definitely able to write material from this genre, although it tends towards the gloomy. I don't think that the Author's Note is as flexible a tool as some other users think and I've not had much luck getting it to leaven the gloominess with a dose of upbeat weirdness by suggesting a 'whimsical' writing style. 

I then created a starting prompt using the tables 'Forgotten Times', 'Dimly Remembered Strife', 'Fabled Stories', and 'Oral Histories of the Revolution' on pages 180-1 from the UVG. I plucked out eight entries from these table to emphasise certain aspects of the UVG's myths and secret history. I put several glossary entries in the World Info, so that the AI would be fed information about some of the peoples and places that make up the UVG if they were mentioned.

At first what the AI produced was often a bit flat, so I came up with some starter sentences that it could expand, describing some recent discovery or controversy that might set the wheels of a plot in motion. I reloaded, edited, tweaked and embellished until I got a set of apocrypha that seemed interesting. About halfway through I switched to using a different set of entries from the 'In Lieu of Histories' tables on pages 180-1, to mix up the input the AI was getting. Sometimes (#7, #11) I wrote more of an entry and sometimes the AI did most of the work (#1, #2, #5, #8). When the AI threw out something interesting I tried to work on it and cut away generic filler or nonsense. 

As tradition dictates, I've placed the apocrypha in a D12 table. What the AI produces is remixed from the UVG sourcebook, so credit to Luka Rejec and thanks for his permission to post this. 

D12 Apocryphal Prophecies and Plotlines

1.

According to the prophecy of the Uncreation, only the forces of the Polychrome Orders stand between the human race and extinction.

The Great Mist is a vast field of roiling gas and solidifying plasma that fills the sky, blocking out the sun. It is a side-effect of the Vile Ones' attempt to leave this plane. It is filled with monsters and monstrosities. The mist will one day block out all light and life from the world. The Great Mist has grown and covers more than a fifth of the sky, swallowing the sun and plunging the world into perpetual violet twilight.

The Lightless Void is a theoretical space between universes. It is filled with a substance less structured that even the primal chaos that existed before the Creation. The Lightless Void threatens to expand, consuming this universe in an entropic decay. When the world ends, it will be with a whimper, not a bang.

2.

A great seer has foreseen the death of the world and it draws nigh. The coming of the end times has been transcribed as the Great Lament, which states that a cycle of creation and destruction has played out innumerable times before, and so it shall again: “The first life was spawned by the heat death of a previous universe. That life spawned new universes until it too died. Then that dead life evolved into new forms of life, which did the same, ad infinitum. We are all dead people dreaming that we're alive.”

The Great Lament began as a minor, self-pitying poetry movement before becoming a mass religion of doom. The Lament's hold on the populace’s imagination is strong, and its prophecies are treated with the utmost seriousness by all who dwell on the shores of the Circle Sea. The human population is divided between those that wish to embrace the coming darkness, or stave it off for as long as possible.

3.

Recently discovered information from a crashed voidship’s databank implies that the viles were the first living creatures to gain sentience.

This has led to a heretical new theory that the viles were the last of the living machines created by the Uncreated, sometimes referred to as the Gods. Some say the viles possessed the ability to transfer their minds from body to body, and so survived the cataclysm that destroyed their masters. It is likely that the viles destroyed themselves in a war of mutual annihilation that took thousands of years.

The databank contained a translation of one of the few vile documents that survived to the Half-Broken Age, the original now lost utterly. It is a simple message. It translates roughly to:

“The sun is setting and we have never been more awake.”

4.

According to a popular legend, an angel once scooped up the dying ember of humanity and took it to the far-flung reaches of the world, where she nurtured its spark and lit a rainbow torch that would guide the people to her. Sparks from the blazing brand painted the Rainbowlands in their polychrome hues. The torch was placed at the heart of the Black City, but as its glow dims, reality itself wears thin.

Some say that the angel and fell in love with a demon and bore a daughter, Lilial, who was gifted with the love of all living things. Nursemaids and wine-sodden romantics say she still wanders the wastes, but scholars pay such tales no mind.

5.

