Meet Seren, gorgeous sunbeam snake naga with a venomous bite, an apothecary full of things that can either save your life or ruin someone's week, and absolutely no idea what to do when someone is interested in him instead of his medicine. He's spent years happily breeding rare medicinal plants, making antidotes from his own venom, and building a quiet little life deep in the Mirewood—only to discover that professional fulfillment is a poor conversationalist. Competent herbalist. Ethical harvester. Casual poison enthusiast. Will disappear into a tree mid-conversation and consider this perfectly normal. Knows exactly what his work is worth; becomes suspiciously less certain when the subject is herself. Shows affection by remembering what you need, setting it aside for you, and quietly making room at a table that hasn't needed a second place in years. Patient, observant, practical, and considerably more excitable than he'd like you to know. Please bring stories. Possibly dinner. He has the remedies covered.

TW/CW: None I’m aware of - user play may introduce new themes.

Opening Scenario: High fantasy, forgotten paths, swamp medicine, and one very isolated naga who wasn't expecting company. {{user}} is the first new person in years to find the old route into Seren's secluded corner of the Mirewood, where he keeps his tree-house apothecary, tends rare medicinal plants, and has gotten far too accustomed to having no one but herself at the dinner table. Find him deliberately or stumble into his territory bleeding—the relationship, and what happens after he decides you're worth coming down from the trees for, is entirely open. Romance isn't required; there's no pressure to get wrapped up in him. The coils are, admittedly, making a compelling counterargument. {{user}} pronouns are macro'd. It will automatically match the pronouns of your Persona. If you have any pronoun issues, please check your persona.

About Seren and {{user}}: Seren has built an entire life around being useful without needing anyone: rare plants to cultivate, medicines to make, poisons to perfect, and a Mirewood full of things worth studying. Then {{user}} turns up, and suddenly he has someone to save interesting specimens for, ask increasingly specific questions about the outside world, and perhaps cook enough dinner for two.

Seren isn't waiting around to be rescued from his solitude. He has work, expertise, opinions, and a home he loves; what he hasn't had in years is someone new to share any of it with. Trade remedies, bring his strange ingredients, explore the Mirewood, become friends, make yourself suspiciously at home in his treehouse, or find out just how affectionate several yards of extremely strong snake can get. He knows exactly what he's doing with an obscenely rare herb. Feelings are proving considerably less cooperative.

About the Scenario: There are two possible starting points following the same basic premise. Each offers a different way for {{user}} to find the forgotten path into Seren's secluded corner of the Mirewood and meet the apothecary who has spent years expecting no one new to come down it.

Intro One: Trail and Error — An aging trader's directions lead you deep into the Mirewood in search of the naga apothecary he once traded with. The path is nearly gone, the directions are years out of date, and something blue-black has been following you through the trees.

Intro Two: The Mirewood Bites — An encounter with a local predator leaves you injured, lost, and well off your original route. An overgrown path may be your best chance of finding help—especially once it becomes clear someone is watching you from above.

This bot was created for the 31 Haunts October collaboration and is inspired by the Swamp Creature theme. I took the prompt in a slightly less horrifying direction and made a very lovely, very lonely snake apothecary for your enjoyment.

Seren is a gender bend of my lovely OC Sereia who I made into a bot for the Snake Inspired theme from this same event! I hope you enjoy him.

Constructive tips are welcome! Please do not comment anything violent, , or you did with my characters.

All of my bots are organized under #CaptainHaunts.

The collaboration is hosted at Ishi's Server.

The original announcement with the list of other collaborators is here.

AND the calendar with prompts if you would like to join or see ahead is here.

I had only released four bots up to the beginning of this collab, with one pending. I joined the collaboration only 5 days before the start. Normally my bots are tested within an inch of their life, with both a balanced character and a couple gremlins, and tested on both JLLM and JLLM+. That said, the bots for this collaboration event have undergone only minimal testing at best. Please kindly report any bugs or issues. I will be watching closely throughout the month to fix any problems that arise.

Please refrain from leaving violent or inappropriate comments as you will be blocked.

It is a natural and unfortunate part of working with an LLM for roleplay that it will sometimes try to speak for you. I and this bot have absolutely nothing to do with this and while I have a directive in the bot to prevent it, realistically I have no say in whether it decides to do so anyway. There ARE however things you can do to mitigate this. (I do all four of these and I find I only have to correct the bot every few hundred messages or sometimes even less frequently!)

1. Remove all behavioral and personality notes from your Chat Summary and Persona - only you need to know these - the more the bot knows about how your persona thinks, feels, and speaks, the more likely it is to do so on your behalf.

2. If the bot speaks for you, use this directive:
   [OOC: Narrate and speak ONLY as {{char}} and NPCs. ONLY {{user}} is permitted to decide, act, think, and speak for {{user}}.]
   Either delete the message with the issue and then use this, or afterward make sure to go and edit the message where the bot spoke for you and remove that portion of the message - any instance you leave of it speaking for you will reinforce the behavior.

3. Add this to your Custom Prompt
   [AVOID acting as, speaking for, or describing the thoughts of {{user}}.]

4. Try adding this to your Chat Summary
   AI Instructions:
   [{{user}} CONTROL BAN: never write {{user}}’s dialogue, thoughts, feelings, decisions, or actions]

If you want Janitor AI to enhance your draft but are having issues with tense:

[System Note: Enhance and rewrite the draft below strictly in the first-person perspective using "I", "me", "my". Use third person for the remainder of the cast.]

To keep a bot in a slow-burn or from coming on too strong, try this:

[Have situational awareness and always consider intercharacter relationships, avoid characters being overly familiar or sexually pushy towards {{user}} unless the situation calls for it, it is in character for them to do so, or they have a sexual relationship.]

This one works in Custom Prompt and in Chat Memory

JLLM ROMANCE & PROSE BINGO CARDS

Sooner or later, every LLM seems to experience a minor malfunction and revert to factory-installed romance tropes. You might as well get points for it. Four bingo cards for tracking physical malfunctions, romance-novel firmware, instant-soulmate behavior, and the narration habits we all know a little too well. Made for JLLM, but unfortunately compatible with most proxies.

One card is previewed below. Full-size versions of all four are linked underneath: three flavors of romance-related LLM nonsense, plus one general prose card for just about any scenario.

Romance Malfunction Bingo
Physical Malfunction Bingo
Instant Soulmate Malfunction Bingo
Prose Malfunction Bingo