Broken Glass - p. 209 +dA

There were four kinds of weapons: fun toothpicks, partially unbent paper clips, gold party weapons, and lightsabers. The plastic toothpicks could be swords or arrows. White or pink were generic, blue was restricted to my sister's characters (they could be stolen by mine in-universe, but they had to be returned eventually), green was restricted to mine (same story), red was aerodynamic (swords swung faster, arrows flew faster), and yellow was between red and the others in functionality but a sign of status. There was also one cat who used a sling, but he was a thief who lived in what might as well have been the basement...

The first few cats were made with "realistic" colors, but we quickly ran low and started making them all kinds of colors. Initially there was no plot; it basically "flooded" a couple times, and everyone had to fear for their lives and climb to safety and try not to get murdered on the way, generic stuff. The main villain was Cougar, the abusive father of Frost and Soot. Everyone hung out around the same hotel (a huge dollhouse). The secondary villain was a pink cat named Pomegranate who was basically evil just because.

Then Kyanite came into town with Blackburn as her captive, transporting him to a vague capital because he was a vague criminal. However, Kyanite was a huge jerk, so some of the other cats helped free Blackburn, thinking she was probably secretly evil. Blackburn sheltered with a dragon that, unlike other dragons in that world, could not talk to the cats. Kyanite was Very Determined to recapture Blackburn because he was actually...a murderer!!! And a magic thief!!!!!

I lost Blackburn and the dragon, so Kyanite never recaptured him. She was too disgraced to return to the south or continue toward the capital, so she settled down. She also showed off her prowess with many different weapons (originally I wanted her to mainly use a bow and arrows (note that her name is Kyanite Talvitama, aka Kyanite Winter (but as a verb), aka K. thing-that-lasts-the-winter...), but seriously, she had a prehensile tail and was one of the biggest cats, of course she was a melee fighter). All the cats decided it was best to band together in this Harsh Wilderness and moved into the smaller dollhouse, where there were antics like Louie making nachos out of any food he could find in the fridge, or Bootsy sleepwalking and falling out a window (he was fine).

At one point, the cat I never named started getting green tail extensions, but there was one specific green Bendaroo that would make you evil if attached to your body, so that was a plot point. I believe this happened during the strange part where we had them at the beach (but not doing beach things, they were just there walking tightropes and whatnot to show off).

Additionally, the dragon Sanguis dragged in a cat named Breeze. This was Breeze Jr.--Breeze Sr. was a murderer Kyanite brought to justice years before. So Kyanite ABHORRED Breeze.

Eventually it was time to pack up the dollhouse and never get it out again, so we found the next best thing: caves.

When we were little (though three years apart), we both did projects where we made shoebox dioramas for Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt. And around the same time as we had gotten the Bendaroos, one of my friends and I had decided it would be fun to make a third cave. So we already had three caves, and we made one more for the sake of the game.

The duct tape cave went all the way on the left and was the active storeroom for food and plastic jewelry. It also had, in addition to the standard puddle of water in the floor, a waterfall that flowed from the ceiling to a hole in the floor. The cave with the painted fabric floor had treasure and a tall sparkly black throne (with a mirror where the head would go), so that became Kyanite's throne (cue endless jokes about "sitting on the throne (i.e. toilet)"). The third cave was painted styrofoam with plenty of places to sit and hide and a floor you could stab weapons into (it also had mini lights in it at first, but these stopped working and eventually were taken off). The fourth cave, on the right, was the boring one, used mostly as storage for things we didn't anticipate them actually needing and for characters we weren't actively playing with at the time, although sometimes it became relevant.

The dragons were all plastic except the original black dragon (pipe cleaners) and Leonardo (original Bendaroos, replacement a paperweight with an alligator clip on a stem), though once Leonardo's replacement came around, he was emphatically NOT a dragon (he couldn't talk, but he couldn't be a dragon because he had a beak).

Anyway, the basic plot that would happen from then on was that some new threat, usually a dragon, would appear, and someone would finally come up with a strategy that would allow everyone to battle it without dying.

There was a two-headed dragon called Fire and Brimstone. Fire was a bad guy and kept trying to make Brimstone attack the cats with him, but Kyanite beat Fire up and Brimstone got to make Fire be a good guy.

Windstorm the dragon was too fast for the cats to attack, but he was after Bat's giant chunk of amethyst. Bat was a winged cat traveling with Toothless (yes, the night fury) who needed to reach the capital to sell her only possession, the giant amethyst geode, and Windstorm ripped her wings off, but she just barely made it to the caves. The plan was for her to stay and heal, and then Kyanite (the leader and best fighter), Spinnen (second best to Kyanite in pretty much every way), and Anubis (the most experienced griffin rider) to hurry Bat out on the back of the larger griffin, Kael (the smaller one was Slash and was Anubis's best friend). However, someone stole the amethyst, oh no!!! This delayed stuff by a lot, and Kyanite, Spinnen, and Hecate (the resident magician who kept the caves lit up, provided fire for cooking, etc.) actually had to go out and track down Breeze, who ran away.

