Byron, I nominate you for the emailing!
Sent, God help us.
We’re Facebook bros still, I also just sent him a message with a link. 
Okay, so, as promised late last night, here’s some of the stuff I’d been planning to do in Kuproper before … well, stuff happened and the board went inactive.
The Once and Future King of Whalebone Ave
I was going to finish this series about crimelord Allan Seabairne’s return to take power in the criminal underworld in Pell. All of his rival bosses and the men who’d arranged the hit on him would have been dealt with.
- Joss Nathan - unstable lunatic with inferiority complex and too many guns, his gang would have been taken down in a small but intense battle in Beggar’s Reef and Nathan himself shanked and then drowned in the Reef
- Mike Belltonin - former city official who had helped arrange the hit, Belltonin had gotten heavily hooked on drugs and would have been spared after Seabairne saw how low he’d fallen, though exiled from Pell after he was forced to get clean
- Roger Jollins - city official, Deputy Dir. of Commerce, he’d already been captured. He’d have been put into a gladiator pit under one of the casinos and forced to battle to the death (his death) against some manner of beastie. (Initial plan was Re-Deads, but I’m not sure how common those would be in the modern Web.)
- Long Rufus Rafferty - crimelord of Eldersden, who’d gotten the “working girls” of the district hooked on drugs and thus more or less enslaved them to his gang’s rule (as opposed to their previous self rule). A longer attack on Eldersden would have been required, but it would have worked thanks to a betrayal by one of Rafferty’s lieutenants, Mr. Echo. Rafferty himself would have been “dealt with” by the girls once they’d been freed.
- Oliver Parks - police officer, formerly of Organized Crime Unit, now Chief of Police, orchestrated the hit on Seabairne. Because of his position, taking him down would have taken more effort, and it would have started with Seabairne and his crew eroding his power base, targeting his reputation and pulling apart his life. After he was removed from power by the city council pending a hearing and investigation, it would have come down to a brief shootout with men loyal to Parks, but he would ultimately have been taken down.
In the midst of the whole mess, Seabairne would have officially recognized Liam Stalwart as his second in command and started grooming him to take over the gang if he died. Razor Chakram and a forced-to-go-cold-turkey-sober Joey Numbaz would have joined into the gang as well. Mr. Echo, not trusted by most of the gang due to his betrayal of Rafferty, would have been handed the identity of Syman Lerga, Seabairne’s “acquisitions man” alter ego, so he could leave Pell with some dignity and a future. Mister Bones, having heard of Seabairne’s return, would have sent along money as tribute to his old boss, as well as sending Po’ Fool, hapless and luckless butt monkey of the Tasnican underworld, to deliver the tribute and get a job with better prospects working for Seabairne.
Aftermath of Valleyville Burning
In the wake of the prison town riot, an investigation as to how Malismo and Brer Rabbey escaped would have been conducted, since the two used magic that should have not worked in the “dead zone” of the valley. Alistair Brand would bring in none other than Alfred Bicksworth, late of ZAPS and currently of the GEACS, for his expertise with this sort of thing. Alfred would have confirmed that Malismo was using a form of Defiling Magic that seemed more powerful than anything Malismo had been known to have used during the Cleansing Wars. As for Rabbey, Alfred would have chalked that up to the poor understanding the outsiders have to “fucking Voodoo magic,” noting that Rabbey had been known to have studied under Medinan Shadow Barons before his original capture.
Martin Olethros would eventually get released from prison, and of course return to the Church of (the mighty!) Spekkio. Their healers would give him full use of his broken leg again, although he’d always be missing an eye since Malismo had ripped one of them out. As Scen noted, he’d end up becoming a player in the Guardian Civil War.
Bomber Harris would remain in prison, however, since no one was sure where he came from, although that would come into play later. (More on that in a separate section.)
Aurora Katarzina, the seamstress and Defiler that had helped wreak some havoc during the riot, would keep on being weird and slightly creepy. Given her otherwise placid and non-hostile manner, the assumption of the investigators would be that she had been ensorcelled or something during the riot, hence the change in her demeanor during it. Later, Malismo would return to Valleyville via the Shadow Walk spell to break her out. What would happen to the two of them afterward I hadn’t yet planned, though I assume they’d both end up as players in the Guardian Civil War at some point.
Brer Rabbey would remain as King of Malcovia, barring major story developments. Scen got things slightly wrong in that deposed King Mooloo wasn’t exiled from Malcovia by Rabbey, he was just kicked out of the king’s estate. (Although I accept that perhaps Mooloo decided “screw you guys, I’m outta here” and exiled himself.) Despite his ruthless nature, Rabbey would have been a fair ruler of the island, and he would have contributed to the effort to eradicate the drugs trade. Given his status as a pseudo head of state, he’d doubtless also get involved in the Guardian Civil War storyline, if only to make sure El Nido gets its fair share of any spoils and thus its standing increased.
