The End of The End is the Beginning

So ends my plot. Tiamat 2011 was my first megaplot, and Bulgraveplot 2012 was the deepest, while my plots for 2013 were simple and short. Now, just as Jumpropeman did, I'm going to dump all the thoughts, behind the scenes stuff, and cutting room floor material that I can into this post.

ORIGINS
In 2013, during a routine look at the Drunken Gryphon message board, I included a request on the board for someone to "awaken the key". Nobody picked up on this. If it had been followed, the placer of the request would turn out to be an insane cultist who wanted people to help him find an ancient artifact that would summon The End, who was originally named Leviathan.

This was Leviathan's initial design. From the very start, I wanted to create the largest enemy the kobbers have ever faced. I wound up failing in that goal in the long run due to JRM - not only did he bring in Actaeus this year, but Rafflesia from Season 1, another living planet, is also presumably larger than The End. The End remained a possibility as a Final Boss From Nowhere but I ultimately just sat on the concept and stored it away.

In the offseason between seasons 3 and 4, I gained a hankering for wanting to do a plot with a big twist to it. All of my plots from the first three seasons were relatively straightforward, although there were surprises like Tiamat employing Celestia and Dr. Bulgrave surrendering. This time I wanted something big. My plots tend to have characters that heel-face turn, so this year I wanted a character to face-heel turn. Mercutio Ferros, AKA Chronos Xarr, was born.

Another thing I wanted to do was make full use of our setting. Similar to how JRM built The Deck around being the ultimate medieval-themed plot, I wanted a plot that made full use of our unique space/medieval setting, so I combined the two to create a plot that could only happen properly in the unique world of the ZFS and Ardea, a criminal from another galaxy infiltrating a medieval society and using medieval weapons, soldiers, and artifacts.

First, we'll review the cast of this plot one more time. Then, I'll excavate my DropBox for a load of pictures depicting characters, items, and plot points that were left out.

MERCUTIO FERROS/CHRONOS XARR
From the very beginning, Mercutio was the true Big Bad behind this plot. There was never a period where he was a paladin played straight, nor was he ever a brainwashed pawn. He was always meant to be the mastermind. I laid out hints right from the very first time he appeared in RP...

The armored man cut an impressive figure, towering over his guildmates. Maybe it was partly because of the bulky armor, but he appeared to be over eight feet tall. This, combined with the hammer and shield hooked on the sides of his armor, made him seem almost otherworldly in his presence.

Over eight feet tall. "Otherworldly". Yep, he was an Adeptus Astartes.

Selecting a World of Warcraft armor for Mercutio's design was not really a pre-planned thing. I wanted a helmeted paladin with a hammer for a weapon, and the design I liked best from my Google trawling just happened to be from WoW. It does add a bit of #ruined to WoW that it had been lacking in RP, for those in our group that play it.

Selecting a Warhammer marine as Xarr's true identity was more deliberate. After Marduk left the forum, we had a severe lack of Warhammer in RP. Thanks to knowing essentially nothing about the franchise beyond "grimdark space tabletop" before 2011, Warhammer is so thoroughly #ruined by ZFRP for me that it practically is part of the ZFRPverse, and I wanted some of that back. I remembered how mooktastic our adventures had managed to make Warhammer marines into, save the few that became protagonists (and even the vaunted Erebus had "he sure does die a lot hoho" gags surrounding him). I wanted to bring back some of the awe that the Warhammer series tries to instill with these no-longer-humans. Even if it meant making an eight-foot space marine into a chickenshit heel.

He was an Ultramarine because I liked the colors. That's all there is to it.

So I had my lead. Very quickly I connected him to my unused boss Leviathan. I wanted Leviathan to be an ancient, horrific monster, so I renamed it "The End". The unknown is often fearsome, and by using such a vague name, I was able to build up The End as being almost anything, from a natural disaster to an army of darkness like SK's Uruk-Hai. But it was always going to be a massive wormlike kaiju.

Now I had Xarr/Ferros and I had the boss he'd summon at the big finish. Next, I wanted allies, and that was when The Holy Guild was conceived.

TYRA FLARE
Unlike Xarr, the other members of the Holy Guild were all ignorant that they were on the wrong side, not knowing that Xarr's do-gooding was just a front.

