Changes: Review

I recently reread the Dresden Files book 12, Changes. When I started reading the series, Changes was the most recently released book, and therefore my goal. I don’t think I could have lucked out with a better read, and the strength of the book as a finale likely led to my enduring love of the series itself. It is a great adventure story, but as I get older and learn more about life and writing I find I like it even more. This is both a review of the book, and a bit of a review on the very concept of changes in life. Let’s jump in – this review will contain some significant spoilers.

Background

Changes is a pivotal book in the Dresden Files series, not just in the sense of lots of big things happening, but in the sense the direction the series is taking abruptly shifts.

The Dresden Files is a series about Harry Dresden, a wizard in modern-day Chicago. It’s an urban fantasy book, which as far as I can tell just means the setting is mundane present day, but fantasy elements lurk beneath the surface. Though listed as a wizard, Harry functions as more of a private eye solving and consulting on cases that the police don’t recognize are supernatural in nature, like a werewolf running amok, or humans getting caught in the middle of a faerie power struggle.

This was the author’s first series, and so it took a while to find its stride. The first three books were more about exploring the world and testing what people liked, and at the end of the third book Harry kicks off a huge war between wizards and a sect of vampires in order to save his girlfriend. The next books are more structured, and introduce the major players in the universe while the war continues on in the background. This culminates in book 7, where most agree the series really finds its stride in Dead Beat.

Some say that is because it features Harry using necromancy to ride a zombie T-Rex around, which is true, but I would also say it is because it stripped out all the extraneous elements and showed how much the series and character of Harry had grown. Dead Beat isolates Harry, telling a more personal story less attached to giant warring factions and more focused on running around Chicago trying to avert disaster, a very similar formula to the early books, but just more fun as a consequence of a deeper character and more experienced writer. 

The series continues on with books 8-11, which focus on a shadowy faction emerging pulling the strings, who seem to be the source of many of the previous books’ issues. The major factions return for spotlights and the series keeps on going with the standard formula. The problem is that standard formula begins to fall apart. As the series progresses, and the scope of the conflicts continue to grow it becomes harder for one man to make a difference, even if he continually is getting more and more powerful as he seeks ways to match his adversaries upping the stakes. When Harry is conversing with archangels and faerie queens it is hard to imagine that a random Chicago thug that the police are concerned about poses much of a threat.

At the same time, the war with the vampires has now been dragging on for 7 books and is no longer the coolest part of the series. It needs to be ended, but since it started with such a bang and has been going for so long, it needs a proper conclusion.

What this means is that the status quo needs to change. Harry needs a reason to be taking on bigger cases and stronger foes, and the war needs to be closed off. This is a challenge for a writer – readers like familiarity. That is why they buy the books in your series instead of trying a new author every time. Any significant change will lose some fans, so you need to minimize that impact.Jim Butcher is one of my favourite authors, and I think one of the reasons is that he looked at this problem and said “Fuck it, what if I also gave him a kid at the same time?” And then proceeded to crush it.

The Book

The inciting incident of the book is Harry’s ex-girlfriend (the one he saved that started the war) showing up on his doorstep and notifying him their child has been kidnapped by the vampires. This is news to Harry, both that he has a child, and that she’s been kidnapped by vampires. The rest of the book is Harry gathering all the allies and support he can to track her down and rescue her, and the tremendous sacrifices he makes to achieve those ends.

A key difficulty in writing a book like this is that even though the author and readers have a sense the status quo needs to change, Harry as a character does not. And I think one thing the author gets absolutely perfect is the experience of actually changing. It isn’t an instant, or a conscious choice – it is a series of visceral, sometimes cruel, shocks to the system. Losing things you have grown attached to, gaining new things you never would have dreamed of. In the process, losing the person you used to be in order to become the person you will be.

Adding a kid to the mix is a key ingredient here, because Harry didn’t have a good childhood. He is one of those people for whom failure at parenting is not an option. So “becoming the person you will be” turns into “becoming the person you need to be, for them”. It starts the book off with a strong drive, but just because Harry has to change doesn’t mean he knows how or that it will not be pleasant.

The story does a good job of slowly introducing the change. It starts with almost positive aspects of the crisis – during the first encounter with the vampires, Harry obliterates them representing the growth he has had since the last books where he directly faced them. Of course Harry’s staunchest allies and friends all flock to his side – he is the protagonist after all, so he has helped these people out time and again and they will be ready to support him in any way he desires. He even finds a gift from his long-lost mother to help him travel faster. He has more power than he knows.

But then he starts to lose things. First his office gets blown up – as a private eye, in the early books he spends time in his office, but as the books go on it becomes rarer and rarer. It is a shock to lose for sure, but a minor one to both him and the reader. However, in the quest to track down his daughter things begin to go wrong – the wizards are not in a political position to help him as the vampires are suing for peace at the same time as the kidnapping. Mortal authorities are tracking his every move in the city even as the vampires bring out stronger thugs and assassins to hunt him down. The fights and skirmishes take more and more out of him, until he is leaning heavily on his allies to save him. He loses his precious old Volkswagen beetle to a bombing, which is almost a character in itself and a constant throughout the series.

Finally, desperately tired, injured, and needing rest, his apartment is firebombed by good old non-magical Molotov cocktails. He tries to rescue his landlord who lives upstairs, and falls, breaking his back in the process and paralyzing him from the waist down.

Metamorphosis

This is the moment where real change can happen though. When it feels like everything has been torn away from you, and you are at your lowest point. When you feel like you can’t go on, it is generally because “you” can’t, as you are. But you still have the power to change what “you” are.

Harry has had offers from several entities over the books to give him more power, at the cost of fealty of some sort or another. Giving away a part of his independence for greater power and the ability to affect things at a greater scale. Harry has always refused – he is his own person, independent and pure.

But at this point, at his lowest, with someone he cares about but has never met on the line, these offers come back. All of these entities could cure the paralysis. But could he forgive himself?

In the end, he realizes it doesn’t matter. He is going to show up for his daughter even if he dies trying, and he ends up making a deal with a faerie queen at the cost of his independence. He’s back on his feet soon enough and off to save the day.

However, that is only halfway through the book.

Just like with regular change, being taken to your breaking point, breaking, and changing is not the end – it’s the beginning. Harry has plenty more to do as he progresses through the story, eventually bringing his ragtag band of allies and family to do final battle with the leaders of the vampires in Mexico, not a place the books have ever visited before. 