Valleyville itself would get repaired and fixed up and continue existing, although I’m not sure what would have happened in the Civil War with regards to it.
A New Player on the Scene
In short, the world of FF7 joins the Web of Worlds.
This. This was going to be my initial contribution to the group, but Scen felt I needed to prove I could hang. This was a good idea for several reasons. It would let me get a better sense of the setting and how it would fit into it, it would prove to the existing writers that I “belonged,” and it set a better precedent. The last thing we really wanted was to set precedent that any new writer could come in and drop in their take on whatever world that struck their fancy.
EDIT: Obviously, with Kupopolis Reborn still in the planning stages, this entire idea is on hold indefinitely. It’s been years since I played FF7 and my notes are on an old brick of a laptop that I need to charge up before I go using it to recover my files.
The FF7 world (dubbed “Asgar”) was about 150 years removed from the events of the game. (And bear in mind, all this was before Advent Children or Crisis Core or Dirge of Cerberus or any of that came out, so for the purposes of what I’d have come up with, those would have non-canon except for anything I deemed good to steal.) There were four main governments on Asgar-- Junon (which included Midgar), Corel, Wutai, and the Cosmo Territories. With the exception of Cosmo, all of them also had their own megacorp that had arisen to help with the rebuilding effort-- Neo Shinra, AesirCorp, and the Zaibatsu. (I forget exactly what the Zaibatsu’s name was.)
By the time of the story, various wars and struggles between the various governments had more or less come to an end, since nobody wanted to do that much damage to the world again. The world had been weaned off of Makou Energy, and exploration of the solar system had begun, with mining operations taking place in asteroid fields and new energy sources being researched. And into this came the Surtran menace. Feral entities made of flaming plasma and molten matter, the Surtrans lived on the surface of the sun and started targeting Asgar. (I hadn’t yet fleshed out whatever instinctual reason, but I like to think it may have had something to do with Sephiroth’s use of the Black Materia awakening them, and it just taking many years for the Surtrans to develop into forms capable of threatening the world.) What the Surtrans lack in anything resembling technology or weaponry, they make up for in sheer numbers.
The world itself is mostly safe from their efforts, since the Surtrans had mostly targeted space installations. Makou Energy proved to be the most effective weapon to dispersing Surtrans’ plasma and matter, so production had stepped up again, although new refining techniques meant it dealt less damage to the planet to create. A massive Surtran attack would lead to a gambit in which Junon sacrifices one of its flagships in space, loading it with Makou canisters and then detonating them with a shot from the Mother Ray. This succeeded in destroying the Surtran attack, but the after effects of the blast cause the heretofore undetected and inactive gate to Gatespace to become active.
What would follow from there hadn’t entirely been fleshed out, but it would have led to more maneuvering among both governments and corporations (both Asgari and not) to establish footholds and secure positions. In the process, also, it would have been confirmed that Bomber Harris was Junonese, and he would have been released from Valleyville to return home and begin piecing his memory back together.
I was in the process of outlining everything, but I had held off on some of it because I still wasn’t confident I was ready to pull it off, and I wanted to at least wrap up Seabairne’s story and due the Valleyville Aftermath stories before laying the groundwork for Asgar’s emergence.
[quote=“Scen”]… Well. This didn’t go into my obscenely long Unravelling summary, but I have quite a bit of loose-ends tying up to do in Merge as well. During the Guardian Civil War, they had troops still committed in Merge. (along with allied forces from Eblan and Hyland) The end result was that the Guardians got spanked trying to re-take Bal, but the Merge League got spanked trying to conquer Worus. (which was defended by a group of mercenaries lead by Kusader, and secretly funded by Mountbatten)
That said, it’s entirely possible that in the midst of all the fighting, the Merge wizards liberated Tycoon. It might have been a tradeoff the Merge League made during the war: they pulled resources from Bal to push the dwarves out of Tycoon, but in so doing they allowed the Guardians to eek out a minor victory and recover some Balian territory.[/quote]
Way belatedly: sounds good to me!
Also, Jay, I like your stuff there. The new dimension sounds cool – and the multiple powers has potential. I think it would have worked out, and your gritty crime story style would work nicely there, too. And the ending of your plot stuff – well, damn. Godfather vibes, man.
Asgar, that’s pretty neat.
I will admit, my initial plan for Asgar involved three governments (Junon and Corel merging into one nation), but I decided having four instead makes for more political thingummies.
A lot of my initial plotline stuff for Asgar after the dimension was established would have dealt with corporate espionage stuff, as the various megacorp security forces (The Turks, AEGIS, and the Saito Yakuza) had to deal with various plots and schemes.
