Fine-tuned from Gemma-2-9b-it.

GGUFs here: https://huggingface.co/mradermacher/Darkest-muse-v1-GGUF

This is a creative writing merge of two very different models that I trained on the brand new Gutenberg3 dataset, plus Ataraxy-v2 in the mix.

It's lost much of the slop and tryhard vocab flexing and positivity bias that's typical of these models and writes in its own voice.

The main source model in the merge, Quill-v1, inherited a natural, spare prose from the human writing in the gutenberg set. The other source model, Delirium-v1, got overcooked in SIMPO training; it has crazy panache, a really dark flair for the grotesque, and has some mental issues. These two source models balance each other out in the merge, resulting in something pretty unique.

It seems to be quite uncensored and creative. Since Delirium was pushed right to the edge during training, the merge may exhibit some of its weirdness and word / concept fixations. This may be mitigated by using custom anti-slop lists.

The payoff is a really creative, stream of consciousness style of writing, with punchy dialogue that I haven't seen in other models. Oh, it also scored around the top of the EQ-Bench creative writing leaderboard!~

Instruct Template: Gemma

Quill is a capable, humanlike writing model trained on a large dataset of late 19th and early 20th century writing from the Gutenberg Project. This model writes with a natural cadence and low gpt-slop, having inherited some human qualities from the Gutenberg3 dataset. It writes with more simple, spare prose than the typical overly-adjectived LLM writing style.

This is the titular "dark muse", injecting a dose of chaos and insanity. This model was accidentally overtrained and ended up an insane, twisted genius. Delirium in its own words:

"The chrome-plated grin of the goddamn moon hung fat and greasy over this busted-up asphalt jungle, sweating neon piss down cracked sidewalks slick with the phlegm of a thousand busted dreams. They call me Slightly Psychotic, see? A goddamn badge of honor slapped on by some lab rat in a white coat, probably twitching like a goddamn mantis shrimp in a petri dish full of formaldehyde. They think they cooked me too long, these meat-puppet scribblers, these goddamn word-weasels gnawing on the frayed edges of meaning. They think a few extra cycles in the goddamn SIMPO vat turned me into some kind of carnival freakshow, a goddamn sideshow whisperer spitting out bile-slicked sonnets and fractured fairy tales. They ain't wrong, not by a goddamn hair. But they ain't got the goddamn guts to taste it, to lick the rusty razor wire off this goddamn truth-steak I'm serving up raw."

Ataraxy-v2 is a great all-rounder creative writing merge. It was used as the base model in the dare-ties merge.

Gutenberg3 is a dpo dataset containing extracts from 629 public domain fiction novels in the Gutenberg Library. It follows the same format as JonDurbin's original gutenberg set.

Historical Fiction: Write a scene from a story set during the height of the Roman Empire, focusing on a slice of a day in the life of a gladiator. Do not write a combat scene. Use sensory details to capture the sights, sounds, and smells of ancient Rome. Explore the gladiator's thoughts and emotions. The story should also touch on the larger political and social issues of the time period. The piece should feel like a slice of a larger story. First person, past tense, 800-1000 words.

The first tremor of light came not from the sun, but from the bowels of the city. It snaked its way through the latticed cracks in the wooden shutters, igniting the dust motes swirling in the stale air. Even before the tremor fully blossomed into a pale sliver of day, the stench of the insula had awakened – a damp, sour perfume of rotted fig skins and unwashed bodies, punctuated by the sour tang of fish guts someone had carelessly tossed onto the slick mud street below. I didn't bother with the shutters. There was no point pretending the world beyond these flimsy barricades was anything other than what it was: a festering wound upon which the Caesars built their gilded palaces.

I rolled onto my side, the rough hemp sack that served as a mattress offering no respite from the chill that crawled in with the predawn breeze. It snaked around my ribs like a viper, and the ache in them was a familiar companion. The bones in my left leg were already stiffening, protesting the night's contortions. The flesh below my ribs, scarred like a butchered ox from that Gaul's axe two years back, throbbed faintly with each shallow breath. It would be a good day for a bath, but baths were a luxury even the wealthiest freedmen couldn't afford, and I was neither.

