Neo Kobbers: Behind the Scenes

And so my biggest plot yet - and quite probably my biggest plot ever - has come to a close. Tackling the nuts and bolts behind this one is going to be difficult simply due to the sheer size, but I'll give it the old college try. First, I'll review each and every one of the "official 25" Neo Kobbers, going over their creation and also including some backstory notes that give a little more depth to why each of these characters joined the Neo Kobbers (much of this material was never mentioned on the forum, and a lot of it is being made up here!). Then, I'll go over all of the events and talk about them and the cutting room scraps associated with them.

-THE NEO KOBBERS-

BLU Pyro
Analogue: RED Spy/Krieg
Backstory: In Season 1, RED Spy received a cache of weapons from Pech that would aid in making the war on BLU Team easier. By Season 2, Spy said that RED Team had all but eradicated BLU Team entirely. BLU Pyro escaped from the hopeless war and wandered aimlessly until stumbling into Las Vegas and discovering the Neo Kobbers.
Cutting Room Floor: BLU Pyro was set to participate in the battle against New Paradigm, and was also slated to be killed off during the conflict. In fact, he even got an illustrated KO shot.
Other: BLU Pyro was one of a few characters that could easily alter how evil they were based on how people reacted. The reaction was trying to kill Pyro, so I went ahead and had him get killed without much fanfare.

Tiffany
Analogue: Sammy
Backstory: A Las Vegas native, Tiffany is unsure as to the origins of her superpowered speed. She feared in the past that she might be a mutant, but the hostile reaction she got from the Psychopata Quarter hints that something else gave her that ability. Her hatred of the overweight stemmed from an unhappy childhood where she was taught quite firmly that people who don't "look right" are to be shunned and belittled.
Cutting Room Floor: Originally conceived as a darker true villain, Tiffany was softened to an anti-villain based on the responses to her appearances before the fight against her. She would have been killed off if people had wanted to hate her, not save her. Later on, Tiffany was a potential target for Anger.

Blue
Analogue: Alex the Raptor
Backstory: Blue was a WCW experiment that was deemed a failure for use in combat (too small) but kept around as a sort of pet. Blue was valuable to WCW for her ability to placate and communicate with the notoriously rowdy Gwangi.
Cutting Room Floor: Blue was the very last "official 25" Neo Kobber to be added. Her slot was initially filled by Gwangi, who pulled double duty as both a Neo Kobber and a WCW entrant.

Captain Douglas Gordon
Analogue: Saxton Hale
Backstory: Gordon was among the very first people ever to gather at the Monster's Lair, and he remained loyal and steadfast to the group until it fell apart this year.
Cutting Room Floor: Gordon was going to be directly fought at one point towards the end of the plot. See the Events rundown for more details.

Seaport Hime
Analogue: Yuugi/Raw
Backstory: Seaport Hime was an oni captured at a vulnerable age and given cyborg hands by an unknown organization. Initially conceived as a mighty superweapon, Seaport Hime proved too much of a shy, nervous wreck to be much use, and was abandoned. The Neo Kobbers took her in and cared for her, and she grew into a strong, healthy woman. She admired the powerful and brave women who became kobbers, such as Silence, Yuugi, Garnet, Sophia, and Samus, and decided to try and be like them and put her talents to good use - even if she had to fight her fears every step of the way.
Cutting Room Floor: Seaport Hime was one of the last Neo Kobbers to be added. She replaced Mr. Atomic, who was downgraded to a joke.

The Scorpion
Analogue: Stag Beetle
Backstory: Spitfire captured and tamed this scorpion to act as a helpful scout.
Cutting Room Floor: Neo Kobber Plot served as a vehicle for me to do a number of plots I'd wanted to do for years but was unable to. The first of those was one of my first ideas for Las Vegas, conceived of all the way back during the 2013-2014 offseason: Stag Beetle vs The Scorpion. So this is, in fact, something of a reverse cutting room floor, actually.

Clair
Analogue: Tenshi
Backstory: A Gym Leader, Clair initially only fought with the Neo Kobbers for the positive PR. However, over time, she grew to quietly enjoy helping others - if only because it made her feel strong.
Cutting Room Floor: Another plot idea folded into Neo Kobber plot, Clair's original role before the Neo Kobbers idea was fully formed was to have her own plot and basically be for Tenshiola what Sir Periwinkle was for Dirksephine: an antagonist who brings the pairing-in-progress closer to smooches. She would have had a few small events culminating in a big Pokemon battle.

