About the Council of Thirteen

Well, it's all over! After only ever doing three non-dayplots, each of which averaged four to five events, I went ahead and did a huge plot with events all year instead! Unique villains, a new main character, so many events... and everything with the Council of Thirteen happened how it did, all because I decided I wanted to do a megaplot at the same time I played a particular game.

For this blogpost, I'm going to give a general overview of the inspiration behind the Council, before going into detail on each Council member. Then I'll talk about every event of the year (including Patchouli Plot, since I might as well talk about it too), and finally some miscellaneous stuff that didn't fit anywhere else. So first, time to explain just where the Council of Thirteen came from!


OVERVIEW

The initial inspiration for the Council (well, beyond the obvious of "I wanted to do a megaplot so I did one") came to me back when I was playing Final Fantasy V Advance. In the third act of that game, the main villain unleashes a group of thirteen demons who he tasks to destroy the heroes (although three of them fight together, so it's really only eleven battles). This made me think that either eleven or thirteen would be a good number for a villain ensemble group, and I decided to go with thirteen because I wanted to push a bit farther and it has connotations with bad luck. That let me start coming up with villains one by one - originally, it was going to be a mix of OCs and media characters, but as I got more ideas I decided to try something new and went with all OCs for the villains. I still like media characters, but this was a neat change of pace! I decided to do the titles as a way to hint at all the unrevealed members of the Council; I felt it was a cool way to show progress, with people having ideas of who was left and getting to see the list of titles gradually fill out with the characters attached to them.

So now I had my number of villains, and a few of the villains already. The next question was, what are they here to do and why are they trying to fight the Kobbers? The latter was the first one I came up with an answer to, deciding on the "fighting energy" plan in order to justify a lot of fights throughout the year. Originally it would have been full power from every fight, Council or not, but I felt that'd defeat the purpose of having the Council themselves fight the Kobbers. That's why I went with the direct connections, which meant the Council needed to fight in order to get enough energy.

The overall motive of the Council came up after the season started, when I wanted to figure out what they were using the energy for and what would be a good enough motive to do battle with the Kobbers. I decided to go with the well-intentioned extremist type, and thus Bradley became a man who painted all the supernatural with the same brush. Most of the supernatural ones who worked for him were willing to give it up (although Halley wasn't), and he considered it an acceptable tradeoff to protect the world. Once I had it all in place, I just kept going through the events, until I finished it all up!

Before I talk about the characters, I want to give a very special shoutout to Harpy for the bestiary gimmick. It inspired me to put a lot more thought into the backstories of the Council members and how they all became part of the Council, and it definitely helped Yew maintain a presence all year. I'd say it improved my ability to create backstories, even! Absolutely a great call to have him fight every Council member.

COUNCIL MEMBERS

Johnny McGraw (The Gunslinger)       

Appearance Source: Deviantart picture by ChrisAppel

The first guy who showed up to fight for the Council, and created due to my interest in the considered Western aspect of the setting. McGraw was always intended to have a personal grudge against Jake, mostly because I wanted an old-fashioned cowboy showdown. He was originally considered to have a more rustic look - I thought this picture would make for a good choice. I scrapped it because I didn't feel it captured the right feeling for a villainous cowboy. He didn't even have a black hat!

Originally, after I picked the picture I came up with, I considered him having some kind of supernatural nature and grudge, and being an avatar of the cowboys of the past. In that case, he would have had a grudge against Jake for not being a real cowboy, instead just a police officer who likes to dress up as one. I never really hashed it out to my satisfaction, though, and once I had settled on him being the very first Council battle I decided to just scrap that aspect and give him the much more mundane grudge. I felt that the first foe who you fight a week into the year probably didn't need to be very complicated.

McGraw actually got his last name from the publishing company, McGraw-Hill. I took one look at that when I was thinking him up and decided "yes, this is a cowboy enough name". That reference's also why his partner was named David Hill. Johnny was just a name that sounded good for a gunslinger, and it fit well together. There's not much more to him beyond being a wild west gunslinger, so let's move on!

Amber Caltricala (The Warrior)

Appearance Source: Completely original! Drawn by Jumpropeman for me.

The Warrior was one of the titles I was the least sure on when I put up the list in January. In fact, I believe it was the second-least defined one at the time! All I knew is that I wanted to have someone who fought with their fists, as a contrast to the Shadow Knight and his blade skills. I later decided I wanted it to be a boxer, rather than a fantasy monk-type or something, and I went for a cool woman because I felt the Council could use more cool ladies. So, off to the picture mines I went!

I promptly discovered that if you try to find a woman boxer on Danbooru or Deviantart, you'll basically either find muscle fetish pictures or thin waifs who don't look like they could hit a fly. No in-between. Even roping in JRM, master of finding good pictures (see: The Deck) didn't help, and ultimately I just called it off... and turned to JRM in a different way! He very kindly drew the art for her, and thus we had the one Council member who was ZFRP art instead of other art, and actually looked like a normal physical fighter. As for the name, Amber was a suggestion from JRM, while Caltricala was a modified version of a name I saw on one of the photographs Goops linked last year.

Amber, like McGraw, showed up so early since she wasn't that major in terms of her role. She was there to have a cool fight with the Kobbers, both in-character and out of character, and she did! I really enjoyed Blade and Silence both recognizing her, it was a great example of tying a character to the RP around them. It was also what really got me to start making backstory info for the bestiaries, since in Johnny McGraw's it was just what Johnny and Jake talked about. That paid off a lot, considering all the stuff I was able to come up with for the rest of the Council. Ultimately, I think I'm quite satisfied with her, and perhaps she'll cameo in the future.

Naoko Hoshino (The Unseen)

Appearance Source: Deviantart picture by barontieri

I've got to admit, The Shadow would have worked better as a title for her. Oh well! Anyhow, the ninja and the pirate both came about from lel pirates and ninjas, and also because the concepts felt like good early opponents. Naoko was one of those enemies who was more around to create a cool fight and try out something new than anything else; there wasn't intended to be much importance to her. Like with McGraw, there were a couple of different scrapped appearances for her, both of which I eventually dismissed for just not being the look I wanted.

Did you know it's really hard to find reasonably dressed ninja women, by the way? Because it is.

Anyhow, once I had "lel she's a ninja" set and an appearance picked out, there wasn't all that much more to decide! The event itself went through a couple changes, but the character of Naoko didn't have that much to worry about, although the bit about carrying on a dead school of ninja arts was created on the fly for the bestiary. Beyond that, there wasn't much that changed between creation and confrontation, but there is one big bit of cutting room floor regarding the future: I actually considered bringing her back eventually! She would have shown up as a redeemed villain in a normal job, sort of a "what happened afterwards" kind of thing, and been a recurring minor character. I still might do something like it, actually, but she probably wouldn't be more than a cameo. The Council's already got a huge breakout character, and that one was totally unintentional to boot! So for now, Naoko will simply remain in jail.

Captain "Redcoat" Morgan (The Buccaneer)

Appearance Source: Deviantart picture by Serathus

With "lel it's a ninja" out of the way, I couldn't resist doing "lel it's a pirate" as well. Yarr! Seriously, though, Captain Morgan was someone I came up with at the same time as Naoko, going with the classic pirates/ninjas joke. Almost immediately, I came up with his personal motive: a connection to the FEC from Season 4. Pirate Plot was one of the biggest events of the year and a very fun one, and part of why I thought to do a pirate despite being in the middle of the desert. I also know that Ven's the type to enjoy RP interconnection, so I decided to draw direct parallels and just make Morgan here to avenge the FEC not being a huge pillaging force. Captain Morgan was kind of an asshole that way.

