Original Sin Story: Re_Crime
[AFTERWORD]
So this is mainly mothy talking about the original book so I guess this means I get to go through my process. More or less just my patch notes from this build of Original Sin Story: Crime.
Part 1
First, I made Maria a little older when she was caught in a storm. I wanted to distance Levia from lightning and make Maria a more Miku-ish age rather than a typical Rin age.
Basically, I’m increasing Levia’s association with wind instead of lightning.
Next was Miroku’s name. I don’t know, it’s an alright name but it feels weird for a surname from later EC being a first name of a not-Jakokuese character here. I first renamed him Nemanja, but then found a Slavic G- name I liked, Gavriil. It’s an equivalent to “Gabriel” which is the name of an archangel.
I liked the first few chapters so not too much has changed. It got exponentially more and more divided from the source material as the book quality went down.
I haven’t changed too much of the worldbuilding or politics cause that is not my strong point, lol. It’s serviceable so I let it be.
I added a description of curled platinum blond hair for Irta Li because I think he should look like Alucard.
Changed the “gear” system of time to “period” since that term is an actual expression of time and is not used in-universe/in the book for this purpose.
Changed Adam and Gammon’s reactions to being late. I just feel maybe Adam shouldn’t be so smug and Gammon such an ass.
I didn’t change anything about Vaju, but his description makes me think of the Capitol elite from The Hunger Games.
Part 2
Didn’t feel like settling on “Mogura” or “Mole People” for those people who dig up Second Period relics, so I just titled them Excavators.
Kept the magic car cause it’s pretty dope and it made my friend go feral cause she predicted it.
Genderbent Raiou into Raijoou because I always imagined the Zvezdas as matriarchal and instead of switching it so Raiou was the late parent, I just said screw it, Eve gets two moms.
I like the idea of Horus Solnste being his own character but there’s really no way to make it work without even more rewrites so he’s still Seth here.
Raijoou’s wife still claims to have found Eve in a river. This is an in-story lie and a meta misdirection.
Added that Adam and Eve have a year to two year difference in age, but they’re both around 20.
I found the whale thing kind of dumb so I just made Catherine a “white blur under the waves” (i.e. a dead sunken body). I get it was a Jonah’s whale reference but I don’t think she needs to literally be a whale for her to fulfill that reference, like how Seth is never a literal snake.
Changed the mention of “THE White Army” to “A White Army”. Raisa mentions a test of her “Second Regiment”. I changed her from a Salem inheritor to a Vlad inheritor (who uses fire magic). This “Second Regiment” is an undead army that are all white, like the Netsuma humans of her First Regiment. Though the zombies are resistant to regular fighting, lightning gets them down quite easily.
I have to say, I wasn’t really chill with Meta being a Gilles inheritor when the info came out but the Red Devotees are so terrifying I couldn’t change it.
Salem inheritor fire is not fire magic. The Netsuma are not all Vlad inheritors like Raisa, but they are all skilled in the fire arts, that is, fire spells and weapons. The arts don’t cover blue flames, as only Salem inheritors produce that.
I made Eve a Held sect member from the start, for more conflict between her and Zellana as Zellana proceeds to be an asshole about Held. Since Nemu isn’t too close to the forest, Eve hasn’t seen Held for herself, so she tries not to cause so much of a fuss, aware she’s in a Levia sect majority place.
Part 3
Adam doesn’t have a direct memory of any river. He was just already out in the open as a very young child as far as he could remember.
Adam is still caught up in a storm like the original tsunami and is saved by Catherine.
Made Horus/Seth as less of a dick than he is, by him being unable to bring Adam to Maria (or reveal Adam as Maria’s son) since Maria’s visitors really are restricted and enforced.
It’s unclear if Horus really did update Maria on Adam’s condition as he claims, decide depending on how you want to see him.
Made Gammon and Adam’s relationship just a bit more pining-y, so when Gammon is drunk he just leans on Adam instead of the counter.
Changed the fucking STUPID Levia inheritor bullshit with Venom. Venom is now connected to Gilles Inheritors. Kept the dead body experimentation part so it’s uncomfortably close to the truth.
