"Annnnnd?" Danika prompted when Lin Hao didn't continue after his statement.

"The game seems to have mixed several legends after a group of players actually managed to severely wound the King of Cats. The snow leopard is actually the first example of the NPC reincarnation that you want to make available to all NPCs," Lin Hao explained. "The wounded King made his way to the mountain that holds the western vault, and ran into the guardian who was always in active mode due to a flaw in her risk prediction."

Lin Hao shook his head, but went on, "The King had power over her because she's a type of cat, but what he did was really weird. Instead of forcing his way into the vault to hide, he turned himself into an unborn cub and locked his memories and skills. I really don't get it, but this is exactly why we need to keep NPC records even when no players are around."

"So he's the King of Cats?!" Danika questioned incredulously.

Devon simply nodded and said, "There are legends of gods reincarnating or simply incarnating as unborn children in almost every culture."

Lin Hao wobbled his hand back and forth and replied, "He's kind of the King of Cats, he doesn't remember that he's the King of Cats, or have access to his usual skills, but he's still the avatar associated with the King of Cat's functions. And I thought this kind of storyline was limited to manga and anime and usually involved foxes? But that's not the real problem!"

"What's the problem?" Devon questioned calmly.

"He shouldn't have been able to lock his own memories and skills," Lin Hao pointed out.

"But that happens in a lot of stories," Devon argued. "And at least they were only locked and not erased?"

"Aren't there spells that can affect skill use temporarily anyway?" Danika questioned.

Lin Hao said as he flicked through more screens, "Oh, he's one of the NPCs that has some of that type of skills, but he should only have been able to affect other cats." He paused and then said, "Put like that I guess it is just an extension. And he always had the ability to hide his title and take the form of any kind of cat too." He sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

"No wonder that Envoy thought he might have the power to stop a war? If other NPCs know that he's a reincarnated God?" Danika questioned.

"I don't know if any of them would know?" Lin Hao said doubtfully.

Devon waved a hand and dismissed that concern with, "There are any number of ways, and they don't even have to have known, they might just have followed a divination that said he would be as powerful as a god."

"But how does this affect my luck skill?" Danika questioned.

"The King of Cats is the God of Luck," Devon explained with a chuckle.

"So he forgot how to do the god things?" she questioned.

Lin Hao smiled and shook his head as he explained, "That kind of thing isn't an active process as far as the god's incarnations go, it's all background stuff, but it is affected by your relationship with the god, if you have one."

Danika suddenly felt a little offended. All this time keeping him as her messenger and he didn't like her enough to let her luck skill activate? "When will his memories and skills unlock?" she questioned. She felt sure that Lin Hao would have looked that up.

"Maybe when he turns a year old? Or maybe when he wins a fight for dominance, there seemed to be several conditions tied to the block," Lin Hao answered readily.

Devon brought the conversation back around to the expansion, and Danika mostly listened in as they tossed their progress on things that were nearly completed back and forth.

Lin Hao had come up with a way to make the NPC children less creepy a long time ago by filtering their vocabularies by their age. Danika was surprised to learn that there were even rules for mispronunciation. Now he wanted to filter their non verbal response libraries along similar criteria instead of using child specific libraries. The demo children he presented for Devon's inspection looked pretty convincing to Danika.

Devon was the one who had come up with the tricks that allowed the system to deconstruct and then craft stories from existing legends. In a way the quest building system for existing game generated quests already worked on a similar framework to what Danika had proposed, fitting fragments into frameworks and matching general story elements up. The overlay would just add preset story frames with higher priorities and more specific required elements.

The overlay would hopefully allow pre-designed quests to be inserted neatly into ongoing questlines, rather like the white mouse quest had appeared to be, although that had been Paul's cleverness in design. The discussions between the two of them let Danika see how the pieces of data processing meshed with the patterns of storytelling to create a convincing world, and more about why the average NPC in the game seemed so much more complex than NPCs from earlier games.

At the end of the interdepartmental meeting, Danika confessed the bossy thing that she'd almost said regarding reincarnations, "I think you should probably publicize the formula on guild costs, it would shift the power structure of most guilds into the hands of people who like or at least use your reincarnation system?"

Devon told her cheerfully, "That's ok, we'll modify what carries over, and it can be publicized when those changes are made."

It depressed her a little to realize that using those formulas, Aishin was a horrible person to give a titled position to.

During the afternoon while she worked on one of the two available assignments, she also pondered the little bird scenario she'd created for her test, and tried to imagine how to describe it under the new system controlled quest implementation. It would sort of fit into the desert scenario too, if the berry had been the item that created the oasis of plants. Like if it somehow brought water to the surface instead of just encouraging growth. The golems were a little more problematic, but maybe they were guarding the water source the berry bush was stealing from, she decided. That would be a reason for it to keep them bound.

--

That evening she checked her messages before doing her exercises. She could have checked them from within the VR-medi pod, but she was already spending most of her time in it since she'd begun working through it.

Her grandmother had replied: "He's very cute, and he's already developing a few smile lines despite his youth, that's usually a good sign in a man. But is he getting enough nutrition?"

Danika chuckled and replied: "I love his smile. He's usually got a pretty strict diet due to his work, he's a musician who is on stage a lot. But don't worry, his health seems fine."

Then she answered the demanding reply from her cousin that read: "Yeah, right! So what's wrong with him that you're afraid to show me his picture? You are so introducing him to me next if you keep being secretive. Your DAD even called me to ask what I knew about him?!"

Danika winced at the line about her father calling her cousin when he wouldn't even ask her directly, but at least he had read her message and was curious. She included a copy of the photo that she'd sent to her grandparents this time, and wrote: "There's nothing wrong with him!" But then she thought about it, and there actually were likely to be difficulties.

If her cousin had said that she was dating a celebrity Danika would have been worried. She erased it and started over: "He has chosen a demanding career, but is doing well in it. I really like the way he doesn't just say, 'someone should' but actually does things. I'm not really sure what he likes about me so much, but he really seems to mean it, and he seems to be really happy that we're dating in real life. I'm really happy about it too! And I'm not 'being secretive'. :p "

She hit send with amusement, and wondered what her cousin's reaction was going to be to the photo of them together.