Children of the Crystals

I am planning on writing, for Camp WriMo, my take on Final Fantasy which for legal reasons, I can not publish in any format that will get me money, but I'm going to write it anyway because maybe if I put it out there on the forums and try to get the attention of Square Enix themselves, this will actually be the next Final Fantasy game.

For those who don't remember what I posted before about this, the working title is Children of the Crystals, and it will focus on three people, a white mage named Ariana, a magitek spellblade named Kelsus, and a dark knight named Gevurah. Ariana and Kelsus are the mst recent chosen of the Church of the Crystals who are on a quest to fulfill their destiny to serve the church and defend the allied nations against the demons that continually invade from the other hemisphere. Gevurah is the prince of an empire that wants to undermine the church and take over the world for themselves, but he has doubts about his father's ambitions and wants to protect Ariana and Kelsus from the imperial troops that hunt them through their journey.

In the beginning, there were four gods who created the world together. They made the world with five regions, each had one to shape and populate as they saw fit, with the fifth region being a common territory where all could gather to live in harmony. However, one race took up te role of leadership and quickly became corrupt tyrants who oppressed the other three races. One race rebelled immediately, another joined the rebellion, and the last race, humans, hesitated out of fear that if the rebellion failed it would make the situation worse. The tyrants were outnumbered, but they were ruthless enough to outpower their enemies and managed to completely wipe out the race that led the rebellion, and were soon to finish off another race. The gods had sworn to remain out of mortal affairs and give them free will, but in light of the genocide they were compelled to intervene. At the divine council, the truth came out that the entire conflict had been masterminded by the god that created the tyrants, no longer content to share the world they had made together, he intended to conquer the whole world for himself. Since the gods were immortal, death was not an option, so the only solution was to neutralize his power by crystallizing him, but the price was that the other gods would get crystallized as well. With their master defeated, the tyrants retreated into exile in their native land while the other two surviving races hid the crystal of the evil god and revered the others. The Church of the Crystals has maintained peace between the two races in their four nations for a thousand years, but twenty-two years short of the millenium, two of the three known crystals shattered. The shards were collected at the shrine of the remaining extant crystal, and it was discovered that when the shards of the crystals were presented by members of the two races of opposite genders, it would summon an avatar of the god of the crystal that appeared to annoint them for some reason that the church speculates is important. The church holds these sacred champions as leaders, but the land that has long been neutral territory has given rise to an empire that believes that the shattered crystals mark the end of the time of the gods and that humans must become independent of such magic. Now the three allied nations are torn between invading demons and usurping heretics and the fate of the world falls on three young heroes caught in the middle.

Kindle Worlds coming to an end

I recently got an e-mail from Amazon saying that Kindle Worlds is being discontinued. This is a bit of a problem for me because I have two books through Kindle Worlds that will no longer be available come August. I would like to draw attention to this situation primarily due to how much I would like people to get these books while there is still time.

Dragon Hand is from the Foreworld Saga which focused on a group similar to the Knights Templar and their various adventures over the course of history, primarily the Mongol Invasion of Hungary in the thirteenth century. My take on this series was basically to place the recurring cast of Final Fantasy in this historical context and run a story that is realistic but features the familiar tropes as if they had actually happened in a world without magic or monsters and was basically boring history with a humorous twist for those in on the joke. I was actually quite proud of this and I was considering doing a sequel that took place during the Renaissance with the descendants of the characters from this book dealing with Machiavelli and Da Vinci in a bizarre secret war, but that will not be happeeing now. Also not happening, an Assassin's Creed tribute concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls, specifically one scroll regarding a psalm and perhaps a few others, starting with when the scrolls were written at Qumran, the legacy of the scribe carried on by an Assassin years later, and another later descendant in Elizabethan England who finds himself embroiled in a secret conflict over scripture that was lost to history. Sadly, while the other idas did not finish forming in my mind in time to beat Kindle Worlds submission deadline, this one is still available until August 29 so get it now!

