LNH20: Replacement characters

[Saxon Brenton]

On 21 June 2012 Adrian wrote:> The mesoamerican idea is a good one. I'm afraid I know next to nothing
> about that at the moment.
> 
> Googlemesh served three different purposes: A mythological hero, a
> primal warrior type character, and a link to the Ancient Legion. These
> three don't have to be to the same character, and the third one might
> not be a living person. We already have a mythological hero: Library
> Lad, who is actually Thoth. Though it would be good to have a
> completely different one from a completely different mythology to
> contrast to him. The second role could go to Devastator, if he goes
> into the 20verse, or a character who's based on the idea for a female
> Master Blaster that we were discussing. The third could be a giant
> robot (maybe the one UM gets in the chapter that I'm currently
> writing, the one that shows up right after Googlemesh dies; there are
> probably others); an artifact of some sort like a weapon, grimoire,
> crystal or non-crystal skull (sentient or otherwise) (remember the
> Dragon originally wanted Googlemesh's skull); a ghost; some sort of
> archaeological code. Or a combination of one or more of the above.
> 
> AJM (would like Saxon's input on all this)
 
[begin blameshifting statement:]
 
After due consideration, I have decided to blame Fiji. 
 
No, seriously.  Last year I went on a family vacation to Fiji, got so 
lazy that I more or less stopped interacting with RACC for months, and 
missed pretty much all the prep work on LNH20.
This year I went for another family vacation to Fiji (we took Dad over 
as a 70th birthday present).  I was able to make one small contribution 
to LNHv2#50 before I left, and then one hurried comment about possible 
character subplots for how Anal-Retenhtive Archive Kid 2 would react to 
the Master Blaster/WikiBoy relationship - which kinda sorta set the 
match to the kindling of the Recent Unpleasantness.
Then after we got back to Australia there was only a few days before I 
had to travel up the coast for the 70th birthday party proper, and in 
the meantime there's been all this *stuff* accumulatiung in my inbox 
which I've been too lazy to read through, and now with only half a week 
left before flying out for RACC-con I'm trying futiley to catch up, and, 
and, and... 
 
There's a tourist marking joke over there which goes 'I'm on Fiji Time', 
which pretty much sums up how I've been blowing off doing anything in a 
timely manner.  So there you go.  It's all Fiji's fault  :-P
 
[end blameshifting statement]
 
Okay, back to business.  The point about breaking down what Googlemesh's 
story telling purpose was into three constituent parts is well taken.
At first blush I do like the idea of using some of the non-western 
mythologies: goodness knows I've done that enough myself, and sometimes 
not even a safely dead non-Western mythos.  That said, if that became too 
difficult (for whatever reason) then we could synthesise a new character 
with those attributes; effectively pulling the Triumph/Sentry/Kid Macro 
trick of bringing back a character who'd been forgotten to history.  In 
any case, depending on exactly which extant mythological character was 
chosen, then there's a good chance that he'll combine the first two 
attributes anyway, and it would be trivially easy to include exploits to  encompass the 3rd.
 
On a purely storytelling level I'm glad you reminded me of the plot 
dangler of the dragon wanting Googlemesh dead.  I suspect that the death 
of Googlemesh will need to be kept off-camera, but the prospect of the 
Recovery Man returning to the dragon with a box, saying 'I have what you 
wanted', and the dragon looking in the box, nodding, and concluding their 
deal would be a good way of moving the story on to the next level.  
Whatever other distractions there may be about multiple spoons could be 
swept away as the Recovery Man gets his hand on 'the one' Spoon/manifestation 
of the Spoons which has the power to draw in all the other quantum-thingummy 
duplicates.  (And depending on his exact personality and/or level of genre savy, 
the Red Shirt thug sent by WHATEVER to be part of the team will either be 
crowing at having been part of a villainous triumph to kill off a net.hero, 
or seriously freaked out that the scheme actually worked and realising that 
he's now in deeper than eh expected).
 
That's all I've got at the moment.
 
---
Saxon Brenton
 
 		 	   		  
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