Since 1997

This is a much more personal page than anything else on this wiki. =) I made a discovery when I was compiling information for other pages and that info begs to be shared. Suffice it to say that depending on your definition of preproduction, it might be legitimate to say that my RPG has been in development since 1997!

Time Capsules From the Past

To this day I've kept several old files from when I first jotted down details of a future RPG, but two stand out as most worth talking about.

Blades of Exile Towns

The oldest file I've found with any information about an RPG is titled Blades of Exile Towns.doc; it has a word count of 6,691, a "Content created" time of December 29, 1997 at 5:08 PM, was last saved on June 23, 2000 at 1:13 PM, and had a total editing time of five hours and 46 minutes over 49 revisions. That create date places the file in the same year as the release of Spiderweb Software's PC RPG creator Blades of Exile, which lines up with the title, and I would have been about three months into the age of 13.

RPG in works

The second oldest file is titled RPG in works.doc; it has a word count of 13,241, a "Content created" time of October 27, 1997 at 2:42 PM, was last saved on March 10, 2002 at 9:37 PM, and had a total editing time of 45 hours and 54 minutes over 569 revisions. With that create date, I would have been just three weeks into being 13.

The Younger is the Elder

Even though "Blades of Exile Towns" has a later creation time, I have almost every reason to believe that the vast majority of what's inside was written before the vast majority of what's in "RPG in works." Each individual reason wouldn't mean much, but taken altogether I'm pretty confident! Some of these reasons include:

• The character Saturn appears in both, but was a male in "Blades of Exile Towns" and a female in "RPG in works." The modern Saturn is feminine gender, so the latter (and likely newer) stuck with me.
• I do remember that the character Boomerang in "Blades of Exile Towns" evolved into the character Backlash, who only appears in "RPG in works."
• Many character names in "RPG in works" come from friends who I met because of Pokémon, which wasn't released in North America until September 30, 1998.
• A character named Rena appears in "RPG in works" and her name likely came from Star Ocean: The Second Story, released in North America on May 31, 1999--and Star Ocean 2 was recommended to me by one friend in that same Pokémon group, so at absolute earliest I wouldn't have played it until early June.
• "RPG in works" has two self-insert characters, one for each gender, whereas "Blades of Exile Towns" only has one self-insert character who matches my physical gender. I know I didn't really see myself as a specific gender at a very young age (in Secret of Mana, when I was 9, I named all three characters after myself, just adding or taking away one letter). So if I saw myself as one gender by the time of "Blades of Exile Towns," it would make sense that it's my own (physical) because then I'd be 13 and certain changes had happened. I also know that after I started going to online forums in 1998-1999, several people confused my gender and I realized I kinda liked and enjoyed that ('cause I just wanna be a person, ya know? :P), so it makes sense that I'd go back and make self-inserts for both genders again.
• The mysterious lists at the end of "Blades of Exile Towns" seem like they were very late additions to that document that don't relate to anything else in that file, but most of the character names they use--Coral, Lore, Parry, Patience, Reason, and Blush--do appear in "RPG in works."

The December 29, 1997 Document

Here are the most interesting pieces of information I've culled from this file, in descending order as I scroll down.

Towns

Although the file's named "Blades of Exile Towns," it only has any real details on one town, Amiriac. It does have a population of 28, though, which is larger than almost any RPG town I'd seen by then. Other named towns are Kerotys, Laceria, and Kello, but almost nothing is said about them.