Keelhaul
Analogue: FormerVengeance's RP
Backstory: Keelhaul arrived from another planet to watch World Creature Wars.
Cutting Room Floor: Keelhaul was set to get his own event very early in the plot where the Kobbers would go on a cruise down the Black Canyon River. However, the cruise would run into trouble when Parasite attacked, and the battle would turn into a three-way dance when Keelhaul and Terroryaki arrived on the scene to fight both Parasite and the Kobbers.
Other: Keelhaul is a steampunk robot Predator pirate. He is exactly the sort of thing FV would link in Chatzy or in a one-off forum post. This is why I knew he had to be part of the plot.

Sara the Geomancer
Analogue: Sarah
Backstory: This one made it to the forum - Sara wanted to be more like Sarah in the hopes that she would "strike it rich" and rebuild her shattered family. When it didn't happen, she became distraught and her jealousy of Sarah began to increase.
Cutting Room Floor: Sara underwent multiple severe and drastic changes. In the original draft, she was a blend of Sarah and Viola, a bullied outcast who desperately seeked attention and was somewhat insane. In a later draft, Sara was, believe it or not, the true final boss of Neo Kobber plot. This version appeared sweet and kind like Sarah, but would make full use of being a bizarro Sarah by actually being an evil manipulator who used her cuteness and supposed vulnerability to make the Neo Kobbers do whatever she liked. In the final battle against her, she would use her geomancy to call on the powers of Earth, Fire, Water, and Wind to create a sort of armored body. Here is a partially-finished image I was MSPainting when this was the planned ending.
Other: Sara comes to us from a Chatzy gag. After I posted this image, the following exchange ensued.

Harpy: who is this bitch trying to take sarah's hubby
RubyChao: it's my new 2014 RP character, Sara (no h)
RubyChao: she's hip and trendy and she's Sarah's new rival

And then I turned a Chatzy joke into an actual character.

Spitfire
Analogue: Widow Maker
Backstory:Another early arrival who bonded with Captain Gordon and was often seen as the one in charge whenever he and Rex weren't around.
Cutting Room Floor: Originally conceived in the 2012-2013 offseason, Spitfire was to be the star of her own megaplot. Spitfire would have led a gang of giant insects and other invertebrates. Their group name was The Valkyries, and their ranks included the following:

* Poison, a giant scorpion
* Quicksilver, a giant centipede
* Shrike, a giant dragonfly
* An unnamed Arthropleura
* An unnamed giant tardigrade
* An unnamed giant bacteriophage
* An Anomalocaris that would befriend Widow Maker, only to reveal he was a spy

Spitfire was originally going to be far more vicious and frightening, and would ambush people from the shadows to rip them apart. She would also be clearly demented and talk like an insane serial killer. She ultimately, however, was just "Widow Maker again" which made me a bit disappointed in myself,  but I did like the territorial dispute thing she had going with Widow Maker.

The Black Mage
Analogue: Celestia/Jaxx Tantra
Backstory:Made up on the spot when Cornwind forced my hand, Black Mage was an ordinary person who snapped under the boredom of life and began killing for the excitement.
Cutting Room Floor: The Black Mage was initially conceived as primarily an opponent for Celestia. The plan involved him kidnapping her and her robots and then traveling to the junkyard to kill them all one by one using a magnet crane and crusher (yes, The Brave Little Toaster directly inspired this sequence, and the actual magnet crane from the movie was going to be there). The fight would be on a timer, and each turn someone would get pulped, the characters growing steadily in importance similar to the fight against The Hanged Man in Season 4's Deck plot. Celestia would be saved for last.

What changed the plans was Chao throwing out a guess that the unknown thug who attacked Silence in her backstory was in fact Black Mage all along. I loved the idea and made it canon. Prior to this, the identity of the thug was... not important! There would have been a third pictures-only blogpost depicting Silence a few years after the attack but a few years before meeting the Kobbers tracking down the thug and killing him with the Silencer as revenge for his attack on her. Instead, Silence didn't find out who was responsible until this year. Once again, another plot was tied into Neo Kobbers - this time, Silence's plot.

Millennian
Analogue: Gezora
Backstory:Millennian's ship crash-landed to Earth a few years ago, and the Neo Kobbers helped repair it so he could go home... but in the time it had taken to fix the ship, Millennian found he enjoyed life in Las Vegas and opted to remain with the Neo Kobbers.
Cutting Room Floor: Millennian's ship, only seen during the Greed battle, was meant to appear at least one further time. Millennian was one of my first choices for a Neo Kobber to infect with Anger and Obey, and the shots would have made him transform into Orga. Orga would have faced the kobbers in a lategame event where a number of Neos make a last stand at the Monster's Lair, unaware that all of them had been drugged. When Sheep asked for my permission to have Otik's clay Millennian do the Orga transformation, I decided to take Millennian in a different direction.
Other: I was very pleased that Julius was a surprise participant in the Annuit Coeptis event, as he bears some interesting similarities to Millennian. Millennian is also something of a pacifist who prefers not to hurt others, but he DOES still attack if it's needed, unlike Julius.

