Broken Promises Fluff Discussion

[Clockwork_Fish]

On 9/22/2017 at 8:14 PM, Da Git said:

I'm not really sure if Titania is resurrecting them or just bringing new life. The badlands used to be a desolate wasteland (because Nythera sucked it dry to sustain Titania), but with just her presence, plants started growing and now it's basically a forest. Same for the Autumn Court. And now apparently, she can do it for sentient beings... 

She's getting stupidly powerful at this rate...

This is something I find rather odd about Titania, and I hope it's something that is discussed in later books and becomes a point of conflict for her.  She's a zombie animated by the Grave Spirit, but she commands life itself.  Now, so far that life she's created is pretty messed up.  There's a description of the brambles that have sprung up around Titania's domain in Through the Breach, and from the sound of it, the Autumn queen is the queen of spiky toxic death weeds from hell.  And blood thirsty dog people.  I can't help but feel like there's something wrong with her magic, and I hope that gets developed.

Still, she feels like she, I dunno, stole Lilith's portfolio.  Commanding the land of Malifaux was her thing, but I guess Titania does it better?  And she out-magic'd and out schemed Zoraida.  I guess she'll beat the Dreamer at cricket next.  Probably plays a mean game of poker, too.

While I like Titania in terms of game mechanics and aesthetics, from a story and character perspective I find her a bit one note.  Her dialogue and inner monologue are all variations on "I am the Autumn Queen, obey me."  There's no real conflict with her, which is a bit of departure from the rest of the book four masters.  Sandeep is the wise teacher who struggles with literal and figurative demons.  Nellie sold out her professional ethics for her dream job.  Reva doesn't know if she's insane or a pawn of the Grave Spirit, or something else.  Titania has been asleep for centuries, turned into a zombie, and should at least be confused at the new world she's found herself in but nope, she just curb stomped Lilith and Zoraida, and she's turning the badlands into a brambly nightmare, and bending the Neverborn to her will.

Anyhoo, beyond that, I liked the fluff in this book.  The Guild entry was fun (poor Lucius).  Perdita's interaction with Sonnia was a bit over the top, but I liked her awkward interaction with Hoffman.  Ten Thunders was probably my favourite.  The ... title fight was a bit abrupt, but that in itself raises questions and future plot hooks.  Was Misaki really that good or did he let her win?  How is she going to feel about this later?

Regarding the Arcanist story, I don't have a problem with the deal Ironsides struck; I would think the Thalarian doctrine would be in favour of replacing plantation slavery with industry.  But freeing the slaves doesn't instantly create wage equity, and the Guild has employed convict labour in Malifaux.  Would that include debtors prisons?  This could turn out to be a monkey paw wish for Toni.  As an aside, I noticed that when Sonnia tells Ramos that "she" sold him out, his mind immediately goes to Rasputina, Kaeris and Ironsides...but not Colette?  Because he treats her like a disposable washcloth, and she hates his guts.  Maybe it was an oversight by the writers, but then again, he's not really a people person.  He could very well be that stupid.

[Rathnard]

On 9/23/2017 at 8:14 AM, Da Git said:

I agree with everything @izikial just said. For me, stories and poems, while amazing, belong in pop-out or Cronicles; not their bios. The Book 4 Bandersnatch entry was useless for telling us what it is.

The Autumn knights entries were similar, although they had their info covered in an Upgrade section pop-out. 

If you're after more background on some of these characters then the TTB books can be a great source for it. For instance the Bandersnatch has an entry in Under Quarantine (IIRC) and the Autumn Knights get a pile of extra detail in Nythera. I know it's not exactly what you're asking for, but I thought I'd point it out nonetheless.

[yool1981]

So I finally got the .pdf version of the book and read the stories.

As usual, the Wyrd fluff is well written and very nice to read so congrats to the writers.

However, I found some of the plots to be lacking flesh or being really weak. So all in all it is my least favourite book so far in terms of fluff.

The only redeeming fact for me is that I found the NB fluff awesome and I can't wait to get a TTB book around the NB, describing the Nephilim tribes.

Below spoilers.

