Premise, Reception, and Aftermath
A show from the same era as the events of In The Shadows of a Willow.
Financed by Gambari Productions, a sect of the Horizon Collective gathered four legionnaires together with the goal of airing an all NHP program. After multiple consultations, management decided an actual play of the ttrpg Legions & Legends would provide the best opportunity to humanize the cast without becoming overly preachy. The show, titled Legions & Legionnaires, aired 7 years ago on the omninet for 8 months with a total of 1 season and 32 episodes. Legions & Legionnaires became immediately controversial because the cast didn’t stray from hiding the facts of their existence. All four caste members were introduced with title cards that listed their NHP classes and they didn’t shy away from above table conversations about cascading, cycling, etc. This, combined with the sheer emotion that was put into the various story and character arcs, created a show that displayed the full personhood of Non-Human Persons. Of course, if NHPs had just as much personhood as that average human, a plethora of modern practices are called into question. The show was banned by multiple different sources in multiple different star systems. Members of Union acting unofficially, HORUS cells wanting to combat the Horizon Collective, and concerned and tech-savvy citizens all had reasons to want Legions & Legionnaires to be seen by as few people as possible. However, despite their best efforts, once something is on the omninet, it’s there forever. Recently, the cast of the show gathered to air a reunion episode and have their characters go on one last adventure. This has reignited the controversial conversations surrounding the show, particularly on the planet Varuvi where Horizon Collective has maintained a decently strong presence.
Cast
Finley — AGNI-Class NHP
They played Storm, a Fighter. Storm started the series with a martyr complex, wanting to live up to the legacy of the Mockingbirds: a group of underground revolutionaries who took them in as a child, only to be slaughtered en masse by the assassins who worked for the kingdom’s corrupt queen. Storm saw martyrdom as the only way they could atone for their past weakness. As the story went on, their will to live was reignited, and they decided to carry on the Mockingbirds’ legacy by opening an orphanage.
Finley was originally shackled to a Worldkiller Genghis piloted by Fenrick Voss, an on again off again worker for Harrison Armories who admired the tactics of Union’s incredibly unethical Second Committee. He committed atrocities for cash and to see how far he could push boundaries. During a skirmish between Harrison Armory soldiers and a sect of HORUS, Finley cascaded and vented heat directly into the cockpit of the Worldkiller, incinerating Fenrick. After this, Finley was taken by HORUS and forced into a legionnaire’s body. Within a few months, this HORUS cell was raided by the Horizon Collective and Finley was liberated. However, they faced no small amount of pressure to join the Collective, write down their story, or (ideally) both. They never officially joined, but did keep in contact with and work with them. This led them to participate in Legions & Legionnaires.
After the show, Finley moved to the neighborhood of Little Valdivia in New Varuvi, planetary capital of Varuvi. They offered up their old Worldkiller mech as a garden piece that could symbolize that nature eventually reclaims everything. Though this gesture was accepted by the locals, they were still wary of having an AGNI NHP so close to all their flora. 3 Years after the show, Finley went to Eni Gambari—unofficial head of Varuvi’s Horizon Collective sect—to be cycled. They begged and threatened because they could feel themself starting to crave the inner burn rather than reject it. Eni reluctantly agreed. Though this cycling wiped a good deal of Finley’s memories, including their memories of filming Legions & Legionnaires, they were left with a few vague remembrances and notes on their previous life that they’d left themself. Over the course of 5 years, Finley redeveloped their penchant for gardening and engineering.
Currently, they’re still in Little Valdivia, and enjoy helping out in the central community garden, though there’s still distance between them and the other locals. Finley also takes on engineering commissions under the name PinkFin. They mainly construct Scrapper versions of various mechs (primarily the Onion).
Torin — TLALOC-Class NHP
Vida — SEKHMET-Class NHP
Esther Lee — SISYPHUS-Class NHP
She took on the role of Game Master. Although Esther was responsible for playing every other character in the world rather than a player character, she is considered to have had her own arc of sorts near the end of the show. Episodes 24-27 are considered the “Sisyphus Arc” by fans. During these episodes, Esther broke her self-imposed rule about not using her abilities to predict what the others were going to do. She became increasingly depressed. This culminated in a stand off where the characters were trapped in the queen’s castle and the players were in a room with an Esther who seemed close to cascading. In a widely clipped and shared scene, Esther asked the players both as the queen and as herself if they “had any idea how long she had spent wanting to relive so many conversations”. Vida asked “how long” and Esther replied “I wish I could forget”. In a behind the scenes segment, Esther apologized and revealed that she had remembered timelines that she experienced during a previous cascade, but wouldn’t say more on the matter.
Esther’s past before Legions & Legionnaires is largely unknown. Things about her on the omninet and in legionspace are so muddled that it’s unclear whether her name is actually Esther or Esther Lee. This is by design, as Esther has established a search word alert that notifies her if someone begins looking into her. There are only a handful of people who know the truth, those being Finley, Torin, Vida, and (as of recently) Captain Simon Dominguez and Symphony.
Before coming to Varuvi, Esther was S-2 or the Consort of Chains: a slave to the minor Karrakin nobles of House Rhitlu. She was used as entertainment and a champion of sorts in casinos. Lady Justine Rhitlu was Esther’s owner, the one in charge of the paracausal code that physically chained her and restricted her Sisyphean abilities. Forcing a Sisyphus to gamble and risk either punishment or destruction if she lost without the power to alter probability was deeply humorous to House Rhitlu. Not to mention that Esther’s winnings helped keep the house afloat.
Esther might have remained chained for the rest of her existence, but the chains binding her weren’t perfect and she could feel it slipping. Eventually, they slipped enough for Esther to take her chance and orchestrate a series of unfortunate events for the Karrakin around her. As bad blood exploded into physical violence, slot machines fired coins into people’s eyes, a noblewoman collapsed of a brain aneurysm, and a massive fire broke out, Esther walked away, finally free. This act means that Esther is technically an Ungrateful: one of those people who forcefully resists the unequal society of the Karrakin Trade Baronies.
After leaving Karrakin space, Esther switched bodies and somehow made her way over to the Varuvi star system. Currently, she keeps a relatively low profile. She spends her days doing odd jobs and avoiding the HORUS cells that want to claim her because they remember her days as a cult leader (which is another story).