Damn, I didn't think you'd catch up that quick. Coolbeans.

Where is your 3rd treatment of our beloved NeS? I'd like to start posting other story arcs that don't kill the NeS, and your hanging noose should have snapped it's neck at least a month ago.

Apologies, Geb. I have abandoned my tact now that the poison is mixed in with my blood, making my tongue mush every time I try to utter words that I might write to this story.

Tact is not the most important factor in this matter. I've wanted this storyarc to be concluded by their prominent writers so that I could tackle it myself. My years of experience have just led me to believe that some good can come out of anything people produce, and I wanted this storyarc to be concluded before I spoke up with my tackling on the matter. Past Kirby's rather melodramatic statement, he raises points that will be brought up sooner or later.

NEW NOTE: Please everyone do what you want all crazy-like from now and even "conclude" the storyarc if you want. Let me worry about the editing process and how it'll actually end. This is meant to be a fun, very story-convention centered storyarc. Evil Geb may seem an unstoppable force with his powers, but he's particularly bound by story conventions and fighting on a meta-fictional level (which NeS, and particuarly NeShattered, is all about). With that said though, don't expect this storyarc to have a happy ending...END NEW NOTE

NEWER NOTE: Just for clarification, the "troublesome trio" are SUPPOSED to be over-the-top anime-style "are these guys for real?" type sub-bad guys. They're SUPPOSED to be good, but their main "powers" are to be REALLY annoying. Ever faced a bad guy who kept throwing poison and confuse at you? Having one part heal the others, and one part defend the others, and one part landing "half your life gone" type attacks? Yeah. They could be taken out "traditionally" or they could be taken out by some meta-fictional means -- breaking story convention, bend reality a little... who knows? They're just there for some conflict, stuff for you all to work with and whatnot. So work it, baby! END NEWER NOTE

EVEN NEWER NOTE (Because making new posts is for losers... ) I also updated the NeS update section. Second half of the first post of this thread, as always... it amazes me how many people seem to forget that...

THE SHORT: Just post people! Just worry about making it dramatic and fun/funny! Don't get hung up on plot, or else the terrorists have already won. Er, I mean or else the Ever-ending Plot has already won. Yes....

Some reminders for ideas Sem and I threw around. Yay vagueness:

-zombie apocalypse
-undead geb, young
-DMV/Taxman conflicts

These ideas may or may not formulate into something, depending on where stuff goes and whatnot.

OK, so based in part on Tracer's early post, I've been thinking about who would be attending this evil wedding to fill out official roles. Tracer's original line-up had the following:

Best Man: Morris the Cat
Groomsman (usher): Bhac
Father of the Bride: Gebohq

Now in my ideas, I switched some of the roles around, added some, etc.

Father of the Bride: Antestarr
Best Man: Qhobeg
Groomsmen (ushers): Rob X, Ares, (possibly Jim Seven)
Maid of Honor - Maybechild
Bridesmaids: Losien (possibly Voodoosnowflakes and Sugarless?)
Ringbearer - Morris the Cat
Flowerbearer - Cthulhu (in "chibi" mode)

The only change I intend to "acknowledge" in the story is the father of the bride -- I figure if Antestarr and I (the writers) follow through with the ideas we've been throwing at each other for the end of the "sidequest" I put Gebohq, Qhobeg and the others through, that Antestarr (character) will object to Geb being the father of the bride, claiming that he's the closest father figure Young has (true). Qhobeg (or Gebohq, depending on what happens) will then be the best man. Until that point, if I write up the post I had in mind with Evil Geb assembling his "cast" for the wedding, he'll probably say something about not knowing who his best man is yet, or make Ares his best man.

