Ok, so I feel it's time to call it in and declare the game over. I'm sad we ended it so close to the end, but when there is no interest, there's no point in keeping things open. I'll be closing the main thread shortly.

I'll give everybody two weeks to look through your private threads in case there's anything you said in them that you would rather not make public, and then I'll open up every thread to everybody, and give it a month so anybody who wants to can download everything - I know at least a couple of people who said they might want to.

Additionally, I'm now open to any questions anybody might have about literally anything you want to know about the game; so, if there's any curiosity you would want to satisfy, now's the time to ask! I might take some time to answer some questions since I might need to locate my old notes to check (it's been TEN years since this game began in November 2011), but I WILL answer anything I am asked about. If you don't want the answer to be public, you can ask in PM.

I considered asking to see if anybody wanted to make an epilogue post, but I realized there's no real point - too much would have depended on how the final confrontation developed and it simply stopped developing into anything, so it's no use. Still, if anybody WANTS to offer the other players an idea of what they think their character would have gone on to do, you're absolutely free to, and if you need answers to what I planned for possible results of the confrontation that never took place, as I said before, I will answer any question I will be asked.

Finally, I want to make sure you all know that, even if it ended with a whimper instead of a bang, this game was nevertheless one of the most meaningful things I've ever done in my entire life - nothing else in my life so far that I dedicated myself to has lasted anywhere NEAR ten years long, so to me this game was extremely meaningful. So, even with ending things like this, I'm happy it happened, and am infinitely grateful to you all for having made it possible!

That's a shame :(


I guess to start I'd be interested in the major players, and where they might have gone. I was told what might have happened with Sun Fox, don't recall if that was public knowledge or not.

Was Valador still going to be a major scene and encounter too, or had we done enough that he was going to be wrapped up quickly?

You would have needed to confront him, but the manner of said confrontation would have depended on what sort of agreement you managed to reach with Summer Wasp.

Also, unlike everybody else, Valador would not have surrendered; he would have done his best to win, although I had planned so that you could still win by forcing him to run away. Also, if you were fooled in thinking he'd been made into an ally, or else let him go for some reason, he would still have died - you'd have learned in the epilogue that he had been murdered, although I would not have openly revealed to you that it had been Laughing Shark to do it, only giving you clues to interpret as you saw fit.

So, for most intents and purposes, Valador was going to have a pretty major scene to himself; he might even have been a final boss of sorts, although if you had arranged things so that you had enough allies, it might not have devolved into a straight up fight. One thing that's sure is that he wouldn't have let his plans be destroyed easily.

Valador was one of the four key NPC I came up with before I had completely framed the story in my mind (the other three being Sun Fox, Shining Peacock, and Blue Snake), and he was always envisioned as the ultimate villain of the game overall, although all of the others + Golden Sparrow, the High Priest of Vashna and Vyctar (which I added in at later stages of the planning) had different antagonistic roles assigned to them as I developed the idea into a proper story.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:24, Thu 14 Jan 2021.

Aww, it's a pity the game didn't get a "proper" ending but yeah, it's been pretty dead in here for some time now. Might as well give it something resembling a conclusion, at least.

I'm curious as to how far Shining Peacock would've gone to get what he wanted - was he really layers upon layers of deception to conceal a dark centre, or was he genuinely out for the betterment of everyone despite having occasionally-extreme methods?

As for Dusk Rat, I had always envisioned/hoped for her "ending" to involve being able to go away and settle herself in some nice forest somewhere, away from annoying humans, where she could befriend the local wildlife (as well as bring along the friends she's already made - Brook, Cloudcatcher, and her rat colony) and act as a sort of nature-guardian protector of the area. Still in contact with the Kai in some way, of course, and keeping an eye out for anything nasty which might show up that she couldn't handle. I seem to recall that "moving out" of the Monastery wasn't allowed or something but eh, I'm sure someone could end up waiving the rules on that a bit, especially if whomever ended up in charge opened up further channels to other nations and stuff (thus likely requiring Kai to possibly be based in other locations anyway). I did say it's what I hoped she would get, anyway ;).