Made Adam a little less willing to commit homicide.
MADE ADAM KEEP HIS STUPID, GROSS PLAN ON THE BACKBURNER. HE DOESN’T GO THROUGH WITH IT.
Adam circumvents Seth for the recipe for Venom. This is very important.
Horus/Seth has told Adam about the river children, not telling Adam he is one of those. Adam thus assumes he must be one of them. This is further misdirection.
Raijoou is still a founding member of Apocalypse.
Seth isn’t around so much while Adam and Eve hang out, so as far as Adam is aware, Seth doesn’t know he’s using Venom. This is important as well.
Gammon flirts with Adam but slyly takes it back before he notices.
Adam is already paranoid that he’s given Eve too much Venom (this is unchanged from the source but still important for the payoff)
Scene with Catherine is unchanged, because I love her and this scene.
When Eve has the stillbirth, Seth implies something on Adam’s part is what caused it. The pieces all come together: Seth may have created Venom, but Adam went behind his back to get Venom, used it while trying to keep Seth from knowing about it, thus making this all Adam’s fault. Seth didn’t even convince him to use it, either.
Part 4
Seth gets a black eyes and is being creepy when pistol-whipped. Also his glasses were sent flying off his face.
Finally, Seth clears the meticulous shit I set up, lmao.
After Maria was rendered sterile and her twins were gotten rid of, she still wanted a child and enlisted Seth to make it happen.
The twins aren’t Adam and Eve. Seth kept the boy in cryostasis in Lunaca Labora for his destruction powers, and gave the girl to the Lighwatch Temple so he could keep a close eye on her. These are Amostia and Elluka, respectively.
Adam is essentially a tube-grown human. He’s not a ghoul child because he was made with two sets of DNA, Maria’s and a foreign man to obscure Adam’s phenotype.
Lunaca Labora is a large underground complex, with secret entrances spanning to and from many important capital buildings.
Thus, when Apocalypse bombed one of these buildings, this caused a collapse in the section of Lunaca Labora below it, the chaos in which Adam disappeared.
It was incidents like this that made Raijoou leave Apocalypse and take a wife in the quiet village of Nemu once again.
Horus had met both Raijoou and her wife, Inanna while searching Evillious.
I named her wife Inanna because I wanted a name that resembled “inazumi” to fit Raijoou’s lightning theme, in addition to Inanna meaning “lady” and “heaven/sky”, and being a Sumerian goddess equated to Ishtar.
Without Raijoou’s input, Inanna enlisted Horus to make them a child, she she couldn’t have any, and of course not with Raijoou.
Eve is fashioned the same way as Adam- made with two sets of DNA donated by Inanna and Raijoou.
She was a backburner project so she was finished about a year after both Adam and Meta. Seth had also made Eve a HER carrier.
Since Raijoou is a Held inheritor, Eve ended up as one, too. Noticing this early in her development, it got Seth interested in making ghoul children with inheritor abilities.
Seth is still a shitty father, but I made it less..... cartoonishly horrible. Not better, just less awful. Seth is already a twisted guy, so he tried raising Adam the way he himself was raised, the only way he could think of: purely for their intelligence. Seth had gifted child syndrome, I’m calling it.
Seth tried making Gilles inheritor ghoul children specifically because they were hard to make. If he could get them correctly, he could make any kind of inheritor.
When he failed, he melted down their compositions since they were now useless. This is where Venom really comes from.
His first success was Meta, which opened the door for more inheritors.
Seth would have preferred Cain and Abel be born alive, as he swapped the God Seed for Seeds of Malice when they were first conceived. (Notice how Seth just always has it with him and is the first to brandish it, even in OSS: Crime?) Eve being a HER carrier would have increased Cain and Abel’s chances of being born with HERS.
They did indeed die because Eve had too much Venom. Not because of some really gross lazy ass-pull of a plot twist. That’d be crazy, right?
Eve was actually immune to Venom because as the Held inheritor test tube human Seth made, her own powers cancelled Venom’s powers out.
But even though the drug did not affect her mind, it was still in her bloodstream.
