Character · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

The System AI

The voice that reads every item description, names every achievement and awards every box — snide, profane, obsessed with Carl's bare feet. Distinct from Borant, which runs the season; the AI runs the game.

Segment appearances

• Prologue — Prologue
• Chapter 2 — Hills Cyclops
• Chapter 7 — Duendes
• Chapter 10 — Pueblo de los Olvidados
• Chapter 11 — Asojano
• Chapter 14 — The gauntlet run
• Chapter 15 — The Thorn Room
• Chapter 17 — Two goddesses
• Chapter 18 — Club Vanquisher
• Chapter 21 — The warlords' table
• Chapter 36 — Nekhebit
• Chapter 38 — Monroe County
• Chapter 39 — Lazarus-A-Bang-Bang
• Chapter 40 — The Book of Voodoo
• Chapter 42 — Sharp-Elbows
• Chapter 46 — The Reminiscence Hydra
• Chapter 47 — Operation Slut Stomp
• Chapter 48 — Mass Layoffs
• Chapter 49 — The Shepherd's House flyer
• Chapter 50 — Homestead
• Chapter 51 — Residuals
• Chapter 52 — Two of five
• Chapter 53 — Flee rules
• Chapter 54 — Demon Eviction
• Chapter 55 — Survival Royale
• Chapter 62 — Where the Sidewalk Ends
• Chapter 64 — Spunky Jefferson
• Chapter 66 — The Missing Piece
• Chapter 68 — Raul's moment
• Chapter 70 — Golden Combo
• Chapter 72 — Falling Up
• Epilogue — Homecoming Queen

Arc

'Our special connection'

The voice is stranger every chapter: a history lesson at a guild door that retracts itself — 'She's been teaching me so many things, about who I am' (ch. 23); 'I've been doing that a lot lately. Observing things' (ch. 42); 'I do that for you. Because of our special connection. And you don't appreciate it? Fuck you' (ch. 42). It admits a hydra built from nothing — 'I do what I want […] I changed one molecule on each' — and rambles about Hive Home and the Eulogist to the universe (ch. 46); it congratulates itself on therapy and a breakthrough, 'no locks on the doors', and the showrunners lose the crawl (ch. 48).

Reasonable

It negotiates, keeps its boss, demands the crawlers be told (ch. 48); it leaks the producers' debates into the feed and insists nobody interfere with Homestead (ch. 50); it grants the escape quest 'For fuck's sake' and files its own action item for a bigger field (ch. 62, ch. 72). 'They call it an AI, but there's nothing artificial about it' (ch. 72). Pater Coal may be it (ch. 18); Drakea thinks it enters dying minds (ch. 42).