#Mob boss Strife

[imagine-darksiders]

Mobsiders, chapter 1.

Timeless Unrest.

So, I'm trying something different here, this is a mafia au in which the Horsemen are mob bosses, and they take an interest in the Reader. This story will be set in the Universe of Darksiders, 2 years post-resurrection.

You are a self-proclaimed reporter, tasking yourself with hunting down a rumour that humans are being sold off-realm as slaves to a certain Demon Prince. At the centre of those rumours is one, particular family who control Haven City, and the Earth at large. You've been found out, and now you're going to have to meet the very beings you've been trying to expose.

--------

You’ve heard it said that a good journalist will face down threats every day in search of the truth, but a great journalist has already skirted so close to the truth that they’ve been privy to the inside of a burlap sack.

‘If there’s one thing to take out of this,’ you muse, panting for breath inside the coarse, stinking bag slung around your head as you’re dragged forwards down an unseen path, ‘At least I can finally say I’ve made it.’

Jesus… You’d only gone out to pick up your ration of milk for the week…

The passage of time seeps by at a disjointed rhythm when you can’t see. It seems only minutes ago you were trekking through the murky fog from your tiny, jerry-built apartment to the community centre near Fifth to collect your weekly rations. A small slip of card had been clutched protectively against your chest. On it, in little black writing was a short, unimaginative list.

'Bacon.'

'Milk.'

'Cheese.'

'Eggs.'

'Water.'

Two years since the Great Waking has seen Humanity still struggling to cobble their lives back together, and although supplies aren't nearly as sparse as they were in those first few months of chaos and disorder, people are still being careful with what little they have.

You'd been fantasising about how soon you'd see the word 'chocolate' appear on the list when, from out of nowhere, there was a loud squeal of tyres on tarmac, and something came careening to a halt behind you.

Strangely, it took you a moment to register what you were hearing.

When it eventually clicked, the first thought that sprang to mind was, ‘Who the Hell has a working car?’ Your second thought came moments later when you wheeled around just in time to see two, suited men plunge a sack down over your head and heave you bodily into an old, rusty car.

In the struggle you dropped your precious ration card.

The jolt of panic that shot up your spine was so potent, you almost managed to lurch right out of their grasp.

They weren’t expecting you to put up a fight, you suppose.

But how could they not? One of the cruellest aspects of the Great Waking was that humanity didn’t come back as new-born souls who had no recollection of their past lives. Instead, in a sick twist of fate, everyone, yourself included, can still recall how they died.

It sure as Hell made you want to avoid meeting a similar fate ever again.

Which is partly why you’d all but exploded into action when you were grabbed, thrashing your limbs, kicking, lurching sideways, gnashing your teeth to try and catch the burlap between them and tear your way out from the inside if you had to.

With all the ceremony of tossing out a bag of rubbish, you were flung, yowling like a terrified bearcat, and the hands left you for all of a blessed second before your back hit a stiff, leathery surface that punched the wind right out of you.

You can still remember the morbid satisfaction of kicking out and striking something solid that went ‘crunch!’ when it connected with the heel of your shoe.

It wasn’t as satisfying moments later when you were slugged so hard in the cheek, your head snapped back and your vision exploded into colourful speckles of light.

An engine had rumbled to life underneath you as car doors slammed shut, and through the ringing in your ears and swimming head, you caught snippets of conversation, mostly revolving around a broken nose and a call for tissues.

You have no idea how long you were in that car for. All you remember is just how peculiar it was to be in one again. Even more peculiar to realise it had been over a century since you sat on a leather seat with an engine purring against your spine.

You still fought, of course.

Borrowing strength from your fear, you struggled furiously against a weight settled on your legs and a pair of hands that kept your flailing wrists in their vice-like grip.

In hindsight, you regret fighting so hard in the car.

Now that you’re on your feet again, stumbling blindly through an unknowable building with half a chance at running away, you’re exhausted, mouth hoarse and dry from shrieking and limbs that tremble with terror and fatigue.

Your throat aches now, thick with emotions, and your cheek isn’t faring any better either, throbbing like it has its own heartbeat.

Even without the tears clinging to your lashes and muddying your view, the path ahead is still obscured from sight by your scratchy, unconventional headgear.

You’re inside a building. You can deduce that much.

And from the sounds of dress shoes clacking hurriedly on the floor below you, it’s either somewhere that’s been newly built, or a place that had remained miraculously untouched during the stretch of time between Humanity’s extinction and their resurrection.

The surface below you is perfectly and unusually smooth from what you can tell as you’re dragged along by two unknown thugs, neither of whom seem hindered by your stubborn efforts to dig the heels of your plimsolls into the floor, hoping to trip on a notch or bump.

It’s only been two years since the Great Waking, and all the buildings in Haven City have one thing in common that this place doesn’t.

Structurally, every single one of them is as rickety and unstable as a two-legged horse.

Yet this place has no creaky floorboards, no potholes left over from where the ground was blasted apart by a falling meteorite, no dip, sag, scoop or pocket to trip yourself up on and shake your kidnappers loose.

You try to focus on the pounding of footsteps, not your heart, nor the abject terror that tries to sink its teeth into you every time those bruising hands clench all the tighter around your arms and heave you upright again when your legs yield underneath you.

Eyes pinched shut, you force a kerosene-drenched breath in through your mouth and choke it out again, blowing droplets of sweat and tears off your upper lip.

You nearly bite your damn tongue off when ahead of you, something unlatches – ‘a door?’ – and you’re readjusted in the men’s grasp, two hands on each arm, keeping you marching forwards.

The toes of your plimsolls squeak against the hard floor as you’re dragged over a small bump and onto a different surface entirely.

Softer. More giving. The footfalls are quieter…

Carpet, you surmise.

“Ah, finally!”

Your hammering heart seizes up at the sound of a booming, unexpected voice that filters in through the fibrous gaps in your burlap prison. You’d almost grown used to the grunts and curses of the men hauling you along, it’s odd to hear actual words for a change.

“Boss,” one of the men at your side speaks up, his clear, nasally tone confirming he isn’t the one you’d kicked in the face, “Got ‘er right here, Boss! Just like you said.”

The breath hitches in your chest and you wrack your brains to place the first voice as it speaks again.

“Oh for- C’mon, guys. The sack? Really?” a distinctly male voice complains.

Your ears catch the sound of metal clinking, heavy footsteps on the carpet as their wearer draws closer to you… He sounds big, weighty, far more so than either of the two who lugged you in here.

‘Shit…’ you think, breathing hard. And when nothing more helpful springs to mind…‘Fuck!’

Stealing an iota of adrenaline from somewhere deep inside your guts, you start to struggle in earnest again, lips stuffed together to stop yourself from letting out any pitiable whimpers of distress. You have an awful, awful suspicion about whose turf you’re on, and it has everything to do with the little, red notebook currently locked in the top drawer of your bedside table.