Rex Maximilion
Analogue: Draco/Major Failure
Backstory:Revealed on the forum, Rex began life as WCW's equivalent of A Gorillion Dollars with the name "A Rexillion Bucks". After WCW went under, Rex bought WCW's assets and made a name for himself largely to spite the old WCW for making him as a joke.
Cutting Room Floor: Like Dr. Bulgrave in Season 2, Rex's alignment fluctuated wildly throughout the early stages of the plot. The original intention was for him to be a full villain, but a few of Cornwind's characters needled him with questions that required a more friendly approach so that Rex did not appear brain-dead. In an earlier draft, he would have piloted New Paradigm while sound of mind, but with the same targets and goals. He was also going to be the true final boss after the Sara idea was scrapped but before the Crystals of Darkness were thought of.

Annuit Coeptis
Analogue: Gravitas Shortfall/Saberwulf's RP/M Sheep's RP
Backstory:A former threat, Annuit Coeptis was talked down almost entirely through diplomacy by the Neo Kobbers. It decided to watch over them, and acted as something of an early warning system for threats.
Cutting Room Floor: Another character whose alignment shifted back and forth. It wasn't until fairly late that I decided Annuit needed to be drugged to be fought.
Other: Conspiracy originates from a Reddit Battlebots roleplay tournament, as an original design from one of the participants. I found it just one day before the Battlebots plot happened, and Annuit appearing as a "plot guide" character ensured it'd need to be drugged for its' battle with the kobbers.

Sundowner
Analogue: Hypotenuse/Cornwind's RP
Backstory:A villain the Neo Kobbers opted to spare and try to rehabilitate. While they seemed to be making progress, it became clear during the plot that they had failed.
Cutting Room Floor: Sundowner's original angle was more talky, and he'd insinuate that the real reason the kobbers fight is not for good, but to push their own agenda onto the unwashed masses.
Other: Sundowner was among the very first characters I thought of for Season 5 antagonists, alongside Rex, Sara, and Clair. The initial idea behind Neo Kobbers was for each character to represent two different kobbers. Sundowner represented Hypotenuse and Delmond, Rex represented Draco and Major Failure, Sara represented Sarah and Viola, and Clair represented Tenshi and Viola.

Scanty and Kneesocks
Analogue: The Succubus Sisters
Backstory: These two had hung around Las Vegas for many years before WCW ever came to town, subtly encouraging criminal activity. Normally fairly well-behaved, Scanty and Kneesocks turned mean when they saw a chance to wipe out the Vibes Movement by killing Morgan and Lily. They'd had a hidden agenda all along of turning Vegas into a true Sin City, but their deaths scuttled that plan.
Cutting Room Floor: Scanty and Kneesocks were initially present at the "Sundowner and Black Mage get the boot" scene, but the timing of events meant that they died before the scene occurred. If they'd still been alive, they would have either remained on the Neo Kobbers side as spies for Sundowner and Black Mage or they would have made their alignment clear by walking across the bar to join them in solidarity, perhaps putting some fear into the Neo Kobbers. I also considered making them redeemable, but decided not to when I thought of them summoning Mammon's corpse to fight Morgan and Lily, because once you summon the dead mother of your enemies to use as a weaponized puppet, you've crossed a line and there are no take-backs.

Tron Bonne
Analogue: Celestia/Carol hybrid
Backstory: Tron left the Bonne family behind for a while to make a name for herself as a great machinist, but when people laughed at her Servbots, she grew despondent and retreated from the public eye. As a Neo Kobber, she began working to quietly make effective and powerful machines. People would learn that the Servbots were better than they thought, and for the knockout punch Tron planned to reveal that the competent robots the public didn't know the makers of were all hers, and she really WAS a great roboticist after all, so take THAT!
Cutting Room Floor: Tron was initially going to be a problem for far longer than she ended up being. She was always going to be a good guy in the end, but earlier drafts of the plot kept her villainous for quite a while. See the Events section for more details...

Bastion and Stonewall
Analogue: Silence
Backstory:This is another one that made it to the forum - at least partially. Bastion and Stonewall both wrestled in the original incarnation of VEW. Bastion was "Vanessa Quake", a huge biker chick, and Stonewall was "Eagles McLiberty", your standard all-American hero. Both were headliners in VEW's early days, but Silence usurped them to become the face of the company. Bastion and Stonewall wound up with the Neo Kobbers when VEW went out of business, and they became Rex's most trusted security guards alongside Keelhaul.
Cutting Room Floor: Silence and Blade were initially going to fight - and lose to - Bastion and Stonewall in a pre-season blogpost, and wouldn't be seen again until it was revealed that one or both of them had joined the Neo Kobbers and formed a stable with Bastion and Stonewall. The option for Silence or Blade to 'turn heel' remained open until the Big Bar Brawl happened. For obvious reasons, they remained heroic after that.

