Sentience

A procedural generator for sentient objects, built with Tracery in 2017.

What it does

Generates self-aware magical items with names, alignments, purposes, powers, and existential opinions.

You come upon a chest.
Within, you find a Sassy Wings Of Flying, Lesser!
This Chaotic neutral object calls itself Bereg,
and it hires you to do butt stuff.
By the way, this item can use prying eyes
and just wants a friend

The numbers

53,805,634,631,400,960 unique sentient objects.

That's 53.8 quadrillion — about 1/8th the number of seconds since the Big Bang.

Breakdown

Category	Count	Source
Objects	4,064	Pathfinder/D&D magic items
Names	595	Tolkien's legendarium
Deities	365	D&D, Lovecraft, Norse, Egyptian, Greek pantheons
Powers	76	D&D 3.5e intelligent item abilities + jokes
Intelligence descriptors	34	"Sentient" to "Self-Driving" to "Vorpal"
Purposes	23	Violence, religion, mail delivery, chores
Missions	21	"is sworn to" → "wanna" → "might as well"
Creature types	23	D&D creature categories
Races	18	D&D playable races + undead
Consciousness claims	11	Existential statements
Alignments	9	The classic 3x3 grid

The Purpose field contains nested references that expand to 4,142 distinct possibilities when combined with Creatures, Races, Deities, and Names.

Grammar structure

origin
├── Int (intelligence descriptor)
├── Object (the item itself)
├── Alignment (moral/ethical stance)
├── Name (what it calls itself)
├── mission (verb phrase)
├── Purpose (its goal)
│   ├── Creature
│   ├── Race
│   ├── Deity
│   ├── Name
│   └── Addressees → Deity | Name
├── Power (what it can do)
└── conscious (existential status)

Data sources

All data hand-collected in 2017 from SRD magic items, Tolkien's legendarium, and various pantheons. The grammar structure, missions, consciousness statements, and jokes are original.

Highlights from the data

Intelligence descriptors include:

Intelligent, Sentient, Self-Driving, Vorpal, Overqualified, Perspicacious, Egghead, Sassy, Smartass

Missions range from solemn to absurd:

• "is sworn to"
• "took a solemn vow to"
• "wanna"
• "might as well"
• "remembers a past life where a witch told it that you would help it"

Consciousness statements:

• "is completely self-aware"
• "deserves human rights"
• "may be the only non-human sentient life in the universe"
• "would like you to have a nice day but can't stop talking about how it will die as soon as you 'drop item'"
• "wants to be 'more than friends'"

Purposes:

• "slay the servants of [Deity]"
• "find the Great White [Creature]"
• "deliver mail to [Name]"
• "do butt stuff"
• "clean its room this weekend"

Powers end with:

• "this item can 'do butt stuff'"
• "this item sounds nervous"

Running it

With uv:

uv run tracer.py

Or with any Python environment:

pip install tracery
python tracer.py

Why

Give an inanimate object consciousness, personality, and purpose. Mix serious fantasy with absurdist goals. Comedy happens.

Every one of these 53 quadrillion objects is technically unique. Most are ridiculous. Some might be profound. The generator doesn't know the difference.

License

The grimoire data is compiled from various SRD (System Reference Document) sources which are released under the Open Game License. The Tracery grammar and original additions are public domain.