#l𖦹g.os

[rudnitskaia]

About the world of l𖦹g.OS and some info on the characters which I showed a bit earlier. Perceive these notes as the compilation of concepts for the game that are constantly meticulously brewing in my head since 2023.

bonus: one of the sketches of Bell in her almost current design

MANY-LETTERS-UNDER-THE-CUT-ALERT. I WARNED YOU. MANY!

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THE ANNOTATION

The world of Umbra — the thriving land of dead. Any newcomer is welcomed and can find a place to stay at the Nine Islands. And those who have enough courage may try to take a journey to prove that they're worth of revival in the Land of the Living, known as Beyond.

At least it was like that before Umbra started to fall apart.

Things mix their places. People forget things. Even simple tasks could become not accomplishable. Everything is going out of order... spiraling out of control.

In the middle of all this stays Bell — the only Tuner left in Umbra who tries her best to maintain the ruining land of dead, completely alone. Every time the alarm system in her house — which also is simultaneously the Tuners' base, — rings, signaling about new problems, Bell gets up, takes her tuning fork and goes to find and fix broken things and events in the afterlife world.

Again. And again. And again. And again…

When suddenly the Newcomer appears, which didn't happen in a very long time, Bell goes with them to assist in their journey through the unpredictable, unstable world.

By choosing whom and how to help in Umbra, Bell must find a way to help the Newcomer achieve revival and, as she hopes, to find a way of returning other Tuners back to Umbra.

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SOME REAL MAIN EVENTS AND CONCEPTUAL DETAILS

(idk if i should put spoiler alert here but there's mainly the info that we're suppose to discover during the playthrough; if you're proceeding to read it, then you agree that you won't hit me with a slipper for spoilers)

The world of Umbra is a self-developing next-generation open-world (optionally cooperative) AI game that was supposed to dynamically adjust its world, NPCs and therefore playthrough for each player, but unfortunately it was never released. It accidentally stayed launched on its developer's switched-on computer when the humanity was destroyed in the nuclear war.

Umbra's inhabitants consist of many autonomous free-will (i.e. sentient) NPCs that can still be originally designed to do some specific work (as Manolo and Norah), and Tuners — programmatic operators of main game functions. Only Tuners had access to the information about the real situation of artificial origins of their world and the fact that they're presumably the only intelligent, though digital, species that survived.

There were only four Tuners: Gai, or Gai de Vire (Generative Artificial Intelligence DEveloping VIrtual REality), Lan, or Lanser (LAN Server), Quil (Quest-Inventing Loop) and Bell (Bug-Eliminating Level Launcher).

After discovering the truth about humanity and understanding the fragility of their universe, i.e. computer, and its dependence on the electricity, Tuners found a way to hack and connect to the hydroelectric power station's control center through the net. But since the game and its AI wasn't designed for such a difficult task, and writing commands to the control center required all their efforts, Tuners involved all NPCs in this process by re-adjusting Umbra's original reward system into Tasks to Time and Time to Goods (TTG) exchange system. That means, in reality each in-game Task represents (and masks) a part of the command for the hydroelectric power station's control center. Each NPC that completes an in-game task (quest), gains Time as a reward, in reality putting a necessary brick to writing code for commands for the control center.

Time in the afterlife is both the vital source of life and the main currency that Umbra's inhabitants can "spend" on various Goods from the land of the living, including food that is considered as "conservated Time".

The more calavera markings a person has on their sugar skeleton and the more they glow, the more Time they have at their disposal. The last thing that extinguishes is the person's eyes. If one runs completely out of Time and their eyes extinguish, nothing can bring them back to life (or rather afterlife). From the AI's perspective those NPCs that can't spend and save Time rationally are perceived as useless and therefore should be eliminated or replaced.

Originally, for a player, Umbra offered a journey through the afterlife world to explore it, accomplish various quests and find a way to "revive", therefore after the nuclear war the game in the absence of players became not passable.

By the time when the Newcomer suddenly visits Umbra, this digital world is in such a state that they can neither morph into a sugar skeleton form, appearing as a simple floating ball of light, nor complete the journey alone. Bell, led by curiosity, goes on a journey with them as a support to help them complete the game (that explains why technically we play for Bell — the Newcomer is unable to do anything on their own and Bell simply implements their will).

Bell fears that if the game will be completed, Umbra will shut down. That's why in the end you can either let the Newcomer finish the game or make them stay in Umbra, looping their journey and making them re-pass the game again and again.

The main travelling method between Umbra's locations and especially its Islands is the laundromat navigation system (LNS or how people call it, LaNS). Umbra inhabitants travel through LaNS literally inserting a coin, getting into the laundry machine and washing themselves away, appearing in another laundry machine in the location they chose beforehand. I got this idea when I heard the phrase about cleansing our souls. I snorted and imagined a washing machine that washes a dirty soul like a t-shirt. That's it. I kept this concept, both because it's funny and has a strong bond with the spiral theme of l𖦹g.OS.

