While still working on the next session of The Four Generals, I stopped to think about how we're seeing a fourth or so version of Eustace Delmont, and how the character has changed...

I'm a bit caught up in various IRL traps and excess-of-solo-play right now. Neither of which are particularly bad things, but both of which are interfering with my usual Monday | Wednesday | Friday posting. Monday's post will be Wednesday and I doubt I'll have time to "catch up" as it were. Which is fine.

While finishing up a scene for the upcoming The Four Generals session (the session 0 of the second mini-campaign), I was thinking about how much Eustace is different from his previous The Alabama Weird outing: Eustace & Hitomi and the Case of the Rambler's Inn. There he was a bit quiet, a bit somber, and a bit prone to just doing things without quite thinking.

That's not the Eustace that was meant to be in that storyline. That's a side-effect of me essentially changing a short mystery romp into a more slice-of-life romance exploration.

THAT Eustace started out as something different and thinking back, I still slightly regret never giving the original Eustace Delmont a chance. Though, the original Eustace Delmont wasn't even called that. I figured I'd take a few minutes and sort through the variations and very quick lessons learned.

Del Eustace

Del Eustace was a overachieving science geek in Leftfield, Alabama who got caught up exploring mysteries while I was playtesting a game. That game never got posted to any blog, but the sequel to it did. There was a plan that Tamara Lane and Del Eustace were going to have a team-up session where they get together to finally solve the mystery but a solo-player's TBP [To Be Played] Pile is always longer than a day is tall or however you want to say it.

I really don't remember much about him besides he ends up blowing up his school to save the town from the encroaching evil and then goes into hiding.

That Tamara and Del never-actually-happened mashup was basically the start of, well, all this. At least the idea that I would work on multiple mini- to semi-campaigns all part of a few bigger ones. Tamara and Del might meet up with folks like the werewolves in Bunker, for instance. Notions that each of my campaigns and one-shot were building to some big finale.

Just, Del got...replaced.

DESCRIPTION NOTE: Del Eustace was tall and thin and a bit awkwardly limbed. He was pictured as the somewhat attractive but kind of odd-personality nerd. The sort of kid who knows which college he is going to and already has a fifteen year plan with backups.

The Eustace That Got Un-Played and the Meta-Campaign That Never Was

Then I played a [meant to be] one-shot using Maidenstead Mysteries and I created a sort of other-Del. Not an overachiever. Someone who seems to whiff at life. Smart as a whip. Good with people. But a blowhard. He was basically Del Eustace, but reversed in a few critical ways. To show the same-but-not-the-same, I called him Eustace Del[mont].

Then I, basically, made him me. In 1996 Mobile, AL. At least near it. Only it wasn't 1996 me [who was only 19], it was sort 2001-era me.

And I dialed a lot of my dumb but funny-for-content tendencies up a notch. Naturally tending towards bragging about himself to the point of making shit up. Loves obscure media. Drops literature references without any warning. Someone who goes off on long rants about minor subjects. A romantic at heart. Someone who might take a few risks just to see.

Maidenstead Mysteries is all about playing cozy British mysteries so I had the idea of taking this Alabama boy and having him write in an over-affected style that was more P.G. Wodehouse Wooster than Agatha Christie's Poirot. The sort of person that knows more big words than knows how to use them.

"I kicked down the door with voluminous force and was enraptured to see the wood give way!"

Here was to be the trick, though:

I was going to write out Eustace's version of events before I made the rolls and THEN make the rolls and explain as myself, as "Eustace's Biographer," what the actual story was based on dice and oracles. This would be through editor notes, footnotes, etc. It was me playing as a sort of Watson to Holmes, where all we have is Watson's version which tweaks things to make a good story.

That's right, I was going to play as an over-the-top version of myself and then also play as my real self telling the real story. It's still somewhat there in the existent text. Except by the second part, it was Hitomi writing it up as a favor to her husband and I went back to change it to always her. It still had some meta, but the central meta-element was cut.

