.hack//sign Chaos Gate

Long ago, I had multiple worlds instead of just one or two.  Luke Callindor and the champions were in Windemere, the superheroes were in Super Earth, and Clyde had his vampires in another Earth.  It was all compartmentalized in my notebooks and . . . I still kept getting things mixed up.  Much of it revolved around Clyde and the Dawn Fangs too because I kept trying to reinvent vampires for all the different worlds.  Inevitably, they would become a variation on the Dawn Fangs and there would be a Clyde-like figure that led them.  It was an interesting journey, which I really have to share.

Clyde was the second character I had in college, so I started building a series around him like I had done with Luke Callindor.  Since he was in a game that involved the modern world, I put him on Earth.  Problems stirred from the beginning because I became obsessed with finding a way to pit Clyde against Luke.  Took about a year to drop that and focus on crafting a real world for the vampires.  At first, he was the only one immune to sunlight, but that made it hard to interact with his friends.  I ended up making all the vampires immune after that, but they stayed in the shadows.  This made no sense and it got even stranger when I had Clyde be the reincarnation of Dracula.  In my defense, it was 2000 and I was only 20.  The vampire craze hadn’t hit yet, so this wasn’t as overdone as it was today.  Needless to say, this got tossed as well.  I played with Clyde in games a bunch to get a better feel for him, but things felt locked in place.

The last series in Clyde’s personal world ended with him reaching his full power and then vanishing.  Part of this was because I was running a Dungeons & Dragons game that I was going to turn into a series.  In my foolishness, I put Clyde in Windemere and had him there long enough to influence events before I realized my mistake.  I could have shifted him out of the story, but then there would be a gap for a few characters or a cheap doppelganger.  Having his series end with him jumping to Windemere was the logical step, but there was always something off.  His main weapon was still a chainsaw and he had no friends like Mab, Xavier, or Titus.  Clyde being in Windemere at this point was wrong, but I handed realized it.

Then, I came up with my Super Earth world for the superheroes, which ended up having vampires.  At first, they were random enemies that would turn up when I needed fodder,  but I began making them sun resistant to increase their threat.  Then, I had a vampire as one of the heroes and made some changes.  I realized that I was coming very close to the Dawn Fangs (though I didn’t call them that), so I made a decision that they would be involved with the superheroes.  This made such a mess.  The vampires were now villains, which caused their series to make no sense.  Mab and the others being around were pointless because they didn’t fit their own world.  Clyde wasn’t even on Earth any more and the one time he crossed over with superheroes in his series resulted in him being hunted.  This had him acting surprisingly weaker then in the other stories because I couldn’t have him wipe out the cast of the other series.  Needless to say, this forced me to rethink everything.

This brings us to the end of Clyde’s journey ‘home’, which I guess I would call the Great Merging. I transferred all of my ideas to Windemere to create a single tapestry of my ideas and all of them fit.  Well, the alien bounty hunter didn’t and I ended up moving the superheroes back to Earth (might undo that), but this isn’t their story.  As for Clyde, his presence ended up filling in some amazing gaps in Windemere.  The Dawn Fangs got their name and appeared as a more common species within the world.  I’ll admit that I felt a little sad about removing Clyde’s chainsaw, Bob’s car obsession, and Mab’s motorcycle, but they quickly evolved into their current versions.  It felt a lot more natural for them, which is strange since they were always played in Earth-based games.  Maybe it’s because they always had a magical quality, so it wasn’t a difficult transfer to make.  There are still times I question my decision, but they’ve really been locked into place. Too many plot holes in the other series got filled by the presence of the Dawn Fangs and I don’t have to come up with different versions of vampires for all the worlds.

As you can tell, it took a long time for Clyde to find his final home.  The jury is still out on how well he meshes with what’s been established, but I can see that he’s comfortable.  That’s probably the most important part too.