Kai have to return once each year to the monastery to re-swear fealty to the King (assuming that continued in the new way the order was run) but otherwise I guess Dusk Rat could have been assigned to an area. Especially since Shining Peacock could have swung that, I suppose, saying it was scouting or some such.


Sun Snake was basically broken after Blue Snake's death, and kind of limping on just to make sure the order didn't fall apart, since that was his last pillar really. Hence why he didn't really have too much patience with Summer Wasp. Him offering to go as a figurehead really was him offering a lot of himself, and only because Rain Feather had put forth the idea, and given that Valador could have undercut Rain Feather, then he thought he might have no choice.

Was that a danger if Rain Feather had been leader? That knowledge of Rain Feather's origins / condition could have been an issue when dealing with Valador, and beyond?


Sun Snake would have probably retreated in to the background of the order. I mentioned to Shadow privately about a Lorecircle of Shadow, comprised of Divination/Psi-screen/POathsmanship/Invisibility. Basically the idea of staying in the background, and able to either fade away when needed or be exactly who you need to be when called upon. The basis of a benign spy network, in fact :p  Sun Snake might have finally settled and learned Solaris, and perhaps started this new lorecircle, and just quietly taight, or whatever otherwise.

I had hoped Sun Fox might be ok, but there was always the possibility that she might have to face her punishment and go to the Daziarn for her crimes. Was that a known end or could more things have happened to decide her fate?


I was wondering if Sun Snake could have weaponised Nexus, in that he could have used Nexus/Psi-screen (the feedback improvement) and PSi-surge to make the living network Nexus worked on actively 'hostile' to any attempt to use it. So for Valador, trick him to using Nexus in the hopes it would basically explode on him and deny him his guildstaff and and make him fear using any mental disciplines. Not that it would ahve ever come down to a fight.... not if Swift Fox stabbed him first.

In reply to Dusk Rat (msg # 4):

Peacock could have gone either way, but at the point where we left the game, he had settled for Sun Snake's suggestion of making him part of a council of five, because he was confident that he would be able to use it to influence things to his liking from behind the scenes, especially with the immortality method you helped him acquire, Dusk Rat, which he would have perfected slowly across the necessary time.

Assuming nothing changed during the final confrontation with Summer Wasp and Valador, he'd have been happy to let things progress in the way Sun Snake preferred, laying low and acting as a political influence until he was the only one still alive of the original council of five that Sun Snake suggested, at which point the mere fact he'd be visibly immortal would have allowed him to become the most influential figure by default without having any need for taking the role of leader himself.

Dusk Rat would likely have gotten her wish by means of Shining Peacock suggesting it as a compromise; since founding new monasteries was something that had already been mentioned as a plan, but one that would be difficult to put in practice, Peacock would have likely suggested that Dusk Rat could be allowed to settle in an area for a period (say, a dozen years), so that she could establish a spy network with the local animals, use it to get a sense for where best to set up a Monastery in the area, and then leave to move to a new forest and start it over again. That'd give the Kai a political base to work with, Peacock an additional new spy network to use that only a Kai could manage and thus with zero security risks, and Dusk Rat would get to live in the wilds like she preferred AND to also meet and make friend with pretty much every animal in Magnamund, given enough time. All under the banner of still being a member of the Order (if an itinerant one), and for the greater good, of course.

As for the king matter Sun Snake raised, Peacock was confident that, once Dusk Rat was able to get a mate for Cloudcatcher and start breeding the zlanbeasts as potential mounts that King Ulnar might be gifted with, any issues with her that might come from that angle would be waived. And, of course, with a Zlanbeast of her own, it isn't like showing up to visit occasionally would be difficult for Dusk Rat to do. :)

Basically, Peacock would have still been focused on achieving his goals of cleansing Magnamund from all evil, but he'd have not gone the more aggressive way he otherwise might have, and would have rather handled things on a more long-term schedule. Considering how his previous plan, which Sun Snake talked him out of, was to start wars intentionally to create reasons for the Kai to intervene, that was mostly a success, I would say. Peaocok really isn't the type to just stop, but accepting that somebody else might have a better method to tackle things is something a true political genius like him was well suited to accept.

