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Glais -> RE: (Pre-DF) Past Present Discussion (Rewrite in progress) (11/11/2016 5:01:05)
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After years away I'm back to
Not finish this story.
But for some reason, despite writing this (rather embarrassing in hindsight) thing, I was unable to stop thinking about it and refining it. As a result, its plot and characters continued to develop without me actually adding to it here.
While it is unlikely anyone who was following it back then will see this, below is my incredibly late synopsis to where this was all going, and how it would have ended.
Many of the details would be reworked, Senyaza would no longer be a scythe wielding DoomKnight, but a gray cloaked man attempting to become a Mysterious Stranger, wearing the actual Stranger as robes. He'd have possessed virtually no fighting skills, but had the ability to act as a medium for spirits in order to defend himself. There would be hints he was tied to the Church of Light (in fact, he was one of Markus Honorius' children, who I'd planned to have appear way back 1,000 years ago, the only one to survive the StoneFang disaster. They would have never met and it would never be outright stated in the story that they were related, only hinted. Senyaza is not his birth name).
The DragonLords' history would've been more greatly fleshed out, tracing back to the first DragonLord, an Elf named Dalun, who would've been Valdur's superior, having retained his post for hundreds of years. Sarkalos' great crime was killing him, the exact reasons centering around the former's torture and preservation of his enemies in glass. There would have been a past ShadowScythe leader named Cenotaph (following Sepulchure's theme naming) who would be weaker than Sepulchure, but far more clever, outmaneuvering the DL order for years.
The white hair and elemental acuity would finally be explained as the bloodline of the first being to bring "humans" (in actually, the common ancestory of humans, elves, giants, orcs, etc. I recall in AQ they were all related?)
"Humans" were sort of an accidental race, the Lords favoring Dragons. "Humans" were the only creatures with no tie to the elements, and so the first mother made a sacrifice of her and her bloodline to give mankind the gift of magic and the elements, to protect themselves. Far too much ripping from Avatar here, but I digress. She would later become the first Demon to ever exist (due to the Stranger's meddling, remember, he did watch humans crawl from the dirt), the Mother of Sin, who resides in the void.
Those born with white hair are known as oracles, being connected to the elemental planes as almost walking ley-lines. This makes them incredibly sensitive to changes, which Zairo and Vendagar discover painfully in Book 2, where the Dissonance sends them into life-threatening sickness and coma.
The thing under StoneFang was a god of my own invention, acting as a sentient universe that Lorithia used as the raw material to create with. Much of the cosmology would have intentionally violated AQ canon, while taking notes from it and being mindful of it. This is partially because I wanted to make Lore's pantheon the center of the Universe, not others. The universal god itself would have been 'Father', the source of the sentient Shadow Universe 'Mother' in AQ. Unlike Mother, Father has no sense of self, something Valdur accidentally gave it when he unearthed its avatar. Its subsequent division into three demigods was an attempt at understanding being alive.
Innocentius would have a much larger role, and (I never realized I had him lose so often) been a much more intimidating character. (I'd also come up with a very odd backstory for the guy, as Kaho never did to my knowledge). Eventually, he would be the third leader of the DragonLord Order, after Valdur's death, and built the Inquisition off of its back.
The Golden King would be renamed the King of the Sun, possession a miniaturized version of an MQ piece of technology that siphons energy from the sun.
The King would have been killed not in an incredibly poorly written and convoluted way as I'd done before, but by spies within the city who magically had teleported the King of the Sun right there.
Zairo and Vendagar's plot is where things get tricky.
No longer raised in WillowShire, they were isolated since childhood and routinely trained and educated in the elements. The idea was to forcibly create DragonLords that would take care of any need of prophecy. (This does not work). They find odd individuals to teach them of the elements on their own (Sir Jing would've appeared, suffering a crippling anomaly that causes him to constantly produce and discharge energy, killing him if he does not release it in time)
Sarkalos would've been freed from the void prison by Senyaza, and played along until Senyaza and his army converged at the North, coincidentally where Zairo and Vendagar's final master(s) lived. Sarkalos kills Senyaza, the 3 demigods aggregate into their original form, and Sarkalos becomes its new avatar. The laws of nature are twisted, some of the dead nearby return to life, the landscape tears itself apart. Zairo and Vendagar petrify themselves to survived.
They would not be awoken for another thousand years, having first been found by an explorer, before the Sanctus Oculi (as LordKaho and I had established connections to our settings) took note of the unusual discovery and the Inquisition, under the guise of normal Knights of the King, took over. They remained petrified until supplied with sufficient mana, and awaken disoriented and with conflict fresh in their minds.
They manage to escape, not easily and most certainly not through force. They hunt for Sarkalos, who woke up years before them, and has befriended The Hero.
