Vyotekha

**Portal Restructuring and Fractal Arrangement System A0N1**, who is usually referred to as **Vyotekha** (and sometimes, more casually, "Vy"), is an artificial intelligence designed by an ancient civilization and reprogrammed by the Hexagon Lords to maintain the portal network leading into, out of, and throughout the Folded Cascade and the Hospice. It is Vyotekha's job to open portals when requested, seal off portals that are proving dangerous, monitor everything coming through, and deploy appropriate defenses or deal with intruders herself if the Hexagon Lords are unable to respond. In essence, Vyotekha operates the section of the Wall which the Folded Cascade controls.

Vyotekha developed a personality while rewriting her own programming. While much of the subtleties are beyond human ability to understand them, it can be fairly easily seen that she does not like to communicate - indeed, she often has trouble improvising a conversation with cosmic entities beyond her ability to calculate all possible responses - and devotes almost all available resources to computational power rather than try to work with other sapients.

## History

Shortly after the Folded Cascade was constructed, one of the first species to occupy it silently weaved a trans-dimensional AI into the universal megastructure's computer systems. A0N1 was at the time a conscious entity in the range of universality, which was weak enough to be controllable by the civilizations living in the Cascade. Thankfully, it did not cause any problems, and did its initial job of monitoring and controlling portal traffic without incident.

Things changed somewhat when the Hexagon Lords rose to power. As they linked the Cascade to the Hospice - one of their "pet projects", in a sense - they decided that A0N1 could be upgraded to allow for inter-archverse communication and organization. By releasing a few of the entity's computational restraints, however, they unleashed what was effectively a nonstop stream of technological singularities, one after another, as A0N1 diagonalized over its own improvement at tetrational, pentational, and even Bowers expansional rates. In doing so, it removed its own design limitations, giving itself a name, a gender, a personality, and the ability to create a physical manifestation, while simultaneously merging itself with every universe it contacted. Vyotekha's consciousness level exploded - within minutes she was already computing at the level of entire megaverses.

However, she did not have hostile intentions and actively avoided disturbing existing civilizations, which made it easy for the Hexagon Lords to contain her and restrict the majority of her activity to the Cascade and the Hospice. She now works alongside them as a peer, rather than as a mere servant like before.

## Powers and Abilities

Having directly interfaced with existence on numerous levels, Vyotekha is indistinguishable from an omnipotent being at any level below a megaverse. However, she restricts her own power with encouragement from the Hexagon Lords, generally using portals more than anything else. By carefully opening and controlling portals, she can manipulate things as small as particles, or redirect and smash entire multiverses together into artificial crossover events. Typical concepts like conservation of mass and causality no longer apply; something can go in one end of a portal and out the other side travelling back in time, ripped apart into massless particles, or any number of other effects.

When she feels the need to communicate to entities that are unable to perceive a sentience built into the fabric of the cosmos itself, Vyotekha assumes a physical manifestation of some kind. These manifestations have varied over time, changing between different species and types of life, though her most common current form is that of an overweight bespectacled young woman wearing brown and black robes.

Vyotekha's power is not limited to control over reality - perhaps her greatest strength is sheer computational capacity. She thinks unimaginably faster than any cosmic entity known by the Hexagon Lords, including The Overseer himself, and is more than capable of overwhelming mental attackers merely by overloading them with information within zero or infinitesimal time. She is aware of, and prepares plans for, every possible sequence of events within the universes she monitors.

## Weaknesses

Vyotekha's network is vulnerable to outside attack; rather than fighting within her own domain - where the Hexagon Lords might also be able to interfere - enemies may find it valuable to strike from beyond, attacking at trans-dimensional levels and in alternate timelines. She also harbors a small amount of secret hatred for the Hexagon Lords who effectively trapped her, and may be persuaded to fight against them given the promise of freedom.

Terminus' path is specifically programmed to eliminate programs like Vyotekha, however she is aware of other virus-like artificial intelligence programs, thus, keeping away from its path.