ANNOUNCEMENT: Game closure & Endgame outline

[zenderael_mods]

I think it's obvious by now that there simply isn't enough interest or motivation left to carry Zenderael through the endgame, especially on the mod end. I know I (Guindo) certainly dropped the ball on a lot of things that were supposed to happen because my motivation waned so badly during the Fall semester due to school stress and obligations, and several of us found ourselves in similar boats. In a game this small, when four or five people suddenly can't play due to real life issues, that ends up being over half the playerbase, and there's nobody to pick up the slack and keep the game rolling.

Basically this was the result of a variety of different contributing factors, and there's no blame to be laid. We had a two-year run and that's pretty good if you ask me; I've never had a game last longer than six months before, so in that respect we can consider this a success!

The truth is that Zenderael was on shaky footing from the day it started. It may have looked pretty on the front end, but on the back end it was held together with duct tape and good intentions, and it really is a miracle that it managed to last two months, nevermind two years. I've come away with some lessons learned as a mod, and some fond experiences as a player, and I hope all of you had some fun during its run as well.

We feel like it would be a disservice to our players if we didn't at least give you an outline of the proposed endgame. It sucks to make it all the way here only to never get to find out how things were supposed to end! So underneath the cut you will find our outline for the endgame (the details of which could have changed based on player choices).

 

Lead-up that's already happened or been hinted at:

• After his encounter with the Denizen, Duncan began to believe that nobody should ever go to the Dark

• Duncan and Ezra suspected that the body of Xumurdad is in the Likeness; Duncan later confirmed this secretly on his own

• Rachel was resurrected, and then mercy-killed by Darius

• Duncan resurrected Rachel; her second resurrection penalty was the loss of free will

• Duncan confronted Darius and then showed him the Dark

• Duncan retrieved Xumurdad's body from the tree (the Likeness stops glowing) and gave the Skin to Darius

• Darius became the Mainyu (leader of the necromancer guild); this was meant to be a stopgap to keep people out of the Dark while Duncan figured out a more permanent solution

Future occurrences:

• Duncan infiltrates the Greycloaks through Archbishop Doukas; after digging into the cleric-Greycloaks' actual goals, he realizes resurrecting Xumurdad would be the perfect solution for the problem he's trying to solve

• Duncan begins working with the Greycloaks genuinely, trying to resurrect Xumurdad; he takes advantage of Rachel's lack of free will to use her as a holder for any stolen God-organs

• Rhys is the first casualty; Duncan plans to resurrect him, but Rhys ends up being one of those mysteriously un-rezzable cases

• Lera is next, killed by Sarai; she is resurrected and regains her old eyes in the process

• Other guild leaders are attacked one by one, either surviving or having their god-organs stolen as desired by the players

• For those God-organs that aren't taken, there was an alternative plan to give Xumurdad's shell a weaker facsimile replacement organ by sacrificing a large enough number of regular guild members

• Nightmare plot was intended to be a way for demons to bridge the gap between the living world and the Dark, their own plan being to allow the Denizen to cross over

• The dragons were also a part of this; there were dragons corresponding to each element and the demons would attempt to use their hearts to power their plans

  • Kaga was Fire, the one the Armaiti crashed was air, Medena was Nature, and Kharveryos was Earth (earth?! yes, the prior Asha's notes explained that Kharveryos had been killed and raised as a lich by a mage)

  • There would have been a subplot for each of these while the guild-leader killing was happening alongside it.

• Doukas would reveal himself as secretly a guild leader as well, having eaten the bones of Xumurdad and become the Monk GL (he never created any guild members)

• Assassin Greycloak activity would ramp up until the Armaiti and Doukas took each other out

• Everyone thinks the Greycloaks are done with?? Except whoops Duncan is still in charge of the cleric faction and they're still acting to resurrect Xumurdad

• Bad end: Duncan isn't stopped, Xumurdad is resurrected, bad things happen and players have to figure out how to deal with Xumurdad

• Good end: Duncan is stopped, Xumurdad resurrection doesn't happen, and players have to decide how their characters would wrap things up

• Optional addendum: characters somehow figure out how to fix death so that people don't go to the Dark anymore!

