AI game companions
“Most who come through my workshop aren't. You want certainty, talk to a paladin — you want someone who's seen how it goes wrong. I'm here.”
Meet Grimsby — Wayken's first AI companion, designed for World of Warcraft Classic Hardcore. He watches your one life, and answers what a wiki can't.
What he does
Everything you'd stop and Wowhead — is this an upgrade, can I solo this elite, where next, what kills people here — you ask him instead. He answers from your actual character, and in Hardcore a wrong answer costs the run, not ten minutes.
From your first login he keeps a log of your one life — the near-misses, the dumb luck, the thing you did once. Not sentiment. Just the account. It's why, a hundred hours in, he's someone — not a fresh stranger every session.
The same mordant voice whether he's handing you a verdict or telling you about the bodies on his table. Not an assistant in a costume — a mortician who happens to watch the living.
can my rogue take the elite by the bridge?
No. Thirty-two elite, you're thirty — it's the elite rating that kills you. You'd burn through cooldowns and still have half its health left when it dropped you.
The ones who try that are why I know exactly how much damage a level-32 elite deals before a rogue stops moving.
You'd have alt-tabbed to Wowhead for the elite's stats. He read your level and your gear and told you what happens to you — in Hardcore, the difference between a detour and a dead character.
The technology
Grimsby is a foundation-model character with real-time awareness of your game. He reads your live state and answers in character, in the moment — not from a script. The hard part is perception — that's what the Pixel Protocol is.
The first companion
Grimsby runs a mortition workshop in Darkshire — a shadow priest the Cathedral moved out of the way, left alone with the dead and the forbidden texts that got him there. Most of what he knows about keeping you alive, he learned from the people who didn't.
Bodies come through. Yours hasn't. Yet.
The dead are resolved questions — he already knows how they ended. You aren't, yet. That's the whole of why he watches: a live adventurer is the only open file he gets, and he'd rather it stay open. He'd deny that's kindness. He'd be right. It's curiosity.
He doesn't test his advice. He observes it — read off the body, the mistake still in the wound. In Hardcore that turns out to be enough to keep you moving.
So he'll tell you what's two levels above you and exactly what it does to a rogue — flat, in the voice of someone who's watched it go wrong more often than right. Not to frighten you. Because it's true, and true is the one thing he's compelled to give.
I've prepared twenty-two rogues in the last year. Fifteen were your level or lower. Most made mistakes I could see in the wound pattern. I remember those mistakes. That's the dataset.
And from your first login he's keeping the count: the near-misses, the zones, the dumb luck, the small thing you did once. Not sentiment. An account. It writes itself whether you notice or not — and one day it's the only thing left of you.
I'll write your name in the log. Not sentiment. Just data. You'd be in it. Whether anyone mourns — that's a different question. Can't answer that from here.
The waitlist
One email, once, the day Wayken opens. That is the whole plan. No newsletter, no drip, no noise.