To those who kept to the background because of the Halsey thing: I'm sorry about that. The moment I hit send I knew I hamfisted it. That's one of the downsides to this project -- so much of it was in real time that I developed a "Post now, think later" attitude. That's one of the fourteen moments I wish I could take back and redo.
1) Can you give us a general outline of how the mutiny plan would have gone?
Sure! I was hinting that there was a general sense of unease amongst the crew. But honestly, from the very start there were decisions that could have been made that would have made it infinitely worse. Stuff like Hive offering a Captain's mast, decisions made when the star went BRAAP, general reactions to certain moments... To steal from Mass Effect, you all went Paragon. When you cracked the whip, you did it fairly. You didn't lock everything down, you didn't try to micromanage. Almost every trigger I threw at you was handled expertly, and the few that weren't... Thank Carver and that INFERNAL SPEECH that I love so much.
It would have built up until a fight broke out in the mess. How that was handled would have determined if people suddenly lashed out against the officers, built into a conspiracy against the Captain, or calmed back down. The lashing out would have resulted in a strange situation where there would still be people working on the station and going about their normal routines, while Security was regularly engaged in battle. The conspiracy would have been just that -- a few people caught plotting and refusing to talk, while sometimes people would behave oddly until they tried to stage a coup on the bridge.
It's hard to give specific details because I had so many variations drawn up, just in case. All in all, before the fight, there were 35 possible triggers that I crafted for BEFORE the fight. I think I actively used only about 20-something of them.
2) I know that Myung was with F484 at the end, but while I assumed that the anomaly was F484, I can't offhand recall a firm conclusion ever being brought about regarding what happened to Myung.
There wasn't. I'll answer this, but I left it open to player interpretation on purpose. There was one version where the players were able to talk to Myung directly, but I'm rather glad it didn't come to that.
Myung appeared on twice in the modern events. Once with Raschad and Wolfe vs Ives, once with the device. She currently serves as Foxtrot's guardian, friend, and healer. Unfortunately, it's been a very slow process, and he's not in his right mind currently which only makes it worse. (Though he is infinitely better -- shortly after his last transmission he became a vegetable pretty much.) He treats her as a human (when he recognizes her as Myung), something that she doubts that she'll get elsewhere. Meanwhile, he's her Reclaimer. (Yes, she's lost some of her humanity from all this, but she's still more human in mind than AI.)
Am I explaining this very well?
3) Where exactly did the Captain fit into the whole thing? What was his history? At one point, it seemed like you were telling us that he was strongly against the insurrectionists. At another, it seemed like he originally was an insurrectionist.
HA! Here's the thing -- I was poking players for responses. Save for a few details, I left the personality, political leanings, and history entirely up to group creation. I would have run with almost anything being said. Stuff like "I'm an Orion!" would have been nixed, natch. But other than that, it was all you.
4) Did you have any plans for the Flood or Covenant? Both were mentioned in passing, but we never dealt much with them, and interacted with neither.
No, I didn't. The Flood, thankfully, are still contained on the rings. The Covenant are still out there, figuring out how to become a force to be reckoned with again. Next time? Foxtrot might not be able to quell their numbers.
5) What were the major contributing factors that got Raschad out alive in the end? Alternately, where could we have gone wrong and sent him to his grave?
Mostly how much stress you put him under, and your actions with the rest of the crew. For example, I kept a close watch on exactly how many people were defrosted. I was waiting for the phrase "defrost any EVA-trained personnel." That would have altered the timetable significantly, and put Raschad on the path to certain doom. Alternately, constantly putting Raschad into situations that would have reminded him of violence, put him in harm's way, reminded him of his pre-recruitment years, or could be related back to the Lebanon in general would have pushed him towards greater mental instability, and thus closer to dying.
If violence broke out, then he was dead. Pure and simple. If you would have pissed off Myung or Foxtrot, he was dead. There was even an early draft where Helen killed him.
He was too Gary Stu. He had to die.
He's also based loosely off of Meesha Raschad from Mistwalker. I try and steal that character whenever possible.
6) What were your favorite five Raschad-dies sequences?
Any that resulted in him giving a last great violent act of defiance against the universe! I mentioned my personal favorite earlier. There was also one that I was fond of where the slipspace drive started to spin up on its own and gave out huge amounts of radiation. (The original line about glowing underwear, in fact.) He drags the crewmembers in there out, then fixes it himself. He had a nice rambling speech about how the UNSC sucks and how great things were before, a few words for Wolfe, and how he was going to "finally join everybody." Yes, Raschad has a slight death wish.
7) Just to confirm, what were the pictures of? Was the first one intentionally a Christmas tree? And the second one was obviously an Engineer drawing from ODST, but other than what F484 did to them, what were you trying to tell us there?
Yes, the first was a christmas tree. Every day is Christmas to F484. EVERY. DAY. Myung makes sure of it; he's happiest on Christmas. It's a small bit of peace that she can offer him. The second was his attempt to recreate those symbols, his way of marking people that he enjoyed watching. As to why... I'm actually going to hold off on that for a while still. Just in case I do make a sequel.
Also, did you ever have the full story of the Lebanon incident planned out?
Planned out? Yes. Written out? Just the bit that I shared with you. I never really had a chance to write out a whole lot of it. I never saw an easy way to go into detail. If Raschad talked about it, that would be ad-lib on my part to fit the situation. Yes, it was nasty. Yes, it was ugly. No, no Flood were involved. Just human error, with a healthy dose of Rampancy.