My other book, which I am slightly less proud of, was Surface, from the Silo Saga. WOOL was the story of the survivors of an apocalypse in underground bunkers known as silos because they were built in the shape of silos but underground. For those who lived in the silos, the world outside was known only from a video feed that showed a barren crater surrounding the only door they had to the outside world and nobody actually went out there except fools who were ready to die. Over the course of the original novels by Hugh Howey, a woman named Jule discovers that her silo is one of fifty and that they were part of a plan that not only prepared for the apocalypse but actually caused it as well. After connecting with the last survivors of another silo, about a dozen of them give or take, she figures out a way for them to escape beyond the wasteland of the silos, which as it turns out is really only an area outside of Atlanta, Georgia, and while the rest of humanity has been eliminated, the world is otherwise far more inhabitable than they have been led to believe. The original story says the plan was for five hundred years, but Jule aborts it after only two hundred and fifty. It also implies that most of the silos remained as they were after the events of WOOL. I read these books with the intention of writing my own Kindle World story and the big story seed planted in my mind was, what happened to the other silos? about forty of the fifty continue to go on as they were, while a few were destroyed and some others figure out what was going on and hide from mission control. My story is how at the end of the five hundred years, the last surviviors of each silo leave, some allied to explore the new world and encounter the desendants of Jule and her fellow escapees and the others who continued to operate under the mission guidelines and are surprised to learn that the plan went sideways hard. I wrote this story in about two or three weeks and tried to publish it fast because my original title got stolen by another and I think my second title got stolen too, so I needed to get it out before somebody stole this idea too. I learned the hard way that stories should not be rushed, and this book is not great, but I don't completely hate it, I just have to be honest that this is not my best work and I hesitate to make this the first book of mine anyone ever reads.

Well, there they are, please get them before they're gone.

I'm on Twitch now...sort of

I just got a Twitch account and I don't really know what I'm doing with it, so bear with me. As far as I can tell I can really only use it through my PS4, although I guess I can use my PC. I am mostly playing Dissidia in preparation for tournaments for the rest of the season/month. I'm pretty sure I know how to share that as soon as I get good enough that I think anyone actually wants to watch me. I also want to play Final Fanatasy XV Comrades while my Play Plus account is active, so that will bewhat I do after the tournament season is over. I'm also playing Dragon Quest Builders and if anyone wants to watch that, I'll put that up after Play Plus expires. I'm in chapter 3 of 4 in Dragon Quest Builders story mode and when I'm done with the story I may work on the sandbox freestyle to buildthe Shrine of the Golden Dragon from 7th Moon, then I'll probably retire from that game. When I'm done with Dragon Quest Builders, I'll probably go back and forth between Dissidia and FFXV Comrades, and even when I finish the story modes, I'll probably still keep playing as long as anyone cares to watch. I also have Uncharted 4 and if anyone wants to watch me play through the whole thing with no idea what I'm doing at all, I'll work that into rotation. If I can figure out how to do this  from my laptop I'll play my own original 7th Moon I made with RPG Maker MV. I haven't actually started anything yet because I really don't know what I'm doing yet and I'm trying to se if I can post my 7th Moon trailer just to have something on my Twitch at the top of Toonami at 10:30 ESTtonight, if that doesn't work, check back tomorrow and see what I've got and wish me luck on figuring this out.

Final Fantasy Dissidia NT tournament is tomorrow and I'm still looking for a team and if I can make this work, look for Kefka under the tag Hidariude7.

Flower City Comic Con

Flower City Comic Con was largely a bust for me, but I do not blame the con, they did the best they could with a great venue, many great guests and exhibitors and a decent turnout of con attendees, sometimes business is just slow and that's the way it goes, just bad luck. Or maybe I suck, either way, I don't blame the awesome convention because I'd still like to go back again even though I didn't sell well, because maybe next year I'll have more traction.

My biggest moment was when I got an offer to turn Superfrenemies into a web series, which hopefully will be hilarious when we finally get around to it, and believe that I will be promoting the hell out of it when it does happen. The second coolest thing to happen was meeting actor Erick Avari on the way to the bathroom and realizing I left my phone to recharge at my table so I couldn't get a picture. My third biggest moment was finding a tiny Wartortle figure I had never seen before and adding it to my collection, which makes number three because there really isn't anything else noteworthy that happened, I sat at my table and did the same stuff I aways do with nothing else noteworthy happen because that's what happens when you are an exhibitor in artist alley, you miss everything. Everything, that is, except the cosplayers I will leave you with now.

