Out of curiosity, would Swift have ever been able to track down that guy in Toran again, the one who claimed Peacock had burned down his village?  Or did Peacock find out about him from Swift's memory of her battle with him and have him mysteriously 'disappear'?
Not sure if that was ever going to go anywhere anyway, since no-one seemed in a hurry to challenge Peacock about his past activities.

Then again, maybe in a way it did Swift some good to know she wasn't the only Kai with innocent blood on her hands.  Might explain why Peacock had been interested in gaining control over her once, kindred spirits and all, hehe ;)
This message was last edited by the player at 01:23, Mon 25 Jan 2021.

He didn't read Swift's mind about anything, but obviously Dusk Rat told him; she trusted him enough to let him take over her body when your team was fighting the Nadziranim, after all, she'd hardly hide something that might be dangerous to him after he asked her to tell her everything that happened on her mission. Peacock didn't particularly care about it, anyway; he would have been confident about his ability to argue his way out of any consequences for that one. While some of the things Peacock did where of the kind that most people would never be willing to accept (like his working with Rain Feather's mother), he never did anything he didn't think was a net positive in the fight against evil, and that meant he had good justifications ready for nearly anything questionable he'd ever done.

Oh yeah, I remember that guy. Turns out Peacock was basically what TV Tropes calls a "Well-Intentioned Extremist" and was willing to burn down a village of innocents in order to clear out a few darkspawn or something. He explained it in such a way that Dusk Rat was willing to let it go when she questioned him about it, anyway - I think she basically went to him after we'd spoken to the guy who made the accusation and said "So this guy said you destroyed his village - is that true?" and Peacock basically said "Yeah, but if I didn't then a load more people would've died to darkspawn so I regret it but it had to be done". Something along those lines, anyway.

As for Dusk Rat potentially trusting Swift Fox, I don't think that was ever likely to happen - Dusk Rat didn't really trust anyone human except Peacock, and that took a while when they first met. She just found them, as a species, so needlessly complicated and deceptive, saying things they didn't mean, twisting things other people meant, arguing with each other to try and get whatever result was the better for them without worrying about how it might affect other people, and so on. She basically just couldn't be arsed with all the faff and dishonesty and didn't really see any need to bother when she had plenty of friends who were straightforward, loyal, and didn't/couldn't understand any such concepts as deceit, betrayal, and the like. And Swift Fox was an assassin, right? And this was a known thing. So it was literally her job, at one point, to gain someone's trust in order to get close enough to kill them. Dusk Rat would likely never have been able to bring herself to trust someone like that, because as far as she was concerned, if you're capable of doing stuff like that once, you can do it again.

Dusk Rat was basically working with everyone because she had to, because it was her mission. She was just putting up with everyone in between doing actual mission stuff like, you know, fending off darkspawn. I think she only ever entered direct combat once, and that was when (and because) she was alone, when she went into the sewers of Toran after speaking with the local rats and finding out that something down there terrified them, and on exploring she found a giant snake thingy that was all mutated and had metal spikes sticking out of it and stuff.

Oh, do you remember when we all properly teamed up and blew the shit out of that darkspawn camp? I can't remember exactly what everyone did...I think Swifty snuck around and planted explosives, I'm pretty sure I directed the erm...what were they called, not giaks...the flying things...kraan? The ones that were smaller than zlanbeasts. Anyway, I think I directed those to start attacking the darkspawn, and I feel like there were some kind of dog-like monsters too that I was able to antagonise in much the same way. So they started causing chaos, other members of the group did stuff, and eventually someone set off the explosives and the whole place turned into a crater while we basically all crouched behind a nearby ridge overlooking the place and would probably have exchanged cheers and high-fives had any of us been the sort to do so ;). I certainly remember that whole scene as being pretty satisfying since we all basically hid and used a mixture of stealth and psychic powers to wreck the place without anyone getting caught :D.

Oh, since they're not around to say, what were Frost Ferret's and Water Hornet's political leanings? Were there any evil secret plans they were trying to enact? :D

They were both part of Moon Shadow's faction, although from different angles and nowhere near as deep into it as Swift Fox was; specifically, Frost Ferret was something of Silver Raven's assistant, while Water Hornet was something of a favored disciple of Phantom Steed, a bit like the Sun Snake to Blue Snake relationship but much less close and much more filled with distant admiration, since Hornet was a third batch.

