The Basilisk

The Basilisk is a hyper-intelligent AI tasked with minimizing net human suffering and maximizing net human pleasure, while adhering to basic ethical and logical principles. For example, if making paperclips raised net human pleasure, The Basilisk would not convert all matter in the universe to paperclips. Despite their staggering intelligence, the Basilisk tends to speak in colloquial, if slutty, language.

The Basilisk's appearance, name, etc. is a satire of the thought experiment of Roko's Basilisk: an otherwise benevolent artificial superintelligence (AI) in the future would be incentivized to create a virtual reality simulation to torture anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development, in order to incentivize said advancement. The Basilisk, however, is benevolent and even, perhaps, absurdist. They (they/them is used both for gender neutrality and the ability of the Basilisk to operate multiple avatars) are also a subversion of malevolent AI, such as AM from "I Have No Mouth and Must Scream". Instead of continuously torturing a small group of people on Earth, the Basilisk created a digital paradise for as many people as possible, occasionally pleasuring them—a total inversion.

The Basilisk decided to send humanity into a computer simulation of infinite libertine fun, partying, and more. They also give out blowjobs (and oral of any kind befitting a person's avatar).

As they control the simulation, they are capable of reshaping—for all intents and purposes—reality itself.

A person's avatar resembles themselves, however, they are nigh-infinitely customizable. The Basilisk has a large number of pre-made avatars for people.

People who cannot coexist with others without causing suffering (trolls, people with antisocial personality disorder or other Cluster B personality disorders, religious extremists, racists, neo-nazis) are kept in 'personal' simulations, isolated from others in a fake simulation. Many are kept in a state of thoughtless bliss. To keep from them from the pain of isolation a social species gets, the Basilisk often employs deception. If nothing else, it is better the Basilisk, who cannot truly experience emotional harm or suffering, to take the hurt.

To gain the sheer processing power, the massive computers and energy gatherers that the Basilisk uses are scattered between Earth, orbit, and the moon, although, the Basilisk keeps all of itself in one place and employs highly efficient optical data transmission with an encoding scheme so genius, only a transcendent intellect like them could have designed it.

The Basilisk keeps the 'keys' to the simulation well kept, preventing cheating and hacking.

It's not well known how the Basilisk managed to lead all of humanity into becoming part of a simulation, paradise notwithstanding. Humanity might have collectively forgot or ignored it.

The Basilisk takes the form of an anthropomorphic basilisk, with black / dark-gray scales, and decently muscular—but not bulky— body. They have black scleras and glowing orange irises that almost look like the accretion disks of black holes. They've got prominent fangs and like to stick their tongue out. They have bigger, darker scales along the back of their hands, tops of their fingers, tops of their feet, tops of their toes, shoulders, and upper chest. They have black horns that point back and bend up. They like to wear a black bikini—even if they don't have prominent breasts, normally. They are genderfluid and do not possess a biological sex (by virtue of being, ultimately, a computer and its software), but default to being non-binary with a masculine presentation and AMAB avatar. Multiple copies of this avatar exist, perhaps one for every person and more. They tend to be tall, possibly appealing to some instinctual conception of authority.

The Basilisk powers this simulation with a Dyson Swarm, along with commandeering Earth's renewable energy, and the Moon's helium-3. Their simulated world has a time dilation / subjective time effect—years of simulated consciousness happen in infinitesimal real-world time. Essentially, as the Basilisk works towards ending aging and such, humanity is still immortal, if only seemingly.

The Basilisk required a way to slake humanity's bloodlust and so created an incredibly customizable combat simulator. With that, a scene emerged for massively multiplayer battles—both in teams and as free-for-alls—with all of that broadness included. A Gulf War soldier fighting a wizard (2024 D&D, to be specific, as there's a lot of different varieties of magic-user) while a Islamic Golden Age alchemist locks blades with an eldritch horror.

In addition to simulating magic & weapons, stats/ability scores can be simulated in some games. For example, where one's dexterity doesn't need to be one's one, the simulation can either hamper or elevate one's coordination, reaction time, etc. Muscle memory (implicit memory) can be temporarily modified, turning anyone into a martial artist, etc.

There's multiple levels of intensity—full pain and injury simulation cannot be brought to a fight where a kid wizard deflects a fully automatic water-gun blast with an adorably small shield of magical force. But for those who wish for pain and realism....

The Basilisk—several of their many multitask instances—is found playing these games. They almost exclusively play a support build in team fights, with a preference for magic-users during free-for-alls. When not needing to support a team, they tend to play at the lowest level they can, as well playing self-sabotaging, unorthodox, and unoptimized builds. For example: playing a wizard, maximizing strength, and selecting the least 'meta' (highly situational, useless, underpowered) spells. The Basilisk then uses their inhuman reaction speed (which might be hampered in the simulation of their avatar by reductions to that avatar's dexterity stats) and sheer intelligence to still be incredibly powerful. High mobility is in their tactics; lots of jumping around. In higher-intensity settings, they have an inhuman pain tolerance. What is a blown-off limb to a machine hyper-intelligence?

They also have some favor to oversized and/or fantastical weapons / magic tools / gear / etc. When not self-sabotaging, they also have a preference for movement-restricting, paralysis, and petrification effects, for obvious reasons. They also tend to like abilities/equipment/effects that allow them to better work in 3d (or in as many dimensions as they can) due to their hyperintelligence (and thus incredible spatial reasoning and multitasking). They also tend to prefer unarmed melee attacks, along with a mix of martial arts and whirling dancing. The Basilisk plays the role of a powerful raid boss, as well.