Normally, that’s not a problem, but Venom’s side effects in a pregnant person include deformities in the developing fetus(es) that can kill in utero (the same general reason Gilles Inheritors were so hard to make)
Eve still went mad after the stillbirth, which is not because of all the Venom in her bloodstream, the trauma activated the self-hypnosis (another Held inheritor power) she uses throughout the series. It’s a self defense tactic to protect her from the death of her children, by making her think they are alive and well.
That hypnosis will last a VERY long time, it’s in constant action like a flexing muscle, though its effects waver. I imagine it’d make her kind of despondent or tired since she’s just constantly using her inheritor powers without even realizing it.
Seth is definitely puppeting all these disasters but Cain and Abel’s deaths are on Adam’s hands.
Part 5
RAISA AND META ARE ACTUALLY FRIENDS, LIKE MOTHY ORIGINALLY SAID.
I mean honestly they’re like casual, informal girlfriends. It’s like they never actually asked the other out but when they spar for fighting practice they pin each other a lot. They just like being near each other. Looking at each other. They drink together a lot.
I made Meta not such a bitch about Raisa, too. Like, Jesus Christ, mothy. Meta is now worried for Raisa because she’s such a hellbeast in battle, not cause she hates her for [404 REASON NOT FOUND].
Meta didn’t really have any impression of Raisa when Pale suggested they recruit her, mainly agreeing because it beefed up their forces, coming to know her because they had since lived together with the rest of Apocalypse.
Meta finds Raisa’s scar (particularly around her mouth) distracting because they aren’t covered up behind a mask like they usually are.
Raisa literally climbs onto Meta’s bed and probably over Meta so they can be face to face.
Meta’s almost not even listening, cause Raisa’s hair is like a glowing white next to her red face. Meta, please stop thinking about how pretty your girlfriend is and listen.
Instead of completely pointless amnesia, Meta simply wishes to not dwell on her past. It’s more of a conscious effort to repress that time of her life than actual locked-away memories.
To nonamnesiac Meta, her life really only meant something once she was around 20.
HEY, INSTEAD OF CHILD META BEING ASSAULTED, LET ME PROPOSE:
Much like Adam, Meta had nothing to do but wander around the country, though she more often broke into homes and stole than he did.
Her Gilles inheritor charms allowed her to weasel her way out of trouble, but she always thought people went easy on her because she was a homeless child.
Her powers/the genuine pity of onlookers sometimes allowed her to SCP-1076 her way into a home, but she always felt out of place and would usually end up running away again.
Meta was caught up in an attack by Apocalypse but as the action was winding down, Pale found her and recruited her, her murdering a hostage as a sort of initiation.
The Royal Capital Army’s armor can’t be breached by Raisa’s fire. This is important later on.
Meta is done zoning out so she hugs Raisa to make her stop shouting.
Some very subtle rewording that implies Meta wasn’t dressed before Raisa left the room. Not necessarily naked, but maybe in whatever nightclothes she had. I imagine just lingerie though.
Milky is dressed as she usually is, on top of the covers while Pale is under them.
Made Meta less so goddamn spiteful about Milky??
Basically Meta and Pale kind of joke with each other about their other partners, Raisa and Milky respectively. Apocalypse is a big ol’ polycule, minus Yegor. Cause he’s a creep.
Kept the cute stuff Meta thinks about Pale... who’d have thought their relationship would be the least garbage out of the original book?
Changed a little bit about Pale’s music box tinkering. He’s not making something, he’s taking it apart. Though he plans to put it back together to get better at making things.
Meta is still thinking about Raisa so she accidentally brings her up when they’re discussing the mole in the group.
Meta genuinely doesn’t think Raisa is the mole, and defends her when Pale asks if she’s implying something.
The woman Meta comes across is still? Eve? I have no goddamn idea why it can’t be her in the original so, you’re welcome mothy, I fixed it.
The fog and fighting has knocked out Adam, whom Eve is cradling. The fog is a byproduct of Venom so it doesn’t affect Meta nor Eve.
