Chapter 135: Asteria's Chronicles, Part 1

"Asteria was shaping up to be a complete and total trainwreck."

Howard, as he always is, just loves to hear himself talk. Even in times as somber and dour as present time, leave it to him to construct a vivid narrative in our head that told of a more simple time.

The scene was set, the year is sometime before the official conception of Chronicles Of Asteria. What year, you may ask? Well… let's just say somewhere between before the eventual heat death of the universe as we know it but also sometime after the 21st century. Does that narrow it down enough for you?

Picture this - Cyberware Game Studios. A small studio, a modest studio, with even more modest people. Their aim, their belief, the creed they almost always dutifully followed since their inception was to always give everything they made and strive for their full 100%.

Let it not be said that they've been led astray from their vision - following such bold claims, as promised, everything from them was given their fair share of that 100% love and commitment.

The only problem was… in our world so imperfect and flawed, not everything would get its fair due to a 100% success. Sometimes the fruits of your labor just end up rotting away.

In Cyberware's case, let's just say they weren't no Hand of Midas, alright. Fame and fortune slipping away from their grasp - release after release, game after game… a slippery spiral downwards into the scary murky depths of mediocrity. 

They have had six games under their belt at this point, with their latest - a Sci-Fi RPG romp set somewhere in the near future - flopping harder than a beached whale. It was almost as if they were always destined to fail no matter which greener pastures they set their sights onto next but try as they might each flop was always more cataclysmic than the last.

From an up-and-coming team of a hundred and eleven bright-eyed individuals to a measly fifty-two in a span of eight years. Budget cuts and disappointing turnovers had whittled the once promising studio down to its last few cents.

Just enough for one last game, one last group effort, a go home or go big push, lest they have to shut their doors for good. But with most of their talent gone, and with morale at an all time low, how on Earth were they ever going to possibly make due?

Enter Howard Philips.

"Was hired during the Sci-Fi phase. Back then I was hired as a simple debugger. I say that but at the same time, I was also given bits of the game to work on since they were so spread thin. For my work, after the game's release, I was promoted to the position of assistant technical director after their old one left shortly after."

So far, the little trip down memory lane was a simple enough one to follow. Even Ash, displaying occasionally frowns at buzzwords like 'awful programming' and 'poor marketing' and 'dismal sales', was able to get the gist of what he was trying to say.

Cyberware Game Studios were in the shitter.

"So upper management decided to go for one last ditch effort. What that was - nobody knew… everybody was just throwing ideas at the wall trying to find out what would stick, and to make matters worse, we lost our game director. Resigned two months after kickstarting the new project citing that he found better opportunities elsewhere."

"Him leaving didn't exactly alleviate matters. Now we've no director, no vision… no game. Production came to a halt, all we had were a few assets made and some sketches done, but really we were just grasping at the straws at that point."

Didn't realize just how dark the times were for this now prospering studio. From the surface, you couldn't even tell that they were once on the verge of bankruptcy just a few measly years back, what with all the fancy high-tech equipment on every floor, and just how sleeked everything looked to the eyes… add the fact that the building itself was merely a side branch to their main studio up north, and yeah… it was hard to imagine them living off of hard beans and spoilt milk for the majority of their time existing.

It's amazing how just one game, one idea could turn that all around… but as we would eventually come to know - the idea was never even his in the first place.

"I was never exactly the big creative type," Howard explained. "Not back then, and certainly not even now. But back then with the big creative people all gone, the studio was becoming desperate, they were practically ready to give the position of game director to the next person that came walking into the front door. Oh, forgot to mention… bye-bye technical director too… they gave me that position too after she has gone and packed up. So yay to me, I guess."

Irene was groaning, scoffing, patience wearing… don't think she was as invested as I was in Howard's tale, walking long paces back and forth in the length of his office.

"All very fascinating, Howard," She muttered un-fascinatedly. "But we're not particularly interested in how Asteria came to be. We just wanna know why it came to be. Can you get to that, please?"

Not keen on irking an already irate detective, Howard complied with a timid nod, adjusting glasses that weren't there. He was a nervous wreck.

"We have pitch meetings every other day in the office. You know… brainstorms that always amounted up to nothing." 

Howard began making minute adjustments to every off-angled object on his desk. Probably just to give his hands something to do apart from simply twitching and quivering in place. 

"It was during one of these sessions that it finally came to me. Don't know how, out of nowhere… an email appeared on my laptop… and when I clicked on it, when I read what was in it, I don't know… it just seemed like a lifeline from the heavens - it was literally the answer to our problems. Everything we wanted and needed was already in it - a captivating storyline to follow, an expansive magical world to create, intriguing characters to give life to… everything."

Irene halted her back and forth, disinterested eyes inversing to ones that looked at him unblinking. "So that's Asteria?"

Much to our surprise, Howard shook her head glumly. "Asteria… that name… it was only one of the original things I actually came up with on my own. The email had another name for it." 

I tilted my head. "What name is that?"

"Kronocia," Howard replied, lips narrowed. "The sender of the email called this world Kronocia."

Another share of glances between us three - there it was, somehow, someway… Kronocia would come to rear itself into the subject matter, it was only a matter of time that it did. But the way that it did clearly caught us all by surprise.

As a game-pitch inscribed an email sent to a random employee from a dying company on the road to ruins. 

At least one thing was finally confirmed here - that the world of Asteria was indeed based on the now no-longer present realm of Kronocia. Their history, their stories, their magic… why they all aligned. Welp, good news was, we were finally getting some answers. Bad news though, those answers came with a caveat of even more puzzling questions than the ones we first had.

For example, as Irene so eloquently put it, "Who this savior from above then? Who sent the email to you?"

Howard quietly stared for a moment. "Would it surprise you at all if I told you that I don't know myself?"

"Not really," Irene said matter-of-factly. "But it does serve to piss me off even more than I already am."

Game Director-man flailed his arms about again. "Look - I'm sorry, alright? I wasn't exactly in the mood to start sniffing around for anything suspect when I just found the one thing that could potentially save the studio."

"And throughout development?" I asked. "Not even the slightest bit curious on just who the hell this golden goose of yours was?"

"Course I was. But it wasn't like they were parading their name around either! There was no credit to the document sent, no label to go off on. Just a throwaway account with nothing in it. And I didn't need them for consultation either - if I wanted to implement, I just go back to that email again… see what other interesting thing there was that I skimmed, and there we go."

"And where is this email now?" Ash jumped in after a long moment of nothing but silence from her. "If you'd be so kind, let us find for ourselves just what it contains within."

A simple request. So easy to fulfill. Laptop was already sitting on the side of his desk there. But once again, as if truly wanting to rile us up, he shook his head.

"I can't," He said, veering his eyes away from any of ours. "I already… I already got rid of it."