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Well, MOSI has turned into such a monster it's hard to say what it's about anymore, but I'll try. Firstly, MOSI stands for "My One Story Idea." Which isn't really the title, just a tongue-in-cheek working title that stuck. The real working title, which I never use, is "A Sketch in Black Ink," which my writing prof. once told me would probably work as a decent title for when I someday pitch my book to publishers, so there you go.

I'm going to make this as concise as possible, so here I go. The story starts with Sabine, an herbalist's apprentice from a small market town that's hit a decline due to decreased trade on the neighboring river in recent years. She gets a letter from childhood friend Jericho, an irresponsible, wisecracking, chain-smoking, lying, swindling, manipulative, borderline-paranoid Border Guard (and all-around nice guy. Really.). The letter tells of an apprenticeship position in Emanon, the capitol of the neighboring country, under a well-known and influential physician, and over the course of a chapter or so she leaves home with Jericho and his cousin Yinda to pursue this position. But Jericho, being the upstanding citizen that he is, gets them kicked off the train in the middle of nowhere for using counterfeit tickets for their journey. They shelter the night in a cave, which upon further inspection leads into some old catacombs from Scilone, the now-destroyed country to the west. There they find Vitae, the only survivor of the catastrophe that destroyed Scilone, and wake him from what seems to be some kind of enchanted sleep (I like to call it SBS--Sleeping Beauty Syndrome). From there it's a story of present and past, with culture-shocked Vitae coming to terms with his previous life as current events unfold before him. Later in their travels, the group meets Nathan, a Northern-born fire mage who is essentially that boy your mother warned you about--bisexual, promiscuous, pretentious, and vain. And quite interested in every third male character to come along, I might add.

They eventually reach Emanon, only to find out that Jericho has been lying to Sabine the entire time. There is no apprenticeship, and he's actually been hired to bring her to the Lord Regent as part of a ploy to cover up the disappearance of Princess Ciora, heir apparent to the throne of Emanon. The Lord Regent waves off that part of the plan, however, on the grounds that Sabine is not quite the exact match for Ciora as Jericho claimed. Around that time, a Northern-born priest named Richard goes mad while delivering mass at a memorial service, reveals the disappearance of the princess and the scheming of the Lord Regent, and sends the city into a riotous uproar before brutally murdering the visiting prince of Elleswahr. Richard later dies of falling down the stairs.

The group flees to a nearby fort called Trimore, where they discover underground tunnels that seem to lead to a hidden fortress underground. It is here that Nathan also loses his mind, disappearing into the depths of the hidden fortress with Vitae in tow. Vitae remains his prisoner for nearly a month, during which the crazed Nathan starves and beats him, before the others manage to get Vitae back. At some point it comes to light that this string of Northern insanity is caused by the ghost of a powerful Northern mage who was murdered in Lower Trimore a couple hundred years back, and the final confrontation becomes a battle among the group itself as everyone's agendas clash--Nathan's insanity, Jericho's vengeance, Vitae's and Sabine's loyalty to Nathan, Yinda's loyalty to Vitae and Jericho.

And throughout the entire plot, Vitae's flashbacks fill in the story of how he got to where he was at the beginning, and how his friend Kyril, another Northerner, also went insane and betrayed Scilone, and how the entire country came to be destroyed.

My main problem with this one right now is figuring out how to introduce the story of the ghost, Rhodora. I need to make it seem natural, not like a red flag sticking up with the words "plot point" written on it. I also need to introduce it early enough that it doesn't seem like some convenient explanation that just happened to crop up. Major pain in the a**, figuring this one out. Minor frustrations include Sabine's perspective becoming important in this draft (the original draft was only filtered through Vitae's perspective). The trade-off between the two of them is a little jarring--Vitae is so calculating and observant, while Sabine is much more innocent and intuitive. It's also confusing, the number of tiny strings I'm using to make up this huge yarn of a story. I'm kind of overwhelmed by the sheer number of minuscule hints I have to keep dropping in just the right spots, then following through and seeing each little thread to its finish. I reiterate: Overwhelming.

