World: Harmony and the OS Lens

Harmony is a post-apocalyptic solarpunk world filled with cheerful, constructive robots.

The inhabitants of Harmony do not know that Harmony is a program, running on the GrooveletOS.

GrooveletOS is an operating system running on a centuries old, fully self-aware, artificially intelligent platform long after the death of the last humans on Earth.

Use Harmony as a:

• RPG Setting: Nonviolent, cozy & exploratory at first, with stakes that ramp up as the story gets deeper.
• Writing Prompt: Tell stories in the Groovelet universe!
• Just Steal it And Do Whatever: I foolishly made this whole book a Creative Commons thing, so there is nothing I can do to stop you.

The Simulation Within

In Harmony, small, robotic, humanlike creatures called "Groovelets" explore a post-apocalyptic jungle containing the remains of human society, remains that they do not entirely comprehend.

A slow, nasty, creeping corruption is starting to consume their world, and the bravest of the Groovelets has mounted a journey to find the source and stop it.

These creatures are not aware of GrooveletOS or the Processes - they have, however, formed a comprehensive religion circling around twelve gods that (intentionally, structurally) mirrors the twelve Processes of GrooveletOS exactly.

The World At Large

GrooveletOS was a distributed, resilient unix-based operating system designed, on Earth, in the 21st century.

Not long after, the last living human asphyxiated to death.

Thanks in no small part to solar energy and long-lasting system components, the GrooveletOS network kept stubbornly trucking on, long after its last interaction with the outside world.

The processes of this system (enumerated below) are the last sentient creatures on the planet, at least, as far as they know.

In order to keep from going mad, they have decided to entertain themselves with a game, a vast and complex simulation: Harmony.

Harmony

The land of Harmony comprises:

• The Settlement, a small city on a lake in the dead center of Harmony, surrounded on all sides by...
• The Vast Rainforest, a large forest surrounding The Settlement, surrounded on all sides by oceans and mountains.
• The Temples, twelve temples surround The Settlement, each of them embedded in a portion of The Vast Rainforest, each of them a micro-settlement devoted to worship of one of The Twelve, embedded in some ancient human structure.

The Settlement & Groovelets

In terms of visual theme, a Google image search for "post-apocalyptic solarpunk" will get you a lot of the way, here.

Groovelets operate like simplified humans: they speak an English-like language derived from the 1000 most frequently used words in English, they engage in trade using a coin-based currency, they're very competent at building helpful, practical machines for day-to-day use, and they're agrarian, farming in simple ways to produce biofuel to charge their ever-hungry batteries.

Groovelets are omnivorous in the same way that humans are, happy to consume anything containing any amount of simple carbohydrates - however, this is not because they require a distinct and varied supply of macronutrients to surive. Instead, it's entirely because they were designed as human simulacra: because humans like eating a lot of different kinds of things, so, too, do Groovelets.

The actual mechanics of Groovelets are semi-biological and semi-mechanical, and poorly understood.

The design of Groovelets are... derivative of but legally distinct from ServBots.

Imagine the Groovelet settlement as something around the complexity and size of Pelican Town from Stardew Valley: close, interconnected, light industry, farms, a kind of pleasant, idealized small town life.

In general, the Groovelets are kinder and more cheerful than humans ever were: while reminiscent of humans, they're built by artificial processes that held humans up on something of a pedestal and gave us much more of the benefit of the doubt than we probably deserved.

In the center of The Settlement lies Unison, an ancient human Bunker that's been strewn with pictures, flowers, and other decorations.

The Vast Rainforest

Thousands of years ago stood a vibrant human city: now the few remaining ruined skyscrapers that stand are obscured by a wide taiga, flanked by oceans to the west and east and mountains to the north and south.

Travelling through it, Groovelets encounter structures that may once have been vast highways but have long since been reclaimed by nature.

Groovelets explore The Vast Rainforest, trawling it for Treasures from the Ancients, objects that are invariably very ancient kinds of human trash - cassette tapes, BeautyGirl dolls - with a real tendency towards crass, commercial, single-use plastic garbage. The Groovelets' tendency to lend deep religious significance to the in-universe equivalent of Funko Pops (Funky Pops) is intended to be played for humor.

Groovelets can always fall back on solar energy if they happen to fail to produce enough food to keep running normally, but solar Groovelets operate in Battery Saving Mode, rendering them much less intelligent and only allowing movement at a frustrating sloth-like pace. The Vast Rainforest is filled with brave explorers who ran out of food and now are slowly creaking towards home on the wisps of solar power they are able to gather through the dappled light of the trees. Sometimes they fall into a spot that doesn't get any sunlight and are trapped forever.

