newnumber6 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
newnumber6) wrote2006-05-24 06:33 pm
newnumber6) wrote2006-05-24 06:33 pm
Entry tags:
XET Diaries, Part 4: Dreamlands and Mojo Mayhem
It’s time for another edition of the XET Diaries. This time, the Dreamlands, and Mojo Mayhem. Plus a few other isolated plots
We had a couple different plots abrew for the Dreamlands. Some of them might have eventually combined into one big plot, of course, but we always wanted to open the Dreamlands up to more regular exploration by the player characters.
Just as a quick recap for those who don’t know, the Dreamlands are a sort of a parallel dimension that some (though not all) people can access when they dream, in Lovecraft’s work. It’s formed from the collective unconscious and typically is at a level about 500 years in the past, at least on average. More generally it’s a ‘high fantasy’ world, with monsters and gods and mysterious cities, etc.
The Dreamlands of course, is the XET-canon origin of Lockheed’s species (along with, at least in our plans, canon Shatterstar's swords metal but we never actually established that firmly), and where the portal that Weapon Xers got lost in (and that eventually got shifted to another dimension in the Rutland incident) originally lead. It’s also where Goblyn was when Laura Dean was in our world, and vice versa, and where Catseye roamed.
Anyway, one of the Dreamlands plots we wanted to do eventually was a sequel to the Ferguson plot. At the end of the first one he ‘died’ but his spirit was collected and lead somewhere else. This would have been into the Dreamlands, where, using his powers, he set himself up as a king. Once he gained enough power, he would have struck out looking for revenge on the people who thwarted him in the real world… that is, the Scooby Gang, for the most part. I think the plot went that he would make them fall into comas and enter his domain, where they’d all take on alternate identities that they believed were the truth. Fantasy style ones. Nat might become a water spirit, for example. This was really more Dave’s plot than mine, but it counts as one of the things I really wanted to do but never got a chance so I had to mention it.
Another plot I always liked was a little bit of a subversion of the normal style of plots we did. It would start out similarly – people disappearing. Different people from all over the city (and so could be connected to any PCs, with it happening to an NPC friend of them). Typically fairly depressed people or ones with crummy lives. The only connection between the disappearances is that they all went to a ‘unlock the power of your dreams’ class before disappearing. Naturally PCs would follow up on it and maybe start taking the class (because the people running it claim to have no idea what happened).
The class teaches people how to enter the Dreamlands as they sleep. The twist to the plot? Everyone who disappeared did so voluntarily, leaving the normal world behind (possibly through one of the underground tunnels that connects our world to the Dreamlands) for a new, and much happier, life in the Dreamlands. Nothing nefarious happened to them at all. However (to make the plot last longer and be more fun) right around the time the PCs arrive, there’s some trouble that only they can help with… perhaps a monster attacking regularly, perhaps Ferguson’s kingdom (so this plot might actually lead into the previous one in one scenario – Ferguson deciding to go for revenge after seeing some of his old enemies in the Dreamlands). Guest appearances by Goblyn and Catseye, and perhaps even the Dreamlands manifestation of Psylocke were natural.
But basically it’d be a Mythosy Plot with a genuine happy ending – the monsters get defeated and the people who disappeared are all happy. No lingering SAN loss. No ‘yes, we escaped… or did we?’ No ‘we won the battle but at a horrible cost/were forced to see horrible things’. Just straight up helped some people. We didn’t get to do that too often at XET, so it would have been nice.
Also on tap for Dreamlands was Selene. Although I can’t remember too many of the details, she was supposed to be the Dark Lady that Catseye, in her Catspaw form, served.
Mojo Mayhem
I was actually quite proud of making XET’s version of Mojo and Spiral. They were based heavily on the Hastur and Y’Golonac mythos as expanded in Delta Green (and the DG mailing list), where Hastur’s themes were haunting beauty and Y’Golonac’s being gluttony and pornography and destruction. Y’Golonac also had some resemblances to Mojo. It was just beautiful because the more I thought of it the more everything fit and fell into place as though it was intended all along. Their whole history is on the OHXET entries of Mojo and Spiral, so I won’t recap it here, but there were of course some plans for them.
