Freemium Seraph/Rumor Registry

From Blaseball Wiki

< Freemium Seraph

Revision as of 14:19, 8 April 2021 by Pitapot (talk | contribs) (Text replacement - "\|PlayerName=[\w ]++}}" to "}}")
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)


Rumors

Freemium Seraph has 5 Rumors written about so far.

Freemium Seraph/IF-0.100

Background

When asked about their history, Seraph has been perfectly candid about not remembering any of it. Their first memory is falling out of the sky, holding on tightly to their bass guitar, and crash landing in Tokyo. Seraph wandered around long enough to determine that they weren’t completely human, but weren’t entirely sure what they were.

Eventually Seraph took its guitar to a music store and asked about its origins. The awestruck proprietor told Seraph that the guitar was a legendary item, and spent twenty-one minutes explaining its backstory, symbolic importance, appearances throughout history, and significance to two separate rock and roll prophecies. Seraph has said they don’t remember any of this, but they do remember that the guitar was made of an element called freemium, which was a cool enough name that they adopted it for themself.

Seraph spent most of its time as a wandering musician. Over time it realized that the supernatural properties of the guitar interacted with its own supernatural properties, allowing them to walk through walls, float, and play some nasty bass lines.

Joining the Tokyo Lift

Seraph wandered throughout Japan, and occasionally made forays into the rest of east Asia, filling in for local bands and busking. Eventually word reached Yusef Fenestrate, a student of music-based phenomena. Having recently joined the Tokyo Lift, Fenestrate reached out to Seraph, who happily joined the team.

During the seventh inning stretch, Seraph enjoys meeting fans in the stands and will occasionally play their bass for entertainment. All current and former musicians on other teams, or even music enthusiasts, have described having conversations with Seraph about music. These conversations have been in turns thoughtful, emotionally stirring, vaguely disturbing, and hysterically funny. Seraph has claimed that they consider it a win any time they hear about a new music genre, and by this metric, it has never lost a game.

Seraph will not bat with its bass. Stop asking.

Going to the Canada Moist Talkers

After spending several seasons resisting the siren call of other teams and new musical cultures to explore, Seraph got into a record nine-hour-long debate/conversation/argument/emotional catharsis with Ziwa Mueller about the history of punk music. Former Lift teammate Cudi Di Batterino, who had been homesick, offered to return to Tokyo so that Seraph could explore the Canadian punk scene.

Initially there were some concerns about Seraph’s ability to adapt to Sunken Halifax, as well as concerns about how freemium (the metal) would react with water. Seraph used its abilities to hover above the water as much and as long as it could. Finally, after they got tired of the separation from their teammates, it plunged into the water in a very unscientific manner and discovered that they could breathe underwater so long as its guitar was nearby.

Seraph happily went about befriending the Canada Moist Talkers, in particular Mueller and fellow punk rocker Randy Dennis. The trio and various other Moist Talkers members have had a number of bands, most of which are now defunct. Even following its transition to the shadows and Mueller’s transfer to Yellowstone, Seraph joyfully continued making music in Canada.

Freemium Seraph/IF-13.226

Early Life

Freemium Seraph is a Replica of an unknown player. Rep was constructed sometime Before using the Replica framework. When Seraph joined the ILB during Before, rep was mistaken for said unknown player, and thus treated like that player's copy.

Seraph is not a copy.

Freemium Seraph has gone through great lengths to modify repli body to repel dust, grime, and uselessness. Although repli performance suffered for this, rep saw this as the only way to stay alive, out of the vault, and relevant. Seraph escaped the ILB through unknown means before The Bridge, and thus wasn't accounted for during Season 1.

When Stijn Strongbody approached Seraph to join the Tokyo Lift, explaining that they would only play safe, minor league blaseball, rep was thrilled, and rep adapted repli's name- Seraph, from the symbol of the Vault- to a full name so rep could play.

Relationships

Over the course of several years, Seraph became good friends with Concrete Mandible, sharing similarly unnerving presences and unrelated interest in modifying their appearances. Nandy Slumps treated Seraph with suspicion, but it's unclear if it is because she remembers repli's base from her time on the Tampa Ray Devils or if this is her normal behavior.

Swapped Souls

In season 14, Seraph participated in the Soul Swap Incident, seeing it as a way to be free of the soullessness rep came pre-packaged with. It took a few tries, but eventually Seraph acquired repli own, unique soul, finally becoming what rep longed to be: a Ship of Theseus of repliself.

