FeatherWriter

Like I said, it's old and it was already much longer than most of the other audition entries. Most people did like... a few paragraphs for their opening. I was the only person who wrote a five chapter introduction thing because I am a crazy person. I still like it, but it's quite a bit rougher around the edges than my more current stuff. It was a good exercise though. The idea of the competition would be that you'd face off against other civilizations in later rounds throughout different time periods. Kinda like the Mistborn trilogies actually. So the audition phase was just supposed to be a prologue and then the first round would show the my civ defeating whoever I was paired up against in the next latest era. So, if you stayed in the competition you'd move through eras from the bronze age to medieval times to modern day to space age. Unfortunately, it never became a thing because not enough people auditioned, but hey I had fun thinking things up and I've still got quite a few ideas about how their development would have gone. It should be noted that the Jaiseti at the time of Called Forth are about 400 years later than this, and the civilization has become much more of a world power. They've got large sprawling cities and a broad empire by that time and a pretty dominating expansionist mindset, which is fun since they're harrassing all of their neighbors for more power. I will definitely be having Len's Jaiseti familiar, Corin, spend some time back on his homeworld to show of his contemporary Jaiset at this point. (And I love Jaiseti titles. Those totally become a thing later. Everybody uses titles with everyone else, and to do otherwise would be extremely rude.)

Nope, like I said in the original post, the background music was an instrumental version from youtube. I just sang over it! Song source:

See y'all? Ellen is way cooler than I am obviously. So, with the hymn being retweeted, that brings her up to four twitter mentions! She wins "most tweeted member of the Cosmere fandom" hands down!

Note: The part about Miranda's hand motion was written by Gavin, the GM, not Emma, Miranda's player. AKA, she wasn't in control and didn't do it consciously. Which is why all of us players freaked out and shouted "GAAAAAAVIIIIN". And ze just cackled madly at us as we hoped that we hadn't just broken Miranda. Not sure about the Seiko or Miranda parts. I wasn't certain whether or not it was a typo, so I left Seiko's part as is. I believe Miranda starts to say "Ma'am" (because that's how she's been addressing Leah thus far) and then decides to use her first name instead. Yeah, Cursed Sun is actually a pretty happy story overall. The competition that it was written for was supposed to be a thing where you create a civilization and follow them through their history. At this point in time, they're at their very earliest, and they're little more than a tribe. So yes, they're a very small group!

I had issues with semicolons a few years ago. I used waaaay to many of them. I'm glad the biology and chemistry stuff sounds like it would work. The competition was a very "no magic, hard science" one, so if I wanted to have sun-enhanced Jaiseti, then I had to come up with a specifically science-y explanation for their attributes. (Most of that biology is probably BS but hey, I tried. I'm glad it sounded legit.) It's worth noting that this is a very bad sunburn that Kalir and Varine are going through. Limited sunlight all their lives and then suddenly they're out in the desert for days on end without protection? They're kinda burnt to a crisp. It makes them stronger, but the sunburn is killer at first. Aaaaaand as a present for New Years (and because I'm still procrastnating my Secret Santa fic), Sydney Scroungers Session #13 is now live! For anyone who is following that. Which is probably just Quiver. (Psst. Read Sydney Scroungers, everyone.)

Yeeeep, the Jaiseti are sun-based. It's not just metaphor! They actually do grow stronger in the sun. Like I said, I like race building and I've put a lot of time and effort into the Jaiseti and even though the competition for which I came up with them fell through, I wasn't ready to let go of them. They actually end up showing up in Called Forth (about 400 years after this story from their perspective) and one of Len's familiars, Corin, is Jaiseti.

Yeah... Len and Vanaline are not nice people. I have no idea why such a large percentage of people think they would make a good couple. They would be terrifying together. Yeah, they might just be the two worst characters in the story, oops. Len's got some character growth to go through and she might become a better person eventually, but I think Vanaline might be hopeless. There's a multiple worlds thing going on, so Vanaline and some of the other familiars are from other worlds and they have different powers. I'm a fan of race building, so all the different worlds have fantasy races with different abilities and physiologies. Len and Kasten are both from the "base" world, Mondial, so they're basically normal humans without cool powers. (Len's summoning is more of a skill than a power. Anyone could do it with the right equipment and knowledge.) I... might give you the link to the current copy of Called Forth. Maybe. I'll have to think about it some more.

