Desmond’s moment of “I have lost control of the situation” was me looking at what I’d written and going “well, this wasn’t the plan...oh well, time to pivot”.
Like Leap of Faith, this got split from the next chapter for flow reasons, mostly tone.
( Draug Plot )
(This was my ‘what I am writing later’ memory jog. When I came back to it later, I went ‘...actually that looks like a pretty good chapter summary’, so here we are.)
Desmond absolutely went back after this chapter and re-read Shaun’s ‘intro to the factions’ sheet and took the line “We absolutely do not need to end up as flexible as the Dragon” in a completely different context than originally intended.
( but which is which )
Desmond actually is doing better than he thinks, but he’s right that he has been half-assing it a little because he wasn’t confident. He did obviously decide to have another existential crisis, this time because he finally realized that people might know who he is now.
Red’s speech about the war is paraphrased because, among other things, he usually tells it at his store.
( synchronicity )
After Desmond finished his speech, I went “wait a minute, that sounds familiar”. There’s a lot of similarity there with Glenn Yarbrough’s It’s So Easy Not to Try.
Chapter title from Beta-senpai (who is still not beta’ing this whole story as he’s not familiar with Assassin’s Creed but is lending a hand here and there). I also sent him part of the speech and he went “I’m sensing some well-earned hostility there...”
compilation of weirdly 10x more relevant to Desmond than your average TSW character dialogue from Krieg:
“Are you here for a signature? I'll make it out to "Christ almighty," since you're so intent on dying for our sins.”
(He did also mention ‘the buzz fades’. That’s less Desmond-specific, though.)
“I’m a writer. I make millions repeating myself. What’s your excuse?”
“Who would you be, what would you be, without this, without your precious war on evil, without your secret world, your sacred brotherhoods, your ranks and titles and rituals. You’d be just another rat stuck in the race with a dead-end job, living for a paycheck and the weekends.” (...not that Desmond would think that was a bad thing.)
“You soak in it so others don’t have to. You take one for the team.”
“Maybe it’ll be different this time. Maybe you’ll save everyone.”
( the nihilist and the assassin )
the lair area is actually near the Park, not the black goat woods. I think I just included it before the Filth pool because it felt like something important to include and I wasn’t going to have it pop up again—except now it has, so now it’s non-euclidian with two different entrances far away from each other and absolutely no explanation. Random non-euclidian geometry is perfectly in-character for this game.
Also almost named this Outside the Story, but the next chapter’s title is more concrete, so I thought I’d go for contrast.
( in the rain )
Desmond would have known that Krieg was in Solomon Island if he’d listened to the Sheriff complain about the number of calls she’d had to go on because the guy was getting drunk again.
Hide & shriek is a goofy spinoff that I honestly wasn’t going to mention except for the fact that lore-wise Carter would absolutely have played it and I realized it was the perfect opportunity to actually make Desmond talk about something. And he didn’t drag his feet this time, so hurray, he’s actually learning.
( a few leads )
Warning: this might be a feels chapter.
Main Points: Assassin's Creed/The Secret World( back in London )
This will be...a long time in the future. But. One of the reasons I definitely ship Shaun and Desmond is, well, first tsundere characters are, like, my jam, but. In AC3 specifically Shaun mellowed. A lot. Still snarky, but he softened a lot and actually made time for Desmond and was quietly supportive about Bill.
The moment I knew The Secret Histories wasn’t going to stay 100% gen was when Shaun got really soft to Desmond, and Desmond was doing it back with a little teasing. (I probably should’ve known before, maybe when Desmond was having his panic attack and probably when Desmond was thinking ‘you know what sounds nice being back in London with Shaun buying me a sandwich’, but, uh, I can be dense about crushes in real life too, so.)
Extra notes from playing: Sherriff Bannerman, fixer Sandy “Moose” Jansen he might well take stuff to
something about the ravens and trouble they came in the last time. Also 25 years ago? Maybe it wasn’t such a weird idea to go trying to talk to the ravens
An artifact with glowing protective runes. Doesn’t get a good feeling from it. Looks like...a winged creature of some kind? Like, a lion or something with wings.
Idol of nergal? That’d be really cool to study...but yeah getting it there would be a hassle, and the Dragon probably wouldn’t be too pleased.
Magic fire. He’s disposing anything potentially dangerous in here now. Oh it turns blue that’s not normal
And a rich lady named Elizabeth Franklin elsewhere on the island.
Worse than zombies. Stay in the light, out of the fog and the trees.
Wabanaki Indian grounds.
!!!! HE JUST GOT A CHAOS FOCUS THAT’S RANDOMLY APPROPRIATE
the morninglight sending people to die to...send off flares?
Clouds...don’t move that fast.
Norma Creed knows enough Greek mythology to make references. Fog came in with the ship. Red seaweed
the anima wells have more plants around them
Feels like he’s hearing ravens everywhere now.