So I was going through my Kupop folder, which I transferred from my external.
I discovered I had some plot about survivors of the war of the magi, named Bewahrung, who were drinking water that let them SEE THE FUTURE. I’m really not sure where this was going, anymore; this was all thought up when I was having some personal shit, and it kind of got mired in that. But! I had an idea for how it ended.
Bewahrung backed White Cell secretly, and snuck in two of theirs as White Cell commanders with false identities. They got killed when this happened; this left the leader, Sirius, alive, but without his resources; I’ll probably work up a resolution. It mostly means, after the Battle of Albrook, there were some incredible engagements against powerful, thousands of years old sorcerers and some heroes. If anyone wanted to help bring them down, lemme know!
Was going back and re-reading some of this thread, particularly the stuff about the Guardian Civil War, since a number of my characters are in that world, trying to figure out where they end up.
Brer Rabbey, as King of Malcovia, would be heavily involved in anything to do with El Nido. He wants Malcovia to get its fair share of things, and with pyra addicts being involved in some of the attacks when FATE/Black Knight takes over, he’d be dispatching Malcovian forces (i.e., most of the named Malcovian houngans/mambos) to deal with them. He’d also probably end up breaking off his “arrangement” with Malismo and Aurora Katarzina, whom he’d been harboring, once Rajaat resurfaces.
Problem is, Maly followed Rajaat in part because he’s a twisted fuck that likes chaos, but when Rajaat turns up as the herald of FATE, that kind of breaks Malismo’s interest in following him. He won’t go to Rajaat, and no one else will take him because he’s a Defiler and completely untrustworthy. Maly and Aurora would most likely end up fighting just about everyone in their efforts to just run away and stay out of the fight. Malismo would basically take the point of view, “Let them kill each other and we can sort them out later.”
Jon Jenks, the Gravedigger, would be aiding Chorras under an assumed identity (since Jenks is a known Defiler), using his Earth magic to strike at anyone that opposes them. Especially Medinans, because fuck Mystics, in Jenks’ opinion.
Scen already touched on Martin Olethros, and I explained further that he would get released from Valleyville and would go back to the Church of Spekkio. After saving Laurence Daniels, I imagine Olethros would have been striking at any enemies of the church-- mostly pyra-controlled puppets-- after Black Knight and Rajaat make their move. (I like to imagine Olethros literally dropping the hammer on some baddie and serving up a few plates worth of ham while doing it, bellowing war cries and similar.)
The GEACS would probably have finally gotten shut down prior to the Civil War, with its four members folded back into the Defense Ministry in various capacities. Alfred Bicksworth, being ex-ZAPS, would have been useful with his knowledge of magical styles, defenses, and limitations. (I have this mental image of the stiff Alfred facing off against some of the baddies’ forces, then calmly removing his glasses before flash-frying them with a magic spell, to establish his bona fides as crouching bore, hidden badass.) Jerry Lenfest, being the computer expert, might probably have been giving all kinds of warnings about the FATE Conspiracy, but not actually taken seriously until it comes out. And then he’d probably have been running for his life, because he Knows Too Much. Jessica Milosa would just be doing boring analytical work until Jerry went on the run, at which point she’d have been dragged into it and on the run as well. Brian “Damage” DeMasch would likewise have gotten dragged into it as well, perhaps with his technical/engineering expertise coming in handy somehow.
I suppose some kind of attack on Valleyville is possible, causing some of the prisoners within to escape, to allow anyone that wants to introduce some future threat to have an intro hook there. Bomber Harris would not be one of the escapees, however, since he’d still need to be there by the time Asgar comes into play.
As for other characters, I already covered the Pellanese criminal gangs from The Once and Future King of Whalebone Ave in a previous post. The only one that still need to get addressed is Fasthand, the marshal in the Republic of West. I’d had an idea to do a story dealing with his adjusting from “roving vigilante gunslinger” into “official lawman” while dealing with a mystery/scheme in West. I didn’t have any of it written down, alas, but I did intend part of the story to deal with a Kuat Arms factory being built in the area where the story was going to be set, and Fasthand having to liaise with the Kuat Arms Experts sent to protect it during construction-- Iggy & Morrie, the Tag Team, who already don’t like Fasthand after their altercations at the Robotics Tournament. I don’t really have any more specific information about what the story would have been around, apart from this-- the story would have been called Styx Justice as a callback to Dirty Pool, where Fasthand and Marshal Tooms had had discussions regarding “city justice vs sticks justice.” I may also have had plans to introduce another character, one of Fasthand’s brothers that had actually survived the massacre and turned to banditry to survive. But, as I said, all of this was just in my head, nothing had been written down.