The Groomsmen, the Ringbearer and the Flowerbearer are meant to be the Protectors of the Plotfractal, of which Evil Geb is/was/may become again one of them. Morris and Cthulhu (looking adorably cute) are the closest equivilants of children, hence their roles. I'm uncertain if I want Jim Seven in the number because 1) he's not supposed to be interested in the affairs of NeS these days 2) he's got a vested interest in trapping people in NeShattered 3) if I decide the others are still Protectors, Jim would still not be one due to his active role in backstabbing the others and his selfish motives and such.

The Maid of Honor I figured should be Maybechild. She's still under the evil-like influence of the Dust, and it's traditional that the best man and maid of honor look like a couple. She'd also make a good mother of the bride, but their role to my knowledge isn't active like the other roles. I figure Losien might be rung back in by Maybe reluctantly as a bridesmaid, but trying to figure out equivilant bridesmaids has proved difficult. I may resort to having Voodoo and Sugarless "kidnapped" by Maybe (and passively Losien) to be part of the ceremony. If this is the case, this isn't even to imply that Maybe will be all evil -- the way I figure it, she may think they can all stop the wedding "from the inside" where they're dangerously close to being lured in by the evil, like Luke in the Dark Empire series. Then again, I might dig up TotallyEvil and uh.... yeah. Not enough female antagonists in NeS.

(In case you were wondering, which you probably weren't, I didn't include Mimiru as an option because she's engaged to CoolMatty, and the bridesmaids are traditionally "available." To my knowledge, Miss Fire, Maybechild , Losien, Amy Green, DoomofGlitter, Katiana Alyce, Maeve, Voodoo, Ariana, sugarless, and "Ricky" are the only characters in the history of NeS with female writer-counterparts. TotallyEvil, Mimiru, Subaru, Highemperor's daughter, and Young are the major female "NPC"s that I can recall.)

An interesting history behind the maids and men of the bride and groom -- there's apparently a Western European tradition that they be in the ceremony, similarly dressed to the bride and groom, to throw off would-be evil spirits or the like from doing harm to the real bride and groom. It's something I may keep in mind...

That's funny, I thought that the best man was supposed to kinda watch the back of the groom during a wedding to prevent any people who were opposed to the wedding from violently stopping it. Especially if the wedding took place secretly in a forest late at night. I could be wrong, though.

Also, I'd like to point out that you shouldn't just throw around ideas willy-nilly. I mean, sure, a Zombacolypse is most likely inevitable at some point, but it's not really something you overcome and walk away from. It's really more something you survive as long as you can. All the rules change. For instance if someone you know is stupid enough to get bitten, he's already dead. It often involves deep planning if you are to survive for an extended period of time. Finding an appropriate location to stand your ground, finding supplies, finding people you can trust to not accidentally let the zombies into your stronghold. All these are important factors.

The NeS heroes would have no chance in the face of a Zombacolypse.

Well my knowledge did come from a wikipedia entry. The more modern tradition, at least, is likely the reason you stated.

As for Zombacolypse, there's no reason it can't start slow in some 3rd world country, and then become an epidemic, say, 30 pages from now... >.>

The way I figure it, NeSquared has been darker, on the verge of falling apart again since it first started it seems. Already we have Hell on Earth (while Helebon and Dalaes are no longer in charge, there's nothing to say that Jim Seven wouldn't try to keep what they started), we have the Forgotten Characters (who, last we heard, were fighting for their own rule), and we have the as-of-yet unknown effects of Jupiter turning into a second, surreal small star of its own, as well as possible suggestions that the Earth is being plagued by spam.