Another story I plan to work on when MOSI is finished is what I guess I've been calling "Poppy's Doll." It's the story of an antique-collecting journalist named John Elliot, who, while shopping one day finds an old box, the key of which, mysteriously, bears his name. Upon opening the box he discovers a slightly unsettling, damaged porcelain doll, which comes to life the first night he has it in his apartment. In a deviation from Chucky, however, the doll is actually rather sweet; she makes him tea and asks to be called Poppy. In an attempt to get to the bottom of this living doll phenomena, John consults Chris, his friend who works at a local doll museum, and who dreams of one day tracking down the final doll made by the famous doll maker John Elliot, John's ancestor and namesake. On Chris's misinterpreted advice, John attempts to repair the doll in hopes of her being able to reveal the secret of her existence, but instead the doll goes on a rampage, mistaking him for the first John Elliot and attempting to take revenge on him for the death of a little girl named Poppy Albright. John manages to break the doll again, reverting her to her sweet, tea-making self, and takes to the street again, this time investigating his doll-making ancestor and the mysterious death--or murder--of Poppy Albright. I have the resolution all figured out, but that's a story for another day.

Since I haven't started working on this story yet, it seems deceptively cut-and-dried. All I need to do is conduct a little research on the making of porcelain, firing techniques, whether the color red can be covered by white glaze, and if something like a porcelain doll can be put through the firing process twice without being destroyed. And, of course, I need to get more in touch with the "supernatural" genre. (I'm painfully out of my depth there--I wasn't even told ghost stories as a child.) I also need to figure out how to incorporate the story of the Final Doll into John's family history, along with the family's unfortunate habit of having their houses burn to the ground.

Yet another story goes by the working title "Annie and Guin" (pronounced "gwin," and having nothing to do with Guinness or Guinevere). It's about a girl (Lord, how a loathe and abhor female leads) named Annie Winters who becomes apprenticed to the batty and reclusive wizard Guin Somerset. (Yes, their names are punny. Yes, it will be lampshaded.) I don't have much of a plot hashed out in this case, but I do know that Guin supposedly killed his corrupt teacher, Borden, became a full-fledged wizard at an impressively young age, and was the toast of the town until some unknown event drove him into seclusion, where he has gone slowly and cheerfully mad. Now all anyone hears of Wizard Guin is if they order a spell from him, or when his little clay golems venture out to buy him groceries and gossip magazines. Annie, of course, interrupts his hermitdom, which he doesn't mind at all, because an apprentice, unlike clay golems, will not fall apart when you send her out grocery shopping in the rain. Aside from very tiny details of their everyday lives (one of which involves Guin's cat having kittens, another of which involves a misfired spell bringing the house's dustbunnies to life), I know that Guin is hiding something up the chimney, which he protects by obsessively keeping a roaring fire in the fireplace. It is very possible that this object is either a glass eye or something that can be metaphorically described as an eye, and is the source of Guin's madness. Someone out there--possibly more than one someone--wants it. That's where the ninjas come in. I also think Guin might get assulted at some point.

This story is, essentially, one big problem in itself, as it doesn't have a real plot yet. If I haven't figured it out by the time I decide to work on it, I might just have to write by the headlights method. Which always leads to a tragic crash, but at least by then I'll know what the story isn't.

The final project that I know what to do with will probably either fizzle out or become a monster to rival MOSI. I'm calling it "The Last Hope Chronicles," and right now it's two short stories, but could possibly become an anthology of related short stories. All would center on a house, Last Hope Manor, and its history. The two stories I have planned so far I've been calling "The one with Vladimir" and "The one with the Sculptor," because I'm clever like that.

The one with Vladimir is about a girl named Kaylee who goes to be a servant at Last Hope Manor, only to discover that the house is not a residential building, but more like respite care for the terminally ill. She watches as tenants arrive, waste away, and die, but things become suspicious when she is asked by Vladimir Scott, head of the household, to attend one of the tenants' final moments with him. Though she does not stand close enough to see or hear clearly, Kaylee watches as the tenant, an old woman whose body is twisted and crippled from disease, dies and, somehow, after death, becomes straight and whole again. She witnesses other deaths, always with Vladimir attending, and each time something strange happens. One man, a business man who lost everything to his rival, kills himself on their property, and though his death was not expected, Vladimir arrives there, too. It is here that Kaylee's suspicions peak, as she is positive she witnesses Vladimir speaking with the man after the man should, by all rights, be dead.