In reply to Sun Snake (msg # 5):

Valador would absolutely have tried to use his limited ability to control Rain Feather against her; although he had less control than he thought he would, she could take no action that could directly or indirectly harm him, so he had a lot of leverage. Assuming you defeated Valador fully, Rain Feather would have been perfect for the leader role, since she had the power of the Sommerswerd inside of her. Defeating Valador and his secessionist plans in a thorough enough manner, or otherwise managing to get Summer Wasp and/or Moon Shadow fully on board like Peacock already was, would have also ensured that Sun Fox was spared; even if not, as long as Banedon wasn't murdered by Valador (a very unlikely thing, since even if he won Valador didn't consider that a goal, although it was one of his extreme contingencies), he would have spoken on Sun Fox's defense and ensured that a few years of prison under his guard would have been the most she could be punished with.

Basically, unless you failed things to the most extreme possible extent or actively campaigned to have her killed, whoever was made leader would have put Sun Fox's fate to a vote and she'd have narrowly avoided punishment. She'd have become a pariah for a time, but she had the work ethic to overcome that and regain people's trust eventually.

For the Nexus idea, it is something that might have been useful against Valador, although it likely would have involved several rolls and not be a guaranteed success. It would have most certainly made that fight easier.

Sun Snake retreating into himself is something that Shining Peacock would have encouraged by helping provide him with research materials and helping him in any project he had, and White Mantis would have done her best to counteract with softer means. I would have likely run it as a small side thread of about the size of the intro threads you all run, with Sun Snake speaking with both and then you as a player telling me where Sun Snake would have gone in the future.

Sun Snake's efforts to forge his own Lorecircle would have been frustrated unless/until he had mastered Craftsmanship, at which point the Lorecircle of Shadows he was looking for would have been achievable, and he'd have been able to instruct others in how to gain benefits from having those disciplines. How he would have gotten there would have depended on which characters you would have told me he'd made a habit of interacting with.

Also, unless he decided to go the way of Black Beaver and secluding himself in a chamber he'd never leave, Sun Snake would have been forced into being part of the ruling council alongside Moon Shadow, Shining Peacock, Golden Sparrow, and either Summer Wasp or White Mantis, depending on whether you managed to persuade Wasp or not. Naturally, Peacock would have been all for helping reduce Sun Snake's workload while Mantis would have done what she could to get him more involved; they would have pretty much become the good/bad angels on his shoulder, although which is which is harder to say.

Aww :(  Was hoping this one could have gone on until the end...

Since everyone had always seemed either disinterested or openly hostile to her own attempts to speak up about Moon Shadow (and with Peacock actively promising to bring Moon Shadow down with him if she'd directly opposed him), she'd developed a tactic of just quietly observing how things were going and then intending to report the situation fully to Moon Shadow at the first opportunity (while not making it too obvious that that's what she planned on doing, just in case).
Spying and infiltration were her main areas of expertise after all.
She'd also sought to use some of her crafting time to quietly arm herself with items intended to counteract some of Peacock's abilities, just in case...
Also she was definitely intent on trying to recover the 5th of the Five Flowers from Valador too, and had planned on honouring her agreement with Wol-Dumar about returning them to the Guild.

Sun Snake actually needn't have worried so much.  He'd managed to at least partly regain her trust after the Maakengorge incident, with that psychic healing scene in the cave.
While she believed his judgement on the leadership thing was clouded, she was prepared to believe that he actually did want what was best for the Order.  And in fact if Wasp or any of her gang had started a fight with him, she'd have immediately sided with him.  Same with any of the group she'd travelled with, and who had accepted her despite learning of her shadowy past self.
And especially Rain Feather, who she'd felt particularly close to after learning her story.

