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The Serpent Isle Irregulars
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About the Setting
This is (or will be) a work of serial fanfiction set in the world of Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle. Its setting is semi-AU, meaning that while most of it cleaves to the game's canon, I've also changed a couple things around a bit. For my Serpent Isle stories, I like to focus on whom I've dubbed The Serpent Isle Irregulars—the Avatar's other companions, most of whom join only briefly and for a specific purpose, some of whom get zapped by lightning or turned to dust within a few lousy minutes of joining up. Happily for them, I'm exercising my god-like authorial authority and letting everyone live and stick around until (and beyond) the end. Yes, even Selina! (Maybe.)
Because of these changes, the sequence of events I'm using in this setting may also be a little different than what one may see in a typical Serpent Isle playthrough. I also had to rework some details here and there for the sake of plot consistency. For example: In this AU, the Avatar finds the actual Scroll of the Serpent in the very beginning of her journey, attached to a note from Erstam to Drogeni. Later on she gives this scroll to the Xenkans during her first visit to Monk Isle. This means Karnax already has a working copy of the Scroll of the Serpent when the Avatar returns to Monk Isle for help with healing Gwenno—she does not obtain the Philanderer's Friend and restore Fedabiblio until later in the story.
Some characters have also been changed a little for this AU. Particularly Sethys, whose story I have altered and fleshed out considerably. I didn't do this lightly; I always wondered if his original storyline suffered from Serpent Isle's plot cuts, as it always seemed to me like it was missing some parts or perhaps never completed to begin with. Anyway, he kind of ended up being this last-minute character nobody really cared about and it always made me a little sad, so for this AU I sat down and worked out a different, and hopefully better fate for him. In a nutshell, he is now an acolyte of Harmony (but still very closely associated with Chaos) whom the Avatar picks up at the temple of Ethicality.
Yeah, it does sound kinda nuts, but I hope I wrote him in a way that still retains the key beats of the original character. If you have time to spare, you can check out the link in the contents below to his revised backstory. In the spirit of fairness I may write complete backstories for the other "Irregulars" eventually; it was just that his story was so significantly altered, it had to be written out in its entirety.
Apart from this, other characters in this AU have been given more robust backstories that may or may not diverge from canon. For example, the mage Trulacci—mentioned by Mosh as a possible lover of hers who was stolen by Columna—is Stefano's father. Technically this made Columna his stepmother for a while, though Stefano was already grown when this happened and Trulacci died not long afterwards. Hopefully you'll pick up a few more hints of similar backstories in the story itself. I guess I wouldn't be much of an author if I didn't write that stuff in, eh...
Additionally, I "saved" a couple characters who got killed by the Chaos Banes in the game, e.g., Bucia and Gustacio in Moonshade, plus others in Fawn and Monitor too. I couldn't decide if I wanted to go with the stories presented in the original developer documents (where most folks survived the Banes) or the one we got after the plot cuts; I guess this is my way of compromising.
Technologically speaking, things in this version of Serpent Isle may come off as slightly advanced compared to what we see in the game. I'm not putting in like, smartphones or jumbo jets or anything like that, but tinned food and orchestrions, maybe. Bridge lamps, crumb sweepers, morning coats, fountain pens... you get the picture! My intention in doing this is to highlight a subtle difference between the passages of time separating Britannia and Serpent Isle, while also infusing the latter with a bit of its Ophidian past. In this AU, the Ophidians were even more advanced (I'm not gonna say steampunk outright but I dunno, snakepunk, maybe? Is that a thing? Can we make it a thing?) and left fragments of their technology all over the place, which I guess gave Erstam's settlers some ideas later on. But rest assured, I'm trying very hard to not detract from the original fantasy setting—of course there's still magic and dragons and the Guardian and that blackrock wand that makes people sneeze.
This is not a grand attempt to remake or redo Serpent Isle, or to make a new game or anything like that. It's really just a framework in which I can play with canon and write my stupid little fanfics to my heart's content. I did something similar for my Portal stories, and I've also already written a few shorter works for Serpent Isle in an earlier, sort of "prototype" version of this AU (you can find all this crap somewhere on my AO3) but those stories kinda really need to be revisited (or at least revised 😬).
Finally, I would like to note that (most of) the character/story portraits were made in Hero Forge! I had way too much fun making these!
So without further ado...!
Fanfics
Ancient History (16 Chapters)
Set shortly after the rescue of Mortegro from the dreaded Moat of Tolerance. Petra needs repairs and unfortunately, it's up to the Serpent Isle Irregulars to somehow make this happen without making things worse.
Supplementary Materials
AU Timeline - A comprehensive cover of Ophidian and Modern histories used in this AU, including dates and worldbuilding details. I recommend starting with this! It puts everything into context and it's fun, I promise!
Sethys's Backstory - A completely revamped history for a largely forgotten character. This is an optional supplement to the timeline but may contain some (AU) lore-related revelations.
Meet the Irregulars - Get the gen on the Avatar's "B-Team". Hey look, they're trying their best...
Black Gate GUMPs - See what the Serpent Isle companions might have looked like in the Black Gate paperdoll style!
Ophidian Reference - Actual canon (as in not AU) information on the Ophidians. Coming soon!
Bugs For Breakfast - My notes on interesting things in the Serpent Isle v1.07 beta USECODE. Coming soon!
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