With his motive in mind first, I needed name and appearance. There were actually several pictures I had in mind for his look, but three of the four rejects got to appear anyway during his big plot! The fourth picture was this one, which didn't feel fitting for this captain but also didn't feel like it'd fit for an underling. So it just got scrapped because of that. After that, the name was easy enough, with Morgan being a very piratey name and Redcoat sounding like a great nickname. Once I'd gotten the basic design down, he was another who didn't really change from conception to event. So we will leave Captain Morgan here at the bottom of the sea, and move on to the next one.

Saul Castello (The Gangster)

Appearance Source: Deviantart picture by Spoonfayse

Saul was one of those characters who I created because I had an idea that I wanted to explain. Not as much as the other three I'll talk about later, but he was part of why the Council wasn't discovered beforehand. Anyone who got too close got rubbed out, see? As for the picture and name, this was actually the second picture I found that I liked, the first being a good picture but not distinctive in the same way all white and red eyes was. That one didn't go entirely to waste, though! Saul's name... well, his first name was just a case of "this sounds fitting", and his last name was me modifying Costello, from Abbott and Costello. I just changed one vowel because I liked the sound better, and we had Saul Castello.

Saul was part of a whole group of characters who were originally going to be revealed at worse times than I first planned! See, two of the lategame opponents I planned to reveal all the way back in May, pushing back all the others - Saul would have shown up in mid-June, giving him less than a month of buildup prior to his event. Ultimately, though, I realized that'd be a bad idea, putting too much focus on the villains who weren't going to be confronted soon and not enough on the ones with upcoming battles. Another big change was in his introduction scene; originally, I had this idea that he would have shown up in an alleyway, having just killed a target. I went with the casino introduction because it better set up the big fight that happened in it later on, and it explained the choice of McGraw's battle location. Beyond that, I feel Saul might have been able to use one more appearance before his fight besides the few he got, but... eh, I think what he got worked out well enough.

One more fun fact before we leave Saul alone for now; the casino was named the Vulture's Roost as a direct reference to the picture he came from. He certainly acted like enough of one!

Rancette (The Sorceress)

Appearance Source: Deviantart picture by Roboto-kun

Commander Bradley's right-hand woman for the first half of the season, and one of the original three founders of the Council of Thirteen. She played a strong role in getting people together, passing on information, and organizing the Council... and basically none of that was my original plan! You see, all I had in mind for the Sorceress at first was that she'd be my justification for anything magical the Council had in nature. Rancette was going to show up in mid-June, get defeated in July, and that was it - she'd be basically a mook without a deep role.

What changed everything was my decision to switch things around to have better introductions for the early season opponents. Rancette got bumped up much higher, becoming the third Council reveal after Bradley and McGraw, and it was when writing that post that the idea came to have Rancette be Bradley's righthand woman. It helped me do introduction scenes for characters that wouldn't be coming to the Council's chambers, as Rancette was much more capable of walking around in public than Bradley was. She didn't have a distinctive mask with a heavily scarred face underneath, and she even had a full civilian identity to allay suspicion. On that note, Rana Cetra was originally going to be a one-off thing for the Anderson introduction, but when I couldn't think of a good third person to be there at Deid Mann's murder, I decided to put Rancette there in her civilian guise. It helped me explain why we couldn't just revive Mann and solve the murder that way, so it all worked out very well! Rancette's increased importance also made her event more significant; I took to calling it the Disc One Final Boss of Councilplot, because the fight happening halfway through the year and Rancette's high position in the Council made it a big deal.

The panther was just a case of working with the image I had. I liked the picture and wanted to use it, so I just incorporated it in and we got a dual boss with Rancette and Angel. Speaking of the pictures, there were a few other ideas for Rancette's appearance... which would have made her much different if I had made one of them the canon one. Ultimately, what I liked most about Rancette's was the calm demeanor, as I felt it was a good contrast to the other pictures and helped inspire me how to play her character. Calm and collected, even in battle; quite different from others such as Saul or Morgan. Her name was actually the product of a dream about characters fighting a sorceress, where I woke up and scribbled down the original name even as the rest of the dream drifted out of my head. I modified it (and don't even remember the original) and got Rancette out of it, and I felt it was more than magical enough for the Council's magic-user.

Rancette was an excellent choice for the halfway mark of Councilplot, and now it's time to start talking about the second half!

Exatron Mark 8 (The Machine)

Appearance Source: The character 8man, from the OVA 8man After

Brought to you by Mettaton and MTT! By which I mean Mettaton's actually partly responsible for Exatron being one of the Council members. I've always thought that robots that looked almost-human but not quite were really cool, and when I learned about Mettaton NEO during the planning process for the Council, it rekindled that interest and made me decide to throw a robot on the Council! Unfortunately, despite his super cool design, Mettaton NEO was out of the running. With how much Undertale had already gotten involved in ZFRP, it's likely that Mettaton will appear somehow someday, and even if he doesn't it'd still be kind of weird to have his appearance show up for an unrelated character. Instead, I turned to the power of Deviantart... and had no real luck. There were a couple of ideas that I marked down, but I didn't like them because they looked either too human or too robot. The balance I was looking for was hard to strike, and I even turned to Danbooru to page through its Android tag.

I managed to strike gold by pure accident! That tag includes the only image with the 8man tag on the entire site, and I googled it out of curiosity. The second I saw 8man's OVA appearance I knew it was exactly what I was looking for, and I immediately slammed it into my list as The Machine's canon ZFRP appearance. With that out of the way, "Mark 8" was almost immediately picked to explain the big 8 on his chest, and Exatron came to me later as just a very robotic name. It took me surprisingly long to come up with it, even with Spy giving me a whole lot of help and suggestions. Once that was all decided, Exatron's role fell pretty easily into place; he was mechanical muscle, one of the big heavy hitters of the Council.

I came up with the idea of him being introduced in a fight and fleeing pretty early on, as a way to mix up the clear-cut "you confront one Council member and defeat them" series. It... was pretty much the only time I mixed it up, but honestly I think it might have worked better as a surprising one-off. He didn't really do much between his two fights because of just being muscle, but I came up with his investigation of the Space Pirates a few days before it happened. It worked well; it made the investigation just a bit more tense and it let Exatron get an appearance and some focus before he was taken off the map. I wasn't expecting his survival, but I was able to use it to deliver some exposition, which is always useful when done properly. Ultimately, while he wasn't the biggest deal in the Council, I feel I did just fine with this mechanical mettaton-inspired menace.

Alan Anderson (The Capitalist)

Appearance Source: The character Prime Minister Wong Yun Fat, from G Gundam

Ace Attorneyyy~ Although originally, Anderson had no Ace Attorney elements to him at all, as strange as it might seem! He was created in a similar way as Rancette, to explain how a particular aspect of the Council worked. In this case, Anderson was my reasoning for the Council's funding. They could afford the meeting room, the technology, the science, all because Anderson was funneling money from his own corporation to them. The picture source was pretty easy to think of, thanks to G Gundam being one of my favorite mecha series. Heck, the only problem was getting images - nobody has screencaps of this guy! I solved that by digging up a few Youtube videos of the episodes he appeared in and screencapping them myself, which worked out nicely. As for the name, Alan was just a very businessman-y name that I could think of, but Anderson came from Andersen, as in Arthur Andersen. They were a huge accounting firm that collapsed during the Enron scandal, so what better inspiration for me to use to name a businessman corrupt to the core?