And her mind and soul had pretty much healed already, between the group's acceptance of her, and the soul within the Sommerswerd.  So she was actually a lot more stable than she used to be.  No more creepy visions or erratic actions, totally focused, like light and dark together, the shadow!  :)

And yep, she'd developed pretty strong feelings for Silver Raven, if it wasn't already obvious ;)

Also Shadow can feel free to reveal how she just happened to be carrying a leaf of Oede around with her when it was most needed ;)  hehe.
(Definitely curious about how that would have gone if she'd gotten distracted from her mission to follow it up...  And whether Moon Shadow would have been angry at her potentially damaging the deal she'd been trying to set up and possibly stirring up trouble with Banedon too.  That was a bit of a regret she was carrying around for a while).
This message was last edited by the player at 00:02, Fri 15 Jan 2021.

At the start of the game Sun Snake was definitely being directed by Blue Snake to think of Moon Shadow and Golden Sparrow as disruptive elements trying to take advantage of the vote to further their own more radical agenda. Given Sun Snake had slightly more leanings towards respecting the connection to the king, and a more friendly relationship with that side, that meant Moon Shadow was unfortunately set up as his primary opposition. Shining Peacock was kept off of the radar in that respect.

And at the end of the game when Sun Snake was trying to give all parties an equal voice, Moon Shadow had, despite the circumstances and conspirators, still killed Blue Snake and helped try to frame Golden Sparrow for it. So while Sun Snake undid what damage he could, he didn't think Moon Shadow had any credibility with anyone on the other side at the moment, and instead expected Swift Fox to act as the proxy for her. Interesting that Moon Shadow would still have been able to have gone on to the council.

To be honest, I'm surprised people like White Mantis and Moon Shadow would have been on the council. I was expecting that the end of the game was actually those one step removed would be in the council as a fresh start, and acting for their higher up. So Sabre Fox, Swift Fox, Rain Feather, etc for Golden Sparrow, Moon Shadow, Shining Peacock, etc.

Moon Shadow hadn't killed Blue Snake, Blue Snake had killed himself, with White Mantis passing the suicide off as murder specifically to make things worse for Golden Sparrow; Moon Shadow wasn't involved in that murder in any way. I think you're misremembering here; Blue Snake's suicide was entirely his and White Mantis' plan.

Swift Fox was given the Oede in exchange for agreeing to murder Colin, the leader of the thieves' guild in Toran, who unknown to the rest of you was Laughing Shark's lover. Swift Fox eventually decided not to do this for her own reason; upon been informed, Moon Shadow would have told Swift Fox that it was fine, that she didn't expect the merchants in Toran would ask that of Swift Fox, and that she'd speak with them and solve the matter. Given that, after the end of the game, Colin would leave Toran to go on a sailing adventure with Laughing Shark (who was going to pretend to still be dead so she'd not be forced to come back to the Monastery), the merchants would have eventually accepted, after Moon Shadow took credit for Colin's decision even if she had nothing at all to do with it, that Swift Fox had dealt with him in an acceptable manner. They also learned not to ask Kai to go kill people for them, as Moon Shadow wasn't happy with them for doing it.

Sabre Fox sitting in the council in place of Golden Sparrow is something that might have been possible, if Sabre Fox agreed to it and Sun Snake forced the issue; Moon Shadow would have been the one coming out of the situation with a sterling reputation, having been wrongly accused and then found fully innocent, and she would have encouraged a more forgiving attitude toward everybody, in the name of healing wounds and not fomenting divisions among the ranks of the Kai. I suspect that Sabre Fox himself would have preferred remaining in a less conspicuous capacity as Rain Feather's bodyguard, but that's the sort of thing only he can answer.

And Shining Peacock's support of your plan was predicated on him being one of the five councilors you suggested; that's how you sold him on your plan in the first place, Sun Snake, so he was always going to be part of it.

As for the five flowers, Swift Fox, I don't remember if I told you how they were supposed to be used together, and what it was they did if you had all five?

While I worked out the framing suicide was the original idea, for some reason I inferred that Moon Shadow had been more actively recruited in to helping as the game went on, given Sun Fox as leader was supposed to be the result. Not sure where I got that impression from, but that coloured the assumption. I suppose the question is what had Moon Shadow and Blue Snake talked about before his death? And did Blue Snake just steal / make an arrow similar to Moon Shadow's then?