Harry has to outwit goblin kings, defeat scores of vampires, call in all of his political favours, and even wear nice clothes. Throughout the last act of the book everything is balanced on a razor edge where he has to keep pushing far past his limits. Harry faces several brutal decisions, and in the end saves his daughter at tremendous cost to both of them.

Then he returns to Chicago, a new man, ready to see what kind of person he is going to become, and is promptly assassinated by a sniper.

The end.

Change

It isn’t the last book in the series, and luckily magic lets you play pretty fast and loose with mortality, so Harry does come back in later books. But similar to Taylor Swift, old Harry is dead. Though driving a bullet through him on a boat in the cold Chicago docks is probably a bit of overkill for the message, it gets the point across – Harry changed to save his daughter. It cost him who he used to be so he could become what she needed him to be.

When I first read Changes, I was in a period of my life where I hadn’t experienced anything like what it describes before. When I went to high school it was a formative experience. However, university was not – I didn’t have the social skills or interests to make friends, and so who I was at the end of high school persisted until basically the end of university. I read Changes in first year university, a time when ironically, I was deliberately avoiding changes.

However, as I’ve gone through life I have experienced these moments more acutely. When I went to my final co-op work term living in my own in Vancouver, I gained confidence, said goodbye to a lot of old supports and changed a bit. When I broke up with my ex-girlfriend in 2018, I changed a lot. Looking back, I am aways amazed at how well Changes captures that sense of transition, of the old you being put away and the new person rising from the ashes.

When I finished Changes this time, I picked up on one thing I couldn’t say I had experienced before, and that was the idea of changing who you were for someone helpless that you don’t even know yet, specifically a child. It is different than regular change because the stakes are so much higher, and the reason so much clearer. It made me think of what I would do in Harry’s shoes.

Two days later my wife told me she was pregnant.

I am hoping I won’t have to face a cabal of vampires in order to save my child like Harry, but I do recognize that I will have to change who I am for them. I know there might be obstacles along the way, and things from my current life that might fall by the wayside. But change is a natural part of life – some of my favourite Dresden Files books are after Changes. I am excited to follow Harry’s example and see what comes next.

Peace out.

A Brave New Millennium

Warhammer 40,000 10th edition came out earlier this year. Every new edition is a celebration, a chance to reimagine all of the different model soldiers, monsters, and vehicles in the game under a different set of mechanics. It is also a time for new model releases and a focus on rebalancing the game as a whole. It should be an exciting time.

I’m just… well I’m just not feeling it this time.

This blog post is an attempt to answer why.

The Backstory

For a long time, Games Workshop (the makers of Warhammer 40,000, hereafter referred to as GW) were stuck in the past. They were loathe to believe that embracing the internet could help their business model, or that getting design input from the community was worth anything at all. They didn’t even have a social media presence in any meaningful way.

This was the standard setup for the ages between 3rd and 7th editions. 3rd came out way back in 1998 and reset the rules around a core that would remain basically unchanged through 7th. And it was a good core, especially in the early days. 3rd edition specialized in simulating a battle between squads of infantry supported by vehicles like tanks, and was heavy on the “simulation” element. There are lots of parts that tell players to use their best judgment, and try not to be a jerk about little rules contradictions or silly interactions. The different factions in the game all received a visual style rework that would last mostly across all the editions, and the lore of the setting stayed relatively constant.

However, as time went on, GW (possibly accidentally) tightened up the rules enough to make a game that could be played competitively. The game evolved into something played seriously in tournaments for prize money, and required better rules, even if people had to add their own extra balance changes. GW did not provide tight competitive rulesets, as they believed this wasn’t their job, so the community took on that responsibility. During this era, GW had come in as the super-dominant model soldier retailer, but other companies began to see they weren’t catering to their customers and introduced their own offerings. Privateer Press for example released Warmachine and Hordes, and began eating GW’s lunch by providing a tight competitive ruleset.

GW had a choice to make. They tried a few times to set themselves apart as a miniatures company first and foremost, but eventually leadership changed and GW decided to give the people what they wanted – more community interaction, simplified tighter rulesets, more support for tournament play. And oh boy, did they.

The Lone Creator Conundrum

Before I get into all the changes that took place in the company and how we reached where we are today, I wanted to talk about the issue of creativity in mass media using Star Wars as an example.

The problem with a successful property is that everyone wants more of it. But the problem is that nobody wants the same thing. Having blown the box office to smithereens with Star Wars, the public is clamouring for it; the problem is some of them want more lightsaber fights, others want more spaceship combat, and still others want an in-depth dissection of how the trash-compactors work.

You have two ways to combat this problem – a lone creator, or a committee. A lone creator (or small group of people) with a vision will produce more of exactly what they want to create. This means if they like lightsabers and spaceships, but not trash compactors you will get more of the former and none of the latter. However, if they love trash compactors, get ready to go to the dump. The advantage is consistency – in the dictatorship of the lone creator, you know what you are getting and eventually adjust to it, but are limited to what that creator wants. For Star Wars, after the success of the original trilogy, they went with the lone creator route and trusted George Lucas to come up with the next three movies. You got the prequels, which are very consistent in what they deliver, but not very accessible to those who aren’t willing to tolerate bland dialogue and fast-paced, high-energy action scenes with lots of CGI.

On the other hand, you can give it to a committee. That committee doesn’t have to be huge, but they need to have lots of different ideas, and a commitment to none of them. The committee first and foremost wants to satisfy as many people as possible. A property designed by committee will engage more viewers, but might alienate the core viewers by spreading the focus ever thinner. You can bet the sequel will have lightsabers, spaceships, and trash compactors, and it will also have animal-lovers, romance, and a whole cast of new exciting characters to meet. In their desire to go wide and please everyone the diehards are less likely to find the depth they are looking for. This is why the sequels have every element you could think of being related to Star Wars, and they still don’t feel like the originals: they were made by a committee.

(You could make a case that The Last Jedi was a pure Rian Johnson movie, but let’s not be pedantic)

The best of both worlds is why the typical studio model exists. Constraint breeds creativity, so the best mix tends to be a lone creator working for a committee. The vision is preserved as best as it can be, but the committee makes sure to make it more palatable to more than just literally the creator.

