beccaelizabeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccaelizabeth) wrote2024-08-31 12:45 am
beccaelizabeth) wrote2024-08-31 12:45 am
Entry tags:
Wrath of the Righteous xover bunnies
I keep going back to Wrath of the Righteous and imagining throwing new different characters at it or making more plot around the edges of what the Knight Commander was doing. Fanfic stuff, obvs. But I dont think there's really an audience for my multiverse xover mixing the computer game with the paper one and beyond. So I just circle it a lot and worry at it like a problem set.
... wants to redeem more characters. The story keeps dangling them in front of me and then going oops nope can't help this one. So I'm like watch me. But by introducing them to people and situations from other stories and genres.
Like, Adam, from Torchwood, applied to Camellia, from Wrath of the Righteous. Big spoilers for game and for Torchwood episodes from... lots of years ago... So Adam goes into memories, replaces people they care about with just Adam, and then when Ianto catches him he adds memories of enjoying murder. Just for the therapy bills and lols. Well no, just as a way of controlling him, but.
Camellia already has the memories of murder and enjoying it. She has accepted that as part of her life. But if you introduce Adam, you introduce *doubt*. Was that her? Was she secretly the hero, like Ianto, who figured out the villain? If Adam replaced someone, who were they? She remembers a very lonely and isolated childhood so there aren't actually many people he could swap out. He might have to patchwork a njmber of servants lives together to make himself an enduring presence, like Norton lost plural people. So if Camellia is left with false memories of Adam, and left to wonder which ones are false, then she can re examine herself, defamiliarised.
It might, maybe, be enough to put a crack in the path she has chosen.
Of course to actually do that then she would have to reject Adam and his 'gifts'. He'd have to fight nasty, like he did with Jack, telling her what she was losing.
As a Shaman she has the most logical chance of actually hitting him, so we can give him incentive to get nasty.
But to get him out of their heads?
If we don't give Ianto a convenient pocket of retcon - and Knight Commander Ianto would not be in such a convenient state, for reasons of late game Plot - then we need another mechanism.
The Angel's Sword. Picking it up gives the Knight Commander memories. Actually so do a lot of interactions with the Storyteller, who could be relied upon to give a consistent perspective on true stories, but only for people who have items to read.
But say the light of Heaven illuminates the edges of the false memories. Say the sword can slice Adam out. As a last Angelic gift.
It's a stretch but if Adam gets as far as Neathholm the 5th Crusade has Much bigger problem.
No one from the tunnels would know if they brought Adam down there with them. Nasty little memory parasite that he is, he would be deep in their backstory. Which wouldn't fit together. Until Kenabres, until the market square. That little group that's supposed to come together trusting each other would be left wondering instead how much was false and when the true memories start.
... Adam arrived in Kenabres when someone did Greater Restoration on Knight Commander Ianto Jones. He is still missing memories, like Ulbrig and Finnean, not yet able to understand what has happened to him. But a spell like that would fix the simple poison damage to XP that retcon did.
... a poison that eats your experience makes retcon sound even worse, and it is already pretty terrible...
For someone that regularly used retcon on himself and others as a career, the whole of Wrath of the Righteous is about memory. And secrets. A dash of bioweapons. A whole lot of messing people around.
But Camellia... say she gets in a fight with Adam where he tells her what he's doing to her. Then she apparently kills him with her spirit weapon powers. Or at least there's ambiguity about if he's left anything in her head.
... that bit is necessary to the story staying interesting but the logic of Adam's existence is nobody can know he was there after he was gone. Either the story is self limiting real fast or we need to change the rules not just add them to a new place. Not ideal.
But that dash of doubt could get Camellia thinking. Who could have been in her life? What did the memories of being a killer take from her? As of course being a serial killer took the possibility of knowing people and swapped in a burial.
Does Rhys know about Adam, after? Does Adam need to touch and alter in order to use them to live? He'd kind of have to or he'd never end, like a visual infection, going endemic if he got in front of enough crowds. So people could know about Adam, if they got the Light on them in turns, or had to be swiped by the Light of Heaven like ... being knighted but more in the head region...
So they'd know from each other they were fighting something that told them it was stealing some memories and replacing them with messed up dark ones. Which is a very Worldwound situation.
... they'd have to trust each other when they say that though. Instead of trusting their own memories. Which could have some bright Light of Heaven bits in where Adam tried to be, so they know something happened.
Camellia values her freedom, so I want to speed bump her choices so she might decide the freedom to murder and enjoy it was actually imposed by that prick who tried to kill her. Then she'd have to figure herself out again from context.
Of course as soon as you get back to her childhood home, the context turns up in several searches. So that's not going to work for long.