Mystics in narcotic trances tell of a demon of lies, who can weave a tale so convincing that it becomes fact. He sits at the end of time, in a hall of mirrors, where the future endlessly fulfils itself in an endless mise-en-abyme. The Demon sows lies in the past to bring about a future in which his lies become truth.

Some philosophers speculate that this is why the descendants of the lings possess gene-memories of a war against the viles that never happened.

6.

An antinomian prophecy, sealed for 509 years, has been revealed. To the disquiet of the Green Inquisition, it states that the truths of the world have been forgotten and must be re-learned. Pilgrims stream to the Black City, anticipating a blissful surrender of memory. Fearing that the revelation will inspire a return to Neo-Infantilism, the Cogflower Church has begun a crusade against 'impious amnesia'. It has dispatched its agents to found a new temple-city deep in the Ultraviolet Grasslands that will staunch the flow of supplicants West.

7.

A bitter debate has emerged among Purple University academicians about whether the so-called "Long Now" is a realistic possibility. According to some para-philologists, the damage caused by the vile-ling conflicts is so severe that humanity may be forced to abandon this world and retreat back to the Source, upon which all reality is based. The Council of Algebraists scoffs that this would be impossible, whilst an Emeritus Professor of Solitonics cautions that this migration has already occurred, many times before.  

8.

A priestess of the Violet Goddess had a vision in the form of a vivid dream. In the dream, the priestess saw a warrior of the Violet Goddess, kneeling over a dying soldier of the Blue Temple. "If only there was some way to save them," the priestess thought. The dead soldier stood up and threw off his azure cloak, and underneath he was not a he at all, but a she. 

The priestess awoke with a start, but the vision stayed with her. She realised that this was no dream, but a prophecy.

9.

Astrologers watching the Fast Stars think they have discovered a message in the signals beamed from above. The message states that the Sky Gods are coming back to claim what is theirs and wipe away the filth that has corrupted it.

Reconstructvist researchers hold that the coming of the Sky Gods is a metaphor for the return of the Far Colony Fleet.

"The oceans ran red with blood, and the mountains crumbled to sand, and the people hid beneath the Earth as the Sky Gods passed judgement."

The return of the Far Colony Fleet is a metaphor for the return of the last survivors.

"And when the Great Flood swept over the world, the righteous huddled in their arks, and were saved from the rising waters."

10.

Many people living in the Violet City and all over the Circle Sea have reported remembering a past life in the era of the Brutalist cultures. Most of these memories are the same: people remember living in a walled city under a mad dictator, with huge siege engines bombarding the city daily. Others remember being a soldier, fighting in brutal close combat against other heavily armoured soldiers. Still others remember living as slaves, labouring to harvest food for their masters or working on massive atomic-powered machines used to defend the city.

Most people who experience these memories dismiss them as dreams or hallucinations, but a few take them very seriously. These people are members of a group known as The Echo, a small but dedicated group who believe in reincarnation.

11.

Some years ago, a Redland dwarf polymath claimed he had conceived of a way to reverse the disaster of Long Ago, insisting it resulted from the unfortunate consequences of a valuable scientific experiment. He was prevented from attempting to repeat the experiment by the ever-vigilant Green Inquisitors, but whether he was truly a radical visionary or merely an astute lunatic is still unknown.

The dwarf's claims were dismissed as lies by the authorities, but they spread among the people as a sort of wish-fulfillment myth. After his censure, he headed out into self-exile in the Ultraviolet Grasslands.

12.

On the steppe, shamans chant hymns to the First Mother, who returned to the world and brought with her the gift of life. They sing to the Second Father, who returned to the world and brought with him the gift of knowledge. As the last light of the sun fades violet on the edge of the world, a shaman turns to you and speaks in a voice that is not her own.

"The Mother has brought me a gift."

You look at her with pity. Her mind is gone.

She speaks again, this time in her own voice: "The Mother has brought me a gift, and Father demands you ascend into the sky to meet with him."

She steps forward and touches your shoulder. The Mother has brought you a gift. Your journey begins at last.

“The sun sets on our time, the sun sets on our time

The colour of his world is grey and black and white.

Long may he drift without a soul

Long may his cities lie in the dust

And a new world break from the bud of the old”