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Adventurers, for obvious reasons, never tell.

Landers, very conveniently, never ask - or never ask _too much_.

Not even the ones depicted as knowledge-hungry.

Not even when Adventurers let slip terms such as "NPC", "real life/world",
"game", etc.

Yes, Landers can be very curious sometimes, but I don't remember hearing them
asking embarassing questions about the Adventurers' world, questions that may
lead to the unspokable topic. Not even Regan, Lenessia, or

> Rudy.

## Are there, in the _Log Horizon_ franchise, Landers which [discovered | were
told | figured out | whatever] about _Elder Tale_?

Do some of them know the "uncomfortable truth"? I.e. that, _in the world where
Adventurers come from_ :

  * "Adventurers" are not "Adventurers" at all, they don't have special powers, they just played a game in which they killed monsters for fun, sitting on a chair and clicking buttons on a machine
  * Theldesia is just the fictional setting of that game, where Landers are fictional, computer-controlled characters.

It would be interesting to see how they reacted to this shocking revelation.

**Note 1** : I only watched the two seasons of the " _Log Horizon_ " anime. If
the answer would contain spoilers for additional material, please direct me to
that additional material (if it is available in English, since I don't speak
Japanese).

**Note 2** : just realize that " _Adventures don't treat us like real people_
" is necessary but not sufficient for what I'm looking for. This because
realizing this is not so hard: in fact, before the [Catastrophe](http://log-
horizon.wikia.com/wiki/Catastrophe), _Adventurers did not look like real
people to the Landers as well_ (so probably the "Welcome to the village of
Arb" joke in season 1 episode 5 could be true also from the Landers' POV). I'm
looking for at least a Lander who knows something like " _Adventures don't
treat us like real people because they used to see us as fictional characters
in a game, the so-called heroes were just playing make-believe to escape
boredom_ ". This is a completely different animal.

**Note 3** : The fight between Papus and Elias Hackblade goes near to what I'm
looking for, but I still don't think that's what I'm looking for. Papus says
to Elias that he (Elias) is fictional, Elias is horrified, but it's not clear
if he's horrified by the revelation, by that ugly monster or by the magic the
monster he's casting on him. Anyway, Kanami treats Elias as real, but then the
scene is cut and we don't know what happens next (at least in the anime).
According to the wiki entry for [Papus](http://log-
horizon.wikia.com/wiki/Papus) (beware of spoilers!!!), he has a special power
that causes Landers to **_believe_** they are fictional. I don't care about
what the Genius **_think_** about Landers, and I don't care if Landers
**_are_** fictional or real people. I care if there are Landers who will
believe what the Genius say, and if this will bring them to discover that
Adventurers were just roleplayers, and how this will change their relationship
with Adventurers. (Note that Elias is a perfect example of Lander that did not
react or ask questions when Kanami and her friends used words like "NPC",
"playing", "game", "real life", etc. No, I don't think he already knows the
truth about Elder Tale just because he's on the Elder Tale box).


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log-horizon
Log Horizon: do some Landers know that their world used to be just a game where they were NPCs?


I've watched the _Log Horizon_ anime twice, but I haven't read the original
material. It's been awhile, though. What I remember is that the Landers
(People of the Land) have memory of times before the gamers got trapped in
their world, and even before that. In their understanding, there was no pre-
conscious "NPC" existence, just a continuum of life. They knew the Adventurers
were different, in that they didn't seem to die permanently. But as far as
they realize, they themselves have not changed.

Whether that understanding is an actuality or not in unstated. It could be
implanted/programmed memories of the Landers. Another possibility is that the
Adventurers had a limited understanding of the "MMO" world, as if they had
only been experiencing it in a sort of "slide show" or veiled fashion instead
of the full world it had actually been.

**::add::** A year after originally answering, it occurs to me that the most
likely possibility is that the game itself had been incapable of representing
the true agency of the "NPC"s. The complexity of modeling actual intelligence
for these in-game characters was simply beyond what could be programmed.

It is possible that the character whose name you ghosted now realizes that the
Adventurers had not thought of his people as "real". I think it likely he has
greater insight due to his focus on becoming like them. But I don't remember
the anime series explicitly stating that anyone but the Adventurers now
realized they had previously existed as part of a game.


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Can't reply to some of the other comments but we can't forget that the
translation system could be shielding the Landers from the abnormal phrasing
like Game, NPCs, Real Life, Other World, etc.

Translations could be:  
Game = before world fraction.  
NPC = Landers.  
Real Life = past Life.  
Etc


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