Part 60

Chapter 60: The End of the Beginning/Random Musings/Text and Image Dump



As our three heroes return from Mars, let us take a moment to remember those who have fallen in battle. All told, 130 men gave their lives for XCOM. Many left behind wives and children who one day will also join XCOM and give their up lives for this cause.

Whiskey
Mr Toes
Sanguinaire
Sugary
Antti
Roxormancer
Drakkel
Cicadalek
Eddy-Baby
Captain Novolin
Marcade
OhsH
Anticheese
Terashell
Pander18
Blackray
MrBims
Mr. Peepers
Jack Van Burace
Katsuma
Dr.Magnificent
Some New Guy
Keyboard Fox
Synth
Loden Taylor
Ice Phisherman
Ainsley McTree
Overmind 2000
X-Future
Vallhallan
Getao
The Raz
Broose
Fangz
Nick Buntline
Roar
Allen Wren
Gruff McGuffin
Crunch Buttsteak
The Deadly Hume
Heinrich von Paxicon
Arujei
HitTheTargets
Kulex
Some Internet Guy
Ulsoro
Ceciltron
Vlad Antlerkov
Andrew Jackson
Diamato
Garfield - Der Film
General Chaos
Daviel
OatmealRaisin
Ryo
Matthew Lacroix Sr.
Scads
seaborgium
Tasian
Sam Meatshield
Ze Pollack
Dirdum
Wild M
JonLikesPie
Africanus
Master Ninja
Sir Spandy
Doc Martin
Tarquinn
Valiant Valium
AngryVegemite
Raptus
Cooked Auto
Kitfox88
Thaumocrat
Bob Smith
SoylentCola
iLurk
willcrouch
Forest Fuckery
Pipgirl
Jetsetlemming
Count Drunkula
Priest
The_Censorship_Nazi
Tsathoggua
Lazermaniac
Bagpuss
Demota
Chairon
Nemo2342
OrangeSoda
Frenchie
kevb0
MaxPowers
Kaider
Coolswa
David Corbett
Hentaikid
Jimmy Tango
John Ryker
Ted Hill
The Casualty
Linall
GoodShipNostalgia
Sad King Billy
Mayday
DeltaOmega
Cedric
El Perkele
GetWellGamers
RomikQ
Bovines
Concordat
Michael Thane
Affi
TTBF
Lord Fancington
KGargly
Torlon
Tarantula
Prowler
W.T. Fuguyz
Blowupologist
Hypern
Linall
Raverrn
Deadmeat Redux
Death's Head
Bunnyofdoom


As we look into what the future holds, we learn that for some of our heroes, the loss of lives does not end with the destruction of the Cydonian base.

Otto Zander enjoyed his new-found celebrity status as the savior of Earth and first man on Mars. He was promoted to Commander, and soon appointed new Director of XCOM. Though with the war over, extreme cutbacks reduced XCOM to a shadow of its former glory. Otto spent the next 39 years overseeing XCOM's new priority - the recovery of Elerium. The Avenger used up most of XCOM's remaining Elerium supply on the trip to and from Mars. Without fuel, the Avenger prototype was donated to the Trove Museum in London, as part of their exhibit showcasing various pieces of history of the first alien war. The aliens that had promised Elerium delivery to countries that sided with them had not delivered significant quantities. The only remaining source lies on the bottom of the ocean, where UFOs had settled after being shot down



Recovery was a difficult process, as exposed Elerium dissolves in sea water. The recovery of even a small amount was considered a success. Humanity needed Elerium to explore outside our solar system, but that was where the Elerium was to be found. It was 47 years until reliable space travel would finally be realized.

Jean Maury and Cowcaster stayed with XCOM, raised families, and lived happy lives.

Waddle Dee story ends on a much sadder note. During the travel to Mars, the Avenger was exposed to high levels of solar radiation. The long-term risk to soldiers was high, and Waddle Dee's luck ran out quickly. He developed an extreme case of leukemia, and died several months after returning to Earth. His last words were "I hate horror movies".

Lily Takakumi did not continue her sciences. She left XCOM and moved back to Japan to help with the rebuild of the country. She gave birth in December 1999 to twins - a girl, Ivy, and a boy, Andrew. They lived normal lives, though in the back of Lily's mind there was always one nagging doubt...



...she always felt that she had left something undone. Something unfinished...



She lived with that feeling her whole life.

Ms Cuddles lived to see her 20th birthday, quite old for a cat. Slowly becoming senile, and losing her sight due to cataracts, she finally died after wandering into traffic and being struck by a car.



The story of Dr. Reis Markus and Roscoe Ulysses Sirius does not end on Mars however...




Reis Markus: OOOooohhhhh, my head. What was that?

Director Ulysses: Stun bomb. Someone fired a stun bomb at us. Where'd they go?

Reis Markus: Hey, look over there. Something's coming up here.



Sectoid: You're Mr. Sirius, aren't you? The one our leader told us about before it died? Please, help us! We can't hear the voices in our head anymore! We don't know what to do!

Reis Markus: They need a psionic leader to organize them. Without one, they're completely lost.

Director Ulysses: And I suppose I'm the only remaining psionic user on this planet.