Yard sale
something shiny + fog
“It might still create havoc, but at least it’s havoc we can control, and that’s the kind of havoc we like. That’s chaos.”
“We look forward to the blood and violence. Killing always ends with the same result, but each unique way of getting there provides valuable information about our enemies.”
Everyone is eager to watch everyone. It is a sign of the apocalypse.
They also call him a drunken dog
Also note the second he could start climbing desmond started climbing.
the greatest gift is an enemy who runs toward you only to lay down and kiss your feet.
The dragon are sure he’ll learn to do wards too
failed attempts to cover up murder—cannot accept what it is and will tear itself apart
the draug have been discreet, have a philosophy—desperate & invasion “let us assume all possibilities are true”
“Steal more artifacts for yourself. The Illuminati will blame the Templars for having taken them, for no one suspects the Dragon.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever win him over, though.” ...wait. I have questions.
Eagle vision to the sewers. Of course.
Desmond is unreasonably happy about explosives. Moose agrees.
Ohhh they’re bonding over explosives, that’s nice
This quote is original and it’s such a good line from Wolf I had to include it. He’s good people. “You look for evil in people, sooner or later, you’ll find it. Even when it wasn’t there in the first place.” (also the ‘it’s a cold place’--I forgot that line was actually in there)
actual line from the game from Nicholas: “I’m still not convinced he’s not here, somewhere, feeding on the ghosts of lost children like some kind of bogeyman.” He knows intuitively what was going on, even if he didn’t know the specifics.
also I never thanked/welcomed spring_gloom /facepalm. Hi, hope you enjoy your stay & good to see you again!
In the actual game, they build the Park up, and then you just...only get two missions in there. (To be fair, all the mind games individual to the character would be a little harder to do, with an MMORPG.) They almost do enough with it in the standalone game, The Park, but then...don’t actually finish Lorraine’s story there. So this wound up being about...three, four actual missions, plus the spinoff, plus at least a little bit of Lorraine’s mission, plus some of my own stuff and other horror inspiration thrown in a blender and then vacuum distilled down to a manageable and coherent volume.
I had no idea how Winter’s murder-void thing would go until he started going off on an Arkham-rant, so. Yeah, that happened. (If you don’t get the reference, don’t worry about it.)
I was going to have Lorraine act a bit like the Filth-zombies and yell out some of the more sensical phrases, but as usual things went differently in writing than in planning. Desmond’s mostly tried to take them on from a distance (or takes them out fast) so doesn’t get to hear them mumbling about groceries.
I chose a slightly-reference surname because canonically Carter doesn’t have one.
usually I try not to make specific kinds of jokes about things like word count numbers but in this case given what’s implied I think it’s pretty appropriate, actually
happy Echoes anniversary!
This is just a nebulous fluff thing that wouldn't leave me alone the week before until I wrote it, and then when I was done I stared at it and went 'uh, this actually works really well as a 'special' because it doesn't really spoil anything and probably doesn't 100% fit in with the story anyway'. So it may someday be somewhat AU whenever I get to that part, but isn't as much as, say, A Tad Too Inviting. Also I'll note I'm sick, keep writing chapters out of order that I'm probably going to have to heavily revise whenever I actually get there, and have been watching The Bourne Identity a lot all because of a) being sick and b) a one-off joke that's going to happen in the next interlude-esque volume? That being said I actually kinda like this a lot and hope you do too, thanks for sticking with this story!
( what it says on the tin )
I’m actually one of the weirdoes that prefers the first game to the second but thinking about “Chad” there’s some similarities here that make this song pretty relevant for writing this chapter.
Desmond actually getting to use information from Initiate is great.
( winter's lieutenants )
( the purple circuit )
I thought I’d added in something foreshadowing for a bit in this chapter previously, but I hadn’t. I went back to fix that. That being said this is actually a really good place to start to pull this in.
Thought this note from my first draft might be of interest to readers. (((Desmond share something for once in your life and stop making this so much of a pain thank you no stop no getting super vague and don’t lie about it Desmond seriously)))
This is in fact the Stephen King reference character who’s also his own thing now, because both authors coexist in my version of the world. The plot of Anne is now partially a reference to Joyland though, mostly because it’s one of the Krieg books that doesn’t have even a blurb or excerpt. You can find Krieg listed on Google Books along with covers and such despite the fact that he’s fully fictional. The mentioned blog also exists. I think I mentioned that this game had ARG elements, enough that they had an in-game browser so you could find, say, Danny’s Twitter for answers to in-game missions. (I wonder if he’s moved to Bluesky.)
Also there’s some interesting stuff here now about commonalities between books Desmond’s liked, now that we have two mentioned: at minimum for some inexplicable reason he might like “outsider protagonist” stories.
( twisting reality )
( nothing here worth taking )
( Rebecca's Third Reports )
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