Chapter Text
Setting background: Several years after the events of ‘Endergame’.
Things that have happened in that meantime:
- the Blackrock crew are pretty stable. Rythian is a mage again, researching / using the new version of magic (after Endergame reset it), but he's a lot less isolated than he used to be, since the castle is now much more of a community than it was.
- Nano has appeared. Most of the Survival Games series has happened in this time - particularly the ones that involve her. She is… something like Ridge, but a new one, and not fully sure how to be that. She doesn’t seem to need the Game sacrifices to power her, but she’s got a lot less power (for now). She also has chosen to keep a lot of her ‘other side’ locked away from herself (Ridge helps with this, although does warn her she can’t deny that part of her or it will find its own way back).
- This has resulted in echoes and hallucinations that manifest as creepy Flux stuff.
(‘Flux Buddies’ as a series had only recently started when I finished Endergame, so I didn’t know where they were going with that. I also didn’t end up watching that much of it myself, so this is all based on the original ideas I'd had / what I remember.)
- Nano’s themes are: Purple (vivid, amethyst, aggressively alive, verging into infestation body horror; not the violet-black dissolving nothing of the End); hyphae-like connections / patterns; ‘childish’ spikes in emotions (while she seems like a young adult in her human side, her godling side is still very young).
- Lalna and Nano have been doing 'Flux Buddies' for a while. Lalna has gotten involved because a) magic changed and he's genuinely curious, and b) frankly because he has some un-handled technology trauma from - y’know - the everything, plus that time an eldritch dragon ate off his power-gloved hand, in a dimension where you can’t pass out. So focusing on some only slightly-unnerving, nature-y themed magic with this new person - who doesn’t know anything about all of the End stuff - is rather a relief.
- Would it be a good idea to perhaps unpack some of what happened? Yes. Is he going to do so? No.
Some nice repression you have there. Be a shame if something were to doom it through narrative.
(Sjiin has gone off somewhere after whatever happened with Magic Police played out. Which was actually an End-clone of Lalna that formed from the ripped off arm getting spat back into this dimension. I’m not sure what happened there; I just enjoyed Enderbeast!Lalna.)
Meanwhile, in the other leg:
- Note that the split point for these timelines was whether Israphel decided to pay any attention to / troll the original duo at the start of SoI.
- If he does = normal world, Xephos ends up being the Hero / Unexpected Variable that sets everything down the path we’ve seen. He’s eighteen buckets of trauma in a fancy jacket, sure, but meeting all those characters, getting pulled into the War of the Sands and derailing the whole Fate of that, led to him developing into the guy we know. Lots of connections with lots of people, and for an empty man with no memories, that shaped who he became.
After the War, the pair wander around a bit more, but Xephos in particular has an extremely hard time with the aftermath and being seen as a hero. Eventually they start actively trying to get somewhere where no one knows about them, and head off across the sea to the Wilds; picking up Lalna on the way (he's looking to lie low after the Tekkit War debacle). Story happens as usual.
- If Israphel decided not to fuck with them = Voltz/Yoglabs timeline. Zephos is still a random variable in the world, but it doesn't do anything if the duo just sort of… wander off in the other direction and don’t interact with the plot. Israphel’s plans work, the War of the Sands is faster / bigger, and ends up with Israphel managing to bind himself inextricably with the very root of magic itself.
- At that point, with The Worst Guy literally on the doorstep of apotheosis, Ridge had to act. And in a more direct way than just introducing one tiny random actor into the mix. (He ‘doesn’t interfere’; remember; for whatever that means.) Unfortunately, the only way to do that now is to quite literally rip magic itself out of the world, and it needs to be done fast (also: opposed, cos Israphel wasn’t exactly a passive actor here). It worked, but it caused severe damage to the world and to Ridge himself - damage that he couldn’t fix from inside the problem. He no longer had access to the Game either, so can't recharge himself in the same way.
- The world trundles on, without magic, but with mad science and industry rising to take its place. Big companies form (being much more massive, capitalistic mad science juggernauts than the <name>.Incs of like, three people from the other timeline). Sipsco is one of these, but collapses after a disastrous attempt to colonize the Wild coast; Sips and Sjiin bolt into the wastelands.
- Zephos and Honeydew generally adventure around, but it’s a very different world. Before magic died, the world rapidly became more hostile / suspicious / terrifying as Israphel’s nonsense occurred, so they didn't exactly make many friends. Something went horribly wrong for the dwarves as a whole, leaving Honeydew without any chance to make amends for his banishment (and being one of the few survivors). The pair are more isolated and a lot more co-dependent; even when they joined one of the mad science companies (the previous ‘Labs’) and met Lalna there. The three later left together in a very destructive way. There’s a lot of wasteland due to war / magical fallout / etc, to go hide in. They run into Sips & Sjiin and Voltz happens - and by this point, Ridge has started to pay attention to them. The group is messing around with things that he can’t fully touch, and that’s interesting to him; although they don’t realise he’s not human.
- The Bomb happens. Red Matter exposure starts affecting Ridge, and his burgeoning bitterness at being reduced to ‘this’ after sacrificing himself starts getting much worse. Zephos becomes a focus of it - he ‘failed’ to do anything useful back then, and he’s tangled up in this stuff now. This Ridge hasn’t had any of the Survival Games stories happen - so the whole ‘you have got too close to this band of good-hearted idiots and it’s bleeding into you’ situation hasn’t played out.
- Ridge essentially starts using Zephos as a vessel / filter for his own power. Both because Ridge wants somebody to research fixing him, and because running it through Zephos a) manages to filter out some of the corruption that’s happening; not fully, but enough to be useful; b) it doesn’t instantly implode him like it would most people.
Something something Unexpected Variable something something Not From Around Here something something.
- Yoglabs happens. With the usual minecraft-world handwaving of how this can occur - although at least in this instance, one of the team is running in a weird version of creative mode at all times. Which is driving him insane, deeply fucking up his ability to see anyone else as a person (with one specific caveat), and generally causing many Unpleasant Things. Also he can track you down if he has your name, and within a certain proximity to the Labs themselves, can just fully teleport people around if he has your name. (/tp <name>)
So, it's not going fantastically well in this timeline.
And it's about to get... complicated.