Could Marchenghast Castle's story go differently?
I loved our new story quests of Marchenghast and the start of it. But the story fell flat in my opinion. I just finished the final quests of it and I just ended up being... Sad? I Expected more, or deeper story I think. Maybe I shouldn't keep my expectations too high up when it comes to SSO...
But as a disclamer, I'm not a professional storyteller and I know I don't see some issues in some stories that other critisize and you can see mistakes in my version and maybe you can have your own version to my version or something. I just ask, please keep it constructive. I try to explain my decisions the best I can.
How I would like the story being told:
It starts the same way it already goes. We hear a call, someone needs help, and we go. Start with the castle, Margaret and other nobles are suspicious of us, we meet Abigail and the little furball whose name is too difficult to me to remember or even find from the internet : DD The tasks we get, increases the trust of the local people bit by bit.
I like how the story starts and introduces the history to us and I like the part that they doesn't really trust us first but then they start to see that we just try to help them. But maybe just maybe I would like the trust come little bit slower, I don't know. What I would change in this part is that they wouldn't maybe accept the beasts at first. It feels bit weird how they introduce the beasts as scary beings that were violent but then immediately there's few people that are like yeah we are going to help them now and take some in. Maybe little slower progress here or atleast something like we have to really convince them to take few beasts in. But then they start to see how the healed beasts are nothing to worry about, they start to trust them more and see how they are not a threat.
There was some story between, but I don't remember much of it, maybe it can remain the same. But when Margaret starts to wake up of the true issues here, I would like to see her go even more against her father. Maybe even show them fighting about it. We never see the duke in the current story. The horrifying scene we find would set her to go to the library with us and try to find the truth. In my version the nobles are the biggest bad because I think it's alright to have done worse than the other in the war and most of it would have happened because of the duke and duke's ancestors using propaganda, painting a big bad threat out of the witches and the beasts. When Margaret finds this out, she will tell the truth to the people of the Marchenghast Castle and they will be stunned of the truth but they trust Margaret and they have seen how the beasts aren't threat after all so most of the people believe Margaret. Beasts and witches did violent stuff too but it was just the reaction to the cruelty nobels did and later everyone can acknowledge that. But the biggest thing would be how nobles do some selfreflection and sincerely apologise. They would want to correct the mistakes they did. Maybe they could even imprison the duke?
In Abigail's part we still go to the Old Watchtower. In this version it just strenghtens the history of nobles' cruelty by showing the old hamlet they destroyed. It brings up old wounds in Abigail but DESPITE the cruelty they faced, Abigail realizes that they can't continue the cycle and they have to start to work together to fight the blight. They accept the apologizing and forgive the nobles. Abigail's story continues in trying to find her mother and her notes. I wouldn't change this. I wouldn't change the situation where due to her mother's notes, Abigail BELIEVES that they can't get rid of the blight but they will do the ritual together with the beasts and the nobles to trap it inside. After this we would get few more daily quests that emphasize the new working together era. Maybe the story would "end" here and continue after maybe few months?
Because Abigail was wrong about the blight! No one knows it at start but blight was a result of the long going hatred. It's slow, no one realizes it in long time, but after they all came together for the ritual and symbolically gave away their weapons, the blight started weakening in some far away places. They started the healing journey together and bit by bit started to fix up some things together. They worked to make safe places for everyone and maybe some little trade routs. Suddenly some scholars and knowleagble people from withces find out together the change in the blight. This would be nice place to start the new bunch of quests in the are I think? Weakening of the blight is visible now.
We try to research the weakening blight and what causes it. We implement new ways to weaken it more but after some time the scolars and the witches realize that the most effective thing was to work together. So now they discuss bigger plans to strengthen the new connection, real missions and working together for actually fixing some old places and cleaning the forest from the traces of war. They will resettle the Old Watchtower, they will fix the broken parts of the castle and maybe expand the hamlet. These quests would be probably similar to for example fixing the Baroness' racetrack but in longer period of time.
Now the blight starts to disappear. It will be gone entirely or would decrease only living in some little parts of the forest. Now the sun is shining through the dead forest again after a very long time. They start to work towards healing the forest with magic and witchcraft again, together. We would get new daily quests that will replace the old ones due to the blight disappearing. Or maybe some old quests could stay if the blight stayed in some places.
And what after that? I don't know. Maybe they want to keep the vail just because they want to or because they are still worrying some bunches of the blight? Maybe they get rid of the vail and start doing trades with the Jorvik again? I don't know, I didn't continue this far.
What inspired me to write this idea? To be honest: I want to get rid of the blight. It's dark and laggy and if they don't continue the quests, I'll probably never come back to that area due to it being difficult to move around. This version would continue the quests for longer time and in my opinion deepen the story and the story having more meaning because now it would be about the healing story from the past mistakes. I don't think it would be a bad thing that one part of the war was more evil in the history because it is also about forgiveness and correcting the past mistakes that was made and listening to the people that was painted evil once. It's about growing to become better people to help everyone.
Thank you for reading and thank you if you are commenting my raw idea of a different story for the Marchenghast Castle. Feel free to share your own ideas or changes to my or SSO's version!