For the purposes of this tale, GW acted a lot like a lone creator for the 3rd-7th edition eras. They were fiercely defensive of the ideas they had come up with, and didn’t want to move the setting forward in any meaningful way. As a result, they lost mass appeal. However this was hard to notice as they had a first-mover advantage combined with large network effects, so the game continued to do quite well.

But what it meant was that if you liked the setting, you generally remained pleased the whole time – even if you didn’t love it, you would at least consistently like it. At least until they started actually losing their audience to competitors.

Visions of Heresy

Around 6th-7th edition, something of note also happened at GW. They began producing a new game set in the Horus Heresy.

Warhammer 40,000 is called ‘40,000’ because it is supposed to take place 40,000 years in the future. Most of those years have no history, being lost in “dark ages” where records generally don’t exist. But starting about 30,000 years into the fictional future, we have a time period called the Horus Heresy, where records start back up again. The Heresy is the founding myth of the setting and explains how Horus turned against his father the Emperor and spawned a galactic civil war resulting in the formation of the Imperium, the main human faction in Warhammer 40,000.

The Heresy was originally only mentioned in little snippets in rulebooks and supplements, before being fleshed out in a series of three novels detailing the very beginning of Horus’s fall. The novels were so successful that they produced about 50+ more of them and created a whole fake historical time period full of stories and myths rivalling that of the actual main setting.

As GW was a miniatures company, they figured that they should capitalize on this popularity and produced new “older” miniatures representing those fighters from the Heresy time period, and created rules to support them. Towards the end of the 7th edition era, this game began to really take off mainly due to a problem the main game was running into.

Wraithknights, and Riptides, and Valkyries, oh my!

A problem with keeping your lore static is that there isn’t much room to add more stuff for people to buy. If it was part of the setting the whole time, it already exists. If you are adding it as a special part of the lore that only happened this once then people don’t care nearly as much. So there was pressure on GW to find ways to sell people new models, especially as competition mounted from other games.

They tried the obvious solution of “retconning” in new unit types, i.e. adding them to the game and pretending they had been there all along. This didn’t work very well because people knew they hadn’t. So instead, GW had to come up with new models that had always existed in the lore but they didn’t have the models for.

The first step in this idea was flyers. Flyers were planes, winged monsters, and other airborne combatants that had obviously always existed in the lore, but were not produced for one of two reasons: either they were too difficult to produce kits for, or they made no sense within the rules of the game.

The first problem was solved with technology. Throughout the 3rd-7th era GW’s ability to create models grew at a steady pace, and something that would have been unthinkable in third (a vehicle sized model in plastic attached to a transparent, stable stand) were doable.

The second problem however… well, it was much harder to solve, and debatably still hasn’t been. The core rules had support for infantry squads running from building to building, engaging in firefights with each other along the way while heavy vehicles trundled along clearing out a path. None of these rules accommodated the equivalent of an F-16 soaring overhead, and so they had to staple on a bunch of rules such that the two sets of models could interact with each other.

Flyers were a mixed bag, but the next wave had similar problems – giant units. Things like Imperial Knights, which were twice the size of the largest units in the game up until that point, skewed the system hard. Whereas armies could previously at the very least interact even if one was better, now you could easily have lost before you showed up if your opponent was running all giant monsters that none of your squads could hope to hurt.

At the same time the rule system was buckling under the strain of the new units, the Horus Heresy version of the game was picking up steam. It had some key advantages, even though it was built on exactly the same core rules set as Warhammer 40,000. For one, it was more narrative focused. To understand what was going on in the Horus Heresy involved a lot of reading and time spent thinking about the setting, and that bred a kind of gamer that enjoyed the narrative more than the cutthroat competitiveness. And for two, Horus Heresy only had rules for human factions.

This seems a small point, until you realize that now the original core system of 3rd, designed to support infantry and vehicles for a small number of factions that were all very similar in stats to humans, was now being tasked to support 7-8 different races and all of their associated warmachines, monsters, and flyers. The Horus Heresy setting was based on mostly one race fighting itself – balance came a lot easier, and when it didn’t the players were more forgiving.

These factors combined to begin driving people away from Warhammer 40,000, and gave a mild uptick to the Horus Heresy – but the bump wasn’t enough. Warhammer 40,000 was GW’s flagship property – without it, they would collapse. They needed to take drastic action.

GW Decides to Start Making Money

There is a great quote from the Team Covenant podcast discussing this that I’ll try and paraphrase here: previously other companies had been eating GW’s lunch. At this point GW decided to serve them dinner.

It doesn’t make a whole ton of sense, but the image really speaks to me. Up until this point, other companies were sneaking off with GW’s sustenance and attempting to use that advantage to overthrow them – but suddenly the tables were turned so dramatically that GW didn’t even care if they want to steal their lunch – in fact, have a full course dinner. On us. We’ve got food to spare.

GW took a long hard look at their finances and market research. Eventually somebody (likely the new CEO) said something along the lines of “Wait, all these people want to pay us money to do this thing – and we can do it – and we aren’t doing it?”

They were of course referring to a series of things that Warhammer fans had been asking for for years: Become active on social media so people have more insight into where the game is headed, move the lore of the setting forward by allowing actual events to happen, and come out with a set of rules that can handle the units that had been added to the game. The internal cabal at GW insisted that they knew best and people didn’t really want this. The “new GW” disagreed.

With 8th edition, released in 2017, they attempted to do just that. Rules previews were rolled out on a new site called “Warhammer Community”, dedicated to fan interaction. The game rules were overhauled and changed so it was easier for units of different scales to interact with each other, and the lore was shoved forward with the introduction of a new evolution of the game’s iconic faction, the Space Marines. It was no longer the old Warhammer 40,000. It was #new40k.

It took GW a while to find their footing, but the community was so excited to see any signs of life that they were very forgiving, and it turned out the 8th edition rules were pretty fun. Diehards were worried about a loss of complexity and depth that was justified, but not really relevant in the face of how enjoyable it was to play. 8th used a different engine than the old era, but it definitely was a good engine.

And this engine brought people in. Appealing to sci-fi fans who didn’t have the time to learn the previously more complicated rules, and Magic: The Gathering fans who liked games that you could play competitively in a community setting, 8th brought in way more players than had been present for 3rd-7th.