Instead, Eustace started becoming more down-to-earth and was a person who was still pretty much me, but kind of just the person I actually was at the time in an overly exciting adventure.

DESCRIPTION NOTE: This meta-Eustace was 6'1 and 350lbs and though his age was not given, per se, it was assumed he was "fresh out of grad school" so around 23. Young enough that some of his behavior was especially noticeable.

Eustace & Hitomi's Eustace Delmont

We ended up with the E+H storyline. Eustace meets Hitomi and falls in love [the original was meant to be at odds with a stand-in Scooby-Doo team where he worked best with the Shaggy-one... and dice rolls ended up coming up with Hitomi].

They are both idiots so they keep trying to sabotage it. They end up solving a crime that didn't happen but stumbling upon a crime that did. Amy Patel is created and later becomes a major player in both The Alabama Weird and The GLOW.

Eustace's joy and blow-hard-ness would only resurface as something like a defense mechanism. It worked ok for the story, but it wasn't quite what I was wanting to play. It was more like a therapy session. To a degree, he became a second run of Gareth Hendrix. A sad sack man from Lower Alabama who finds out what he wants by throwing himself into conflict.

I don't actually mind that version of Eustace, but I also don't think I ever quite want to go back to that version again. In fact, after I was done I thought about retiring the character.

Except...

DESCRIPTION NOTE: This Eustace was more like 6'2 and 250lbs. Still a big boy, but not quite as obviously fat (though still fat). He had curly hair and at some point starts growing a beard which he keeps from then on [again, matching my general build/description at the time].

From Nurse to Witch-King

When I started playing The GLOW, based initially a wide-reading of Arcane Agents, I primarily had two characters in mind from two pieces of Dean Spencer's artwork (seen in the first ever The GLOW post). I named the agent-type "Arcane Order Agent Johnny Blue" [with early hints that he had multiple fake identities, but was an actual agent] and the smoking femme fatale was somewhat randomly turned into Amy Patel...which lead to her being the technically-adopted daughter of Dr. Patel but her biological parents were from Hong Kong and Vietnam.

After using Amy Patel, I decided to include references to a new Eustace Delmont. Codenamed Nurse. He was pitched as a younger man than Johnny and was sort of "little brother who acts like the big brother" to the lead. He kind of showed up whenever I needed a logical reason to progress the plot but there was nothing obvious. He was the sidekick that was a stand-in for oracle roles in fiction.

Only, months later I decided to bring him back. Along with Hitomi. These were different takes on the character. Each was older. Each more self-confident. Eustace was now a fairly muscular psychic. Hitomi was a more self-assured hacker.

Nurse went on to become The Witch-King, a plot point where The GLOW is trying to heal itself from turning into a runaway catastrophe. As of the 2024-continuity, Eustace is still "hardwired" into The GLOW's operating system and still directing things, here or there.

DESCRIPTION NOTE: This Eustace is around 6'4 and pure muscle. He shaves his head and his arms have been upgraded with Gnole-Tech [The GLOW's equivalent of bio-engineering] to have long blades and crushing power.

Back to Basics, Just More As Intended

Now Eustace is back in The Four Generals as something of a guest spot that might sustain for a bit. This Eustace is 27. Still dating Hitomi. Still getting called off on adventures by Amy Patel and by people needing help around Lower Alabama. He is somewhere in between the original, meta, version and the updated, slice-of-life, version. He is sometimes loud. Very nerdy. Has a tendency of rushing into danger.

But, he is also personable, likes to protect people, and realizes his own weaknesses. He is aware that his "powers" come from his collection of friends who support him: Amy, Ellie, Hitomi, Jani, and others. He's a bit comic relief, but he is definitely a Main Character.

This version is intended to be the default version going forth in The Alabama Weird campaigns.

DESCRIPTION NOTE: He is 6'1 and probably around 275lbs. Definitely fat, but also a bit used to moving around so some of it is muscle. He is absolutely not a fighter but also not quite a runner. He likes clever solutions.