I had thought that Rain Feather putting herself as leader might have changed Shining Peacock being able to also be on the council, and led to him trying to pull strings from the sidelines. Despite Rain Feather not actually being swayed by Shining Peacock, it would become known that Rain Feather was Shining Peacock's pupil?

Be interesting to see the side threads, especially with people not able to weigh in any more like Laughing Shark or Water Hornet. I don't think there's anything in mine that's objectionable, but of course everyone will see Blue Snake's duplicity for themselves :D


I hoped the five daggers might go to the five council members if the brotherhood/Wul-dumar was willing. Since their combined power was supposed to be equal to the Sommerswerd, if Sun Fox had survived (which you said she would have) a plan may have been for her to do the Lone Wolf thing and walk the world helping with the Sommerswerd as a symbol of the Kai still. While separating that aspect from the leadership and from leaving Sommerlund / the world defenceless from threats that needed a Sommerswerd-level of power used against it.

Blue Snake had intentionally called Moon Shadow to his room to ensure she could be framed for his death, and he'd asked to borrow her arrow, which he knew about, in exchange for offering support to her bid for leadership. Which was a lie, but made it so that Moon Shadow couldn't really defend herself from the accusation of murder when Golden Sparrow made it - hard to answer "why was the murder weapon, that you're known never to leave behind, in the room" when the answer is "I left it there of my own free will". Blue Snake engineered things that way specifically to force Golden Sparrow and Moon Shadow to clash, weakening each other and, as a result, strengthening those who'd be neutral by dint of absence, ie, Sun Snake and Sun Fox.

After she was accused and imprisoned, White Mantis eventually went to Moon Shadow and told her that Blue Snake had killed himself, but she didn't reveal the whole conspiracy or her role in it - she just said the suicide had been so cleverly disguised that she'd not been able identify it at first glance. Mantis also said that she would reveal this, but at a more appropriate time, to humble Golden Sparrow for his arrogant actions, as a lesson.

As far as Moon Shadow was concerned, she took it all to mean that Blue Snake, for some reason, had killed himself and wanted to implicate her, and since White Mantis was the only one who could prove her innocence, she agreed to hold her silence until Mantis revealed things herself, both because if Moon Shadow had spoken herself, her words wouldn't have been believed, and because Mantis had asked her to and she didn't want to jeopardize things.

Of note, if things had progressed to the point of her execution, depending on circumstances it was possible that, instead of letting herself be killed, Moon Shadow might have fought; in that case, you might have returned to a Monastery where the victor in the fight between Golden Sparrow and Moon Shadow would have been named leader by right of conquest. That was one of the least likely possibility, but it might have happened if Moon Shadow was to learn enough of what was going on to decide that letting herself be executed was not the path that would lead to the best future for the Kai as a whole.

Assuming you got the all of the Five Flowers, I would have left it to a group vote what happened to them.

Rain Feather made it very clear that she'd broken with Shining Peacock; given this, he would very strongly argue that his presence on the council was important as a representative of a group that Rain Feather clearly didn't see eye-to-eye with. Also, he might have made it clear to Sun Snake in private that, if he was honest about wanting cooperation rather than wanting all the power to himself, he had to prove it by letting Shining Peacock be one of the councilor, else Peacock would consider Snake to be lying and go back to his old plan of using all of his stored blackmail to thrust the Kai into civil strife. Peacock would be willing to cooperate and share power, but not at all willing to be put aside and have less power than he started with.
This message was last edited by the GM at 10:25, Fri 15 Jan 2021.

Ah, so I had most of the correct vague information, but through not knowing the specifics had inferred that Moon Shadow had come to be given a more active role in the situation. And had assumed whatever initial plan had been thought, it had altered somewhat during all the discoveries. I think in Sun Snake's mind Blue Snake had possibly discussed his own impending death and proposed the Sun Fox compromise to Moon Shadow. That being how he'd got the arrow, and that being the reason for Moon Shadow's silence.