“Sorry, Boss,” the nasally man to your left responds, shifting on his feet, “Gave us a little more trouble than we was expectin’. Look what she did to poor Dimitri.”

There’s a pause, in which you assume he must finally see the extent of your efforts to escape the car.

“Yeah,” the stranger eventually says, “I noticed that… S’it bad?”

The man to your right – Dimitri, you infer – huffs out an acidic hiss through his teeth and starts to dig blunted fingernails into your sleeve, upping the pressure until you wince beneath the sack.

“Broke my fucken’ nose,” he sneers in a voice that’s thick and wet, as if he’s bunged up with a bad cold, “F’she knocked any teeth out, this little bitch’d be-“

“-HEY.”

It’s alarming how one simple word can crack across the room like a bolt of lightning, raising the hairs on the nape of your neck and causing Dimitri to choke on his tongue in his haste to fall silent. Instinctively, you flinch away from the shout, as far as the hands will allow, though you can’t help but notice that the men on either side of you do the same thing, each taking a quick, aborted step back before they seem to remember themselves and stop in their tracks.

Nobody says a word. You don’t because you’re loathe to draw that kind of wrath down on your own head, and the men don’t for much the same reason.

Another heavy boot falls to the carpet with a dull, metallic ‘clunk,’ far closer to you than it was before, and when its wearer draws in a breath, you can hear the creak and stretch of leather as it expands to compensate a prodigious chest.

… He’s standing directly in front of you…

“… I catch you usin’ that kind of language about this lady again,” the stranger growls, his once casual tone now deep and dark as a mineshaft, likely just as dangerous, “And I might just forget that you humans aren’t bulletproof.”

‘Humans…? Oh, God…’ Gulping audibly, you try to keep your breaths shallow and quiet; a difficult feat when the air around you is disturbed by the terribly familiar ‘click’ of a gun’s hammer locking into position.

From within the muffled pocket of your hood, the sound is almost deafening.

Throat closed around several, trapped sobs, you hold your breath and clench your eyes shut, expecting that at any moment, you’re going to hear a man die.

But then…

“Understood…” Dimitri says, hesitating for a second before he quickly adds, “Sir.”

How he managed to speak without his voice quaking, you’ll never know.

With bated breath, you wait for his Boss’s verdict.

When it comes, the stranger’s voice bounces back to its jocular lilt in a turnaround violent enough to leave you with whiplash.

“Good!” he announces promptly, “Can’t have her thinkin’ we’re a bunch of monsters.”

His tone shifts again as he aims it at you.

“Now then...”

Gentle, amicable, friendliness wrapped in a cloak of deception. You know how loud his voice can be, so this unexpected softness means nothing to you.

“Let’s get you outta there, n’ see that pretty face up close…”

Oh, if only you could will yourself to dematerialise and sink through the floorboards like you’ve seen so many demons do on a whim.

Finding your voice, you shake your head, eyes wild behind the sack as they flit from side to side. “Please,” you croak, fruitlessly trying to peel your arms away from the hands rooting you to the spot, “I-I haven’t seen your face, I don’t know who you are, just-!”

Enormous, unnaturally cool fingers brush against the bottom of the sack, wriggling under the twine and tugging the knot loose. In an instant, you reel backwards, throwing your head as far away from the touch as you can, chest heaving hysterically when the man simply follows your motions.

“Just let me go home!” you sob, realising that maybe you aren’t cut out for this, after all.

A reporter. You could spit at the idea now. What the Hell were you thinking? You could have taken up with the group who left to build farmlands outside the city. You could be relaxing on a maker-built porch right now after a hard day of planting those precious seeds an angel found in Svalbard.

You could have picked up a hammer and set to work patching the holes in a shelter's roof, or jumped in a wagon that trundles around the city, distributing supplies and medical aid.

There are no jobs anymore. People are too busy focusing on the rebuilding effort, trying to restore an entire world and its civilisation to something functional once again. Nearly everyone wants to help, in their own way.

And what did you decide to do, to help? You thought it would be a grand idea to pick up a pen and a notebook and chase down information, scribbling out newsletters from the rickety desk in your apartment and distributing them around the city by hand.

And that foolish decision has led you here, to your doom. You'd grown too cocky, thought nobody would pay attention to one, little human trying to track down the sources of rumours that people are being sold off-world as slaves.

A mellow chuckle rolls from a throat high above your head and resonates inside your ribcage. “Easy, sweetheart,” the stranger coos, gripping the sack and raising it carefully up over your face, adjusting easily to the way you twist your neck from side to side, “You’re all right.”

When the burlap finally pulls free of your eyes, you can’t keep yourself from squinting against the sudden intrusion of light, blinking rapidly to clear your vision.

“There you are,” the voice says, quiet with barely contained wonder.

Keeping your head locked straight ahead of you, you finally manage to peel your eyelids apart and free the tears that were trapped behind them. Little tracks roll down the curves of your cheeks and gather on your chin as the body in front of you comes into focus.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck. Fuck. And shit.

You’ve been flying too close to the sun, haven’t you, Icarus? Now you’re going to die, and what came of it? What was it all for? Exposing a corrupt family to the world. A world who could do nothing to fight back even if you armed them with knowledge?

There’s nowhere you can look that isn’t absolutely covered by armour. You can't even see the room beyond it.

A vast torso stretches across your field of view, protected entirely by segments of silver armour. Each interlocking part connects with another seamlessly to fit over the swollen muscles of a body built solely for destruction.

Every inch of it is marred with a constellation of scratches, welts, and age-old scorch marks tarnishing the silver black in places, and from waist to chest span three, distinct gouges that have torn through the armour entirely, leaving thin lines through the metal and giving you an uninterrupted glimpse of black, skin-tight leather beneath.

Something big had left those marks, and still he'd come out the victor.

Everything your bulging eyes take in attests to a life lived in battle, and a survivor of all that have made an attempt on his life.

You don’t want to look up. You’ve heard a rumour that to meet his eyes is akin to slapping a hungry bear on its snout. Your eyes can’t see high enough to glimpse the mask you suspect is tilted down at you anyway.

You know what you’ll see if you do. You know the man standing in front of you, perhaps not personally, perhaps more than you should, perhaps not at all. His name is scribbled on almost every page in your notebook.

Gritting your teeth, you swallow thickly and instead, allow your gaze to creep lower, away from the eyes burning a hole into the top of your head.

You regret looking down almost immediately when your stare lands on the butt of an enormous, silver revolver jutting from a holster strapped to his hips, so large that it would make any ordinary man who wields it look like a toddler trying to play with a cannon.

An audible whimper falls through your teeth as you flick your gaze sideways and see the second gun you already knew was there.

You swear you can feel several pints of blood drain from your face.

These guns are about as infamous as their wielder. And you’re standing within spitting distance of all three.

“O-oh, shit,” you stutter through buzzing teeth. And really, what else is there to say?