... except she now has several Adam altered gaps to blame ever so many things on...
Heh, could do a story where she blames Horgus for everything. And he refuses to speak in his own defence, because blaming him means she thinks it was something wrong in the first place, and he'd want that so much for her.
The thing is though, if you want to avoid the ending where the serial killer who tells everyone the voices told her to kill is now level 20 and possibly a bit mythic, you have to break up *early*. Like before the Gray Garrison reprise.
So say
Ianto gets Restoration and wanders through the crowd in the market square. Adam... hides if he knows what's good for him, as he may by then, for late game spoiler reasons. Then when Ianto falls he finds himself alone in the dark with Adam, which seems perfectly natural as soon as the man gets his hands on him. But Adam making room for himself in Anevia and Seelah would need to fit into two wandering geographies of backstory. And then Camellia never left Kenabres. And they're all trying to get to know each other, in between fighting off giant bugs, so there's time to hear bits that don't fit.
Then it's Ianto who gets his hand on the sword and the Light of Heaven shows Adam for what he is.
... he resembles demonic possession and what the Ooliodroo do later on, but he's unique. You wouldnt want him in a game because he does so much more than 'charm person' you have autonomy problems.
To get the most out of the stories then Ianto needs to know about the murder memories. He would from experience assume they are false. So Adam must shout about them when he realises a spirit weapon can harm him?
Then Ianto would try and be calm and supportive while assuming she's also going through a really bad day of false memories of murder. Tell his own experience, and how Jack wouldnt believe him, because he knew he was a better person than that.
(Interestingly, if you listen enough audios, and add them to the Cyberwoman and general working for Torchwood One, there is a case to be made that Ianto is not, in fact, a better person. Maybe all Jack could be sure of was strangling wasn't one of Ianto's kinks...)
But it seems like an interesting story if the Knight Commander knows from the first day about Camellia enjoying murder but just insists, strongly, that she isn't that kind of person.
Maybe in Camellia's house they don't just find evidence, they conceal it. Like, the house was taken over by demons, you wouldn't want to confuse her, after Adam took advantage...
Maybe a discreet conversation with Horgus Gwerm puts him on the spot to confirm or deny.
Or maybe it's just enough to break up with her from the adventure party before the Wardstone.
The thing is, one way to read her story is, a crusade is very much not murder rehab. Murdering the people the Knight Commander points her at would do her no favours. And that's a conclusions that Ianto could come to very early.
Heck, if he did have retcon, he would retcon the memories of murder away, in the confident expectation he was helping restore status quo ante.
... have or make. Ianto isn't a science specialist but he has a prodigious memory and knows a little about all of their jobs. So how difficult is it to make retcon...?
After that though, what would Camellia do?
A shaman has a little Healing, and the crusade can always use that. But what would keep her behind teh lines when it is spirits of Battle that drive her?
I just have that feeling where it seems like you could rotate these characters just right to click
and get a new and possibly better for them or probably just very dramatic story out of it.
And that's without even getting into the fact that almost the first thing you learn is Resurrection is possible in this game. Terendelev's scales. Then scrolls at the Defender's Heart. The computer game doesnt have True Res but in theory all he needs is a name, or optimally a name, date time place of birth, and same of death. Ianto has that in his mental files for we don't know how much of Torchwood. ... plus about 823 had the same date and place of death, which is a bit easy to memorise...
Huh, just checked via wiki and wayback, and the website said 823 total staff of whom 27 survived. I had it memorised as 823 down out of 850. oop.
ANYway:
Ianto Jones, Torchwood survivor, dropped on a planet where True Res is a thing, is going to start trying to save enough gold to start saving people.
Which makes him a very different guy from the canon Knight Commander, who only has the context and friends the game gives him.
Plus while one can imagine Ianto being very on side with closing the Worldwound, Torchwood does have form with wanting to exploit rifts, and the Trickster path has ever so many temptations on that front, so you'd want to bring back friends who would be on several sides of an argument.
Also, imagine Owen being the one to pick up the wand that triggers the Undead mythic path. Tangly. He'd understand exactly what he was risking, or he'd think he did, but if he tried taking it he'd find himself in way too deep. You could fit an entire story arc into one of the time gaps for the Knight Commander. Would need to tweak the logic a bit though. Or, use the DLC where Nahyndri gets involved, and all paths say the Knight Commander isn't the only one who tried getting on that boat of bones.
Plus greed is a temptation for everyone, but when every gold piece gets you closer to another life saved... Owen has such a list. All of them do. And if they start bring back their guilt list instead of filtering for how they'd cope, ever so many stories arise.