The funny thing about Anderson is that his defining quality was being the guy who couldn't just be punched in the face, and had to be proven guilty with words and evidence... and that wasn't even my original idea. The first idea I had was that he'd be just a regular fight! I'll get into detail later what the exact plans were, but it would have an ordinary fight that wasn't different from any other Councilplot, and probably just ended with him getting killed off like the other black-hearted villains. Basically it would have been Profiteur all over again, and that's what started me thinking of a way to mix it up. I decided to make the investigation more important, so I began reworking my ideas to feature investigating Anderson for his financial crimes - it helped that I moved Anderson up. He was also a character who was originally going to show up later, in July instead of June, but his June appearance gave me time to do proper investigating. This phase had the idea of an investigation confrontation followed by a battle, and was about when I got the idea to introduce Winston Payne into the mix. Payne was my very first idea for a ZFRP character, and I was originally going to have him make a joke cameo in May, but... I forgot! That actually worked out well, before Payne showed up I had no idea how the Kobbers were going to learn about Anderson. Instead, you had a character leading the charge and recruiting people to help defeat him.

The big thing that really changed it into a full investigation was deciding to make it a full-on murder case. With all the evidence that needed to be picked up for that, and multiple scenes dedicated to advancing the investigation and nothing else, I decided to just go entirely into the Ace Attorney style and make Anderson wholly non-combat. It also let Payne play a bigger role, considering he would have been useless in a proper fight. I'll cover the confrontation itself later down, but there's a couple things I want to mention about the investigation; first, I was kind of winging it most of the time! I actually had some evidence ideas, but some of them got scrapped or adjusted on the way (for example, the Yatagarasu's arm cannon was going to link the Pirates to the Council, but that was accomplished through other ways. Or how Anderson's alibi was going to be different and involve him arriving a day earlier than planned, but I felt that making it an hour or so was easier on people). Second, for those wondering why John Putnam Thatcher was a character I chose to use, it's mostly because of the other inspiration for going full business mystery. Thatcher is the protagonist of a bunch of murder mysteries in business settings, and that's part of why I switched over to murder mystery and investigation entirely. So I just had a shout out to that by having Thatcher show up a couple times.

To answer the most important question: yes, gatorade (red) was his favorite flavor.

Doctor Engelstein (The Scientist)

Appearance Source: I don't know! The picture is so widespread, it's basically impossible to find the original source.

The very first Council member! Not in the canon building of the Council, or the order they were battled, or importance, but he was the very first one I created! All the way back in September of 2015, I started to put ideas together for the Council, and the first idea that came to me was a mad scientist to let me do anything I needed to that involved science. Like Rancette for magic or Anderson for money, which is why the three of them were listed together in the Council's profiles. Engelstein's picture just came from me googling "Mad Scientist" and realizing this worked excellently, while his name was just something I came up with by trying different names out. I knew it had to end in -stein, though, thanks to Einstein and Frankenstein.

Once I had the basics down... very little changed with Engelstein, really! He was always meant to be a mad scientist who had embraced the mad part of the label, gleefully running crazy experiments just to learn what exactly happened. Heck, that "They called me mad... AND THEY WERE RIGHT!" line from his event? I had that in mind before the season started. He was also considered to be fought even later than he was, as before the Enigma began to finalize, Engelstein was considered for the late September event. Originally, though, despite him not fighting until so late in the year... I was going to reveal him in May! He was one of the two who was going to show up earlier, pushing back the reveals of Rancette, Anderson, and Saul, and would have been revealed right after the Nettori plot in May. I decided ultimately that it would be kind of annoying to reveal him this early when it'd be four months to fight him, and pushed him all the way back to July as the post-Yakuza reveal.

As for the Metroid Fusion bosses... yep, Engelstein was always intended to be my explanation for where they came from. My repeated playthroughs of Metroid Fusion in the offseason got me excited, and I was interested in doing some Metroid plots, but I couldn't think of much to mix it up with the others... so I just rolled it into Councilplot! You'll see that idea in other things as well, Councilplot served as a springboard for some other ideas I had. The Nightmare post was just a way to introduce and move Nightmare beforehand rather than "oops you forgot about wrecking this while down there" (which would have gotten even weirder with Owen taking over the lab) and to remind people of Engelstein before his event happened, and his event itself was a way for me to have fun with SCIENCE! Ultimately, he served his role very well, and I hope people enjoyed Weird Science.

Maria (The Enigma)

Appearance Source: This picture by takt, a redesign of Touhou's Mima

Well, here she is. The most significant character from the Council, a Chaoacter guaranteed for Season 7, and probably the Council member people most wanted to read my thoughts about.

And absolutely none of it was meant to happen.

At the time I put up the list of names for the Council, back in January... I didn't even have any clear idea for the Enigma yet! I knew from the beginning I wanted the last member of the Council to be a big surprise, so I left them as an X factor while the other twelve got proper hints to their nature. However, at the time I had no idea at all beyond that, and even before I got to Maria I thought up and rejected multiple ideas - interestingly, a bunch revolved around Kawashiro. The very first one I had was a true, proper doppleganger, who had been in place the whole time disguised as a Kappa Mob member. I decided pretty quickly that wouldn't sit well with people after Dopplemass, so I instead switched to them being an emergency weapon called into Vegas thanks to the Council struggling. The first idea was... they'd still be in disguise at Kawashiro, but this time only as a master of disguise. Also I had decided they'd be leaving the kappa mob alive, because I thought people might be unhappy if I killed off a kappa (good call, considering that if I permakilled Mizuki, Chiharu, or Kasumi, I'd be thrown off a cliff). Ultimately, I decided I didn't like any form of the disguise concept, so I instead thought of the idea of the Enigma being some form of a body-hopping ghost. They would possess someone at Kawashiro and try to tear it down, leading to the event (which, at the time, could have even happened in August!). That idea was eventually rejected as well, since I wasn't really sure how to do it in a satisfying way. So, now that we've covered all the proto-Marias, let's get on to Maria herself!

The first big surprise is that Maria was initially not supposed to show up in the bar at all! I was originally going to have the Enigma's whole deal being the barely mentioned trump card, someone too dangerous to let loose and barely corralled by Bradley. Even Halley and the Shadow Knight would have been concerned to hear that Bradley was unleashing the Enigma, and the idea is that she'd have been hiding in the city as a normal person. Underneath a guise of normality, however, was someone who basically loved to kill for its own sake and would have gleefully torn apart the Kobbers after being set on them. This version of Maria didn't give a shit about the supernatural or not, and she just worked with Bradley so that she could kill as many people as possible when the time was right (one idea I had for Bradley contacting her by phone was that he'd tell her to try and not kill too many bystanders, to which she'd reply with "No promises! Gahahaha!"). She also had a much stronger powerset than the one she got, which was the ability to permanently duplicate any power that directly hit her. I was even building up to this in May and June, with little posts where Nitori and Praline accidentally hit a random bystander with their power; it would have also included Tenshi and Josuke, and I would have revealed during the event that Maria had water powers, ki beams, rock powers, and a knockoff Crazy Diamond all at once because of that. Of course, she would have had mostly random powers, since she would have only had the chance to get powers from Kobbers fighting her in the event. As for her appearance, that was chosen because I thought the takt art was the perfect type of art to sum up the design type I was looking for, but for a while, I didn't want to use it because of Mima being ZFRP canon. I was concerned that using a redesign of her might be weird! I eventually just went ahead and did it, and with how solidly Maria established her own identity, it clearly hasn't been a problem. Her name was itself a modification - I took Maria because it sounded like Mima, nothing bigger. I learned later that it's a name popular in many cultures, so it ended up perfect for the woman who doesn't know her past.