I'm not sure how much I really want to reveal in one story, but it turns out that Last Hope is some sort of holy remnant from ancient times, sacred ground that grants the final wish of anyone who dies on the property. The house always has a guardian, a person whose final wish resulted in immortality. Vladimir is one of these people.

Over the course of the story, Kaylee finds a consumptive bum by the name of Deimos Owen, and despite Vladimir's misgivings, brings him to spend his final days at Last Hope. He dies there, and, unbeknownst to Kaylee, who does not witness his death, wishes for immortality and enters training under Vladimir to become the house's new guardian.

I'm not 100% sure about the ending, but I know that Kaylee dies somehow, and her death wish is that she and Vladimir can be together (I'll have to make sure they fall in love at some point). Vladimir lays down next to her and they both die. Final scene will involve Deimos welcoming a new servant girl into the house--or, just for the irony, welcoming The Sculptor.

The one with the Sculptor starts similarly to The one with Vladimir, with a girl, this one named Maginel, arriving at Last Hope to be a servant. But now there's no sign of Deimos; the house has somehow fallen into the possession of a man whose name I came up with and then promptly forgot, whom I have been referring to as Sculptor or The Sculptor for quite some time. Anyway. Synopsis. Maginel, long time fan of The Sculptor's art, arrives to fill a position on Last Hope's serving staff. To her shock, she finds that The Sculptor is a viciously reclusive man, to the point where, while he will associate with his servants, he never shows his face. He goes about the manor draped in a black robe which hides his shape (but somehow can't make his movements any less mezermizing), black gloves on his hands, hair and neck covered, and his face hidden behind a mask so thick it shadows his eyes, muffles his voice (which is nonetheless so compelling that when he orders people around they can't help but do what he says), and doesn't even reveal the shape of his nose. In her cleaning/poking around the manor, Maginel discovers a storeroom-turned-gallery of The Sculptor's figurines, ranging from oldest to most recent. The farther she walks toward the recent figures, the more grotesque they become--limbs twisted and left to dry, torsos or heads squeezed into undefined shapes, eyes and other features picked out with tools or fingernails, whole sculptures scratched to deformity. She concludes that The Sculptor must be horribly deformed in some way, mentally if not physically. One day, she happens to witness him finish one of his sculptures--a perfect, fluid, poetic human form, like the ones he used to make. Before setting it out to dry, however, The Sculptor viciously rakes the figure with his nails, taking out huge gouges. When Maginel protests that it had been perfect before he decided to ruin it, The Sculptor replies that mankind is not meant to look upon perfection.

I'm not sure about the ending of this one, either, but somehow Maginel dies, her final wish being that she could see The Sculptor's face. Sculptor, however, uses his Power of Compulsion voice to convince her that her final wish should also include him, that he should be able to see himself. The magic of Last Hope forces him to remove his mask, at which point Maginel gasps, reaches briefly for his face, and then collapses, dead. Meanwhile, The Sculptor sees himself reflected in her eyes and also keels over dead. I think.

The big secret that I might not fully reveal being that his death wish was to be as perfect as his sculptures, which not only rendered him immortal, but perfect, meaning he does not age, scar, or become ill, and also meaning that his appearance is so overwhelmingly beautiful that it will kill anyone on sight.

I need to invent some sort of loophole, of course, that the only way Sculptor manages to die is seeing himself in Maginel's eyes. He obviously can't off himself just by looking in a mirror, or he would have already done that. Maybe, like a vampire, he just doesn't have a reflection.

I'm actually of the opinion that Last Hope would be best suited to a graphic novel series, perhaps with the idea of the property granting wishes (with absolutely no limitations to what you can wish for) being introduced early, and each story sort of leaving to question what certain characters' final wishes were. For this to work, of course, I'd need more material, more characters to off, etc. That's why it ranks fourth on my list of projects.