Z&V would've had a teacher in the "Past" arc, a small Sneevil (who survived the Reset) I just made up as a blatant Yoda ripoff before recently deciding what to do with him. He gives them gifts, a flow for Zairo that stores mana, and a handle for Vendagar that contorts light into various shapes to use as a weapon be it axe, sword, or otherwise. I bring him up now because he is more important to further events, and because I forgot.
Eventually things get sorted, there is another conflict, Sarkalos escape, Z&V do not understand his motives whatsoever.
Elemental Dissonance injures them greatly, Vendagar disappears, Zairo is captured by the Inquisition and held for three years.
By the time the hero finds him, the Inquisition's undergone some great disasters, though Zairo is still imprisoned. A veil hangs over his face, roots can be seen growing from beneath it.
Long story short, he and Ven are reunited, and they team up with the hero to find Sarkalos (who has simply studied the laws of the world) and stop him from becoming a god.
Father is slowly replacing Sarkalos' own consciousness. By the end of the final battle, Sarkalos doesn't exist, Zairo is a cripple, Vendagar grows disillusioned with life and leaves. He will not be seen again for millennia, having made a deal (or rather, he tried to scam Death) with Death for immortality. In his mind, it allows him to circumvent the Mother of Sin's sacrifice, as if he is always alive, humanity always has a nexus to the planes.
Zairo dies, his body crystallizes (there is a knife in DF stating it's made of crystallized Giant's bones so I ran with it) and the roots in his eye grow into a massive, alien, tree. It sits for thousands of years. Its roots then reach into the core of the planet and feed. Combined with the other troubles of the day, Lore is basically beyond any inhabitable point, all of its people are doomed to a slow death. Vendagar, having made a deal with death for immortality in exchange for one day delivering an "equal measure of death" unsheathes his sword, a gift given to him by a being he is unaware of is a Reset Survivor, and the light-eating demon inside destroys the sun and all light from the nearby systems. A planetary mercy-killing.
Ven and Z's former master appears, applauding Vendagar's actions, and stating he has completed the first part of his role. The demon free from Vendagar's sword, all he holds is an empty canister. The being hurls Ven and the Zairo-tree into a jar, and they are sent back to a time before time, 30,000 years before MQ's present day. The first thing they witness is the same demon preparing to devour a world. Vendagar sets out on a millennia long quest to recapture it, but in that time goes senile as his mind continues aging. His ship grows into an aggregate city (and one tree) of cultures' remnants he has spared. He can scarcely remember his name, the species living on the ship take care of him.
Finally, the reset happens. Vendagar and Zairo, being the exact same individuals as they are in the present day, reset into themselves. Forever.
But of course that's not the end, and Father begins to observe this strange causal loop within him.
As it turns out, the reset had affected the gods, minus Father and Mother who more or less slept through it, as well as time itself. Chronomancy cannot take you pre-reset. Some other force had intervened.
This is where things get (even more) plot holey.
First my thought process: I'm getting older, and even though I grew up with these games, I'll never see the 'ending' so how would I write it? What would be the 'final villain' of the entire setting?
Finally I arrived at: Lorithia's opposite, Destruction. Beyond Uncreation, the goddess of Destruction (whom I dubbed 'Erranea') sought to remove all concepts, ideas, beings. The idea of uncreating something could not even exist. Note: a plot point was that no other god or goddess of destruction took their duty to this extent. One of the ways I altered the cosmology was that each universe had its own set of unique gods, for the same roles. 8 elemental lords, a deity of creation and destruction, but each universe had individuals, not parallels of the same god. Erranea was unique. She noticed beings like Kathool had survived, (and in the case of the Sneevil, he served as one of millions of emissaries she has in the universe), and constructed a lattice from their memories, while leaving her avatar on this plane to tether the force of destruction to the universe (unwritten rule I added, a primal force of the universe cannot fully leave it, lest it fall out of balance).
Somehow or another, she would've confronted Zairo and Vendagar, revealing she'd turned their life into an infinite time loop to create flaws in the universe and effectively, trap Lorithia in a constantly looping universe. As it would happen, she has done this with billions upon billions of people (hence the emissaries, to steer their lives towards a time loop) The flaw was that due to the reset, and Father not even showing himself then, no gods were even aware Father existed, simply crafting the cosmos out of his matter.
At this point, I would've had to come up with a resolution for Zairo and Vendagar, and Erranea's god war would've begun, which would involve pretty much everyone. AQ, DF, MQ hero etc. AQW canon largely ignored, minus some aspects of the Mirror World, because I just really liked it.
In the end, as she cannot be killed, Erranea would've come to accept her role in the balance of the universe.
That's an incredibly abridged version, there are in actuality far more details, minor characters, subplots, that I'd just written for fun in a notebook in my free time, but this is the gist of where the main story would've escalated. I still plan to constantly finetune it, if only for my own entertainment and to make it feel truly good in my eyes.
I enjoyed my time on this forum with all of you and am thankful anyone read it to begin with.
Still changing. Go figure.
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