Tyra came about when I decided I wanted to play around with a ninja-type character after scrapping a possible one in 2012 that would have been a minor part of Garlandplot. She managed to make a fairly decent impact despite me not using her too much, and I suspect she inspired the creation of Kela, who I much enjoy, so that's nice.

Like Mercutio, Tyra being an Assassin generic from Ragnarok Online was just me picking my favorite design. I don't play MMOs, so any art assets I crib from them are purely due to enjoying the art for what it is, not an effort at expanding my enjoyment from a game I've played to death like Pokemon or Final Fantasy Tactics. As for her name, it's a Golden Axe reference! That classic Sega series has a female Amazon named "Tyris Flare" as a regular character. I don't even think Golden Axe is a particularly impressive beat-em-up series (I'm more a Streets of Rage guy, as my 2012 roster shows) but it's still a nostalgic nod to me thanks to playing the original on a real arcade machine back in the nineties, and it fits the theme.

I had wanted to do more with Tyra, but she was tied up in the plot for most of the year. When she broke free from Mercutio after The Burning I tried to use her more.

As some already know from Chatzy, Tyra was initially slated to be killed off to gather heel heat for Mercutio - another reason she appeared so rarely. Despite her infrequent use, some people got attached to her anyway, and I couldn't go through with it despite planning multiple possible deaths. The four deaths for Tyra were:

1: Getting eaten by The Devourer that night she was on guard duty
2: Taken off life support by Xarr when he visited her in the medical ward
3: Killed by Xarr in an isolated place after finding out his true identity
4: Getting brainwashed by DeRosa's perfume and assisting Xarr in a final Holy Guild reunion battle, than killed afterward by Xarr in a "you have failed me" moment (Mammon took this role instead)

THURG
Originally named "Tharg", I decided I liked "Thurg" better. I also didn't want a name too similar to Harg, SK's treant from seasons 2 and 3. Even though Harg was a minor character, I still try to avoid duplicate names when I can. It just felt right to not be too similar. The name choice is just a simple, caveman-like one. Fitting for a simple hunter like Thurg.

Thurg really got the shaft importance-wise. Early drafts of the plot gave Thurg a lot of toys to play with, including numerous medieval monsters that you'll see later. At one point, Xarr was going to act as a distraction while Thurg, under Xarr's orders, summoned The End and attempted to control it, making the final boss "Thurg Riding The End". However, I established early on that Thurg couldn't control animals if they were too smart, and his failure to control The Devourer underlined that he'd never be able to use The End.

Like Tyra, Thurg was meant to be a sacrificial lamb, killed off to thin my roster and deepen Xarr's darkness. While I wasn't surprised when people cared about Tyra, the distress at Thurg's almost-permadeath during the Devourer fight was an eye-opener, considering he'd done nothing but fite Bubs and make Wendy's jokes. I tried to make up for his absence later on when I used him for the Deck Kings and Caesar plots, especially Caesar since that was a nice little dayplot that was straight Ardea, and a perfect fit.

MORGAN AND LILY
We've all been there. We've all had That Character. the one that got completely out of hand and took far more of your roleplaying time than they were meant to. "Oh they're just bit characters" we'll say, or "I'll just use them this one time for laughs".

No. That's not how it works.

Morgan and Lily were initially conceived as not even being characters. Originally, there was an entire coven of succubi all sharing a cave. Probably half a dozen of them total, all nameless. The initial idea was that Mercutio would go on dayplots with other characters, helping to "solve problems". Little stuff like a wolf stealing livestock, or an ogre harassing a forest path. Eventually Mercutio would have led an assault on the succubus cave, and it was here that people would get their first inkling that Mercutio wasn't all sunshine and roses, because the succubi would be portrayed as ambiguous in their villainy, and their evil acts would largely revolve around making people cut loose and have fun, while Mercutio would seem like a cold-hearted enforcer. It would all be very grey and hard to figure out who was right.

That... that didn't happen. First and foremost, the succubi weren't ever going to be straight villains and, as you probably know, am definitely not the type to trick other users into having their characters do something presented as good but is actually bad. Also, somewhere along the way the succubi group was pared down to two. I'm not sure how it leapt from "one-note early dayplot enemies" to "popular, multifaceted characters with light fluffy relationships", but there ya go.

At least I finally got some Ardeans that stuck, instead of my usual minor/secondary character natives, like Shroud and the Coneheads.