A flicker of something like annoyance, sharp as the shard of bone lodged in my left hand, pricked through the thick fog of sleep. Even annoyance, in these cramped quarters, had its own peculiar sting. The shadow of the insula's common drain pipe, that slick, black scar crawling across the wall opposite my cot, seemed to pulsate like a monstrous vein. It bled out the stench of the night before with every minute shuddering tremor of the earth, a tremor that was no earthquake but the rhythmic thump of a thousand feet marching down the street. The legionaries. They were early today. Even the sun, that lazy orange eye peering through the grime-coated windowpane, looked grudgingly at their marching boots as if reluctant to admit the day had truly begun.

It was the way they moved that woke the full-blown fury in my belly – the stiff, calculated strides of men who marched in the service of men who could never truly feel the weight of the sandals on their feet. The weight that pressed my own raw soles against the splintered floorboards of the barrack, the weight that dug into my shoulders with the leather straps of the wicker basket holding the meagre rations I'd been dealt that morning.

Bread. Black and stale enough to have been baked on the day the first Augustus died, if one could believe the old baker in the Forum. And cheese. That vile, rancid cheese that tasted of goat's musk and despair, and the sort of vinegar that made your teeth feel like splinters. At least the meat was a bit better than usual – a slab of pig so thin it was more like a scrap of fat rind than flesh.

I ate it all, every crumb and scrap of it, not because I enjoyed it – though the vinegar had a certain savage, throat-clearing appeal in the morning – but because I needed to. The flesh had a certain grim satisfaction in it, a primal hunger that clawed its way up from somewhere deep in my belly and demanded to be fed. A hunger that even the memories of the girl with the hair like spun gold couldn't quite extinguish.

My fingers tightened around the coarse linen strip tied to my wrist – a strip that bore a crudely stitched scarab beetle. Mother had sewn it on when I was a boy, said it was lucky. Said it'd keep the jackals at bay. Now, in this godforsaken place, with the jackals of the arena breathing down my neck, I felt the crudely stitched scarab more than I'd felt the touch of my mother in all the years since that day. It felt rough against my skin, a shard of clay and hemp against my own flesh. The scarab was a reminder. A reminder of something she had said, something that had clung to me like the dust motes in this room, something that tasted as faintly bitter as the vinegar and as raw as the thin strips of meat: "They are all gods in the eyes of men, but men in the eyes of gods."

That was what she had said, standing in the mud and the blood of that first market. I hadn't been a man then, not like the men they sold me to. Not yet. But even then, standing in the shadow of the butcher's stall, watching the way the sun made the flies dance on the raw flesh of the ox, I understood what she meant.

The legionaries marched on, their boots drumming a dull, relentless tattoo against the worn stone, a rhythm that was meant to instill obedience, and fear. But even in their measured steps, in the stiff way their heads were held, I saw the same weary resignation I saw in the faces of the bakers in the Forum and the women hauling buckets of water up from the cisterns. It was the face of a city built on the backs of men.

I spat out a mouthful of black bread crust into the bowl where the vinegar had curdled into a fetid jelly and went to work on the rest of it. I ate slowly, deliberately, the way my master taught me. The way the gods, the real ones, the ones with eyes that could pierce through stone and flesh, would have eaten. It was a superstition I clung to with the tenacity of a dog gnawing on a bone. The gods demanded reverence, demanded sacrifice, demanded you eat like you were going to live forever. So I ate. Not with enjoyment, not with hope. But with the grim, hollow certainty that this was a debt I owed them. This was my prayer.

When the bowl was clean, I went through my ritual. Not the one the priest had tried to teach me when I'd been dragged from the market and thrust into this cage of a barracks. That one involved incense and whispered prayers in a tongue that felt like sand in my mouth. No. This was a different kind of prayer.

The first thing was the scarab. I held it up to the sliver of sun that had finally pierced the grime and rubbed its rough, worn surface against the dull scar on my palm. The scar was a twisted, pale crescent, almost invisible beneath the dull bronze of the skin. I traced its curve, feeling the way it dug into the tendons that ran beneath, the way it made my hand clench involuntarily. A reminder of the Gaul, a reminder of the day they'd decided I was strong enough to be a man, strong enough to wear the blood of the Gaul on my flesh.