Mojo started a Strip Club hiring mutant dancers which was intended to be a growing concern… the girl who dosed Eve’s bar would be working there, and then naturally as things developed – a character might want to try and get it shut down, etc. He’d also be into mutant porn and prostitution of course, but pinning him on anything illegal was damnably hard. Maybe at some point some of the PCs might have confronted him about the unsavory-but-not-illegal aspects of his business and he’d have rationalized it as something good for mutantkind, arguing that in his own way he’s actually supporting equality, because he’ll employ mutants in exploitative business just as readily as he’d employ humans.
There was one idea of a ‘Mutant Gladiators’ plot, funded by Mojo who makes money both on ticket sales, betting, and the home video sales. He would hire various mercenaries to abduct mutants, who would then be brought (via Spiral) to an underground jail and forced to fight to the death. If they win, they go free (because Mojo keeps his word on the letter of a deal), and they can’t be captured for by the same team again for 6 months. Or they can voluntarily ‘fight for cash’ if they want to go that route. If they lose, well, they die, of course. Fairly basic plot, mutant abuse that gets everyone’s attention, people can angst over being forced to kill, etc. The drug Nextacy from the Drug Plot might well be used to force more peaceful mutants into violence in a few cases.
At one time it was intended as the way to reintroduce Longshot... specifically, that he always won all his battles, but never killed. So Mojo made him a promise that if he defeated so many people without killing them, while they were trying their best to kill him, he’d let him go (and anyone he defeated would be released too). This would let Longshot be all noble and cool and also allow PCs who don’t want to kill but want to be nabbed for the plot to have an out – they’d be forced to go up against Longshot, and lose. Later we planned to skip this idea and just have some of Mojo’s hunters (which included Kraven the Hunter) chase Longshot, luckily enough, right onto the X-Mansion grounds. But scheduling fell through and never managed to pick up.
Mojo wouldn’t be the guy on the scene and because all of his occult and organized crime connections it would still be devilishly hard to actually pin anything on him, but PCs would bust up the operation and send a lot of the intermediaries to jail. It might have ended up that PCs be aware of Mojo’s involvement, just be unable to legally do anything about it and attacking him illegally has his own problems.
The bouts would, of course, be hosted by Arcade, because it only makes sense. If Arcade escaped prosecution (or got out after prosecution by means fair or foul) he would then be hired to construct Murderworlds which would be a restart of the business, except mutants vs. a deathtrap rather than mutants vs. each other, so there were more plots there
Spiral might have lost a limb in some event or another and Mojo would spare no expense replacing it, leading to her silver-arm-thingie that she has in canon.
Mojo also was planned to, eventually, be part of the Hellfire Club’s inner circle. Of course we never really got the HFC started despite repeated attempts – this was almost a concession to the fact that maybe it should be a mostly NPC organization anyway, and so not relying on PCs at all. Other members might have been an NPCized Sinister and a few others.
Mimic
The unfinished plot the first time XET died was Mimic. He’d just started a cult and the X-Men were approached by Delta Green to get him. We sort of left it vague exactly what happened, but I’ll go with my thoughts on what might have been.
The general idea of the plot is that X-Men would infiltrate the cult and eventually one of them would get too close to Mimic and he’d copy their powers. Each time he gained another set of powers he became more unstable. Eventually, he’d start seeking out mutants just to get their powers, and become a threat to all, forcing people to band together to fight him… except with all his powers, he’s a hell of a threat.