Turned out Anubis hid the amethyst to delay Bat's departure. He was basically grounded, but he managed to defeat Windstorm by distracting him with the amethyst, then dropping the amethyst on Windstorm's head. Bat and Anubis fell in love.

In the original comic (1: Amethyst), Windstorm wasn't particularly fast (as far as I remember), the cats were just having a difficult time fighting him because I had upgraded dragons' scales to be mostly too tough to attack. He was still defeated by "Onyx" (aka Anubis) dropping the amethyst on him, but in the comic, this was to give Kyanite an opportunity to attack a vulnerable spot on Windstorm's throat.

Oh, and we can't forget the soap opera aspect. It just...was a soap opera. Spindle was the catalyst of most of it because he would become enamored with a new girl every other week or so, but then there was also something with Lloyd, Lightning, and Blood (Seashell Head) liking the same girl, who was PROBABLY Bat. Persephone and Ink were into each other, but Ink didn't care about romance, and Featherfall kept getting jealous of the girls Spindle liked and got really annoying about it (but no more annoying than Spindle himself and his awkward flirting), and so on, and so on...Breeze also had a crush on Kyanite despite her despising him. Rabbit sort of had a crush on Night but not really, Harry officially obviously liked night (but HarryxBear would have been canon if we'd had the guts), Civet liked Featherfall (who thought he was annoying and embarrassing)...

Hecate's sister Persephone came to visit and was retconned in as visiting for six months of every year--not because of any Hades tricks going on, Just Because. Their family, the Kurais, were a powerful family in Claw Canyon City (equivalent to NYC). Suddenly Persephone was acting weird...and lots of cats started going into magical comas! It turned out Pomegranate was back, and instead of just a cat, she was actually a soul-stealer. If a soul-stealer bites a nonmagical creature (magicians are nonmagical CREATURES even though they HAVE MAGIC--I can expand on that sort of thing if you want), then the victim goes into a magical stasis, and the soul-stealer can transform into them. If you kill a soul-stealer who currently has stolen souls stored, the soul-stealer remains alive but all the souls go back to normal. Anubis followed "Rabbit" down the waterfall through the hole in the floor and battled Pomegranate in her lair, stabbed her (thus releasing the souls), and threw her down the next level of the waterfall.

In the original comic (2: Pomegranate), the plot of this was virtually unchanged, but there was more melodrama.

NightxStripe is the slightly less soap opera-y part of the soap opera. Stripe was verbally abusive to Night and a generally unpleasant and violent guy, but no one quite had the heart to kick him out of the caves permanently because they didn't want a dragon to eat him. Night was nervous for several reasons: Stripe's presence in her life, Stripe's safety whenever he was gone because sometimes he stormed away, and a secret: she was actually a spine-cat!!! Basically the setting's equivalent to a werewolf but spiky instead of a wolf, and instead of automatically transforming based on the moon, the phase of the moon simply added stress, and the more stressed out a spine-cat is, the more difficult it is to remain in non-spiky form. I don't remember if this ever became known to the other characters, but it was planned.

Oh, yeah, soap opera: Spindle became enamored with Night when she showed up. Night had a necklace she always wore. Featherfall began dyeing her fur blue and wearing a necklace she made. Eventually Night took pity on her and gave her her own necklace. Featherfall gradually got better about Spindle's constant crushes, but she still wears the necklace because she likes it and appreciates that Night gave it to her. The blue dye was plot relevant somehow, but I don't remember exactly how.

New plots were generally kicked off by the creation of new characters. A group consisting of Poppy the cartographer/artist/baker/writer and her friends Pine (a soul-stealer), uh...I don't remember the other two but there were two more...arrived at the caves. Kyanite became very angry at Pine's presence, and he appeared to blackmail her into letting him stay, but then it turned out Pine was friendly and nice. It was generally assumed Kyanite hated soul-stealers. Pine helped reveal another bad soul-stealer who was stealing everyone's stuff: Citrus, who believed Pomegranate to be alive, then ran off shouting. Pomegranate was later seen flying on the back of a not-dragon.

In the original comic (3: Evergreen), I attempted to make Anubis/Onyx a less likable character and went overboard. The general plot of it (Pine and friends appear, stuff goes missing, Pine tracks down Citrus, Citrus screams for Pomegranate and flies away on Leonardo) was unchanged, but there was much more melodrama. It was not worthy of 41-42 pages (all of the comics were 41-42 pages long, so I guess I applaud my past self's ability to ration space, even if the comics themselves were terrible). In the comic, the other two cats with Poppy and Pine are Civet and Ink (referred to as Jet), but in the game, Civet, Ink, Cinnamon, and Eve showed up together later.

Pomegranate then showed up as a recurring villain, always escaping at the last minute.

The not-dragon bit a winged cat, causing him to crash-land at the cave. The not-dragon, Leonardo, was venomous, and it was a type of venom none of them had seen before. Fortunately, they found a tiger lizard (giant rubber tiger striped lizard) to heal Sage, but his wing was mangled forever.

In the original comic (4: Flames), Sage was bitten on the paw, not the wing; I don't remember how I planned for his wing to be mangled. The tiger lizard bit went about the same, but they saw Pomegranate lurking in the forest.