Dress Code

The town is run by a mayor, but the country--assuming there is one--appears to be ruled by a greater Empress Alexia, who's imposed a dress code for girls and boys, broken up by age groups. I've shown the key portions of the dress code below, with more commentary to follow afterward. I'm sure psychologists could have a field day with these details, especially when they're mixed with the implications of an Empress imposing them and something else I get to mention down in the October 27, 1997 Document section. XD

Group	Top	Waist	Legs	Feet	Winter permissions
Boys 0-5			anything modest
Girls 0-5	anything modest		anything modest
Boys 6-10	shirt or tunic	no belt	pants or shorts	boots, sandals, or sneakers	jacket
Girls 6-10	shirt or tunic	tied sash required	shorts or skirt	sandals, slippers, or sneakers	jacket, leggings
Boys 11-15	shirt only	belt required	long shorts only	boots, sandals, or sneakers	jacket, pants
Girls 11-15	tunic only	tied sash optional	skirt only or nothing with a long tunic	sandals, slippers, or sneakers	jacket, leggings
Boys 16-20	shirt only	belt required	pants only	boots or sneakers	jacket
Girls 16-20	tunic only	tied sash optional	shorts, skirt, or nothing with a long tunic	sandals or slippers	jacket, leggings, sneakers
Older than 20	anything modest		anything modest

Interestingly enough, the dress code only applies while in town. Given the time frame, I was in junior high and had encountered my first (and last) school dress code in our own world, which might or might not be a coincidence. Maybe it says something about my view of "civilized society" and how it might have been modeled by school! :O

But as for a non-joke explanation, maybe it was just easier to imagine character designs if I limited the range of possibilities. :P Considering how many sword-wielding elven heroines I imagined (see the Discarded Characters section) and the fact that I thought through this enough to say that girls didn't need to wear shorts or skirts with a long enough tunic, I'd bet that I just liked the image of the Elf from the excellent beat-em-ups Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom and Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara and made a mental template out of her tunic, circlet, and mostly bare legs. Then it was copy-and-paste from there--change her colors, change her shoes, and sometimes give her a skirt, and voila. Insta-heroine. :O

(If only it was that easy. :P)

Town guards and mages are exempt from the dress code and so are priests, who can dress according to their religion. Seeing the word "religion" in such an early document surprise me; I wasn't raised in any particular faith and by that age I'm very sure I still pictured the "Lord" and "King" in Joy to the World as a medieval king (maybe even confusing him with Good King Wencelas!) and it wasn't until years later in life that I knew there was more significance or history to the sign of the cross than to, say, the state birds I learned about in school.

As another example of how little I knew about the world that isn't faith-related, I also still believed that one of my parents was "black" because I didn't know "black" had ethnic or racial implications (or what ethnicity or race were); I believed that we say "black" in the way we say "redhead" to refer to a girl with orange hair or the way we say "orange fur" when talking about tan-colored tabby cats.

Discarded characters

Some characters who didn't survive past this document include:

• Aurora, a legendary elven ranger who's the second greatest hero in the world. Although she's gone now, I did reuse her name for an unrelated very tall female character in WWF No Mercy who specialized in submission maneuvers.
• Lady Shendara, an old lady magic user who knows both offensive and healing magic.
• Jock, a soldier who seems to be filler.
• Wendy, an elven paladin and the world's greatest hero. Although blonde, her name most likely comes from the Wendy's fast food chain.
• Joxer, the greatest swordsman. He's almost certainly an expy of the Joxer from Xena: Warrior Princess, especially from the episode For Him The Bell Tolls. Alternatively, I did have Dekar from Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals as a model of a superpowered medieval male plus a funny elementary school teacher who claimed to have the strength of ten men, so he might be based on them.
• Korie, a young human thief who's popular but hangs with questionable company.
• Autol, a king of thieves who is unquestionably an expy of Autolycus, also from Xena: Warrior Princess.
• Kelurr, a wizard nepharim (a cat person in the world of Blades of Exile).
• Nexa, the third greatest swordfighter behind Joxer and Celty. Another expy of Xena: Warrior Princess, right down to wielding a chakram, but not as strong in the context of her world as Xena is in hers.
• Cossser, a mage slith (lizard person) who's lived long. Even today I dig that a lizard person would have three S's in his name. My 13-year-old self was on the ball with that one. ^^
• Letono-Ihrno, a Vahnatai (blue alien-like species) paladin whose name is more or less ripped from canon NPCs.
• Nectar, the elven archmage and debatably the greatest elf. I've always been oddly drawn to her name, so at least that aspect of her might be revived one day.
• Merry, an elven paladin. I probably got her name from the male hobbit Merry of Lord of the Rings--not that I'd read the book, but I'm one of the few who even briefly played the (terrible) J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: Volume 1 for the Super Nintendo.
• Lucia, another elven hero who's Wendy's sister but mostly seems to be filler.
• Okolo, a "troglodyte" warrior.
• Dragon, a dark elf ranger accompanied by Scythe, a female wolf companion who would later become Ari. He's an enigmatic character dressed in black who may be a ghost, a god, an immortal, or an illusion. (Translation: I was trying pretty hard on this one. :P) Anywhere between 2002-2008 or so I probably would have been embarrassed by a character named Dragon, but hey, if it's a good enough name for Eiichiro Oda, the author of One Piece I can live with it more comfortably now.
• Flavia, a dwarf warrior who wields a golden axe. No relation to the Golden Axe franchise, which I hadn't played yet--and, of course, no relation to the Flavia from Fire Emblem: Awakening, which didn't exist yet!
• Shree, a rainbow-colored phoenix. I probably got the color idea from a 'Dungeons & Dragons' Monstrous Manual.
• Princess Rainbow, Celty's weaker older sister and an elven warrior who doesn't enjoy being a princess and wants to go on adventures. Ya know, much like Princess Alena (Dragon Quest IV), Princess Nadia/Marle (Chrono Trigger), Princess Jasmine (Aladdin), Princess Yuffie (Final Fantasy VII), Princess Ariel (The Little Mermaid), Princess Toadstool (Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars), and every other princess I'd ever seen by then. (Hey, even by now nothing's changed--there's Princess Estellise/Estelle (Tales of Vesperia), Princess Natalia (Tales of the Abyss), the Princess class from Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City, the Princess class from 7th Dragon, Princess Melia (Xenoblade Chronicles)...)
• Starr, an elven gymnast paladin who wears white and yellow. Credit where it's due: I'd like to believe I'm still creative, but "gymnast" and "paladin" aren't two words I'd think to put together. XD
• Nerry, an adventurer who's found imprisoned. Not much else is written about her.
• Princess Celina, a damsel in distress who gets the full scary treatment: bound, gagged, and even blindfolded. That's something I'd never put in a game now. =/ In her dialogue she calls herself a great warrior and says she has training as a mage but also says she's only been on an adventure twice, so I don't really know. Still, I wouldn't write her off as weak. Despite getting damselized, when you need the phrase "taken by alien beasts in the night" to justify how she got captured, it does mean something.
• Merst, the evil leader of the alien beasts and an affiliate with the underworld.
• Flute, an adventurer who goes on a suicide mission against an army and gets captured. Unlike Princess Celina, the instant you free her, Flute starts destroying armies alongside the party.
• Lallo, a twilight elf warrior who leads an army of gremlins and dryads. I'm not exactly sure what a twilight elf is or how it differs from a dark elf like Dragon. :P

Beryl

Beryl is a left-handed, flaxen-haired mage with glowing clothes, winged slippers, and a magical shield shaped like a fireball. Despite being immortal, I still made her only 16 for some reason, and she's a happy-go-lucky and playful hero.

She gets her own section because if anyone from the "Blades of Exile" document's ever going to be resurrected, it would be her! She's the most lighthearted and she's a beautiful case of the past mirroring the present back to me. Unlike other killed-off characters who were blatant rips from franchises I enjoyed, I probably made Beryl from my own imagination. I hadn't yet played an RPG with the archetype of a genki girl mage--Lemina from Lunar: Eternal Blue Complete wasn't until 1998 and mage characters like Mara (Dragon Quest IV),

Surviving characters

Celty

Celty is a legendary elven warrior and the world's second greatest swordfighter even at the age of 14. Her appearance in this file makes her my third-longest-surviving character, beaten only by Saturn and Ari (then named Scythe)! Though her modern incarnation doesn't care for weapons anymore, at least Celty can say she's always been in the top tier of power no matter what universe she belongs to. =) Even though her name is pronounced with an S sound, her name almost certainly comes from Celtic music, a genre I really liked when I was young.