Two possible ways to defeat him: One, burn him out with as many powers as possible. Two, destroy his ‘power source’ (a crystal that was stolen by Gambit and given to the person who gave it to Mimic… it’s all in the logs, but the dots weren’t explicitly connected). The first tack would lead to a huge explosion of the crystal anyway. The second would require a lot of work because it became embedded in Mimic’s chest. I thought perhaps PCs might either try to dose him with a power that’s more of a liability, or use a non-mutant to help solve the problem, the most obvious non-mutant being Adam… Mimic couldn’t absorb his powers and skills and so he could be surprised.
The Return of Illyana
Every once in a while someone suggested a plot where Illyana returns. As much as the idea made me instinctively cringe (because of the first Illyana player we had, not the character itself), there was an idea that I had for the ending and I really liked it, and it never made it of course.
The subject of Illyana’s return wasn’t my plot, so I won’t go into any detail (my memory’s always better for my own stuff than other people’s anyway) – suffice it to say it was generally involving her losing control of Nightmare because of getting too attached to reality or something along those lines. Maybe leading to an Inferno style plot. But what follows was an idea I had for the ending…
So, in the final battle, Illyana has to sever her connection to Nightmare in order for the Earth to survive. Except there’s one huge catch. If she severs it while the portal’s open, it’ll stay open, and that’s no good. But she’ll only have the strength to close the portal from inside Nightmare. And if she does that and severs her connection, she’ll be at the mercy of Nightmare, and it’s not known for mercy. Classic 'to save the world she must plunge herself into hell' type ending, except…
Back when Monet was Penance, she was in Illyana’s domain from time to time, and she learned much about the spell that transformed her. It protected Monet’s body and her mind from the horrors of Marius’ realm. So, once she closes the portal to Earth, she casts the spell to turn herself into a Penance creature so she can survive being trapped in Nightmare.
Like Monet though, perhaps, after a time, Illyana would find a way to escape her prison and return to Earth… but not to human form. She would be stuck as Penance. Thus, we’d be able to have both Monet (even though she was still comatose after Rogue absorbed her powers and memories permanently, but that could always be reversed) and Penance as playable characters in XET’s world at once, without the hokey ‘twins’ plot in Marvel canon.
In the next entry, more on XET and Delta Green and the Secret Life of Groundskeeper Willie, plus the Government and Excelsior.
We had a couple different plots abrew for the Dreamlands. Some of them might have eventually combined into one big plot, of course, but we always wanted to open the Dreamlands up to more regular exploration by the player characters.
Just as a quick recap for those who don’t know, the Dreamlands are a sort of a parallel dimension that some (though not all) people can access when they dream, in Lovecraft’s work. It’s formed from the collective unconscious and typically is at a level about 500 years in the past, at least on average. More generally it’s a ‘high fantasy’ world, with monsters and gods and mysterious cities, etc.
The Dreamlands of course, is the XET-canon origin of Lockheed’s species (along with, at least in our plans, canon Shatterstar's swords metal but we never actually established that firmly), and where the portal that Weapon Xers got lost in (and that eventually got shifted to another dimension in the Rutland incident) originally lead. It’s also where Goblyn was when Laura Dean was in our world, and vice versa, and where Catseye roamed.
Anyway, one of the Dreamlands plots we wanted to do eventually was a sequel to the Ferguson plot. At the end of the first one he ‘died’ but his spirit was collected and lead somewhere else. This would have been into the Dreamlands, where, using his powers, he set himself up as a king. Once he gained enough power, he would have struck out looking for revenge on the people who thwarted him in the real world… that is, the Scooby Gang, for the most part. I think the plot went that he would make them fall into comas and enter his domain, where they’d all take on alternate identities that they believed were the truth. Fantasy style ones. Nat might become a water spirit, for example. This was really more Dave’s plot than mine, but it counts as one of the things I really wanted to do but never got a chance so I had to mention it.