What changed things to having her show up was that I got a hankering to try and pull off a twist, like Everett or Watchlin, so I just hurled Maria into the bar as a new character! Since I only had ideas for her true personality at the time, I started to make stuff up on the fly, such as her being a drifter, or her craving for lime lollipops and other lime sweets (inspired by the green lollipop in her source picture). One of the most important facets to come out of this early period was when I used her to check the Kobber Blogger, by introducing her smartphone. That smartphone was integral, lemme tell you. Of course, at the time, my intention was for a big betrayal, where everything she did at the bar was a big lie meant to make herself look like a good person, when she actually wanted to murder everyone there. By the same token, her power of self-directed matter shifting was just a single power of the many she had copied. For the part of July she was around for, that didn't really change! Sure, she went on a few events and talked to a few people, but she didn't really do enough or feel significant enough to have me change my mind about her turning out to be evil and getting killed off. By the same token, I was dropping hints that she was actually super murderous, having her express bloodthirsty thoughts during her first two fights, the Gog and Agog battle and the Gigatron event. So, I went into August still all set to make her turn heel.

Early August was when the first couple things that would eventually change my mind started to happen. The first one was when Maria actually began to interact with the Planeswarden crew, talking with Duer over Skype via smartphone. This was important both for Maria actually beginning to make close connections with a character group (before this, she'd just had limited interactions with a variety of characters) and also because it was the first time any real backstory had been created for her! It was that conversation that brought up Maria's lack of history, which I came up with on the fly largely since I didn't have any ideas for where she was from or what her past was. So I gave her a past that was no past at all, and it became pretty significant in her approach to life. The second important thing was having Maria meet Dolby on a complete whim, fueled entirely by "Maria has a smartphone and loves modern tech, while Dolby is made of retro tech. I bet it'd be funny if they met!" This was even after I joked about Maria being Dolby's kryptonite and everything. The conversation was actually pretty good and they hit off reasonably well, which would be very important later on. At this point, I was still pretty sure Maria would be a villain, but I began to waver on making her murderous and a definitely-needed-to-be-killed  one, leaning towards having her just be loyal to the Council instead and possible to just arrest. There was actually a short window of time where I considered having Maria capable of returning next year, likely as an ally of some of my planned Season 7 characters due to a perceived lack of other friendships for her (that sure didn't last).

Then came the big one: Format Wars. Inspired by the fact that Maria was maximum modern, I threw her at the Sinclair event for fun when I came in late during that race. I had a lot of fun sending her modern (rented) jeep against Sinclair's classic car, and when the second one was Odyssey I knew I had to send Maria again. After all, she plays Pokemon Go, how modern can you get? Those two and her growing friendship with Dolby were what it took to convince me to plan to send her on every Format Wars event, and as Maria kept going on events, befriending Dolby and the others, I gradually began to really like her supposed disguise. I started wavering on the Maria event ideas, first dropping Maria's "true" powerset to make the matter shifting all she had (so that she wouldn't be ridiculously powerful if she stuck around), then dropping her solid loyalty to the Council (the idea I had for a while was that she would be fighting the Kobbers to let them choose where Maria went). It was Maria's fights against Clippit and Dahlia that really cinched it, as well as her fury at the two of them for abusing the Nostalgia Elementals. That made me certain Maria wouldn't be fully loyal to the Council anymore with how much she cared about the clearly-abnormal Nostalgiakin, so rather than a conversation about how dangerous the Enigma would be to unleash, the three remaining Council members talked about how the Enigma might not be loyal anymore. For a few days, I waffled over whether to reveal Maria's Council membership at the Enigma event or beforehand, before finally deciding to reveal her as a Council member ahead of time and making it clear that she didn't believe in the Council at all anymore. That settled the nature of the event entirely, and I had the Shadow Knight help her due to his gradual establishment as a deeply honorable character. As an interesting tidbit that I didn't have a better place for; Maria was originally slated to have a last name that would have been used for a dramatic reveal - Bradley would have contacted her and referred to her by that name (which is why I set him up as referring to everyone on a last name basis), and she would have sent a note from The Enigma addressed as that, and only at the event would they have been revealed as the same. When I decided to reveal Maria early, I scrapped that entirely, and now she doesn't use one in everyday life. The name itself may come up in some context, next year - I have a couple thoughts...

After Enigmaplot played out and Maria fully joined the Kobbers, I knew I had to bring her to Bradley's event. The full rejection of his beliefs would be to fight to stop them, and she had friends among the Kobbers who she wanted to save. Now that the Council's done, what's next for Maria is coming to Kuwahawi in Season 7, and entering the seventh Big Bar Brawl - I once planned that the Brawl would be just Season 7 debuts for my entries, but after how well she was received, there's no way I can leave Maria out! And one more thing: while most of Maria's backstory, such as her lack of a homeland/family and the source of her powers, was made up on the fly, I've noticed that I left a bunch of good plot hooks in said backstory. Expect to learn some more about her past next year, because I've already got some interesting ideas.

I feel what best sums up Maria is these two predictions from Gooper Blooper: 
Gooper Blooper: I obviously don't expect a whole lot this season because you have so much else going on, but
Gooper Blooper: I am predicting a plot for Maria next year that will give us some more info about her
Gooper Blooper: also predicting she's in BBB7
At the time they were made, these were completely wrong predictions, since Maria was slated to be permadead by the end of this year. Now? They're totally right, and all thanks to a handful of unexpected events in RP.

The Shadow Knight/Sir Galrien (The Shadow)

Appearance Source: The character Berserker, from Fate/Zero

The Shadow Knight came about in the same way as General Cleft and the Alliance of Evil/Good: me looking at my old, not very good RP and going "wow, I could do that a lot better now... what if I did?" In the first RP he appeared in, which was the one the Alliance hailed from, the Shadow Knight was a totally generic evil villain who killed off other villains (and later my protagonists) in order to collect the Chaos Emeralds, which promptly revived nearly everyone who he killed off and unleashed his even eviler boss, who promptly killed the Shadow Knight and then didn't do anything beyond stand around and look menacing. Later the Shadow Knight somehow came back to life and started working for the guy who killed him, with seemingly no qualms about it whatsoever. It was pretty bad writing! Especially since he had no personality beyond "is evil". When putting together the Council, though, I began to wonder if he'd be a good fit for this group.

As it turns out, he was! It helped that I had watched Fate/Zero during the Council planning process, which meant I got to learn about Berserker. A knight clad in all black armor was the perfect choice for the Shadow Knight, especially since my mental image of the old RP version was a recolor of Kirby's Heavy Knight. That would have looked weird in RP as a big bad villain. Next came "why's he the Shadow Knight" inspiring me to make him a body of shadow contained within armor. That led to the idea of being an immortal knight who sought death to escape a life he did not desire, and that was a major role in making me play him sympathetically. He originally wasn't going to be that sympathetic, he was even planned to kidnap the Alliance members at one point! However, by the time that would have happened, he had been established as honorable and noble, and it would have felt very OOC for him to do that. As for his true name, you can thank Bree for that. She suggested a few knight names to me, and I modified one slightly to come up with Sir Galrien. Credania just came from an online generator, and I felt it worked well enough for this country.

