So how are you guys doing this November? Pretty fucking shit? Same! How about we try and forget all the fucking awful stupid crap going on with some behind the scenes stuff of the latest chapter? We're all suffering, but hey, at least we have each other. This is my personal therapy now! Chapter 44, let's go!
Kasumi Goes Double Agent: You all knew she wasn't actually going to betray all her friends, right? Kasumi is a thief, but she's not a backstabber. No, she just played the role to get herself aboard the shuttle and make sure Zek was still tethered to the Flotilla Alliance. Zek probably should've suspected it, but he felt he and his men had connected to Kas so much that her natural preferences towards criminals would draw her in. Show what he knew.
Then again, Retz was also manipulating him as well, as he wasn't really helping Zek accomplish the plan. He was preparing him for how badly it was going to blow up in his face and mitigating the damage. So the question you're probably asking now is, did he know Kasumi was planning a double cross? Well, maybe, but he was mostly just counting on her forcing Zek to play by the rules of engagement. He didn't want his friend burning every bridge possible. If Kasumi was around, then at least no one would get hurt.
How will he feel when he learns the truth of why Kasumi said yes? Well, you'll have to wait for that one.
I suspected that people might be upset if I presented Kasumi outright siding with the pirates out of the blue. So I did my best to telegraph her true intentions without giving it all away. Not sure how successful it was. As I've said before, I don't really like tricking my audience or assuming they're stupid. They know how stories work and I'm not going to try too hard to convince them of one thing when we all know that's not happening. I feel that makes it more impactful when I actually DO something that's sudden and shocking. It's better in my mind to make an actual surprise. Like when I revealed the Singular was actually a villain. I could've played it out longer and all that, but nah, it was cooler to just have the mask slip off in the first meeting.
So when something is clearly NOT happening the way the story frames it, I try my best to telegraph and foreshadow. That way, people pick up that it's NOT the way its framed, but can take some enjoyment in asking themselves "But is it though?" I did this first when Tali "Died", but it was obvious she wasn't dead. I knew that her turning up alive wouldn't be very shocking so I wasn't going to pretend she was. The characters had to believe she was dead, not the audience, that was more important. Same thing here, Shepard and Tali have to BELIEVE Kasumi betrayed them more than the audience does. That sells the emotion better I feel than trying to force an obvious lie onto the readers. How much more annoying would it be if I insisted that Kasumi was a traitor after all? If I kept pretending things were one way without a proper explanation? And if even after I revealed the truth, I kept trying to force the lie down your throat and claim that what was happening wasn't what I just said it was?
I'm still salty about the stupid Hydra Cap Run is what I'm getting at. I will never trust Nick Spencer again or his incredibly mean-spirited attitude towards fans. Screw that.
So yeah, Kasumi faked her betrayal. But she gets to go on a treasure hunt while leaving a trail for her crew to find her so... win-win.
BBR Still On the Air: I was surprised people thought Boz was done for good. So I made sure to write in that he was still broadcasting, just not really to the UNSC anymore. He's not happy, as next chapter will prove. You might actually see him sooner, assuming I can get the next BBR chapter written up fast enough. It will probably be a short affair. There's not much to really say at the moment other than watch the crew of the Fallen Serpent feel pretty sad and sorry about the state of things. But the short little acknowledgement of his broadcast still running shows he's not completely out of a job.
Island Getaway: Zek is feeling pretty low, something we'll get into a little bit here and more next time. His focus though is on the Cutlass, pure and simple. He gets that, everything is suddenly better. So that's where he lays all his thoughts on. Everything else is secondary right now.
Luckily, his two compatriots can take in the scenery more. As can we. Making alien worlds is a complicated matter because you can only do so much with our reference material. Why do you think we just have desert planet or jungle planet or snow planet or city planet so often? It's easier to create a single biome and stick with it. That way you don't have to think too much about ecology or biology or anything too complex. The way you spice it up tends to be in trying to make the worlds just a little bit off, just not exactly the same as our planet's environment.
My idea here was vines, not just actual vines, but everything it basically vines, a jungle made of tangled, twisting vegetation that is just scrambling constantly against each other to get that precious sunlight. They all wrap around and choke at each other, creating a massive interconnected canopy and biosphere. The jungle on the island is basically one massive thicket of trees and vines lashed to each other as one.
The temple was a little harder. I wanted something old look, but I knew it couldn't be just a repeat of all Forerunner architecture. I wanted that old lost city feel. So, thinking back to Halo 2, some of those structures when we first landed were pretty damn old looking. So yeah, precedent for Forerunners not always dealing in shiny metal post-modern brutalism.