MAMMON
I had thought that Harpy or Draco (the two people who might have encountered Mammon in her home series) might have recognized her by her enormous glob of hair, but I don't think either made it far enough to encounter her. Yes, Mammon was in fact a vidya character in disguise - specifically, Mammon the storyline boss in Final Fantasy: Four Heroes of Light and bonus boss in Bravely Default.

Mammon's principal role in the plot was "Decoy Big Bad". She was meant to look like the boss, and in-story, she WAS the boss - initially. However, she lost that position to Chronos Xarr even before her mind started to degrade from Fiore's poison perfume.

I've been wanting to use elements from Four Heroes of Light ever since I played it in the fall of 2012. Aside from Josephine's Halloween 2012 costume, I never got the chance until this year. Even though her time spent in her true form was brief, hopefully those creepy giant arms left an impression.

THE DEVOURER/THE END
In the early drafts of this plot, The Devourer was far less important than it ended up being. Originally, The Devourer and The End were not the same creature! Instead, The Devourer was just one of a stable of three monsters under the command of Mammon's group, all three of which destroyed crops. There were three separate boss fights planned against each of them - every time one was defeated, a new one would appear and pick up where the last one left off. This was scrapped due to making the plot too lengthy.

It wasn't until after The Devourer was killed that I realized that my ideas for The End's final design were meshing up closely with The Devourer, and rather than have two similar-but-separate monsters, I combined them. It made more sense anyway. As Xarr said himself, why WAS The Devourer there? In earlier plot drafts he was a controlled monster, but he was pretty clearly independent in the final product.

The Devourer is based on the Mongolian Death Worm, an infamous cryptid. This worm is rumored to live in the Mongolian deserts, killing people and camels with poison spit and electric shocks. His image is from a Google Images trawl, and appears to be a carnival/freak show painting. Carnival art, of the type that adorns dark rides and sideshow attractions, is a lost art. The unknown artists' depiction of the Death Worm is savage and unique, and I knew immediately upon seeing it that I had to put it to use in RP.

Side note: Unlike the others, The Devourer truly was immune to DeRosa's perfume. While Mammon and Xarr were still humanoid, The Devourer was far enough removed from human biology to easily shrug it off.

FIORE DEROSA
A relatively late addition to the plot, Fiore was the last of the "big four" to enter the picture. Originally he was going to be merely a Boss Battle Pavilion fight. Fortunately I worked him into the main plot, because despite his early exit Fiore was a huge factor in the plot and somehow wound up tying the whole thing together.

Fiore's main purpose at first was to be a huge heel heat magnet. The reason I was going to bring him in for anything at all was because he was just such a gigantic douche in Bravely Default that I knew Harpy would just love killing him all over again. And then he targeted Sarah and the entire forum wanted a piece of him.

Aside from the most horrible thing anyone's ever done in ZFRP - starve Sarah - Fiore was largely a background player. His notes and perfume lingered on well past his demise and served as vital exposition and plot points. In the end, it was DeRosa who both ensured the plan would come so close to succeeding AND that it would eventually collapse on itself.

I have always believed that the overall theme of ZFRP is friendship and teamwork. How many times have we had someone go off and try to defeat X villain by themselves only to need the rest of the kobbers to bail them out? Erebus going off to fight Veshen. Delmond going off to fight Mengsk. Zephyrus trying to do everything by himself, Ash and Christine being selfless to the point of self-harm, Aevar getting his shit ruined by Undertaker Squad, and so on and so on. This group of villains had all the tools they needed for success, but every last one of them was, as Cornwind put it, looking out for Number 1. There was no true teamwork or camaraderie here, and that was why they failed.

COLONEL BAHAMUT

Ever since Browny was first introduced in 2012 I've wanted to do a Contra: Hard Corps plot. I got my wish by working it into this plot. The original idea for Brownyplot was much the same as it turned out in RP: a quick miniboss fight against one of the many, many very strange bosses from the game, ending with a boss fight against Big Magnum.

This event served a few other purposes, too. It made it seem like Chronos Xarr was a separate plot while at the same time hinting that he was tied to the Mammon plot. It also added a much-needed infusion of space into the plot, since although I'd wanted the plot to include both fantasy and sci-fi, I couldn't include too much space without giving away the big twist, and several events that would have utilized space tech on the surface were cut, leaving only DeRosa's lab to add some sci-fi flavor to the planetside events.