Of course, such other apocalyptic senarios might kick in too, such as...
EMP killing all the technology
a "technological singularity
an ecological super-fart
existance will cease to be (and possibly pop things in existance)
destroyed by aliens
buildup of greenhouse gases
hit by a gamma ray burst
a new ice age
earth gets colder as the sun is blocked by particles in space
a huge tsunami
being hit by a comet
nuclear winter
normal matter is replaced with strange matter
mining for energy gone wrong
extinction of animals upsetting the ecological balance
eaten by a black hole
wiped out by a super-virus
terrorist tactics
the eruption of a super-volcano
our reality isn't real, and someone "turns us off"
Planet X returns
the moon is hit
the atmosphere gets too dirty
sea levels rise
global dimming
man-made black hole
we run out of oil
eaten by grey goo
overgrown with food
Dec. 21, 2012 comes and the Mayans were right
scientists trigger the collapse of the Universe
mass insanity
alignment of all visible solar bodies on Sept. 9, 2040
technology assimilates us
robots kill all humans
humanity evolves
population decline
infertility
the magnetic poles flip
interstellar doomsday cloud
no more men
stars heading towards us
second sun "Nemesis" visits
Earth's core freezes
the Milky Way dies
our sun dies
the universe has a "Big Rip"
fundamental constants reach critical value and crumble
the universe has a "Big Crunch"
we turn into sleeping robots to survive
Hinduism is right
Zarathushtra was right
Islam is right
Christianity is right
the Vikings were right
and of course, zombie apocalypse.

And there are certainly many other ways the world of NeS could come to an end!

Uh, I'm really sorry about that.

Nothing to be sorry about -- it just needs some lovin' now, is all. One of the things that irks me, and which Highemperor in particular did a lot, was throw in a bunch of ideas but then not do anything with them, or only use them briefly to sprout a bunch of other ideas that never got any attention. Your posts that triggered that whole senario was good -- it just needs to do stuff. Besides, if we're actually going to blame people, at least some of it should go to Antestarr as well, if memory serves me right.

Hey, I had originally planned for a story arc in which the heroes had to command a space ship towing an enormous block of ice to cool off Jupiter. It's just that other things came up...

Woo! You finally introduced The Patriot! Developing him (and TLTE really) should be loads of fun. I'm going to be trying to write a collaborative post or some with Antestarr and whomever to continue the side-quest thingy, and probably work with advancing the main group too. Unfortunately, job + Twlight Princess + not being at my own computer right now = distracted from doing NeS stuff.

So like, yeah... I'm back.

Krig: You mean you've caught up? (Edit: It seems like you have, but I'm just wonderin' all the same. Mostly because I'm interested on your thoughts on what you've missed out over the pages... I'm sure TLTE would be very interested on your thoughts on Thand at least. ^_^)

<nitpick> You know, TLTE, even if we went with 1 day of real life = 1 day in story time, 7 years isn't quite "many years ago." Close, but not quite. I'm more likely to say that only a year or two in the entirity of NeS has passed myself, but the nature of time in NeS is one of those things that's never wholly been tackled, and maybe never should be...</nitpick>

I'd have also nitpicked about how TLTE is referred to as number 7 (as Romanov earlier in NeSquared refers to him as number 105), but I noticed that you inferred the idea that this numbering system was in regards to the military-type/grade clones, which I think is pretty awesome.

In any case, your post was awesome -- and funny! I'm still trying to figure out how to make The Patriot unique from Captain America... >.> It'll probably end up developing through some random little detail, like usual.

I'll try to get some postin' done over the weekend. *crosses fingers*

You're right about those things that you mentioned. Accordingly, I fixed them. Thanks for covering my back again

I would be interested in what Krig had to say about Thand...perhaps you could email me to that effect, master Krig?

Awwww, you didn't have to change the 7 part, but I ain't gonna fuss about it. As for "covering your back" -- what can I say? I'm my own fanboy when it comes to NeS... Also, one day I'm gonna beat that formal part of you one of these days... ;>.>

Incidentially, I've been up for hours now browsing through Wikipedia, initially to look up stuff about Uncle Sam, then got side-tracked when looking at Captain America and a whole mess of Marvel-DC stuff. Please oh-please I hope NeS doesn't become the mess of stuff they got... (as for Uncle Sam, he definately makes a good model for The Patriot, and I'll have to ramble some other day in detail about the stuff I'm suggesting in this paragraph).