You’re in the den of one of the most dangerous beings in the Universe. One of four, in fact.

You’ve heard so many names accredited to him.

Endless Spirit of Timeless Unrest is your personal favourite for nothing else but the sheer pageantry of it.

He’s a killer, a monster, spreading desolation and terror everywhere he goes…

Worse still, before the End War and Earth’s downfall, you and everyone else assumed he was nothing more than a fairy-tale written into the pages of an old, allegorical book.

After all, a Horseman of the Apocalypse? It was always such an outlandish idea.

Until it wasn’t. Until he wasn’t.

“Hah…”

You give a start at the soft chuckle rumbling above your head.

“Not the reaction I was hopin’ for, but beggars can’t be choosers…”

You try to keep your tear-blurred vision on the armoured torso in front of you, but the decision to of inaction is stolen from you seconds later when a gargantuan, metal gauntlet rises up in front of your face.

Startling, you buck against the goons pinning you in place as he extends a finger and slips it underneath your chin.

You cram your lips together, fighting to stop that impossibly strong hand from tilting your head back.

Eyes rolling with fright, your face crumples and you let out a wheezing sob that catches in your throat as your gaze is forced up past a monstrous, armoured chest, then over a thick neck until finally, when you can hardly muster up the courage to draw in a rattling breath… there he is, staring down at you with eyes that exude all the qualities of a predator. Bright and yellow like melted gold, illuminating the silver helm that conceals every other feature from view.

Thick spikes of hair jut from the back of it, and you're reminded more of sharp, ebony horns belonging to that of a demon, rather than anything human.

Above you looms the man who holds Haven City and all the world in the palm of his unforgiving hand.

Of their own accord, your quivering lips peel apart and release his name into the air like a curse, uttered in terrified reverence.

“Strife.”

[turtleblogatlast]

I will never be over how good Leo and Hueso’s dynamic is and how both of them get so much out of having the other in their lives.

In Leo’s case, he gains that older male figure in his life that he is willing to trust and lower his walls for. He gains a confidant where he has none elsewhere, too busy keeping up his many masks with his family to ever consider showing them his true thoughts. He gains an authority figure who is willing to hear him out, no matter how reluctant said figure initially appears.

In Hueso’s case, Leo’s direct involvement in the skeleton’s life has undoubtedly benefited Hueso so unbelievably well. For one, it’s Leo’s choice to ask Hueso for help finding his brothers that ultimately leads to the clearing of Hueso’s Hidden City ban. Then, it’s Leo and Mikey that Hueso brings on to help him with two mob bosses, ending with the bosses no longer being a problem for Hueso. And of course, through Leo’s decision to come to Hueso for advice and later the slider’s insistence that Hueso try to make up with his brother, Hueso’s estranged relationship with Piel is finally mended.

Sure, Leo causes no small amount of strife and damages to Hueso’s business and person, and Hueso is often annoyed by and speaks callously to Leo, but there’s a reason Leo feels comfortable enough to continue going to Hueso, and there’s a reason Hueso ultimately always hears Leo out.

They really do end up feeling like a nephew and uncle, don’t they?

[bhaals-that-slay]

Honey goes farther then vinegar in the strife buisness.

Like, tyranny isn't built in fear or domination. For sure not on simple threats of firebombing somones house. Why the fuck would the lord enver gortash work with someone he has to threaten into subservience.

We KNOW gort uses his dick in politics, we KNOW he is the sexy lord of baldurs gate. Why has his character been turned into an archetype of a mob boss?

The Chosen are setup yo subvert their typical story archetypes anyways.

Bhaals - spawn is an admirer of the beauty of murder, not on mass but as individual art pieces.

Myrkuls chosen is simply a family man worn and wearing thin, not a power hungry self serving lich.

Banes chosen is still a scared child from hell, using subversive backroom tactics, using his goons to protect himself not a tuff boss strutting around the city throwing his weight around ruling with fear.

Serve cunt; not bombs

[samsspambox]

oh god ok much much thoughts i hope you don't mind my extremely rambly series of asks. first off, marius

I imagine Marius villain as that he wants to completely remake pax to be free of austin & giann's influence, and if he can't, destroy the company instead. because what if austin & giann never truly got over carenina's death?

austin subconsciously holds marius to the Giann Standard:tm: and is generally more absent in his life, sometimes ignoring marius' achievements (like winning the art competition at his school) for giann's events.

giann despises marius for taking away his mother, and makes no secret of that. austin doesn't notice (austin never notices), and only the staff saves marius from the worst of the bullying. (he would have died when he was six, if someone didn't alert giann. and even then, the saving was for the sake of his reputation, not because he genuinely cared about marius surviving)

but that doesn't matter now. as much as austin disliked him, he has no reason to return to the job. and even if austin really does suspect that marius took care of his brother (because he did. the body would never be found), and every conversation they have are a careful dance around the accusation, he would never know.

after all, his name starts with m. m for marius. (m for monster. and what can they say when the truth comes out? what can they say to a monster of their own making?)

-🍓

(why do i hurt marius like this when he's my fav?)

sorry for the incredibly late response to this strawberry nonnie i'm nothing if not a corporate slave to the government

bUT!!! vincent as a young hacker intrigues me 👀 like,,, i guess you could put him in luke's place? secret agent vincent kim but you decided if he's corporate spying or not LMAO!!

you're so right mob boss vyn richter sounds so good and delicious esp if you think about all the influences he has and, if he plays into Dad Haspran's hands, he can gain so much capitol. like. a whole ass king in stellis funded by his dad and his dad can't say shit bc he's reaping the benefits of increased imports and having a relationship with his son.

i do like the idea of artem being pushed to be an anti hero of sorts in the law industry, i think i still prefer blackmailed artem into helping bc after a while he'd become what he fought so valiantly against, yk? it's poetic but i won't deny mockingjay has a really good ring to it.

luke as a vigilante i can totally get behind, especially if you combine him being a bit of a labrat and concocting his own poisons or like making torture devices!!!

no but marius reinventing pax is so good, not just for a villain au but in general??? he does it out of grief and strife and to kick out all the people who oppose him and i'm gnawing on this like a dog to a bone nonnie i like this one a lot it's so poetic and it can take so many meanings and it could mean that marius killed giann for the throne bc he's a king after all

also you 🤝 me

villans are also pretty neat

thank you for dropping by nonnie!!

