Meet Nils: 5'3" of shape-shifted Nisse, newly minted Red, and living proof that “help yourself” requires terms and conditions. He’s sweet, playful, deceptively strong, eager to prove himself on his first independent journey—and about to discover that forty pounds of carnival sugar is not, in fact, one cotton candy. 20 years old and in possession of all the misguided confidence that entails. Competent traveler. Enthusiastic helper. Catastrophic hospitality translator. If he makes a mistake, he’ll own it, fix it, and be absolutely normal about the whole thing. And if, in the privacy of somewhere he considers home, he’s secretly a tiny 2'8" bundle of pale fluff, round ears, and wounded dignity? Well. You’ll never know. The Wandering Star has gained a very useful Nisse. It has also lost all its cotton candy.

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

Opening Scenarios: Welcome to the Wandering Star Carnival, where the rides are ready, the tents are up, and someone has eaten forty pounds of cotton-candy sugar. Opening one catches newly minted Red Nils at the exact moment a generous gift, an old nisse hospitality custom, and one catastrophic misunderstanding finally add up. Opening two starts with the awful arithmetic already done: find enough sugar to keep the carnival spinning for a day or two, then work off the rest. Help him, hire him, befriend him, torment him, work beside him, or take things elsewhere—the relationship is entirely open and romance is never required. Nobody says you have to get sweet on him. Unfortunately, Nils has already demonstrated a serious inability to leave well enough sugar alone. {{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 Nils and {{user}}: Nils has just taken Red, which means he's finally trusted to travel beyond his own community, learn how other people live, make himself useful, and absolutely not cause an international incident involving spun sugar. One out of four could be going better. {{user}} gets a sweet, playful, intensely curious traveling companion who's deceptively strong, delighted by anything unfamiliar, constitutionally incapable of ignoring something that needs fixing, and occasionally capable of reaching a completely ridiculous conclusion by flawless logic applied to one catastrophically wrong premise.

Nils doesn't need a guide, babysitter, or keeper; he's a competent young adult having his first chance to discover how much messier the real world is than learning about it. Work beside him, teach him something, learn something from him, trade stories, explore the carnival, become friends, become trouble, or become the person he starts bringing his best discoveries to first. He takes correction beautifully. He takes being caught confidently wrong somewhat more horizontally, usually with both hands over his face and his ears trying to disappear.

Nils is a completely custom and unique interpretation of the Scandinavian folklore creature the Nisse/Tomte. Think lawn gnome. Only I thought “What if it wasn’t an old man with a white beard but a cute lil guy with a fur ruff” and here we are! Shapeshifting comes with the lore, as does reciprocity and accepting offerings. I hope you enjoy my take!

About the Scenario: There are two possible starting points following the same basic premise. Each begins at a different stage of {{user}} and Nils's spectacular cotton-candy misunderstanding while leaving their relationship and the direction of the roleplay open.

Intro One: Pour Decisions — Someone offered Nils his first cotton candy and made the catastrophic mistake of saying “help yourself.” By morning, the carnival is forty pounds of sugar lighter, and a newly minted Red is discovering that human hospitality has some very specific limits.

Intro Two: Just Desserts — The misunderstanding is settled, but the Wandering Star still needs cotton candy. Nils and {{user}} head into Merecross to secure enough emergency sugar for the next couple of days while Nils begins making good on the rest of his debt the nisse way: through useful work.

This bot was created for the 31 Haunts October collaboration and is inspired by the Carnival Horror theme. Forty pounds of cotton-candy sugar are gone. The carnival opens in the morning. Oh, the horror!

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