Bahamut was intended to be largely a comic relief villain. He was goofy and over-the-top, with stupid weapons that didn't work properly and a minion force that all quit because he wasn't paying them. The plot wound up taking a darker turn at the end, however, when Bahamut managed to (almost) KO Sammy, then get immediately targeted for death by Hypotenuse. Things got complicated. It's the way of RP sometimes.

STORMTROOPER C
Trooper C was a very late addition to the plot, conceived a few weeks before the big Psyche-Lock sequence. Originally, Xarr was going to escape by taking Gloria hostage to prevent attack, then stealing one of Bulgrave's sifters off of her and using it. After C's memorable performance in the Stormtrooper Fite, I felt he needed a real run as an antagonist for a couple reasons. Number 1, it underlined how incredibly prone to backstabbing this assemblage of villains was. Number 2, it added some balance to the plot - the only prior space section had been the Colonel Bahamut adventure. With Trooper C getting involved, the final four battles were equally shared - two medieval villains (Mammon and The End) and two space villains (Trooper C and Xarr). It perfectly encapsulated the balance I had wanted to strike, using our setting to its' fullest potential. A unique blend of fantasy and sci-fi, just as I'd wished.

Thanks to Everett's tireless "Don't Kill People Even If They're Assholes" campaign, Trooper C was the only surviving antagonist (not counting The Executioner since that was Thurg under the influence). Everett was right in one way, at least - Trooper C isn't going to be able to break out of prison, at least not easily. He has no special powers and no connections. It's an ordinary dude in jail.

CIVILIANS
We sure did kill a lot of civilians this year, eh? I'm generally not comfortable with mass genocide for heel heat. Like, I'm not gonna complain if other people do it, but although it's crossed my mind many times I always end up Cutting Room Floor-ing it. That's why I sought for a method of causing disruption in Ardea without actually killing anyone - while there were surely some casualties, it wasn't widespread death and horror like the Thunder Kings, or pure torture and agony like the Sin Cities. It was more of a mass brainwashing.

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You've met the cast, now meet the never-beens. Here are the characters and concepts that didn't make it into the plot.

MORGAN SPADE
The Holy Guild was originally slated to have four members, not three. In one of the very first of the dayplot missions Mercutio would take the kobbers on, they would encounter a group of cultists preparing to sacrifice a child to a dark god. Upon saving her, however, it would turn out that the "child" was in fact a Lalafell, a race of beings that just happen to look like human children, aside from the big ears.

Morgan would be a proficient scientist and machinist, and was originally the one responsible for controlling The Devourer and the other beasts that attacked crops. Of course, no one besides Mercutio would know that the innocent, cute child was one of the most dangerous people in the plot.

One of the concepts that lasted the longest before Morgan's scrapping was that she would eventually attack the kobbers herself in a fit of mad fervor, either from Mercutio's preaching figuratively brainwashing her or from DeRosa's perfume literally doing it. She may have even died in the attack, found slumped behind the wheel after the machine broke down, babbling about Zienna. Her vehicle for this event underwent three revisions before ultimately being discarded. The tank was a hint at Mercutio's true identity as a Warhammer character. An alternate version involving one of the Succubi getting perfumed and hijacking the construction equipment used at Haven was tossed around in my mind a while before it too was binned.

After Morgan the Succubus took Morgan's name, her name changed to Juniper before she was discarded entirely. Whether she's the same Juniper as the one from Mercutio's journal... who can say?

BATTLE DROID
A mook that never was. If Harpy had not been present for Day 2 of the finale, Trooper C would have been fought during Day 3 or in a separate mini-event, and the buildup to Mammon would have instead been a wave of mooks, including these guys and some turrets and other obstacles cribbed from Contra Hard Corps.

THUNDERFIRE CANNON
There was a possible event for stealthy characters that would involve sneaking into the mines at night to steal important documents. The Thunderfire Cannon would have acted as the security guard, and players would have to avoid it. The Cannon was another possible hint that Xarr was behind everything - another bit of stolen space tech. Instead, the documents were acquired after the DeRosa fight in a nod to Bravely Default, which gives you some backstory in the form of DeRosa's notes after you defeat him.