And to end this on a "thinking about NeS too much like a comic-book fanboy nerd" note -- assuming that The Last True Evil is 39 (as TLTE claimed to be in one post), he was born as early as 1960 (if we're to assume that it's still 1999 in NeS) and as late as 1967 (since it's still 2006), which would make his age between 21-28 year old in 1988, which is a very nice age bracket IMO. EDIT: My bad -- TLTE's been consistant with "late 30's" (the post I was thinking of has TLTE saying "I'm barely 40!" not something like "I'm not old -- I'm 39!" as I thought). In this case, he was born as early as 1960 (if we assume he is 39 and NeS is still in 1999) and as late as 1971 (if we assume he is as young as 35 and that NeS is set in 2006), making his new age bracket in 1988 between 17-28, though if we consider profiles "cannon" he has to be at least 18, and more likely closer to the 28 range with the time likely needed to have built up his skills, clones and the like. And yes - it's best to assume that clones can be made ala "The Sixth Day" that starred the Governator of California (within days) and not Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (needing to "grow"). Unless, that is, if we're to assume that "The Original Last True Evil" (OTLE, from pages 20-something to 30) is in fact the offspring of Rasputin and some random prostitute (as TLTE recounts to Kirby in the storyarc Tracer's been re-writing :D) and that Rasputin did not live past 1916, placing OTLE's relevant lifespan at the birth and rise of the Soviet Union, which would make TLTE's "birth" more or less arbitrary as they could have chosen to clone him whenever, whether it took a day or an actual full "life" growth of time...

I better end my NeS-nerdiness here before I start encouraging this sort of thing in other people, because this sort of thing is BAD for NeS! BAD BAD BAD! No, seriously... ah, I'll ramble about it later.

Heck yeah, the whole Arkng Thand thing is awesome. The part where TLTE and the others march into Deitopos to confront him? Sheer awesome. This story is going to go some interesting places, methinks.

So yeah, I hope to be around and writing and stuff a lot more now. I've missed the NeS, in my long interlude in the land of Absentia. It's good to be back.

Also, I really want to read the conclusion of the Hawthorne/Detective story-arc! Holy moley was that frustrating, to read through all that and then realise that the conclusion hadn't been finished yet! Not fair!

Some notes for myself. If anyone wants to beat me to the punch and steal any of this, by all means do so:

-Have Otter talk about via subtext how he got to be a drunk (being in a bad relationship and being blind/not blind to cheating significant other?)
-Have Qhobeg talk about/question his purpose with someone (how he couldn't trust the others with Geb's safety, how he's defeating bad guys, greater purpose unknown...
-Following RPG-ish templates for possible battle between TLTE-group, T. Trio and the Patriot:

TROUBLESOME TRIO
-Ted (in green) -- defender (shields, hostages, explosives)
-Ned (in purple) -- attacker (firearms, 1/2 life down magic, poison, etc.)
-Fred (in red) -- enchanter (healing, buffing/de-buffing, illusions)

"NEUTRAL"
-The Patriot -- Pariot:TLTE::Superman:Batman (revolvers, torch?)

HEROES
-The Last True Evil -- rogue + fighter (Batman)
-Amal -- liability?
-Sarn Cadrill -- fighter (Geb stand-in)
-CoolMatty -- wizard (attacker-nuke bad guys)
-Losien -- bard + Jackie Chan*
-Maybechild -- cleric + druid
-Mimiru -- fighter (dex)
-Semievil -- mage (less " magic nuke" and more "other magic stuff")
-Sugarless -- analyst (find weak spots, patterns) + tank (Krig minus the axe)
-Voodoosnowflakes -- unknown...
-4 Denny's patrons -- redshirts (ala Star Trek expendables)/liabilities

*I figured out that the "Mr. Nice Guy" Jackie Chan model works rather well for Losien, as he pulls of both action star and the humble, not bad-***, quirky, etc. qualities that should be present in Losien.