Fact Sphere
Analogue: Wheatley
Backstory: Fact Sphere showed up one day and they couldn't get rid of him, so Rex put him in an office job to get him out of the way.
Cutting Room Floor: Fact Sphere was originally far, far more dangerous and would be a proper boss battle. His event got a tremendous amount of hurried, frantic reorganizing before it eventually became what it was. See the Events section for details. Fact Sphere was also a candidate for being faced a second time while under the influence of Anger.

Gamble Man
Analogue: Zephyrus
Backstory: Although not built by Celestia, Gamble Man works for her. He ran a casino that opened in Tridenland Manhattan in Season 2. Come Season 5 and Tridenland's restructuring, he appeared to help run the King's Ransom, but was caught and reprogrammed by Tron Bonne to serve the Neo Kobbers.
Cutting Room Floor: Gamble Man's event had a strange road through development. See the Events section for details.

Watchlin
Analogue: Kevin/Harpy's RP
Backstory:Watchlin was created by Tron Bonne as a marketable robot pet. Unfortunately, Sundowner and The Black Mage secretly reprogrammed it and made some severe alterations...
Cutting Room Floor: The original plan was for there to be four Watchlins, and each would captivate a different Sarahkin. They would talk with their "owners" and give suggestions and advice, and all four would seem custom-tailored to be as perfect for their matching mage as possible (The Sarah Watchlin turning up the cute, the Gloria Watchlin showing off the model's intelligence, etc). All four would start out normal and friendly, but over time they would give more and more questionable suggestions to the Sarahkin - and the Sarahkin would listen, until finally the Watchlins would lure the four of them to a back alley of Vegas and inject them all with a coma-inducing poison.
Other: Watchlin was always meant to be the plot's big "heel turn" twist, although as mentioned Sara was also going to be a true villain at one point, and there are a couple other characters that could have turned but didn't...

Nabisco Thing
Analogue: Mac Tonight/Blik
Backstory: Nabisco Thing was created by Nabisco in the 90s to help sell their food. However, by the early 2000s, Nabisco Thing was outdated and unpopular, and Nabisco fired him. Knowing no existence beyond appearing in front of hungry people and offering them cookies and crackers, Nabisco Thing wandered the earth aiding the hungry, and is responsible for saving dozens of starving third-world villages with its' ability to create aid packages. It eventually joined the Neo Kobbers to raise awareness about world hunger, and to use the Neo Kobbers as the muscle Nabisco Thing lacked, should force be needed.
Cutting Room Floor: Nabisco Thing was actually slated to be the first Neo Kobber eliminated alongside Gamble Man, but its' role in Gamble Man plot was a bit smaller than planned, so I held onto Nabisco Thing for a long time until thinking up the "joke event".

Coppy
Analogue: Clippy
Backstory:Rex Maximilion purchased Coppy off of Amazon to help him in business-related endeavors. Coppy may not seem like much, but he is incredibly effective at crunching numbers and doing various minutiae that comes with running a company. As annoying as Coppy could be, Rex kept him around because no one could possibly replace him.
Cutting Room Floor: Coppy was going to be killed off, but when he survived his New Paradigm coin flip I opted to let him be.

-THE EVENTS-

Rap Crab Fite Club
I was blanking on a Fite Club opponent for Ringabel when Harpy tossed him at the facility in early May, so I ultimately decided to use one of my sillier WCW ideas for some early foreshadowing.

Wheel Of Fortune: Gamble Man and Nabisco Thing
Here's where I began one of Neo Kobber Plot's running themes, that being the tractor gimmick. For this event, the gimmick was using Wheel Decide instead of Random.org or Chatzy's dice rolling. I was unsure if Wheel Decide was behaving correctly, since halfway through the plot Gamble Man went on a big losing streak, but it began leveling off a bit at the end.

The original plan for the event was VERY different - Gamble Man wasn't involved at all! Instead, for my first major plot, The King's Ransom would hold a Grand Opening that is ruined when one of the slot machines comes to life. The living slot machine, which would sprout mecha legs and face the kobbers in combat, was to be a Skeiron analogue built by Tron Bonne. The character was scrapped in exchange for Gamble Man when I remembered I already had a slot machine robot to use.

The Fast And The Furious: Tiffany
This plot was initially a lot more bloodthirsty and would have ended in Tiffany's death, but people wanted her saved and not killed so I toned her down and made her able to see reason. This event's gimmick was Tiffany's absurdly high defense tractor, which represented how difficult it was to catch her.