Another plot I always liked was a little bit of a subversion of the normal style of plots we did. It would start out similarly – people disappearing. Different people from all over the city (and so could be connected to any PCs, with it happening to an NPC friend of them). Typically fairly depressed people or ones with crummy lives. The only connection between the disappearances is that they all went to a ‘unlock the power of your dreams’ class before disappearing. Naturally PCs would follow up on it and maybe start taking the class (because the people running it claim to have no idea what happened).
The class teaches people how to enter the Dreamlands as they sleep. The twist to the plot? Everyone who disappeared did so voluntarily, leaving the normal world behind (possibly through one of the underground tunnels that connects our world to the Dreamlands) for a new, and much happier, life in the Dreamlands. Nothing nefarious happened to them at all. However (to make the plot last longer and be more fun) right around the time the PCs arrive, there’s some trouble that only they can help with… perhaps a monster attacking regularly, perhaps Ferguson’s kingdom (so this plot might actually lead into the previous one in one scenario – Ferguson deciding to go for revenge after seeing some of his old enemies in the Dreamlands). Guest appearances by Goblyn and Catseye, and perhaps even the Dreamlands manifestation of Psylocke were natural.
But basically it’d be a Mythosy Plot with a genuine happy ending – the monsters get defeated and the people who disappeared are all happy. No lingering SAN loss. No ‘yes, we escaped… or did we?’ No ‘we won the battle but at a horrible cost/were forced to see horrible things’. Just straight up helped some people. We didn’t get to do that too often at XET, so it would have been nice.
Also on tap for Dreamlands was Selene. Although I can’t remember too many of the details, she was supposed to be the Dark Lady that Catseye, in her Catspaw form, served.
Mojo Mayhem
I was actually quite proud of making XET’s version of Mojo and Spiral. They were based heavily on the Hastur and Y’Golonac mythos as expanded in Delta Green (and the DG mailing list), where Hastur’s themes were haunting beauty and Y’Golonac’s being gluttony and pornography and destruction. Y’Golonac also had some resemblances to Mojo. It was just beautiful because the more I thought of it the more everything fit and fell into place as though it was intended all along. Their whole history is on the OHXET entries of Mojo and Spiral, so I won’t recap it here, but there were of course some plans for them.
Mojo started a Strip Club hiring mutant dancers which was intended to be a growing concern… the girl who dosed Eve’s bar would be working there, and then naturally as things developed – a character might want to try and get it shut down, etc. He’d also be into mutant porn and prostitution of course, but pinning him on anything illegal was damnably hard. Maybe at some point some of the PCs might have confronted him about the unsavory-but-not-illegal aspects of his business and he’d have rationalized it as something good for mutantkind, arguing that in his own way he’s actually supporting equality, because he’ll employ mutants in exploitative business just as readily as he’d employ humans.
There was one idea of a ‘Mutant Gladiators’ plot, funded by Mojo who makes money both on ticket sales, betting, and the home video sales. He would hire various mercenaries to abduct mutants, who would then be brought (via Spiral) to an underground jail and forced to fight to the death. If they win, they go free (because Mojo keeps his word on the letter of a deal), and they can’t be captured for by the same team again for 6 months. Or they can voluntarily ‘fight for cash’ if they want to go that route. If they lose, well, they die, of course. Fairly basic plot, mutant abuse that gets everyone’s attention, people can angst over being forced to kill, etc. The drug Nextacy from the Drug Plot might well be used to force more peaceful mutants into violence in a few cases.
At one time it was intended as the way to reintroduce Longshot... specifically, that he always won all his battles, but never killed. So Mojo made him a promise that if he defeated so many people without killing them, while they were trying their best to kill him, he’d let him go (and anyone he defeated would be released too). This would let Longshot be all noble and cool and also allow PCs who don’t want to kill but want to be nabbed for the plot to have an out – they’d be forced to go up against Longshot, and lose. Later we planned to skip this idea and just have some of Mojo’s hunters (which included Kraven the Hunter) chase Longshot, luckily enough, right onto the X-Mansion grounds. But scheduling fell through and never managed to pick up.