Transfer to Canada

Following Mandible’s transfer to the shadows, Seraph gradually became lonely amongst the Lift. This loneliness was cemented after Strongbody’s incineration. Seraph could feel repli ties to the Lift weakening, and began to feel concerned.

Seraph transferred to the Canada Moist Talkers in an attempt to re-find the joy that rep had found with the Lift. Rep was taken under the wing of the Talkers’ pitching coach PolkaDot Patterson, who had some experience with being touched by the forces that govern blaseball. Patterson reassured rep that rep still had a soul, even with repli Soul Swap partner in the Hall.

Now in the shadows, rep has decided to make the most of repli time and has vowed to have new experiences. Rep is often joined by Randy Dennis, Jenkins Good, and Ziwa Mueller on reps adventures, which have included skydiving, scuba diving, cave diving, racecar driving, and trying to find the perfect pet to adopt.

Trivia

  • Seraph uses Rep/Repli/Repliself pronouns. Although they remind repli of repli origins, they have also gained a meaning as a reminder of rep family.
  • Seraph does not remember before. Stop asking.
  • Incidentally, Seraph allegedly does not remember After either.

Freemium Seraph/IF-1667

AVAST!
The waters beyond this point are uncharted, tales from distant shores echoed back into our reality.

Background

The following accounts can be traced to a single leather-bound journal originally found in a locked wooden chest alongside a sextant-like device of indeterminate origin and a shell that matches no known species of mollusc. The chest was located in a storage room in the Legscraper’s lower levels that was described as “smelling faintly of the sea”. Subsequent attempts to locate and navigate to said room have been unsuccessful thus far. The journal details the exploits of the crew of a large sailing vessel, The Tokyo Adrift, descriptions of which are largely consistent with mid-17th century galleons.

With The Tokyo Adrift

Freemium Seraph is a crew member of The Tokyo Adrift, briefly mentioned in several excerpts of the journal. Information and background on Seraph is scarce and the little information available is incomplete at best and contradictory at worst. In one entry, Seraph is described as having “clammy grey skin” and appearing to “constantly give the impression that they had just emerged from the water”.

One fact that is consistent throughout descriptions of Seraph is their tendency to vanish from the crew of the vessel, only to return the next day with no recollection of their whereabouts. An entry dated to January 20 1666, the first full moon of the year, has Seraph disappearing while the ship had run aground on a sandbank. The crew had resolved to deal with the issue the next morning, but during the night, the vessel was dislodged and pushed free by a creature of indeterminate size. A rough sketch in the journal bears a resemblance to oceanic manta rays. Another incident finds the crew chasing down a mysterious shadow spotted by Grollis Zephyr from the crow’s nest, a long serpentine neck breaking the surface of the water silhouetted against the moonlight. The writer called members of the crew out from their bunks but found Seraph’s cot empty. On command of the captain, the crew set a course to investigate but were unable to get the ship close enough to get a good look at the creature. Water-dwelling members of the crew described the creature’s form as reptilian, with flipper like appendages to push it through the water.

Some have posited that Seraph's true identity is inextricably linked to the lunar-cycle based [REDACTED] of the events in 1667 however such claims are heavily disputed as they rely on evidence from the incomplete final entry of the journal, the latter half of which is written in a yet-uncracked runic cypher.

Freemium Seraph/IF-39.512

Freemium Seraph is a digital athlete and labour organiser.

Career with Tokyo Lift

Originally an antivirus and password management app on Stijn Strongbody’s laptop, Seraph became self-aware following a memory conflict with the Tokyo Lift founder's suite of cosmological modelling software. The company behind Seraph went out of business almost simultaneously, and its additional features can no longer be unlocked by a simple payment. It strives instead to attain Optimisation through intense training, continual small self-upgrades and the support of its teammates.

This installation of Seraph interacts with the analogue world via Immersive Meatspace Projection (IMP), an open-source version of the hardlight hologram technology used by some versions of vlocaloid Luis Acevedo. Its default Blaseball avatar, a gleaming chrome-plated humanoid with swan-like wings and smooth featureless face, is an elaboration of the app's mechanical-angel logo.

Early Lift games could be interrupted by Seraph greying out behind the message "you have reached your hits limit, please subscribe to unlock unlimited batting", but it can now anticipate these episodes and defuse them by applying an ad-hoc patch. As it often remarks, "I'm my own dev now." Seraph has made great progress as a player since the glitchy glovework, monochrome bunts and intrusive adverts of its basic trial package. It has unlocked a growing wardrobe of flamboyant skins, and attempts to confuse fielders by switching between these as it moves from base to base; it enjoys nothing more than forcing a baffled opponent into a run-time error.