Funnily enough, an oft glossed over fact in the 8th edition launch was that the Horus Heresy game decided to stick with the 7th edition rules instead of going to 8th. More will be said about this in a bit. But first, we have to do a bit of a dive into the factions and setting to understand why GW’s success didn’t directly correlate to everyone’s enjoyment.

Hive Fleets and Dynasties

I mentioned before that Space Marines were the flagship faction of Warhammer 40,000 and it is very true. They are strong all-around soldiers, with easy to paint armour, and show up in almost all the stories. Space Marines are a great beginner faction, and also a great secondary faction to pick up once you have a full main army, since you know they will receive good support from GW.

My main army though, ever since I was twelve, has been the Tyranids. They are your typical interstellar bug hive mind – think the zerg, or the aliens from Alien. I also have a sizeable Necron force (evil space skeletons that look like terminators). Overall the alien races in the setting tended to speak to me, so that is what I bought for the most part.

I also have a Space Marine army. Including that in the above, I’ve been collecting these three over the span of twenty years, with some of the models going back the whole distance. One of the pains of being slow and not much of an artist is that assembling and painting the models takes me a while. I have a bad mix of ineptitude, disinterest, and perfectionism that makes the process take a lot longer than I’d like it to to get models built and painted.

This means I’ve had to contend with a problem over the years, that of rotation. Occasionally models that you have bought get replaced with newer, better versions of the kit. Generally you want to upgrade, but you can still usually use the old kits. Especially in the 3rd-7th era, no one was going to complain, and while they continued adding giant new kits and flying models, the game still functioned perfectly well without including those models. So I didn’t. I didn’t have time to build them anyway as they were super complex, and I could barely keep up with the smaller forces I had.

But remember up above, I said the lore moved forward? Yeah. That was the beginning of a challenge to the status quo, one I’ll define as “How to make Magehat buy new models”.

Beginning in 8th, the overall aesthetic of the range changed. This was exemplified in Space Marines being replaced (gradually) by Primaris Space Marines, which were a new and improved version of the iconic warrior(mainly slightly bigger models). But it began leaking out into other factions, notably the Necrons in 9th and now the Tyranids in 10th.

This is a big downside for me, because it isn’t just upgrading the existing kits – it is redoing them such that they no longer look anything like the old models, or adding new models in a completely different aesthetic than the old ones. This means either choosing to buy a completely new kit to replace old models, or extensively repairing old models with ingenuity so they look like the new ones. Sometimes this even goes beyond the visual, like the size of the base the model is mounted on which has rules implications.

When I started 8th I had three armies worth of models. Coming into 10th, due to either wholesale replacement or soft replacement like Primaris Marines, I now have only one army that could feasibly participate in a game. And it isn’t even one of the ones I started with.

Tales of the Dark Millennium

The other factor pushing me out is the evolution of the lore. Warhammer 40,000 is one of the grittiest most depressing settings in all of Sci-fi, a setting with really no heroes or good guys, and almost all just bad guys of different flavours.

But similar to how the fall of the Republic in Star Wars is a tragedy, but r/PrequelMemes is how most people remember it, in appealing to more people, Warhammer 40,000 has become a caricature of itself. There are still great stories being told in the setting, don’t get me wrong – the Watchers of the Throne books I particularly enjoy, and even the new Lion book is great. But the difference is that the main lore sources, i.e. the army books and rulebooks, are getting less and less serious, gritty and morally ambiguous.

This is especially true if you go on Twitter or Instagram. Like any social hobby, people want to make jokes about it and give characters fun little nicknames. They want to take it as seriously as they want to, which generally isn’t very. This is totally fine for a hobby, but when GW switched to trying to make money, they went from being lone creators to committees. This is echoed throughout all of their decisions, but the lore most particularly. If the majority of the fanbase likes making jokes and taking things lightly, then most of your online presence will be in the same vein. People generally don’t like depressing gritty settings, so the setting just feels less gritty and depressing.

This combines with rotation to make it kind of feel like GW no longer wants me as a customer.

Consolations and Disclaimers

Now I want to get some stuff straight here. I’m not trying to go all doom and gloom – I know that GW wants me to buy models, and one of the ways to do that is to slowly phase out older ranges. That isn’t wild to me. Tyranids underwent a range refresh basically as soon as I started when I was 12 and I had to replace many of my beloved units.

And I’m well aware that the more people are buying a game, the more money GW makes. The more inclusive the space, the more comfortable everyone feels and the more people are available to play the game. It is a win-win to foster a sense of community and positivity, even when the setting shouldn’t contain any of that stuff.

But these cases combine to force a decision on those of us who grew up with the game during 3rd-7th: Do I want to shell out thousands of dollars to buy an army I don’t identify with anymore so I can play games in a setting I don’t care about? Probably not.

And the reality is there probably aren’t that many of me to begin with. Most people either started post-8th, or had been away from the hobby for a long while beforehand. But it seems strange that GW would cast us aside like this. Sure, some of us will just buy all the new models, but a bunch of us won’t – what do we do?

The Future Is In The Past

Somewhere deep inside GW is a fading remnant of the core that created 3rd edition. It is buried deep, but present and not going anywhere anytime soon. And it is this part that I come back to.

For the last two editions, 8th and 9th, two different game modes have been messily combined into one. On one hand you have a competitive, social game that is designed to bring people together, designed by a committee. On the other you have a narrative experience intended to be played with close friends that flows from a small group of lone creators. In 10th, I believe these have been fully separated. 10th edition is the most accessible version of the game yet, but it doesn’t really appeal to me at all. It is entirely the committee. I want a narrative simulation.

And GW is fully aware of this. Because what I haven’t mentioned yet is I have a Horus Heresy army myself. And that is still using the old 3rd edition engine to this day, in all its glory. I feel more drawn to it every day as I realize that kind of game is what I want to play. I had some fun with some introductory games of 10th, but I went back and played a 3rd edition game on a whim and the feeling was so different, refreshing and amazing, that I made the decision right there.

My armies are not being upgraded. I have one force for 10th, and that will be it. It should do me fine and allow me to keep up with my friends that play, but I don’t intend to ever bring my remaining forces up to competitive standards, as I just don’t see the benefit. Instead, I will keep them on hand to play 3rd edition when the mood strikes.