Final Fantasy, Sandman and Flower City Comic Con

Final Fantasy gets top billing this week not only because I am getting into Final Fantasy Dissidia NT, but also because Record Keeper got an unteresting update to reinvent itself that I want to report on. I didn't have time to finish another volume of Sandman, but I've read enough to make some larger realizations about the series.

Final Fantasy Record Keeper got a major update this week overhauling it's interface and introducing a new mode called the Record Dungeons covering Corrupted Paintings. This is actually a big deal for this game because the Record Dungeons actually allow you to travel around inside the Final Fantasy worlds and truly experience the story. When this game was originally released, the format reduced the games to just battles. This is fun enough, and it was workable enough based on the system set up for All The Bravest, but since Brave Exvius and Mobius raised the bar for storytelling and overall gameplay for both the platform and the company, Record Keeper has started to feel antiquated and overly simple, and ultimately too repetive to keep players interested when the company has better ways to spend your time. I've only played through one dungeon so far, but it looks promising; the Record Dungeon starts with Final Fantasy VII being played through again, but now Tyro, the player avatar, gets inserted inside the story interacting with the characters. Battles are roughly the same, but now the party is adjusted to the story so you can play through it as it was meant to be, serving the story better than the original format. You can still play the higher level challenges, everything that was there before is still there, but thanks to special restrictions on the Record Dungeon, they can be enjoyed equally well by everyone new and old to the game. If you are a Final Fantasy fan and you haven't tried Record Keeper, now is the time to jump in.

I have been practicing hard at Dissidia and I think I'm getting better, but I am kind of cheating by only playing against the lowest level AI, when I play any kind of real challenge I still get my ass handed to me. At least I'm getting to the point where I know what is going on around me and I can figure out how to play, but I have to say, the controls are still kind of awkward and the fact that fights are 3-on-3 means that whether you are playing with AI or actual players, you only have control of about one third of the action, and when you activate your summon, you're down to a quarter of control. I suppose this is the same in any team game, but is really hard to get used to the fact that at any moment my team could win while I'm personally getting my ass kicked, and somehow stats can still list me as 1st place MVP. Basically, NT is a major button masher; aim roughly in the direction of your target and hope for the best. Strategy is difficult because your combos are kind of predetermined so it just doesn't matter. You have seven bravery attacks that are all preset by character and your only control is which direction your moving your character in, and honestly it's largely cosmetic, no matter what you do your just stealing bravery, different techniques rarely make any real difference other than what your character appears to be doing on screen, the effect remains the same. What you do have control over is your HP attack and your EX skills, but the HP attack doesn't provide a lot of variety, it's just that when you level up, you get a stronger HP attack, so just put the strongest one in that slot; the real strategy comes in with EX skills, your buffs and debuffs. EX skills actually do have different effects, and selecting the set that suits your playing style is very important, it can make the difference between whether you are actually making a difference or wasting time if you don't even understand what th abilities are actually providing. My winning combo that I recommend, especially for newbies who may not be sure what to do, is Poisonga for the forward skill, and HP Regen for the reverse. Both skills affect HP over time, Poisonga reduces it for your opponent, while Regen restores it for you, by settign Poisonga forward you can throw it at your opponent while chasing them which defaults Regen to the reverse which can be good because if you need Regen you may want to retreat while restoring yourself.

