Ambrosia Software Web Board: Through the Looking Glass - Ambrosia Software Web Board

Kat, you're right about Yomu.

I think SKY should do some investigation around Cademia. They could probably work out that the judge is busy and that he most likely has no connection to anything going on unless he's interogated a prisoner. So basic, asking people what happened, and looking under loose rocks.

I can't tell if it would be a good idea to rejoin the group before or after a main goal is achieved.

Katerei, I'm fine with the idea of SKY rescuing Beorn from the sewers. My thinking is that after waking up he won't be able to exit the way he came in and will go deeper into the city looking for an exit he can reach. I hope to be able to post this weekend, but that depends on how this next week goes.

About an hour has passed between visitor's post and mine, I figure SKY has left the tavern to go talk to the guards by now.

I finally, finally got my post from last month up. It's not much for all the time I've spent on it, but it's something. Unfortunately, I haven't been keeping up with the other posts, so I'll need to do that before I can write a post in the same timeline as everyone else.

I have a request:

Can we have an in-depth cast list? With minor characters mainly, there seems to be so many that I'm losing track.

Name and job (and possibly role)?

I don't mind having alot of characters floating around, as long as I know who's who.

I forgot to mention this earlier, but I wanted to note that in retrospect, I realize my posts are a little confusing because of the abundance of characters. I also admit that the story is a bit convoluted. The main reason I started this line of posts was to allow me to introduce alternate-Wizard in such a way that it would emphasize his ability to assume many roles. Had I written it all over the period of a couple days, it would have been better; even I didn't think I'd have it sitting around a month later.

A little info on alternate-Wizard: he really is almost the exact opposite. Wizard's short and kind of fat. Alt-Wiz is short and gaunt. Wizard focuses on telekinetic magic; alt-Wiz is almost exclusively a telepath. One has thick gray hair with a beard, the other has long, flowing white hair and no beard. One is a grandfather sort of figure, whereas alt-Wizard is distant and cruel. Etc.

Alt-Wizard almost never lets people see his actual appearance, preferring to hide behind his illusions and play a thousand different roles. I like the idea of him being an evil mastermind, but I still have difficulty thinking of him that way. Every time I write him, I approach him as nothing more than a simple ruffian. I need to work out his character some more. I think he'll be capable of crafting good plans, but he will also enjoy playing his roles so well that sometimes he'll get caught up in his different characters and lose sight of his plan. Or possibly, alt-Selax can be the real mastermind/manipulator, and alt-Wizard either thinks he is or just makes everyone else think he is for some reason. I'm still not sure. These are all just ideas.

Two Jacks, in a nutshell:
Orthrus is captain of the guard, Typhos is his father, Cindy is the grandaughter of Typhos, daughter of Orthrus.
Garmr is a guard. Cerberus is a guard.

Alt-Wiz wanted Orthrus' amulet without having to raid the mage's home and reveal who he is, because the amulet blocks his ability to cast illusions. His original scheme was simply to convince Typhos to get the amulet just by asking, but he also had an uncontrollable urge to destroy something (meaning I wanted him to burn down a building ) and kill a few people. That set the elaborate plot of Typhos getting taken to jail in motion.

/brainstorming

Hm, strange. My idea for Yomu's alt is somewhat the same, except that he's a mastermind in alt Cythera.


More on this later...

Who specifically would you like added? I've tried to grab the people that stick around for more than a couple of posts (because I assume everyone else is a one-off thing to pretend the world is bigger). I know I'm missing Galahad, since he's likely sticking around.

Also, very few people have offered up descriptions, so the blurbs could be more useful, but that requires participation from people.

Need more Selax.

I have been very busy of late. Indeed, I expect to remain busy until this weekend. At that point, I will (I hope) be able to post at least briefly.

Why don't you go annoy 453 for not having joined the TS ?

The bigger issue is you always read the forums as a guest, which makes it very difficult to reach you without calling you out on the field.

P.S. Next time delete the quote tags and put the responses inline so I don't have to scroll back and forth trying to pair up answers with questions!

Well, to top off my 3+ week running illness, my laptop display decided to stop working, so my near-term participation will be somewhat random. Even though I was waiting on Katerei and Selax anyways. >_>

I guess one of you other dozen character threads will have to fill in the content gap in the meantime.

Ooh, did you get a White Screen of Death too?

I didn't know you were sick, Tyry :( *Sending get-well wishes*

Aren't you like the third person whose screen has died lately? I think I should start looking for a backup monitor...

It's Thanksgiving here this weekend so I might have some writing time, but that's tentative.