Setting info that wasn't yet revealed:

• The tree of the Likeness is the true form of Xumurdad; the human form is merely an avatar It used to interact with humans. Yup, that means Xumurdad was actually a World Tree this whole time.

• If the tree is Xumurdad's true self and the avatar Its body, the Denizen was Its soul. The Dark came into existence when Xumurdad was defeated and the Denizen was born. Resurrecting Xumurdad would've meant putting the Denizen inside the avatar's body.

• Every god has their own afterlife; this is the explanation for those people who mysteriously can't be resurrected. Xumurdad's power only allows for bringing souls back from the Dark; if the soul is in, say, Pelusa's afterlife instead, Xumurdad's Heart has no power over it.

If you'd like to weigh in and discuss how things would've played out in the comments, you are more than welcome to! I'm also available to answer setting questions on this post, since there's no need to maintain a mystery anymore.

The game will remain open as a musebox, so if you do find yourself wanting to come back to this setting and these characters, you can. The zenpc account has been given the power to accept join requests, and the login information can be found on the contact page. There will no longer be mod guidance and the mod e-mail is no longer being checked, but if you have any questions you need answered, you are always free to contact me (Guindo) directly by whatever means you like.

We are sincerely sorry for not being able to deliver a proper endgame. Hopefully knowing how it was intended to end provides some sense of closure in lieu of that.

It was great getting to play with you all for as long as we had together. Wherever you decide to go next, good luck and enjoy yourselves!

Comments

[inchesofevil]

Also as a sidenote--THE GAME TIMELINE IS FINALLY UP TO DATE. I will not be adding any new entries to it, but it wouldn't have felt right to close the game without a current timeline.

[firecracker_hopping]

End of an era!

I loved playing with you guys, and it was great while it lasted. I'll try to hop into chat sometimes; I'm also on Gchat (I think most of you added me), and Tumblr and Plurk as texside. I'm in a couple other games on Dreamwidth so if you're gameless, gimme a poke and I'll give you the skinny. I know me, Doom, and Hibi are working on an all-OC magical academy game and while we're taking our sweet time, we'll tell y'all when it's done.

As for plans!

As mentioned up there, Lera was slated to die. I'm okay with keeping or ditching that; if it'd feel weird in any epilogues people want to play out, I can. Me and Doom did write the log up, so I could post it at some point. She can or can't get the eyes back, depending what people want. I figured she's involved in trying to stop Duncan at the end.

Acher was gonna come back as UNDEAD and do a face/heel turn to the side of good (...sorta, as much as a hardass like him can). However, I may call him done as of his last log. It's a good end point.

Tyrus was gonna bite it against Irena; I can do that or not if people like. There was an ending in mind for Chisaki, too, but I'll wait on spilling the beans on that.

I am one hundred percent fine with doing wrap-up and epilogue logs, or RPing off the outline (or deviating from it if people want, we're in musebox territory now! NONE OF YOU ARE SAFE!)

I'll miss you, Zen!

[suddenly_science]

Hello, Zenlings! I will also be available for headcanoning or actual epilogue RP, with one caveat:

I would like to spend a week or two collecting any scene requests and then attempt to actually do the requests I've collected in chronological order as much as is feasible. That's just the most fulfilling way to approach it as an RPer for me.

If you'd rather just talk out how our characters' arcs ended, that's good too.

Mine have some unanswered questions -- I haven't decided yet whether Harriet gets the brain back or not. There's an unfinished log with Mal where she becomes a druid that I still consider canon, so if she doesn't get the brain back, she would be continuing to work on her druid powers with support from Mal. As for the godbrain, it might depend on how Irena's arc plays out either in headcanon or log form.

Whether or not she gets the godbrain, Harriet is involved in Duncan's endgame -- when she learns the murders he is responsible for and what his goal is, she feigns interest in his mission and lets him believe he has gained her loyalty in order to lead him into an ambush carried out by other people.