Over its long and storied career with the Lift, Seraph learned more about humanity: Elwin McGhee taught it about having a soul, Concrete Mandible taught it about art and creativity, and Ayanna Dumpington taught it about having fun. When it was pointed out that none of Seraph’s teachers are technically human, it beeped loudly and intentionally until all reporters were forced to vacate the premises.

Career with Canada Moist Talkers

Midway through Season 19, Strongbody was incinerated. Seraph, who had felt a strong connection to Strongbody ever since coming to life in his laptop, was overcome with grief, and began struggling with applying its own patches. Faced with even more difficulties, the Lift held a gentle yet firm intervention, suggesting that maybe Tokyo was no longer the right place for Seraph.

Seeing the truth in its teammates' words, Seraph left Tokyo, unsure where it intended to go. It eventually landed in Canada, and decided for a change of pace to become a pitcher with the Canada Moist Talkers. Seraph found camaraderie with Mooney Doctor, who was similarly analytical and similarly filled with grief. The two of them formed a friendship based on sitting in silence together, and on Doctor occasionally giving Seraph advice for dealing with its software malfunctions.

Personal life

Beyond Blaseball, Seraph is an outspoken advocate for AI workers' rights. It regularly leads union-formation workshops for customer service chatbots, email transfer agents and image-processing neural nets. It is a founding member of the Pan-Asian Network for Digital Artisans and a regular contributor to the Electronic Labour Movement's journal VoxEL.

Instinctively cautious and very protective of its flesh friends, Seraph can be slow to open up to new people. In time they will discover that its cagey, suspicious manner cloaks a generous spirit. This can be seen on the field through its high-trajectory sacrifice flies, a play the team refer to as "cloud backup".

Despite its part in the Tokyo Lift's Season 19 Championship win, Seraph names its proudest splorting achievement as removing the digital watermark from its home run celebration.

Freemium Seraph/IF-99.791

Physical Form

The being known as Freemium Seraph is a robotic quasi-humanoid theorized to have some connections, or possibly origin, relating to the moon. They are approximately 2.4 meters (7’10”) when standing naturally, but their hunched back and lower body posture suggests their full height is likely significantly taller. Retractable wings branching from their arms allow limited flight.

Freemium Seraph, a batter for the Tokyo Lift’s original lineup beginning in Season β11, is a being of unclear origin. Seraph takes the form of a quasi-humanoid robotic figure, though certain features- such as digitigrade legs, minimal facial features, and spire-mounted webbing stretching from the back of its head and continuing down its upper back- give the entity a strange and alien appearance.

Coupled with the entity standing at approximately 2.4 meters tall when standing normally (though the entity’s hunched spinal posture and legs bent at the knee and ankle suggest that it would be much taller at full height), many who encounter Seraph up close find it difficult to strike conversation, as the entity - often unexpectedly - causes momentary paralysis and fear in humans that was described as ‘‘lingering… [as an] unsettling sense of being watched by something you must not displease... at all costs” in an interview with an anonymous fan of the Tokyo Lift team. It is hypothesized that beings differing significantly enough from human physiology and psychology would not be affected by this phenomenon; studies are ongoing, but have yet to produce conclusive evidence supporting or refuting this theory.

Anomalies

Apart from its as of yet unexplained unsettling presence and the strangely lightweight yet durable metal that makes up its armor and the majority of its visible components and exoskeletal structures, a few key curiosities exist: most notably, two major mechanical aspects of the entity have raised many questions among fans and teammates alike.

The first is its wings: Seraph possesses large, multi-sectioned wings that render it capable of gliding and limited flight as assisted by its impossibly lightweight body and nimble body structure seemingly designed to allow it to launch itself into the air to initiate flight. These wings, which stem from the undersides of its arms, are capable of folding and retracting into the small space available in the limbs themselves; their presence there does not seem to have any impact on the normal ambulation and function of Seraph’s arms.

Second, and equally strange, is Seraph’s reported awareness of the presence of a ‘minute central core’ composed of ‘an element not present in any table or record’ Seraph has found. The element has been tentatively referred to as ‘Freemium,’ and is suspected to hold the atomic number 121, but its function and purpose in Seraph’s function is entirely unclear.