(Fun trivia fact: Sculptor started as an idea to make a Phantom of the Opera who, instead of being hideous, was so beautiful that he had to wear a mask.)

All my other ideas are just vague little things. Something about a circus of smugglers from a parallel dimension, a prince who is a white tiger, a pair of fire-breathers, and a soldier with wings. Something about a sorceress whose apprentice is in league with her pet cat, who is actually a transformed human prisoner, and who has spent years trying to free the songbird who is his transformed love. Something about a city where half the population is nocturnal but perfectly human--there is something interesting hidden in the cold storage vaults under this city, but I don't know what it is. Something about a blind man in a cave that contains a lake, on the border of which there is a city, which houses the largest library known to man--and a little girl who can steal people's identities by saying their names.

And, maybe someday, a sequel to MOSI. But we'd better not think about that.

I'm totally working on stuff! Like maybe once a month. If that. A lot of different stuff.

There's a sci-fi which plotwise I would describe as a cross between Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Mortal Kombat: races from different planets have competitions in which they design species with big sex drives and short lifespans (i.e., about eighty years) and leave them alone for a few millenia to evolve and then pit their creations against each other in a sort of Olympic Spectacle. One team designed humans to be innovative, but ******** it up because humans went and invented really weird things like lies and fiction and bad memories and this confuses everyone. Also the underdog team thought it would be a good idea to steal the human-designers' ideas and they end up with... distorted human-chimpanzee-things. Anyway. Hilarity ensues. Dr Phil guest stars. Et cetera.

A story about vampires who FALL IN LOVE WITH HUMANS AT HIGH SCHOOL LOLS are vampirey. Two kinds of vampires, the domestic kind who form their own societies away from humans (but still eat them) and the feral kind who live in swamps or wherever the heck they want (and eat humans). The two kinds are unaware of each others' existence until one of the feral vampires strays a little too close to suburbia and d'aww it looks like a cute little kid and foster home and blood-suckage and big news story and where did the little kid go? And the domestic vampires are all "Hey that sounds familiar OH SHI--"
THERE IS NO SPARKLING IN THIS STORY.

'Nother story about playing with clean slates. You know, the Forbidden Experiments and all that. Kit, the woman carrying out said Forbidden Experiments recruits a married teacher (Patricia) to help her out. Trish is heavily influenced by Kit and slightly idolizes her, enough so that she accepts and is even enthused about the Forbidden Experiments and becomes a key factor. We see Trish replace her husband with Kit as far as coupley things like trust and confidence and respect go, until she breaks down and confesses everything, everything she's ever done. Husband is understandably disturbed and takes some action. The conclusion: These Kids Are ******** For Life So Let's Forget It, Whatever.

And the tale of Sebastian and Alice, a story of two people who trap themselves into life. The characters are named Sebastian and Alice. They are in that pivotal stage of life known as Your Mid-Twenties and I guess it's kind of about how they make certain decisions and cut off certain options until they are doomed to stagnant and unhappy lives of convenience. Which sounds really boring beyond all measure, but I like to think it's doing okay.

I enjoy writing the last one the most, and it has the most developed characters, but the other three have more developed plots.

@ No: What I actually meant was that it's a little jarring for me when I switch between them, particularly when I have to pull out from one narrative to edit another. I keep slipping up and making Sabine too calculating.

To be honest, though, it's incredibly convenient to have Sabine and Vitae as joint narrators. Since Sabine is familiar with current culture but not terribly worldly, she becomes a carrier for the plot and worldbuilding, while Vitae, who is worldly but not up-to-date on current events, is the carrier for backstory. He is also a much more reliable way to offer descriptions of what characters look like and how they behave, since he notices and analyzes details Sabine has a tendency to overlook.

Yes, Rhodora is the ghost that causes the Northern curse, and seeing as how I introduce that curse as a general attitude of, "Northerners are all insane. That's Just the Way They Are," I probably want to introduce her legend as early as possible so I can lead up to revealing that Northern insanity is, in fact, a curse.