Sectoid: The automated system has sent a tachyon distress signal out, and we did get a response.

Director Ulysses: From where?

Sectoid: I don't know. Our leader did the data analyzation for us. It probably came from our deep space outpost, the return signal came from somewhere nearby.

Director Ulysses: That means Otto and XCOM know we're still here and functional!

Reis Markus: No, there's nothing on Earth that can receive a tachyon signal. To them, it'll just look like a massive energy release, like an explosion.

Director Ulysses: Do we have a way to get to your outpost?

Sectoid: We have our ships, but we don't have a way to pilot them!

Reis Markus: Oh, I'm sure I can figure something out.

Director Ulysses: Good. We need to regroup, and figure out what we're going to do. We can't go back to Earth. I need to learn more about, well, everything.

Sectoid: We will gladly help you with anything you need. We're at your command. Our leader was right to trust in you.

Reis Markus: Hey Roscoe, I'm glad you came over to the right side. Sorry about not telling you earlier.

Director Ulysses: I'm still angry about you trying to kill me back on Early Light. I'll be keeping an eye on you.

Reis Markus: I know. At least we have a long time to work things out.

Sectoid: Thank you, Mr. Sirius!

Director Ulysses: You're welcome. Let's head to your ship. There's nothing here for us anymore.



----


Thank you all for reading my LP. I said it before, but I hope I did a good job of everything. One of my XCOM LP folders has a bunch on things in it I wanted to use in the LP but never got around to.

I know I never showed a live Reaper, Sectopods, a live Ethereal, and most of the UFO schematics. Blame randomness on the game's part. If you're interested, go here. They have a complete UFOpaedia, as well as the videos from the Playstation version.

One XCOMUtil thing I never got around to showing was this:








XCOMUtil can generate completely random UFOs. This is a Battleship. There are obviously some problems with nonsensical patterns, but it does correctly display the number of engines and other goodies you would normally capture from UFOs. This would be a good feature for someone who's played the game to death, since each UFO can be made totally unique.

I planned to have a lot more Enforcer things in here, but once I found out I could record that game, I wanted to save the good bits for that LP. There are a few good bits in it, really!

In this update, I wanted to have a better psionic freak out thing. I would have included bits from the XCOM Alliance trailer, but this idea was scrapped once I realized I didn't have the skill to make something rivaling Doc Future's videos. Incidentally, I don't think anyone noticed the Terashell ghost in the first image of that update. It's only on for 1/50 of a second and 88% transparent, so I'm not surprised. It was a couple of updates later when I put a more obvious ghost in an image that people finally noticed. This update was also where I finally slipped a heavy plasma into the hand of Otto in the ubiquitous psi-debriefing picture. I really didn't expect anyone to notice, since it's such a tiny detail. Most of you are pretty smart, so if I want to hide something in my images to set up a twist, I need to be really subtle about it. I'm quite glad no one saw it coming, but it still made sense at the end.


Take a look at this image from Interceptor:



This is where Roscoe Ulysses Sirius was introduced into the canon. There's quite a lot more in Interceptor about this. It's interesting that the game itself is confused as to who is the actual leader of the cult - Sirius or Markus. I thought it would be cool to have both of them start as on XCOM's side, since everyone and their dog should have known that eventually they switched.

Remember that crayon update? I really liked that. I wanted to do another, based on the question "what is the opposite of Chryssalid Heaven?" The answer was to be a descent through XCOM Hell. I was going to post it after the video with Dexanth. Roar died there, and I wanted to show his journey through XCOM Hell, completely ripping off inspired by Dante's Inferno, writing in that rhyme style to the best of my ability. I had the levels planned out, who would be there, I had my inspiration images found, and I got as far as this image before realizing I'm not as good with ArtRage as I thought I was, and that this was a bad idea just for a Some Cool Guy joke payoff on the last level of XCOM Hell.

Here's some random XCOM shit I found:





Someone wanted the video of the first level of Cydonia. It's completely unedited, and probably boring, so be prepared if you wanted to watch it. I'd honestly recommend against that, unless you really want to see how I play the game when I have an LP in mind.

Video gone

If you haven't watched it yet due to spoilers, you can now go watch this now:

Beat the final mission with starting equipment. Video with subtitles on Vimeo. From the Emasculation Station thread. (Video gone)

I'll post more in here about a ustream run at a later date.

Thanks for watching! I'm glad I received some good fan submissions. Cowcaster's latest ones had me laughing pretty hard. The single best entry was probably this one from Synth. Overall though, I really need to thank Dexanth for continued submission to the thread. So thanks Dexanth, you won the contest! Tell me what forum upgrade-

Whoa, hold on, contest?

Yup. The "Best Overall Fan Submission" Contest.

You never said anything about that!

Because I didn't want to be deluged with shitty entries. I wanted people to submit things for fun, not for reward. Dexanth, tell me what upgrade you want, and I'll send you something. Might I recommend a new avatar? Yours has popped up in Helldump's crap avatar thread a couple times.

Thank you all again! Couldn't and wouldn't have done it without you all. It's going to lessen the pain of trying to archive this damn thing.

Jade Star, it's your turn now...