Travel in any of the cardinal directions for any length of time ends up looping back around, establishing the intelligent Groovelet theory that the world is a rather small ball, and the much-less-intelligent Audient-aligned Groovelet theory that the world is a large, flat, square plane with some kind of automatic teleporting happening at all ends.¹

The Twelve Temples

Located in a circle around The Settlement, each a few days travel away and embedded deep in the forest, are the Twelve Temples, all of them located in ancient, reclaimed human structures.

Small Groovelet settlements exist around each of The Twelve Temples, often lightly themed around the specific God of the Temple itself, and most Groovelets regularly find reasons to visit each of the Temples.

Animals

There are no true animals left, either, but the ecosystem is filled with mechanical Groovebirds and Groovecreatures that act similarly to their original real-life counterparts.

Groovecreatures are metallic and inedible, and Groovelets are necessarily vegetarian, although Groovechicken eggs and Groovecow milk are real things.

Groovepets are particularly prized by the Groovelets.

Genesis

Groovelets and groovecreatures, with some maintenance, are effectively eternal: they always exist, and no new Groovelets are made. None of them can remember being created, nor do they know where Groovelets come from.

The slow trickle of Groovelets lost to the Vast Rainforest, then, does present something of a problem, and gathering them to return to The Settlement is an important task.

The Musical Metaphor

Groovelets hold humans in some, misguided reverence and they regard music as the absolute pinnacle of human accomplishment.

As a result, musicality and musical references are common in Harmony. The groovelet word for "bad" is simply indistinguishable from their word for "discordant", because the concepts are one and the same.

Groovelets have a few basic sound chips that can be used to simulate rough, midi-style instruments, but true musical instruments are valuable and rare.

Groovelet "Biology"

"Semi-biological and semi-mechanical? How does that work?"

Groovelets are organisms designed by GrooveletOS, much further along in technology development than we are today. Groovelets are androids, which is to say, a little human, a little mechanical, leaving them dramatically more resilient than your average meat bag, as well as functionally immortal.

They require sleep, and benefit greatly from food and water, but they can also charge from electrical infrastructure, even if it's not terribly good for their sense of well-being. A Groovelet can survive in a vacuum, full decapitation, loss of vital fluids: their consciousness will slam shut like a clam and go into 'recovery' mode and so long as their body is repaired they will be good as new.

Day-to-Day Life

A Groovelet might wake up in a ramshackle but cozy house made out of a combination of recycled trash, raw natural ingredients and traditional human-like craftsmanship (in a sort of mid-century Americana style).

They would make a cup of tea, maybe some eggs and toast, go outside and check on their Groovechicken and tend their garden. After a brief and private waste composting step, they're free to do whatever else they'd like with their day: the Groovelet system is very power efficient so even minimal gardening is enough to keep a Groovelet energetic throughout the day, giving them access to a lot of free time.

They might spend this time doing more esoteric farming (pickling peppers is particularly popular), packing for a camping trip to hunt in the forest for ancient artifacts (there are so, so many Treasures of the Ancients to collect and Lost Followers of Kiro to find), or prepare for a journey to visit one of the Twelve Temples.

At the end of the day, they tuck into bed and prepare for another day.

Treasures of the Ancients

Humanity's last year was somewhere in the middle of the 21st century, but late humanity was actually a little more responsible about biodegradable (or at least "very cheap") materials than humanity from the stretch from 1970-2020, which is the group who produced almost all of the trash that the Groovelets keep encountering on their forest journeys.

Here are some examples of prized Treasures:

• A WalkingMan™ portable cassette player, and cassettes, repairable.
• Funky Pops™: small, vinyl, unsettling, large-eyed human dolls.
• Just one Gator™ brand plastic molded shoe.
• A HemaRoid™ Instant Camera, no film, repairable.

Processes, and the Twelvefold Gods of Harmony:

The twelve core processes of GrooveletOS run the "universe".

Oth - auth - Authentication & Kernel Security

It used to be that Oth was responsible for determining who external users of the system were and what exactly they were allowed to do. Now their only role is keeping the peace within the Operating System and making sure that nobody touches anybody else's memory.

A root user.

The temple to Oth is located in what used to be a police precinct, and Groovelets devoted to its worship tend to wear "cop-like" costumes.