One question I have is: does the Hawthorne/Detective storyline take place in the 8th dimension, or in the regular NeS dimension? It started out in the 8th dimension (the Heroes left the HHoH and went to a nearby bar, and things went from there), but since then there seems to have been an assumption that it's taking place in the original NeS dimension. However, if it is in fact taking place in the original dimension, then there's a curious lack of reference to the fact that demons are now ruling the world/most of the world, and that this army of Forgotten Characters are running around trying to take power for themselves. It does seem to take place in America, and we haven't really outlined what the situation is in America, though it being so close to Canada/Hell, one would think it would be one of the first to fall.

Thoughts?

The assumption I've started to make is this:

The 8th dimension, like most other dimensions in NeS, have places and/or means of transporting people from it to other dimensions and visa-versa. The heroes were "trapped" when first arriving because it was uncharted territory, and while portals (in the general term, not swirly vortexes specifically) between dimensions exist, they're not easy to find/come by/what have you. Once in a dimension, however, it's assumed that most of the heroes are equipped with some form of beacons, which can be dispersed, allowing the Thingy^2 to transport them to those places and back with (more) ease than before (the idea that it's really painful is, in theory, supposed to keep people from doing this willy-nilly). NeShattered is supposed to be an exception, with only one magic-type portal guarded by the forces of Hell, but that got bent when the "cliffhanger convention" allowed TLTE and the others to go there. Also, the Haunted House of Heroes is surrounded by spooky woods, which I've assumed have had the story convention of acting as portals, much like plot tunnels, plot holes, etc. However, that's meant to be more unreliable, as it can be easy to get lost in the spooky woods.

Also, my assumption on the forces of Hell and the Forgotten characters over-running the Earth was that the less populated an area was, the less its effects were felt. Knowhere Valley is the proverbial Middle of Nowhere, so they likely wouldn't feel the effects the same (or at all) like, say, London -- where Helebon made his capital -- would have felt it.

On a related tangent, to be technical, the battles involving the forces of Hell and of the Forgotten characters is an apocalyptic senario, not a post-apocalyptic one. The latter implies that the conflicts have settled, which I suppose COULD be the case, but then that leaves the question -- what happened? What is the world that the heroes return to find? THey had left it at the start of these conflicts, and I had always assumed that it'd still be conflicting when they returned.

As for the whole Hawthorne/Thatchett stuff, I want it to be finished so I can deal with the stuff they've thrown in (-_-) and to possibly deal with whatever Thand was doing that would "change the world" while the heroes were in NeShattered...

On another note, you all should really check out the webcomic Dr. McNinja:

http://drmcninja.com/index.html

In my opinion, it's got the balance of absurd/funny and drama/character stuff that NeS should have (and sometimes does). If nothing else, it's a pretty awesome webcomic.

I'm not writing up the wedding ceremony on the 25th anymore, and since I don't feel like making a new date, I'll just say everyone has until I, CM, Ante and quesadilla_red finish up the side-story. I'll figure out how this story-arc will end when we get to it.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Would anybody be bothered if I wrote a story post that had a song in it?

Why not? It's been done before, and they're usually good

I was thinking Twin Suns would be a good guy to rally the Forgotten Characters and perhaps begin to use them for his own purposes. The conflict between the Forgotten Characters and the Demon Overlords hasn't been dealt with much, and I figured it was about time to do so. We still haven't cleared up what exactly happened with the demonic leadership after the demise of Helebon. Did Helebon even actually die? I can't remember.

Anyway, as usual, anyone else is free to take this wherever they want. My only plans were to have Twin Suns rename the Forgotten Characters the "Free Characters" at some point, to emphasize their split with the writers and anyone else who might want to control them.

Ah, leadership -- that should have been the obvious thing to do with the FC formerly known as Twin Suns. What you said sounds like good stuff.

