#and gonna get back into reworking my tag index

[jadedarcana]

Getting ready to be a lot more active and personal on here, I’m quite excited for it!

[the-scientists-grimm]

Blog Patch Notes (The “Bird Update”)

So I mentioned recently there were some overhauls to be done on this blog. Said changes will be details under the cut. The short version is, I’m reworking my main verse to stick closer to canon, while keeping the other verse as an AU. The new main verse has some character backstory changes, some new characters, and an overhauled agenda for Mags.

Details under the cut

New Main “Canon+” Verse

For a while now, Magpie and crew have been moving further and further from even remotely resembling canon compliance. Granted, they’re OCs, so they’ll never be 100% canon compliant (especially Mags and Shae). I’ve had to come up with reasons, especially over the last season or two, that Mags and crew are off screen. Such as parking the Retribution way outside Mistral so they can interact with Mistrali characters, without effecting the course of the canon story.

I’m honestly tired of these backflips.

So, as of now, I’m rewriting some backstories, some plot arcs, and reworking some concepts.

Backstory changes

Mags

Rewrote backstory. Rather than being trained by Qrow, and Qrow alone, Magpie now attended Beacon Academy.

For the sake of not reworking her age, and because she’s already questionable as far as the timeline goes, Magpie started at Beacon a year before RWBY.

Joined Team MGMA (Magma) (See below)

Mel

Mel’s backstory, while undiscovered by... anyone I’ve interacted with, remains mostly unchanged. What has changed is that rather than being found by Shae sometime during Volume 4, Mel is on Magpie’s team at Beacon.

Joined Team MGMA (Magma) (See below)

Ketron

Our favorite Atlesian councilman has some motivation changes. Mostly minor, but he’s going to have a slightly different end goal.

This also effects Shae, as their stories are very deeply intertwined.

New characters

Team MGMA

Gavyn Cecil

What team is complete without a Knight? Or a Round Table?

Based on Sir Gawain of Arthurian lore

Rather than wielding a single weapon, the good knight carries a sword and a Dust infused bow as two distinct weapons.

His Semblance is torn straight from his Arthurian counterpart: Namely, he’s more powerful at [H I G H  N O O N] and becomes weaker the earlier in the day, or the later in the day.

He’s the team’s stealthy sneaky one

The G of Team MGMA

Alexander Andreas

A second tactician? On the same team? Oh no

Who else could this man be based on, but Alexander the Great

This great fighter wields a sarissa, combined with a grenade launcher, lovingly referred to as “Rolling Thunder”

Also true to his namesake, Alexander is often found rolling around the battlefield in a chariot. The difference being, his lacks horses, and is instead motorized.

Off the battlefield, this chariot folds down into a wheelchair. That’s right, he’s disabled.

His Semblance is still undecided.

Alexander fills the role of the team’s tech expert and, possibly later on, pilot if the need arises.

Both members of MGMA are MIA post-Fall

More Huntsmen to come

Perhaps we’ll see who Azuli would’ve been had she escaped her back injury.

The Grimm Indexing Project (”Project Elric”)

Magpie’s attempts to document the Grimm have been a long running theme on this blog. Since just a couple of months after this blog was created, in fact. However, when the MAS Retribution—the ship she was granted command of by @huntsman-ash—came onto the scene, this fell by the wayside, despite it supposedly being a tool to assist her in her research.

Therefore, in this new “Canon+” timeline, the Retribution is no longer under Magpie’s command. 

This solves two problems. First of all, it allows our dear bird to return back to her central focus. Second of all, it allows the Phoenix to be brought back into relevance. For those who don’t recall, the Phoenix is a... Well, it’s the Serenity, from the TV series Firefly. The ship was a gift from Magpie’s fiance, Breeze from @team-cblt. And it’s been completely irrelevant since.

Further, Magpie’s work on the GIP has been extended. Not only does she want to collect and distribute information on fighting the Grimm, but she also wants to teach people outside the central cities of each kingdom how to protect themselves. This goes further still, in attempting to organize the Huntsmen further, banding them together to make protecting villages and towns in the outer reaches of each kingdom easier. She wants to build hope.

This new extension of the GIP requires a new name. Said name has not yet been decided.

The Project isn’t officially founded until after the Fall

Team BLAC

“So if the Retribution is gone, what happens to team BLAC?” I hear you asking

I’m glad you asked.

First of all, Alexander and Gavyn are MIA post-Fall. I’ve yet to decide what they’re up to, but I’m sure they’ll reunite with Mags later.

BLAC still organizes after the Fall of Beacon. Ivory comes aboard the GIP around the time RNGR+Qrow are finding their way to Mistral, finding she has information that might help protect villages in Mistral. Ivory’s original introduction was lackluster, and I’d say this hardly counts as a change.

Shae, still a Hunter-Killer (see @huntsman-ash for more detail) at this time, is sent to assist and protect Magpie in whatever ways she can. The exact details of her discovering her true nature are still hazy, but seeing as there’s a Summer Rose clone interacting with member’s of Summer Rose’s extended family, I’m sure it’s not a huge leap in logic. After a significant time with the Project, Shae still leaves the Hunter-Killers, deciding to become a full-time Huntress.

New “Retribution” verse

...So you know how I said before that the Retribution was being scrapped?

I’m not doing away with that timeline entirely. No, no, you see... I always meant for Magpie to be under a lot of pressure in that verse. She’s young, inexperienced, and in command of an entire airship? That’s a lot of pressure.

But... I can still show that off... if we treat this timeline as the “Bad timeline”

And now that I have a separate canon verse, I won’t feel bad about ignoring canon when it suits my needs.

Because some of my plans for this verse involved Haven falling at the end of volume 5. Which it didn’t. Which is part of why this rework came up in the first place.

So, following the Retribution verse, Magpie is still in command of the Ret, the backstories and team building stays exactly as it’s been up to this moment, and Haven has fallen. I’ll do a proper verse page for it, detailing what from canon stays, what goes, and how everything fell into place.

New blog layout

To match these changes, I’ll need to change some of how the blog page is organized. This is getting complicated fast, with two different timelines to manage. As such, all of the character bios will be listed under the verse pages. That means I’m gonna have to duplicate character pages. There’ll be at least three of each character, if we’re counting the Doctor Who verse.

There’s likely to be a tag structure rework too, to differentiate the different versions of each character without needing a verse tag constantly. Because our time traveling version of Magpie has a bad habit of not staying where she belongs.

The layout updates will take a while to work on, as I do have classes to worry about. But I figured I’d get this post out there so I at least have it on record that changes are coming.