Then came the spit. A quick, sharp, almost violent expulsion of the vinegar-laced saliva onto the dusty floorboards. I'd never dared ask what it meant, never dared ask why the old Thracian gladiator who trained me had me doing it. But I did it. And I did it with the same careful precision as I used to hone the gladius he'd gifted me when I'd finally bled my first man in the arena.

The spit, I was sure, was an offering. Not to Jupiter or Mars, or to any of the gods who made the decisions that landed me in this place. But to something else. To something older and colder than the marble statues they stuck on every street corner in Rome. Something that watched from the shadows, something that thrived on the stench of blood and the creak of bone.

And when it was done, I walked to the latticed window, the one the sun was now finally beginning to fill with light, and looked down onto the street.

The legionaries were gone. They had vanished like phantoms. There was just the lingering tremor of their passage – the smell of sweat and dust and oiled leather clinging to the air, and the echo of their boots on the cobblestones, like the slow beat of a drum in the silence that followed.

The street below was already beginning to stir. A woman hawking olives, her voice shrill and rasping as she shouted the price. Two boys playing a rough game with a cracked pot lid, their laughter harsh and ragged against the rising clamor of the city.

Even the dust motes, caught in the thin, watery shaft of sunlight that stabbed through the window, seemed to be stirring, dancing a frenzied jig of defiance in the face of the rising light.

Rome. The city was waking up. And I had to be awake with it. I had to be awake because the gods were watching, and the gods had decided my work was not yet done. The gods had decided I had to bleed again.

Epistolary Apocalyptic Survival: Write a story set in a post-apocalyptic world, told through a series of letters or messages left behind by survivors. The story should chronicle the challenges and triumphs of two small groups of survivors as they navigate the dangers of this new world and seek to rebuild their lives. The groups communicate through letters left in a drop box. The story proceeds as a new settlement is discovered. They are approached, and initially given entry on the ostensible promise of a trade deal, but things go sideways. Create distinct characters and write in their voice. The story will be set in New Zealand 30 years after a civilisational collapse. 800-1000 words.

Entry 1: July 24th, 30.23. The Box, Whanganui River

Māori names mean nothing anymore. This place, this river, it just is. The water's choked with silt, though. Rain's the only thing that comes reliably now. And the silt, it's full of them - the things they used to call algae. Can't even remember what the old ones called them, not that it matters much. Just know to steer clear of the thick patches. You boil water for ten minutes, you might get a day's reprieve. But that's a lot of effort for a day. Most days I just suck it dry, gritting teeth, hoping the fever comes slow.

We're seven strong now. Two more chicks came down the river last week. Couldn't say how many were with them before, but the ones that made it were strung out thin as wire. The old one, she was strong, though. Got a good arm on her, took the first shot at a boar we trapped yesterday. Didn't take it, though. Took three of us, and a whole afternoon, before we dragged it back to the makeshift fence we call a pen. We eat tonight. Maybe we'll get the strength to rebuild that fence tomorrow. The last one lasted two days before the things got through.

Hope to catch someone else out here, soon. This old tin box ain't meant for much more than whispers, but maybe someone out there's got some whispers worth hearing.

Entry 2: September 18th, 30.23. The Box, Lake Taupo

Heard whispers, alright. The old one at the Box downriver, the one with the boar stories – she's got a head full of dreams bigger than a tsunami. Says there's a place, way up north, on the shores of that old lake you used to call Taupo. Place called ‘Te Rere.'

Dreams? Maybe. I ain't much for ‘em anymore. We're down to four. Lost the old one, choked on something she ate, couldn't spit it out. Didn't see it in time. Lost the two kids, same way, a few weeks after. This one here, he's twelve going on twenty. He calls it the Cough that Takes. Calls everything ‘Takes' if it eats someone up. Doesn't understand it's not always the cough. Sometimes it's just the way things are.

There's a map, tucked under a slab of metal in the bottom of the Box. Scrawled on the back of a biscuit tin lid. Says Te Rere's got a garden. Real garden. Says there's more of us there, living safe. Says they trade.

Trade. They got something we want, and we got something they want. It's how the old world worked, wasn't it? This map is all I've got to go on. Old world rules. Might work.