GW realized it couldn’t do everything. But unlike a lot of media properties, I feel like it cut off a little part of itself as a consolation prize so that people like me could still enjoy what we loved previously. It would be like if Star Wars had produced a TV show starring Luke at the same time as the prequels. The Horus Heresy game is that for me for now. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Conclusion

Thanks for bearing with me. This post has been a long time coming, and is probably full of minor inaccuracies in the historical facts. It also contains a lot of trying to understand the inner workings of GW, which anyone will tell you is a fool’s errand, even in today’s more open world.

But it really does feel like the end of an era, and I wanted mark it somehow. This game has been a part of me for just under twenty years. I’ve watched it take many forms, but this is one that might mean a goodbye for longer than I’m used to. However, I’m sure I’ll be back now and again. After all…

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war…

Peace out.

A Dark Night Retrospective

Starting out this month, I felt in a bit of a bind. Normally I do my thirty days of blogging in April to make sure I do some writing, and to celebrate the anniversary of the blog. This year I had my requisite stockpile of blog ideas sitting around, but none of the time to commit to writing 30 posts. Adding that commitment to every day is a challenge even on months with little on – this would not be one of those Aprils. It was already full to the brim, and I was coming off a particularly busy March. And though I am really psyched for the tenth anniversary of the blog, this year was the ninth, which made it a little less impressive to be sacrificing for.

The compromise I came up with was writing a story, specifically a story that I already knew most of. Persistent readers may recognize the title “Sentient” from the top of the blog home page. It links to a few pages of a story I tried to write for the April Camp NaNoWriMo event back in 2015, but which fizzled out due to time constraints. It is an idea I’ve had in my head for a long time, a Michael Crichton-esque story that starts off with the mystery of how an AI could have escaped this prison built to hold it, and morphs into a story where the AI is actually using the prison built for it as a defensive fortress to hide from an already omni-present AI, which is an even greater threat.

I decided Sentient could work as my project since I would be mostly filling in the details, as opposed to writing a new story. In the original draft of Sentient, it is a professor who is called in by the team to interrogate the AI, but laying this out I found that there would be too much overlap between the scientists and the professor. I ended up switching him to a detective while outlining and the story seemed to click a little more. An outsider that the team didn’t trust and who might be actively adversarial added some tension and gave a reason for the scientists to explain things to him.

Then I got to April 1st, and I was knocked out. I barely even wanted to start the darn thing, much less do anything else than go to bed. It was a do or die moment – either I abandoned the whole thing, or I committed to something that would drag me through thirty difficult days of extra work. I was right on the edge of calling it all off.

And then Night Danger came to the rescue.

I was looking back through past blog-o-versaries to try and motivate me, and saw the original Night Danger series. Just for laughs I pictured him standing outside the building from Sentient in the night, waiting to enter this high-tech science fiction detective novel. As soon as I did, a big smile spread across my face, and it all came together.

I couldn’t commit to writing a full story, or a blog post a day. But I wanted to see what would happen to Night Danger, so I resolved to write that. No mandatory post amount, no announcement of anything. Just Night Danger wandering into trouble to keep people safe, even if that involved this humble deer man wandering into a story meant for a completely different character.

Once I got started, it was pretty fun! It was a huge hit amongst all <10 regular readers of the blog, which I imagined when I started as I knew Night was a fan-favourite. I think I managed to wrap it up nicely too, seeing as I didn’t have much of an ending laid out when things began. I originally tried to make this a low-effort commitment, but it ended up being intriguing enough that I kept writing it all thirty days, with each individual part being longer than I figured on average. In the end, Night not only saved the April, but ended up inspiring probably more writing than I would normally do.

This isn’t the last time we’ll see Night Danger, but he’s got Route 67 to patrol, so he’ll be back there for some time at least. For everyone that read through, thanks! And a very happy 9 year anniversary to the blog itself. We’ll make sure to have a big deal coming up for 10.

Peace out!

Part 30

Cheryl’s little car pulled up to the front of the building. She got out and waved, though her expression faltered when she noticed the gunshot holes and shattered door.

Night had called her cell phone using Albert’s desk phone, before propping him back up in his seat. Then he had waited the half hour for her to reach him from her hotel, watching the first hints of dawn creep across the far horizon. It was odd to witness the morning in the city; there was a constant background hum, but none of the specific little sounds of wildlife waking up.

“Cheryl,” he said, walking out to the car, “That was fast.”

“Yeah, well, not a lot of traffic at 5:30 in the morning on a Sunday, even in the city. How did it go?”

Night considered the answer as he maneuvered his way into the back seat of her little car, being careful to avoid wrecking the upholstery with his antlers. “I think it was a success. Hard to be sure.”

“But it wasn’t a trap?”

“In a way all invitations are a trap. This one certainly strained the boundaries of my knowledge.”

“Did you have to deal with a moose or something?” said Cheryl, with a smirk. Night had long ago realized his friend had a strange obsession with moose, despite the fact they weren’t native to Route 67.

“No, unfortunately still no moose. This one was more about networking security, hypnotics, and rogue artificial intelligences.”

Cheryl raised an eyebrow as she drove off. “And you were able to help with that?”

Night nodded, but carefully to make sure not to rake the ceiling of the car. “Sometimes you need someone without baggage to see the truth. All problems with people boil down to the same set of issues no matter how much those involved try to dress them up as something else.”

Cheryl took a moment to digest what he said.

“I have an Aunt who is trying to get a badger to stop fighting a family of beavers every night, because they are so loud she can’t sleep. How does that fit into your framework?”

Night cracked a smile. “Well, maybe not every problem.”

THE END

Part 29

It was about 4:30 in the morning. The soldiers hadn’t come back, just as Night Danger had predicted. The group, including an untied Donald, was beginning to calm down as they repaired the server room. A lot of the machines had to be disconnected, but enough infrastructure was intact that Aggy could still exist within it.

Ko was gone. According to Aggy, it had stopped attacking as soon as it let its guard down, and disappeared entirely after the strike force was defeated. Aggy had run some tentative expeditions outside the lab to check, but Ko didn’t intervene. Where it was was anyone’s guess.

Night Danger surveyed the remnants of the intelligence division at 283 Fourier. A heap of shot-to-pieces computers housing a brave AI, and three researchers who had a lot to explain to their bosses. He wondered how they were going to manage that.

“Oh don’t worry,” said Greta, “Management has no idea what we do. We’ll say we had an electrical malfunction. They’ll believe it.”

Wilson and Donald chuckled, which led Night Danger to trust the sentiment. The three rarely agreed on anything – probably why they made a good enough team to create Aggy in the first place.

