More Trellani and update

I had teeth extracted last week — looks like more problems with the crown I had done. Had another one extracted yesterday, appearantly the crack in the crown let the roots get infected, even though there is nothing wrong with the tooth itself.

*sighs* So that’s another $1400 down the drain. On top of helping to pay for my mother’s cancer, fixing problems with toilets, water heaters and the calipers on my brakes, I estimate I’ve gone through something like $25,000 since December. Ugh.

Given that, I’m not sure how much time will be devoted to writing for the next few weeks, as I’ll need to put in some extra hours. I did a  bit of Naruto writing but only because I’m still having a block on the next part of TWCD.

It’s coming together but the outline I had worked out is not really where I want it so I’m doing some work on that.

Since I wasn’t feeling well, LuckyFK decided to surprise me with some more Trellani, which is (as usual for him) awesomely done. Between that and enough vicodin to bring down Big Boss, I think I’ll be okay to try and write something tomorrow.

Enjoy 😀

Trellani, Travelling by LuckyFK
Trellani, Travelling by LuckyFK

OSABC on AO3

After hours of hardcore tinkering, I finally managed to bounce an import of OSABC to Archive of Our Own, although still covered in shitty formatting.

http://archiveofourown.org/works/4844429

Anyone active on AO3 who has the time to edit the headers and footers, set tags, that kind of thing, please let me know.

I’ll add ATTWN and TWCD as time permits.  In other news, I had two teeth extracted today (thank god for emergency dentists) and I’m pretty dopey.

Collectors and the Premiseverse

Horror is like a serpent: always shedding its skin, always changing. And it will always come back in the way you least expect it, catching you by surprise.

 

The funny thing about ME2 is how much sheer potential was allowed to fall by the wayside, and how easy it is to put it back where it belongs.

I’ve had more than one person ask me about why the Collectors wear robes in my story. That’s because they were originally designed that way. The image is from a picture I took from one of the ME Art books.

I have a hobby in collecting the ‘art books’ that come with games. The ones for ME, ME2 and ME3 were particularly fascinating as they showed a ton of content that had been sidelined, ignored, changed or re-shifted to fit the game we know today. Some of the most profound changes came in the ones made to the Collectors.

Sure, the Collectors of the games are creepy — giant insect flying things with glowing eyes, bug-like clouds and weird ships. But they simply don’t back up their smack. Unlike the geth of ME1 and the Reapers of ME3, even on insanity Collectors simply fail to truly cause terror. And in the end, it’s shown they are little more than tools, perhaps without even the ability to alter their fate.

I really have no damned clue what Bioware was intending for them, but it doesn’t matter much as I’ve changed up the nature of what they are. The Collectors will be the first ‘taste’ of the true power of the Reapers, and all the crazy big resources I’ve thrown at Shepard in the lead-up into TWCD will be used and probably not enough to take down the threat. But I also want to explore what it means that they survived, and give a hint of why Saren and Benezia felt the way they did.

I’ll do that in three ways.

First, the Collectors are actually going to demonstrate the crazy technology we keep hearing they have. I won’t spoil anything, but the goal is to make the technology of the Collectors as creepy, sickening and unnatural as the bug-men themselves. Given their tight resources, they are masters at recycling biomass and wreckage, and some of that will bleed over into their tech.

Second, I want to give them a rationale for both continuing to exist and a reason for their activities. We’re told in ME2 that they are twisted, indoctrinated Protheans. But the Codex later tells us that the Reapers left the indoctrinated Protheans to die, so someone is confused. In my version, the purpose of indoctrination remains to break minds and make them obey. But the Reapers are managing more than one galaxy and they need tools to monitor events, identify the best choices for ascension, and act as a back up in case things go wrong. That can’t be done with mindless remote controlled drones, dammit. So they have … something like a culture. Even in the state they are in.

Finally, and most importantly, the Collectors are there to introduce the idea that some of what the Reapers and Leviathans are doing is simply … beyond our comprehension. Some of the science the Shepard Team will find or have to do will uncover really disturbing things, and even the tiny amount of power the Collectors can draw upon to use will be terrifying to deal with. Nazara was an arrogant ass who was completely unaware until too late that he was being played — if he had known he could have wiped the entire Citadel Fleet by himself with a single use of the Godpower.

The Collectors have an identity as tools, but they are ‘smart’ tools. They are looking for their own answers, and have their own plans separate of that of the Reapers. The Collector General is the son of the Prothean who came up with the Beacon project, after all. They made a gamble when it was clear they would lose, and the destruction of Nazara is the first sign the gamble might pay off.

That being said they would never even think about allying with or working with the ‘natives’. They see the Citadel races as barely any more advanced than vorcha, but they don’t dismiss them as a threat, only as being of any real use.

Ultimately, as the heralds of the Reapers, the Collectors and their goals should be horrifying. If you put a few things together it isn’t hard to figure out just what they are planning to do. But the Collector Agenda adds one more layer of things Shepard has to figure out, and is a big part of the divergence in my AU from canon.

For new users

Obviously, if you want the ability to do anything on the forums or to post on the site itself, you need to email me.

The link to do so is here : http://logicalpremise.org/wp-login.php?action=register . I have also added it to the menu.

Unless I’ve had personal discussions with you via PM or email it is unlikely that I will approve such access, given that since I turned on user registration I’ve already had 940+ bad signups connected to known malware or spam sites.

The email address is viley@att.net

UPDATE 9-14 at 1:20 PM : After a blast of two thousand bogus signups, I’ve implemented captcha to cut down on registration and deleted the fake accounts.

Some Changes, Additions, whatever

I’ve added the ability for people to register with the site, as well as a simple forum for asking direct questions.

I’ve put out the latest chapter, for reasons described in the authors note. Going forward I will send out a list of who besides Liethr will have editing rights to the document and put it out two days before I submit it to FF.net.

Anyone who is familiar with how to transfer documents from FF.net to AO3 should comment.

As an aside, I’ve strongly upgraded the security of the site, but I always implore anyone who registers anywhere online to use a password other than the one they use for banking or other important websites.