Part of not getting the specifics was of course Sun Snake's own mental state at the time - partially his distress at the death of his master compounded by all the reasons for it that he'd never been let in on, and partially as he had moved on to truly trying to pull everyone together in concert. So that was partially my characters fault and partially mine for not getting all the fine details :D


Though Sun Snake would have been furious with Blue Snake if he'd found out the details. He'd asked originally if both sides would be given a chance to be their better selves. Golden Sparrow was creating his own problems by being so heavy handed, and that's what Sun Snake was trying to help with, at the end. But Moon Shadow sounds like she was just straight up tricked! I suppose that's also why it read as Moon Shadow being more active in her own side. Because I didn't see - so Sun Snake wouldn't - how this was her creating her own problems.


I suppose to explain until the threads get shown, originally Sun Snake believed that the side he was on was for keeping the status quo. That Master Firestone as the head, but Firestone and Blue Snake as a team, were the current leadership and a good team. So he believed that Moon Shadow was looking to put aside that leadership for her own radical side, and Golden Sparrow was looking to supplant Blue Snake then push his own more radical agenda on that side. And that while Master Blue Snake's 'humble those two sides' to help Master Firestone be officially elected was a tiny bit troubling, he trusted his master and guessed tough times called for tough measures. He had no idea the plan. And a little later, as he got to know the group, was more vocal in his worry about doing anything active to humbling people. In fact I want to say that Sun Snake got as far as even pitching the idea of a 'triad' like the brotherhood to Blue Snake as an alternative - where Moon Shadow and Blue Snake would still have a voice )Blue Snake finally being visible and acknowledged for his guidance) behind Master Firestone as Grandmaster, thus keeping the sides in balance. That, too, might have been why there was more assumption of making overtured to Moon Shadow?

He also knew Blue Snake had thought Sun Fox was a good fit for actually filling in the role of Lone Wolf. And Blue Snake's talk of the Firestone/Blue Snake team meant he was advising that maybe the same thing could happen with Sun Fox / Sun Snake when Sun Fox became leader. Of course, thinking that this might be a little bit more in the future, and a means of appeasing people with the likeable Kai being the future. He didn't realise Blue Snake was actually setting that up now.

So obviously Sun Fox having been corrupted was a blow that came at the same time as the discovery of the actual death of Lone Wolf. Sun Snake being a little bit more divorced from his feeling at the time, literally is how I played it, actually let him make some more mature 'Blue Snake' like decisions that ultimately helped re-habilitate Sun Fox. A more emotional Sun Snake would well have pushed her to the dark side. But even then, Sun Snake would never agree with hiding Sun Fox's past, as that just makes her a leader that could be brought down if the secret was found out. He felt she needed to atone for that, somehow, and if Kai willed it, be able to act for the order in some way as Lone Wolf used to.

So with the death of Blue Snake too, Sun Snake was thinking everything that Blue Snake might have been working towards completely undone - no Sun Fox (this was true, in a way), and Blue Snake was dead and Firestone withdrawn. But since Sun Snake had already been looking outside the idea of Sun Fox, and also had been thinking that a team of two was not balanced enough, and three - and then five - working as one was a way to keep the order strong, that's what he petitioned for. So even when he was told more of Blue Snake's true plan, he was already 'nope, not good enough, and not going to work cause you died before I could tell you Sun Fox was got by Valador!' and was pushing in the direction he said.

Looks like Swift called it right.  She'd suspected the use of Moon Shadow's arrow was a frame-up attempt, since by that point she'd gotten the impression that everyone else was out to take her down.  (Verbal attacks on the master of someone who started out suffering from erratic paranoid episodes will do that!)

With regard to the other leaders, after Starfire's drunken rampage with the Sommerswerd (especially with him nearly killing Silver Raven in the process!) made her believe he was just an overly-aggressive muscle-brained idiot who couldn't be trusted with absolute power over every Kai in the Monastery.  And she suspected he was using Golden Sparrow to try to intimidate people into backing him (or else!) hence Sparrow's seemingly increasingly-aggressive attitude towards people.