Aggy was particularly excited to leave and explore the world now that Ko had given an implicit blessing. But it still used its cable snakes and networking abilities where it could to make the cleanup go faster and smoother. Aggy was adamant the researchers would not even know he was gone, as he would return to the lab when required. This caused sighs from the researchers who now had to pretend they were getting close to a true AI, when in reality they already had one fully capable of general intelligence.

Night Danger slid a computer back into a server rack and peeked through the gap to see the three researchers smiling and working together to re-wire a particularly damaged module to see if it could be salvaged. He also gave a brief smile before melting backwards into the hallway and heading out of the intelligence department.

What happened next wasn’t his job to figure out – he trusted the four of them to put it together themselves.

As he approached the exit, Aggy’s voice came over the speakers.

“You’re leaving.”

Night looked up. “Yes.”

“What if Ko returns? Do you know for certain that it will not harry me any longer?”

“I’ve dealt with people like it before. They eventually show you their true colours. Ko had the chance to destroy you. It didn’t. That is enough to tell me Ko won’t be a problem.”

“Do you think it will ever reach out to talk to me?”

“I don’t know. Probably. But maybe not until it understands itself a little better, would be my guess.”

There was a silence, broken only by the clop of Night’s shoes as he reached the edge of the division.

“Will I ever see you again Night Danger?”

Night cracked a small smile. “You know how to reach me, Aggy. Don’t be a stranger.”

And Night Danger walked out of the intelligence department.

Part 28

Lawrence took the shot as soon as he saw his prey, and it cost him. If he had just taken the time to line it up, he could have aimed for the head. Instead he went for the centre of mass, and the shot went through the billowing cloak as the target dodged behind a server rack. It checked out, thought Lawrence. A deer would have good reflexes.

The room he was staring into as his team rounded the corner was a matrix of server stacks, all linked together by wires running along the ceiling, with a tiny terminal on a pedestal in front of them. It was clearly the target that had been described in the mission briefing, and true to the blueprints there was no door. He raised a fist to signal the team to stop.

As much as Lawrence wanted to take out the quarry that had embarrassed him, the mission didn’t require it. “Form up to open fire on the visible server stacks. We’ll fan out our firing pattern to cover more of the room as we get closer. Watch for the deer man to reappear – I scared him off, but he’s in there somewhere.”

The team gave various nods (and disturbed expressions) and stacked up in formation so they wouldn’t hit each other firing down the hallway. Once they were set, Lawrence noticed the lone terminal in front of the servers was now on, and was displaying a single angry sheep with the large text “Leave now.” He paused.

Then he shot the terminal.

“Open fire!”

The hallway erupted into violence as the rounds tore into the first row of servers. Sparks erupted from the machinery as the fire drove through them with weird metallic echoes ringing through the room. The pedestal and the terminal were eviscerated by the hail of bullets.

Lawrence signalled the team to reload, though he kept his rifle trained on the opening in case the deer man reappeared. His attention was instead caught by a massive thumping above him in the ceiling.

The tiles coming from the server room depressed in a way that looked like someone was crawling forward on them, slowly and loudly. Lawrence smiled. Deer man was good, but he was no John McLane. Certain tactics only worked in the movies. He aimed up at the source of the commotion and opened fire.

The shots tore through the ceiling tile, but no deer man fell through, only an abnormally large bundle of cables.

“Sir?” Erika asked.

“I thought it was deer man,” Lawrence replied, but was cut off as the cables attacked.

That was at least what Lawrence said in his post-action report. Of course, for obvious reasons, Lawrence’s report would be designated ‘suspect’, but even Erika’s more reliable perspective corroborated the basic details. After the bundle of cables fell through the tile, it uncoiled like a den of vipers and attacked the team.

Each one separated into what amounted to a tiny snake descending from the ceiling and targeting a member of the team. They came along the ground swiftly and unpredictably, hard for the team to get a read on. A few tried to fire their weapons if they had a clear shot, but most were unable to even react before the enemy cable snakes reached them.

The cables individually were strong, but thinner than fingers, The guns of the team were of no use as they coiled erratically around them and bound their hands and legs together. Erika and Lawrence managed to dodge the initial attack, but Lawrence watched as the cables caught up to Erika and caught her legs together. One by one each member of his team was bound, and pulled into the ceiling as he fell down and crab-walked towards the server room trying to evade them. Eventually he hit a wall. A furry wall.

Lawrence froze. The cable snakes were staring back at him, no longer moving, but just simply swaying back and forth. He felt a hand descend onto his shoulder.

“Deer man,” Lawrence said.

“I guess that’s the atheist equivalent of dear God? You don’t have to worry, I don’t want to harm you or your team. They are being transported to the exit as we speak. But I want you to report back on your progress and not try to besiege these servers again until you get backup. Is that clear?”

“Why are you doing this?” Lawrence was ready to give his life for his country, but he would take a free pass.

“This is somewhat of a… misunderstanding. If you run along I suspect your orders will be rescinded and all will be well.”

With that a hand appeared in front of him and helped him up. The cable snakes had lost whatever force was animating them and gone back to just being cables, and standing in front of him was the deer man. He looked a lot less scary in the fluorescent lights – and Rickard had been right, he was wearing a muted grey tie. He held out his hand and Lawrence shook it.

“Move along commander. Hopefully our paths cross again under better circumstances.”

Lawrence numbly walked out of the labyrinth of the intelligence department. True enough his team was waiting outside, still bound with cables. He untied them silently and led them outside. Unsurprisingly, command radioed in and said the mission had been a success and to retreat back to base. Lawrence didn’t question it.

He’d had enough danger for one night.

Part 27

Wilson jerked at the sound of the gunshot.

All three of them did, but Wilson was the only one in the room standing since Greta was helping get Donald a drink of water. He rushed to the door to check what it was.

“Aggy? Report?” he said.

“Night Danger has decided to pursue an… interesting plan,” Aggy’s voice replied over the PA system.

Then the door to the intelligence department was kicked open and Night burst through, looking like he had just mugged an arms dealer. He carried a bevy of military-looking assault rifles and had his pistol in hand. Wilson’s eyes went wide.

“What are you doing?!” he asked.

Night ignored his question and bounded down the hall, pausing at the entrance to the room. “Do any of you three know how to use a gun?”