The Cannon would have shown up anyway to lead the Battle Droids if Stormtrooper C had not been fought on Day 2.

THE END AS THE ICEBERG DEVOURER
A second possible design for The End. I waffled back and forth between Leviathan and Iceberg Devourer for a while before giving up and looking elsewhere. As lovely as this image is, I didn't find it fitting enough.

THE END AS A THRESHER MAW
The third of four possible designs for The End, and the first one to use the concept of "The Devourer was The End's larval stage". This one was scrapped for two reasons. First, I wanted to make my own design, as none of the ones I'd found were fully satisfactory. Second, for people who had actually played Mass Effect, the revelation that the end of the world was just that boss monster you fought that one time would be way too underwhelming.

FALSE BIOLLANTE
Here's the first of the two monsters that would have aided in destroying crops along with The Devourer. The design is taken from old concept art of Biollante.

FALSE DAGAHRA
And here's the other one - more Toho monster concept art. Both monsters were grown in a vat by Morgan Spade, with help from Xarr. The fact that the monsters resembled Biollante and Dagahra would have been a hint that the true culprit of the plot was someone aware of the kobbers, as they were allied with one and fought the other.

ADAMANTOISE
This miniboss monster was conceived as both a beast for Thurg to call on and a dayplot foe for Mercutio. Obviously, neither happened.

MINOTAUR
Another miniboss monster that would be used the same way as Adamantoise. I considered asking JRM if it could be the same minotaur as the one from Fite Yer Mates. Again, though, nothing came of it.

THE GAPING DRAGON
Yet another boss monster. I've never played Dark Souls and don't plan to, but the Gaping Dragon's design was so crazy and out-there that it immediately caught my eye. I wanted to use it for something, but could never work it in. First it was a 2013 Drunken Gryphon bulletin board item, like The End. Then I considered making it a Boss Battle Pavilion match, before adding it to the lineup of possible Mercutio dayplots. It was then finally, mercifully, scrapped.

BUG MONSTERS
Two more unused creatures. I never had much of a plan for them.

TOWER
Possible final dungeon idea. This tower would have been created by either Mammon or Xarr using dark energy. After fighting waves of mooks and some obstacles to reach the top, The End would be summoned.

DISGAEA 3 SUCCUBUS
An unused picture for Morgan and Lily. I'm not too fond of the redesign the succubus monster class got in the newer Disgaea games. It's not BAD, but the original one works better, I think. The proportions are less barbie-like and there's no inexplicable necktie (compare the official art here and here, lewd warning). I DID use the D3 design a lot initially to represent Morgan and Lily - this is because the sprite looks okay and was available in a high resolution. I'll probably go more uniformly old-school for the succubi in the future to stabilize their look.

ALTERNATE MERCUTIO COLORS
I didn't know if I'd be able to use these but I didn't want to lose them so I saved 'em just in case. Mercutio with color-changing armor! I'd considered having it turn red when it became obvious he was a villain.

SCRAPPED THE BURNING SEQUENCE
The Burning was originally going to start with Gloria, Siren, and Sonia already captured and tied to poles, with books laid at the pole's base to act as kindling. I felt it unnecessarily edgy and scrapped it.

SCRAPPED MAGATAMA SEQUENCE
I had wanted to get every single one of my important characters involved in this plot. Let's run down the list.

Sarahkin = Gloria getting targeted for The Burning
Viola = Attacked by Fiore
Myriam = Attacked by Fiore
Samhain = N/A, October only
Browny = Searching for Chronos Xarr
Widow Maker = N/A, not planned to return at the time
Succubi, Tyra, and Thurg = Duh

Who's missing? Silence and Blade.

During the big psyche-lock sequence, Mercutio was going to frame either Blade or Silence as being the real Chronos Xarr. Blade would have been framed with evidence, while Silence would have been dragged in and asked by Mercutio point-blank if Silence was her real name, whereupon five black locks would have surrounded her, tossing a huge swerve (that was ultimately a red herring) into the mix. Silence also was a possible ally in the final fight, joining Ash and Tenshi on Xarr's ship. She had no reason to be there anymore, though, so she was removed.

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That about wraps it up. I hope you enjoyed the plot. I feel that it came together well, even if I wound up making a lot of it work by sheer luck. If you have any further questions, ask away in the comments!