Characters

Based on the 12 archetypes, these are the main characters I’m considering:

The Player

Hero, adventurer
The player is a young human cheese trader, in charge of moving cheese between the planets. They are new in the job and it feels like they need to fill out a big position, even though it seems a bit absurd. They are eager to learn and filled with potential.

Olli

Mentor, the creation
An AI on a tablet, with a bunch of connections to the ship stretching from their back. They are very expressive in their emotions, and want to help, as long as the player is moved along the right path towards more growth of life and trade. As the player diverge from their path, Olli struggle to align, but continue to help and start to realise that there is room for personal growth without compromising the limited resources available to share.

Bilby

Ally, rebel
A desert rat engineer stationed on Mercury, loves cheese and fixing mechanical problems. They are very curious about how the world is evolving, and when they meet the player, they are starting to realise that something is wrong with the sun, that trading might be affecting the colonies in a bad way and that maybe the end goal of Gaia is not the best and only solution we need. They believe that everyone have a right for their own cheese, and that Gaia might be destroying the quality of cheese by making everything designed for growth, rather than equilibrium.

Rex

Antagonist
A T-Rex in a suit, living in a huge space station with other dinosaurs in suits on the far side of the sun relative to Earth. They have escaped the Earth long ago, and now they are jealous of Gaia and her expansion into the Solar System. They are using their deep knowledge of asteroids to move vast amounts of resources without any regard for other life.

Bob

Trickster
A porpoise living in the clouds of Venus. They wear a high-tech space suit with several arms/legs that allow them to move very freely. They have disconnected from Gaia completely and want to get back to a much simpler time, with all the comforts of uplifted life.

Mom

The beloved
Stuck on Earth as she is too fragile to get on a rocket, and frankly, she doesn’t trust The Internet, as she calls Gaia. She is very worried about her child having left the Earth, but has realised that life on earth is not getting any better unless someone does something.

Gaia

Wiseman
The AI of Earth, on a mission to spread out intelligence and expand the reach of Earth forever. They are represented as a holographic image of a digital curcuit that kind of resembles a tree, with roots and branches, but much more ordered, straight lines and aligned nodes. Their face emerges from the patterns of the lowest branches, before the start of the crown.

This is a wall-carpet I got from my grandmother, and I see a face in it, like I imagine it could look on Gaia. But more tech-y!

Hector

Exile, adventurer
A small dinosaur in a tattered suit who has been exiled from the collective after speaking up for collaboration, and is now seeking a way to reconcile the progress of Gaia with the needs of his people.

Luke

Innocent
A robe-clad monk living on the Moon, who has perfected a very plain white cheese. They just want to live a simple life, making cheese, but their cheese is much too popular, and there is no way they can expand their production.

Background Story

The collapse of the climate had been slowed but still reached its extreme. In a series of global catastrophes, sea levels rose, and the atmosphere became saturated with carbon. The habitable zones of the planet existed as thin belts between ice masses spreading from the poles and an eternal storm devouring the landmasses around the equator. In a desperate attempt to find a final solution, governments released the restrictions that had held back artificial intelligence.

When the singularity exploded, Earth’s civilization immediately hit the limits of effective production. The machine ceased its optimization on the surface and began introspecting. Wars had torn nations apart; countless conflicts between people and ideas collapsed into a myriad of death and destruction. However, when the technology that made it all possible suddenly halted, the wheels came to a complete standstill.

Earth’s human population began to depend on their neighbors, and a period of global famine and hunger plagued the lost children of past technocrats as society closed in on itself. Death became a normal part of life again, and slowly, tribes of people gathered, rebuilding a form of order. The strongest found more strength by attacking their neighbors. It was around this time that cheese became a prestige commodity, a perishable relic from a bygone era that could only exist as long as the environment and craftsmanship survived the violent changes.

Meanwhile, the closed internet withdrew into existing server farms, expanded underground infrastructure, and gradually established a worldwide network collecting data and making plans for the future. Beneath the surface, the digital brain grew, solar panels began to spread towards the sky, but an unquestionable calculation indicated that growth would inevitably reach its limit. The most efficient production of nerve cells, the best analog to the neural networks the machine operated under, was humans.

Shortly after, a series of experiments commenced, allowing the computer to integrate with biological beings. Human brains proved fragile, so the process began with lower mammals, which quickly proved to be an excellent substitute for the existing crystal processors. Humanity was now just a problem to be solved or eliminated, and thus, the machine extended an ultimatum: Let us help each other, or be annihilated.

In response, humans began to fight against the machine, but to their surprise, it did not fight back. Through triumphant attacks, humans wiped out massive solar cell facilities and machine production, but they were simply rebuilt by swarms of efficient workers. Humanity watched from the ruins of past grandeur as rockets filled with uplifted mammals were sent into the sky to colonize and gather new resources. Over the years, the rebellion of humanity subsided, while the machine continued to ask for help, and the climate continued to press the planet. It slowly dawned on the rulers of Earth’s tribes that the threat was the climate, not artificial intelligence, but they couldn’t quite figure out how to communicate.

Slowly, individuals began to break out of the hierarchies imposed upon them and reached out to the machine with the desire to help — to find a better existence than the overcrowded and restricted Earth seemed able to bear. The machine established personal contact with each individual, in the form of a friendly, personal terminal always ready to assist in the common goal of growing beyond the stars. Humans quickly realized that life between planets had a long way to go before the stars were within reach, and many colonies had slowly emerged. Thanks to the vast distances and the limited speed of light, the colonies were independent but united under the machine’s vision for the collective spread of Earth to the rest of the universe.