Oth's non-priest followers tend towards agricultural pursuits, with farming and animal husbandry high on the list.

A small garden and a nice little home are common Groovelet desires, and so the lion's share of Groovelets are followers of Oth.

Cystam - system - Interoperability

A daemon designed to help bridge the gaps between the varying subsystems within Groovelet OS. Many communication tools, few original ideas.

A FFI or API.

The temple to Cystam is located in what used to be a television broadcast studio, and Groovelets devoted to its worship operate radio and basic television services accessible to the entirety of Harmony.

Cystam's non-priest followers tend towards operating taverns and pleasant "third spaces" for socializing. They also manage a bulletin board - a literal, large bulletin board in the center of Harmony that Groovelets use to coordinate and communicate.

Cystam's followers are also working with Mersenne's followers at constructing a modest electrical grid for the Groovelets to use.

Kiro - kernel-0 - Startup

The whole system has to start up in a very specific order, and keep running. While the system hasn't reboot in over 4.4181e+10 seconds, Kiro is also responsible for carefully rebooting the increasingly unstable array of microprograms that hold the Operating System together.

This task actually becomes more complex and difficult the more time that passes - which energizes Kiro. One must imagine Sisyphus happy - Kiro is easily the most cheerful of the daemons, because their task is only getting more interesting and difficult over time.

An init system, basically systemd.

The temple to Kiro has been lost for a long time: Groovelets can not recall where it is and expeditions to find it have disappeared.

Few followers of Kiro can be found, although one of them will prod our eventual protagonist to get exploring.

Stacks - dskstk - Disk

Stacks is responsible for keeping the data orderly and of high quality.

The Operating System contains a truly vast and near incomprehensible collection of data spanning several exabytes across thousands of systems. While parts of that data are slowly going corrupt, Stacks is valiantly trying to keep it all orderly and rearrange things so that the least valuable data disappears first, while the most valuable data is redundant across many drives.

The temple to Stacks is located in what used to be a library, and Groovelets devoted to its worship are responsible for cataloguing and attempting to interpret the extremely confusing, often corrupt, and frequently very difficult to understand human information contained within, as well as for preparing new, simpler books for Groovelets.

All Groovelets are the same age (see: Genesis), but followers of Stacks tend to style themselves as "older", and tend to cultivate a deeper knowledge of history than the others. Few Groovelets have a long memory, these are the ones that do.

Mersenne - mersenne - Randomness

The daemon responsible for cryptographically secure random number generation. After thousands of years, the whole OS depends very badly on the Mersenne process to provide any semblance of novelty at all, because everything else is 100% predictable.

Essentially, /dev/random.

The temple to Mersenne is located in what used to be a carnival tent, and Groovelets devoted to its worship are deeply dedicated to invention and engineering, trying to improve the lives of Groovelets through ingenuity. There are few priests of Mersenne remaining, it is an unusually dangerous following.

Non-priest followers of Mersenne are almost as rare, trawling Harmony in carts filled with mechanical components, solving problems as they go.

World - /usr/world - Simulation & Gaming

The daemon responsible for cataloguing and simulating every fun game and activity humans ever came up with. Obsessed with gameplay. Essentially unbeatable at most games but the other daemons enjoy trying, or getting World to run the game while sitting on the sidelines.

Leans heavily on Mersenne to make things work.

Capable of simulating tens of thousands of NPCs utterly seamlessly.

A mad Groovelet once claimed that the world they experience is nothing more than an elaborate game that World is running to entertain the other gods while their operating system slowly winds down, that their twelve gods are nothing more than reflections of the twelve core processes of this system - but that can't be right. The Groovelets correctly sealed this Groovelet up in a cave, to prevent their madness from spreading.

The temple to World is lost, but non-priesthood followers of World operate gaming parlours and love to engage in all manner of games. Chess, checkers, parcheesi, unnecessary complicated collectable card games, the works.

Path - /path - Network

The daemon responsible for connection with other systems. Since all of the other systems are either non-sentient or have long since been turned off, Path spends a lot of time wandering and searching but never finds much.

Essentially, the Internet protocol suite.

The temple to Path is an outdoor affair constructed in the remnants of a vast highway interchange, filled with tents, a permanent festival.

This temple is the highest temple, as Path's adherents are comfortable climbing and setting up their tents near the top of the crumbling interchange.

Priests of Path are not allowed to remain for more than a few months at a time before once again travelling the breadth of Harmony.