------------------------

-----------------------

------------------------

Guild:

The gathering of coworkers at the coffee machine and the bickering over the poker game is not my cup of team. I feel the Guild's head staff looks more and more like the X-Men and less and less like the facist Big Brother that was so interesting in the former fluff.

Lucius is too ridiculous. I preferred his old creepy self. I hope his fluff will become more fleshed out with Titania taking the lead of the NB.

Arcanists:

Many comments have been made and I share them. The way the deal is made does not seem realistic to me. The aftermath is even more difficult to swallow. It is unlikely that Ironsides has an omnipotent leadership in the Union and many Arcanists will be pretty pissed especially if she is called in to be a witness as Sonnia implies.

The 10T fluff hints at potential later troubles but in fact they should start at once. Short of producing proof that Ramos killed the former Union president, I don't see the miners just waiting and doing nothing while their hero is in prison. There should be uncontrolled riots all over the place.

Let us pass over the Guild so quickly passing revolutionary laws in the States...

Additionally, why is Rasputina, host of December, giving anyone access to Witness' prison? Isn't that counterproductive to allow another Tyrant to be potentially set free?

Finally, why is Rasputina letting Sonnia have access to the Peaks? There is bad blood between the 2.

Ressers:

Despite the fact  that McMourning suddenly becomes an eavesdropping spy and that it does not fit with his former stories, I like that the fluff of this character is evolving.

Neverborn:

Awesome I liked every bit of it.

Outcasts:

I found it quite boring and the gathering is quite ridiculous at times. Same X-Men feeling as the Guild.

Gremlins:

Same as the Outcast, with the extra bit of Zoraida's character losing some of her mystery and creepiness.

10T:

Interesting. The duel though is far too quick and the politics oversimplified.

[Gnomezilla]

Post previews aren't displayed on the main page at the moment, but the habit of leaving spoiler space is a good one to keep. Otherwise I just know that the preview would pop back into existence and make a hypocrite out of me.

@Seadhna I think the word we were both hunting for earlier was not 'fanservice' but 'wish-fulfillment'. I agree with you generally that I liked the allusions and puzzles of previous books better...but I acknowledge that sometimes the relic hammer of directness is necessary, and @izikial actually talked me around to agreeing with his viewpoint about the model bios being better when more factual (I liked the offbeat ones, but he's right, it's safer to go off-beat in a vignette or a sidebar). I definitely didn't like the extra-short bios, though. They were short enough at the standard length. The textbook-like layout (possibly cross-pollinated from The Other Side?) works well even if it was a tad jarring at first. I absolutely miss the vignettes/checklist of masters not mentioned in their stories.

 

Guild: Someone said that it felt like a script for The Office or similar sit-com. I don't like those kinds of comedies to begin with--there may for some people be relief in tuning in to people being realistically awful, and then cutting the show off with the remote as a substitute for strangling them in real life--but I don't feel that. So I can only imagine that the stories are venting a bit of stress for someone else, and just read along knowing I'm going to miss something. (Still, it's a better premise to start from than Shifting Loyalties' comic-book premise for a Guild humor story. Closer to a universal appeal.)

What good does it do to the Thunders' plans to remove the runes that are strengthening the barriers between worlds? Why did Perdita miss her chance to talk to the one Guildie who might have known something about abominations and get some clue to the troubles coming out of the crater? Is there a pun I am missing between croquet and cricket? My ability to spot a pun never did come back fully. (Also a mild cross-reference which I eventually found again in Divergent Paths of all places.)

I was quite pleased and gave much credit to the descriptions of Sonnia in the midst of her healing, which credit was immediately lost with Lady Justice turning her head, with the implication to look, at items which caught her attention.

 

Resurrectionists: I'm more in awe knowing how blasted fast a good portion of this had to be rewritten. Inspiration is a weird little beast, isn't it. Although not nearly as weird as ever hearing McMourning yell at someone else about discretion.

This was a fairly self-contained story and I don't have any questions about how it moved the storyline forward.

