‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 801

Numbers don't lie like people do.

29 Comments

I’ve had this feeling real Kat has been pretending to be AI Kat for a while. That or it’s actually D.. hmmmm…

Most likely D usurping the AI for now. If it were actually Kat, I don’t think she’d be pulling the same confused/surprised expressions.

Perhaps the AI is smarter than Bandit gives it credit for.
(…New thought: perhaps the AI is D!!!)

Gonna need a new stat for “frenemies”

Heh – Danni, The AI Whisperer.

Although my first thought is maybe this is how Mani manifests against an AI target…

Which made me think of potentially a funny end result for Dani – 16% in Morto, Mani, Demoli, Kesti, Erbana, *and* Cardista.

I guess the real stats were the friends we made along the way. Or vice versa.

Hahahaha, nice!

Danni rejects your logic and substitutes her own.

The Numbers Don’t Lie, and they Spell ‘D’isaster for you!

“Lies, Da**ed lies, and Statistics!” 😉

Even TENka doesn’t know the full extent of the Game’s programming. It’s possible they missed a stat that is designed to simulate interpersonal relationships for NPCs.

Very true, or maybe Tenka knows things that Bandit doesn’t.
Either could potentially create this apparent situation.
Just because current players ignore various relationship stats doesn’t mean that the AI created before don’t ignore them.
Also, Danni might have triggered some keywords.

I really mangled that last bit there.
Should probably replace that “don’t” with “will”.

That’s an interesting point as well – Danni’s new to the game, so the preconceived biases about how The Game works – it could also be an untested part of the A.I. – an enemy claiming to be a friend doesn’t work perhaps, and a friend claiming to be a friend does work, but a friend claiming an enemy is a friend is an edge case is an edge case that probably doesn’t come up in a situation like this – it possibly comes up in Mani or Erbana skill trees, but the untrained attempt here likely wasn’t fully tested, or has an RNG value to it tied to the friendship/enemy stat distributions.

So we could be in untested A.I. patching territory now.

Bandit might think that this is actually Kleya, which would be terrifying. Or he might think that this is Kleya’s personal custom A.I., which would be so very very much worse.

Arguably even worse, Kleya live-hacking TENKA’s A.I. bypassing their anti-hacking programs in a way that doesn’t alert them that it is even happening.

LOL I feel the AI is questioning “Friend? You’re registering THAT thing as a friend? Trying to compute…. failed… attempting again….”

Sadly, when playing a RPG, most of my friends ARE my enemies.

Lol, been there, got cause critical wounds cast on me.
(Many years ago playing D&D, cast by a “lawful good” cleric, when he claimed he was casting cure light wounds on me, and he says he did it because I was telling people he was forcing the party to pay for him to heal us, which he was actually doing, nor did he even indicate he was upset by my PC telling the truth about him to others… No idea why the GM didn’t have his deity slap him silly for that series of major transgressions.)

So yeah, PCs can be real [expletives deleted]…

so expensive material

The AI’s ears say “doubt”

A thought: it was supposedly TENka that sent the original message telling them they would play with an AI in control of Kat. I wonder if it wasn’t actually TENka that sent the message. I offer two alternatives:

1: (considerably less likely) Snowman’s group showed up to ambush them during their time slot. If they had missed the time slot because of Kat’s no-show, the ambush plan would have failed. Snowman’s group (or whoever they happen to be working with that’s targeting Bandit) instead hacked a message in to make them stick to their time slot so the plan would go off without a hitch. I think this is less likely because they would have also needed to supply an AI on short notice, which would have triggered a ton of red flags with TENka.

2: (the more likely of these two) Keiko herself sent the message, disguised as a TENka message, to make everyone in the group think an AI was controlling the Kat avatar. She either has D controlling the avatar so she can keep an eye on things, or she is in fact still controlling Kat and is merely acting as though it is being controlled by an AI. This would allow her to gauge Jake’s reactions to things and gather information without any immediate risk of repercussions resulting from her identity being blown. We know from her reaction upon logging out that no warnings are going off, and that bothers her; in her eyes, the lack of reaction to the revelation of who she is means something is wrong. Like this, she can gather information from up close while keeping some perceived distance so that if things do go wrong for her, she can bail quickly.

We know she more than likely has the skill and access to do all this, either without triggering any alarms or by using D in a way that would scare away any responses without giving her away. We also know that the decision to use an AI was surprising to the veterans of the Game, which means it very well could have been fake. I don’t imagine it would be difficult to simply send a message that looks like its from TENka to the group, but to anyone outside the group make it look like nothing unusual is happening.

Perhaps I’m reading too far into this, but I think the second point is very possible. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this all comes together, whatever the case may actually be.

Okay, no, having gone back and looked at the archive a bit, we know Keiko hasn’t been involved the whole time. It’s possible she took control partway through, or its possible D has been acting in her stead without her knowledge, but the idea that she sent the message is dead.

I think we only have a vague understanding on what D is and what D is capable of doing. If we compare D to a browser, my theory is that this AI would be like Adobe Flash. AF requires a browser to run, but is not a browser itself. In this manner, I think D is involved with this AI. This might permit K to jump in and take control of Kat.

I thought Keiko got herself involved in a real world rescue based on D’s info after her panic flee and shortly before they went into the game.

This does not preclude D running her avatar maybe even to get data for Keiko to act on or just to preserve the option of entering the game later if Keiko reconsider her panic.

I hope you had a Merry Christmas, Aneeka!

I did, thank you! Hope it was great for you, too!

Does he know the AI’s programming? If not, the AI might do Erbana differently. 🙂

Or it could be D… though I thought D was friendly with him? It’s not Kat, else she wouldn’t be trying to stone him. Maybe D or Kat JUST took over? Oooo that’d be nice if she just got back. ^_^

I mean, Kat did tangle him up earlier – stoning him would be lenient of her.

Unless you meant she’s straight up Morto him if she say Bandit.

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 801