HW08 Jessie Jiang

 

Xuan (xuxian)

Xuan is one of the sky nomads. She is a young woman who has dedicated her life so far to become the head of the family. Note that despite having no blood relation, all the people in their nomadic group are considered family, with a shared surname.

Xuan is kind, determined, reliable, but secretly she is in conflict with herself about a past wrong-doing. She hides it well, because the revealing of such truth will mean that she will forever lose her chance of becoming the family head. 

In the game, she should be a sharp-shooter type of character that compensates for Bai's melee type. I imagine this game to have dual protagonists, and the player can switch between Xuan and Bai. 

Xuan also has a striking resemblance with her ancestor, one of the original crew members of the crashed starship. Her ancestor has fostered a companionship with Bai during their space voyage; she once broke the law (although it is never discovered) and unlocked Bai from her programming, just so Bai’s sensor can feel something other than threat level, just so she can feel some infinitesimal things like water fleeing from her palms. By some chance, this eventually saved Bai from being deactivated during the ‘second fall’, since she is no longer connected to the main system of Kun-lun mountain. 

Bai

Bai is an artificial intelligence from the star-faring era. There are duplicates of her archetype, but most of them are destroyed or deactivated during the second fall of the civilization. She has a humanoid disguise and a creature-like combat mode. Her shape language should exhibit symmetry that indicates fine engineering, but also some add-on element that breaks the symmetry. Bonus if the add-on element is that certain someone’s gift from star-faring era. 

Bai has been wandering through the earth ever since the ‘second fall,’ with a corrupted memory bank and without a goal. She no longer has a record of her friend(Xian’s ancestor)’s name, but still has image recordings of her. This AI still holds onto the imagery remains of someone who died long before the start of the second fall, but does not understand why. As for the second fall, Bai only has a vague recording of the event; her archetype has played a part in it, but her own role is unknown; Bai also knows there is something wrong with the starship site, but she does not have access to it anymore. During her wandering, Bai learnt to disguise herself, so she can visit different human settlements. She travels aimlessly across sky cities, cliff cities, and some repurposed ‘old empire ruins’. 

Bai is curious, and has a composed manner; she is a character who moves with a guileless grace. Her combat mode can be something of a serpentine form. It will also be interesting that her archetype has become a malevolent creature of myth after the second fall, and been recorded on potteries and tapestries. 

In the game, Bai is a melee focused character. As an AI, Bai is locked out of almost all the accesses from the terraforming sites. To access the system of those sites, she will need a human companion. In this game that will never be made, the player will need to switch between Xian and Bai to unlock the puzzles of the old empire sites. 

It will be funny if BAI stands for something like ‘biomimic anthropopathic instrumentation”.

Hai 

Hai is one of the elders of the family. Fahai’s ire towards Xuan comes from his grief. His daughter is killed in an event in which he believes Xuan is responsible for. And ever since that accident he has been hostile towards Xuan. 

He is also the falcon keeper. Himself is a character that is weighted down, however he is surrounded by birds. 

Fahai is wise, and has an air of knowing authority around him. He is old and imposing, but the imposing part comes from his judgmental look. It will be a bonus point if his visual-language also conveys grief. 

All of my three characters are somewhat in conflict with themselves. Fahai’s conflict comes from the fact that Xuan was like a daughter to him before, since they are in the same nomadic family. He has already lost his own daughter, does he want to lose another one as well? But to forgive Xuan is a discretion of his own daughter’s passing.