Battle At Luxor: Seaport Hime 
A small event that existed primarily to introduce both Seaport Hime and the Luxor pyramid, which would become important much later.

Viewer Discretion Advised: Fact Sphere, Terroryaki, and Volatilis Sceptum
This event pulled double duty as a way to help Kevin get his show on the air without The Producer's involvement. Full disclosure, I was a mess leading up to this plot and had no clue what I was doing. The initial plan was a game show run by Fact Sphere which would see one or more Kobbers eliminated each round as they dealt with increasingly-ridiculous obstacles. The "winner" would then face Fact Sphere in combat, him having gotten a hold of a GlaDOS-like robot body that would make him combat-capable. Even as the plot was starting, I didn't know what exactly we would be doing that night. Struggling to think of excuses, rules, and ideas, I scrapped everything just as people began entering the TV station and made it the simple WCW fight you all got.

The Fight For Fireworks: BLU Pyro and Keelhaul
After Keehaul's event was scrapped, I tossed him in here to get him checked off the list... and it turned out he was the only Neo Kobber to get checked off, because BLU Pyro got a lucky break and escaped without getting killed, to return months later. This event also introduced Mr. X's goons, who were the seemingly random thugs assisting Pyro. I refrained from using a picture in order to make it less obvious.

Unmasked: Bastion and Stonewall
A very important event for multiple reasons. The first, obviously, is that this served as a major milestone for Silence. We got more information on her past and she finally unmasked, hence the title. The event also introduced Anger and Obey, my get-out-of-jail-free cards. See, I wanted these events to be full of action and fun battles, but I was wary of people refusing to fight due to the Neo Kobbers being sympathetic. We've had events before where people don't really know how much force they should be using or if they should be attacking at all, and this was my attempt at making it more obvious. Lastly, this event was a sort of turning point for the plot - the events began to get more serious overall, and were loaded with higher stakes. There would be a reprieve later with the joke character event, but things ratcheted up even higher after that one as endgame began.

Dragons, Drama, And Doubt: Clair and Perfect Kyurem 
This event, and Clair as a whole, primarily existed as the "final boss of Tenshiola confessions", though Tenshi was still unsure where her feelings laid so it was instead the final thing keeping Viola from confessing. Chao and I discussed the event plans, and we came up with two ideas. The first involved a standard Pokemon battle, while the alternative was Tenshi fighting the Pokemon herself. I suggested combining the ideas - a straight Pokemon battle, followed by Clair unleashing an illegal seventh Pokemon - and that was what we did! Perfect  Kyurem was chosen as the illegal entry just a couple days before the plot, largely due to its' appearing in our community before as a chatzy joke via Chao's creepypasta quotes.

Party's Over: Scanty and Kneesocks
Sarah's bachelorette party wasn't going to be crashed originally, but someone else who had planned to do a plot that evening pulled out, so I jumped in with my own event, and since said event was going to happen at the same location that the party was happening... well, you know. At this point in the plot, I had not yet thought of The Warriors Of Darkness. This is shown by the fact that Pestilence wasn't "born" until a few weeks later.

The Fury Of The Storm: Sara
Not my event, but rather one of Tom's. The large scope meant that it made sense for a lot of characters to converge on the site, and that included both the Kobbers and the Neo Kobbers. Seeing an opportunity to take care of another Neo quickly, I had Sara and Sarah find each other.

Sundower and Black Mage's eviction
Not an event, but something I had a comment on. This happened earlier than I'd planned, as Hypotenuse made it abundantly clear how stupid it was to leave them alone for so long. I moved the moment up in response.

Crazy Train: Blue and Gwangi
Crazy indeed. I do love me a good spectacle, and a chaotic battle atop a moving train with constantly shifting battlefields was a great idea for a plot, IMO. I'd also remembered Cornwind had planned for a train battle in Season 3 but never got around to it, and I was happy to offer a replacement. The wide variety of enemies covered all aspects of the plot. The robots were there as stronger foreshadowing that Mr. X was involved, the patchisaurs returned with new monsters, and Seaport Hime resurfaced as a drugged opponent for M Sheep in a vehicular slugfest.

Something's Gumming Up The Plumbing: Parasite 
This was an "anytime event" I used to fill a space left by another plot getting delayed. Short and simple, with an opening at the end for Kisume to show her stuff. Like Keelhaul, Parasite had been left with nothing to do after the Black Canyon event was dropped, and this was my solution.

