They built Ringworlds, broke the Light-Barrier, were able to distort reality at their whims, even building artificial holes in space-time allowing them to travel back in time to the moment of the machine’s inception.
What else do we know?
Something went wrong. Reality was altered. The rules of the Universe… broke. The sundering of physical reality had such far-reaching and catastrophic effects that the Human Hegemony utterly collapsed.
Given these disparate pieces of information (which may not be related in any way), are you sure you want to risk using this ancient, ill-maintained and most certainly dangerous technology?
More to the point, did someone already make the attempt?
That’s… Extremely interesting (and super neat, but let’s not let me go full dork mode.) I’m eager to hear the story… And to see how radically different (or similar…?) this iteration of Vitruvian may be.
Is Vitruvian aware of this particular past self - or, at least, that he’s carried that name before? If he is - or, since I’m assuming he’s not, if he were aware - what does/would he think of Raijin MC having that name?
Also… Do any of the other preset names have in-universe significance, too?
Heh… Grand ball… On the noble path. I see what you did there- no need to dance around it. But, careful, those balls aren’t exactly all fun, yeah? Lots of politics, lots of assassinations (character, mostly, but the other kind,too) one too many instances of street magicians being fed into ancient magic boxes… The MC won’t exactly be able to party and flirt and more unfêtered, y’know?
But… Wait. Balls… Gorgeous guys… Leather bottoms? It’s like you’re holding a giant flashing arrow, pointing out the ridiculously low hanging fruit. D’you want someone to grasp it?
And if they succeeded, who’s to say that they’d even be able to find and pluck the wings off the butterfly that caused this hurricane?
…could their traveling back to the past -if they tried/succeeded/whatever- have been the thing to cause everything to boil over? Do we create ourselves?
It’s a real eye-opener. Vitruvian doesn’t know it but he’s kind of… important.
He has no idea whatsoever, but Arinthas has his suspicions.
He’s got a suspicious little mind, that one…
Fujin was standing next to Vitruvian at the time.
Odette was a famous High Priestess of the Nomad who first got the idea to formalise worship by writing the first wholly accepted book of religious doctrine, paving the way for the modern Church.
Tychon was a warrior king who unified the Eastern territories more than a thousand years ago.
Queen Talia the Fifth founded the High City of Kadana, formally incorporating several disparate towns and duchies into a sprawling, wealthy Kingdom that could dictate terms to the Barons of the outer Rings with it’s immense wealth. Within four generations her many many children were married off to half the nobles in the Rings and within a couple of generations there was a unified government of sorts.
The rest are just nice names.
That’s one of the possibilities. Another is that their constant warping of space time began tearing holes into other dimensions, and something on the other side didn’t take kindly to the intrusion.
The Humans could have conceivably run into anything out there, honestly the mind boggles just thinking about it. I’ve never been so existentially terrified by my own lore-building before.
Yes, poor Lord Flash, he’ll really need all his wits and good connection to the upper brain just to survive, on the other hand between the Prince, the Chevalier and our trusty butler it will be EPIC.
I wonder if the Chevalier or mr. Gray have ever met the old Flash before, back when he was a rebel street magician, or even if he crossed paths with Flash and the burned man on their more nocturnal activities. As that would mean gaining mr. Gray’s attention may be what doomed the original Flash in the first place.
Not me personally, but Lord Flash, most certainly, he’s got at least two targets in mind.
I think the whole shadow thing only really holds true on one (the rebel) of the three possible paths in your own game. It will certainly make romancing a certain character (Radjack) on that path awkward…to say the least.
The other two, mage and noble, I think are able to forge a more independent identity of their own, seeing as how they are going to lead the sort of lives the original protagonist could never have, while the Rebel one does go on to kind of fill their predecessors boots, so to speak. Seeing as how the rebel is going to be surrounded by everyone and everything from Flash’s old life.
All very true. I would say that as a Noble your official backstory is that Flash is alive and well and… you. In the Mage path you’ll be working to distance yourself from your past Humanity (at least you will, anyway). So you’re still sort of burdened by Flash’s past, and while you’re not directly in their shadow, they are always going to be a part of your identity, whether you like it or not.
I have now developed a second digestive system that exclusively processes angst.
I would think that the mage path is also the one where we’ll actually get to learn about the machine and its process (or am I completely wrong there?), and therefore find out that we were made from a body and maybe that we should have had memories. So even if we try to distance ourself from humanity, the MC could still be curious to who the person who supplied the parts to create us were.
In the noble path, even if our official backstory is that we are Flash, that’ll only come up if we run into the rebels later. And since we have no former memories, and won’t be told what we actually are, I would think that path has the least change that we’ll feel like being in the shadow of Flash and /or give them much thought.