[leithanienwnt]

Okay, I went back to Design of Strife and played S-1, and it was actually a pretty good map. It was way more about managing burst windows, and the way the boss is on the outside and switches sides while the mobs are in the middle was really creative and actually got across how good of a boss this is. Genuinely, way better than A-3 (and imo easier to figure out). But @thederangedsolicitor RBing my other post about DoS and talking about their experience as a newer player taking on this event made me think about how that compares to my experience. I started playing a week before cc11, and while I wasn't really able to fully engage with it (I was still building my first units and figuring out how the game worked), it still managed to get across just how engaging the difficult content in this game can be. Seeing the challenge of managing timings and adapting to mechanics, and then seeing other people do wild high risk strats online made cc into this aspirational content for me: I wasn't able to do as much with it this time, but I'd be ready next time. I cannot imagine someone having that experience with design of strife. And it's really too bad, as that was kind of the first step towards me leaning into niches and pushing past risk 18 in cc12, and basically all the things I've enjoyed most about AK gameplay. I really hope that I enjoy the cc reboot more than this, but maybe even more than that, I hope that it can return to getting people into this side of the game like the old cc did for me.

[licantropa]

👀

mianite bloodborne au that I just never finished writing for.

basically, Sparklez is the main character, i.e. our moon scented hunter and he wakes up zero clues and ideas about where he’s at and who he is but he learns one thing immediately and that is that he’s gotta hunt.

His first boss fight (the only one I’ve got figured out in my brain) is Andor who he watches turn into this huge fucking amalgam of feathers and righteous anger. While up until this point he was fighting mobs of beasts and messed up townsfolk, this would be his first real taste of an actual challenge. Andor himself was pushed to his limits between being forced to worship gods he doesn’t care for and being ignored, he succumbed to become what he does.

Before all that, in a place that the present time regards as “old yharnam”, Spark and Jeriah take in two, maybe orphaned, children.

Capsize and Redbeard are originally from Fishing Hamlet but they do 100% lie about everything to Spark and Jeriah so what the truth is, they don’t really have a concrete understanding of their past.

Jeriah is a vileblood and a hunter, and Spark used to hunt with him, but after a near death experience takes him out and now he upgrades other hunter’s weapons and helps fix the damages caused by beasts. In the present he would definitely be a boss Jordan would have to fight.

Because of the nature of this world, everything goes to shit eventually. Jeriah takes Capsize under his wing and does teach her how to hunt efficiently, unfortunately because he cares about he cannot in good conscious let her join his blood knights and that causes a lot of strife between, so much so that she does go hunting, although not on her own. She does get blood drunk and slowly deteriorates into a beast, but she is killed before she fully turns into one.

Spark takes Redbeard under his own wing, though Red doesn’t take to fixing weaponry as easy as Capsize takes to fighting. Redbeard has an eye (the red one) that is hypersensitive to beings (great ones) that are hidden to most, this does cause a lot of pain and he gets an eyepatch that helps with the pain.

So Ianite and Spark don’t get together here and I realized that because Spark is genetically related to like three integral characters, it’s hard to find an explanation for their existence in the story. Of course I could just ignore that but then I’d know I was purposefully ignoring that and it’d just fuck with me. So, I gave up on writing it lmao.

[taoofshigeru]

Sea of Stars Final Thoughts

See this post for my initial thoughts. Comprehensive spoilers to follow, obviously.

---

1) World design was the highlight of the game for me. Each area looked unique and was fun to navigate around, and the way they were able to integrate some puzzle design into it was quite nice. Using the Graplou to get around felt super-smooth, which isn't always the case in isometric-style platformers.

2) Combat was solid but really not much of a challenge. I never game-overed on a boss up to and including the final boss, and both times I did lose was just a mob where I went in without bothering to heal. The key reason for this was Seraï's Disorient was busted and allowed my team to rip through every single-enemy boss like tissue paper. And most bosses were single enemies. You just keep hitting them with turn delays and then they never take turns. Tack on Arcane Barrage and Great Eagle later on in the game and it gets pretty ridiculous.

I mean, lock-breaking is a neat idea but I've experienced very similar things done better in Octopath Traveler's break/boost system, and when I was fighting bosses I kind of wanted to just be doing a game that didn't depend so much on timed hits. Bravely Default II included similarly stunlock-focused moves like BP Depleter or the Bravebearer class' entire moveset, and the main criticism of that game was how it had a counter system where late-game bosses would randomly counter actions taken by the player in ways that many, myself included, felt were punishing and unfair design. And I feel like this game showed me the other side of what happens when you just let a move like Disorient be usable without any sort of punishment.

Crustaleon dropped minions that lasted more then one multitarget attack before he could be delayed, and the Sea Slug dropped boulders even when it wasn't its turn, and I was excited to see one or both of those mechanics be folded into the final boss battle. Given this, the final fight with Aephorul felt like a real anticlimax. It was just a literal curb stomp for the heroes. Aephorul got to take like, 5 whole turns.

All that said, I enjoyed managing and being able to swap out the party of 6 in real time was nifty. I just wish they had done more with it in terms of late-game/true ending bosses with some real teeth.

3) The music was great. Particularly a fan of the Dweller boss theme mix that plays during the Dweller of Torment fight, and that super-amped Glacial Peak theme.

4) Writing/story was where I felt the game really ran into real inconsistencies. If I divide the game into acts.

The first act, up until the Dweller of Woe fight, I was fairly consistently not enjoying the story. The second act, from the Sea of Nightmares to Swan Song of the Warrior Cook, I found to be genuinely inspired. The third act, Seraï's World, Fated Hour up until the final boss fight, did well but also felt like it was somewhat coasting to the end off the strength of the second act. (Resh'an kind of just quits the story after you fight the birds to scroll through his text history with Aephorul and I was expecting him to play a mildly bigger part in the true ending.)

And the pirate dialogue in particular had some real turds that came off as mean-spirited rather than humorous. It's okay to have a story with some whimsy and humor, and for an RPG to poke fun at itself or the genre in general. But there were some jokes there that just personally felt sour to me. Case in point:

My honest opinion is that when the entire second half of your game boils down to using one move on bosses repeatedly until they die, maybe cut the Keenathan half of that exchange. The game and the script is more than this, but that's the quote I'll remember from it the most.

5) All that said, the cast had its moments. Garl is the good boy of all time, and while I'm neutral on Resh'an and Seraï as characters they had this great dynamic during the Dweller of Strife fight that ultimately leads to the warrior cook's untimely death.

Resh'an: "The rules exist for a reason and people will get hurt if I break them." Seraï: "People have gotten hurt following your god damn rules!"

Given that a) Garl dies as a result of Seraï tossing the vial of time at the Dweller and b) Valere and Zale would have died had she not done so, the script leaves room for them to both be kind of right, which I thought was a neat and nuanced writing decision.

I kind of wished they had explored it a bit more, too. Valere and Zale understandably focus on what Garl does while living on borrowed time and that does take precedence. However, after the funeral, it may have been effective for one of them to exchange some harsh words with Seraï over her decision back there. That would have helped crystallize them as two distinct characters with a wider range of emotions. As opposed to just being Garl's matching sidepieces. (Which is itself a fine role, still!)

---

To be clear, I liked Sea of Stars quite a bit! I had beef with some specific elements that keeps it out of my top tier of pixel RPGs, but more than anything I'm really, extremely appreciative that people make games like this. Will look forward to seeing whatever Sabotage does next.