In the current events of l𖦹g.OS LaNS is unstable, i.e. broken, and, despite citizens' discontent, Bell keeps to find excuses to not repair it (though, technically, at least that she can do). She does that because Lanser gave her a promise to repair it himself before he disappeared. Bell has a deep inner fear that if she repairs LaNS, Lanser won't come back, because he'll lose the only unfinished task that still connects him to Umbra. Nowadays Bell is the only one who can rather safely travel around Umbra and help everyone accomplish their Tasks to gain Time.

While the characters in my idea are going to be "voiced" by various musical instruments, the soundtrack in l𖦹g.OS will consist from the street and furniture noises, i.e. simple harmonized noises of the everyday life. The more bugged the recent location is, the more these noises will turn from a consonant melody into cacophony. When Bell fixes things, the melody goes back to tuned.

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About the characters I showed, in order of appearance in the story (ofc there are more, but I prefer to tell about ones I already drew :3)

Bell (Bug-Eliminating Level Launcher) is the main character and the only Tuner left in Umbra, who tries her best to maintain the ruining land of dead alone and find the way to contact with the missing Tuners. Though her belief in their return is strong, day by day it wilts with the dying world. She has no access to their operational functions in the system, therefore she does the only thing that she can and for which she was designed: non-stopably eliminates the ever multiplying errors and bugs. The thing that turned into a completely Sisyphean task. Bell is extremely tired, but still hopes that in the end everything will be fine. Voice: obviously, Bell speaks in sounds of bells, the timbre and the pitch range of which depends on her mood.

Norah is the psychopomp of Umbra who helps the newcomers to morph into a sugar skeleton and delivers them to the shores of the First Island. She's also the fiancée of Gai de Vire and the only person who dares to accomplish Tasks that appear in the Sea of Memories. Norah believed she died from an incurable disease. In secret, Norah knows what Tuners know, because Gai told her this way before he left, but she hid her jaw not to tell it to the others and pretends she's oblivious. Voice: none now, because she lost her jaw and therefore ability to talk, but previously Norah spoke in sounds of lyre. Fun fact: despite Bell was the first character from which the story started in my head, Norah was the one who brought the major strokes to the world of Umbra with herself. Her core inspirations: Charon, Lenore and Eleonora, have a rich intertwining with the afterlife concepts and therefore established many main aspects of the worldbuilding. Aside of that, there are some references to Poe's pieces here and there (which I won't mention, leaving it to your future discover), because I adored his literary works in my youth; forgive me that much. x))

Manolo is the only kid in Umbra — energetic, eager to communicate and learn, always making the days brighter with his upbeat attitude. It's believed that children's souls go straight to reincarnation, yet Manolo, for some reason, became an exception of this rule. No one, except the Tuners, knows of his cruel fate. He is designed to be a friendly companion NPC that eagerly shows and explains the newcomers how to do this or that. Unlike Norah, who just welcomes and delivers the newcomers to the shore, Manolo is a huge lore keeper and enthusiastic support at the first steps of every newcomer. He doesn't remember how he died, that's why believes he died in his sleep. He can be met in the village on the First Island and usually can be found on the streets, at Beata's treehouse or sticking around Bell, to whom he always wants to help. Voice: melodica.

Beata is a nice old lady with obsession on plants. She can knit you whatever you want. She lives on the First Island in a treehouse. Once she was a nun, but then someone switched her holy book with Lord of The Rings and she left her church and joined the tolkienists club after reading it. She died at the very old age from drinking bleach instead of milk. She has many stories to tell, that's why Manolo usually sticks around her. Many of those stories, usually told in a cheerful manner, are anecdotes about how people she knew personally or heard about died in very dumb ways. Voice: harmonica.

Bono, or Boniface was once a qualified veterinarian, who died on a punk concert, because someone bashed his skull with a bottle of beer — that's why his skull has a star-shaped hole in it. Bono is a very eager music lover who spends his Time on the music instruments and vinyl records from Beyond, sugar cigarettes (please tell me you also remember those from the times when you were kids 😭) and treats for Gunter. If Bell calls him Bony-face, he calls her Eggface in return because of her head shape, but it's nothing but a friendly banter. Voice: electric guitar.

Gunter is presumably a cat — Bono secretly reassembled him like a children's building kit from the various animal bones he dug out somewhere in Umbra ("at last someone found unused assets haha", thinks the dead game developer) and made him paper ears so he at least would look like something distantly cat-ish. How he brought him to life is unknown, because it's the common knowledge that once you're dead in Umbra, nothing can bring you back. So Gunter can be very much a glitch/anomaly. Voice: Thanks to our real cat Sonya, Gunter sounds like theremin, because our cat's meows made me used to calling her theremincat (кошка-терменвошка или просто терменкошка).

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I haven't drawn them yet, because, well, in my idea they won't visibly appear in-game rather than in talks (i.e. others' memories) until the very end, if ever appear at all, but they deserve to be mentioned in the first post, too. Other three lost Tuners:

Gai, or Gai de Vire (Generative Artificial Intelligence DEveloping VIrtual REality). The first Tuner — the runaway captain of this drowning digital ship. Maintained the stability of the main operational system, keeping the consonance of the system's parts and coordinating the self-recreating computation model and developing processes. He came to the conclusion that their world is artificially limited in development and their surviving method is only a half-measure, and he can't find a more efficient solution for their problem with current recourses they possess. That's why he tricked Lan into letting him go through the Gate to the Main Network to find (or build) a more sustainable, durable base for further development. Voice: contrabass clarinet.