Part of my problem with Rhodora is that I've made her legend strangely local, particular to the area where she was murdered. It also doesn't help that only Northerners and particularly nerdy scholars know anything about the legend at all, and the only native-born Northerner the group comes in contact with during the story is Richard (Nathan is Northern-born but not native, and doesn't know any of the old stories). I guess, with the Nerdy Scholar qualifier, I could have Vitae know something about it, particularly since he's a history buff. He could even have heard about it from Kyril when they were at school. But I'd much prefer finding a way to make the legend more of a widespread ghost-story, which would make it easier for me to paint it into the background instead of making it part of some vital character's repertoire. And then if I can distill it down into a ghost story, how to reveal the true story behind it? /thinking out loud


@ Irian: I wouldn't exactly call that a major lack of plot. Some people say that short stories need to focus on a single action or event, and I think your short story so far sounds like it fills that. Two characters meet, talk, and part ways. This event would seem irrelevant except for the knowledge that, over the course of this conversation, something has changed. By the end of the story, things either can't or won't go back to the way they were at the start. That is the plot, and for some short stories, that's all the plot there needs to be.

I'm kind of thinking of the short story "Rock Springs" right now--the entire story is about a guy, his daughter, and his girlfriend--trailer trash, to be brutally blunt--and how they steal a car to go on a road trip or something. They stop at a hotel, the man and his girlfriend have an argument, and she leaves. The end. The power to interpret gets handed to the audience. Or, to look at something even shorter and more ambiguous, the short story "Say Yes," which is just an argument between a husband and wife over whether or not a person is the same person if the only thing you were to change about them was their race. The husband maintains that, if you rewound a person's life and had them be born a different race, they would have been raised differently and therefore be a different person, but the wife is really asking if he would have married her if she was exactly the same person she was when they first met, but black. Not only are they arguing, they're not even arguing about the same thing. And in the end, there really is no resolution. The whole thing is maybe a page and a half long, but you know by the end that something has happened in their relationship that might never be fixed.

Anyway, it's late and I can't stop rambling, so I'm going to stop now.

@Rae: I imagine if there is some serious damage going on in the cave, at least someone has a warped retelling of what's going on. They're bound to pass a village or group of people who may not know that there's a curse, or anything to do with Northerners, but that there is this cave it's advisable to not enter, due to _____.

It's an old legend, which means details will be dropped, details will be embellished, it could easily turn into a widespread, normal ghost story without the curse tagging along, just from the inefficiency of oral tradition. Someone finds a more "fun" way to tell the story, that's the story that gets passed on.

The problem would be, yes, getting down to the real story, then. I guess a part may be how involved Rhodora's spirit itself is involved in the story. Usually part of a curse is that a warning comes with it.

I'd figure with the way curses operate, there isn't a point to them if the person who is cursed doesn't gain an understanding of what his or her error was, so perhaps Rhodora reveals that in some way or another.

Nathan could have what is taken for a sort of fever dream during his insanity, or some other sort of vision about what happened, and therefore why he's been cursed. It could be portrayed in a way where it isn't really all pieced together until the aftermath.

But I'm not sure how present you want the actual Rhodora to be in the entire plot.

@ Erika: You have no idea how pleased I am that you like the changes I've made. ^_^

@ No: I think "curse" can turn out to be a disputed bit of nomenclature, since the Northern characters in MOSI are "cursed" in the same way the angel-girls in Ceres: Celestial Legend are cursed--something happened a long time ago, and it's still affecting the world today by trickling down through the generations, fed by a consciousness that refuses to go away even though it's dead. Rhodora's "curse" isn't something that was cast on the Northerners to teach them a lesson, but Rhodora using the Northerners as tools to avenge herself on the man who killed her--who is dead by now, obviously, but his people have conquered her people and taken their land, so she really just wants revenge on anybody who isn't blonde. So, yeah, the curse is meant to teach someone a lesson, in a roundabout way. The Northerners are cursed to go insane and cause destruction in their wake, which is a curse to the other countries, but an eye for an eye in Rhodora's opinion.