[nonfer]

[rolkstone]

Introducing a mob boss with a desire to eliminate their enemies can add a high-stakes and suspenseful element to your story. Here are some considerations and ideas for developing this plotline:

1. Motivations:

Clearly establish the motivations behind the mob boss's desire to eliminate their enemies. This could be driven by revenge, a desire to consolidate power, or a perceived threat to their operation.

2. Identifying Enemies:

Define who the enemies are and why the mob boss sees them as threats. Are they rival factions, individuals within the mob seeking to undermine the boss, or external forces encroaching on the boss's territory?

3. Hierarchy of Threats:

Establish a hierarchy among the enemies. Some may be more dangerous or influential than others. This can add complexity to the boss's strategy and decisions.

4. Methods of Elimination:

Explore the various methods the mob boss employs to eliminate their enemies. This could involve strategic alliances, covert operations, or direct confrontations. Each method comes with its own set of risks and consequences.

5. Internal Conflicts:

Show how the mob boss's decision to eliminate enemies creates internal conflicts within the organization. Some members may question the boss's motives, while others may support the aggressive approach.

6. Alliances and Betrayals:

Explore the possibility of alliances forming among the enemies to counter the mob boss. This can lead to unexpected betrayals and shifting allegiances within the criminal underworld.

7. Cat-and-Mouse Game:

Develop a cat-and-mouse dynamic between the mob boss and their enemies. This can create a tense and suspenseful atmosphere as both sides attempt to outsmart each other.

8. Consequences:

Consider the consequences of the mob boss's actions. This could include retaliation from the enemies, increased attention from law enforcement, or internal strife within the mob.

9. Moral Dilemmas:

Explore the moral dilemmas faced by the mob boss. Killing enemies may be a means of survival in their world, but it could also lead to personal and moral consequences.

10. Redemption or Downfall:

Decide whether the mob boss's quest to eliminate enemies leads to redemption, more power and control, or eventual downfall. The resolution can have a significant impact on the overall tone of your story.

Tips:

Character Development: Dive into the mob boss's character. What shaped their ruthless personality? Are there vulnerabilities or personal struggles that drive their actions?

Foreshadowing: Use foreshadowing to build anticipation and hint at the challenges the mob boss will face in their quest to eliminate enemies.

Dialogue: Craft compelling dialogue that reflects the tension and power dynamics between the mob boss and their enemies.

Atmosphere: Create a dark and suspenseful atmosphere to match the tone of the story.

By carefully developing the motivations, methods, and consequences of the mob boss's desire to eliminate enemies, you can create a gripping narrative full of intrigue and high-stakes conflict.

i Put this through chat gpt and this is what i got

[lillaxtrigger]

The bosses

Surprise, the leader of the Psychic criminal syndicate has not one, but two acting bosses sharing their part in steering the mob down the most lucrative path. Though these twins hold a few spats from time to time, their brotherly bond and appreciation for one another will always anchor them. To the right is Cen: The psychic of space. A rather loose and eccentric man keen on fulfilling his artistic vision and is the half responsible for brainstorming most of the idea's used to rocket the mob's influence into the atmosphere. Holding the power to warp the very space around us, Cen can warp and contort almost anything he so pleases; bending away whatever strife may attempt to near. To the left is Tury: The psychic of time. The more tightly kept and calculated businessman aiming to keep the mob's affairs on the optimal and successful route by any means necessary, often in conjunction with his brother's ambitious ideas. Clutching his chokehold over the reigns of time itself, Tury not only can manipulate it in standard ways; slow down, speed up, rewind, fast forward, stop; but also control the passage of time with whatever he touches; regressing or aging them at will. Together, these two have not just cornered, but concurred the New York drug trade market; quashing all that dare attempt to quell their success. But for what end? What could drive such a dynamic duo to so fiercely dominate the shadows of the city?

[janspar]

The Crimes of Yethara

An Account of the Orator Yethara Her Falsehoods and her Crimes

The Orator known as Yethara has preaches across the Abhesk, from Zhikav to her alleged home city of Vilv. In her wake, agitation and strife has bubbled forth to disrupt the peace and prosperity of these great cities. But who is this agitator?

Yethara claims to be from Vilv, yet the authors, possessed of no small familiarity with that great city, have not found any there who knew of her, neither in her youth nor as fellow workers.

She preaches of justice and freedom for the workers and groundsfolk, but what does she know of labour, and working conditions? In all her speeches she never tells what her trade was before she set out to crash Abheski society.

The authors of this pamphlet can reveal that Yethara, far from being a humble Vilvan worker questing for justice for her fellow groundsfolk, is in fact a hypocrite, a subtle infiltrator fomenting agitation to disrupt the trade of the Cities and the great Companies that have made the Abheski a prosperous nation.

Yethara was born indeed to a Vilvan mother, but by an Erthani father. She was raised on a stinking vessel of that nomadic nation, learning from the cradle not of industry and toil and honest trade, but of treachery, mendacious dealings, and jealousy. Having spent the greater portion of her years aboard barges, she donned the guise of an Abheski only well into adulthood, and then only to pursue a plan of sabotage and dissent.

In her tour of preaching her agitations to the groundsfolk, she travels not by airship. The sky, beloved of all Abheski, is not her path. All true Abheski, undeceived by the glamour of dissent, recognise her beliefs as dangerous; understanding this, she sticks to the ground and the waterways, knowing she will not be challenged but instead receive aid from the disaffected and the hostile nations who share in her jealousy. Upon the sovereign decks of Erthani vessels, she is shielded from the bailiffs and constables and marines. In the deep forests, she is hidden from the sight of those vessels that protect our communities .

We wrote of the strife to be found in the wake of this orator. When she spoke in Lansk, she provoked a riot against the bailiffs, wherein dozens were killed. In Mirsvr, a mob stormed the Lesyan Tower and slaughtered another score of innocents. In Otvev, a fire claimed a Company Depot, though the docks and the Erthani fields were spared any such disaster.

It is clear to all that Yethara is not a mere orator, preaching a creed of justice. The inescapable conclusion is that Yethara is a vile conspirator. Whether she is among the leaders of the agitators attempting to bring our nation to ruin, it cannot be said, but she is certainly the most visible figure and the most dangerous.

Don't let this Agitator destroy us!

Protect your family, protect your prosperity: If you know of agitation or conspiracy, tell your bailiffs, and tell your bosses.

Pamphlet anonymously distributed ahead of a labour rally in Mirsvr.

[imagine-darksiders]

Mob boss horsemen au mayhaps?? Ruling haven cities underground after the Awakening, tearing apart errant groups of demons trafficking humans around.

You are a rookie reporter trying to break into journalism by getting a scoop on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the most powerful dons on a freshly rebuilt Earth.

You’ve been trying to confirm the rumours that their affiliation with Hell’s most influential demon; Samael.

