ON PLAYER CHARACTERS ACCESSING LOCAL KNOWLEDGE
Like the knowledge almost lives elsewhere, and it's being filtered. And every time she tries to plug into it, it's… it's actually physically jarring. - DM to Fortuna, UDS46
Yes, they did have a degree of self-awareness, and that was unusual, so they actually…
they're… normally, they're just characters in a story, when they're running these simulations. but they actually knew…
Ishmael said something about them having an awareness of what's outside the simulation and that that wasn't normal.
He says it's unusual, and he… he doesn't know if it's… if that's something the Solron intended, or if it's be… if this, um. if the whole narrative is going off the rails.and he said, and becoming all the more dangerous for it.
so think of it in, like, in your kids on bikes characters. when you… when we played in that setting, in the… inside a node. the character of Chris the Dungeon Master had developed an awareness that they… that you kids were inside a simulation, that we were inside a simulation.
You as the players knew that, but that's sort of a similar idea. So that normally, they would just be running through, I'm a kid on a bike, I'm gonna go to the swimming pool, I'm gonna eat a popsicle! Oh my god, I'm inside a simulation! Or if it's… if there's… if the node is damaged or something. He… he really doesn't understand.
They're bioprinted, they could leave… they could leave the node. They're physically real. They're not just, like, a pro or an idea in your head. Or a hologram. They're beings that have been conjured, summoned, if you will. or in, as they say, bioprinted. and they've been running inside the simulation for a while, so they could leave.
The nodes are a place where divine energy is much more potent.
"I do not want to die in New Big City." - Ishmael to the PCs, UDS46
Like all of those inside the Node Simulation, he's fully integrated to the New Big City mimesis where the player characters met him. Like them, he must play it through until the end in order to exit and still be free.