And funny that you would mention fever-dreams, because Nathan does have something like that--he "dreams" backwards through moments of the lives of the other people who have gone insane, experiencing Richard murdering Evahrie, Kyril attempting to kill Vitae, back and back, to witness the ritual Rhodora used to seal her soul into a stone (the reason she's been able to remain a ghost for so long). I suppose I could also have him witness her death. It only makes sense, since her death wound manifests itself in an illusory kind of way, which is to say that Nathan feels the pain of it and simply can't understand why he isn't bleeding all over the floor and, you know, dying.

I don't know where any of this is getting me, but yeah.

Huh. If I could get the ghost story boiled down to an appropriately generic-looking thing, I could have somebody from the Rugard caravan tell it as they travel or something. *pondermentates*

Current works, current works... argh. Well. The first thing you should know is that "current" changes rather rapidly, as I switch stories faster than a sentient elevator on speed. The second is that my brain is stuck in Video Game Land. I find this rather aggravating, thank you very much.

Okay... timeline/story/plot(s) #1: The Someplace-That-Totally-Isn't-an-Expy-of-New-Mexico Chronicles

Episode One: Winter's Requeim (Crappy Spoiler Titles, Ahoy!)

So... Kita just survived the random annihilation of most of the Western Marxist Assassin Organization (known as the Vanguard of the People's Republic, or the Vanguard) of which she was a part, and goes off to enlist the help of Feragel, a former member with no such political... morals, and Indio, a survivor from another city. (there were actually quite a few survivors) They try to figure out what happened and somehow not die, and make up what I call the Snarky Party. They... don't always get along particularly well.

Meanwhile, Elia survives an elven attack on her village, runs into Adele, (a guy, in case you're wondering) who was just freed from some petty king's "service", and they get sort of... assimilated by the Heroic Hero, who... well, we don't know what he's up to. He's crazy. Maybe he thinks he's saving the world. Anyways, they make up the Head Trauma party.

The two parties wander blindly about the region, running into sub-plots right and left, and participating in the occasional revolution. The Head Trauma party gets sparkly powers of ice, fire, and balance, and the Snarky Party gets half a clue. They all end up in a cave on a mountainside where a crazy princess is hiding, (long story, but her nickname is "Anastasia") having engineered the whole thing (or at least, the part with the Head Trauma party) as a plan to turn the whole world into a pretty, pretty icicle. Presumably they defeat her, but to break her spell, the Hero kills Elia, then wanders off thinking he's the Avatar of... light... and... dark... or... something. Adele gets adopted by Elias parents, (who survived after all) Kita rides off into the desert in a state of emotional turmoil, Feragel goes on being Feragel, and Indio goes back to the remnants of the Vanguard, who are re-forming right about now. The end.

Episode 1.5: Guardian Quest (or, what happens if you ******** up Episode 1)

You play as a dude wearing classic Barbarian garb on a quest to... do... something. Actually, you're not on a quest. But several hundred years ago, the world was covered in ice, and your best bet at survival is to get one of the Animal Guardian Spirits (introduced in a sub-plot of Episode 1) to follow you around. Which one you get (or if you get one at all) depends on your actions. Yeah, it's basically one big joke about the title, with a multidimensional morality meter tacked on to make the whole thing seem worth while.

Episode Two: History's Conquest (In Soviet Russia, History Conquests You!)

Kita returns, with rumors of a time machine. Some very corrupt people from a very corrupt city have also heard these rumors, so she attempts to get the 'ole gang together and get ahold of it before they do. Only Indio doesn't want to go, as he's had enough of their constant bickering and manipulation. So instead, we get Kenzie! (who wasn't dead, after all) They go, find the time machine, and bring it to Vanguard Headquarters.

Next, in classic Kita-esque "ooh, let's poke it!" problem solving style they decide to use it on someone, and Indio volunteers. While traveling through history, he... semi-possesses various historical figures (hello, Continuity Porn!) only to discover that he can't actually do anything to change any of it. Yes folks, a time machine that doesn't do s**t. And oh, look someone's about to start a war over it!