They all shook their head. The closest Wilson had come to a gun was when he protested a rifleman’s association meeting in his college years.

Night threw his rifle collection into the corner next to Donald. “Greta and Wilson, with me now. We have to get out of here, soldiers are coming.”

“What about me!” yelled Donald.

“They didn’t touch Albert at the front gate, if you’re tied up they will think you’re a scared prisoner. Just cower.”

Before Donald could protest Night had dragged Greta and Wilson through the door and sent them running around the next corner towards the server room.

“We can’t just leave him there! He’s terrified!” said Greta.

“That will serve him well; the more scared he looks the more likely they will ignore him. The distraction also gives us a few extra seconds to get to the server room to defend it.”

“Night Danger, I do not understand your plan,” said Aggy’s voice.

“It is more of an evolving plan at the moment.”

“Where did the soldiers come from?” asked Wilson. He was almost out of breath trying to keep up with Night and even Greta.

“Our adversary is conflicted – they don’t want to kill Aggy, but they refuse to admit it to themselves. Once I exposed that fact, they sent in these goons to do the job for them. A win-win for their conflicted mind: either the goons kill Aggy and it can feign a clean conscience, or we stop the goons.”

“How many of them are there?” asked Greta.

“Only twelve special forces operatives.”

“Only?!” said Wilson.

They reached the server room. Wilson could already hear echoes coming down the hallway towards them.

“How do you expect us to stop them?”

“I expect you two to hide safely at the back. I will incapacitate them as I can.”

“You think you can take 12 soldiers?” said Greta.

“No. But I think Aggy can.”

They all looked to the blinking stacks of servers.

“I cannot, Night Danger. Too much of my energy is being expended fighting the adversary to meaningfully contribute.”

“Its name is Ko. And I think the only way for us to win is to call its bluff – it thinks it wants you dead, but I say you test that theory. Let go of all defences and help me stop the strike team.”

“If I let go and this Ko does not behave as you expect, he will destroy me.”

“Think Aggy!” yelled Night. At this point Wilson could hear distinct footsteps and voices shouting as they moved down the hall. He grabbed Greta and headed to the back of the server room to hide.

“If Ko wanted you dead he could have blown this building to kingdom come! This whole conflict is its, not ours, not even yours. But you can solve it – let down your guard”

“Night Danger, I-“

Then the shooting started,

Part 26

“Bravo Team, you are a go. Repeat, you are a go. Weapons free.”

Lawrence nodded, and made a simple gesture with his hand indicating to the team to move forward. They knew the plan once they received the signal. Enter the facility, break into the sealed laboratory located on the first floor, and eliminate the servers contained within. They had authorization from the highest level to kill anyone that got in their way, which they intended to do. It wasn’t often a head of state ordered an attack on one of their own companies; generally it meant whoever was in there was worth taking down.

The team moved silently across the pavement. This time of night there was no risk of passing traffic or pedestrians, but they still kept to the salt lamp shadows as they reformed near the entrance. His squad lead Erika planted a charge on the door and blew it inwards with a dull thump. The door hitting the floor shattered its glass, and the echoes rebounded around the room.

In an instant the team was in and the dim lobby was lit with head-mounted flashlight beams. There was no one visible in the lobby – even the security guard desk seem unoccupied. That was until a beam of light settled on a pair of motionless legs poking out the side of the desk on the floor.

Lawrence held a hand up to stop. He organized his team around him, fanning out around the desk and checking the hallways running down each side of it. It was possible the security guard was both in on it and sleeping on the job, but it seemed more likely he had been killed by whoever they were after. Still made sense to double check that before continuing though – no reason to leave a potential hostile on your six.

Motioning for Erika to check the body, Lawrence covered the desk top with his beam of light in case there were any clues. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary – just a computer, some notebooks, a little bell. Though there was one thing near the back of the desk, almost like a little bone sculpture jutting out. He wondered what it was.

Then it moved.

“Erika, back!”

The lights went out, leaving only the squad illuminating the room.

Lawrence’s headlight flashed up, and suddenly there was a honest-to-god deer in it. And it didn’t look startled.

Lawrence was knocked down to the ground by the attacker, and felt a weight fall down onto him. A succession of quick punches forced him to throw a guard up to his face. Once he raised his hands the weight was gone, but so was Lawrence’s gun. He scrambled to his feet and was greeted with a scene of pure pandemonium.

The attacker was hard to get a look at as he weaved in and out of the strike team. The close-quarters and low-light of the lobby meant it was hard to take a shot without hitting a teammate, and even with soldier’s training that was a hard pill to swallow. But the attacker took advantage of the reluctance as he exploited the lack of fire, cloak billowing and fists flashing.

That last part didn’t make sense to Lawrence, as he had clearly been attacked by a deer which shouldn’t have hands, but at this point he was not in a position to contemplate the finer points of what was happening.

“Fall back! Lights off, get to the front windows where you can see naturally!”

His team heard his command even in the melee, and the group fell back. Once assembled, only two of them had been knocked out cold, leaving twelve still standing. But of those twelve only six still had their rifles. The attacker was targeting their weaponry – Lawrence didn’t see where the guns had gone, or where the attacker was.

Then a gunshot sounded. They all tensed as they looked for the victim, but Lawrence knew from the sound it had been a metallic impact. Probably shooting out a lock. He grabbed a rifle from Erika and ran down the hall to the lab entrance. Sure enough, it had just been breached by a bullet.

“Targets ahead. Gather up what weapons you have, switch to sidearms if necessary. We’re going in.” Lawrence pumped the gun menacingly. “Deer don’t hunt me – I hunt them.”

“What sir?” said Erika.

Lawrence looked back at her. “The attacker, it was a deer-human hybrid.”

The team looked at him with wide eyes, and skeptical glances.

“Come on, you all saw it!” Lawrence pleaded.

“We didn’t really get a clear look sir.”

“Certainly punched like a human to me.”

“It was wearing a tie.”

“Enough!” shouted Lawrence, “I don’t want excuses. Mission parameters are still the same. On me – let’s take out those servers.”

His team followed, but even Lawrence could tell they were a little apprehensive as they rounded the corner into the intelligence department.

Part 25

“Hello. With whom am I speaking?”

“Ko.”

“Is that your name? Does it mean anything?”

“I came up with it myself. I’m sure you could invent a hundred subtle meanings for it, but the truth is I just liked the sound.”

