Welcome to the Dog Days of Podcasting, 2022 season. This year we’re taking part by creating 30 NPCs to use with table top gaming, writing projects, or other creative endeavors. These NPCs are system agnostic, but may include minor suggestions for how to run the characters with a party of adventures and explorers. They are written with a specific genre in mind, but will include notation for how to use them within at least two other realms.
That said, let’s get started.
Today, we’re visiting The Swarmed Data, an NPC designed for Urban Fantasy campaigns.
The Swarmed Data
III
In the wake of our day to day lives, we leave behind a tapestry of data across multitudes of devices and systems. Historic events, casual encounters, our movement and communications; all points that can be collected, organized, and analyzed. But when magic manipulates systems, and digital requests are fueled by ritual sourcing, that sea of knowledge can take on a new existence. They birth a digital phantom, ready to join a swarm of others living an echo of the lives they mimic.
Never alive, and never to die, The Swarmed Data is a facsimile of a living being. Magic mixed with an avalanche of data in a world adjusting to digital life has given rise to vagrants of code. These wanders watch from device cameras, speak through myriad fonts across screens, and spread themselves across networks in ways that shouldn’t be. They post about their favorite topics, live stream a party’s adventure, and even serving as the occasional watchful eye to help their favorite protagonists.
These packages of noise are young datavores. They are tempted by the rare, the new, the fresh. Most never want to do things other than to horde or distribute information. Using this, they can be tempted to aid or harm, infiltrate or sever. They are also full of information, and if caught and dismantled may provide useful data about the events and person that unintentionally sired them.
In urban fantasy, they are the whispers in the net, the ghosts in the machine. Living social media accounts and magpies of access. Starring out at the divine world through glass prayer boxes.
In cyberpunk stories, they’re the swarm of the digital dead. The forgotten accounts of people a century gone, shifted from database to database until something clicked and new personas formed. Eager for new access and unlimited opportunity for misunderstanding.
In ages of legend, they’re the lost stories given life by ember sprites. Birthed by storytellers around bonfires, these aspects found connection in the dreams of mortals, and took shape on the periphery of the mind’s witness.
Like shadows, they are us but not. Our forms blurred, lost, and reforged through imagination. They do not understand the data they know and have a challenging time sharing it with those who ask. But they love the ask. Curious as children, dangerous as cats; one must never underestimate the digital native.
The audio portion of this episode is shared on a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Sounds and music are provided by Syrinscape’s Club Flux Soundset. Please see the website for individual song and sound usage. The text for this episode is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Have a good time with the character, and let me know if you use them for something.
Until tomorrow.