My computer is fixed but my parents refuse to pay $300 to pick it up.

I've been pretty good about staying involved though right?

Black screen - the video card burnt my logic board (must be why NVidia recalled it).

Oh, I think I'm the only one in the world to get a white screen :(

Can someone help out with posting a little bit of background on Anisa, Berossus, and Bryaxis (from the game)?

Tyry- I don't have access to a proper computer right now, so I can't refresh my memory on the Cademian mages. It appears that even Fiery's dialogue page is lacking on information from Bryaxis :( But here's what I can remember off the top of my head.

Anisa's a history buff. I assume she knows even more about history than she was specifically programmed to rant about. I remember she tells of the Sapphire books (in exchange for which you must tell her everything you can learn about Alaric's mum), and I think she has more information about golems and Abydos than anyone else in the game. She lives alone in a medium-sized house near the Eatery, south-east of the town-square. She has a couple of bookcases of history books.

Bryaxis's a musician. He likes magical instruments, and has a few of his own which are considered stolen even if you move them before taking them.I believe he's a freemage? He's somewhat of a hermit anyway, living a little ways off of the city. He has a huge house to himself, with a music workshop, a dining room, and a bedroom. He's friends with the bard Demodocus (sp). I remember him talking about magical locks that require an instrument to play the correct key - and I'm thinking he even helped design those?

Berossus is just a judge. He lives in the second tyrant's castle in Cademia. He's pretty useless as far as helpful information goes. A couple of rooms of the castle he keeps locked up, one of which had a sapphire book in it. He spent a lot of his time in council with Naxos and Malis, but Naxos is dead now. I guess he still hangs out with Malis. He has two servents, a cook, and another dude (I can't remember what he did, except suspiciously walk back and forth in front of the locked rooms). Berossus was willing to believe that a shapeshifter exists, and released Halos from jail after a kid from the Ratcatcher's Guild gave witness.

That's all I can remember ^_^

I'm pre-emptively blaming Avatara for any shortcomings in my post.



<edit> That is to say, I'm not entirely sure on the sequence of posts to come, and Avatara can't seem to make up his mind on what he means by "TwoJacks wants some info so he can post." I apparently have a lot to say here so I've divided it up by sections.

~-~-~

BMW: That info is great, thank you; that's far more than I was expecting anyone to remember. A couple quick questions - do you know which rooms are which in Bryaxis's house, and what the ones in Berossus' castle are? There's probably more room for improvisation with the castle since it's supposed to be large, but I don't want to accidentally transform his bedroom into the kitchen. Oh and... what are those little rooms to the south of the castle - sheds, guard posts, servant quarters?

I'm also planning on giving Anisa a maid/housekeeper/equivalent, partly for plot purposes and partly for logistics - it's been several years since the game and she's probably getting a bit old to do her own cooking and cleaning - but I don't think that'll alter canon too significantly.

~-~-~

TJ: So are you doing a SKY post? From what I can gather you wanted me to describe Katerei's reaction to Beorn first, which is fine. You can change this or copy it word-for-word, whatever you want, but it'd be something along the lines of:



~-~-~

Regarding the latest villains:

Yes I am planning on keeping Iannah around for awhile, so please do not kill her off. As far as I can recall Aremis does have to die before Day 8 but other than Devlin's speculating, the actual manner of his death is still open - Rythan, can you confirm that, if you're still lurking?

The plans for Iannah & co.'s murder attempts has been loosely laid out. I don't want to give too much away yet, but I'm not really sure who's going to end up writing what parts of this next arc. For now suffice it to say that Iannah, Bastian, and Aremis will be heading to the judge's castle, and Avatara can add in whatever he thinks people need to know.

~-~-~

We're getting closer to merging all the Day 6 threads together. I'm hoping things will get a little less confusing as people and plots start to fall in place. </edit>

This post has been edited by iKaterei: 15 October 2009 - 05:03 AM

iKaterei

The Cademia villains get a message* from Devlin saying the mission in Kosha is a success and warning about the Hero characters on the way. Nothing written is too specific, in case the "wrong" people get a hold of it. It says Devlin is on his way to fill them in on details too risky to write down. Aremis is supposed to meet Devlin but after he separates from the group he's grabbed by Rythan, dragged to the caves beneath the city, and fed to the bone pool. I don't know if you want to write that all out but the important piece is he gets snatched when no one is looking and as far as everyone else is concerned he up and disappeared. If the rest of the group lives into the eighth day I imagine they'll be suspicious about both he and Devlin going missing.

