"As a backpack," snorts Aestrix. "I just. One of the most important objects in the world, Glint's very last egg, possible chance of helping to remake the world into something less itself, and. It is a backpack." She rubs the bridge of her nose. "All right. Okay, Tyria, you do you. So I'm assuming miscellaneous heroics ensue before he gets beamed in the head with more major plot?"

    "Actually no, he gets to major plot fairly quickly. He finds the Exalted—ah, here's a hologram for you—they used to be humans but shed their mortality in favour of becoming eternal guardians of Glint's legacy. They'd been dormant for a while but reactivated when Glint's egg approached and then they detect that James is the egg's chosen bearer and he has to go through a buncha trials to prove his worth. When he inevitably succeeds at all of them he places the egg in a magic chamber and its magic creates a fuckoff huge forcefield around the magic Exalted city and also gives James a vision of Mordremoth using a captured Logan, Zojja, and Trahearne to create New And Improved Mordrem."

"Er."

    "Mordrem being Mordremoth's minions," he clarifies. "And yeah, that's pretty bad. Not worse than death though."

"This is a future vision, right, it hasn't actually happened yet?" she confirms. "Glint had some future vision stuff, it'd make sense if her li'l unhatched baby inherited some of that. Not that I'd have any idea how to do... anything with future vision and Tyria if I were writing it myself."

    "It's not clear that it's a future vision, actually? They've, like, already been captured. But it's not the last time the dragon is gonna give James a vision of terrible things to come."

"Joy of joys."

    "Pretend you don't like it, why don't you."

James just laughs.

Aestrix snorts.

"So, ominous vision, egg of destiny is safely hidden away, James... immediately rushes off to save his friends from the horrible fate that awaits them? That seems the obvious next thing to do."

    "Exactly! ...well, more or less. They still didn't know where Destiny's Edge was, and James had gotten separated from Taimi when he ran off to do egg shenanigans, so he went looking for her. She had, apparently, found some ruins with a mix of Exalted magic and asuran technology, which was pretty exciting, and after she powered it up—you also helped with that, James, by hitting things until they yielded their magically conductive organs—"

"I do so like usefully hitting things," he says cheerfully.

    "That you do. Anyway, she powered it up, which showed a detailed leyline map of northern Tyria—I don't remember whether we clarified this earlier in this story and can't be bothered to look back, leylines are lines of magical energy through which magic will most naturally flow. So, big map, they see some interesting places highlighted as major nodes, but there's one place they don't recognise. Also, powering the place up woke a hibernating Exalted that was in the computer up, forgot to mention that. So, Exalted explains to Taimi and James that the mysterious hub is Rata Novus, an Asuran city that helped the Exalted fight the Elder Dragons in the past. Taimi gets super excited and wants to go there."

"Of course she does."

"I'm shocked. Okay, so, map of where magic goes, lost asuran city, and maybe the lost asuran city will have nice things in it that will help with the Dragon. I should figure out a way for this lost city to be found entirely to make Taimi happy, though I'm not really seeing an... obvious way to do that."

"The plot itself needn't change that much, does it? It's just that people won't die."

"I kind of don't want people to get captured and traumatized," she says, mildly. "And if the plot stretches out too far, it stretches implausibility if people don't die. Some of the aspects of the plot can certainly stay the same, but we'll be working under more of a time crunch so as not to give the game away."

"Hmm, that's fair enough. But I don't know how to make it last—less, even with the no-killing and no-mind-control thing. You could I suppose say that part of the reason Destiny's Edge got captured was that they were 'betrayed' by the sylvari of the Pact, and since that's no longer at play they manage to avoid capture. And then I'm sure after they find Tarir James can come up with a reason why they should go exploring those ruins."

"Right. Uh, guessing from context, Tarir's the Exalted in the computer?"

"Oh did I forget to say? Yeah I did, Tarir is the city of gold the Exalted built to house Glint's egg."

"Aha. Okay. Recap, then, so I can understand it—there are two cities hidden in this jungle. Tarir is the city of gold, mysteriously located here to house Glint's egg and mysteriously in the area that the egg happens to end up, for some reason. Rata Novus is the abandoned asuran city, because I guess real estate was cheap in that area and they wanted to have sleepovers with Tarir and paint each other's nails or infrastructure or whatever. They proceeded to trade information and neat things, and preferably both should be found by people while I'm saving the world. But that's like, a nice sidequest, it's not a world saving requirement. Keeping people from getting taken prisoner and experimented upon is more important."

"I mean, yeah, except they don't have the first clue where their friends are and don't have the firepower to actually take on Mordremoth, so they want to use Rata Novus as a base of operations to host the front of the remaining Pact members against the dragon."

"Pedro. Pedro, none of this has happened yet. 'Saving lost friends' only becomes an issue if they get lost in the first place. If we lose them, yeah, of course we're going to go save them, but we should not just assume that they're going to get lost."

"—oh right you meant that from a meta perspective, sorry, got confused."

Aestrix giggles. "It's okay, it happens. I'm more interested in what things are at play than what went down in the canon timeline, though I need to know what happened in the canon timeline to pick up everything. Like, uh, I think the egg should probably go to James if he's up for it, he makes a better baby dragon daddy than some of the other candidates." She looks at James. "But if he'd rather not I can come up with an alternative solution. Do you want to be a baby dragon daddy?"

James sporfles. "That's a bit disturbing! But yes it sounds interesting to be the guardian of Glint's legacy," he says archly.

    "Did you have any doubt he'd respond like that," Pedro asks, deadpan.

"Yes, Pedro, because he does not live in my head. Even if he did, the people that live in my head have thrown me for loops before. Besides, it's still important to ask and give alternatives. I could show up and make a ton of sweeping declarations about what things are going to happen in characters' lives, but that seems like it'd be a dick move, even if I were completely correct about all of my declarations."

    "Yeah that's fair.

    "Anyway, so I think my earlier proposed solution still works: Destiny's Edge doesn't get captured because no sylvari are backstabbing them, and then James finds the egg, takes it to Tarir, finds an excuse to find Rata Novus, they find Rata Novus, they orchestrate their offensive from there and go fight Mordremoth. Bonus points for not having to kill Trahearne because Mordremoth was in his head."

"Excuse me, what was that?"

    "...right, I hadn't finished my story, had I."

"I think I distracted you with plotting, sorry," says Aestrix. "Uh, James, we're definitely averting that one, Trahearne is going to be just fine, not to worry."

    "Okay, so, next! You start looking for Rata Novus and conveniently find a group of Pact soldiers who got captured with Trahearne, Zojja, and Logan but the heroes distracted the Mordrem and they managed to escape. So: a lead!"

"...wow, my life really is fictional."

Aestrix cracks up.

"So you, Taimi, Canach, and Braham go looking for Rata Novus while the rest of your party goes to try to track where the prisoner caravan must've left to. Shenanigans happen, you find this species of giant bugs that eat magic from the leylines—" hologram "—and they're all over Rata Novus, so you deal with that. There are some Inquest—uh, Aestrix, wanna explain them?"

"Evil asura. Amoral nerd off group of our beloved Feanorian-alikes. Pedro, we might be getting into too much detail here?"