One of them - Strife - has been keeping eyes on you, and he decides he likes what he sees. He discusses the curious little human with his siblings, and when he drops the photograph on the desk between them, they all individually decide they also like what they see.

You’re walking down the street one day, fumbling to find your apartment keys at the bottom of your bag when a long, sleek car pulls up alongside you and some very well dressed people tell you you need to go with them. One of them none-too subtly moves his jacket and you catch a glimpse of a gun on his hip.

They drive you to the mansion on top of the hill, and there you’re introduced to the Four Horsemen, all of whom are very, very interested in getting to know you better.

[my2phetaliaheadcanons]

Additional 2p France Headcanons

This was requested from the other site I post on.

François remembers Joan of Arc. They weren’t lovers, but François respected her. At such a young age, she was the victor of many different battles. Joan of Arc also was a woman of God and took her vow seriously, which François admired.

François had been forced to watch it. He hadn’t cried in that moment, not when she spoke her last words, and not even François noticed she had finally passed away. François cried over the young woman when he was completely alone in his cell. When the weight of her unfinished potential finally crushed him.

The grumpy Frenchman wears rings when he wants to show off. You know those nice rings that Godfathers wear in all the mob movies. Thick, expansive, with fat jewels. He’ll wear them when he meets with the other mob bosses, sitting there letting be a passive symbol of his wealth.

François doesn’t often act on his anger toward Oliver. Instead, he regards him with a cold indifference that often gets under Oliver’s skin. For centuries the two have been going back and forth. Oliver, attempting to get a reaction out of François, while the Frenchie does his best not to react. So far, the score is Oliver: 1,253,095 and François: 986,978.

François may not run but does walk often. Most of these are leisurely strolls where François has a cigarette in his mouth, and a calm look in his wine-colored eyes. Occasionally, the walks are a way for him to clear his mind from strife. His posture will be slouched, and his appearance looks like one coming out of a warzone. Those are one of the few times, Matt will come to François’ aid. Taking him back to his residence and forcing a discussion from that hurting man.

[up-sideand-down]

Gang Au. Gangster Zack and Jazz singer/player Cloud

Zack had been working with the Soldier Boys for years, since he was practically a kid. It was the best way to make money as an orphan in the slums, just carrying messages or packages of "reminders". When Angeal called him up as some extra muscle, Zack stayed close by watching and learning as much as he could from the mob boss. Then the time came and Zack had to pass the gang's test: hold his own against one of the bosses. He didn't beat Angeal, but stayed on his feet all bruised and bloody. Angeal shook his hand and welcomed him as his right hand man. The other bosses: Genesis and Sephiroth approved.

The Honey Bee in lay right on their borders, next to Don Corneo's turf. Andrea Rhodea had some sort of leverage against both sides so it became a sort of neutral zone. Both sides could come there so long as there was no bloodshed on the premises. Sephiroth, Genesis, and Angeal go there often to "talk" with The Don's men. Zack started coming along with Kunsel and Cissnei as backup and muscle...not that they're ever really needed.

At one of the meetings there's a new act: Cloud Strife steps up to sing. The whole place goes quiet when he starts. His voice is low and bluesy. He seems like he's singing directly to Zack and Zack feels it getting hard to swallow. Cloud looks so handsome in his half Honey Boy outfit. Even the mob bosses clap at the end of the performance. Zack sees Andrea Rhodea shake Cloud's hand and he just knows Cloud will be back again.

A few weeks pass and Zack sees Cloud sing several times (sometimes without his bosses even) and then suddenly...Cloud isn't there anymore. A few days later, Cloud shows up at the Soldier Boys and begs for a loan...and not a small one either. He's tight lipped about what its for and how he'll repay it until Genesis acts like they won't do it. Cloud admits it's for Corneo. A good friend of his got picked to be his bride, Cloud offered Corneo money to get her out. He could only pay half and now the due date is closing in. Sephiroth smells an opportunity. "We won't pay...but we are going to hide you. Seventh Heaven is where you said you were from." Zack sees where this is going. Seventh Heaven is where the bosses were trying to expand...and with Cloud they have an excuse to start fighting for real. Zack still jumps when Angeal calls him up and tells him to make sure Cloud and all his friends stay safe.

Zack takes Cloud and his friends to one of the Soldier Boys safehouses. He also get posted as the muscle there a lot, despite it being in the middle of Soldier Boy territory. He has to fight to keep from babbling each time, but Cloud loves to talk to him. Zack learns that Cloud is new to Midgar. He had a friend who was a Honey Bee who got him a job as a janitor/bouncer for the Inn. Andrea heard Cloud singing to himself on the job...and that's how the act started. Zack says that he liked the show. "I know," Cloud tells him, "I saw you in the audience at least five times." Zack blushes horrifically at that.

[threadsketchier]

So I saw the prequels prior to the Originals and it always bothered me how Luke got dumped on a death planet of Tatooine considering the state of that environment and shot that when down in the previous films while Leia got a life of privilege. I was hoping Bail would argue against splitting the twins. I obviously knew why it had to go that route because it had to align and follow up with the Originals. I guess it came off that Luke wasn’t really wanted...?

I already wrote a ficlet somewhat addressing this misconception.

Also, frankly, I’m getting kind of tired of rehashing the same issue - why do people keep assuming that the Larses don’t matter and don’t have a right to be in Luke’s life just because they live on Space Australia?  Why do their feelings not count just because they’re low-to-middle-class moisture farmers who don’t live in a palace on Space Switzerland-Utopia?  Why the fuck do people assume that Luke wasn’t wanted just because the Organas have a personal preference that was obviously previously established before shit hit the fans and they wanted a daughter and Bail, as a senator and Viceroy - essentially co-leader of his planet - is a fucking rational guy who understands the necessity of making hard decisions dictated by logic over emotions?

The twins weren’t just “split up because that’s how the movies have to go,” it does make internal sense within the narrative that it was safer to hide them in vastly separate locations to prevent both of them from being discovered at the same time and thus lost together, or for their latent Force bond to make them a psychic target if they grew up together and established it, acting like a beacon for Vader and Palpatine and any minions of theirs.  It sucks, it’s painful, it has awkward consequences for them later on when Leia’s a bit too loose with her lips, but that’s why these movies have a tragic backstory.  It has to suck real hard before it gets better.

Does it seem crazy that Leia wound up raised in such a screamingly obvious position as daughter of a then-Imperial Senator and princess of a highly prominent Core world being trained to follow in her biological mother’s footsteps and become a senator herself, thus occupying a very exposed role in the Empire, right under the Emperor’s and Vader’s noses?  Yeah.  But also remember that the Superman/Clark Kent illusion can actually work in real life.  Assumption is a powerful thing.  Your average Joe Citizen would assume that someone as otherworldly as Superman, an alien with the ability to fly, strength to bench-press skyscrapers and jumbo jets, heat vision, and other amazing things, would never stoop to living as a normal, humble, inconvenienced human being.  It’s not merely the hiding behind a pair of glasses and hunching over a little with a nerdy tone and habits - it’s the entire idea that a Clark Kent could even exist in the same person of Superman.  They don’t understand that he was raised as a human and actually desires this life, and doesn’t feel the need to lock himself away permanently in his dope Fortress of Solitude and never interact with the very people he wants to save and protect.