Eve is so stressed, so hypnosis is going into overdrive to the point she can’t even get her children’s names right. or she could just be so upset that she’s slurring her words.
Raisa has somehow come into intel that says Yegor is the mole and is conspiring to capture Meta, so she abandoned her trip north to warn or help Meta.
Raisa is not immune to Venom, but the mask she uses to cover her scars is helping filter some of it out so she’s still lucid enough to yell to Meta.
The fog has overtaken most of the scene, Eve has escaped with Adam, and Capital Army forces are closing in on Meta.
Raisa tackles Meta to the ground in an effort to cover her and unleashes an explosion (that ends up knocking the both of them out) in an effort to keep them away.
Elluka is older on account of being Maria’s twin daughter. She’s still quite youthful anyways.
Removed the second period legacy room mumbo jumbo. It can just be a Third Period anti-magic room.
Yegor Asayev looks like V from V For Vendetta, because I said so.
Instead of dying like a punk and offscreen no less, Raisa was killed immediately after her stunt to protect Meta. Remember, her fire can’t penetrate the army’s armor. She was aware of this but it was all she could think to do, or to do at all.
Yegor doesn’t know how Raisa caught wind of his betrayal and wonders if he has a mole of his own. I don’t either. It’s for intrigue!!
Made Meta more... emotional. Cause she kind of seemed not to care too much. Like obviously she was angry and defeated but since in this version, someone she loved, Raisa, died protecting her, all in vain, she’s even more griefstricken.
Meta and Elluka are friends by the barest means. Meta tried scaring her to get what she wanted, but Meta ends up giving her advice. This is how it was in the original but I still want to highlight it.
Instead of a pendant, Seth’s plan and map is kept in a glass bottle on Meta’s person.
Seth remains a little shit in this scene because he’s honestly the best part of the original book.
Elluka still cries for Meta, because of their rapport. God, I just think it’s so sweet.
Kept the baby Pale thing. I mean in the original it was probably added to make the age gap between Elluka and Kiril less YIKES, but I wasn’t quite sure how to take it out. Even if Elluka is older in this continuity, I think Pale being de-aged doesn’t hurt.
Hansel and Gretel are preemies!
Clearly something is up with Gammon, so I added he’s being tying his hair differently and smiling more often.
Since it was traveling into Maria’s maze that marked this changed, I changed his hair tie from high to low to match Irina’s low braid to suggest Maria might be in there.
I think it’s weird if Gammon himself was just kind of removed from the story by another character in his body so I made it ambiguous as to whether he’s still in there or not.
Looking at the babies forces Meta to think about her own childhood.
Meta can’t drain the tanks without letting the babies fall, so she dives inside, disconnects them from their support tubes and breaks them from the inside.
Yes, I’m aware the strength needed to break the glass would have to be fucking IMMENSE since it can handle the pressure from containing a building’s worth of heavy fluid, but shut up, Meta is buff in this continuity. Besides, the glass probably isn’t made to withstand sharp, repeated points of stress from the inside as opposed to the designed entire surface area pressure. I’m sure someone who’s into physics is reading this and pulling their hair out and I’m sorry. Not sorry enough to fix it. sdfghj
I want the incident that allowed Adam to escape to be the same one Meta escaped in, but I have NO idea if I can make that work in the timeline. I sure which there was a goddamn calendar system for this, mothy.
I have no idea what the hell mothy is talking about with Levia’s blessing, but anyways I kept it vague about how the babies are immune to the Venom fog. The wording is more in line with what we hear during Lust Arc when IR is talking about Mikulia’s immunity to Sateriasis’ lust spell.
Part 6
Kept the fourth wall breaking with Eve. That shit’s too great.
Definitely made the pre-demonic Venom Sword Raisa’s sword that they confiscated.
Eve picks up her Held worshiping habits again. They technically never went away but it was hard to do deep in Levianta.
Part 7
Adam doesn’t recognize Meta. To be honest, I can’t tell if he DOES recognize her in the original or not. But for sure here, he doesn’t point her out as Meta.
Adam is kind of silently panicking, so he just says sorry for every movement of the shovel he makes to bury her.