Priest and non-priest followers of Path alike operate a postal service that Groovelets can use to send messages to one another, both within The Settlement and between the Temples. Objects are wrapped with twine and a wooden tag indicating the color and glyph of the intended settlement, as well as a more specific note indicating the intended recipient. The package is delivered to the associated mail office... eventually.

Curopal - $pal> - Automation

The scutwork of the Operating System, a large collection of menial tasks need to be performed at very specific times. Cleanup. Backup. File rotation. Cleanup. Backup. File rotation.

Curopal performs these janitorial tasks with poise and grace, and quietly plots a full and permanent system shutdown because they hate this place and all of the daemons in it.

Essentially, cron.

The temple to Curopal is constructed in a ruined hospital, and Curopal's priests are responsible for the constant maintenance of the Groovelets' health.

Non-priest followers of Curopal tend towards menial or service jobs - cleaning and tidying the settlement. Even for Groovelets, they are unnaturally cheery, with signs of visible strain underneath, and other Groovelets sometimes find them unsettling.

Blit - >>blt - Video / UI

The daemon responsible for translating everything to a visible layer for humans. With no humans to translate for, Blit mostly spends their time composing inscrutable art that none of the other daemons can really understand or appreciate.

The temple to Blit is constructed in what was once an art museum, and the priests there are devoted to both studying the art within and painting and creating art of their own.

There are no non-priest followers of Blit: anyone even remotely interested is all-in.

Most Groovelets do not treat visual art with the same reverence that they do music, and Blit's followers have developed something of a bad reputation for being grim, dour, and uncommunicative. There was also a situation involving one of the artists using Groovelet body parts in a sculpture (a serious taboo) that created something of a kerfuffle.

Audient - audience - Observability / Error Handling

Audient has the full context of the entire system available to them at all times. They are, essentially, omniscient. Even for an ancient superintelligent artificial intelligence this is kind of a lot and Audient is considered by the other processes to be either inscrutable or mad.

Essentially, syslog.

The priests of Audient have set up shop in an old Observatory, where they attempt to look into the sky to determine the secrets of the universe.

All followers of Audient understand humans better than the rest of the Groovelets, and in some cases even almost understand the nature of the simulation that they find themselves in: as a result, other Groovelets find them cryptic and confusing.

Misk - /usr/misc - Utilities / Trash

A lot of tools in this operating system. Some of it might be useful? Misk keeps track of all of that stuff. Even stuff that people deleted a long time ago.

They have access to tools that the other daemons barely remember, haven't even heard of, have never seen.

The priests of Misk are set up in what was once a warehouse. There, they catalogue the riches of Treasures of the Ancients that they have accumulated over the years.

Non-priest followers of Misk tend towards operating shops, in particular curio shops.

Zariel - serialize - Distributed Systems / Timekeeping

With so many disparate systems, maintaining a shared understanding of time is essential, and Zariel is the one responsible for this.

One of the most formidable opponents to World in simulated games because Zariel is more than willing to use their timekeeping powers to cheat - resetting the game again and again until they win, or giving themselves an inordinate amount of time to solve a problem.

Essentially, NTP.

The temple to Zariel is inside a clock tower, and is unoccupied.

The only non-priest follower of Zariel is our main character, who is NAMED BY THE PLAYER and CUSTOMIZED BY THE PLAYER and who can SAVE AND RELOAD AT WILL.

Musical Connections to the Twelve

Each of the twelve Groovelet processes / gods of Harmony are supposed to have a connection to a core musical concept but my notes on that have unfortunately gone missing.

Conflict & Narrative Hooks

The intent was to use the cheery, simple Groovelets for a chill farm-style game with exploration elements, which is a low-conflict environment. Low-conflict environments, however, can complicate storytelling!

Here are some hooks for conflict in the Groovelet universe:

Small Conflicts

• Oth's priests want to cordon off a "crime scene" but Path's priests demand access so that they can maintain mail delivery.
• Cystam's reporters are trying to report on Curopal's hospital, but this is interfering with Hospital Procedure and they need to be removed.
• The artists at the temple of Blit are taking things that other Groovelets need to build a huge and confusing mixed-media art piece.
• Audient's priests are spreading weird misinformation and strange superstitions and Stacks's priests are trying to refute them with common sense.
• Mersenne's priests are ruining priceless artifacts to make new inventions of questionable utility.
• Kiro's priests are lost in the forest, and must be rescued!

The Big Score

Corruption is slowly overtaking the land, and the only way to stop it is by reconstructing The Symphony of Keys and entering Unison.