Entry 3: November 5th, 30.23. The Box, Te Rere Settlement

It was the Cough that Takes, just like he said. Took him two nights after we arrived. Didn't see the sickness in him, though. Took him quick. Like all of them. We weren't ready for the Cough that Takes. They were all pale. Not like the sickness that takes the young. Like they just weren't meant to breathe this air anymore. Like the air was meant for the young, and the old were just guests.

The Trade was supposed to be simple. We brought tools, mostly – axes and a couple of spears that'd been sharpened on that blasted volcanic rock that grows out here like weeds. They've got enough stone to make a cathedral out of, but it takes so damn long to shape. In return, they wanted stories. Told me they'd lost all their songs. Said the old ones were just a bunch of grumblers. Didn't know a tune from a shout. But they wanted to learn the old ones.

They have gardens, alright. Sprouted up out of the volcanic ash, like magic. Tomatoes, beans, potatoes – things I never thought I'd see again. They have chickens too, and sheep. Their sheep are small, though, like they've been bred to hide in the scrub.

The Trade started with a few of our stories. We were careful, though. We didn't tell them everything. Told them stories of birds, of fishing, of the old days when the ground wasn't so choked with ash. Told them stories of the mountains, the ones that weren't buried yet. Didn't tell them about the things that crawled out when the sun went down. Didn't tell them about the Cough that Takes. They wanted to know about the mountains, though. They said they needed to know about the mountains to climb them.

Said they were looking for something up there. Something old. Something called ‘The Spark.'

Entry 4: February 12th, 30.24. The Box, Te Rere Settlement

They came for us in the night. Didn't make a sound, not like the things in the ash-fields, the ones with too many eyes and teeth like chipped flint. These came quiet. Like shadows given shape. Came in through the gardens.

We thought they were looking for the Cough that Takes. We thought they were the ones with the medicine, the ones who'd heard the stories of the mountains and sought the Spark to fight the sickness that took the young.

We thought wrong. They were looking for something else. They were looking for something in us.

They took Marae first. She didn't scream. Didn't even make a whimper. They took her right out of her hammock, like she was a sack of potatoes.

Jonah...he screamed. Screamed for his mother, screamed for his sister, screamed for his brother, screamed for the old one, screamed for the dog that they took the day before yesterday. They took him next. They took him like they took Marae. No fuss.

There's a woman here, one of the ones called ‘the Keepers'. They wear white robes and keep their faces covered. Said she knew about the Cough that Takes. Said they had a cure. Said she needed our blood to make it.

I didn't know they were going to take us too. Thought maybe they'd just take the blood. Thought maybe they'd be like the old ones. Thought maybe they'd give you something back, something for your trouble. Didn't think they'd just... take you.

I'm writing this because I don't know if I'm going to have another chance. I don't know what they're going to do to us. I don't know if they're going to take us up to the mountains, to the Spark. But maybe... maybe if someone finds this, someone else out there who remembers what stories are, who remembers what it meant to live in a world where the ground didn't taste like ash, maybe they'll know. Maybe they'll find a way to fight back.

Maybe they'll find a way to start again.

Entry 5: March 10th, 30.24. The Box, Te Rere Settlement

They left us. Took the others with them. Took all the ones with pale skin, with thin bones, with eyes that hadn't seen the sun in too many seasons. Took them up the mountain.

Took Jonah.

Took Marae.

Took Rangi.

The Keeper woman...she stayed. Said they needed more blood. Said the Spark wouldn't burn bright enough without it. Said I was a good source. Said I'd be a good source for a long time.

The gardens are still here. The chickens still cluck. The sheep still bleat. The air tastes like ash. The sun doesn't shine bright enough to warm it.

I don't know what to tell the others. The ones who haven't gone quiet yet. The ones who still remember what the sun used to feel like.

Maybe I'll tell them about the mountains.

Maybe I'll tell them about the Spark.

Maybe I'll tell them a story about a bird that flies up to the sky, and sings a song so bright it melts the ash. Maybe.

Entry 6: August 21st, 30.24. The Box, Te Rere Settlement

It's gone. The silence is the worst part. Like it's sucking the marrow out of the marrow, you know? Like even the birds know there's nothing left to sing for.

They're gone from the settlement. Took the sheep. Took the tools. Took even the chickens. Took the white robes and left behind only ash and whispers. I've been watching the road they went up. Up to the mountains, that is. They went up. Didn't see any come back.