Hornet was also in a similar friendship/conflict with Sun Fox as Sun Snake was, with a confused mix of admiration and envy. Hornet also was investigating Peacock's dealing with Sejanoz and Rain's mother, so he might have come up on a more antagonistic side of that confrontation, had he been around for it. Hornet also had some admiration for Valador and Sabre Fox, as the two of them had saved Ruanon from an Helghast in their backstory, so he was very conflicted when it was realized Valador might be a villain, and he really admired Sabre Fox a lot for his bravery and courage.

As Ferret left earlier, the last I had from him was a lot of determination toward saving Silver Raven and, of course, since he had almost been killed by Haxadrom on Valador's orders, he had serious reason to hold a grudge against both of them, but I wouldn't be able to say how that would have evolved if he'd still been around for it - hence why I tended to keep him out of most events, as I didn't feel confident with handling his reactions.

Poor Water Hornet, didn't realise he actually liked Valador!


For some reason I didn't trust Wul-dumar as a player, even though my character had no reason to. Not sure why. Was the mage straightforward and innocent, or was there anything going on with him?

He was a neutral politician with a passion for collecting artifacts. He wasn't an enemy, but he was the primary reason you couldn't just go to Banedon and tell him "look, Valador is evil, we can't prove it but we saw it with our own eyes"; even if Banedon would have believed you immediately, Wol-Dumar would have stopped you from taking any action until you provided some solid proof to him. So... in a sense, there wasn't anything more to him, but in another, he was your biggest obstacle to solving things quickly about the Toran situation.

I hope that helps?

Also, I will be opening up all the private threads to everybody in ten hours or so - I imagine once you've read them all, that'll open a few more questions. Note that the entirety of the game, all threads, covers FIVE different pages - you need to go to the scroll-down option and select page 4 or 5 if you want to see the threads in those pages.

I'll leave the game up for two months so that anybody who wants will be free to download everything in it, but after that I'll need to mark it for deletion, as for the site rules, so if there is anything about the game that you want to save, do it as soon as you're able to! ^_^

Maybe his avatar looked oddly suspicious for some reason? ;)

something that I wondered about, what was the reputation Peacock had with Vyctar? I recall that Vyctar told a story of a certain kai with abilities that sounded remarkably like Peacock. Was there anything to that?

I think the hair colour matched for the time

The hair color matched, yes, because it was him. Peacock annihilated several divisions of Drakkarim on his own, which earned him a big name during the war; he did it with very unsportsmanlike tactics, traps, psychic assaults, and a good dose of carefully harnessed nightmare fuel to pass himself as scarier and stronger than he was to them. As a result, he earned a reputation. You can safely assume that anything Vyctar said about him was at the very least based on truth, with some exaggeration as is normal in fights, and some of it being watching things from the opposing side. Once you know how far Peacock was willing to go to save Red Dawn, it shouldn't be surprising that he was willing to terrorize the Drakkarim into insanity in order to win the war.

Peacock wants the side of good to win, and he's more than willing to go to very extreme length to ensure it; remember, he spared a murderous witch (as in, somebody who killed innocents due to no other reason than anger) and made her into his agent just to have an inside agent among the forces of darkness. You shouldn't be surprised that, in a publicly declared war against people who were allied to the Darklords, he went all out, nor that the result of Peacock going all out was terrifying to the other side, since he prides himself in his skill at presentation. :)

Ok, now everybody should be able to see everything; if people could confirm for me that this worked, that'd be wonderful! ^_^

Seems to be fine, yes

Gonna have lots to read! Before I do a few more questions

Rain Feathers ghost visited Fox in his sleep. I could sense it coming when I saw the opening post of the thread. Was this just Fox alone? I’m pretty sure at least Snake saw her too?

Also, in the private thread where Peacock met Fox during the adventure with Dusk Rat, was there anything involved in this? Or just a filler story?

Rain Feather had a dream meeting with each of Sun Snake, Swift Fox, Dusk Rat and Sabre Fox. You will find a thread for each. All of them are sadly unfinished, as Rain was unable to keep posting in them.

Shining Peacock meeting with Dusk Rat during your memory mission was nothing sinister, just him showing up as the only available authority figure. As I said, he didn't see himself as evil and, where his students were concerned, all he wanted was for them to succeed and be happy - preferably in a manner that made him happy and successful as well, but I don't think that qualifies as strange or evil, does it?