Yeah, but that official story only disguises the fact that Flash is not in fact alive and the mc really is a sentient machine.
Even if the noble backstory were in fact true I think that a person with severe brain damage who undergoes a procedure that “restores” him/her but at the cost of (permanently) deleting all memories of their old life may very well become a new and different person entirely (the eternal battle between nature and nurture, where I’m kind of leaning to nurture) and Lord Flash will certainly be “nurtured” very differently compared to old Flash.
In any case it seems like Lord Flash can at least try to work to some of the rebels goals, improving conditions for the commoners, together with the Chevalier and the Prince in his own way. It doesn’t seem like he necessarily has to be(come) a tyrant like Lady Calinas and the current King seem to be.
If you do decide to do a scene where Lord Flash and Radjack (and maybe the Chevalier too) meet, I’m sure it will prove to be both fun and interesting.
I think our beauteous butler, mr Gray (a.k.a the Chevalier) also knows old Flash and perhaps a bit about what he was like back then and that may or may not come up during the noble path.
Well maybe only partly, since learning more about the nature of Myrmidons and this universe than what I knew back then, but something like Mr. Spock, maybe not entirely discarding them but striving to be in complete control of his emotions and prioritizing logic (in most situations) will definitely be part of my mage mc’s philosophy. As in this gameworld at least that does not seem to be entirely at odds with my mage mc’s goal of becoming a more perfect machine.
But again Mage Flash will have a radically different sort of “nurture” compared to real, noble and rebel Flash won’t he?
You aren’t necessarily wrong there, I would certainly like to use that path to talk about the wider universe, and the Myrmidons themselves. Some of the stories will deal with the unique struggles that the Myrmidons need to go through (how to deal with immortality, how to handle your unchanging nature, how to ‘evolve’ etc)
Oh you’ll never even learn your original name without meeting the rebels, when I say you’ll be in Flash’s shadow, I mean that very loosely. Everyone will know that you were once a more ‘normal’ person, and they will remember that.
Yeeah…that’s definitely going to be necessary. I mean, there is a reason why many immortal creatures in fiction are depicted as having gone batsh*t insane (or lost everything that made them seem “human” in nature) specifically due to being immortal and unchanging, when the rest of the world is not.
Which makes me slightly worried about the future of the MC in the other paths.
Well the mc in the other paths is not without friends or resources either and he’ll have close to a thousand years to figure something out before he really starts to lose it, so I think there’s hope there yet. Assuming a character on the other parts even wants to live that long, without suppressing your emotions it would be a long litany of losing all your mortal friends and loved ones, over and over again. (unless mr. Gray is immortal too, on the noble path I suppose ).
I’m inclined to agree, the two characters will share virtually nothing except a face, but that contrast will always exist (for readers, not so much for Flash him/her/zherself).
The thought that this MC might well come to embody a complete and distinct set of moral values and priorities that would appal the original Flash is a compelling one. As is the thought that there might be something innate to Flash’s personality that shines through regardless of the brainwashing.
I don’t know which thought I find more difficult to accept.
You can’t have all of them at once. You have to pick and choose. Gray might be an embarrassing political choice for a Dukedom, but Radjack might cause the whole government to collapse.
Oh god, he’d throw one leg over the arm of the throne, eating a chicken leg while the advisors talk about matters of state…
Interesting notion you have there…
You’ll have plenty of time to determine what exactly you think the perfect machine looks like, at least.
Of course, you’ve got to save some of the delights for specific characters and playthroughs after all. Besides I’m sure my Lord Flash will have his hands full romancing both the Chevalier and the Prince already.
Just for that picture we’ve got to have a Rebels victorious scenario/epilogue where they decide to crown Radjack.
Which could give even more potential drama in the rebel path. Since we’ve already established that we’ll retain some of Flash’s muscle memory. If we’ll develop values and priorities that would appal Flash then it would be an extremely jarring experience for the rebel crew, since we seem like Flash in other ways.
If we develop values and priorities that align with the former Flash, it’ll be distressing for the team since the question of “is the real/old Flash in there somewhere” will keep popping up, and can make the team continuesly second-guess themselves.
EDIT:
It’s kind of funny. I normally aren’t that much into drama and distress in game routes. But apparently I am in this game. xD
Well much like my noble Thinker Flash likes to present a certain published piece of Twilight fanfic as the ultimate example of pre-fall poetry/literature to deliberately sass the more stuffy nobles, I think that if Arinthas neglects that aspect of his development with his Flash, mage Flash could certainly decide to copy mr. Spock’s mannerisms and philosophy if any of the old Thinkers were sci-fi nerds too they’d likely have stored the complete catalog of episodes including the relaunch and about 200 remakes/re-imaginings of the series since then in there.
I know noble and rebel Flash just lend themselves to that sort of play, don’t they?
).