Be sure to comment!Very well. This will be interesting.
Let's get the ball rolling. We need to field some more ideas. Before we get to business, all participants please read what's up at
http://www.chronocompendium.com/CrimsonEchoes/Sidequests.html .
We should probably take things from a character's point of view:
64999998 B.C. Agent and Data CubeCharacter Focus: Unknown, Ayla?We wanted to involve Yaluk here. I may have the answer. The girl may have been abducted to a very tough part of the terrain with many hills, holes, and trees. Navigating this would normally take a very long time, but perhaps Yaluk and the Reptites know the area. Yaluk in fact does, but wants a trade in exchange for helping them. My idea is that Yaluk hands them a strange device; she explains that like the datacube they seek to recover, it's a small storage devices containing the history of the Reptite timeline. Yaluk asks the party to make sure Belthasar works to decipher the language and then present their history to the world so that even if it is their fate to die, they at least have some existence. This is a bit of an emotional moment...Ayla admires how Yaluk is fighting to keep her world alive, even if only in the minds of humans. They take the device and rescue the datacube, and everything else happens according to what's on the sidequest page.
64999998 B.C. Rainbow ShellBut should we rather keep that Yaluk thing for a trade for information about the Rainbow Shell? It all depends. We could really do something interesting with this...perhaps Yaluk only allows the Rainbow information if you do try to make Belthasar decode the DragDex. Robo could find something shocking...but I don't know what. We need input here.
11998 B.C. Ultimate BeastCharacter Focus: UnknownWho can we give some character development to here? Is there anything we can do to make this...more interesting? Crono focus, maybe?
11998 B.C. Zeal QuestCharacter Focus: Magus?In line with Magus's becoming Magil -- in effect losing the absolute negative attitude and becoming more of this interesting, "beautiful person" (as Serge calls him), I'm thinking he might have a reason to go to Zeal one last time. I also want to involve the Dreamer's Wing. But of course, Magus gets an awful lot of development everywhere else, so maybe we can add another underused character like Robo. In fact, that would work well with the dreams if we could avoid rehashing Data's TNG stuff. So perhaps Magus leaves for Zeal suddenly, and the party (with Robo for some reason) pursue him. They look for a while but cannot find him. Exhausted from prior adventuring, they decide to take a nap, hoping he'll turn up. We get to see the dreams of those who take a nap, with Robo last -- he doesn't get to dream, but rather reflects. We cut to Magus staring on a cliff, silently thinking. We perhaps hear him think a couple things in line with deciding to live avidly for once, and noting that life perhaps doesn't have to be an eternal nightmare...and behind him come Janus and Schala. Janus is alarmed, wondering who this frightening man is. We see some very juicy, interesting dialogue before Magus decides to test Janus and Schala, making for an interesting battle (though motivating Schala to fight might be hard). Magus encourages them and tells them to return to Zeal Palace. He then enters Enhasa and goes to sleep himself. We see his dream.
Robo then wakes up while the others are sleeping and heads out to a balcony on Enhasa, where the three Gurus are talking. We hear the scene DK and I described above. Two of the Gurus leave and Robo comes out to see Melchior, who assumes he is one of Dalton's golems or some other creature (though is pleasantly surprised at Robo's intelligence and make). They discuss dreams, with Melchior noting the importance of being able to sink into another realm devoid of meaning or importance to real life. Robo gets the idea for a dream circuit, and the two wish each other well. In the morning, Magus rejoins the party.
1 A.D. Beat the ColiseumCharacter Focus: UnknownSince this one can be completed well before the official sidequest chapter, I'm not sure what to do here. Perhaps we can make the final relic for the Museum quest appear here. I had this crazy idea about a kingdom in between Zeal's fall as Guardia's rise; it united the tribes, but eventually collapsed (perhaps it used the Flame, making that statement in Cross about civilization
s true). The prize could be an ancient manuscript documenting it and some armor. The manuscript would be ripe for the museum, as it'd give the historians information about something they'd never known of previously.
1 A.D. The SubjugationCharacter Focus: Unknown Marle?We've always talked about how Choras used to be its own kingdom. I had an idea. Now that Cedric the Executor has wiped Antaeus off the map, he has one last thing to do to consolidate his power -- he wants to meet with all the tribes and officially declare his sovereignty. Guardia historians made this look like a pleasant event, but the party in 1 A.D. only hear of this "subjugation," where Cedric will declare himself king and definitely seize control of the other tribes.
But this is where my idea ends. The leader of Choras, perhaps named Cambyses (father of Cyrus the Great in Persian history), would be in attendance, and perhaps Cedric would have those who disagreed with him killed. Without messing up time, I was thinking that maybe Marle, who'd be in attendance, would outright try to stop Cedric from killing someone like Cambyses. This would drastically alter history by ensuring that Choras, weakened from their leader's assassination and falling into ruin sometime before 590 A.D., would still be a strong island nation. But this would have to be a linear sidequest, since the party couldn't time travel again until they corrected things. The Epoch could be stolen, but thats a bit of a tired cliché at this point...I think the interesting part would come from Marle realizing that she has to murder someone in cold blood to pick up the slack for Cedric.
602 A.D. Defeat KasmirCharacter Focus: Mystical Knights602 A.D. Train the KnightsCharacter Focus: GlennAnything we can do to make this a bit more interesting, rather than a story about Glenn following Tata around? Perhaps a conflict happens somewhere?
1002 A.D. Valle CrimseCharacter Focus: CronoThis is directly related to the master weapon / armor quest, which won't be decided until we finalize the weapon / armor lists...which I think was done. I need to check out the ROM and just take the weapon names from there. At any rate, I'm worried this might be a bland one. There's the discovery of the ancient monastery and the guy who wields the Geistrand, which could be interesting if we used that idea, but I'm worried about rehashing old honor / knight themes. We could make it a little critical, though. Perhaps the old knight would ask about life outside, and if women still cook while men fight -- in effect showing his age and a little backwards thinking via sexism. After talking with the party he says that even if the armor he gives Crono isn't used to defend Guardia, he's sure something good will come of it. But before I ask how Crono might be developed here, so we want to stick with this scenario? Is it too bland, or could it work? My idea was to have a bit of a custom, autumn-themed tileset.
1002 A.D. MuseumCharacter Focus: UnknownWe can come back to this one by picking random points in the story and leaving special items for the player to pick up (like...that animal hide from 64999998 B.C. might have some use later on if Glenn takes it to the museum).
2302 A.D. Ultimate WeaponsAs Crono collects stuff, Melchior realizes that he might be able to enhance several items with his new technique for extracting and molding core Rainbow Shell material. But we'll come back to this one. It can involve several trips to the different eras.
~
Questions in summary:
1. Any other way Ayla could get some screen time for the datacube effort?
2. If we use the DragDex idea, can we do something with it in 2302 A.D. and involving Robo? What about the Rainbow Shell?
3. What can we do to make the ultimate beast quest interesting? Character focus?
4. Zeal quest: sound good?
5. Character focus for Coliseum?
6. 1 A.D. -- ideas and suggestions? Throw in some legends? Marle?
7. Train the Knights -- something to make it more interesting?
8. 1002 A.D. -- thoughts?
9. Lastly, is there somewhere we can involve Gaea's Navel? That did strike me as sort of interesting.
We'll pick up the museum and ultimate weapons later.