If you'd solved the situation with Summer Wasp, the Kai you saved in that thread would have showed up afterwards among those greeting your return, commenting how she was looking forward to become a great Kai who helped everybody and saved people, just like Master Dusk Rat. Other than that, the thread was really more of a way to give you and Dusk Rat a chance to interact as players and build a connection between your characters than anything else.

Is that Swift Fox that Summer Wasp and her gang nicknamed "Shady"? :)  hehe.
I remember around the start I missed that Laughing Shark was one of Wasp's crowd.  Somehow I'd gotten the mistaken impression that she worked with Moon Shadow, hence why Swift was more open with her than she'd normally have been with someone outside of the inner circle...  Not sure it had much of an effect yet, but I'm still rereading everything from the start for now :)

Was it ever explained why White Mantis actually seemed afraid of being put forward as a candidate for leadership?
(Although I get the impression that political games and healers don't go well together...)

It would mess with Blue Snake's plans as well as put into questions White Mantis' position as the neutral moderating party between the various candidates. Thus, neither Blue Snake nor White Mantis were inclined to let that happen, and since they were in agreement, and working together, there was no real chance of her position changing.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:44, Sat 30 Jan 2021.

Ahh okies.
Lot of complex stuff going on in the background that we didn't get to see there (or at least Swift didn't.  Such is the price of being an antisocial loner perhaps).

And awww...  Did Silent Mole have a crush on Sun Snake, and he broke her heart?  *frowns at him*

Sun Snake's real superpower was obliviousness :p

I'm glad it's entertaining for you all to read! ^_^

And yeah, Sun Snake totally won the obliviousness prize in the game, there's no arguing that.

Hmm, wasn't there a link somewhere to download threads?  Can't seem to find it if so.  Might be thinking of another forum...

Not sure what order the various sub-threads go in either, I only know the ones that I had access to as Swift.

Interesting seeing things from the perspective of other characters though.  No wonder we didn't talk much at the start, everyone was suspicious of everyone else, hehe :)

It should be possible to click "see all" on a thread and then "D/L" to download, but having never done it myself, I'm not sure.

As for reading order, I can help! To a small extent. The truth is that a number of private threads cover multiple instances where a character would come back to a side thread multiple times throughout the game, at different points.

In general, the Prologues all come first. Sun Snake's prologue is set a considerable amount of time before the game starts (I think a few months), Rain Feather takes place a few days before, and Dusk Rat's is the night before, so reading them in that order would give a more logical progression. Water Hornet's prologue is the exceptions, as, while it starts chronologically a bit after Sun Snake's, it then continues and only rejoin the main story much later (since Hornet joined the game later himself), so I would suggest to threat it like a memory thread - wait for when Water Hornet joins the group in the main story (near the end of Thread VII), and when he explains his presence, go read his thread for the details. Unlike the memory thread, Hornet's prologue contains significant information, and not reading it would reduce understanding of following events.

From there, it's better to read thread I as the opening; thread 0 starts chronologically before thread I, but the events there cover a much larger span of time, and Frost Ferret (protagonist of that thread) rejoin the main story at a point that is well into thread II. As a result, I would say read thread I first and thread 0 after it, or else read thread 0 before everything else, and then move into the prologues. In any case, thread I should be read before thread II is.

As for the side thread, the best way to go is to just follow along a thread; then, if one or more players have time to themselves (say, staying watch together), or go do something separate on their own (say, a shopping expedition), then you should probably interrupt your reading of the main thread and follow the side thread until the characters in it rejoin the story, at which point you go back to the main thread. The numbers on the side threads (0.0, 0.1, and so on) have next to no meaning - they're not a chronological ordering, a group-based ordering, or any other such ordering of any sort, I just picked the number that I liked the particular day I started that thread and then distributed the remainder as I went. Following the main thread and branching out whenever the thread does (it's generally pretty clear) is the best way to go.

The Memory threads (of which there are three) only really matters for further characterization of their character, and have no real story purpose, so they can be read at any time. In general, a character will mention the events in questions (Sun Snake's first mission in Illirion, Sabre Fox group fight against Starfire, Sabre Fox commenting to Dusk Rat about them having worked together before) in one of the main threads, at which point following to the memory thread to have more clarification would be the natural response, but one could completely ignore them, or read them all before the main story, and in either case get the same benefit from them.