The decision to have him show up by killing off some minor villains was made almost immediately, since I wanted to refer back to his old RP role that way. I'll explain why I picked the Pokesquad further down in the blogpost, but as for his protection of the Alliance, that was chosen about the time I decided the Pokesquad would be the ones he killed off. Originally it was just because they got into a lot of fights and thus contributed to the fighting energy plan, but as I refined that such that the Council was the main source, I changed it to a combination of that and protecting Corporal Guy on Bradley's orders. As I developed Bradley, it felt like he wouldn't do that, and it changed again to their being an inspiration for Galrien thanks to their devotion to heroism. The gimmick where he'd occasionally show up to assist the Alliance wasn't decided until shortly after his first appearance, and I feel I did it just right. Three times was enough to really showcase him without overdoing it, since it was only over about two months away.

Let's see... as for the Shadow Knight assisting Maria's escape from the Council, that was decided on when I wanted a bit of a dramatic buildup to the Enigma plot day. It also helped explain why nothing bad ended up happening to Maria between then and the finale (although some scrapped plans were a little different). Beyond that, I think I've exhausted what there is to say on this guy, so let's move on to his polar opposite!

Halley Solaris (The Rocketeer)

Appearance Source: The character Nozomi Hoshino, from the music project Trillion Starlights

So hey! You know how Maria went from being super evil to being good and unwilling to fight the Kobbers thanks to gradual changes in planning? Yeah, well, Halley Solaris was pretty much the opposite! Although she never started out anywhere near what Maria ended up, just as "not an asshole but still impossible to talk down". The initial inspiration for a rocket skater came from one of my favorite Danbooru pictures, which I was all set to use for the rocket skater... until it was pointed out to me that those weren't tight pants, it was pantyhose with a pantyshot. So, that put the kibosh on that particular picture, and I hunted around until I found Trillion Starlights. It was still a stupid design (Nozomi wears basically no pants at all of any kind, just underwear, because ?????), but it was much easier to crop, so Not-Shimmer, aka "Sparkle" was born! Later on, I picked out her name through space theming, thanks to Halley's Comet and the solar sun. As a fun fact, Original Skater Girl was going to have flamethrowers, but Halley didn't have them since she lacked a fireproof outfit like Original Skater.

Now I had the Rocketeer, and originally, she was always Bradley's second in command! The plan was for Halley and Bradley to be featured in one combined event, where Halley made a last stand to buy Bradley time for his ultimate transformation, and while she wouldn't have been a huge jerk she would have been impossible to talk down or arrest. She was also planned to show up in May after McGraw's defeat... even though she wouldn't be defeated until the very end. Thankfully I realized that'd eclipse more relevant characters, and like with Engelstein I pushed Halley's reveal back to July. That delay was what sparked the change from her original loyal-but-not-an-asshole personality, all thanks to the song Highway Star. Having discovered the song in the interim thanks to a JJBA video, I began to really enjoy it and associate it with Going Fast. Thanks to that, I wrote Halley's introduction with her being focused on her speed, and during July that started giving me ideas for an independent event rather than a teamup with Bradley. That's why I changed my plans and made it 13 Councilplots total.

So now I knew that I wanted to have Halley on her own, what caused her to be super evil? My original plans! See, once upon a time Halley was meant to be the "shows up as good guy, turns evil" character, but since I had mentioned her design to a few other users and had The Rocketeer labeled, I threw that out pretty quickly. Now that she was on her own, I didn't need the loyalty aspect to explain her fight, so I decided to subvert people's expectations in a different way. Cute anime girls are generally redeemable (Shimmer), so what if one was completely irredeemable? That inspired making her actually a scumbag underneath it all, wanting to kill Eggman just for his failure and revealing that she knew Bradley's plan would ruin the world. I wavered on her motive for a while - at first it was just "shits and giggles", then I had the idea that it was a desire to see the invincible Kobbers smashed apart, and finally I went for the classic motive of power-hunger. I think Halley was a lot more effective for being rotten to the core, but the one thing I wish I had done was an idea for a scene between Galrien and Halley's events. Halley would have been ordered by Bradley to fight the Kobbers, tried to backstab him then and there, and Bradley would have revealed he had been onto her plans for months and had a counterattack, forcing her to stand down and follow his orders. Ultimately, though, I couldn't work it out to my satisfaction, so I dropped it and just had Halley gun for the Kobbers first of her own volition.

Speaking of Bradley!

Commander Bradley (The Mastermind)

Appearance Source: This picture by Crazy Tim, a redesign of Paper Mario's General Guy

The guy in charge! Commander Bradley wasn't always the guy in charge, actually; originally, a military man was going to be the concept behind one of the other Council members, while the Mastermind was someone totally different. Buuut then I couldn't think of a good mastermind, so I took one of the ideas that felt the most leaderlike and moved them up to be the Council's commander. Hudson Bradley... I don't entirely remember where I got the name, but I do know that I picked it because it just felt like a name you might give a military man. As for the picture, that was picked because it was one of the best pictures for a military commander I could find. Just had to explain that mask!

A lot of Bradley's material wasn't decided on until during the season, actually. His plan, his motives, his connections... all of those I only came up with as events played out! Bradley's motives were decided because I wanted to avoid making him just Evil For The Sake Of It, and I liked the idea of good intentions with terrible, terrible execution. I wavered on how sympathetic, if at all, to portray him, and since he got huge amounts of heel heat from just announcing his plan I went all in on the unsympathetic side. As for his connections, the tie to Corporal Guy was not something I thought of at first! It wasn't until around late July that I began to wonder if I could explain why they had the exact same mask, and that gave me the idea of Bradley knowing Corporal Guy, which went from there into Bradley actually being his mentor. It was a surprising amount of depth I didn't expect to get from one of the Alliance members, so I feel it was the right call. Originally Bradley just wore the mask to hide his identity, but I decided to explain why he'd have it at the time he knew the Corporal, so I gave him the scarred face and the past fights against the supernatural.

The barrier shield was thought up only a little while before the finale, as a way to explain why we didn't just barge in and murder Bradley right away. It's much better to have reasons for that than to just say you can't, after all. Beyond that... there's not all that much to say. The thing about Bradley is he was always intended to be the final foe, but by necessity I also needed to reveal him first. So to avoid making him too annoying, I kept him relatively low-key, and most of his actions were tied to reveals or to commanding the Council - heck, people thought he might be a fakeout Big Bad with how little he did onscreen. Luckily, I feel the final event itself made up for it big-time. Bradley was just one of those villains who doesn't make an impact until you actually fight him.

EVENTS

Now that I've gone over each of the Council members in-depth, let's talk about their events, both the actual Council members and their allies! Some of them came out close to my original plans, others were heavily revised. I'll also include Patchouli Plot in here, because why leave out my only non-Council plot?

Showdown At The KO Corral: Johnny McGraw
Not all that much to say about this one to start with; once I knew I wanted to have a cowboy showdown, I was gunning for maximum Classic Western, even in the setup with the callout letter. I even did some research by watching A Fistful of Dollars before the plot! I originally considered having it out in the desert, but decided to go for the Vulture's Roost to set up Saul later on. Also, tumbleweeds? Lethal. RIP Sakuya

Kawashiro Technologies Goes Green: Nettori
While the in-character reason for Nettori attacking Kawashiro was to steal their tech, the real reason was... a name joke. Nettori, Nitori, eh? Eh? As for the first part of the plot, I wanted to give it a try with a plot gimmick, making it about progressing through obstacles before actually fighting the source of the plants, like the swamp of the Hermit or Annuit Coeptis's pyramid. Nettori was one of the most memorable Fusion bosses for me, which is why it got to play a major role as a plot antagonist.