As for demon leadership, I'd imagine it's technically under Jim Seven's control. The politics confuse me a bit too. I can tell you for certain though that Helebon's not technically dead -- he is trapped in the darkfoil/saber-thingy that Evil Geb is currently in possession of right now (see his profile for details). Still, that puts Helebon out of commission in regards to all that jazz.

Hell in NeS: combining the worst of politics and religon

Anyone else notice the rather obvious "Demons are to Forgotten Characters what Fascism (sp?) is to Socialism?"

Demons: Long live Lord Seven! Er, Lord Helebon! Er, Lord Seven again?

Forgotten Characters: Power to the prolitariate-- we mean to freedom from the writers!

We need the chimi-changa to eat all this stuff again... >.>

So that makes the Heroes what... American Capitalism?

Yay capitalism!

Just finished re-reading the Final Post of Page 50. Powerful and gripping, it is. I'm very proud of my part in it -- mind you, I can't really remember which parts were mine and which parts were written by other people.

I did notice a couple places where it still said "Insert scene with Losien and TLTE here" -- we were waiting for TLTE to write those up. Did those ever get finished? Are they languishing somewhere, not added to the post? I'm curious.

Krig: Not to my knowledge. I think it's just one of those things we never got around to doing or something.

Bah, I should write stuff, but Resident Evil 4 has me in its grip... >.>

I had some catching up to do in NeShattered, but now I'm good. Is there some greater plan going on behind the scenes with TLTE and The Patriot and I should hold off on posting or is it safe? I'm not going to start killing characters or anything, but it seems like TLTE the writer has something up.

Also, is Shattered Antestarr supposed to be a David Bryne reference?

From the way people were talking, the Patriot was just a random idea that no-one had plans for. Since they didn't post any plans for him here, you're free to do whatever you want with him. Well, mind you, it's not good form to kill off someone else's character. But other than that...

If anyone complains, just give them a long speech about how that's the nature of an Interactive story, and if they want to determine the destiny of their characters they should really be writing more.

Kids these days -- why I remember back in the early days of NeS, when people not only didn't care if people had plans for their characters, they would often deliberately mess up said plans just because it was funny! Hah! [/old man]

Okay, so I started the battle. I couldn't think of anything for the TLTE/Patriot angle...I was thinking that the next post dealing with that could happen as what I was writing is going on. Or not. Or I might come back in a couple hours and just write in a thing anyways...

I do have a question, though: Does anything trigger Sarn's Sran Cadpill persona (i.e. one minute he's normal and the next he's completely delusional and giving orders like it's the New Crazy Story all over again ) or is it a permenant part of Sarn's personality that we're free to use or not use at our discretion?

I'm pretty sure it just switches randomly. I've seen no pattern anyway, nor has Sarn mentioned any such thing.

(Geb here. I don't feel like signing Sem off, so I'm posting on his computer/account.)

Like Krig said, there's no plans/method of madness for The Patriot/Sarn's multiple personality switch. And if there was, Krig's also super-right about the "interactive story" part. The only thing I'm thinking I might like to do with the Patriot is, after this storyarc (near or far future), I'd like to suggest the idea that The Patriot is "part of" something like the Justice League/X-men/whatever. Why? Well, I always imagined that Geb and his band of hero-types weren't unique to the NeS world. Geb's a professional hero, and he went to Hero college -- this would imply that there's a whole field devoted to this career, and only a minority become super-famous/successful, which may not reflect their actual importance to the world-saving. Geb and the others would be one of the less-known ones, and The Patriot (with some other "filler" types like The Badass and SuperSexyWoman or some such) would be a super-well-known bunch. It's just an idea to interject a bit of the "mundane" real world element that I'd like to be in NeS, like dealing with the DMV, taxes, who cleans the kitchen this week, that sort of comical/absurd juxiposition with the epic fantasy meta-fictional conflicts.