The Dancing Carousel: Watchlin
This was one of the rare occasions I felt like taking a crack at horror. Harpy RP is generally cute things with a horror background, or horrible things happening and then getting stopped and buried in cute. For Watchlin, I flipped it a bit so cuteness became horror, rather than the other way around. In the original version of this event, Watchlin possessed a strong poison that it could deliver by stabbing with the mouthparts in its' final form. This poison would run on a very low tractor (probably a d6) but if you lost the roll and had no anti-poison defenses, your character would be debilitated. Basically it was the opposite of Tiffany. Instead of having a very large defense tractor for a character so frail they'd be downed in a hit or two, it was a very small attack tractor that could OHKO if it actually managed to win.

Cookie Calamity 2015: Nabisco Thing, Coppy, and Rap Crab
The last Neo Kobber plot in terms of the order I thought of the concept, save A Scam In Your Future. This plot resulted from an accumulation of loose-end joke characters that had hung around into the later stages of the season, specifically Coppy, Nabisco Thing, and Rap Crab.

WCW's Curtain Call: Rex Maximilion and Spitfire
When I thought I'd plotted Rex into a corner, Mr. X was my saving throw. By further splitting up the Neo Kobbers into two groups of good and evil, the plot's final stages got easier to manage. This event also helped wrangle other characters into Neo Kobber plot, specfically Widow Maker and Regigigas.

This plot was going to be held in a park at one point instead of the WCW arena.

Battleplots: Tron Bonne, Nightmare, and Ziggo
For years - literally since late in Season 1 - I've wanted to do a plot about a robot battle tournament. The earliest form was simply a Fite Club-like tournament tree featuring people's robots, like Zephyrus and Optimus Prime, fighting it out. Later versions of the plot added details like Celestia entering and the kobbers having to help her overcome a smug jerk with a powerful robot of their own. The latest version of the plot before this year had Dr. Bulgrave as the protagonist and his rival Sir Barnaby McManus von Buxton the Third, who would be the smug guy with the OP bot. When Battlebots managed to get back on TV and score good ratings and general acclaim, I knew it was finally time to do a plot about combat robotics.

An initial version of this plot would have started with a lead saying that Tron and Mr. X were both in the lab, only for it to turn out to be Mecha Tron and Robot X, with the real X having taken Tron to his headquarters. Tron would then need to be rescued so that she didn't have to make robots for Mr. X against her will, similar to Tiamat forcing Celestia to build her Warmechs.

A Scam In Your Future: Mr. X's Thugs
The last "space filler" plot. Once more I stepped up to bat when someone else couldn't plot that day. Birthed from a Sumireko dayplot concept, this plot's purpose was to show more of the sorts of things Mr. X's goons were up to, and gave the kobbers a chance to take a bunch of them out early.

Un-Retirement: The Retired Neo Kobbers
The main purpose of this event (aside from letting people have fun making and fighting their own Neo Kobbers) was worldbuilding. This diverse crew of enemies showed off the history of the Neos and made the group as a whole feel more like a legit parallel version of the kobbers. These characters were originally going to be explained as simple "reinforcements" that still went to the Monster's Lair but had just been off-camera the whole time. Making them retired Neos "coming back for a cameo" made more sense and fit the story better.

Before later character direction and Otik's event happened, Millennian was going to be fought here, drugged and in Orga form, as the plot's boss.

Red Sun: Sundowner and Captain Gordon
The original idea here was a rooftop battle against Sundowner and two drugged Neo Kobbers - Captain Gordon and Seaport Hime. Seaport was dropped after Crazy Train used her, and Gordon was placed in the Gotengo to mimic the helicopters from the Sundowner boss fight in Metal Gear Rising. Sundowner's gimmick - defense rolls that could be used as attack rolls if he won them - was one of the earlier ideas for a tractor gimmick in this plot.

Cornwind requested months before the event that Sundowner use the "I'LL SPLIT YOU IN TWO!" line so Hypo could respond with "Into what?" :V

That Old Black Magic: Black Mage and BLU Pyro
As stated in Black Mage's section, this event was originally a fight in a junkyard that served as a large-scale Brave Little Toaster reference. In this version, BLU Pyro was still there to help Black Mage, but in order to allow Black Mage to fight and keep the crusher going at the same time, the machinery in the junkyard would be controlled by Tron Bonne. Her loyalty to the Neo Kobbers was much stronger in older drafts of the plot, though by this point her will to listen to Black Mage was wavering badly. She'd be easy for people to convert, and would turn on Black Mage partway through the plot. The plot changed locations when the event became more Silence-centric.

Robosaurus was a late addition to give Black Mage some more ammunition, and pulled double duty as a way for a drugged Celestia to fight. The tractor gimmick this time was Mary helping Black Mage by boosting his rolls with her drinks.