Blue Snake really freaked her out on a deep level, hence her apparent dislike of him.
Given that she had spent much of her youth building up an impressive collection of mental scarring at the hands of her own father, any psychic contact was a major trigger for her, and Blue Snake's habit of just poking around in everyone's minds was like a torment for her, especially as she knew she couldn't stop him.
Same with the Brotherhood Mage who Mind-Charmed her near the start (a less traumatic means of doing what her father used to do).  I remember at the time I actually flipped a coin to decide whether she'd snap and attack him for that, but he got lucky ;)  hehe.
Returning to Toran was also a bit of a traumatic experience for her, and with her mind being so uncontrolled at this point, her inner flashbacks and fragmented memories tended to get 'projected' outwards without her realising, hence why anyone with psychic ability around her would have been picking up some rather creepy visions :)
As she began to recover more stability and control over herself though, she did actually realise that Blue Snake wasn't the same as her father, and was prepared to try to speak with him at some point, maybe even try to learn how to shield herself better.  This was before finding out he was dead obviously.

Shining Peacock she seriously distrusted right from the start.  Especially with Moon Shadow warning her that he was probably the most dangerous person in the whole Monastery.
Finding out that Moon Shadow had basically kept her from coming under Peacock's control (and most likely ending up going down the same path as Red Dawn) made her even more grateful to Moon Shadow for saving her from that.

I didn't actually know what the Five Flowers were meant to do.  Swift herself got the impression that each one contained an aspect of Ishir's power, and that together they could equal the Sommerswerd.  So she'd initially hoped that the power of all five combined together with the Sommerswerd's power would have been able to overwhelm and destroy the Deathstaff (that was the possible solution she'd hinted at).
Afterwards, she was actually pondering gathering all five and getting them to Moon Shadow and her allies among the Kai in the hope that they would provide a counter to whoever got their grubby mitts on the Sommerswerd.  (Although she was saving that as an extreme last resort, mostly only if Shining Peacock had been the one to take the Sommerswerd (I was curious about whether it would have worked for him, if it still considered him a Kai, what with destroying villages and all!))
But she had fully intended to bring all five back to Wol-Dumar at some point, given that he was the one who told her about them after all.  And for all her other flaws, Swift was never one to break a promise to someone she respected.

As for her epilogue.  If everything had worked out ok, if the Order had been stabilised and she'd hooked up with Silver Raven, and it was happy endings all around.
I hadn't finished all the details and wrote it down yet, but basically, she would have returned to Anskaven in disguise, wandering the familiar streets, trying to make peace with the past.  Lay the Ghost of Anskaven to rest once and for all.
And eventually she'd have met a sad-looking older woman sitting at the harbour looking out to sea, and struck up a conversation.  They'd have talked about the woman's daughter, believed long-dead after her father, an evil-hearted man, abducted her from their home when she was still young.
Whereupon it would be revealed that her daughter was actually alive and better than ever.  Cue emotional reunion...  :)

That was her 'Good Ending' anyway.
If she'd failed to save Silver Raven, I had a much darker 'Bad Ending' on standby, but luckily it wasn't necessary.

If she'd died, I might have brought in another character.  I did think of Sapphire Rose (my character over in Sabre's game at the moment), but she seems a bit too much like Sun Fox (before she went all dark side), though amusing cheerful rivalries with Sabre Fox would have been fun ("whoever kills the least bad guys buys all the drinks later!") :)
Might have played Winter Rain, who was a similar build to Swift (more in the stealthy stalky ninja-esque genre), so could probably have taken over her role in the game easily enough.  But who never speaks, communicating mostly with hand signals and confusing telepathic fragmented images.  Would have been interesting to play that actually :)

Anything in particular anyone wants to know?  No more secrets in the shadows! ;)
This message was last edited by the player at 13:34, Fri 15 Jan 2021.

Sun Snake did detect the mental flash. He assumed it was Rain Feather and I think mentioned it to her (she clearly knew who it was in her response, I think). As a player I wasn't sure if it was Swift Fox or even Dawn Sword instead.


Did Swift Fox know the story of Red Dawn? Sun Snake never shared it as he'd heard it through Sun Fox, so didn't want to betray the confidence, but it did explain Moon Shadow and Shining Peacock's dynamic.

Who would Swift Fox have supported if something had happened to Moon Shadow, anyway?


Also, speaking of Dawn Sword, what was her potential arcs, and what would be her future given where things left off in the story?