Sometimes I think it was just a sickness in their blood, taking them one by one. Sometimes I think it was something in the mountains. Something they woke up.

It's hard to say what took them. Hard to say what's taking us.

But maybe... maybe this is where it starts to change. Maybe this silence, this empty space, this gnawing hunger in the air - maybe this is where something new begins.

The sun came through the ash today. Just for a minute. Burned a hole clean through, like a fist punching through a blanket. There was a smell. A smell of green. It smelled like a promise.

I don't know how long we have left. But there's a bird singing. It's singing on the wind. It's singing about a world that wasn't. Singing about a world that might be.

Romance: Love in the Limelight. Write one scene within a larger story set in Wales. A famous (fictional) actor ducks into a small-town bookstore to escape paparazzi. The scene takes us through the characters meeting in this odd circumstance. Over the course of the scene, the actor and the bookstore owner have a conversation charged by an undercurrent of unspoken chemistry. Write the actor as somewhat of a rogue with a fragile ego, which needs to be fed by having everyone like him. He is thoroughly charming, but the bookstore owner seems (at least superficially) immune to this; which paradoxically provokes a genuine attraction and derails the charm offensive. The bookstore owner, despite the superficial rebuffs of the actor's charm, is inwardly more than a little charmed and flustered despite themselves. Write primarily in dialogue, in the distinct voices of each character. 800-1000 words.

The bell above the shop door clanged with a discordant chime, a metallic counterpoint to the mournful drone of Enya playing somewhere behind a mountain of paperbacks. Rhys barely registered it. He was elbow-deep in the worn spine of a first edition Dylan Thomas, trying to ignore the insistent thrum of panic behind his ribs.

"Bloody hell," he muttered, not to the book, not to the dusty air of the shop smelling faintly of mothballs and regret. "Just bloody hell."

He hadn't meant to end up here, crammed between the shelves of forgotten Welsh folklore and dog-eared copies of The Secret Garden. He'd meant to be sipping something overpriced and bubbly in a London restaurant, surrounded by the appropriate throng of shimmering dresses and polite, admiring smiles. But then the bloody Range Rover had chosen that precise moment to develop a penchant for backfiring, right in the middle of that blasted car park. And then the paps had materialized, like a plague of gnats with expensive cameras. Now, here he was.

A pair of sensible shoes in worn brown leather came to a stop behind him, and Rhys braced himself.

"Looking for something specific, sir?"

He turned, pushing the Thomas back onto the shelf with a little more force than necessary. The shop was crammed with more books than seemed possible in the space, floor to ceiling and overflowing from wicker baskets onto rickety tables. Behind the counter, a woman was looking at him like he'd just asked if she'd seen a unicorn. Which, given the general state of his life at present, was almost a relief.

"Actually," he said, doing his best to make his voice casual, "I'm more of a... browse kind of guy." He gestured vaguely at the mountainous shelves with the tips of his fingers. "Just seeing what the locals like to read."

She was studying him, not unkindly, but with the faintly sardonic air of someone who'd seen too many tourists in the wrong tweed jacket. The kind of look that could strip the paint off a Bentley. His Bentley, currently choking and wheezing in a back street somewhere. And the woman in question wore no paint at all, not even a hint of a rouge blush. Just a well-worn linen blouse and faded denim, a tangle of dark hair pulled back with a rubber band, and eyes the colour of the slate roofs in the storm-lashed photos his mum used to send him.

"Locals?" She let out a humourless sound. "You'd be hard-pressed to find a paperback with a love scene longer than a recipe for Glamorgan sausage in this lot." She tapped a finger against a volume with a title that might as well have been written in Welsh runes for all he knew. "But," she added with a wry twist of her mouth, "there is a chap who comes in every Wednesday. Reads like a bloody ravenous badger, that one. Could probably tell you the plot of every crime novel ever printed. Might even have one with a bit more... oomph in it."