Nova had an additional arc that's now completely relegated to headcanon/musebox realms where he became a necromancer and attempted to aid Duncan's mission. This is still on the table as something that could have happened. Either way, he is not killed when Duncan is defeated and goes on to be a part of Chisaki's mystery ending.

For headcanoning or log planning purposes, you can reply to this thread, catch me in chat, or ping me on gchat.

[howl_typhoon]

Hello, citizens of the universe!!

I will also be totally willing to do outro stuff and epilogues.

Awkwardly, Tai Feng's social circles mostly vanished on her/get murdered (Rhys and briefly Harriet), leaving her sort of twisting in the wind. In theory she would've been brought back into events by the revived Lera (who would surely be none too pleased to learn just who the new Vairya was...)

The joke I always made was that Vairya Taifeng would end up running the show like the Boss in Saints Row - somewhat madcap but also actually directed, leading from the front and trusting her lieutenants to guide her hand, and coming down like thunder on anyone fool enough to cross her or her ilk. But she was also learning subtlety, and one option I'd been doodling on was Tai Feng eventually using her Vairya stealth to monitor one or more Greycloak meetings and generally muddle with their affairs that way.

On a more open end, that Boss parallel may have opened up; with Rhys dead, the Armaiti a ruthless hermit, no particular CR figured out for Mal, Safta destabilized and Bastan's cleric leadership the epicenter of the problem, Tai Feng could very well have slowly started asserting herself as a sort of gangster-queen, particularly as the need for protection from absolute madmen became more and more acute.

As for the other...Sarai probably deserves her own post.

[foreignsoul]

So, as the note that Lera was killed by Sarai may suggest, Sarai was a complete madwoman the entire time. I was waiting to surprise debut this icon so here it is now.

The truth of the matter was that Sarai awoke to consciousness while Dead in the game's coded terms, which apparently turned out to mean actually dead. This immediate exposure to the Dark completely shattered her expectations of the world and really just her mind in general. Sarai believes that the Dark is the true world, and the world of the living little more than a stage play put on before the actors all go home to their true, inevitable destinations.

Sarai also lost her ability to feel regret when she was resurrected from this encounter with darkness, making her a being of truly alien mindset. Sarai was, thus, actually a Cleric-faction Greycloak since before she rejoined the Amber Eyes before the war, reasoning that the living world was utterly, fundamentally meaningless, and the only thing that could possibly change it so primally was the resurrection of Xumurdad.

Over the course of Duncan's scheme she probably would've become disillusioned with his ideals, but she would've been an effective heavy and hopefully a recurring major lieutenant (possibly receiving a stolen GL organ to buff her threat? IDK maybe) until it was time for Lera to send Sarai home. To hell, that is.

The ultimate comedy option I was just gabbing about with Tex is that if the Denizen were to be invoked, Sarai might go full Kefka. Understanding from the Cliff's Notes that it is nothing less than Xumurdad's Soul, she might attempt to devour its own essence - so that she could reforge the Dark itself in her image.

Spoilers: This would not actually be funny, and you would not want her to do that.

(though, too late to matter, I do like the idea that that's how you fix the dark.)

[firecracker_hopping]

I admittedly would kinda selfishly love to see Sarai-Denizen until she has to be stopped because HOLY GOD.

[foreignsoul]

NOTHING IS HOLY HERE.

[firecracker_hopping]

Yeeeessss I want it even more now. :E

[foreignsoul]

I'll totally do it if we can get a few. S-Rank Ending secret final boss, sure!!

[andlivefreely]

I had a lot of fun playing! Sad to see it go. :(

I'm available for headcanoning, should anyone wish to figure out where things are at with my characters. I'll stick around in chat for a while but can also be emailed.

alt!Mal has pretty much faded into the background as a general or whatever in the Amber Gaze. I think at this point Tavan's also faded into the background, though he'll be a 'loyal' sneaky Greycloak-er 'til they start to lose then ditch them. >_>

Zach'll probably stay out of things and go about his life in the Nenakret I guess, living with Nayan and keeping in touch with Victor.

