Crimson Flag Plot Trivia and Q/A (SPOILERS)
Now that the comic proper has finished, I will now answer some plot related questions if anyone has any! Although keep in mind I'm very much a fan of soft world building-- that is, nothing is canon until it shows up in the comic itself, and your speculations on what happens behind the scenes are as good as mine provided they do not conflict with anything presented.
I'll also share a few fun facts about making the comic itself:
- I had the beginning of the comic up until the Relran Tree explosion (what I consider to be Act 1) reasonably planned out as well as the ending (big fusion battle, Lucian leaves for a new adventure at the end) in my mind when I started the comic, and figured it was enough to get started. Hence, we get some confusing parts in the middle as I tried to connect the dots. I would not recommend undertaking a big story like this unless you have every scene outlined from beginning to end-- which is what I'm doing with my next project.
- As mentioned, Tod really liked Voltar so I made him a bit more light hearted and had him come along with the heroes in Act 1. Originally he was going to be a more shifty merchant type, and a much more minor character, not really coming into play until the heroes needed to borrow his airship again later. I still had him keep his shrewd merchant roots though.
- Ludovic was originally going to be more of a heavily armored swordsman type but for some reason I spontaneously decided to dress him up like
Xiahou Dun. After Julian's capture, I originally wanted him to lead an assault on Caerreyn with the remaining Gray forces, but cut this part to keep focused on the main story. A very early idea that never made it down on paper was he figured out how to use the cloak to turn into a taur, and thus lead the assault with a taur-calvary. The second idea was he stole the Death Evan and used that. Stealing the Death Evan made it into the comic but I cut out his involvement to not get too crazy with the plot threads.
- I also figured Ludovic and the rest of the grays going on an adventure with the Death Evan, including having a run-in with either some Snows who were running some sort of illegal trade operation or the Snow government themselves when they got too close to their airspace. Again, cut because I didn't want too many plot threads going on.
- The Death Evan is named after the final boss in Breath of Fire 2 (SNES). This is a throwback to a habit of naming airships after SNES RPG final bosses in a forum story/RP I posted in sometime around 2003-2005 (Dhaos and Sinistral are two others that come to mind). I very nearly continued this trend with the rest of the airships but didn't want to get too crazy with the name infringing.
- The fusion at the end is directly inspired by Breath of Fire 1 (SNES), in which everyone fuses into a single giant dragon to fight the last boss (which is AWESOME). I actually had the fusion written down as a dragon up until the very end, when I changed it to a giant kitsune since that makes a bit more sense for foxes to fuse into. This is a very clear surviving plot point from 2008 I was very glad to finally indulge. Although unfortunately it kind of looks like a macro ninetales. Ooops!
- I dreamed up a way to get a version of MK Virmir into the comic as either Lucile's brother or some convoluted plot point where they split in two somehow. I'm really glad I didn't introduce yet another character with antennae-hair, because, good trees.
- Bryce is an example of a character who wasn't planned very well. He was perfect for Act 1 but after that I didn't really know what to do with him. I originally wanted him to go with Lucian and Sierra to Alopexia, but it didn't really make sense for him to want to leave Avelina's side and also his usefulness would be limited being feral-ed, so ended up having Lucian and Sierra travel to Alopexia by themselves. After that point it was clear he wasn't needed for the rest of the story.
There are probably a lot more so I'll post if I think of them!