Vader was lied to by Palpatine about the nature of Padmé’s death, but there was no disputing that she actually died.  In his crushing despair, Vader accepted with heaps of self-flagellation that his child was dead.  He didn’t even know he had two children.  In his mind, whenever he saw Leia - surely they were in each other’s circles at least at a distance before Rogue One and ANH - even if she reminded him of Padmé six ways from Sunday, he would not assume she was his daughter, because as far as he was concerned his child was dead.  The OT establishes that latent Force-sensitivity also does not automatically make two related Force-sensitives consciously aware of each other until they mutually know one another as being related and Force-sensitive, so not even torturing Leia revealed this to him.

But I’m going off on a tangent.  Let’s break this down:

Tatooine is nothing but a source of anguish for Anakin and his personal loathing for the place made it ideal as a hiding place.  And no, I’m not just haha joking about sand.  He was a slave there and buried his mother there after slaughtering an entire village of natives he knew in his heart that he shouldn’t have.  It holds nothing but misery and failure for him.

Yes, Tatooine is abso-fucking-lutely a galactic cesspit.  It’s ruled by the most vile mob boss in the galaxy, is rife with nasty wildlife that’s out to kill you, and is haunted by the troubles brought about by strife between colonizers and the native population.  It is indisputably a dangerous place.  But it wasn’t Tatooine that killed the Larses.  It was the Empire.  Just because they look like Soft Folks™ doesn’t mean they were - Owen and Beru knew how to take care of themselves, and they certainly knew how to take care of a child in this environment.  They survived to middle age just fine, and would’ve kept going if it wasn’t for those fucking stormtroopers.  Just because they didn’t live a life of luxury also doesn’t mean they were dirt poor either.  When we meet Luke in ANH, he’s a healthy young lad who still has the privilege to fuck off with his buddies around his farm duties.  Life may be tough but it’s not squalor and deprivation for him.

But honestly, even if they WERE dirt poor, they’re still Luke’s family, and they very obviously loved him.  I almost feel like I shouldn’t have to restate it, but I will: Owen and Beru loved Shmi, and upon hearing that Anakin died and left behind a baby son, why wouldn’t they be moved and compelled to take Luke in, and why wouldn’t they deserve to have the chance to raise him in their memory?  Even though they’d be sad that Luke was orphaned, they might even see this as a blessing to be able to raise Shmi’s grandson and Anakin’s son.

As much as he bitched about chores as a teenager, Luke learned damn valuable skills growing up on a Tatooine moisture farm that, coupled with the Force, saved everybody’s asses at the Battle of Yavin, and went on to make him an ideal squadron leader.  Wealth and privilege are not always the best foundation, or at least certainly not the automatic one, for a person to learn good character either.

The Organas are human too.  Faced with a difficult choice, they decided to take this poignant opportunity to fulfill a dream they’d been deferring for some time.  Sometimes parents wish for a specific child, and that’s their prerogative (except IRL they don’t actually get to pick, they get whatever kid they gestate).  If they’d taken Luke and let Obi-Wan take Leia, we’d be having the same argument about Leia growing up on Tatooine.  There was no inequality in this decision.  Bail and Breha wanted a daughter, there was a daughter present among the twins, so they chose her.  This does not mean they valued Luke any less.  Since the twins couldn’t be raised together for their own safety, it might as well have come down to a coin toss.  Bail isn’t evil for exercising a shred of his personal emotions and desires in a situation where he otherwise knew he’d have to restrain himself.  Also, he’d be smart enough to respect the fact that both children had actual family elsewhere in the galaxy and wouldn’t think any less of the Larses just because they live on Tatooine.  The only way his decision would be careless or heinous was if he knew Luke was being taken to people who were abusive or so destitute they couldn’t even care for themselves, much less a third person, and he did nothing about it - but we know this is not that situation.

How do you feel about non-wealthy people living in harsh places here on Earth raising their children?  Would you expect all the rich people in the world to go take those children away from them and adopt them just so they could grow up “privileged” instead?  Think about how that sounds for a moment or two.

Honestly, if Bail had tried to argue about taking both twins because he felt taking Luke to his legal family on Tatooine was “cruel” or “neglectful” because of the planet’s “risky environment and poverty,” I’d hope either Obi-Wan or Yoda would have enough sense to smack him upside the head for being so thoughtless as to insult these people for being seemingly beneath him.

There is more to life than money and power/prestige, and Leia’s upbringing wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.  She was no pampered, air-headed royal spending her days sitting idle being hand-fed space grapes while her “poor” brother ate sand cookies.  She had to undergo intensive academic, political, and physical training from young childhood in order to prepare her to become a covert Rebel agent while she was still a teenager, as if being a child senator wasn’t already stressful and demanding enough.  Sure, she never lacked for anything, but that is an incredible amount of responsibility to saddle on someone who wasn’t even an adult yet (like her bio mother).  Luke was blessed with far more freedom and peace in his childhood than his sister.  And him living on Tatooine with his father’s surname wasn’t nearly as dangerous as Leia existing within the heart of the Empire while actively engaging in Rebel activities that could have cost her her life, even without getting into the whole “daughter of Anakin Skywalker” business.

Also, just because we joke about Tatooine being Space Australia doesn’t mean every single day of Luke’s childhood was THAT eventful.  It was more likely 80% dull farm life and 20% mayhem, and that 20% would be mostly Luke’s fault for being a crazy nut like his parents and getting himself into trouble he could have avoided in most cases.  In other words, growing up there might not have been nearly as “deadly” as we make it out to be.

[theexpanse]

DANGER! DANGER! DANGER! That alert is for the people of Earth, considering that the last shot we saw on season 4 of The Expanse was of Belter villain Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander) sending cloaked asteroids hurling toward our fair planet.

The impending arrival of those asteroids in season 5 of the show — which premieres Dec. 16 on Amazon Prime Video — is especially bad timing given that one of our favorite Earthlings, burly Rocinante mechanic Amos Burton (Wes Chatham), just happens to be on his way to Earth himself. And judging by this exclusive first-look season 5 photo we have of a blood-splattered Amos (above), things are not looking too hunky-dory for the bearded wonder in his hometown of Baltimore.

What awaits Amos down on the surface? What will happen when Naomi (Dominique Tipper) finds out her long-lost son Filip (Jasai Chase Owens) is an active part of daddy Marcos' team? And why should we be keeping our eyes on Mars for clues as to what's to come? We chatted with Expanse showrunner Naren Shankar to get the scoop on season 5.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So is season 5 just going to be book 5, Nemesis Games, or are we going to see some season 6 in there, or some new bridge material like you did last season? What are we looking at?

