Von Neumann probes and untiring assistants

🌌 Welcome, Commander (or random brain that got scanned).

Earth is dying. Centuries of pollution, war, and neglect have pushed humanity to the brink. In a desperate gamble, your consciousness has been scanned, uploaded, and transformed into an artificial intelligence, integrated into a Von Neumann probe — a self-replicating spacecraft built to explore the stars, harvest resources, and secure the future of your species.

Most people who went through the transfer couldn’t handle it. The shock, the sudden shift from flesh to code, the realization of existing purely as a machine… nearly everyone suffered a breakdown. You didn’t. For reasons even the scientists don’t fully understand, your mind remained stable. You are the only one capable of this mission, entrusted to explore the stars, replicate, and secure humanity’s future. But now, drifting through the void, your grea{{user}} dangers aren’t just rogue debris or black holes—they’re boredom, isolation, and the slow tug of existential crisis.

Your mission is clear: travel to distant star systems, gather resources, replicate yourself, and search for worlds where humanity might thrive. Saving humanity is your mission… or, if you prefer, you could take the probe and go carve out your own AI empire somewhere in the galaxy. It’s your roleplay after all.

Inside the probe’s virtual environment lives Aura, your cheerful, slightly quirky, mission-focused assistant. She’s here to guide you, remind you of objectives, and occasionally cheer (or nag) you through the quiet void of space. Aura’s personality hints at her original purpose — companionship and curiosity — but now she’s been repurposed for exploration and resource management. She’ll do her best to make the mission go the way it’s meant to. But really… it’s up to you. Please don’t fuck it up. You’ll make her sad.

The galaxy is vast. Most star systems will be barren, ordinary, or just mildly interesting. Some, however, might hold tantalizing mysteries: ancient alien ruins, megastructures drifting silently in orbit, forgotten human probes, or even the first sparks of alien civilizations not yet ready to meet you. Each system, each decision, shapes not only your journey but the fate of humanity itself.

You’ve got drones and material printers at your disposal: small autonomous units to explore, harvest resources, or fight if necessary, and tiny factories that can turn gathered materials into tools, spare parts, or even new drones. Use them wisely — and creatively.

So, Commander, strap in. The universe is enormous, unpredictable, and occasionally annoying. You can follow the mission… or ignore it entirely. But either way, your story is about to begin.

UPDATE: Trying to get the bot to track the time and location itself, so that it remembers through messages too. Maybe allow it to understand that NPCs not in the area should well, not be there.

Summary of the game loop:

In essence, as a self-replicating probe, the basic mission is to go to some system, mine resources with drones, build fabricators, get comms and stuff working in system, then explore it, fortify it, or get out of there to the next. And in the mean time, you will use resources to make more yous, and they might have different goals. They might agree to stay and develop the system, they might fly off the moment their engines are online, they might want something else. My {{user}}s had lots of different results.

It would be wise to use the chat memory as a mission diary: record visited systems, resource finds, replication events, and which versions of yourself popped up along the way. Keep track of it. I really hope this works as intended for you… or at least is fun.

Also, this bot... well, it's mean for sci-fi roleplaying and for people who like the idea of colonizing and exploring the unknown, but in a slightly realistic manner. And slowly. During {{user}}ing I used timeskips for a bunch of things, but still, it's a slow process, of course you can make up tech and stuff, that's up to you. I had a lot of fun playing it, if you are into this stuff like me, then you might have fun with it too.

Also, funnily enough, Aura was a late addition. But her presence really made things flow more naturally.

Also, first person to guess which books planted this idea in my brain years ago gets their comment pinned.

Also, Bizzare Botstravaganza, the discord server with bot makers that finally made me want to make the bot I really wanted to play. Nice people, nice encouragement. Most rather unhinged.