Boxing Day: Amber Caltricala
Woo, punching! The choice of the VEW gym as an arena was picked when I came up with the callout, and I'm very happy that Goops was willing to play along. Amber herself felt like a good character to give the characters hints at the rest of the Council - one of the things I wanted to do throughout the year was make sure information showed up IC as well as OOC. It was the last ahead-of-time callout because I wanted to build up everyone else ahead of time; McGraw and Amber were the only ones I felt should debut for their plot events, and thus needed some form of "here's who you're gonna fight".

The Mukyu Heard Round The World: Ridley's Skull
The epic culmination to a running plot thread since Season 3! I got the idea sometime after the end of Season 5, when I had given Ridley's Skull back to Elvis Impersonator. The first part I can up with was making Ridley's Skull actually evil, and specifying it as being powered by hate was inspired by Live-A-Live. That game features a horse that turns into human thanks to PURE HATE. I originally wasn't sure how evil to make the Impersonator, but I decided to throw him a bone and let him turn out to be controlled as well, since then they could reconcile by working together on Fite Votes.

Interestingly enough, while Patchyplot wasn't part of Councilplot, it was once considered to be! When I didn't think I'd have enough characters, I considered making the Impersonator one of the Council members, and for a while I considered him being an ally of the Council. Ultimately I decided that as silly as Patchyplot was, it was best suited to being completely independent. Super Mecha Patchouli was added because of a suggestion of Mechapatchy showing up, and I thought it was a good way for Ridley's Skull to fight on its own. This was also meant to be the leadin to a Patchy retirement, but I've decided I'll probably keep Patchy and the Impersonator around, just as fite voters first and plot characters second.

The Collision At The Concert: Naoko Hoshino
This plot originally wasn't going to have anything to do with Praline at all! It took me a while to work out what I even wanted Naoko to do, and my first idea was for her to attack Eggerman due to his significant position as the Mayor of Vegas. When I came up with the idea of Eggerman vs. Eggman, I decided to switch Naoko's target (especially since I wanted to get as many Chaoacters involved in Councilplot as possible), and threw her at Praline. Originally, it was going to be just a random sidewalk ambush for both Eggerman and then Praline, but I decided to make it the concert both to have Praline actually performing for once, and to make it easier to put characters there to get them involved.

As for the concert and fight itself, the idea to have Ironheade cameo was pretty much decided as soon as I knew it would be a concert. SK was down for it, and we got some cool metal to pump people up. The set defense was me mixing it up again and giving Del's concept a try - I thought it fit the unknown enemy well, but she kind of went down fast in that regard. If I ever bring it back, I'll need to tinker with it. Questions for next year!

A Pirate's Life For Me: Captain "Redcoat" Morgan
A battle on the high seas! But with a lack of high seas, I had to make do. I considered the Black Canyon River as a reference to the scrapped Keelhaul plot back in Season 5, but I decided a lake with some good size for other people to sail up and board would be better. As I mentioned above, the First Mate, Second Mate, and Third Mate were all rejected choices for Captain Morgan himself, given new life as his mooks. I was slightly worried about having Exatron battle and flee, but since Morgan went down it wasn't a filler plot, so in the end he got his debut that way after all. The plot was pretty clearly about Morgan anyway, so it was probably pretty obvious Exatron'd be out of there.

Mob Mentality: Saul Castello
Woo boy, this one went off way better than I expected. Castello and his casino was one of the events I had the least idea of what I was doing at first; I sort of came up with most of what I was doing on the fly, such as the size of the gunfight. Saul wasn't always set to be battled in the Vulture's Roost, for that matter; I only decided on that when I picked the premise of D'arby's attempt to fleece everyone. It was probably obvious, but I didn't actually roll for D'arby's blackjack hands. He was cheating, after all! I didn't really have a first idea, mind you, I just took a while to come up with the one way that it actually did play out.

Speaking of D'arby, he was a huge demotion. Daniel J. D'arby was originally considered to be one of the thirteen Council members! As The Gambler, he would have done a similar gambling-type encounter, but then I shifted into going full OC. He was dropped to working for the Council in general, and then dropped again into just being an underling of Saul's. I left out Osiris's soul stealing because I felt that might get too touchy, especially with him being just a mook. Santino was a reinvention of the rejected picture for Saul, in the same way that the three pirates were. He existed mainly to mix it up and provide some more firepower, and he sure succeeded at that.

Along Came A Spider: Yakuza
Admittedly my most filler-y plot, I never really had much in mind beyond "I wanna use this Fusion boss" - beyond that, it was largely tied to my original ideas for the Federation Force, which I'll discuss later. It worked well as a way for FV and SK to do a full plot, though, since both had trouble with that thanks to timezones and work schedules. The Space Pirates and the evidence from them were a last minute addition to make it more relevant to the overall picture, and the Engelstein reveal was shifted here instead of post-Nettori.

Showdown At The Pillar Of Light: Rancette
The big halfway point battle! Rancette was always planned to be battled midway through the year, thanks to my plans meaning that the second half of the year was already full up, but it worked out much, much better thanks to her more important role. Revealing the Council's goal happened largely because A: it created some plot progression, B: it allowed me to stop dancing around the subject in Councilposts, I could outright say "we wanna get rid of the esoteric", and C: it helped play up Rancette as being even more of a big deal.

Angel was there largely because of the picture, and I had fun writing a magical panther. As for the ending, I know there was interest in sparing Rancette, but I wasn't planning to push it one way or the other. I decided I'd see how it played out, and Sumireko pulled off a high-value killshot, so I went ahead and let her get killed off. At least you kept the kitty!

Hard Boiled Eggs: Dr. Eggman
Eggermania etc. This plot was one I had in mind for Eggerman once it was clear he was a full face now, and I added the Council tie because I thought it was a neat way to explain it. The other Eggs were all taken from the same panel as Eggerman's picture - I nearly added a fourth, before realizing that one was the normal Eggman body. For the best, since I ran out of names after Eggedman. The metal knockoffs were added a few days before the plot as a way to make the final fight before Eggerman's beatdown not feel too busywork, and I think they all did well. It helped that Eggman on his own basically can't fight, so Eggerman pummeling him was basically just a coda.

Mechanical Mayhem: Exatron Mark 8
The Meta Yatagarasu's appearance here was largely thanks to a plot idea I scrapped twice, before rolling it into this. I first considered it coming back in 2014 as part of the Mother Brain battle, but decided that I should focus just on Mother Brain there. Then it was a considered 2015 plot, with some of the same structure; it would have been reconstructed by renegade pirates, blown them up, and caused trouble for Pitsuho, but I scrapped it in favor of the Alliance of Evil's Ultimate Evil Plan. Exatron was always meant to be the metal muscle, and he pulled it off pretty well, helping this fit as a good Big Fight Plot. As nice as it is to have the variety of locales to do plots in, sometimes it's fun to just have a classic street fight!

Turnabout Industries: Alan Anderson
This one was completely different at first! My original idea, when I first thought up Anderson, was for an immediate battle in the boardroom. It would have been a two-phase fight, where the first phase was a battle against Anderson in a suit of powered armor, and for the second phase he would have been joined by a helicopter (piloted originally by Exatron, and then by Bradley when I was sure that Exatron would be taken out beforehand). The pilot would have escaped, but Anderson would have very likely been killed. My second idea was for a verbal confrontation, and when exposed as a crook Anderson would have called in the helicopter and leaped to it, resulting in a boss battle with a helicopter that Anderson was riding. I even had music in mind for the battle!