The Last Soul: Mr. X 
Streets of Rage is a series that I think transitions very well to RP, which is partly why I've taken so much from it. This plot was designed as a fun send-off to that dastardly Mr. X, with tons of enemies, two chances to split up and take branching paths (one for the first half and a second at the very end) and multiple environments to fight in. I also incorporated all three games in the series. The elevator and Mr. X's offer to join him were from Streets of Rage 1. The final battle against Shiva and X and most of the enemies were from Streets of Rage 2. The lab area, P-1 robots, and Robot X were from Streets of Rage 3. And to top it off, Mr. X trying to escape via aircraft was an idea used in a game mod I played years ago called The Return Of Mr. X, which was made using the SORMaker found in Streets of Rage Remake.

I used lots of mooks, the changing environments, the branching paths, and the constant "AND NOW THIS IS HAPPENING" fast-moving action to try and simulate an actual beat-em-up game in RP form. Pretty much all I was missing, in retrospect, was having someone punch a trash can to reveal a freshly-cooked chicken on a plate, which they would then eat in one bite. Damn, I should have thought of that earlier. Well, aside from trash chicken, how'd I do?

The Ascension: Annuit Ceoptis and Millennian
This one was all about being unlike I usually am. A lack of enemies in the early segment, instead having our heroes deal with obstacles and traps. A boss that didn't attack directly, instead assaulting the mind. And, of course, sads. If I hadn't previously discovered Conspiracy, both Annuit and Millennian would probably have been completely erased. Alternatively, if Otik hadn't used Orga already I might have dealt with Millennian elsewhere and he wouldn't have been involved here at all (he also would have likely survived the plot) but Annuit would still be permadead.

Big Business: Rex Maximilion
Everyone expects me to save the kaiju for last. JOKE'S ON YOU BRUH! I wasn't sure which order to do the final events in for quite a while. This event underwent a number of changes, some due to it not being the finale after all. Here's a quick bullet point list.

* Rex was always going to control New Paradigm, although whether he was purposefully doing it or being controlled depended on his heelishness.
* The earliest form of the final battle (and the very first thing I thought of that was initially conceived as being tied to this plot instead of a separate idea that merged with it later), first considered last winter, was a non-mind-controlled Rex controlling a massive skyscraper with spider legs. Later, I selected Stratosphere Las Vegas as his building and the design became the crablike mecha that made it to RP.
* One idea was having the Warriors be fought in the city, then as each is killed their crystal merges into Rex. Once he was infected with all four, he'd lose control completely and activate New Paradigm, initiating a pause similar to Chronos Xarr when he summoned The End last year.
* Crystal-Controlled Rex was dark and edgy like the Warriors, but with crystals sprouting from his body. No image was made, however, this was just my mental picture I would have used when making the MSPaint if I had.
* Rex was considered for permakilling in this event - even if he was only being mind-controlled.
* Another possibility I considered a week or two before the event was Rex actually having been evil all along, and his surrender was a fake-out. Then I thought about maybe making it so his mind control would be more subtle, and it would look like he had betrayed the Kobbers and been evil all along, but he was actually still not evil. I decided this was getting too complicated and trashed all of it.
* The Blood Tractor was first conceived last year for use in the fight against The Devourer, but I decided to not use it then.
* To determine which Neo Kobbers would survive the fight, I flipped a coin in Space Court for each one. All of the deaths were to be illustrated, but I didn't have time or energy to do so.

Drive Out The Darkness: The Warriors Of Darkness
The conception of Cataclysm was what ensured the Warriors of Darkness would be the final event, since they couldn't both form Cataclysm AND infect Rex. I could have forced it so Cataclysm infected Rex, but I didn't feel the need to make the Warriors quite that persistent. The defense-eroding gimmick was a very late addition that I thought would help make the fight feel more like progress and to weaken the 31 defense tractor. The Blood Tractor returned primarily because of the positive reception to it the day before, and it made sense for Cataclysm to be that bloodthirsty. Cataclysm's MSPaint is the sort of good old-fashioned abomination I haven't drawn much of since the Projects in Season 2, and a reminder that I can draw spooky stuff too, not just cute.

-MISCELLANEOUS-

Mary
Mary was considered to be revealed as a villain in the form of a Neo Kobber spy, observing the Kobbers and feeding information to Rex. I couldn't bear to do it... so I considered giving the role to Mary's coworker Jinako before dropping the idea entirely. Additionally, Mary was originally not related to Silence at all, but when touching up Mary's picture one day my mind started wandering, looking for a surprise twist to unleash, and I realized I had two redheads that looked dissimilar enough that no one would suspect their relation...

A Neo Kobber event featuring Mary and people getting trapped in her store was considered. At first, the culprit was Fact Sphere, inspired by this image, using a set of controls to dump people (including Mary herself) into Grab-N-Go's basement, which he would then flood with water to drown them. Then, Mary herself was the one trying to drown people. The final version of the idea was Fact Sphere again, hijacking the store and locking Mary into it, then attempting to destroy the entire store with a flood. This version had Fact Sphere be under the influence of Anger.