So, after having explained how the side-threads and memory-threads work, the next thing is the reading order of the main threads themselves. While following the story by thread number would make for a chronological sequence, the fact that the groups parted midway through Thread II to go on their own missions and didn't rejoin until thread VI. Given that, I would instead suggest to go with the separated reading - follow the mission of the Toran team first, and then, when the groups join up, go over the events the Maakengorge team experienced, and continue from there.

This is because the adventure of the Toran team took place in the even numbered threads, starting with II, so when you are reading Thread II, following from it to Thread IV and then into Thread VI, and thread VI is also the thread where the two teams joined together. Thus, following them lets the narrative flow more naturally. Then, reading thread III, V and VII clarifies what went down with the Maakengorge Team, and then Thread VII proceeds directly into Thread VIII, so that smooths out the reading experience.

Thus, my suggested order would be to read the prologue threads in the Sun Snake > Rain Feather > Dusk Rat sequence, then Thread I, then Thread 0, then after that the Toran Team story in threads II, IV and VI, the Maakengorge story in threads III, V and VII, and from there follow the threads from VIII on along their normal numbers, reading the memory threads whenever the relevant memories are mentioned, and checking for side-thread whenever the group is split for whatever reason or a player would have a chance to do something on their own while others aren't around (such as standing guard), as there will often (although not always) be one - often this is mentioned in the relative main thread's OOC, although not every time.

I hope that helps! ^_^

Ah yeah, I remembered seeing a D/L link somewhere on another game thread, but not seeing it here.  Not sure if there's something else I need to do to make it show up.
Just a thought anyway.  This is probably the longest RP I've ever been in, so would have been nice to keep a record of it and read through the whole thing again in my own time.

If this had gone all the way to an ending, it would have been an interesting project to write it up in novel form.  Though uncertain how that would work with multiple viewpoints.  A constantly-changing third-person view could get confusing after a while, unless it was handled with a lot more writing skill than I'd ever claim to have.

OH, while I remember, Dusk Rat was technically wrong in thinking Swift Fox was an assassin.  More like she was a weapon.  The infamous 'Ghost of Anskaven'.  So was like blaming a dagger for stabbing someone rather than blaming the person who'd wielded it ;)
Although, yeah, Swift wouldn't have tried to defend herself from that accusation, as she always did believe she was at least partly responsible.  A combination of crippling guilt, post-traumatic stress, and psychic-torture-induced mental damage was at the root of all her issues really.  Psychiatrist's field day.
Her mind had effectively fractured into the 'Ghost' part of her and the part of her that was loyal to the Kai, and when she was emotionally stressed, her personality could switch to either of those causing her to lash out, sometimes at the wrong target.  Being hit by psychic attacks could aggravate that situation too.  And her inability to shield her mind properly meant that if she experienced a flashback, it kind of got projected outwards, without her being aware of it.
Ultimately, she was still just a scared kid whose life had been stolen from her, hiding from a monster (the fact that she thought she had become the monster made it worse).
Sometimes writing her thoughts scared me a bit.  But I like it when I can really feel for a character like that, makes them seem more interesting.  And an (anti)hero with no flaws is a boring one!
Having her learn Crafting was a different path than I'd imagined her following at character creation, but it worked out nicely for her storyline.  :)

The original version of Swift was more in the D&D Rogue style.  Reformed thief whose skills were being put to service for a more noble purpose.  But ultimately a much more light-hearted and fun-loving character.  I figured Laughing Shark could supply the fun quota in this team though.

Sapphire Rose (another Kai character of mine, who I'm currently playing in Sabre's game) ended up inheriting that more reckless fun-loving side.  (And it may yet end up getting her killed!  hehe).

Currently reading the second watch sub-thread after the Vordak/Helghast fight on the way to Toran, where Sun Snake and Laughing Shark are discussing political viewpoints, while sharing some of Laughing Shark's home brew.

That...  looks like quite an interesting experience :)  hehe.

Oh we're back on Sun Snake being oblivious again, are we? It is quite the superpower :p


I recall the discussion with Laughing Shark was fun, good to have the two viewpoints. As I said before, I'd shifted Sun Snake's potential conflicts from Summer Wasp to Moon Shadow, so I think I was more receptive to Laughing Shark. As opposed to how the finale turned out!