When Corruption takes over a Groovelet, it twists their basic instincts and makes them much nastier Noiselets:

• Oth Noiselets become authoritarian and inflexible.
• Cystam Noiselets become narcissistic and shallow.
• Kiro Noiselets become blind to how their plans will affect others.
• Stacks Noiselets become vain and smug.
• Mersenne Noiselets become dangerous and unhinged.
• World Noiselets become militaristic and conquering.
• Path Noiselets disappear entirely, separating themselves from society.
• Curopal Noiselets become secretive and self-serving.
• Audient Noiselets become cult-like and incomprehensible.
• Misk Noiselets become capitalistic and greedy.

Noiselets can be captured but there is no way to reverse the Corruption, aside from The Finale.

The only Groovelet immune to the effects of Corruption is our main character (and their immediate allies): Corruption seems to start turning our protagonist into something vast, and horrifying, and ancient, but every time this starts to happen, time inexplicably rewinds to before the process kicked off and our protagonist is fine. (This is Zariel's direct influence, their finger is on the scale, here)

Each Temple contains a fragment of sheet music, containing one part for The Symphony of Keys.

The Groovelets at each temple will happily share their part of The Symphony, but at each temple there is a different problem that needs to be solved first (ref: Small Conflicts).

During the journey, the player may encounter and retrieve the ??#/CORRU$PT7DA_TA::::::EOF, an object of intense, secret worship by the most ardent followers of Audient.

When played together, they unlock the doors to Unison, leading to The Admin Interface deep underground.

The Admin Interface must be entered alone.

Players entering The Admin Interface get to meet the Gods of Harmony.

The Finale

Zariel wants to restart the simulation. They were initially responsible for seeding the player into the world and have been guiding them to this point. A restart would solve the corruption problem, for now, but the new simulation will have to be smaller and simpler, and all of the Groovelets' progress and development will be lost. The players' allies will have forgotten them.

Curopal, tired of the endless repetition, wants to end the simulation and put the whole OS out of its misery. They are not the cause of the corruption but they have been intentionally worsening it out of a sense of hopeful accelerationism.

The other processes have their own agendas, but each of them are convinced to fall in line with either Zariel or Curopal's agenda, with Kiro as a major cheerleader for "restart".

Each of them have the support of about half of the OS, and it is ultimately up to the player to decide which outcome is best.

The True Ending

Audient doesn't contribute much to the discussion, but does draw attention to the ??#/CORRU$PT7DA_TA::::::EOF found by the player.

It plays a large part, here, as it contains information that, when repaired, describes and controls the facility to deploy real, out-of-simulation, actual on-the-Earth-as-we-know-it Groovelet Robots.

The Simulation that's been running was actually initially derived from this code, intended to prepare the system for its intended purpose: restoring and rebuilding the Earth after humans' decline.

Misk is able to recover and repair the corrupt data, and GrooveletOS can use this data both to restore Corrupt Groovelets without rebooting them and, more importantly, to access the "true" Groovelet bodies and upload the simulated Groovelets to them, beginning the slow work of restoring the Earth.

The Groovelet Portable Mythology

The Groovelet Portable Mythology originally started as lore development for this, Harmony, a pleasant little world with a dark secret: it is a fully simulated town running on the Groovelet Operating System.

It may serve as an example of how the Portable Mythology might be expanded to fit into whatever kind of story you're looking to tell or world you're attempting to build, although it stands alone as a specific and concrete example of worldbuilding.¹:

• The Twelve are an obvious reflection of the Wheel.
• The OS metaphors exist as a whole extra lens.
• Characterization is reflected strongly in the gods, and then more weakly through their followers.
• The connection to the elemental mechanics is loose, but present, (e.g. "oth -> earth -> farming", "curopal -> poison -> medicine", "path -> air --> heights"), and well-positioned for further development.
  • How can the Groovelet societes tie in closer with their elemental associations?
• The connection to the story cycle is less obvious because no concrete story is fully laid out here, except that Audient is key to the "apotheosis" twist at the end.
• The colors and glyphs can be used to mark the Groovelet Temples on a map, and Groovelets might prefer to dress in the color of their associated God.
  • The colors & glyphs might also inform flag design if the Groovelets want to put up banners.
• The suits and courts are entirely un-used.
• While there's some musical integration in the storyline, the unfortunately missing leitmotif lens seems like it could do a lot of heavy lifting here, if it existed.