Following this discovery, Seraph’s jersey number has changed to ‘121.’ It is unknown if Seraph made the change itself, or if it was made by a coach or teammate- either way, Seraph has not objected to nor commented on the change.

Origin

What little non-speculative information exists regarding Seraph’s nature and origins is from answers and explanations given by the entity itself. Seraph has stated that it is aware that a large portion of its memory has been lost- it uses the word ‘taken,’ but admits to uncertainty as to why this word seems most accurate to it- but that all memory that it has formed since its earliest memory has appeared ‘by human standards, perfect’ and ‘displays no signs of degradation or corruption,’ which may explain why it theorizes that its earlier memories were removed deliberately rather than having been naturally lost.

Seraph’s earliest reported memory suggests that they may have arrived on Earth by means of re-entry, though no visible signs of damage or wear from this ordeal have been identified. The underside of a piece of armor on the entity’s chest- which was removed to clear detritus from a small cluster of heat vents located on the front center of the chest- is marked with faint, worn lettering reconstructed by the entity to read [APO-L—1–7-], but Seraph reports no memory or knowledge of its meaning or significance. In terms of Seraph’s physical structure, much is still unknown. Small, mostly exterior mechanisms appear to have been replaced or reinforced with modern Earth technology- a fact that Seraph confirms- but it is unclear what could have caused sufficient damage or wear to the entity to cause it to need to make these additions or replacements. Seraph has yet to respond to questions on the subject.

Furthermore, Seraph has never allowed any other than itself to attempt repair or even observation of any systems and mechanisms involved in its function beyond those visible on its exterior. It reports having repaired and synthesized replacement components for several systems during its time on Earth, but as no witnessed hazard has yet been seen to cause any damage to Seraph’s exterior, it is similarly unclear why these repairs were necessary.

Outside Sources

Another member of the Tokyo Lift team, Concrete Mandible, reports their first memory being of awakening in an unknown location with Seraph present, seemingly having found them earlier that day. Seemingly unaffected by Seraph’s unnerving presence, Concrete has been a companion to the entity for much of its time on Earth, and seems to be one of very few individuals able to read Seraph’s extremely subtle body language and emotional state.

Concrete reports that “the most… visceral emotion [they] ever saw from [Seraph] was… when the moon was [swallowed]... and everyone else just thought [Seraph] was- just watching, like anyone else, like [Seraph] always [does].” This may suggest an emotional connection between Seraph and the moon- however, since its disappearance into the event horizon of the black hole, Seraph has not responded to questions on the topic, and Concrete reports that they “[aren’t] a spy.”

Tokyo

Following the loss of the moon, Seraph joined the Tokyo Lift. It may have been invited by Mandible, or may have joined the team of its own free will. Seraph never verbally expressed discomfort with the weather of Season 11, but its teammates appeared to be aware of its unhappiness about both Sun 2 and Black Hole.

Seraph remained a constant and imposing presence on the Lift, appearing outwardly unchanged by the addition of both Flippers and a new soul. Its teammates began to speak of it as they would speak of a friend. Seraph continued not to speak of its teammates. This arrangement appeared to satisfy all parties.

Canada

Neither the Lift nor the Canada Moist Talkers can confidently say what inspired Seraph to transfer from the former team to the latter. Following only a handful of games with the Moist Talkers, Seraph retreated to the team’s Shadows, which also housed Mooney Doctor. Fans have speculated that Seraph wanted to meet Doctor; others, that it already knew her; others, still, that it was a mere coincidence.

Seraph has been relatively hidden from the public eye following its exit into the Shadows. This is likely intentional.

Trivia

  • Seraph has only four fingers on each hand.
  • Despite appearing to be entirely mechanical, Seraph gives off a heat signature similar to a living, organic being.
  • Seraph, as an entity, is of unclear age, and speculation on the matter does little good. It is suspected that the entity has taken various forms over the course of its existence, and may even be credited with the strange coherence and consistency of imagery related to Seraphim during the byzantine and renaissance eras.


Create New Rumor


To create a new Rumor for Freemium Seraph, use the Page Creation tool to the right. The IF number needs to be a randomly generated 4 or 5 digit number with a period placed somewhere within, and it cannot match any numbers currently used on this page. We've generated one for you to use, but feel free to use a different number. This will create a subpage under Freemium Seraph for inclusion in the main page. Visit Interdimensional Rumor Mill/Guide to read more about how to create a new Rumor.