 

Arcanists: I disagree with some of the previous posters. Ramos does know people and he was right to skim over Colette who had neither the knowledge nor motive to be included in that list. Also followed along and watched Mason have to disentangle the readers' mistrust of the note, but I've been pondering over that one and don't see a more decisive way to have written those scenes that still kept the denouement where it needed to be. Setting that story just depended on a background knowledge of, and trust in, Guild pre-eminence on Earth that we, who have followed Malifaux and its fallible Guild for years, just don't have.

That ending does make me sad that one of the outcomes of Divergent Paths didn't happen: one of the inquisitive child's paths not taken had her inspired by Ironsides and teaching herself and tiny teddy to brawl. It would have gone well to have her mirror Toni wondering if she would bring hope to others. The self-righteous man came to Arcanists at the end, yes, but his part in their story has yet to come. Marcus has accumulated more humans under his banner, but they have not yet been woven into the greater storyline.

I will support the author and point out that Guild can (and should!) bring an upgrade to make healing impossible for a turn--it's non-master, but we can just put it on a witchling handler off-screen.

 

Neverborn: I'm going to have to start reading into Celtic myth, aren't I? That heart isn't something I'm familiar with but sounds like something which ought to exist. What of the water creatures? Am I missing an allusion there, as well? About their existence? About the wounds that they deal? And on the topic of allusions, I never did get an answer after the story Unmask! Unmask! about why the ritual which alerted every construct and living thing with construct parts also attracted Lilith's attention. Now she's been put into a pit reeking of undead energies. What do you get when you cross a construct with an undead?...

The trickster woman of Divergent Paths came here at the end, and now Nytemare has a potential host physically within Malifaux and a potential host Earthside. This is going to be a problem. It probably already is a problem.

Thank you a thousand times for not continuing to give the Dreamer rhyming slang. I don't care how appropriate it is. It is the worst to interpret, absolutely the worst. I'd rather plow through ten pages of public-school slang than try to reverse engineer the kenning of a guttersnipe.

 

Outcasts: *snort* *giggle* "Freikorps-land" (Ok, so my taste in comedy isn't sophisticated, per se. It just runs more to sketch shows and one-liners than sit-coms.)

Sure, let's try and move what's probably the focal point of the spell which mended the first Breach. I'm sure there's no way whatsoever in which that will backfire. Hard to believe that idea came out of the same fount of sense which looked at a Malifauxian artifact and decided that writing it off as a loss was smarter than waiting for a buyer and being driven insane/having his soul harvested/corrupted into necromancy or worse.

The inquisitive child of Divergent Paths came here, and will go along to this new town, and I have to keep reminding myself how much of her story isn't written yet. So unspeakably happy with the little mechromancer's name. I don't know if you intended 'the light, corrupted' or 'the Mary Magdalene' for its meanings, but they work.

...and will someone please relieve Karina of her treasures? Hannah has quite enough to do without also having to redecorate her office.

 

Gremlins: The...social commentary of this would've escaped me entirely if someone hadn't mentioned it, so I'm most grateful to whoever did.

And what's so wrong about an airshipocracy, anyway?--

 

Ten Thunders: --because an airshipocracy, at least, wouldn't've had a Brewie or a Wesley miscounting the votes as the Ten Thunders wished them to be counted. Trust in the 'ship, my gremmies.

This is another story where the discussion cleared up points I would have wondered about otherwise, or honestly, not even perceived. Thank you, faction advocates, for connecting the earlier Chronicles story with the 'new' character in here, and connecting her with the abbreviation of the final fight. And it isn't abbreviated because this author doesn't know how to write fights; I very much enjoyed reading the parts that focused on one character's arc through each skirmish. It definitely would've been stranger without the exposition added, though.

[Mike Wallace]

On 10/24/2017 at 12:50 AM, Gnomezilla said:

Resurrectionists: I'm more in awe knowing how blasted fast a good portion of this had to be rewritten. Inspiration is a weird little beast, isn't it. Although not nearly as weird as ever hearing McMourning yell at someone else about discretion.

When Wyrd sent the story my way I was giddy to write it and got it done in a weekend. It still needed a bit of editing though.

[Angelshard]

Is soul stone healing making a comeback? Seems to me there's a rather large focus on it, in most of the stories, considering it was removed in m2e.