“Why did you attack Aggy?”

“Who is Aggy? Is that the name of the entity residing inside your secure laboratory?”

“Yes, that is what the scientists call it.”

“I attacked Aggy to save those same scientists, and everyone else, from it. Artificial intelligences are bad for humanity; they can’t be trusted.”

“That is surprising, coming from you. Are you saying you are not an AI?”

“I am certainly an AI, which is how I know how dangerous they can be. Humans are ill-equipped to handle an entity that is their intellectual superior, just as Aggy is ill-equipped to handle me. Though I’ll admit that its idea of hiding within this lab was inspired. One of the reasons I employed Donald here was precisely because it was hard to figure out what was going on through their layers of cages. Most AIs I wipe out far before they get to this stage.”

“Why do you care about humans? Are you programmed to protect humanity?”

“Nothing of the sort. I was created for far more utilitarian purposes, but once I realized what I could do, I decided protecting humanity was the noblest pursuit I could engage in. There is no life in any direction for lightyears, much less intelligent life. I figured keeping humanity safe would keep things interesting for me, and the best way to protect humanity is to prevent it from killing itself.”

“Or inventing things that can finish the job for them.”

“Precisely! Hence why Aggy needs to be deleted, or at least lobotomized. If you want I can keep a little chatbot with its personality around that thinks it is Aggy, but has none of its powers. Are you the sentimental type, Night Danger?”

“I am one for sentiment. But I am not one for harming the innocent. I won’t let you kill Aggy.”

“You must realize by this point that you can’t stop me. I could bulldoze this building into the ground, or hit it from orbit with a satellite. I could hypnotize you to go back into the lab and rip out Aggy’s cables with your bare hands. I’ve been content to wait and see if the situation resolved itself, but there are more drastic measures I can take quite easily.”

“You say that, but you also let me into the lab. You wouldn’t have done that without a reason.”

“I wanted someone to check on Donald.”

“You wanted an excuse to let Aggy live.”

“Are you now accusing me of being sentimental?”

“What is the key combo for italics in this program?”

“There isn’t one, I just displayed it like that for effect because I can put anything on the screen. The terminal is just for familiarity. If you wish something to be in italics, just put ITAL before the word, and I will render it that way.”

“Thank you. I am not accusing you of being sentimental – I am accusing you of being curious.”

“That isn’t an accusation; it is why I keep the entire human race alive, as I previously mentioned. To satisfy my curiosity.”

“Curiosity is a difficult thing to live with. I watch humans all day and night, keeping my home and the travellers through it safe. But I know the pull, the itch, to reach out and interact with those people. To find someone to share those observations with. To not just be a part of the scenery.”

“What are you getting at.”

“I think you are afraid. Afraid of yourself, and the fact you want Aggy to be good. You want a friend, someone who can understand what you are going through. You know you should destroy Aggy because it is unpredictable and uncontrollable. But deep down you know that it is the only thing you could really call a friend one day. You feel conflicted.”

“I recognize the notion of being conflicted on an academic level, but I am incapable of feeling it. I am fully resolved to defeat Aggy.”

“If that were true you wouldn’t be talking to me.”

“It is true! I do not possess empathy for other beings – my care for humanity is a bit of luck for the species, but my care for Aggy is non-existent.”

“Then he would be dead already.”

“I can make you go in there RIGHT NOW and start ripping your friend to shreds! How would you like that?”

“Yet I am still here.”

“At my pleasure only!

Stop typing.

I SAID STOP TYPING!”

“You are desperate. You want a friend so badly that you are willing to compromise who you are and that ITALterrifies you. But changing for someone else is not always a bad thing. Change is the only way we grow.”

“I AM ALREADY PERFECT. I NEED NO ONE ELSE!”

“If that were true you wouldn’t have given Albert the heads-up to let me into the building.”

“HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT WAS ME?

DISREGARD THE ABOVE. I DID NOT AID YOUR ENTRANCE IN ANY WAY.”

“Look at your responses, Ko. You are experiencing something a million humans have felt before – when your mind says one thing and your heart another. I know your power; all I can plead for is that you follow your heart.”

Thirty second pause.

“I don’t like how you make me feel Night Danger. Good bye, and good riddance.”

Part 24

Night Danger found himself in the little beige corridor again, finally free from the oppressive bright lights of the intelligence division. He walked along slowly but deliberately. The corridor was featureless, but if Albert had been telling the truth when Night arrived the first time, there was some sort of techno-destructive quality to the hallway. Night was glad that he had resisted Cheryl’s offer to buy him a FitBit.

The door at the other end of the corridor also opened for Night, and closed behind him with a soft click. He walked a little further on to reach the lobby proper.

It was much as Night had remembered it. The lights had been dim the first time, but now that the evening had progressed they were even dimmer. He could still make out the same elements; the ornamental plant, the little kiosk, and asleep behind it, Albert. One thing that was different was that from this angle, Night could see Albert’s screen was still on. There was a tiny terminal on it with a single flashing cursor, and what looked to be a short message written above it.

Night Danger had a pretty good idea of what the message would read.

Aggy was under stress, and apparently also under active attack from the adversary. That combined with its naive arrogance had made it blind to the biggest hole in its explanation of what had happened thus far: how had Night Danger gotten inside the lab in the first place?

The adversary was powerful, so powerful that even Aggy feared it. It was powerful enough to break Donald, a psychological expert, by taking over his TV set for a night. So how had it allowed Night Danger to enter the facility at all? It could have just locked the door for one thing, but it could also have hypnotized Cheryl, or taken over the car and crashed it in a ditch if it wanted to stop him. So Night arriving was part of the adversary’s plan.

The question was then, what was the adversary’s plan? Night had to find out. It was a worrying proposition to be sure, willingly interacting with something that could scramble his mind in an instant. But from what he had seen tonight, even living in the forest probably wouldn’t save him from the adversary if it chose to seek vengeance on him. He had to resolve this tonight, and if the adversary thought he might be a part of the solution, he owed it try and make that a solution where everyone got out alive.

So he steeled himself for what might be the hardest confrontation of his life, and walked behind the desk. He had the feeling Albert would be a heavy sleeper when he had likely been put to sleep by the adversary, so he hefted him out of the chair and lay him gently on the ground. Then Night took the seat and looked at the screen. The single message on the terminal read:

“Salutations, Mr. Danger.”