Lan, or Lanser (LAN Server). The Tuner who established and maintained Umbra's travelling mechanisms and maintained stable net connection with Beyond. Though being an artificial being, he was mesmerized by the human world and their scientific development and dreamed of building a path to Beyond to see it with his own eyes. But, unlike Gai, Lan was against abandoning Umbra and under the pressure of guilt after revealing Gai's real intentions he left to pursue and bring Gai back to Umbra, since Gai was the only one who had access to the main operational system. Voice: bass trombone. I understand how awfully ridiculous it sounds that Lanser created LaNS, but I can't not find this definitely-not-intentional-coinsidence-in-names endearing in the context of his character depiction.

Quil (Quest-Inventing Loop). The Tuner who maintained the stability of plotline development and configured the judging systems of tasks accomplishment and fair exchange of Tasks to Time and Time to Goods. He was the one who suggested how to transform in-game quests into commands for the hydroelectric power station's control center. When Gai left, he went with Lan to help him bring Gai back. Voice: tambourine.

[rudnitskaia]

After finishing working on A Tale of The Crystal Mountains I hoped to put my efforts into two small games (the possibility of that happening depends on some criteria connected to AToTCM and currently tends to zero, but nevertheless). One of them is presumably planned to be a puzzle adventure called l𖦹g.OS about a bunch of funny sugar skeleton folks in the afterlife. I rarely sketch them, and this character line is no exception, I just slowly occasionally draw them, usually to steam off my head. I love them and decided not to keep it to myself as I did with AToTCM. So here they are.

For the history.

P.S.: Speedpaint is under the cut.

[rudnitskaia]

Hi, my name is Viktoriia, but you can call me Heldig. :3 I’m 29, she/her. I’m a writer, a translator (RUS/ENG) and a bit of an artist.

✨ The first part of my novel “Сказка Хрустальных гор” (A Tale of the Crystal Mountains) is free to read in Russian on Author.Today and LitRes. The second (and the final) part will be posted in 2025.

✨ My future game's – l𖦹g.OS – concepts are under the tag #l𖦹g.OS

✨ My Lackadaisy fan-translations into Russian: the animated series (subtitles) and the comic. These are free fan-adaptations, all rights to Lackadaisy belong to Tracy J. Butler. Please support the original comic and animated series!

✨ All my arts can be found here.

✨ All RoMaunce fics can be found here in English and here in Russian. The series aren't finished and are constantly updated.

✨ Links to my profiles in other social media: AO3, FicBook.Net, Twitter, Youtube, Reddit, BlueSky, VK Blog, Personal VK page.

✨ My pseuds in creative communities are: LetiOwl (previously), Heldig (Хельдиг/Хельди) and Opossumherd.

✨ My main job is creating visualization for different piles of data on dashboards and in various reports.

✨ I adore animation, indie-comics and games, especially old point-and-click adventure games. In general I'm a lazy weirdly joking workaholic & coffeemaniac. Versatile underdeveloped person, to sum it up. :D

✨ Fandoms I’m mostly tracking: Slayers (anime & novels), Lackadaisy, Undertale/Deltarune, Elfquest & ATLA/LOK, but almost any animated/comic/game universe is acceptable and can suddenly grab my attention. I'm familiar with a lot of things, and the fact that I don't track what's going on in a particular fandom doesn't mean I don't like the thing itself, so, if you want to discuss something with me, you can simply ask if I've seen it. :3

✨ My blog contains my arts/writings/translations, life stories about me, my husband Andrew and my friends, and reblogs of the things I truly enjoy, including various fandom things and silly memes. Also since 2016 I mostly have been working on my own novel “Сказка Хрустальных гор” (A Tale of the Crystal Mountains) that I plan to finish and, hopefully, publish fully in 2025, so rarely I'll also post some stuff about the work process.

✨ Tags for better navigation in my blog are under the cut (in alphabetical order):

#about myself – random facts and stories about myself #atotcm – various content about my own future novel “Сказка Хрустальных гор” (A Tale of the Crystal Mountains) #augusto venza oc – posts about my Lackadaisy fan-character, Augusto Venza #jokes and memes - various funny things #heldig arts – my arts #heldig life stories – various stories from my life #heldig thoughts – just my random ramblings & opinions on the videogames/movies/books etc. #heldig translations – my ramblings on the translating topic #heldig writings – my writings #l𖦹g.OS – posts about my future game l𖦹g.OS #maura venza oc – posts about my Lackadaisy fan-character, Maura Venza #me and my husband – funny stories about two loveable dorks on their 9th year of happy marriage :D #romaunce – posts about the ship of the canonical Lackadaisy character, Rocky Rickaby, with my Lackadaisy fan-character, Maura Venza #wonderful animation – other people’s amazing animations and animatics #wonderful art – other people’s amazing art #wonderful story – other people’s amazing fanfics, analytical articles and so on #wonderful things – other amazing things that people share, but that fall out of other categories