* I've thought about it for a little while but I can't decide on something that would get a message to Cademia a day faster than it takes to travel there. I'm guessing only magic or carrier birds would do the trick. It's up to you if you want to specify.

This post has been edited by Ragnar0k: 15 October 2009 - 04:59 PM

"That's so easy!" I thought as I read your questions, "I'm even using OS 9 right now!" But when I went to open Cythera, this poor machine tells me it can't have Cythera and Internet Explorer open at the same time! And, well, I'm lazy. *Closed-teeth grin* So I'm going from memory again.

Bryaxis's house opens into a foyer area. To the right is his music room (the one with the red dot), to the left is his living/dining room. His music room has a shelf along the west and north walls, and a desk in the south-east corner. The dining room has a small table and chair, and I can't remember what else (not much, he hangs out in the music room when he's not eating or sleeping). Through the dining room is the bed-room. He has a bed there, and I believe a dresser too, unless his dresser's in the dining room o.O The bedroom looks like an alcove on your map.

The castle's going to be harder to describe even though I remember which room goes where. If we were physically next to each other, I could point to the map and show you which room is which ^_^ Or if I knew how to modify and upload images, I could mark on your map. But oh well, here goes:
The room with the red dot is where Berossus hangs out all day. It has pillars along the sides. If you enter and walk straight north, you'll walk between two rows of chairs, facing each other. Then Berossus's fancier chair is at the top, facing south. Naxos and Malis would sit in the chairs just south of him, and chat all day. Maybe Malis still does, I don't know. The room opening east from the main room is Berossus's bed room. He has a shelf along the east wall (with some of his things on it, a gavel, a musical instrument, etc), and a dresser in the north-west corner. He kept the old keys to the castle (four of them, for various doors) in his dresser, along with his clothes. I can't remember where in the room his bed is :\ Back to the main room, if you exit to the north, you'll be in a hallway. The castle-servent guy walks back and forth in this hallway all day. Your map seems to show two doors from the main room going north, I don't understand that. The wider one is the actual doorway. My guess is there was a decorative ax on the wall to the right, making it look on the map like a doorway.

I think I need a new paragraph. So you're in the hallway north of the main castle room. There's a bedroom at the east end, which is kept locked. Don't remember the details, except I believe there's a lever in there, hiding under a potted plant. Sorry, I can't remember what the lever opens/closes :( (does anyone else remember?) I think it might close the entrance to the castle. This room also has a window in the north, with closed shutters. Back to the hallway, there's a room to the north, another bedroom I think. Also kept locked, this is the room that had a Sapphire book in it. This room has a (locked) door out to the yard, in the north wall. On your map, this room appears to have two doorways to the west (which would lead to the dining room), but again I think there were axes or something on the wall to make the map appear to have doorways. You have to go back to the hallway to get to the dining room. The huge table is in the north end of the room, leaving room to walk from the hallway to the kitchen in the southern part of the dining room. Then that big room in the west is the kitchen. All I remember is that the oven is on the west wall, there's crates of food along the south wall, and the cook-lady that works there all day is old, hard-of-hearing, and a little grumpy. The door to the yard in the north is kept locked. The little room off the east wall in the south is the servants' quarters.

Now, the little buildings in the castle yard south of the castle are guard posts. They are tiny. I believe in the lower eastern one there's a lever (that closes the entrance to the castle yards?). On the eastern side of the other eastern post-thingy, there's an entrance to the sewers.

One other thing I want to note is that there's a locked-off section of the yard, in the north-east corner. Maybe you can see on the map where the little walls come partially out? In that section, there's a sundial, and a hole where Bellerophon dug (perhaps it's been filled in since). The hole leads to the second tyrant's tomb, but Bellerophon already emptied it of its goodies. The servants must have keys, they like hanging out in this locked-off area after-hours.

I hope you can make some sense out of this post!

The lever in the north-eastern room opens a nearby secret wall which leads out to the small courtyard with the sundial (and the hole which leads to the Tyrant's tomb).

There is also ANOTHER lever in Berossus' quarters which lowers a porticullis over the enterance to the "Throne Room" (onstensibly the enterance hall). The lever in the south-western guardhouse seals the outer gate to the fortress proper.

The man who "walks around all day" is Asius, the castle's majordomo. He's not particularly significant.

The castle cook is Alcestris, who has apparently worked as the keep cook for a long, long time. Incidentally, she shares a room with Asius (whom she descibes in-game as a "smarmy little man").

There are also about 2 to 3 guards on constant patroll between the guardhouses at all hours.

Oh, and theres an enterance into the sewer in the south-eastern guardhouse.

Uh huh...