Also, I can't recall who David Bryne is, but I don't think S. Ante is meant to intentionally parallel him. Ante and I are having fun making 80's song references though... did he do the "this is not my beautiful house" song?

Nice stuff, Tracer. On a somewhat related note, we can write out/ignore Grismath's stuff, btw. He dropped from Massassi and clearly expressed that he would not be involved in NeS anymore.

Yeah, he was the singer in The Talking Heads, who sang Once in a Lifetime.

I only had two ideas for the Patriot, really.

1) A play on story conventions, which is becoming a mainstay of the NeS these days. The Patriot is the square-jawed, stars and stripes, blue-eyed hero - a stereotype's stereotype, and unashamedly so. Yet, if you've been reading the NeS, you're not rooting for him, but for the foreign man in black with a shadowy past and an even more opaque future, TLTE. Which brings me neatly to;

2) The Patriot, like TLTE, is a living anachronism - he's displaced from his time period, the Cold War. So now, these two men representing two superpowers (one of which doesn't even really exist in totality anymore) are going at each other in an age of mobile phone cameras and blog postings, for a defunct purpose. Just out of spite, really. As well as being absurd and funny, it's really quite tragic.

A post soon should illustrate these two ideas in action, but I'd be happy for anyone to jump in at any time.

Sounds good. But I'll wait - my new policy is 'no back-to-back' posting.

I was gonna write something for the Patriot/Troublesome Trio conflict, but there's just way too many characters there to keep straight. I think NeS works better when there's multiple smaller groups, rather than one large group. Large groups lead to Silent Character Syndrome, which leads to Forgotten Character Syndrome. Which of course leads to dramatic confrontations on space stations orbiting Jupiter, but that's another thing entirely.

Anyway, my point is that we need to split that big group up somehow. I can't think of any good way to do that, though.

Also, any comments on my character illustrations? I didn't realise until I drew it that CM's characters are all based on some anime called ".hack" -- I based Subaru on that. The others I tried to follow the character bios. If anything should be different, let me know!

Krig! Time to ramble.

First off, yay post! Some nitpicking, only because it's partially my fault for suggesting it in my last post which Ante e-mailed me about -- Shattered Ante isn't supposed to know that he's gone delusional. In my post, I was trying to suggest that he thinks the HERO-types are delusions because, being a resident of NeShattered, and having his own dreams and whatnot broken, can't imagine a world/existance where the NeS continued in a "good" way. He thinks The Otter is a delusion, but not Russell.

As for your suggestion on one big group vs. smaller multiple groups, it can be a hard balance to strike. On one hand, there's what you said, but also, too many smaller groups leads to fractured storytelling -- instead of too many characters to sort out, it becomes too many "plots" to sort out. It's fine if a writer is just focusing on one group, but in theory, people are reading (and maybe even writing) the whole thing. Still, the one group is a bit large, and it's not going much anywhere. I'll try to make a post to break 'em up some.

As for your character illustrations, yay! I'll still grumble about the use of names/etc. from other works, but you all know that spiel already. Yay sketches! Since you probably haven't seen it, I'll post quesadilla red's own drawing of her character (though her scanner made her red look pink) as well as a random pen sketch of Losien's head I did. It's super-simple, but I still like it. >.>

Ooh, I hadn't seen that sketch of Rick. Or at least I don't remember seeing it. I'll edit the sketch to reflect that.

Anyway, I think three or four groups of four or five people each is not too many to keep track of, at maximum. You see that kind of thing in novels all the time (Robert Jordan comes to mind). It might be a bit difficult because we're writing things so slowly, but when you read straight through, it's not hard to keep track of. That's what I found when I was catching up, anyway. In fact it made it more interesting, since if you didn't really like the one part of the story, you always had the other groups to look forward to.

Oh, and I've edited my post to reflect Shattered Ante's actual beliefs about his mental state.

Ok, updated Rick's picture. Better?