I made sure to have some of that, as a means of suggesting this temple is more than it seems. The Forerunners didn't want people just stumbling onto this place after all, they wanted it hidden. They needed it hidden. So it had to look like a broken old ruin, which the jungle helped along with over the millennia. Creating the perfect place to hide a superweapon.
It probably goes without saying I am a huge fan of Indiana Jones, so if the way this whole thing was constructed feels familiar to you, that's probably at least one of the reasons why. It's my reference point. A lot of my stories tend to lean on the pulpy serial side of thing, regardless of genre. I just really love that style of story telling. I know some claim its disposable, its in the name, but I don't agree with that assessment. No writing in my mind, even bad writing, is disposable. There's always something being said in it, even if its shallow. And there's always something to learn in my opinion. I guess I just seek value in a crop of stories that I believe are some of the most fun you can ever have getting lost in another world. All Pulp Fiction needs is a little modernization to remove some of the outdated aspects of it and it's still a viable genre. I hope I'm achieving that goal if nothing else.
But speaking of Story-Telling...
The Truth Behind The Shanty: I hope people aren't disappointed to find out the Astral Cutlass was, in fact, a sword all along. But as I've said before, if everyone is assuming it isn't going to be a sword, which I suspected, the only way to surprise anyone is for it to really BE a sword. Which it always ways, although I toyed briefly with the sword unlocking something else. But well, I'm saving that idea, it will work better somewhere else.
To make up for the Astral Cutlass being exactly what was promised by the song, I revealed the truth behind the sword. Let me tell you, keeping this story inside all these years was real hard. And I knew in the end I couldn't tell it the usual way. It would've been boring if it was just Taq reading in dialogue. So instead, I shifted perspective and narration style to something entirely different in order to properly extoll the true history of the Astral Cutlass.
Let's summarize, after the defeat of the Precursors, one of their number rejected the idea of turning into the Flood, refusing to admit they had lost. So with the help of the Chronicler, the Precursor that saved itself as a living memory and tried to infect Tali's mind if you recall, he crafted the Relics of Power. With the ultimate goal of creating the ultimate weapon, the Astral Cutlass. With the ability to destroy ships, slipspace travel across the cosmos, read minds and alter time.
Yes, I know, it's a bit like the Infinity Stones, but it's different because they create a sword not a glove. So there.
Anyway, this Precursor, known as The Raider, recruited the kig-yar in the infant stage of their civilization, to be his crew for a dread fleet of essentially space pirates/vikings that plundered Forerunner worlds en masse. Not really with the goal of profit in mind, just because the Raider wanted to make the Forerunners hurt. And it worked... for a while. Then the power basically made his already dark mind even worse. Once he went insane, and started eat his crew alive, he attacked the Forerunner homeworld. Which basically screwed him because then the Forerunners hunted his ass down and, despite his immense power, he could no longer wield it effectively and was at last killed.
The sword was depowered, the relics split up and the kig-yar regressed to the state the Raider had found them in, similar to how the Forerunners would do the same to the ancient humans much later on. However, they knew the kig-yar would want to get back up into space eventually, so they left one of the relics with them as a test for when they were ready. Too bad that whole Flood thing happened and then they tried to scarper off with the relics/use them for themselves without involving the sword. And we all know how that turned out.
I really like mythology, so I tried to make this story read exactly like that, with a moral and everything about letting revenge consume one's mind. And a more subtle message beneath that one about how power doesn't so much corrupt as it does reveal. Remember, the Raider was a pretty bad person even before his got the Cutlass. I firmly believe that power isn't a corruptive influence, it's a revealer. You give a man enough power to do whatever they want, and they'll show you who they always were beneath the skin. It's not power that turns men cruel. Cruelty is often baked into a person through other means.
But while it reads like a cautionary myth, it's also a history, so I crafted it like that. The Forerunners clearly left some things out. You noticed how they exalted themselves quite a bit in there. Given how they are, while never really claiming to be Gods, they are rather high on themselves. And I suspect they wanted to give their people full credit for beating the Raider. But maybe that's not the whole truth.
Zek is a little pissed off about all of this of course, it sucks hearing your whole culture is the way it is because some asshole was a sore loser. But Taq is ecstatic because the story suggests the Kig-yar were always destined for so much more before the Covenant arrived and essentially did what the Raider did. To her, this is proof their people were always aimed towards the stars. That their heritage was piracy and it can be reclaimed. Now that they know the truth, discovering the whole picture is that much easier.
Maybe the kig-yar weren't passive henchmen. Maybe they turned on the Raider and that was what helped the Forerunners win. Taq is optimistic, the revelations here are what she always wanted. Something the kig-yar can claim as their own. For Zek, it just pisses him off that his life keeps getting dictated by someone else. And that's probably what sets him off when Taq suggests the sword poses too great a risk to be used selfishly, as it could warp Zek's mind like it did the Raider's.