Mojo wouldn’t be the guy on the scene and because all of his occult and organized crime connections it would still be devilishly hard to actually pin anything on him, but PCs would bust up the operation and send a lot of the intermediaries to jail. It might have ended up that PCs be aware of Mojo’s involvement, just be unable to legally do anything about it and attacking him illegally has his own problems.
The bouts would, of course, be hosted by Arcade, because it only makes sense. If Arcade escaped prosecution (or got out after prosecution by means fair or foul) he would then be hired to construct Murderworlds which would be a restart of the business, except mutants vs. a deathtrap rather than mutants vs. each other, so there were more plots there
Spiral might have lost a limb in some event or another and Mojo would spare no expense replacing it, leading to her silver-arm-thingie that she has in canon.
Mojo also was planned to, eventually, be part of the Hellfire Club’s inner circle. Of course we never really got the HFC started despite repeated attempts – this was almost a concession to the fact that maybe it should be a mostly NPC organization anyway, and so not relying on PCs at all. Other members might have been an NPCized Sinister and a few others.
Mimic
The unfinished plot the first time XET died was Mimic. He’d just started a cult and the X-Men were approached by Delta Green to get him. We sort of left it vague exactly what happened, but I’ll go with my thoughts on what might have been.
The general idea of the plot is that X-Men would infiltrate the cult and eventually one of them would get too close to Mimic and he’d copy their powers. Each time he gained another set of powers he became more unstable. Eventually, he’d start seeking out mutants just to get their powers, and become a threat to all, forcing people to band together to fight him… except with all his powers, he’s a hell of a threat.
Two possible ways to defeat him: One, burn him out with as many powers as possible. Two, destroy his ‘power source’ (a crystal that was stolen by Gambit and given to the person who gave it to Mimic… it’s all in the logs, but the dots weren’t explicitly connected). The first tack would lead to a huge explosion of the crystal anyway. The second would require a lot of work because it became embedded in Mimic’s chest. I thought perhaps PCs might either try to dose him with a power that’s more of a liability, or use a non-mutant to help solve the problem, the most obvious non-mutant being Adam… Mimic couldn’t absorb his powers and skills and so he could be surprised.
The Return of Illyana
Every once in a while someone suggested a plot where Illyana returns. As much as the idea made me instinctively cringe (because of the first Illyana player we had, not the character itself), there was an idea that I had for the ending and I really liked it, and it never made it of course.
The subject of Illyana’s return wasn’t my plot, so I won’t go into any detail (my memory’s always better for my own stuff than other people’s anyway) – suffice it to say it was generally involving her losing control of Nightmare because of getting too attached to reality or something along those lines. Maybe leading to an Inferno style plot. But what follows was an idea I had for the ending…
So, in the final battle, Illyana has to sever her connection to Nightmare in order for the Earth to survive. Except there’s one huge catch. If she severs it while the portal’s open, it’ll stay open, and that’s no good. But she’ll only have the strength to close the portal from inside Nightmare. And if she does that and severs her connection, she’ll be at the mercy of Nightmare, and it’s not known for mercy. Classic 'to save the world she must plunge herself into hell' type ending, except…
Back when Monet was Penance, she was in Illyana’s domain from time to time, and she learned much about the spell that transformed her. It protected Monet’s body and her mind from the horrors of Marius’ realm. So, once she closes the portal to Earth, she casts the spell to turn herself into a Penance creature so she can survive being trapped in Nightmare.
Like Monet though, perhaps, after a time, Illyana would find a way to escape her prison and return to Earth… but not to human form. She would be stuck as Penance. Thus, we’d be able to have both Monet (even though she was still comatose after Rogue absorbed her powers and memories permanently, but that could always be reversed) and Penance as playable characters in XET’s world at once, without the hokey ‘twins’ plot in Marvel canon.
In the next entry, more on XET and Delta Green and the Secret Life of Groundskeeper Willie, plus the Government and Excelsior.