I know, Emergency Virtue is actually back, shocker. But as the great philosopher Beyonce once said, "Bitch I'm back, by popular demand." (I mean...I wasn't back by popular demand...but I'm back...so y'know, it's the thought that counts!)
But anyway onto the actual topic. So, it's quite clear that we're heading into the last days of Insurgency now, so I thought it'd be great to write an Emergency Virtue. Before I go ahead with this Emergency Virtue, I just want to say something. I already made it clear that whilst the community is improving when it comes to communication and less arguments, and I already made my say on how after Insurgency we need to communicate more and strive towards actually having more fun and less arguments arising from character, something I think comes down to people seeing their characters and their creations as separate entities, but no so as if you're proud of these creations and love to work on them, even alone, which is all fine and good, but it's more like “This is my army, these are my characters, this is my organisation, and it's better than yours!” It's not so much about trying to write different types of characters (well it is but it's just prefaced with), trying to write the most powerful spec, the better army, etc.
If working on Insurgency taught me anything, it's that there's a clear issue with communication, and this isn't a way of me referring to any one given incident or person (or group), but working on Insurgency was honestly a bitch. I never expected it to be busy, but when I first kind of proposed the idea to Alex, over a year ago, I was still new to the Skype group, I clearly didn't know how things exactly worked because I hadn't essentially planned with any other people to the extent of one great arc, and though everyone has been supportive and I appreciate, there are still issues with people arguing with others, or myself, or just other dilemmas getting in the way.
Honestly, I expect there will always be the occasional argument and whatnot, nothing is perfect, but after working on Insurgency, and becoming a GM and seeing these arguments, it's pretty much become a joke between us that whenever an argument is going to happen, it's going to be stressful and also this isn't the indicator of that. I'm sure most of us remember the stadium fight and how difficult that was, to the point where GM NathanielCoran was clearly feeling stressed out about that incident too.
I don't care if I'm being “over-dramatic” or whatever, because there is a problem and I'm not going to ignore that. The problem is, thankfully, getting better now that people are actually sitting down and talking to each other, but there is still a lot of work that clearly must be done and as someone who almost came to hate the arc they were working on just due to how trivial, petty, and annoying some of these arguments were, I just need to make that known. Honestly, we have a good community here, with amazing characters and stories, I just hope that in the future we can work together and better appreciate each other.
But with that being said, it's time to get to the fun stuff which is one main question: What happens now? So, wow, I never expected the final battle to have this much of an impact, if really any. I mean there's going to be some impact yes, some people will be shaken, but if you look at the schedule, you'd think most of that aftermath would be addressed for the following day, and then not forgotten, but kind of pushed aside for a lot of the new things coming along following the one-week timeskip. And that is kind of true, the final battle will have impact, but maybe not as much impact after the one-week but honestly the impact alone from the final battle doesn't matter, it's the final day as a whole which is more important because aside from the ending of Insurgency and the big battle. A lot of stuff happened including Marshal returning as Rhys and reuniting back with Argent Mind, Jessica is still out there looking for Jade, Jade meanwhile has left The Broker, The Citadel has basically no allies left, The Safe Zone is probably going to be reintegrated within the city, The Broker is entering a coma, The Ravagers are stronger than ever, etc.
I know most of these are associated with the battle, but nonetheless it's still important to see what is happening with characters all around, I'll try to get to as many characters as I can but I can't assure I'll get to everyone. Also please note I will not be addressing my characters, or at least not as heavily as others because well, I know what my characters are doing. Also note, some of this is speculation, some of these are ideas or things I've just heard from the creator which might not come to fruition, others are fact or probably well-grounded at the very least.
Let's start with Broker, and I have no idea what's going on. Hudson and I planned that Broker would face repercussions due to damage in the battle, months ago and it was agreed they'd enter a coma. It looks like that's happening but honestly, I'm not too sure if they're dead if they're in a coma or if they even plan on coming back. After Insurgency, what I personally will be hoping for and think what will happen is that Broker will return but will go on to have a redemption arc, if you look at the state of The Citadel now, it's practically lost everything. The Little Mice are there but they did have a good chunk killed, James and Mira are leaving The Citadel, Jade, Shade and Jason probably are going to also leave, which basically really leaves Claudia and The Broker left, and if The Broker dies then Claudia is basically all on her own. Honestly, no idea what is going to happen to The Citadel or Broker, but I guess we'll have to see, all we know for now is that it is not in good hands, especially when the funding has been pulled from Ragno (though could it rise out of the ashes and redefine itself? I don't know).
In terms of The Tower, things are looking to be really hectic real fast. We don't know much about the Infiltration arc that is coming (trailer below), but from the sounds of it, it seems Rhys is only planning more havoc to come. It could be that Rhys is planning to somehow bring down the Tower from the inside by exploiting his connection to Argent, and this could be a war on all fronts, physically, mentally, emotionally, we know that Rhys is manipulating all these factors. I mean when Argent first saw him, he heard the bones in his leg crunch, essentially breaking them from landing too fast, Rhys purposefully mentions Argent's wife Eloise as a way to sadden Argent already showcasing mental and emotional manipulation. Needless to say, I think this will be a very intense arc, maybe someone finds out about Rhys, maybe Rhys wins, or maybe this could only be the first step into the main plot for Villainy and Virtue. It could be that Rhys is going to actually be defeated, and with the Tower possibly being left scarred but stronger than ever and ready to focus on Rhys or Marshal Maleficus whilst he's down. But at the same time, the very opposite could also happen.
Speaking of people getting stronger, the Ravagers are just going way up there. They've come back to make a pretty big mark on Heartania, nothing we haven't seen since 'A City in Chaos', not only helping to weaken Broker, The Citadel, but also leave with adding the remaining Vipers to their gang, and now possibly adding two new members which could be Rick and a new character who has a past with Reaver, known as Lena Gardner, or 'Leviathan'. I would check out Alex's great short-story 'Deadly Connections' which he's working on, it explains a lot more about Lena and hopefully will open up about her connection to Reaver. All the while the Ravagers may start to come out of their hiding and now with Felix back, they're the one group that seems to have gained the most from this battle, so what they do is really something we have to see, but all I can imagine is a lot more activity from them, they are far from over.
Meanwhile, we have characters such as Alice planning to have their own independent plotline, which is called Sons of Crimson (trailer down below). I don't personally know too much about it, Adam has shared some things with me but once again, I don't know if I have the right to share that. But it's clear that after the death of their sibling, Alice will be moving away from Heartania to sort of deal with their loss, but also get caught up in other events. I noticed that the tagline says “where you fall is now where you belong”, so this could mean that it's a phoenix out of the ashes storyline. I'm very interested to see where this goes, and I wish Adam the best of luck with it (we'll never forgive you for Crimson though.)
And last but not least, Jade. Jade has been with The Broker for quite a while, so her leaving The Broker and possibly The Citadel in a time like this, is pretty big. Jade is still quite an independent character, and with Jessica hunting them, we don't know what is going to happen. I can tell you that Arla is working with me on a little plot called 'Eyeglass' which will involve Jade investigating the death of her cousin, Scarlett Blythe, so that's going to be pretty interesting. As for the direct aftermath of Jade following the day after the battle, we just don't know what's going to happen, so it will be interesting to see how Jade reflects on her time with The Broker, how she comes to wanting to investigate Scarlett's death, etc.
Anyway, that's all I have for Emergency Virtue as of now, thank you for reading, I hope you take my words into consideration and thank you for your support in Insurgency, it wasn't easy but it was worth it.