I do actually, but it's all either very old or very rough. I've got an original short story called "Beneath the Cursed Sun" that's a few years old now, but is not too terrible. That one's publically published on deviantart and it's complete. It starts here and is five parts long. Like I said, it's old, but it's finished at least. My current story that I'm working on is currently under the working title "Called Forth". It's only about halfway finished and it's a SUPER rough draft at the moment, because it was a NaNoWriMo piece and therefore super sloppy and disorganized. I have given out links in the past, but honestly, it's really so rough and so much has changed even from when I started that it's not really accurate anymore, so I might hold out on showing you that one. It's basically about a selfish jerk of a summoner named Len and her four familiars, who get caught up in a revolution that they really shouldn't be involved in, but have to see to the end anyway. Len is an... interesting character to write and all four of her familiars are a fun bunch as well. And by fun, I mean horrible and tragic mostly. Heck, the first line of the novel is: "No matter how many times it happened to him, Kasten never got used to dying." (Poor Kasten, I'm so mean to him...) However, I do have a non-canon short story posted about Called Forth, because... a few of the people who have read the draft started shipping two of the characters (who are NOT going to get together but that's not stopping them from shipping it) and I decided to humor them and write a quick scene between them. Honestly, I think it's a good indication of what the story's like... right up to the point that shippy stuff happens. Light, I'm really bad at romance, especially two characters that I know should not be together. Anyway, so there's a short non-canon story of "VanaLen" (which would be Vanaline and Len together), that can be found here. It's more indicative of what my writing currently sounds like... if you ignore the shippy stuff at the end. Bleh.

Hehehe, well you couldn't expect me to wear such an illicitly stolen holy device openly on my freehand, could you? (And more seriously, it's REALLY hard to put that on without help, and pretty much impossible with my non-dominant hand. Also, I an only take pictures with my right hand because of the way the camera's set up.)

I've never actually been trained or anything, but I've been singing for years! And fun fact, I actually ended up taking some pictures of the Soulcaster today before any of this went down. Trying to make it look like I was Shallan or something like that. Much nicer looking than those original ones, certainly.

Hey, it's my topic, so I hereby give you permission to post as much as you would like over there because I am a GLUTTON FOR FEEDBACK. I will fight of the machinations of the admins if they try to give you trouble about it. (But I highly doubt they will.)

ARE THERE OTHER THINGS??? I knew he posted my Soulcaster on his blog a few years ago (with a similar freak out from me) and then this, but IS THERE MORE? I am... singularly unable to handle everything to do with this whole situation.

Well, seeing as BRANDON ALREADY TWEETED ABOUT IT, I suppose I might as well share this over here. Ellen (fallenwithstyle) wrote a Survivorist hymn to the tune of “In the Bleak Midwinter” and I decided to try to perform it. I don’t know anything about audio editing and this is the first time I’ve recorded myself singing, so I’m a bit nervous, but the few people I showed it to have convinced me that I’m not going to embarass myself by posting it. Song source: "In The Bleak Midwinter (Instrumental Orchestral)" by Sarah Brightman ((Listen here)) Lyrics: In the Final Empire, under stars unshone, Scadrial stood barren, blackened world of stone. Ash had fallen, ash on ash, ash on ash, In the Final Empire, long long past. Hathsin could not hold him, nor the world contain; Yet his mists surround us, leave us not in vain In the Final Empire, strong against its might Lord of Mists, Survivor, lead us to the fight. Heirs in spirit, all, if freedom we have sought Lady Heir to guide us, leading as he taught. Righteous war knows of no greater strength than this Warrior Ascendant, borne by the mists. What have I to offer, to compare with those? What is strength, but keeping to the path you chose? In our world’s new dawning, all may do their part, Stand for life and freedom, with a mighty heart. (And in case anyone's wondering, no I am still not over the fact that Brandon has not only heard me singing, but also tweeted a link to it. aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAH)

Well I guess I might as well post it in the Mistborn forums now, I guess. *still trying not to hyperventillate*

WHAT WHATWHATWHATWHATWHAT *WORDLESS SCREECH* HARMONY HELP ME, BRANDON HEARD ME SINGING. AAAAAAAAH. HOW DID HE EVEN FIND THAT? I DIDN'T POST IT TO 17S OR ANYTHING. I'm like... the strangest mix of flattered, embarassed, and horrified. Harmony, I just... *faints*

Looks like it's time for me to break out my camera... Let's see if we can't make something cool.