... kind of want to play through with Owen now and get to the what have I done point... but I don't want to play evil...
Anyway! Throw different people at the same story, get different story, obvs. Throw different story at the same people, also get different story. Including an excuse for a continuation of it.
Still turning them around in my head for now though...
... wants to redeem more characters. The story keeps dangling them in front of me and then going oops nope can't help this one. So I'm like watch me. But by introducing them to people and situations from other stories and genres.
Like, Adam, from Torchwood, applied to Camellia, from Wrath of the Righteous. Big spoilers for game and for Torchwood episodes from... lots of years ago... So Adam goes into memories, replaces people they care about with just Adam, and then when Ianto catches him he adds memories of enjoying murder. Just for the therapy bills and lols. Well no, just as a way of controlling him, but.
Camellia already has the memories of murder and enjoying it. She has accepted that as part of her life. But if you introduce Adam, you introduce *doubt*. Was that her? Was she secretly the hero, like Ianto, who figured out the villain? If Adam replaced someone, who were they? She remembers a very lonely and isolated childhood so there aren't actually many people he could swap out. He might have to patchwork a njmber of servants lives together to make himself an enduring presence, like Norton lost plural people. So if Camellia is left with false memories of Adam, and left to wonder which ones are false, then she can re examine herself, defamiliarised.
It might, maybe, be enough to put a crack in the path she has chosen.
Of course to actually do that then she would have to reject Adam and his 'gifts'. He'd have to fight nasty, like he did with Jack, telling her what she was losing.
As a Shaman she has the most logical chance of actually hitting him, so we can give him incentive to get nasty.
But to get him out of their heads?
If we don't give Ianto a convenient pocket of retcon - and Knight Commander Ianto would not be in such a convenient state, for reasons of late game Plot - then we need another mechanism.
The Angel's Sword. Picking it up gives the Knight Commander memories. Actually so do a lot of interactions with the Storyteller, who could be relied upon to give a consistent perspective on true stories, but only for people who have items to read.
But say the light of Heaven illuminates the edges of the false memories. Say the sword can slice Adam out. As a last Angelic gift.
It's a stretch but if Adam gets as far as Neathholm the 5th Crusade has Much bigger problem.
No one from the tunnels would know if they brought Adam down there with them. Nasty little memory parasite that he is, he would be deep in their backstory. Which wouldn't fit together. Until Kenabres, until the market square. That little group that's supposed to come together trusting each other would be left wondering instead how much was false and when the true memories start.
... Adam arrived in Kenabres when someone did Greater Restoration on Knight Commander Ianto Jones. He is still missing memories, like Ulbrig and Finnean, not yet able to understand what has happened to him. But a spell like that would fix the simple poison damage to XP that retcon did.
... a poison that eats your experience makes retcon sound even worse, and it is already pretty terrible...
For someone that regularly used retcon on himself and others as a career, the whole of Wrath of the Righteous is about memory. And secrets. A dash of bioweapons. A whole lot of messing people around.
But Camellia... say she gets in a fight with Adam where he tells her what he's doing to her. Then she apparently kills him with her spirit weapon powers. Or at least there's ambiguity about if he's left anything in her head.
... that bit is necessary to the story staying interesting but the logic of Adam's existence is nobody can know he was there after he was gone. Either the story is self limiting real fast or we need to change the rules not just add them to a new place. Not ideal.
But that dash of doubt could get Camellia thinking. Who could have been in her life? What did the memories of being a killer take from her? As of course being a serial killer took the possibility of knowing people and swapped in a burial.
Does Rhys know about Adam, after? Does Adam need to touch and alter in order to use them to live? He'd kind of have to or he'd never end, like a visual infection, going endemic if he got in front of enough crowds. So people could know about Adam, if they got the Light on them in turns, or had to be swiped by the Light of Heaven like ... being knighted but more in the head region...
So they'd know from each other they were fighting something that told them it was stealing some memories and replacing them with messed up dark ones. Which is a very Worldwound situation.
... they'd have to trust each other when they say that though. Instead of trusting their own memories. Which could have some bright Light of Heaven bits in where Adam tried to be, so they know something happened.
Camellia values her freedom, so I want to speed bump her choices so she might decide the freedom to murder and enjoy it was actually imposed by that prick who tried to kill her. Then she'd have to figure herself out again from context.
Of course as soon as you get back to her childhood home, the context turns up in several searches. So that's not going to work for long.
... except she now has several Adam altered gaps to blame ever so many things on...
Heh, could do a story where she blames Horgus for everything. And he refuses to speak in his own defence, because blaming him means she thinks it was something wrong in the first place, and he'd want that so much for her.
