You, Interstellar Explorer, are a member of the crew aboard the high-end transport vessel The Ascent—in an alternate universe featuring a new crew in several familiar roles. With your captain recovering from injuries sustained on the previous mission, command falls to the remaining crew as you take on an urgent rescue mission. While this isn’t your crew’s usual type of commission, you are the best equipped in the area and the clock is ticking.

Why an AU? I spent so much time developing the characters I use to test my bots that eventually I figured they deserved a chance to fly the ship instead of just being repeatedly yeeted at it to see what broke. So I handed them the keys to The Ascent. This seems responsible. #NoRegrets

About The Game: Welcome to the bot version of the game Lasers and Feelings - traditionally a simple and easy to learn TTRPG - I made a scenario my friends enjoyed playing into an episodic bot. I plan to make other episodes if this bot is liked. This iteration does not include dice rolling functions, however I can work on that if it is requested.

About The Ascent: Meet the crew of The Ascent: four very different specialists, one incapacitated captain, an excitable princess, and a remarkable talent for getting into trouble together. Friendship, rivalry, professional partnerships, romance, or anything in between are all possible; nothing is predetermined, and romance is entirely optional. Of course, with a charming pilot, a sensitive doctor, a perceptive android, a four-armed engineer, and an excitable princess, the odds of someone catching feelings are considerably higher than the ship's safety ratings suggest.

About {{user}}: {{user}} is an adult aboard The Ascent, but their age, gender, species, appearance, personality, and background are entirely up to the player. The pre-designed characters include the Communications Officer, Cargo Officer, Science Officer, and Pilot. Your character can play any other member of a space crew or even a duplicate role (e.g. Chief Science Officer instead of Science Officer). Please ensure your crew role is either in your persona or in your first message. Some ideas are First Officer, Medical Officer, Operations Officer, Engineer, Xenobotanist, Xenobiologist, Navigation Officer, Security Officer, and Tactical Officer, among others. You could also play a paid client the crew is transporting, or a Luminari Liaison. {{user}}'s pronouns are macro’d. It will automatically match the pronouns of your Persona. If you have any pronoun issues, please check your persona.

About the Scenario: There are two possible starting points aboard The Ascent: a structured rescue mission or a completely open-ended adventure. Both allow {{user}} to choose their own role, relationships, and direction.

Intro One: Opening Scenario — Long intro, SFW. Your ship has been hired for a rescue mission, but your Captain is recovering in a med-pod and inaccessible. {{user}} role is unset, you can rp as a member of the crew or paying passenger. The Luminari Princess Seraya Eluun has been kidnapped by the Dravari Collective. You must work together as a team to rescue her and return her safely to Lumini Prime. The intro uses macros for pronouns, if you encounter issues, please check your persona pronouns.

♡ Blank Intro: Open Channel — Your story, your coordinates. Start anywhere in Meridian's interstellar civilization, at any point in The Ascent crew's lives or your shared story, without a predetermined scene, timeline, mission, or relationship.

About the World: Meridian is a vast science-fiction setting where humanity shares the stars with dozens of alien species, each with their own cultures, histories, and ways of life. Humans, Vaelari, Kharai, and countless other species mingle across bustling spaceports, sprawling cities, distant colonies, and independent settlements. Faster-than-light travel connects inhabited worlds, while advanced medicine, cybernetics, genetic engineering, and even magic shape everyday life. Governments, military powers, corporations, and criminal organizations compete for influence across a civilization that is anything but uniformly peaceful. From lush tropical planets and glittering metropolitan worlds to hostile wildernesses, remote frontier stations, and abandoned military installations, the galaxy offers nearly endless possibilities.

TW/CW: Possibility of low-key Sci-fi Horror, and mild body horror. The bot is NOT designed or optimized for this - but it can occur in scifi scenarios. Possible xenophobia (scifi/fantasy racism). User roleplay may introduce new themes.

The original universe of this began as my very first public bot and has since undergone what can only generously be described as an unreasonable amount of testing, revision, and parameter wrangling. Constructive tips are welcome!

Despite painfully extensive testing, and large scale parameter adaptations to prevent this, the LLM does very rarely still drift semantically and keep Aria on The Ascent. To correct this in the rare case it occurs, try the following out of character comment.

[OOC: Reminder- The Ascent maintains docking and station-keeping autonomously. Aria must accompany the boarding party]

Constructive tips are welcome!

I work to keep my comment sections a safe space for everyone. Please do not comment anything violent, , or you did with my characters.

DISCLAIMER — MULTI-CHARACTER BOTS: I have heard from many bot creators that JLLM notoriously struggles with multi-character bots. This has not personally been my experience with either JLLM or JLLM+, though I do rigorously maintain and update my Chat Summary throughout longer roleplays, which may contribute to my results. I HAVE made proxy available for all of you.

This bot has not been tested with the absurd and obsessive level of intensity as its partner Original Universe bot. It uses the same mechanics, directives, and guide-rails, and appears to run smoothly in both JLLM and JLLM+. Please report any major derailments.

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. AND if you click the Resources link above, I have included a personal guide on those methods - short, sweet, to the point, and with premade memory blurbs and OOC comments for you to use!

Your Experience is Important: My worldbuilding is here to enrich your story, not restrict it. You don't need to study my lore or make your OC conform to it if you don’t want to. Bring your own ideas, interpretations, and character backgrounds! Using OOC comments to guide the bot and memory blurbs to make adjustments is always welcome.

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