Yeah, remember those people from the first part, who were looking for the time machine? Well, they hired a mercenary army, and are bearing down on the Vanguard in what promises to be a very, very bloody battle. The Vanguard sends off a diplomatic emissary to tell them that, no, the time machine doesn't do anything, but in the meantime, Feragel runs off in a suicidal one-person charge. And dies. Crisis averted, protagonist dead. Cue the overly angsty funeral, and roll credits.

There's more: Episode Three: The Sum of all Desires (It's Not What You Think it Is!) and Episode Four: No Title Found, but it's late, and I need to go sleep now.

Okay, entry #2, possibly now with issues! Possibly.

Episode Three: The Sum of All Desires (It's Not What You Think it Is!)

Since Feragel died, we're done with that lot, more or less. Instead, we get Allemande, who, aside from being named after a German dance, was raised without any friends. She goes off to school to be a... magical... engineer... person, (which is very world-specific, so hello, Worldbuilding Porn!) and even I don't know whether her parents know yet. (she did tell them, but they don't really pay attention) There, she meets four other students that become her bestest friends, and one really annoying chick who isn't actually a student of magic. They have issues, get involved in strange love triangles, and destroy the world. The end.

Aright, so... less briefly, Allemande teams up with Lucile, the savvy local girl, adopts Mikah, the extremely shy girl with a mysterious past, and has to sort out a love triangle between Felix, the local "knight in shining armor" (even though he isn't, really) and Indio's semi-adopted apprentice, Edward, a slightly apathetic lech, and Claire, who is... just... Claire. Her nickname is 'annoying author avatar,' and... if you knew me really, really well, it would be apparent why. They go on random quests to pay for their education, until they come across a semi-hidden location from previous games! (Isn't that convenient?)

After this, they tend to go on quests that reveal each of their personal neurosis and backstory; Mikah's possessed by a demon via evil experiment thing, Allemande's parents hardly know she exists, Lucile's father is a total creep, Felix was partially raised by Indio after the whole Episodes One and Two thing, ******** if I know what happened to Edward, and frankly he's lucky to have a name now, and nobody cares about Claire, so she doesn't get a backstory quest. Also, random things start turning into Lovecraftian horrors and attacking people.

So, due to the whole monsters attacking people right and left, the school closes. And in an attempt to re-open it, our party of dysfunctional teens sets out to stop the monsters, going on the fact that a rather enigmatic minion who keeps following them about might not be pretending to know something about what's going on. Just a side note, but Allemande actually does know what's going on, and she doesn't do s**t. Seems like sometimes friends do let friends do drugs destroy the world.

They track Enigmatic Minion guy down, who slaughters Claire along the way. (really just the payoff of a "magic protection pendant" that Lucile gave Allemande in a cute not-so-friendship moment, and Allemande gave Edward to get him off his a** as far as the him-Felix-Claire thing went, and Edward gave Felix in another cute not-so-friendship moment, and Felix gave Claire when he dumped her because they didn't really like each other, but he's going to pretend he doesn't despise her along with everyone else. The pendant really gets around.) And then things go to hell. Lucile reveals herself to be the person behind it all, kill Mr. Minion, who she despised all along (we knew the last part, though, unless we were idiots and shipped them) and wipes the floor with the rest of the heroes, before finding that she is too emotionally attached to kill them, sobbing about her past (her father was a complete b*****d) and disappearing, the first victim to the next part of the magic-curse-order-and-chaos-dichotomy-thing that she's activated. (It makes Allemande the personification of order as everything else, starting with Lucile, goes all chaotic and un-organized, basically reverting to nothingness)

And then, for about half of the screentime, Allemande wanders around a hostile and disintegrating world, losing her friends one by one, and eventually dying, while never giving up on the idea that somehow somehow, she'll save everything and everyone she cares about. And the world ends. The end.

Episode Four: No Title Found (It Got Better!)

It turns out that Recurring Character Antimony's obsession with/crush on the Philosopher's Stone (aka a lot of things) is at least somewhat mutual, and he/she/it saves her from the total destruction of everything and gives her the power to make it all better. There is a possibility of bringing everyone from Episode Three back except for Claire, Minion, and Allemande, because they died rather than disappearing. That's all I have so far.

More later.