Once I went all the way into the murder investigation, I scrapped the combat entirely, deciding to go with the Ace Attorney-style confrontation, complete with testimonies. Honestly, I was mostly winging that part; I didn't have specific contradictions in mind! I just let you guys come up with things based on all the evidence and all the words, and you did fantastic. The breakdown, though? That was in mind from the beginning. Can't end an AA case without a breakdown, after all.

A Wonderful Day For Science: Doctor Engelstein
Engelstein's plot wound up being... surprisingly small. On the other hand, I got a Del on it, so what's not to love? It was pretty much the way I expected it to go, although originally the mook phase would have had the Security Robot, Arachnus, and Zazabi. With how small it was, I felt that'd be overdoing it, so Zazabi was simply incomplete and still in the test tube. As for Engelstein himself, I wish I had busted out his hulked up form earlier, rather than focusing on the science. I know it went down surprisingly quickly, but I was getting the feeling that the event was winding down, so I decided to end it rather than drag people along too long. Despite being a bit finicky, I still liked how it played out, and how the Federation Force got a day in the limelight - unsurprisingly, they weren't always meant to have that. That's what happens when they end up more likable than intended!

Written In The Stars: Ezradamus
A confession: that one theme of Stardust's, which I only knew from Danganwrestling, is basically the entire reason this plot was themed with an astrological nature. I had a vague idea for Josukeplot (nothing beyond "AN ENEMY STAND!?") but it took this song and a reason Ezradamus wasn't doing anything until September to decide "let's make him astrology themed". The Stand Arrow was chosen as a way to make him a threat that needed to be taken down, and the tourist was actually going to die, until I decided to leave it up to chance. He won the flip and lived... which worked out well, considering I had no idea how Josuke would have found him otherwise! Age of Aquarius's power was decided right before the event itself, since I knew I wanted it to be related to the Zodiac but couldn't figure out how. When the event hit, I decided that personality influencing was better than the general "crab power, goat power" etc, and we got the ability to affect people based on zodiac stereotypes. It was pretty cool, even if it meant some total burial of some characters.

An Enigmatic Friend: Maria
You know how Maria went through a bunch of different drafts until what actually happened? Yeah, so did her event.

The very first idea I had, when she was totally hidden, was that Maria would have rushed into the bar on plot day. She would have recruited some Kobbers to join her in a warehouse, where she would have revealed her true colors and tried to kill them. Once I had her show up as a heroic character, the idea was revised for a different betrayal, where Maria would have stumbled in talking about someone attacking her and Tenshi. The Kobbers would have followed her and found a badly injured Tenshi, who would have gained just enough consciousness to single out Maria as the one responsible. That would have forced Maria to shut her up with a killshot (yes, Tenshi would have been revivable), followed by a vicious battle with the Kobbers. Not only was Maria going to have all sorts of powers, but I felt Original Maria was evil enough that if she was defeated but not killed, she would have demonstrated a self-destruct power and blown herself up in an effort to take every Kobber with her.

Then, of course, my plans began to change! Version 2 was the "not a crazy murderer but still fully loyal to the Council" version, where Maria would fake her own kidnapping and leave a message to go to the warehouse. This time, I had the idea that people would have to force their way through a deathtrap maze, like the obstacles in front of Nettori. At the end of it, Maria would have been waiting and owned up to everything, before battling the Kobbers. At least she probably wouldn't have exploded if not killed in this version. It would have pretty much been up to people's reactions if she lived or died, though.

Once I started to get deep into Format Wars, I abandoned that and shifted to Version 3 of Enigmaplot. In that one, I already had the idea of Maria just outright saying it at the park, but this time she would have forced a fight anyway. Not to beat up the Kobbers, but as a way to decide who to side with - if the Kobbers won, she'd side with them, but if Maria won the fight, she'd go back to the Council. The Shadow Knight wasn't involved in that one either; one idea I actually had (that I'm glad I scrapped) would have been to build heel heat by having Halley show up at the end of the fight and shoot Maria in the back as punishment for failure, before escaping. I scrapped that part because two and a half weeks would probably be too long to wait after something like THAT, and because I thought about it and decided that Halley had enough heel heat anyway. One other fun fact: Kisume was considered to be the guide character for this event for a while, as a way to get her involved in Chaoplot this year. That switched pretty quickly to Hecatia when Maria befriended the Planeswardens and thus had a direct connection to Hecatia.

The ending of Format Wars and a few of the conversations afterwards were what finally got me to switch into the form we had, with the Shadow Knight helping Maria escape the Council and the lack of an enforced fight. I decided to just have Maria admit the truth and see what happened, which was "nobody wants to fight her". The fake fight proposal seemed kinda interesting, but I didn't push it since I'd only have two people wanting it. On the day of, I considered bringing in the ex-Planeswardens here, but since Harpy wasn't feeling up for it I left them out... which worked out pretty well, they were definitely a highlight in the later event. People liked this anyway, so in the end I'm just happy that it went off so well.

Not A Dream: Nightmare
2spooky! Nightmare and his early October appearance basically served a twofold role: one was just to have a good old fashioned spoopy dayplot against what's widely considered the weirdest, spookiest Metroid Fusion monster. The other was a way for people to give plot attendance to characters who weren't invested in all the big plots beginning to wrap up around this time. Luckily, people were down for that - Samhain, Mob, Yuyuko, and Willy were all good examples of what I wanted. Kisume was just there so she could actually get involved. The last thing I wanna mention is that the junkyard was actually not the original idea! It would have just shown up in the city, like how Exatron actually appeared, but when I decided to reveal it ahead of time I needed a good place to put it. Therefore, right in the pile of junk.

Knight Falls: Sir Galrien
One of my most surprisingly poignant plots, that's for sure. Galrien was always intended to be a tractorless battle, thanks to me wanting to give that type of plotting a try as a host - and with how well it went off, this might not be the last time I do it! The ex-Planeswardens were a much later addition when talking with Harpy; she suggested adding them in to tie the Planeswardens to the Council even more, so I did! Aquila and Hana were pretty good here, and another advantage of the tractorless battle - it was easier to juggle three opponents against not that many foes. Fun fact: in the original version of the plot, Galrien would have kidnapped the Alliance as I mentioned, and held them captive in order to force the Kobbers to battle him. He would have been working with Halley, even. Of course, by the time it actually happened, he was already breaking from Halley by lying about Maria and he was too honorable to attack his charges that way. Thus, just walking into the bar and saying "fight me".

In terms of pleasant surprises, I was also glad Rifa was here, because it made it a lot easier to introduce Galrien's backstory and the true reason why he fought, and I liked how Yotam got to show another side of his character. Of course, the biggest and best surprise was actually getting Ivel on a plot. Trust me, I wouldn't have expected that at all if you asked me, but I really liked it! Ginocini was pretty fun, and I wasn't expecting to get a bonus user on a Chaoplot. Thanks a lot, dude!

Speedway Star: Halley Solaris
The only core Councilplot not initially planned! As mentioned, Halley was supposed to be combined with the Bradley event, until I got enough of an idea to give her a plot day of her own. It was pretty easy for me to pick the Las Vegas Motor Speedway; NASCAR is one of my oldest fandoms, and with an actual racetrack they use right here in the area, I just had to Go Fast. I wasn't always sure of the attack ideas, those took me a while longer to work out, but Tenshi getting her motorcycle blown to bits was always in the cards. For a bit of time, I considered having Halley kidnap Maria beforehand and you'd be fighting to rescue her, but again I felt that was unnecessary heat. Thus the plain callout. I also considered having the event happen during a race, but I felt it'd flow better if you only had to worry about Halley and not about a bunch of NPCs as well. The giant combination of finishers certainly worked much better that way.