Now, if you're interested in the story, Dissidia is a whopper encompassing a whopping seventeen games at this point, that's all fifteen main numbered games as well as the spinoffs Tactics and Type-0 which didn't even make it to America. The whole thing starts with th original Final Fantasy, which if you don't know includes a time loop that apparently Dissida is a part of. In FF1, the Warriors of Light begin by hunting down a rogue knight named Garland and then proceed through a prophetic journey to fight the ultimate foe Chaos which turns out to be Garland who was transported through time at the same time you defeated him and that the every conflict on your entire adventure you've been on was created by him when he became Chaos two thousand years ago when he was sent through timeat the beginnign of your adventure. In the original release it's implied this time loop has been going on for a number of cycles, but the game is the last cycle because you actually defeat Chaos and break the loop. Dissidia numbers the cycles by specifying that it is the thirteenth cycle, and since it ends with the first frame of FF1, that game must be cycle 14. Here's where things get complicated, Chaos is opposed by a goddess named Cosmos and they each summon champions from alternate universes, specifically the other Final Fantasy games. In the original Dissida, there twenty two champions left for the final cycle including one hero and villain each from the first ten games plus Shantotto from FF11 and Gabranth from FF12, while the prequel in cycle 12 includes Lightning from FF13 as well as a few others from the other games but everyone else beyond the first thirteen games seems to be new now, so the implication is that since champions are lost with each cycle, the first included the full casts of all thirteen games but so far we have only seen the last two cycles. While the first two games gave everyone amnesia, NT allows all of them to remember everything that happened both in Dissidia and their own original games. This story has introduced two new gods, Materia and Spiritus, surrogates for the old gods who are desperately trying to sustain this world that shouldn't really exist as it was made for conflict and will only exist as long as there is a conflict to be fought in it, and therefore the godsmust generate conflict in order to sustain their world or die with it. The ten villains form the last two rounds are back along with fourteen heroes from those cycles (Kain joins Cecil from FF4) and Y'shtola, Noctis, Ramza and Ace get pulled in as well fresh and new to the surreal nightmare that is Dissidia. Square intends to add more characters, but for the American release, this is our core cast to join the Electronic Sports League (No DLC allowed). That's the setup, but beyond there really isn't much to the story that you need to know. In fact, with the idea of this being primarily for arena play, the story mode is a series of unlockable scenes that you earn from simply winning random battles, and even the story mode ending basically just says the characters leave behind a version of themselves in this world to keep fighting for the gods and what we're playing is just an infinite battle royale with no real point other than Final Fantasy fans pitting their favorites against each other.

Now as for Sandman, I'm reading Volume 7, Brief Lives, which draws attention to the Endless, which I find interesting and amusing. The Endless are the personifications of concpets that are so primal that they precede the gods and are confident they will outlast even the immortals. They are truly eternal which gives thema unique perspective, they know they ae better than everyone, but at the same time they are just seven people who realize that their existence is meaningless if they don't come down from their ivoy towers and interact with people like normal. This is interesting because they relate to each other most honestly as just another dysfnctional family, and they usually interact with other people as equals because they are just over reminding everyone how high and mighty they are, at least until someone is arrogant enough to think they are superior to anyone, then the endless put them in their place. Dream has befriended William Shakespeare, the Fairies, and the gods of many pantheons and treats all of them with the same respect as the ordinary mortals whose lives he extends on a whim to serve his realm and sate his loneliness. But if some dumb fool witch or goddess actually acts like she is above the others and dares to talk down to the mortals while in the same breath approaching Dream like an equal, he reminds them he is even farther beyond them than they are beyond the mortals. And then when his business is done and he's made his point, he goes back to something as simple as having dinner with his sister or going on a date with a goddess and casually acts as if it's just as normal to have an amicable break up as condemn an ex to Hell. The grand beauty of this series is it's simplicity, Neil Gaiman's writing style doesn't suggest anything impossible for me to write myself, what sets him apart is the scope of context, to envision the mightiest beings imaginable, and then make them seem as normal as you and me. In some ways the Endless are even more normal than the mortals in the story, as if the point is that in the short sightedness of mortals who know they only have about a hundred years at best to accomplish everything, those who are hundreds of years old tend to have already crossed off everything on their bucket list and are kind of over it, and those who have literally been around since the beginning of time really have seen it all and it is impossible to impress them. It makes me want to befriend a deity and go out for drinks, but we can't all be that lucky I guess.

My biggest news is that next week will be my first time at Flower City Comic Con, so if you are in the Rochester Area, please come down and see me and buy a book at my booth, I will give my usual report of the cosplayers and other crazies that come by. For those who cannot join me in person, please click the links at the side and buy a copy of my book online.