Given her age, in the Blades of Exile universe she's subject to the Empress' dress code and wears a sky blue tunic and skirt, a dark blue sash, and an ice blue circlet; her only non-blue pieces of clothing are her clear slippers. (I'm not 100% sure what I meant by "slippers," but almost definitely not house slippers or flip-flops and absolutely definitely not glass Cinderella slippers. I might have meant something like ballet flats or Mary Janes, but I believe the most likely possibility is that I was thinking of jelly sandals. It's tough to say, though. There are no descriptions of her height, hair color, skin color, or anything else, so it might be fun to have a fanart contest one day for her "Origin Outfit" and see what others come up with. ^^

Rae

Rae is a blonde 18-year-old human paladin from a snowbound land who wields a magical sword created by Nectar and wears almost entirely white: a cape, tunic, skirt, and leggings. Her only non-white clothes are clear slippers (the triumphant return of clear slippers!), which again makes me wonder what I meant. The text says her leggings end at her ankles and I was very specific earlier about wearing appropriate clothing, so who knows?

Rae eventually merged into Snowy, another paladin. The name Snowy almost got into the game, but I wasn't too keen on a character from a wintery area being named that way, so I went back to Rae and then updated the name to Tarine because I didn't want it to be so short.

Limestone

Limestone was at the time mostly what Lime is now: a green golem with near-impenetrable armor that even the world's greatest heroes can't break through. When I put it that way, Lime sounds kind of like The Incredible Hulk, but I wasn't familiar with any non-DC Comics superheroes at the time.

Harp

Unlike the current Harp, this Harp is a left-handed 17-year-old bard dressed in a cheerful yellow tunic, skirt, and leggings with an orange sash and red sandals. Despite being the eighteenth named character in the file, she's the first with named equipment: the Song Maiden's Blade and Phoenix Feather Shield. And, contrary to her name, she plays a flute. =) So did I.

Boomerang

Boomerang is a ninja of unknown gender dressed all in purple with black sandals. I know that I meant the traditional full-body ninja garb worn by everyone from Ryu Hayabusa (Ninja Gaiden) to Ibuki (Street Fighter)--even though I hadn't played Ninja Gaiden or Street Fighter III then, it's easy enough to pick up ninja outfits by cultural osmosis. Still, with that description, I can't help picturing Kurenai from Sengoku 3 instead.

Boomerang was another expy character, but less blatant about it than the Xena rips. Although s/he's named after Boomerang from Wild Arms, s/he's a character much more like Shadow from Final Fantasy VI--a hero whose motives remain mysterious, but at least you know s/he's on your side.

By the time the October 27, 1997 Document rolled around, Boomerang became Backlash via the power of thesaurus! :O Instead of one character of unknown gender, s/he became two characters: a vengeful, challenge-seeking male super warrior who plagued the party many times, very much in the vein of the Wild Arms Boomerang, and a challenge-seeking "bad girl" super warrior from another dimension who joined the party. The modern Lash is somewhere between the two versions of Backlash.

Saturn

This Saturn is a male paladin claiming to be Dragon's brother. There's not much to him; he's a generic do-gooder and has little in common with the modern Saturn except his name.

Document's End

At the very end are two lists that seem like they go against almost everything before them:

The Old Age of Heroes: Wendy (Female Paladin) Dragon (Male Ranger) Saturn (Male Sword Warrior) DoF Demon (Male Fist Warrior) Scion (Male Sword/Fist Warrior) Lucia (Female Ranger)

The New Age of Heroes: Coral (Female Sword/Fist Warrior) Lore (Female Paladin) Parry (Male Sword Warrior) Patience (Female Priestess/Mage) Reason (Male Mage) Blush (Female Thief)

Up to this point, though, eight of these twelve characters haven't been mentioned--and the four who have, Wendy, Dragon, Saturn, and Lucia, all seem to be active in the world and only the first two are great heroes who would define an age.