Behind The Screen Of Archengeia As A GM

So.  The allegory between Airships and nuclear weapons is probably obvious on the most fundamental levels, but the implications and long term ramifications are what I always admittedly focused on.  Airships detonating like that is just a shock moment (and somewhat unlikely to happen again anytime soon), but the 'nuclear' threat remains, and that's the problem.  Given the Directorate's assault and the situation, I had a feeling we'd be hitting a heavy episode is what I'm saying.  (note: I had no idea what did occur would occur, that was all a result of party interaction, but still).

So how do you deal with this?  Me, as a writer, I've always felt that in the shock of a moment people can't truly understand a thing.  It takes time for it to settle, for their brain to process.  So you hit someone with something big, something heavy, and then you change the tone, the pitch of the story so they can comprehend it a bit better and really come to grips with it.  And being me, I like to plan ahead for just such an occasion.  So I'm going to mention two things I've had percolating in my mind for some time.

1: Thog.  Thog has been growing as an individual and a sentience ever since he was first introduced.  I honestly didn't know if he'd just be eradicated or if he'd keep developing and provide opportunities for interaction and character development, but pretty much since the party first dealt with the "Thog problem" while not in optimal circumstances (in Aphus Lassel's Human and Tusker residencies) I've known how this was going to go down, barring the party interfering.  Fierneceal would continue to keep Thog on a leash, so to speak, per Rory's wishes I might add, but each time he manifested he would be more of a complete being.  This situation was allowed to sit until a time at which I felt it best to remove Fierneceal from the picture, almost quietly and in a way I doubt the party really thought about much (not that I mean offense), at least not in relation to Rory's predicament.  But the primary purpose was to ensure Thog would have to be dealt with AS a person, rather than an inconvenience.  And I loved the session that resulted.  Props to Rory for doing a wonderful job with Thog's developing personality with next to no input from me at all. 

Side note: What Thog is is best described by an analogy, just to lay this out for all to be aware.  Imagine a soul is a blank cube of clay.  Now you shape and mold that over time and experiences and you get a person, Rory.  What Gaerlan did was forcibly, insanely, reshape that exact same Rory-shaped clay into something else.  Now Gaerlan didn't really think this through long term (hell, it shouldn't really have been possible to begin with) but with greater exposure to being in that new form, the clay became more acclimated to the Thog-shape.  Thus Thog continues to grow mentally and emotionally at a rapid pace, until he will be just as intelligent and capable of a person as any other Tusker, or as Rory himself, a point that is not far off.  But there is no real segregation per say, this isn't even a Jekyll and Hyde scenario because (ultimately) the two are just different resultants of the same potential.

2: Javan 2.0.  This is another thing that's been in development for quite a while, and one I'm rather pleased with engineering after the fact.  No, I didn't set it up so Javan would have his soul edited improperly (you guys really did that on your own), but ever since that fateful dice roll I didn't even tell anyone about, I knew Javan would eventually mutate.  Didn't know how.  But I felt, as a writer, that the impact of such an event was one best saved.  So from that point on I made it a point to try and bit by bit feed Javan (the character, but also the player admittedly) what I call 'moments of awesome'.  Why?  Aside from distracting Javan (player) from what happened to Javan (character) and distancing him from the event, it also served an in-character purpose, because Javan's very existence was unstable and so his focus kind of literally determined his reality.  As long as he kept being distracted by the moments, he'd remain Javan, but as soon as that stopped he'd begin to change.  Why am I proud of this?  Because the most likely thing to stop distracting Javan and hit him full force with unpleasent reality would also, by definition, require time and a recoup period (in character and out) for the reality of that incident to fully flesh out.  Thus it was self fulfilling; and worked great as another way to have a segue from the tragedy that hit Marblebush.

So there it is, a little peak into how I do things and the kind of thought and planning I put into GMing.  Just two little points (I didn't mention Rekarg for example, muwehaha) but I hope you enjoyed.  Or at least hate me slightly less.

PS: Yes there will be a proper Meanwhile Elsewhere sometime this week.

....
What the hell did you guys do on that ship!!?

Rory was intending to have his "curse" cured, but when Fierneceal said that we had to visit Aphus Lassel right away, I guess at that point Thog's intelligence and existence in the world was guaranteed, since Rory would go without--well, with a few second thoughts, but go nonetheless. Because it was during the visit to the island, in the sanctuary, when Fierneceal discovered and subsequently revealed that Thog was a person, someone with its own feelings, thoughts, and perspective. Rory was mad at her for not putting him before Thog, and despite his frustration with the "complicated development", he wasn't going to resort to using the curse removal machine like he initially wanted, for that fact alone. Still, he wants to be in control, even when he sleeps. When Araiguna was afflicted, he was tired all the time, and that's another thing Rory wants to avoid.

Now initially Thog was just a joke name, but at some point in his linguistic development I would like to have Thog give himself a proper name branching off of his current one(the party will probably still give him a nickname, but I'd like to remove the completely direct reference). Is it possible that Thog will develop an understanding of the Tusker language?

How would you best describe Rory's "clay" now, if we could play with that analogy?

Well, hate is a strong word, but...kidding. I'm glad you made him smarter because honestly that makes things easier. Whatever solution we arrive at, getting there will be easier. I hope you picked up the hints in my journal.  

Thog's thing was awesome. Javan's thing was awesome. Everyone is awesome. TEH EDN.

Ok, jokes aside, there is all this strange stuff that makes no sense happening with Javan, so I'm going to be honest and say me, the player, fully expected Javan to slowly become some kind of elemental slime or something terrible like that as time went on. So it made all the moments of awesome all the more important for me, because actually, even now, I still doubt Javan is out of the fry pan yet.

Javan was still being his silly self, on purpose, if only to distract the party for even a moment from all the shit going on, but then he'd remember about his own... wait a second, is that a dragoon camp?! *goes into fangirl mode* *does the air temple trial and wins at life* *fights a dragoon ZOMG!* *becomes a DRAGOON!!!11ASDFAOISFJSA* ... and so on. And then comes the Marblebush, which hit both him and the player...

So yeah, props for the GM, it was a awesome way to make it all happen.

It is interesting to see how our GM sets up the events we went through so far. I must admit that, because of my particular taste of fiction, the airship detonating didn't have much of an impact on me (I was there on Ventrilo when it happened). It had an effect, of course it did, which was like : "What!?". But it didn't affect me on an emotional level. The suicide of that poor woman though. When I read this part, it really hit me. I cannot properly explain why, but I guess that an event like that, which we can call a true tragedy, affects me more than the airship blowing up because some nations don't like each other. Or maybe I just lack imagination to envision the horror of the situation. But that's me the player. Zeiss the character is still trying to process this. And is kind of failing.

As for Rory and Javan... I said it once as a joke, but many members of our party seem to undergo through bad stuff.

The bad stuff happening to the party:

That leaves Gwydo, Kolson and me as "normal" people. And I am the only one going through a positive change.

I am curious what else Arch has in store for us. I am sure he has some "solutions" prepared for the members of our party, but I hope we are smart enough to recognize them.

Makes me wonder how cured i really am.