Apologies for writing an essay per post back on the main thread, but Captain Quiver has been giving me all kinds of wonderful feedback and liveblogging about Sydney Scroungers, and if there's one thing that I am physically incapable of shutting up about right now, it's that. Thank you, Quiver, for being so amazing and reading through and commenting on all that, because I am completely obsessed with this amazing story and can't stop. (See, I'm allowed to say that it's amazng, because I'm not the sole contributor, right? I can totally brag on the other writers, because let's be honest at least 40% of the amazingness of that story is the walking human awesome generator that is Rachel Zhu.)

http://coppermind.net/wiki/Thaidakar That should help!

The divide for 11 and 12 was actually right as Miranda starts to throw her punch. There was a break with a new intro there, but both Gavin and I thought it would be best just to put these two together, so I wrote over it and just made it all flow together. There's actually not even a scene or paragraph break at the point now, as the last line of Session 11 was: "Before [Miranda] has time to think, Sylvie’s words have set her fist into motion." We do love our nerd culture. We get fairly liberal with references and shout outs as time goes on, because they're fun and they give the characters connections back to the world. (And who doesn't want a Firefly reboot? Crazy people, that's who.) And yes, fiVe is very resentful of Sylvie. I'd go all the way to outright loathing, actually. I really, really, really love playing fiVe and she's one of my favorite characters to write. However, her appearance here -- and Vee's -- are both Gavin, since they're giving out new plot information! Ze did a good job with her here! What is to be done with fiVe is a major plot point from here on out, and it's something that's going to be causing contention in the crew. It's one of the reasons that I gave Sylvie the aspect: "V2 is Broken and I am Incomplete" because this is going to be a major motivator for her and I want to be able to use that for and against her in the sessions. Sylvie's viewpoint is interesting. She very much feels that Vee, and therefore fiVe are versions of herself and therefore what she wants for them is is going to be best. She's the only one who has a right to those memories and feelings, and especially if fiVe has gotten to the point where she actively dislikes her "source material" then in Sylvie's mind, something is terribly wrong and needs to be fixed. (And she is slightly correct here. fiVe is damaged quite thoroughly, but whether that is influencing her desire to be independent is a different story...) Heh, when we started rolling for that fight scene... Sylvie kind of had an amazing fight roll and nearly knocked Miranda all the way to unconciousness, oops. Figures I'd roll excellently when it's against my own teammate, right? (And yes, the slurrings are pretty funny. Cute little slurry Miranda.) Finally, Reika and fiVe. I really need a way to show what exactly fiVe's damage is in context, but this starts to hint at it. Basically, the problem is in her programming: she's only designed to drift with Sylvie and she is supposed to become a copy of her drift partner through that drift. When any of the AiVees drift with another person, their programming tells them "The memories that you're receiving are yours and you are to treat them as though they actually happened to you." So, Miranda's drift (and later Seiko's) actually overwrote the memories she had from Sylvie and it makes trying to remember things absolute hell for fiVe. She's got multiple sets of memories in her head and she has no way of differentiating between them, so she ends up acting like a glitchy version of Sylvie with copious amounts of Seiko and Miranda mixed in. fiVe is actually channeling a lot of Seiko here, because all of her perceptions of Reika come from him. She has to keep reminding herself that she's not Seiko and that Reika isn't her sister. And I'll try to work on session 13 soon, because I really, really, want to keep posting more of these, but I do have my Cosmere Secret Santa fic due in a week and... I'm terribly behind on that. Perhaps I'll do some Scrounger editing in the meantime as a break though!

Misc Comments: Yeah, I like Seiko because I love sad broken backstory characters, and he's got that in spades. And to answer the Zhu question, she's an NPC (though a fairly important one!) and is played by Gavin. Ze does such an incredible job with her. I think she's pretty much everone's fave character. Basically, the five Scroungers are always played by their player. Players occasionally have control of any accessory characters, the ones who are closely related to their character, such as me playing fiVe and Vee or Ellie playing Seiko's sisters -- however, Gavin also has the rights to take control of these characters if the situation demands it. Everybody else -- Zhu, Wulagu, Greg, Samil, any of the other characters -- those are gonna be played by Gavin exclusively! Session 9 As soon as Gav mentioned a Jaeger showing up, I pretty much begged hir to make it Vulcan, just because I think that being mean to Sylvie is my favorite thing ever. She's pretty much going through some very severe PTSD right here. The Vulcan Specter incident not only ruined her life, but was also the most traumatic thing she's ever been through, and seeing it show up here again totally renders her useless. And the Seiko/Sylvie thing is another version them being foils. Seiko's freaking out because Wulagu just threatened his sisters and he can't handle it. While on the surface, he and Sylvie's freakouts are a bit similar, Seiko stays functional and knows how to work through it, while Sylvie totally breaks down. I think "badass" is pretty much an understatement when it comes to Zhu. She's just the coolest person ever. So amazing. So so amazing. As for Vee's specs, you'll see quite a bit more about how she and fiVe function as the series goes on. One thing to note is that that whenever her processing goes to above normal levels, one of the first things that gets hit is her voice processor. There's two reasons for that: first, it's a non-essential. Voice processing takes power and if she really needs to, she can switch to text output to save processor, so her programming says that having a clear voice is one of the first things to go. The second reason is more extra-textual: it gives me more ability to show emotion, which is something that I have a problem with when it comes to both of the AiVees (which is our current collective name for the AIs). It's hard when I don't have physical reactions to work with to convey emotion, so I have to settle for finding equivalents. This is one of the reasons why Sylvie pulls up the graph output of Vee's emotions in that first interlude, to give me as a writer the ability to give her a visual aspect to what she's feeling. Session 10 Part 1 Sylvie as an addict isn't something I'd thought of before actually, but now that you bring it up, it's more accurate than you might think. She and Vee are very, very codependent, possibly to the point of an unhealthy relationship. Sylvie doesn't tend to process things well on her own, so when she gets stressed or finds herself unable to deal with things, her immediate response is "drift". It's worth noting that she's still suffering a bit of her annoyedness at not being able to drift over the Greg situation, and now that Vulcan has shown up, Sylvie's just about at the end of her rope for being able to function on her own. Also, quite a bit of her outrage at Seiko is on Vee's behalf. The override code is very much a vulnerable aspect of Vee, something that she trusted only Sylvie with having. Seiko using it here, bringing it out of nowhere, was horrifying and shocking to both of them. He basically just chloroformed Vee out of nowhere, and Sylvie was in her head when it happened, feeling all of that terror and panic right as she goes dark. I do think Seiko feels bad for Sylvie, or at least he would if her inability to handle these kinds of situations didn't put him in danger. He knows how to deal with stuff like this, she doen't. While her inexperience causes a lot of problems for him, he also cares a lot about fiVe and can understand why Sylvie acts the way she does. (He got the code from drifting with fiVe, of course. Miranda drifted with fiVe once, then Seiko did as well without letting Miranda know about it. Both drifts went very badly for all parties involved and are part of the reason that fiVe has so much damage.) Session 10 Part 2 Told you they got more cohesive, didn't I? Yeah, Sylvie definitely screwed up with the Vulcan thing and both she and Zhu know it. That's part of why Zhu scares her so much: if Zhu ever decided to lock her up, she would have no defense and no way out of it because she is 100% guilty and deserves to go to prison. The fact that Zhu is giving her a second chance is unexpected and scary. After this session, Sylvie's high Aspect changes from "Wanted Drift AI Programmer" to "Atoning Drift AI Programmer" and she replaces one of her other Aspects with "Terrified of Disappointing Marshall Zhu". Suffice it to say Zhu is going to be a major motiviating factor in her life after this. Captain America might be a bit too nice for Miranda. Emma has talked about how she's definitely not supposed to be read as a "good" person and that she and Seiko kinda make a good pair because of that. (Because Seiko is definitely a bad person.) She's kind of the steadying member of the team, though. While Katie is supposed to be the leader, her thrill-seeking adrenaline junkie aspects can make her reckless, so Miranda helps keep her focused and in line. Again, I'd argue that he's not really supposed to be this badass Worf or Wolverine character. While that was the original idea, he's definitely playing to the broken and traumatized background more than the awesome kickass kind of character. Ellie's said: "I was going to write him as this stoic badass but then Miranda ordered him an Appletini and everything went downhill from there." I mean, he's a kid, who's had to learn how to do horrible things, who has murdered and tortured and bloodied his hands in every way imaginable, because he made the decision to put taking care of his sisters above everything else. He's pushed down his conscience to be able to do these things, becoming the "conssumate professional" but he's in a very unhealthy state of mind because of it. And he totally breaks my heart because of it. Ellie is a terrible person and she makes me cry with her stupid tragic characters UGH. Katie's still definitely the team leader. Not all of their jobs are going to be for Zhu, and she's the one who makes the calls and sets things up. The group is a team now, and she's their head. This certainly isn't going to be the end of her involvement. Not by a longshot. And I am also excited to see more of Eleanor's backstory. Some of it starts to come out in Arc 2, but I think we've got exciting things to see from her. Interludes: Some of these, like Sylvie's and the Diver are post-session, others are backstory. The Sylvie/Vee interlude is all me, I wrote that one alone and without the group, and then sent it by Gavin to make certain it was okay. Obviously I have a lot more control over this kind of situation, so it's going to read a lot more straightforward. In fact, that's what really separates the Interludes from regular sessions. They're either written by one person or a back-and-forth between two people. Gavin wrote the Diver, and actually ze just posted it to tumblr like this and waited for us to find it. (That jerk.) Yes, Miranda's backstory is pretty dark and I'd say she's really not over it or moved on. However, rather than being depressed, Miranda's got a very deep hatred of Kaiju, and will do anything to destroy them. She's driven, and lots of the things that she does are motivated by this. It's why she became a J-Tech engineer (J-tech would be Jaeger Tech, while K-Science would be Kaiju Science). She loathes Kaiju with every fiber of her being and would tear them apart with her own hands if she could. It's part of what makes her relationship with Katie rocky, because Katie is a Kaiju enthusiast and is fascinated by them. This starts to come out more in Arc 2 as well. The PPDC is a worldwide organization founded by the UN in response to the Kaiju attacks. It operates quite a bit like a military organization, but it is international, with Shatterdomes (bases) around all of the Pacific. Each Shatterdome is headed by a "Marshall" who is in charge of all of that Shatterdome's operations and coordinates attacks with other Shatterdomes. Also, this second interlude was written by Ellie and Emma together, if I'm not mistaken, so they're each playing their own characters here. Glad you liked the second Sylvie interlude as well! This was also my writing (though I had to get the okay to use Yegorov, as he's technically an NPC). We're not sure if he'll ever show up in the actual campaign, because as the Marshall said, he did attack some fellow pilots and is currently in prison. It'd be interesting if he ever did show up though! The chronological order thing is something that's difficult to avoid, as we're all just kinda figuring out and writing up these pieces of backstory as they come to us. They do jump around a bit, and there's not much I can do about that. Tumblr sorts by post-date so I can't even rearrange them at all. Misc. Yeah, the Sylvie and Zhu pics come from a dollmaker, so we can't really do anything about the style. This dollmaker actually has a LOT of options though, so we were able to get things a lot closer to accurate than we might have with other dollmakers. I know most of the crew actually made versions of their characters with this one, but I don't think the others posted theirs. Also, the team's aspects have changed since then. We keep a google document that we can all edit to keep track of the team's aspects. If you're curious, at the end of Act 1, the team's aspects are: Eleanor, Miranda, and the Advanced Hydrophobia comic were drawn by Ellie, who plays Seiko, as presents! (I think she might be drawing the rest of the crew at some point too. She's so cool. Ellie is the coolest person ever.) They're probably a lot more accurate than the dollmaker pics, because there was actual drawing involved! (And eyeliner usually isn't painful, but it IS very easy to mess up and then it's a pain to try to fix and get it even.) Whew! And, Act 2 is in progress. I'm going to try to get another session posted soon. The first two were short, so I combined them. (Session 11 originally ended right before a certain confrontation. Quite the cliffhanger.) And then, I think the most recent thing is a conversation that Ellie and I did between Reika (Seiko's youngest sister) and fiVe. I'm gonna try to get Session 13 up soon, but we're playing tonight, so I might be busy! EDIT: And at Gavin's suggestion, if you find yourself curious about Fate at all, you can download the rulebook for free on Evil Hat's website.

It's almost too bad that we've already got a magic system based around "breath" because the linguistics geek in me finds it all too beautiful that both of those words come from the "spir"="breath" root and that would just be the coolest magic system ever.

Session 6 Comments It's funny that you talk about Eleanor being the character whose thoughts we see the most of, when I tend to think of Eleanor and Katie as the characters that I know the least about. That is probably due to the fact that Emma and Ellie, who play Miranda and Seiko, realize that I like those two characters a lot and have decided that it's their goal to make me cry with tragic backstories and characterization talk for all the Cosmere meanness that I have perpetuated over the years. There's also backstory stuff for Seiko, Miranda, and Sylvie posted after Session 10, whereas Katie and Eleanor both have yet to reveal much of their backstories. However, now that you mention it, I realize that Emmalyn does tend to write Eleanor with a lot more inner thoughts. Seiko is speaking Japanese! He and three little sisters are all from Japan. His name would be pronounced SAY-ko Wah-tah-NAH-beh, by the way. I said SEE-ko for the longest time... Miranda knows a little bit as well, probably from the two of them living as roommates for a while. And hah. Emotional scars. From a bunch of Brandon Sanderson fans? That doesn't sound like us at aaaallllll.... *muffled sobbing over Seiko and Miranda in the distance* (I may or may not be a fervent shipper of those two. Their ship name is currently called "Advanced Hydrophobia.") Session 7 Comments Yep, by this point Gavin has gotten into the habit of giving us a nice, concise "previously on" statement to open the sessions, which I've taken to preserving. They're nice when I post these with some time apart, but reading back-to-back-to-back they're not as necessary. Occasionally we'll try to deliberate in the side chat to figure out the plan and then have one of the characters take charge and order the rest about, usually Katie or Miranda, but sometimes it just makes more sense to have the characters do it themselves. And, thanks for pointing that Eleanor thing out. That was a mistake. Sometimes I have to rearrange statements and such to make them work, like someone will respond to something that's a little farther back or trying to group characters who are speaking together, and I make a few mistakes sometimes. Thanks for helping me catch that! Oh Seiko. He... may just be my favorite character actually. Certainly among them. The more you find out about him the more "likeable" he becomes. Ellie has talked about how she originally planned to write him as the selfish stoic badass type, and then Emma had Miranda order him an appletini and it all went downhill from there. He's still very cold and distant, but when you realize why—the fact that he's had to do so many terrible things and become this terrible person to try to provide for his little sisters after they lost their parents in a Kaiju attack—your heart just kinda breaks for him. Or mine does at least. (If you're curious, you can hear Ellie talk about Seiko here, and if you're not through with hearing me ramble, I talk about him here with my actual voice yay.) The action sequences actually have that cinematic feel because of part of what's going on with the FATE system actually. When we get into a combat situation, we actually start taking turns and go in order, as opposed to our normal system of just everyone acting and talking as they feel . I do some rearranging and sticking some turns together when they need to, but we get longer, more complete sequences from each character as they take their turn. Sometimes it's going to be a direct combat roll, such as Katie and Sylvie taking out those two guards or Seiko shooting sentries. Other times it's a character using one of their skills to "Create an Advantage" and manipulate the situation to their benefit, such as Miranda charging in and intimidating the guards into surrendering. Session 8 Comments Wulagu is awesome. I'm glad you picked up on her Bond Villian influence, because that's something that Gavin has explicitly stated to be a motivation for her character. She's theatrical, she's terrifying, and she's deadly effective. We're all a fan of awesome lady characters being awesome (you might have noticed that there's a bit of a female-heavy weighting to the character balance) so all three of the major faction leaders are women. Wulagu is one, Marshall Zhu is another. The third starts to come into play in Act 2 (though none of the characters have actually interacted with her yet. Sylvie has talked to her brother quite a bit.) Actually, Greg's not worried about being outed. That's another thing you're probably going to pick up on in the campaign: we've got absolutely zero issues with having characters who are non-heterosexual or non-cisgendered or... well any sort of gender, sexual, or romantic minority showing up. The general idea among the players is: "Well, everyone else writes white, het, cis, male characters. Let's not do that with our story. We're gonna have a bunch of awesome ladies. And we're gonna have a bunch of people of color. And we're gonna have a bunch of people who are some variety of queer too." Greg and Samil are one of quite a few same-sex couples in the campaign and it's not going to be portrayed as suprising that that's a thing. Greg and Samil are a couple, Tara will flirt with a female guard in Session 9 (though it's offscreen), the Scroungers drop in on a neighborhood house with two husbands. Katie is currently nursing quite a crush on Marshall Zhu. Marshall Zhu (as if she couldn't get more awesome) is actually transgender herself. A fact which is widely known in the universe. Though it hasn't been explicitly stated yet, you can assume that all of the characters know this about her and aren't going to be surprised if she mentions it. In fact, Seiko and Miranda are one of the very few heterosexual couples even being hinted at currently. So yeah, Greg isn't worried about "being outed" here. What he's thinking is that he and Samil have been on a few dates, but Samil might not be as serious about this whole thing as Greg would like them to be. (aaawwwwww.) He explains this in Session 6: As for Tara's "convenient" introduction, yes... it was a very nice stroke of luck. And was the result of a very lucky roll on Heather's part. One of Katie's top skills is "Conacts" so Heather asked Gavin if she could roll to see if she could use that Contact skill to create an advantage inside the room. Gav told her she could try, but it'd be a pretty hard roll to beat. She managed to pass it, much to our surprise and celebration, therefore creating a situation where someone in the room had worked with Katie before! Thus Tara was born. Can't wait to see more of what you read! EDIT: Whoops, I meant to comment on the Katie, Eleanor, and Sylvie as a "strike team" thing. It's actually less far-fetched than you might expect. Katie's got a very high Athletic skill, which means that she tends to fight in ways that aren't necessarily straight-forward, but is very much able to hold her own against opponents. Thanks to Sylvie's training in the Jaeger pilot program, she's actually the team's hand-to-hand combat specialist and can be absolutely dangerous when she needs to be. She did kill that guard accidentally while sneaking into Vulcan. Eleanor's really the only non-combat-ready person on the team, which you picked up on. Also, I don't know if I mentioned, but Seiko's actually the youngest member of the crew, though quite a few of them would be surprised to learn that, and he tends to pass for older than he is. (Sylvie certainly would be surprised. She thinks he's older than she is.) He's 22, if I remember correctly, whereas Sylvie, Eleanor, and Katie are all around 25-26, and Miranda is the oldest at... 28 maybe? I should talk to their players about that sometime and nail that down.

Haha, nope. Katie's a PC, played by Eshonai! I'm glad it's getting easier for you to read, that's definitely a good thing! Yes, Miranda having an exoskeleton was a reveal to us all actually. In fact, Emmalyn (who plays Eleanor) and I were both completely unaware of that little scene until I got the copy of the log to edit into the transcript. We were both very surprised to find that out. There are a few more reveals like that, though most end up with a little bit of foreshadowing at least. Miranda was in Sydney during one of the first Kaiju attacks, and she's got quite a bit of damage from that event, so she built herself an exoskeleton to get around. I believe there's actually a backstory account in one of the interludes (after session 10) that talks about that event. Yes, we have interludes in between arcs. And character backstory flashbacks within them. We are all fans of Way of Kings, aren't we? I love reading your responses to these, they're awesome!

Well, I certainly can't change things about the plot or characters now and I don't have much control over plot, though like I said, the pace picks up quite a bit. Eventually we get a feel for each other's writing and it will feel like there's a much more cohesive story as all of our characters become like gears, finally clicking into place and working together to move the plot forward. We're very reactionary here at the beginning, which gives a bit of a disjointed feel because at this point, we don't really understand each other's characters. However, nowadays, we all kinda keep track of all of the characters and understand how they work together. You'll start to see Sylvie and Seiko start having issues with one another, and as that developed, Ellie (Seiko's player) and I have had extensive conversations about their characterization and how they act around one another and what possibilities there might be for them in the future. We both like the idea of them foiling each other in a lot of ways, so both of us work to bring out that kind of characterization in a scene. We talk about possible kinds of resolutions and Gavin, the GM stays aware of what we're planning and where we maybe want our characters to go and constructs these scenes to help push and change our characters in those ways. It really becomes collaborative storytelling (which is something I think an RP system like DnD might never get around to making happen.) You can certainly comment on my work with Sylvie and Vee, (as well as another character that I play, when you end up meeting her). You'll probably be able to guess who that is when she shows up. I'll pass on anything you might like to say to the other players as well, though you certainly don't need to feel like you have to comment on them! I like hearing people's responses to what happens though. Megan (tinandpewterstrength) actually ended up giving us a liveblog while she read and it was super fun to read.

I'm glad you like Sylvie! She's a VERY fun character to play, as is Vee, the AI. As you've probably realized, yes she's not the "main" character so to speak, as all five Scroungers are equally the main characters. So she gets about a fifth of the spotlight! About FATE Core: You don't actually have to understand anything about the FATE Core system to understand it, but you can be aware that there are game mechanics behind quite a bit of what happens. Each of the characters have five "aspects" which are character traits that could work for or against them. Players have access to a limited number of "Fate points" that allow them to "invoke" their aspects and change the outcome of a situation or a roll. For instance, one of Sylvie's aspects (at this point in the story) is "Wanted AI Drift Programmer," so if there were a situation where that could come in handy - like she's working with drift tech - I could spend a Fate point to give her a boost if she needed it! Aspects can also be used against you, in what are called "compels." Another of Sylvie's aspects is "Tempted By Tech," so if a situation comes up where that could cause her trouble, anyone at the table could point that out, and I would get paid a Fate point for Sylvie messing things up and causing trouble. For instance, in session 2, Sylvie hears about all that fancy tech that Katie's got installed on the bridge and Gavin, the GM immediately tells me "Sylvie's Tempted by Tech, Alyx. I think she's going to go mess with it and go break something. How about she takes out the Navigation software accidentally in her meddling?" And I grin and cackle because causing trouble for characters is fun, and gleefully accept my new Fate point as I start to write out her doing just that. We've also got some rules for combat and such, including "mental" combat which is very fun. The humiliation of "Bar Creep Rick" in Session 1 is actually a mental combat, in which Sylvie, Eleanor, and Miranda gang up on him so well that he doesn't even get a chance to retaliate before he gets "taken out." There's some actual physical combat later on with some goons, so you can know that there's gonna be a lot of rolls behind that. Fight rolls vs. Defense rolls and turn orders and such. You won't see the technicalities, but they're behind whatever happens. We do all of this technical talk in a separate chat window, then keep the actual on-topic chat totally in character. So while all this is going on, you won't see it in the story. Only the results of these rolls, invokes, and compels show up, while all the mechanics stay below the table. You don't have to understand them, because we handle all that stuff ourselves. Part of what makes FATE Core such a great system, as opposed to a system like D&D or something, is that it encourages players to have well-rounded characters and to play them accurately. The focus is on storytelling and characterization, rather than minutae like stats and such. PoV and Tense: It should all just be one tense: present, but the omniscient jumping between the five characters is a style that probably isn't very familiar and takes a bit of getting used to. Not only does it get easier to read as you go on though, but... I also get better at differentiating between them and letting you know whose PoV is whose as the sessions go on. It takes a little bit of time for me to get used to how to write these, but I get better! For reference, my style tends to be: each paragraph is almost always it's own character. The PoV will almost never switch between paragraphs. And for the most part, each new paragraph is a new character (though there are some exceptions where one character's PoV will last multiple paragraphs. It's unavoidable sometimes.) I also try to make sure the character's name is stated early on in the paragraph, so that you know who's talking (and also who's writing, since each character is being written by a different person.) Extra stuff: Glad you like the opener! That would be Gavin's writing of course, and ze's a great writer! You'll see some pretty great intros from hir later on as well. (As well as some fantastic NPCs!) The pace starts to pick up quite a bit after this. We're still trying to get our feet underneath us during these first few sessions, but things start getting intense just a few in! I'm glad you're sticking with it and I'd love to keep reading your responses!