At one point during TCOS development we created the Discipline Masters, a set of the Enclave’s greatest heroes and prime examples of what to expect from the Discilpines, our class system. While they were put in the game, they never got the attention I wanted them to have, nor were all assets used. I envisioned them as a band of contemporary heroes the players could fight alongside to in specific scenes.

Marlon Kromodikoro, Dennis Zoetebier and yours truly created a bio for each of the Discipline Masters and this series is meant to showcase each of them. The game itself only contained minor bits and pieces.

Master Ancestral Mage

• Name: Kimian the Quartehr
• Race: Human
• Gender: Female
• Age (998 AC): 73 (925 AC)
• Previous Faction: House Rune

History:

Kimian the Quartehr was born into a noble family in Fountain District, Quarterstone. She never had much to wish for during her childhood and spent much of it running around the district trying to sneak into the “more dangerous” Green District housing Quarterstone’s working class. During one of her ventures into the Green District, she was enthralled by some of mages at the Citadel of Ail, and decided there and then to become one herself.

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To me at least.

On the PlayStation (or PS One if you are up to date with Sony’s trademarks) there was this beautifully simple yet mind-bending puzzle game called Kula World. It never received a sequel. So initially, I was kind of offended to find ‘some idiot copying Kula World,’ under the guise of Puzzle Dimension.

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image © Nesperado.com

Some time ago a friend of mine mentioned how he still at times breaks out the Super Nintendo to play the game Hook, a platform game based on the movie by the same name. That actually ignited a pang of nostalgia; I myself immediately associated that with the Ocean range of platform games and as such with their (IMHO) greatest achievement, McDonaldland.

Known across the Atlantic as M.C. Kids curiously, it was one of the few games I rented at the local video rental store more than once. Not because like every kid back then you revered McDonald’s and you needed the Happy Meal toys as your life depended upon them, but rather because the game was actually good. Proper good. And now that I’m looking back on it, probably the best licensed game of its time. Which is rather amazing when you think about it (especially taking the NES’s games library into account).

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Back when I was content lead at Spellborn Works, I created multiple ‘mood pieces’ to reflect upon the universe of “The Chronicles of Spellborn”. These texts were written at a conceptual level, to provide artists and fellow designers with an idea of how the game world behaved on its own. This rough text was meant for post-release content. There was the notion to give the Enclave a more suitable opponent and the Arionites were chosen for that purpose. However, as the Arionites were already all over the game, we needed to introduce a stronger version.

“How many have we wasted so far?” To Eridin the question did sound offensive. By order of Shadow’s Hammer or not, these were still their fellows. That woman didn’t seem to understand that.
“So far, seven have *died*, Sharan. Three immediately after the cauldronization, four after ‘successful’ cauldronization.”
“Good.” The word mark clawed itself into Eridin’s mind. “That means we are well within the limits of the procedure.” She picked up one of the red crystals on the altar in front of here and walked to one of the dead bodies. “It also gives us… opportunities.”
“Opportunities? They’re dead! Finding a suitable weapon to fight the Enclave is one thing, but outright *killing* our own to get… these undead monstrosities… is-…” Sharan flatly held her hand up to signal silence. Eridin obeyed.

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I’m in doubt whether I should be surprised about The Chronicles of Spellborn being shut down over at Playdom (who bought Acclaim Games) or I should be surprised about the game still running at all. It seems US players still have until the end of August to still visit the Shards and after that the game will stop.

I thought it odd that the game was kept running at all after Spellborn Works was pulled off the project; it basically robbed the game of support of any kind and I can only imagine how many bugs and problems players might have uncovered since then. Still, with a Korean development team working on it there was some hope it could be revived.

But now it seems the aftermath is coming to a close. With Frogster pulling out in Europe and Playdom shutting down the US side of operations, it seems the game has been finally laid to rest. And although it pains me to say this, it’s probably for the better.