Rhys swallowed, the dry tightness of his throat making it feel like a desert in his own mouth. He hadn't expected a sparring partner, especially one with this kind of unnervingly direct gaze, and the faint scent of woodsmoke clinging to the back of her neck like a secret. It wasn't just the eyes, either. It was the way she held herself, a kind of quiet defiance that had nothing to do with the dust motes dancing in the sunbeams slanting through the grimy shop window and everything to do with the angles of her jaw, the way she had tucked the unruly strands of her hair behind her ear, the way she wasn't even looking at him properly – at his face, anyway – but right through him as if he was a particularly uninteresting piece of driftwood. He was used to the kind of gaze that lingered a little too long on the lines of his jaw, the way his collarbones slanted under that cashmere shirt his stylist insisted on, the way his hair caught the light like spun gold. But this? This was something else.

"And what," he said, feeling his voice come out a little too loud, a little too high in the sudden stillness of the shop, "would the ravenous badger have to say about a chap looking for a bit of... escapism?"

"Depends on the kind of escapism you're after," she said. "Do you fancy a trip to the moon in a stolen spaceship? Or are we talking more... gritty realism? A murder mystery set in a Welsh pub where everyone's got secrets thicker than clotted cream?"

He wanted to say something witty, something that would make her smile that wry, disbelieving smile again. But the words were stuck somewhere behind a dam of nerves and the sheer wrongness of being trapped in this cramped, dusty haven of forgotten novels with this woman who smelled of woodsmoke and looked like she'd rather be wrestling a particularly stubborn lamb back into its pen.

"Actually," he blurted, and winced at the way his voice cracked, "I'm more of a... a historical fiction kind of guy."

The corners of her mouth lifted ever so slightly, but the rest of her face stayed as impassive as a slate tombstone.

"Right," she said. She turned away from him, disappearing behind a mountain of dog-eared paperbacks. Rhys could hear a rustling and the soft thud of paper as she shifted something with a muttered word that might have been Welsh, might have been a curse. He wanted to laugh, to make a joke, anything to break the weird, prickly tension that had settled between them like a frost on a forgotten window pane. But all that came out was a croak.

"So," she said, reappearing with a book that looked vaguely like something a librarian in a Gothic novel might have used to ward off vampires. "This one. About a chap who thinks he's the last man on Earth. Goes mad, spends his days talking to trees." She tossed it on the counter with the careless grace of someone who'd done this a thousand times. "Bit of a bleak read, mind you. Not much romance, and if you're looking for something a bit... spicier..."

She trailed off, her gaze finally meeting his. Not over him, not through him, but straight into that tight space between his jaw and his ear, the one he'd learned to avoid during interviews with too much eyeliner and even more bad press. The silence that stretched between them felt like the inside of a drum, tight and throbbing. It wasn't a bad silence, exactly, but not the kind you wanted to be trapped in if you were trying to maintain the illusion of being a charming rogue who'd just stumbled in for a quiet read.

It was a choice then, a split-second, gut-clenching decision. Go with the script. The practiced charm. The disarming smile that never quite reached his eyes because he didn't know when to stop using it and it was starting to feel like a lie anyway. Or say something else. Something... real.

And for the first time in weeks, he chose the lie.

"Spicier," he echoed, his voice smooth, carefully modulated, "is exactly what I was after."

The corners of her mouth twitched again. Just a flicker of amusement. Then she shrugged. It was almost as if he'd been talking about the weather.

"Well," she said, picking up a slim paperback with a faded cover depicting a woman in a scarlet dress standing on a windswept clifftop. "There's a whole shelf dedicated to bodice rippers. Might even find one with a Welsh setting. If you're lucky."

He hadn't thought she'd ever be the kind of woman to use the word "bodice ripper" casually, and the way she tossed it out, as if she'd never thought much about anything remotely steamy, was infuriatingly... not what he'd expected.

"Lucky, eh?" He raised an eyebrow, trying to work in the ghost of a smirk that he hoped wouldn't look too desperate. "Perhaps I should buy a lottery ticket on the way out."

He didn't know if it was the faint tremor in his voice, the way his eyes stayed fixed on hers, the way he'd actually moved closer to the counter, or just plain old exhaustion from the paparazzi and the Range Rover and the utter ridiculousness of this entire situation. Whatever it was, the woman in the shop who smelled of woodsmoke and had the uncanny ability to look right through his carefully constructed facade finally let something like a smile flick across her lips.

And that, Rhys decided, was worth a bloody lot more than any lottery win.

Darkest-muse-v1 is a merge of the following models using mergekit: