[Edeia] Elikai

An Edeia representing the idea of Saving - Save States, Save Files, The Preservation of Instances of Time.

Age: Roughly 120 years old. The human that became this Edeia was alive when the first Mario game came out.

Personality
Elikai is a creative thinking being. They see most things as a puzzle to work out, how A will result in either B or C. They love a challenge and love achieving the best outcome of it. They're a daydreamer that wants the best for everyone and they get attached very easily to... anything. From a tiny rock with googly eyes to video game characters.

Abilities:

• Odd Future Vision
• Minor and limited Time Travel

Saving has always been more or less time travel in video games, so their power reflects that. Their future vision isn't exact, more like "What if I do this?" they get a vague sense for what could happen next, so on and so forth, but not ad infinitum. There's a point where they can't see any further without moving forward.

The minor and limited time travel is the manifestation of using a save state. Travel back to a specific point that they HAVE to set. They can't go back to the beginning of creation. They can only go back to a point they 'Saved', and some get over written the further on they go. With this ability, they could maaaybe change things, or maybe nudge in the right direction, but nothing major.

History
A small child picks up a controller, and finds their joy in guiding the character on the screen.

As the small child grew, their joy and love for video games continued to grow as well, often times imagining themselves right along side the hero. Each new iteration was a new life they wished they could preserve in time, even to just have a snapshot of it.

When the ability to have save files came around, it was a whole nother ball game. Longer stories meant more time with the characters, grander adventures. And with the ability to save, came the ability to learn from mistakes and undo them.

If they just kept trying new things, they will eventually get the outcome they want. Of course this didn't work all the time, teaching them that sometimes you just can't change the way something is, but generally there was always a way to save it.

As life churned on and video games evolved further and further, they evolved with it, learning new lessons but always keeping the idea of Saving in mind, going back to it and visualizing it from time to time. The ability to save a point in time so you could possibly do it over. Save States on emulators furthered this, able to go back to a closer point and figure out where you went wrong. Sometimes this worked against them, accidentally saving into a bad situation. So they learned, and adapted, solved the puzzle of a tricky encounter.

Undertale used the Save feature in a way they never expected. Suddenly gave it a meaning more than just saving a point in time. Saving meant preserving, saving your friends you made, the memories you adore, going back over and over to figure out where you went wrong in order to achieve a happy outcome.

To Save, is to Preserve.  And she wondered... what else could you do with the power to Save?

As they grew, they kept developing their Idea, working to make creative games revolving around the many things you could do with the power to Save, and how the world could react, how some situations couldn't be reversed, and how sometimes doing so too much will land you in bad situations.

It was harder to apply this to real life, but they tried, seeing things as puzzles to figure out in their minds, theorizing different scenarios, and then hoping for the best outcome because there was no going back.

Actualization came later in life, a few decades into the age of Reunion. Life flowed like a rollercoaster, up and down, highs and lows, she designed worlds and played dozens more, the Idea of Saving a constant burning presence in her mind. She watched some of her friends succeed, and some fall down, and she'd always wondered... if they could go back to the point before a fatal mistake... could things go better? She tried her best to help, and sometimes she succeeded, but others she failed.

But such is the nature of Saving. You help where you can, and remember the lessons you learned from previous mistakes. And you persevere... to preserve. To Save.

Abstraction
A digital-esque landscape with various hearts and screens dotted about, with lines connecting them to further hearts and towers that stretch on into infinity. They represent save points and the possible futures that come from each. It's all monochromatic with the hearts and screens being the only bits of colour there.