The thing is though, if you want to avoid the ending where the serial killer who tells everyone the voices told her to kill is now level 20 and possibly a bit mythic, you have to break up *early*. Like before the Gray Garrison reprise.
So say
Ianto gets Restoration and wanders through the crowd in the market square. Adam... hides if he knows what's good for him, as he may by then, for late game spoiler reasons. Then when Ianto falls he finds himself alone in the dark with Adam, which seems perfectly natural as soon as the man gets his hands on him. But Adam making room for himself in Anevia and Seelah would need to fit into two wandering geographies of backstory. And then Camellia never left Kenabres. And they're all trying to get to know each other, in between fighting off giant bugs, so there's time to hear bits that don't fit.
Then it's Ianto who gets his hand on the sword and the Light of Heaven shows Adam for what he is.
... he resembles demonic possession and what the Ooliodroo do later on, but he's unique. You wouldnt want him in a game because he does so much more than 'charm person' you have autonomy problems.
To get the most out of the stories then Ianto needs to know about the murder memories. He would from experience assume they are false. So Adam must shout about them when he realises a spirit weapon can harm him?
Then Ianto would try and be calm and supportive while assuming she's also going through a really bad day of false memories of murder. Tell his own experience, and how Jack wouldnt believe him, because he knew he was a better person than that.
(Interestingly, if you listen enough audios, and add them to the Cyberwoman and general working for Torchwood One, there is a case to be made that Ianto is not, in fact, a better person. Maybe all Jack could be sure of was strangling wasn't one of Ianto's kinks...)
But it seems like an interesting story if the Knight Commander knows from the first day about Camellia enjoying murder but just insists, strongly, that she isn't that kind of person.
Maybe in Camellia's house they don't just find evidence, they conceal it. Like, the house was taken over by demons, you wouldn't want to confuse her, after Adam took advantage...
Maybe a discreet conversation with Horgus Gwerm puts him on the spot to confirm or deny.
Or maybe it's just enough to break up with her from the adventure party before the Wardstone.
The thing is, one way to read her story is, a crusade is very much not murder rehab. Murdering the people the Knight Commander points her at would do her no favours. And that's a conclusions that Ianto could come to very early.
Heck, if he did have retcon, he would retcon the memories of murder away, in the confident expectation he was helping restore status quo ante.
... have or make. Ianto isn't a science specialist but he has a prodigious memory and knows a little about all of their jobs. So how difficult is it to make retcon...?
After that though, what would Camellia do?
A shaman has a little Healing, and the crusade can always use that. But what would keep her behind teh lines when it is spirits of Battle that drive her?
I just have that feeling where it seems like you could rotate these characters just right to click
and get a new and possibly better for them or probably just very dramatic story out of it.
And that's without even getting into the fact that almost the first thing you learn is Resurrection is possible in this game. Terendelev's scales. Then scrolls at the Defender's Heart. The computer game doesnt have True Res but in theory all he needs is a name, or optimally a name, date time place of birth, and same of death. Ianto has that in his mental files for we don't know how much of Torchwood. ... plus about 823 had the same date and place of death, which is a bit easy to memorise...
Huh, just checked via wiki and wayback, and the website said 823 total staff of whom 27 survived. I had it memorised as 823 down out of 850. oop.
ANYway:
Ianto Jones, Torchwood survivor, dropped on a planet where True Res is a thing, is going to start trying to save enough gold to start saving people.
Which makes him a very different guy from the canon Knight Commander, who only has the context and friends the game gives him.
Plus while one can imagine Ianto being very on side with closing the Worldwound, Torchwood does have form with wanting to exploit rifts, and the Trickster path has ever so many temptations on that front, so you'd want to bring back friends who would be on several sides of an argument.
Also, imagine Owen being the one to pick up the wand that triggers the Undead mythic path. Tangly. He'd understand exactly what he was risking, or he'd think he did, but if he tried taking it he'd find himself in way too deep. You could fit an entire story arc into one of the time gaps for the Knight Commander. Would need to tweak the logic a bit though. Or, use the DLC where Nahyndri gets involved, and all paths say the Knight Commander isn't the only one who tried getting on that boat of bones.
Plus greed is a temptation for everyone, but when every gold piece gets you closer to another life saved... Owen has such a list. All of them do. And if they start bring back their guilt list instead of filtering for how they'd cope, ever so many stories arise.
... kind of want to play through with Owen now and get to the what have I done point... but I don't want to play evil...
Anyway! Throw different people at the same story, get different story, obvs. Throw different story at the same people, also get different story. Including an excuse for a continuation of it.
Still turning them around in my head for now though...