Faerror

## Regional Spread

**Faerror** (singular Faerror, plural Faerror) is a highly dangerous, semi-predictable Complien of the Magic and Cyber elements. It does not grow.

## Appearance

Faerror are pink, blocky, iridescent creatures with four arms, two legs, and a long torso. Their upper body is encased within a flange-like metal object. They have two flat wings and a broad stinger on their abdomen. On the top of their head are two antennae, between which floats a flathead screw.

## Information

### Habitat

Faerror are only found in the rolling hills of Bitland. They do not venture beyond these hills or into Complinoid territory, but will retaliate against any Complinoids that try to build structures in the hills.

Each Faerror has a "home", a specific point in 3D space around which the Faerror patrols when not sating their own needs. These homes are usually boulders, flower beds, lumps of moss and lichen, or cracks in the permafrost.

On the winter solstice, when night falls upon Bitland for 24 hours straight, Faerror leave their homes to hunt until the solstice ends.

### Biology

Faerror are very powerful Compliens overflowing with volatile complixonox and magical energy. They are also intelligent, capricious, and have no sense of empathy for other beings, including other Faerror.

Their eating habits are unknown, though they are known to take offerings of ferrous minerals. How they reproduce is also unknown. They have maintained a population of roughly 400 for many millennia.

When touching metal or a substance with metallic bonds, the electrons of the metal move onto the Faerror as if the Faerror is part of the metal. Faerror appear to gain pleasure from this. This effect is most noticeable on pure iron at temperatures below 5°C (41°F).

If exposed to any part of the splüklouine plant, Faerror will spontaneously combust.

### Behavior

Faerror are relatively benign when left alone in their domain, the western mounds of Bitland. However, any Complinoids that enter this area quickly find themselves enshrouded in a thick, magically-induced fog and led by a Sprite to a Faerror, who will play some variety of magical trick on the intruder. Usually, these tricks are somewhat harmless, but if the Complinoid insults the Faerror in some way, the Faerror will do something disproportionately malevolent.

No native inhabitants of Bitland remain extant today, but ruins and artifacts found on Bitland show that an ancient society of Jeligant existed on Bitland from roughly 3,000,500C to 3,000,800C. They were likely wiped out by a minor period of global cooling that made survival untenable for a few decades. However, they left behind writings that detail their interactions with Faerror, which constitute a rough explanation of their behaviors and motivations.

## Faerror behaviors

### Accessing the Faerror mind

According to native Bitlandic documents, a male Jeligant named "Allane Turnting" encountered a Faerror and tricked it into revealing a special phrase that opens up the mind of a Faerror. This phrase is a seemingly nonsensical string of words - "*double quote semicolon return semicolon run command prompt semicolon*" - that nonetheless causes any Faerror that hears it to freeze in place for 30 seconds. During this time, certain keyphrases can be spoken to the Faerror that will cause it to do certain things.

Once the 30 seconds is up, the Faerror will almost certainly turn back towards the speaker and do horrible things to them. In fact, this is the fate that befell Turnting, as the Faerror he tricked stole his genitalia in retribution.

One keyphrase, "*show console*", causes the Faerror to vomit up a sheet of vellum on which is printed special information about the Faerror's current mindset. The sheet, titled "Console", shows the Faerror's emotions, running function, and item in memory, all written in native Bitlandic in reldrich ink.

### The console

The three emotions of a Faerror are boredom, irritation, and squibble. On the upper half of the console are the names of the three emotions followed by a number representing how strong that emotion was at the time of printing. Boredom and irritation are integer values clamped between 0 and 10. Squibble is a float value with no minimums or maximums besides the overflow limits.

In the middle is a section indicating the currently running function, if there is one running. Below that is a value labeled Memory, which is an integer clamped between -16 and 16.

### Known keyphrases

Saying a phrase that is not one of the above keyphrases will cause the Faerror to say, "Compiler error," and immediately use Explode.

### Hunting

At the midnight marking the start of Bitland's winter solstice, all Faerror stop patrolling and teleport to an unknown location, except for Faerror being commanded. Once commandment stops and the Faerror has run *DoSomethingFunny*, the commanded Faerror will immediately disappear as well.

In the first hour of the winter solstice (12-1 AM), all Complinoids on Bitland will hear clattering, yelling, and barking noises as though from a great distance. The noise is amplified the closer one gets to the western hills in which the Faerror reside. The fog covering the hills becomes impenetrable to electromagnetic radiation, and any people who venture into the fog disappear entirely. This is the time when residents of Bitland who have not left for the winter lock themselves in their homes.

For 22 hours (1 AM-11 PM), the cloud of fog moves down from the hills and sweeps across Bitland, covering an area of roughly 16 mi² (41 km²). During this time, all non-Complinoid Compliens on the island will go into a state of dormancy. Shorwarmors fall into a deep sleep, Lazmokes turn off temporarily, and Ahosphels sink to the floor and become inanimate. Conversely, all Complinoids become anxious and high-strung.

Any Complinoids that become enshrouded in the fog disappear without a trace. If they are shouting, making noise, or otherwise broadcasting signals, the sounds and signals will fade out as if the Complinoid is moving away rapidly. The fog will not go inside buildings or containers closed to the outside, even if they are not airtight.

As the fog approaches one's location, a brass hunting horn can be heard in the distance, followed by shouting and barking noises. The horn is slightly bitcrushed, as though it were run through a sound chip. Once the fog passes, the shouting and barking dissipates.

At the end of the solstice (11 PM-12 AM), the hills become foggy once more. No Faerror patrol the fog, however, and any remaining Sprites will instead lead intruders in a big circle. At midnight, Faerror return to their homes and resume their normal activities.

Once midnight strikes, all taken Complinoids stumble out of the fog dazed, stuporous, and dirty with bits of rust. The only thing they remember is being grabbed by something in the fog and hearing a deep, feminine voice saying, "No overload for method 'Raycast' that takes 7 arguments."

## Trivia

* They are attracted to the Leaky-Loos that move in and out of Bitland, and will sometimes play with them by hitting them with their hands to bounce them around.
* They create massive amounts of magical energy that mitigates the dampening effect of Bitland's natural magical depression. If taken out of Bitland, they would likely die from their own extreme concentration of magic.

## Spells

The full list of spells that Faerror can use is unknown, but likely to be very large.