I Reject Your Reality: Commander Bradley
The grand finale! The biggest change, of course, was removing Halley from this and giving her an event of her own. Originally, Halley would have been battled in the Council's meeting room, buying time for Bradley to finish powering up to his ultimate form. The elevator would have been tied to her life like the safe in the speedway was, forcing a battle rather than letting you just shove past her. When I decided to make Halley separate, I realized this was a good chance to actually have normal Bradley do things - in the original drafts, you never fought him as the Commander. After making Commander Bradley the opponent for the first phase in the meeting room, I knew pretty quickly that I wanted to give everyone the chance to tell him he was wrong. With how good the speeches I got were, I knew pretty quickly I made the right choice. As for his weapons, I wanted him to be sort of a parallel to Corporal Guy, since Bradley mentored the Corporal. That's why he got the guns, the grenades, and the rocket launcher; they're all things that Corporal Guy has regularly used in the past.

Now for the Avatar of Battle! Pretty much from the beginning of the plot, I knew I wanted some sort of ultimate transformation for the final boss, and I knew I wanted to tie it to the fighting energy - if they spent all year collecting it and it wasn't used for anything, then it feels like a waste of a plot concept. The choice of FFV's Enuo was settled pretty quickly, as not only was FFV the reason I went for the Council, it's also just a very good picture for a transformed and powerful human. For his powers... well, originally, he was just going to have powerful magic! That was it. You'd fight a tough sorcerer type. When I scrapped Maria's original powerset, though, I got an idea for how to recycle it and make it tie into the entire year of Councilplot, and that's why Bradley gained the supernatural powers of every character involved in Chaoplots (except for Patchyplot which wasn't connected, Andersonplot which lacked a fight, and Enigmaplot which was both). I briefly considered letting him get the powers of anyone, but I decided it'd be simpler, fairer, and most of all more fitting if it was just Chaoplot attendees. I even had a list I consulted, which is part of why I was able to get all 15 involved users represented.

A few more things... originally, Corporal Guy and Maria were slated to get shunted aside. They would have been unable to bring themselves to fight Bradley, and subsequently turned to stone or vropped away for the Avatar of Battle. I decided that these two had enough of a personal stake that people would actually prefer them getting involved, so I kept both of them fighting for the entire battle. Speaking of which, it's kind of funny; since Corporal Guy didn't have a personal connection until halfway through the season, and Maria was supposed to get permakilled at first... I basically didn't have any invested guide characters until late in the season. It was originally gonna be... I don't even recall, it was just some heroic characters to do heroic things. I like it better this way. As for the location of the final fight, it was originally going to be down in the laboratory basement after Bradley transformed. A few weeks before the fight I got inspired to come up with a more dramatic location, one that had the lights of Vegas in the background... and I realized the Big Bar Brawl 6 arena was still there, the sight of a huge Kobber battle. One PM to JRM later, and the Silver Dollar was all set for the final boss fight! (Even though I didn't tell him what I was using it for)

Bradley was originally considered to have a longer speech after you beat him, which would be something more solid about trusting the world to the Kobbers now. I decided it'd probably feel a little shoehorned, and that I preferred just the implication of understanding right before he died, so he got the five words and that was it. As for the music, I knew pretty quickly that I wanted the first three themes once the fights were certain... and the actual boss theme took a while to pick. I considered the FF5 final boss theme, and the Live-A-Live final boss theme, but ultimately went with Bravely Second because nice and dramatic. All in all, for all my concerns, this finale certainly felt like a grand finish to a huge, all-year plot. Which is exactly what I hoped it'd feel like!

MISCELLANEOUS
Some things just don't fit in one of those two areas! So I'll talk about them here.

Scrapped Jester Chao Plot
One plot I considered doing was one where some wackos founded a cult around Jester Chao. They'd view him as a "Messiah of Evil", and kidnap him for evilness. In a callback to my old RP, the leader would have been Swordsman Red, a robot similar to Axem Blue and Lancer Orange who dated from the original Coalition of Malice. Other considered cultists were Admiral Koopa and Joker Chao from the same source, and Roserade and Magnezone, who would have survived the end of the Pokesquad here. In the end, though, I decided we'd had enough cults to last us years, and that a stand user plot was more interesting. Which brings me to...

The Pokesquad
Always intended as a fakeout, and always intended to have Floatzel be made of failure, but which degree differed greatly depending on plans! The first idea was to have only Floatzel (and possibly Luxray) get killed off, scaring the others into joining the Cult of Jester Chao. When that plot was scrapped, I moved up to the Shadow Knight killing all four. Looking into old RP reminded me of Kricketune and Electivire, so I had the idea that they would show up looking for the others, accidentally run into Maria, and die horribly that way (this idea was thought up before Maria was even onscreen, mind you).

When I got the idea for a fight between them and Tenshiola, I went ahead and knocked out Luxray and Magnezone during it so that it wasn't entirely a "all of them got away" skirmish. I brought Electivire and Kricketune to up the numbers and make it look like there'd be a future encounter, and then of course they ran into the Shadow Knight. The main reason I used these guys for the Shadow Knight introduction really just boiled down to "old RP collisions", where one guy from old RP wiped out a whole bunch of others. Between the Alliance, the Pokesquad, and the Shadow Knight, there really were a lot of old RP reinventions from me this year.

The Federation Force
These guys were meant to be a lot more antagonistic than they came out. The original idea I had (courtesy of Gooper's suggestion) was for them to be actively trying to take Samus's job, and they would repeatedly try to push the Kobbers aside and take over missions. It was originally meant to lead up to a fight with the Force, where you'd have to beat them up so they realized they couldn't just barge in and take over. An alternate idea that came later was that the Force would try to fight Yakuza on their own and get their ass kicked, but when I actually started writing them, I ended up making them, well, not-jerks. I kind of wish I had a better conclusion for their arc, but at least they got to do a few things of their own, such as the Welward plot.

Making them the Other M marines was just a stupid spark of inspiration after I realized the numbers matched up - four Federation Force, four Marines who weren't Anthony or Adam. While people had trouble keeping track of them, I still think it was a fun decision. If nothing else, they're certainly more interesting than in Other M or Federation Force!

Renegade Space Pirates
My justification for the Metroid bosses. These guys were never meant to be a very big deal, and getting wiped out offscreen was my very first idea for them! The reason they weren't confronted properly is because I didn't have any good ideas for them; while the Metroid bosses were all new, you guys had fought enough Space Pirates in Season 4. They became simply a focal point to bring things in; Samus, the Force, the bosses, and the Yatagarasu. In the end, they just tried to control something they couldn't... like all the other times the Space Pirates got destroyed because of that.

CONCLUSION
There you have it, all the stuff I could think of to talk about when it came to Councilplot. I'm so glad I did this wild megaplot ride; it was a great six months and I loved how much everyone became invested in it. Getting literally every user involved in the plot was one of my proudest moments!

What's next for Chaoplots? Well... not this. I'm definitely stepping off the megaplot train for a while, this was wonderful but I'm not gonna try and do something as big again for a couple years. Instead, expect to see a few smaller-scale plots in Season 7. I've got at least one in mind already, so I can't wait to see you next year for more Chaoplots! Thank you for reading this far if you did, and participating in Councilplot either way!