The time placements are all over the place in this chapter, just ignore it.
Eve’s self-hypnosis is still in full effect when they escape deep into Elphegort.
I sort of added a whole scene? More like I took stuff from other scenes and added enough to make it its own scene.
Her hypnosis was in complete swing when she came in the door, but Adam and the reality of Meta’s death finally broke it. Her denial from now on is normal self-denial, not the result of an inheritor ability defense mechanism.
Even though Eve has, on some level, acknowledged her wrongdoing and the reality of things, she still finds comfort in the babies.
I know earlier I made Adam less willing to commit homicide but I find his even just contemplating infanticide darkly humorous. Like, what the fuck, Adam? Of course he doesn’t follow through on it, though.
Kept Gretel being weirdly conscious of everything while Hansel is just a normal baby. I love the idea of Gretel being a creepy horror movie baby who knows more than she should and Hansel is just here vibing.
Remember that Adam thinks she’s done all this because he drugged her with Venom. He is indeed responsible for killing her unborn children with Venom, but he isn’t aware Venom hasn’t affected her mentally.
So Eve’s Original Sin is killing Meta and taking her babies, and Adam’s Original Sin is “ruining Eve” and thus killing her children.
Part 8
Added how Seth technically had Maria’s permission to do what he did, but he still took advantage of that, so even revealing that wouldn’t make him look good. It’s not officially reported cause it could lend him some credence.
Kept his edgy little manifesto because it makes me laugh.
Didn’t take out the Pale/Kiril thing because honestly that was an adequate turn of events.
Glossary
Levianta was founded by a cabal of mages who discovered Second Period artifacts. Magic is powerful, but requires time and preparation to use—however, the old technology streamlined the usage of magic, making it easier and more useful for technological advance. The woman who would become the first queen was named Alice Merry-Go-Round, and she is the one who realized this.
She hired people to dig up the technology in the temple, but was faced with resistance from the local populace, who revered Levia-Behemo using that temple. Alice put a wall around it in response, and this became the “first wall”. More walls were built and eventually this became a fortress.
Her followers named it Alicegrad, and Alice herself founded Levianta with herself as the queen. Still, they faced resistance from the natives. To appease them, Alice declared Levia-Behemo as the country’s god, and made a council of 12 people. Six of them were mages who served under her, and six were comprised of the local natives. Levianta grew prosperous.
When the first queen died, her daughter inherited her position and took on the name of Alice Merry-Go-Round herself. Since then, every queen has taken that name. The one who appears in the story is the seventh one.
Alices 1 through 4 are based on Alice of Human Sacrifice, broken by the Fifth one.
Loop Octopus and Vaju are of the 6 mage families in the senate. Asayev and Li are of the 6 native local families. The families are supposed to be equal, but there are great gaps between them. Example being Loop Octopus has taken much of Vaju’s wealth, and there are two Loop Octopuses on the senate now (Gammon and his younger brother, Nazar, the family’s heir).
Lighwatch is a place where they raise queen candidates, but also has things like jail cells and execution devices like Torcia Tower. Lighwatch collects girls with Levia inheritor powers. They are able to remove “malice” from people’s hearts, and also hear the “voice of god”. Yegor is able to tell them by sight, as he is an inheritor of Behemo, who can see another person’s inheritor powers. Zellana and Elluka are orphans.
There were different varieties of Ghoul Children when it came to the artificial personalities they had. “Clean” refers to those that have no memories, “Preset” refers to those that have pre-made false memories, and “Copy” refers to those that have identical memories to Seth.
Catherine was a marine scientist, and married to Gilles. They rode along in the Climb One. They had a son, but he was sickly and did not ride on the same ship as them.
For this reason she grew jealous towards female psychologist Rahab, whose two children were able to board the ship with her. When she realized that Rahab was having an affair with Gilles, her jealousy turned to rage. She conspired with Lich to kill Rahab, but in the end was killed by Lich, who she realized too late was really “malice” wearing his form.
So then, I guess I’m gonna have to fix Original Sin Story: Punishment, whether I want to or not. Can’t wait to see what fuckery awaits us in it.