(Ingame, this is about when I started retroactively planning two separate plot points that will come up later.)

Katniss and Peeta showed up and were nebulously evil (with Katniss as the scheming mastermind and Peeta as the bumbling sidekick), along with Spindle's sister Blueberry, who mostly just wanted to kill Spindle. This was around the same time Frostbite (soul-stealer) arrived. Frostbite stole food and occasionally treasure from the cave cats and lived in Pomegranate's old lair. Katniss and Peeta were generally thwarted by someone capturing them and keeping them prisoner until they talked their way free; Peeta was pathetic.

I don't remember what the truth bread (a white half marble) was for, but I do remember Hecate baking truth bread and feeding it to Katniss and Peeta.

In the original comic (5: Frozen), Katniss, Peeta, and Blueberry were not included. Anubis/Onyx went sneaking around Pomegranate's lair and got surprise attacked by Frostbite, who stole his sword and told him not to tell anyone she was down there. I also moved a later plot point to this point in the story...

At some point something (maybe the four-headed dragon?) ripped most of Poppy's face off, and that was a plot point because she was supposed to be the prettiest one, but things worked out and she and Sage fell in love. I remember beginning a mini comic where Sage comforted Poppy that things would be okay--different, just like he would never fly again, but okay, because he was surrounded by friends, and it could be the same for her.

Hecate also went to magic college (which meant that for some time the magic spells were in danger of fading away but it all turned out fine) and came back with a boyfriend, Fox the fire magician.

I believe Hecate's trip to magic college was referenced in the comic at some point, but I don't remember when.

Persephone had always claimed not to be a magician herself (which would make her the equivalent of a Squib), and devoted a lot of time to studying magical creatures, but Hecate knew the truth: she was actually an exceptionally powerful charmmaker who could basically turn a diamond into a living creature, but she had had a bad experience when younger and decided to stop doing magic. However, her newfound confidence allowed her to do magic again, and she made Jade the wolf out of the green diamond again. This was definitely planned to be included in the comic, but my timeline was a little weird.

Soap opera sidenote: Persephone instantly fell in love with Jade, making Ink jealous and sad. However, she realized shortly thereafter that she was mostly just overwhelmed with emotion at using her magic again.

Then...I found the original cat who would have become Anubis except I instantly lost the cat so I had to remake him looking slightly different. I named the original version Onyx and made him a thief. He tried to join the cave cats, but someone (Spinnen, maybe?) attacked him, so he drove away on his moped and used his sling to warn Spinnen away. Then he joined Frostbite in the lair below the caves. That plot point never went anywhere. A plot point that DID go somewhere was that Frostbite and Anubis tricked Pomegranate into thinking Frostbite had already stolen Anubis's soul in exchange for Pomegranate "giving" Leonardo to Frostbite. Leonardo could then have left whenever he wanted, but he hung out with Frostbite and Onyx in the old lair.

Frostbite freeing Leonardo was the plot point I moved into Frozen.

Breeze's long lost sister Briar showed up and was evil but joined the cave cats. She eventually betrayed them somehow and was killed. Briar showed up in the comic, probably in Frozen.

In the original comic (6: Seryyville), I used the plot point with the evil tail extension, but the comic was absolute garbage, wow.

Kyanite and several of the other more experienced cats disappeared. A golden metallic dragon became the new threat, and no one was equipped to deal with it, because metallic dragons have tougher scales and can eat metal. Because Hecate was gone, the magic lighting in the cave faded away.

Phainopepla, a winged cat, and his panther Namiri arrived. Phanopepla had a giant box that Namiri was always rolling around on a cart. (Namiri was basically his horse, although horses, unicorns, and pegasi also existed in the game.) He was there for revenge on Kyanite for trying to kill him when he was cursed to be a dragon, unable to talk to cats, and committed the heinous crime of not killing Blackburn, a cat he didn't recognize, just for climbing into his nest. Since Kyanite wasn't there, he decided he'd just do evil stuff anyway. He started kidnapping cats by wrapping them up with rope and covering their mouths and hands in wax from his suitcase. I guess he was defeated eventually.

(This was one of the two retroactive plot points I mentioned earlier.)

Hecate's disappearance was relevant because it explained the lack of truth bread.

Kyanite came back with her purple metallic dragon to help defeat the yellow metallic dragon, but then I lost her (temporarily). Hecate also returned, as did some cats from way back at the beginning of the game.

Two cats from her hometown, which had received its name, Hegoaldean, came looking for Kyanite. Back at the beginning of the caves, remember, she just walked out on the job when a murderous magic thief escaped her. Kyanite was still missing, so Phoebe and Cloudburst (girlfriends) didn't realize it wasn't common knowledge that Kyanite was half soul-stealer and Pomegranate was her half sister. Citrus and Pine were each other's siblings and Pomegranate/Kyanite's cousins, which was why Kyanite didn't want Pine in the caves.

(This was the other retroactive plot point.)

In the game, the cats attacked Cloudburst and Phoebe, but then things settled down again...? Kyanite returned and was furious that everyone had learned her backstory.

There was a lot more planned, including a showdown with a crystal dragon, a species about which they had lots of misinformation, but...oh well.