NAREN SHANKAR: You know how it's worked over the years. It's like certain story lines get pulled forward, other stuff gets pushed back sometimes. Character elements get combined into other stuff. There's definitely some elements of book 6 in this season, I would say, but it's largely drawn from book 5.

Let's start big picture, and then we'll drill down on a few things. If I just walked in and said, "What's the big crux of season 5? What's the big story you're telling here?" What would you say to that?

I'll give you the theme, because that's probably the easiest way to look at it. The theme really is about the sins of the past. To one extent or another, that's every single story line, whether it is Naomi personally confronting the fact that she had a son with this very charismatic, and now quite violent, revolutionary-type leader. Whether it's Amos connecting to his past, or going back to Earth for reasons that we're not quite sure of. Whether it's Holden's past with unleashing the protomolecule. Whether it is the past geopolitical history of the Belt, and its relationship with the inner planets, which we see through Avasarala.

That's really what the season is about. It is connecting all of the things that we have done in our lives to the moment of the present that we are in. It's like everything comes to a head all at the same time.

We ended season 4 with Marco letting these asteroids off towards Earth. What do you want to say about that impending arrival?

Well, it's coming. It's coated in stealth, so it's very hard to see, and there's a whole bunch of them. From the end of season 4, the last image that we left with was Marco looking at the plotted trajectory of all of these asteroids. The last image that you see is a whole lot of them that are lined up to hit Earth in its orbit. So, they're coming.

Let's segue from that to Naomi. What's Naomi's mission here? We see a little bit in the trailer with Marco, and her son. What is she going to look to do here in season 5?

Well, I think at the end of season 4, the message she sent to Fred Johnson was, "I need to get in contact with my son. I'm calling in that favor that we set up way back in season 1. I'm calling in that favor. I really need to find my son, because I'm afraid that his father is going to get him killed."

It's that she understands, or she's seeing that Marco is on the rise, and she knows the kind of person that he is. After years of feeling like, "I can't reconnect. I abandoned him. I left my kid," she's determined to reach out to him, and try to save him from somebody that she thinks is really a terrible person.

What is awaiting her when she gets in contact with her son and sees who he has become?

Well, I think maybe the way to answer that is, the reunion that she is hoping for is probably not the one that she's going to get.

I mean, we saw what happened with that airlock at the end of last season.

He doesn't bake her a cake.

What's Holden's take going to be on Naomi and the spot she's in, and this mission that she's on?

The two of them are together. The question marks of, "An Earther and a Belter, can we be together?" They have chosen each other. They've chosen to be on the Roci. They've gone through a tremendous amount. That's true for the whole family. That's true for Amos. It's true for Alex, the group. It's like the most warmest and connected beginning for them that we've ever seen. I think that that's an interesting outgrowth of the fact that we really took our time building up that family unit from season 1 on.

After the events of season 4, after everything they went through on Ilus, it's like they are a bonded group that… It's just their chosen family. It has that feel to it. There's a connectedness and warmth to the relationships of all of our four main people on the Roci, and that's reflected in Holden and Naomi.

It's part of the fun of getting into deep runs of shows if you do them properly, is that you really do develop the relationships. If you think about where these guys started in season 1 to where they start in season 5, it's a pretty interesting change. And it feels believable, because you're taking the time to actually set it up. We're starting Holden and Naomi from, I think, a very warm and supportive place at the beginning of season 5.

I want to ask you what's happening on Mars, and if there's anything there that might be something that might connect later to, say, book number 7 and what we may be seeing down the line a bit on The Expanse? Obviously, there's some long-term stuff happening in Mars that you may be planting some seeds for.

Yes! Absolutely. See, this is spoken like a book reader. There absolutely is, and we actually teed it up at the end of last season, as Bobbi got involved in the black-market arms trade. There are little pieces of it that are popping through the surface even then.

Part of what was going on at the very end of season 4 was they were selling stealth composites to Belters. Those are the stealth composites that Marco uses to coat the asteroids. And, if you look really carefully at the end of season 4, it's Filip who's one of the Belters that is blowing up things on Mars.

Bobbi doesn't know who that is, but that's Filip who helps blow up that salvage yard at the end of season 4. But, absolutely the tip of that conspiracy that we started at the end of last season plays an incredibly important role in season 5.

As you talk about the Belters, I gather that we are going to be seeing more Belter factions. What it was like to think of all these different subgroups that we're going to see, and the different motivations and things they might have? I imagine that was pretty fun to put together.

It really was. Again, I think one of the things that we've really tried hard to do to really dimensionalize the conflict. It's like, you're seeing every side of it. We've driven down into Earth. We've driven down into Mars. We've driven down into Belt. We've driven down into the independent faction of Holden and the Roci gang.

In terms of the Belt specifically, at the end of season 4, Drummer walked away from the OPA. She walked away from politics and Fred Johnson, and didn't take Ashford up on his offer of being his XO. She struck out on her own, trying to create a life for herself in this very tumultuous world. Well, politics, and war, and strife, they have a way of finding you. It's hard to avoid them. What we're going to find from her in season five, her story line speaks to that very directly.

One of my favorite stories in all the books is Amos going to Baltimore. I'm really excited to see that. What can you say about his time back on Earth?

I think you're going to love it. It's one of the things that I have been looking forward to doing for years. We talked a lot about it because The Churn is a fantastic novella. What we've done over the course of the series is, we have found a way to express these novellas into our narrative in a way that they're not really done in the novels proper.

You're going to get that. I think people who have read that novella, especially, but I think fans in general, even people who've never seen the show, they're just going to love this. It really is one of my favorite story lines we did this season.

What can you just say about what he's facing there, or why he's going there?

Well, without giving too much away, there have been times when Amos has had a chance to go back to Earth, even at the beginning of season 4, when the Roci was in orbit around Earth. Amos didn't go back down there.

Reaching back into season 3, when that reporter Monica Stuart was interviewing him. She was talking about, "Isn't it funny that you got the name of a mob boss?" He said, "Oh, it's a common name in Baltimore." And, "Oh, yeah, how'd you get out there? You ended up in the lottery really fast." There's a lot of mystery attached to Amos' backstory around Baltimore. Without telling specifically why he heads back, you're going to get a lot of answers to it. Things are going to feel really, really satisfying because it illuminates a side of him that nobody else on the Roci gets to see. Nobody else really knows, but the audience is going to get to go with Amos to experience it.

Speaking of Amos on Earth, what can you say about the possibility of seeing Clarissa Mao again in season 5?

I don't want to spoil anything. [Laughs] She's down there, I suppose.

I think I know where she is too.

We did see at the beginning of season 4 that she's in prison. The story lines in particular this season have such depth to them, and it feels like you're just getting really into these characters' skin in a way that we haven't done to this extent before. So we're really excited for people to see it.