Mood Radio 
Another possible spy, Mood Radio was originally slated to be the 25th Neo Kobber, replacing Gwangi (who was ultimately replaced by Blue). The reveal would have come in the form of a mocking news report. I decided Watchlin's turn was enough and dropped the idea.

The Knight
A Neo Kobber based on Brinehammer's RP that never made the cut. The Knight (no name was ever conceived) would have appeared to be the plot's final boss, a big and dangerous Neo Kobber that wouldn't fight until the closing stages of the plot. However, while fighting him, it would become apparent as he was taking damage that The Knight was a robot, and not human as previously assumed. Then, upon his defeat, it would be revealed that Sara was controlling him, and she would assume the final form mentioned in her profile and initiate the final battle.

Del's character Julius actually comes really close to what I imagined The Knight to look like. The idea was to subvert expectations by having The Knight not be real, since I've had no less than three of my major enemies (Garland, Sir Periwinkle, and Chronos Xarr) be "bad men wearing armor", to the point that people would probably see me with an armored dude, point at him, and go "ENEMY!"

T'Sythos
The Behemoth (the monster Millennian and Annuit merged into) was originally going to appear long before I thought to have Millennian do that. The creature, using the name "T'sythos", would appear in the WCW arena as a boss to fight alongside Annuit, who would unleash it upon the world for one of two reasons: either to display what wildlife looks like in Annuit's realm, or else T'sythos was a "too dangerous to use" result of surgineering at WCW that Rex asked Annuit to seal away, and Annuit's drugged state made it decide to break the seal. People who were good at physical fighting could attack T'sythos, and people who could handle Annuit's mental assault would face him instead.

This image of a sad Clair would have been used if the Clair plot had gone differently.

Clair almost had a Dragalge on her team, but I forgot to include it. It was replaced with Garchomp.

The Hanmaru Doll was a possible opponent during BattlePlots, but the enemy roster was already packed full. It instead appeared only as a prop at the "Superweapons Convention" Aura held to try and steal Sine's Infinity Gauntlet (you probably remember this sequence as "A MILLION POUNDS OF CANDY")

As I've mentioned in Chatzy in the past, Stormtrooper C was a member of the Neo Kobbers at one point. He was removed for a few reasons. Most notably, while not everyone may have been totally satisfied with C's non-lethal defeat courtesy of Everett, I felt it was ultimately kind of a dick move to undermine Everett's accomplishment that way.

This was C's appearance for the final battle against him.

FormerVengeance talked about wanting to see literal Dragon Flies in Chatzy one day, and I considered adding one to the plot for him to face. It would have appeared in the laboratory section of the Mr. X event, but I ultimately went with other choices.

The original lineup of monsters for World Creature Wars consisted largely of resurrected beasts from Zoofights 1 and Zoofights 2, the most oft-forgotten and neglected of the series. Firenoceros here was one such beast chosen to return. I decided instead to go with a mix of original and not-from-Zoofights monsters. Das Ziegenmancer (AKA The Necrogoat) and Snakes On A Brain were other candidates for resurrection.

The Owl Patrol was the ZF2 remnant that persisted the longest, with the idea of using horrible owl people as elite mooks for Rex's forces. Here is an image I planned to use for them, and here is an image of the human-faced fish monster Jinmen Gyo, another scrapped WCW monster who you'll recognize if you played Contra: Shattered Soldier. I'm linking these pics for a reason - they're both pretty creepy - so click with caution.

Another possible direction for the WCW monsters was to make them all themed around the deep sea as a reflection of the coincidence that every Zoofights winner was aquatic. One of the animals considered for this was the horrific beast known as the Elbow Squid, which looks positively nightmarish and incredibly cool, making it a perfect pick. However, space wasn't found for it, and it was deemed a bit too similar to Terroryaki.

The full lineup of deep-sea WCW entrants was:

* Giant Squid (Terroryaki)
* Tongue-Eating Louse (Parasite)
* Gulper Eel (Big Gulp, Parasite's first host)
* Anglerfish (Parasite's second host)
* Elbow Squid (Unused)
* Goblin Shark (Unused)
* Bobbit Worm (Unused)
* An eighth non-chosen animal

RED BUBS
RED BUBS OVER PARADISE

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A huge thanks to everyone who participated in my megaplot this year. With over TWENTY events of all sizes and flavors, I don't expect to ever top this behemoth in sheer size. Current plan for next season is to do several smaller plots over the course of the year, though I don't really know yet what those plots will be.

Enjoy the rest of the season - and the offseason, too!