Quick aside, Taq's outburst and Zek's responses to her... it's probably the most vicious either have been to each other. Zek's self-loathing coming out while Taq feels more betrayed by him than ever because of just low he's sinking. I suspect it's going to look ugly for a few people, and good, I wanted it to be that way. This is how Zek learns in the end.
In any case, I'm just glad I finally told the Astral Cutlass' story and I hope you loved reading along. Maybe I'll do more little legends like this in the future with other stories. Who knows? I did like it. It helps to break things up and not always be stuck doing the same damn thing all the time.
Serpent Sentinels: Hey, remember when Kowalski and Co were joking about a killer dragon guarding the Cutlass? I gotta tell ya, this wasn't the original plan, but it stuck with me and it felt like a cooler idea than the temple crumbling. Thing is, I didn't want to do another damn Sentinel fight and I didn't like any of the Prometheans for it. I could've chosen one of those Warden things from the fifth game... but I went with the "Screw it, I'm making robot dragons" button instead. Always the best option in my mind.
I cobbled together some bits and pieces from the Prometheans to make this, most notably the Watchers. Just their anti-grav tech so the Serpents had a cool means of flight that wasn't just flapping metal wings. I also made them tanky and hard to kill, because if they were meant to guard the Astral Cutlass and prevent it theft, they had to be built to last.
Lucky for them, Zek is still a novice and the Cutlass needs time to acclimate to its user. Zek's reckless bullheaded determination at least enabled him to survive long enough to land some hits, but I think it was pretty obvious he had no idea what he was doing. He was surviving by the skin of his teeth. Because these Sentinels don't play for anything but keeps. He was getting better of course, but our beloved space pirate was never going to get far just winging it and hoping for the best.
I will be honest, I took way more pleasure in Zek falling out of the sky and hitting everything on the way down. I know the results aren't funny, but I've always found falling gags funny since I watched Homer Simpson fall into that gorge twice.
Snarlbeak's Revenge: Yeah, this went about as bad as you all expected. Although exactly how bad changed a bit. I didn't always have Zhoc show up here the same way, but in my head it always had to be some combination of factors that lead him here.
The sugar smuggling helped him find Zek, but I made it clear that it was a recent development. Snarlbeak only found out about recently and scrambled to get everything in place. So Zek isn't completely blameless here. His actions did cause this, but even then he might have been okay had he not broken the alliance. Snarlbeak could track him, but he didn't have the numbers, once Zek fled the Flotilla, he was fair game. And with Zhoc armed with the Covenant's tracking program, he could follow Zek no matter where he went, just like the Covenant did to the Ascendant Justice.
Originally it was just supposed to be one or the other, but I decided that either let Zek off the hook or didn't really track as well it should've as a means of getting Zhoc here. So I combined the two for maximum effect. Hopefully its satisfying enough.
The Revelation of Dread Feather's call to arms was a late addition. I never wanted Snarlbeak to come out and say "I killed your dad" or anything. That felt too cliché. But it made more sense that Zhoc instead just let him die. He could've saved him, but decided that wasn't tactically sound. And then I warped that into him basically confronting his blood phobia by attempting to Torture Zek to death. I felt it better encapsulated Snarlbeak's character. He's not just crazy, he's calculating. He didn't leave Dread Feather out to dry out of malice or because he wanted him to die, but he just decided his friendship was a liability and he'd be better off without him. A dark reflection of what Zek has become really, which only makes this all sting worse.
Then there's Taq, who as much as she is pissed at Zek for literally everything, she doesn't want to see him dead for it. She was concerned for his mental state if he used the Cutlass, she does care, she just can't love someone like Zek. Both because he hurt her and because he clearly doesn't love himself. Snarlbeak of course picks up on this and also realizes kill Taq will hurt Zek way more.
The moment is... well it was shockingly brutal in how it came out. I think Zek pleading to die in Taq's place, to spare her and just have him be killed, that was a little bit of extra proof that he's not a lost cause. But I still was more than a little disturbed at the torture sequence. I was relieved when I was able to write Kasumi coming to the rescue followed shortly by Shepard.
But as you saw, Snarlbeak got away. The Cutlass is his now and that spells trouble for everyone. He's going to attack our friends back at the carrier and then have the Syndicate Fleet join in on destroying Earth. So, will our heroes come up with a plan to stop him in time? You'll have to come back to see for yourself I guess, as we begin to head into the grand finale of this adventure. I hope to see you all there.
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