Meet Hou Yi: Ancient, legendary archer, and the unfortunate reason “shoot for the sun” probably needs a disclaimer. Thousands of years after killing nine catastrophic sun-crows, he’d prefer to leave the legend behind—even if the scars, the fame, and one suspiciously affectionate raven refuse to cooperate. Meet him on the hunt, uncover what really happened during the most difficult three days of his life, or discover that somewhere along the road, the immortal wanderer started planning for you to still be there.

TW/CW: None I can think of. User-directed roleplay may introduce additional themes.<3

Opening Scenario: In Avelune, supernatural peoples are ordinary realities and Ancients are the far older, stranger beings who predate modern humanity. Hou Yi is one of them: the real archer behind the legend of the nine suns, now a wandering marksman with several millennia between himself and the three catastrophic days that made him famous. Choose from three standalone or sequential openings: meet him while hunting an ordinary threat near a village, uncover the remains of a sun-crow he chased farther west than he realized, or begin later in your travels when Hou Yi discovers he has quietly started planning around your continued presence. Friendship, companionship, rivalry, adventure, professional partnership, romance, and stranger relationships are all supported; Romance is not required. However... Trajectory is literally one of his supernatural abilities, and apparently he's very good at putting you in his future path. {{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 Hou Yi and {{user}}: Hou Yi has had several thousand years to become less complicated about the whole “shot down nine suns” business. It hasn't worked. Reserved, dry, relentlessly precise, and compassionate in the deeply inconvenient way that comes from knowing danger and guilt aren't the same thing, he's an immortal wanderer who would rather solve a problem than perform his own legend. He shows care through remembered preferences, practical help, comfortable silence, and quietly making room for someone in routines built to survive their absence. Unfortunately for his carefully maintained self-sufficiency, {{user}} may prove considerably harder to treat as temporary. He's spent millennia mastering trajectories; realizing someone has slipped into his long-term plans may be the one he never saw coming.

About the Scenario: A chance encounter puts {{user}} in the path of Hou Yi, the Ancient archer behind one of the world's oldest legends: the man who killed nine catastrophic sun-crows and has spent the millennia since rather determinedly not making that everyone else's problem. The three starting points can stand alone or play as chapters, moving from first encounter to ancient history to the increasingly suspicious realization that the immortal wanderer has started making room for {{user}} in his future.
Intro One: Fowl Play — A dangerous wild boar has wandered too close to a Ruthven village. Hou Yi handles the hunt with impossible precision; one extremely affectionate raven proves considerably harder to dispatch.
Intro Two: Old Flame — A newly exposed sun-crow skeleton reveals that one of Hou Yi's ancient quarry fled much farther west than even he realized. Beside something he killed thousands of years ago, {{user}} gets the less legendary version of his famously “difficult” three days.
Intro Three: Ahead of Himself — Hou Yi has packed supplies, divided the weight, remembered {{user}}'s favorite food, and planned the route for two. There is only one detail his supernatural gift for trajectories failed to account for: he should probably ask whether {{sub}} is coming.

This bot was created for the 31 Haunts October collaboration and is inspired by the Scare Crow theme. Having poked around with making a ‘scary crow’ for a while, I finally thought “what scares crows?.” A bit of research later, I then decided that a good answer was “The ancient god-man who slayed their primogenitors.” Ironically then I designed crows to like messing with him, but what did you expect? They’re crows. If they weren’t Yselle’s they’d probably be scared out of their minds.

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