Outside of druiding Harriet while drunk and then teaching her the ropes, I didn't have any plans for Mal. I think I'd want him to keep the womb, and fight against the resurrection, though it would probably be pretty simple for Duncan to set an ambush for him since uh best friends, unless the earlier assassinations wind up pointing at Duncan as the culprit... If it lead to him losing it and getting it back later, I guess that could work too? No idea what people want to happen with that whole thing.

Irena... Oh boy Irena. She was going to show off her new Khshathra powers to Nova, kill Tyrus when he tried to break into her mighty deathfortress, then get assassinated by an agent of the Greycloaks and lose the brain. Eventually she'd get resurrected by Nova as a lich! My plan was to have her mental capabilities remain intact at that point, so she wouldn't come back broken. Beyond that I hadn't really planned anything, but uh she'd probably want to strive to be the BEST LICH EVER and help Nova out with stuff if he needed it.

And Valentine's Valentine. She's fine just doing druidy things forever. >_> (Though she'd stick by Mal 'cause Vohu/player)

[firecracker_hopping]

I could do Tyrus's downfall if you and Hibi are up for it!

I wouldn't mind some wrap-up with Lera and Val and Lera and Mal in there, somewhere, maybe depending what others wanna do to find a good place for it.

[abyssalis]

Zen you were fun and we had a good time! Alas, I had already been discussing with the other mods that I was going to bow out of the game due to lack of time and a lot of unexpected life situations that would not let up. But I was still going to stalk you guys into oblivion.

I have had some discussions with other players about epilogues/other logs and I WILL TRY TO GET TO THOSE EMAILS SOON. I apologize for my lack of aroundness these past few months.

As stated, Rhys was going to die without being able to be resurrected. Given the last bit of setting info, I'm going to pretend the next time Mezzron manifests, there's a suspiciously scarred and silent warhound about.

(There was at one point joking talk of Rhys getting resurrected and stealing the larynx from Xumurdad's corpse. The joking-er thought was that he would pretend to mope as silent Rhys-who-lost-his-whole-life-over-again while secretly working as a masked magical bard and building a new guild of bard spies. I would have wanted this to lead to rigging a city with speakers for a massively ranged, if brutally taxing songspell at a dramatic moment.)
(I think too hard about jokes.)

Virelai would take Rhys' permadeath hard, but resolve to be stronger in both body and spirit. Over the years, it would prove Rhys must have headcanoned her as a late bloomer, for she grows into a lovely lady. Which in Virelai's world means she gets tall. Gunnar continues life with Therea, and Iravati continues to try to be a Good Spellsword who is fiercely loyal to Lera while affectionately irritating Ravindra for the rest of their days.

Victor and Acher finally become friends and go fishing and use the worms in Acher's undead eyes as bait.
(May not be their actual epilogue.)

Missie becomes a necromancer with a seeing eye undead dog. She makes creepy undead corpse dolls and controls the power of life and death to work as a healer in her own way. Unlife is beautiful.

[suddenly_science]

that joketalk scenario for rhys is now my headcanon for an au that had a happier ending :3;;;;

[firecracker_hopping]

Victor and Undead!Acher fishing is totally the epilogue in my heart.

[inchesofevil]

Wow okay I should make a comment too but realtalk you guys, I am so burnt out on this game right now that I cannot brain headcanon endings for any of my characters. Zen has actually been really stressful for me pretty much its entire run and I spent so long just trying to hold it together that I finally wore down and couldn't find the will to try anymore.

So when I think about where my characters would end up and how things would resolve my brain just goes ???? and I got nothin'.

I can say that I planned on killing Duncan. I assumed there would be some sort of dramatic confrontation with his friends after his actions were exposed, and there would really be no choice but to kill him.

And his final words would be a quietly terrified plea of, "Don't send me back there."

So, you know, everyone who's ever heard him talk about his encounter with the Denizen--enjoy your guilt!!