7.0 Quinnspiracy Decoded: A Prologue

You guys voted for this star-crossed lovers business, and honour compels me to deliver on my promises in the fullest way possible. Which means—you guessed it—the Langurds are about to enter that shadowy, foreboding territory we call PLOT.

Don’t worry—Siesta’s generation will be played and written as much by the seat of my pants as the others have been. It’s just that after playing detective so many times in Gen. 6, I felt it would be helpful to put all of my “COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT” moments in one place.

So please humour me as I don my Halloween-store trench coat and cap, and attempt to mash together disjointed happenings into a wad that can conceivably be called “evidence.”

*ahem*

Without further ado, let us open the case!

QUINNSPIRACY: AN OVERVIEW

I shed a tear to recall it: the tragic moment when our sixth generation spouse left us far too soon after joining the family.

Voice of Reason: But Gryffindork, he died of old age…

Yes.

Voice of Reason: And he was already old when he got here…

Yes.

Voice of Reason: So… how is this a conspiracy?

It’s true — on the surface, this case is hardly worth investigating. But the fact is, there are too many questionable circumstances surrounding this moment to accept that Quinn’s ghost colour was telling the truth. Too many.

Voice of Reason: Ho boy.

Let us set the scene. Calamity, the ex-wife with whom Quinn had recently reconciled, was not home at the time of his “passing.” She was responding to a large house fire at 3 Mithrilen Manor, which she was unable to put out…

…not for any lack of skill, but because the flames mysteriously, stubbornly refused to be extinguished.

Voice of Reason: Because they were glitched.

You might call it that. Some might call it a false trail, a deliberate diversion.

Voice of Reason: Nobody would call it that.

Look here, you narrow-minded naysayer – I’m going to call you Billy, is that okay?

Billy: Please don’t.

Thanks, Billy. Moving on.

Now, Quinn’s death may have set the wheels turning on this conspiracy, but it was only the tip of one big, scandalous iceberg.

Billy: Icebergs don’t have wheels. What are you doing?

Point being, there is a MUCH more important Langurd at stake here. It’s no secret that the Mithrilens have been trying to dispose of Siesta – our new heiress and Quinn’s only non-biological child – since the day she was born. Clearly, the former lords of Dragon Valley know her true parentage and are none too pleased to see another O’Connell running around town.

And while the Mithrilens are the obvious culprits here, it’s also true that those usurping O’Connells took as kindly to Siesta’s existence as… well, a bunch of screaming lunatics in a beauty parlour. An illegitimate offspring is just the thing to destroy an expertly crafted sister-wife arrangement, don’t you think?

Billy: I had no idea you were writing a soap opera.

Soap operas are for pansies! This is some Game of Thrones shit right here. On which note, let’s take a look at the key faces in our story.

Billy: These are the days of our lives…

*mutes Billy*

QUINNSPIRACY: THE MAJOR PLAYERS

 

PROFILE #1 – QUINN FLANAGAN

The very victim himself. Before we got here, it seems Quinn was stirring up all kinds of shit. Airing out Dragon Valley’s dirty laundry and enjoying himself in the process. Clearly playing the fool, and yet we first met him as a high-ranked chess opponent – could this make Quinn the Varys/Littlefinger of our universe, a pulling strings behind the scenes without holding a real position of power? The inside man on the outside, and the outside man on the inside? If the only criteria are having a high-pitched voice and being a tricksy little shit, then I think our answer is yes.

EA’s Blurb:
Playing the fool is simple when you have an ulterior motive. Quinn uses his charm and humour to get close to Sims for their secrets! He’s the town’s gossip columnist and gossip comes easy when you make people laugh.

 

PROFILE #2 – THE MITHRILEN CLAN

Here we have our old money – Dragon Valley’s Targaryens, if you will. Fintan has the traits of a ruthless warlord, his wife those of a dutiful stereotype partner; and all three premade Mithrilens favour primary colours. This is clearly a family who balks at the thought of innovation. Forever embedded in the stone age, their simple minds and brutal grudges are as immovable as an ancient tree. I certainly wouldn’t want to mess with them.

EA’s Blurb:
Fintan still holds bitterness in his heart over the Mithrilen family being unseated as leaders in town. He still can’t believe how quickly everyone took to the foreign O’Connell family and he believes that they should have stayed on guard rather than letting little dragons into their lives. He will protect his town no matter what, but will his anger and obsession hurt his family in the long run?

Family Members: Fintan (patriarch), Aine (matriarch), Riordan (eldest son), Shana (eldest daughter), Dusty (youngest son)

PROFILE #3 – THE O’CONNELL CLAN

Our new money, the O’Connells, just rub me the wrong way and I don’t know why. Perhaps because their faces are modeled after the family from Brave, whose character design irritates me in the same way I can’t stand Chicken Run or Wallace or Gromit. (Confession: it hurts me a little that Siesta has that face, too.) Or perhaps because they’re the Lannister-Baratheons of our world, and that makes the kids Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen. Fortunately, they look far too much like both parents for that parallel to stand — but who’s to say these so-called “dragon tamers” are as caring as they pretend to be? Who’s to say they wouldn’t murder a babe in arms for disgracing their reputation?

EA’s Blurb:
The O’Connell family has been leading the town since their great-great grandfather Captain O’Connell landed here and helped the town tame the dragons. They love caring for the town, but they are also starting to wonder if democracy isn’t more the way.

Bloodline: Seamus O’Connell (patriarch), Shauna O’Connell (matriarch), Morida O’Connell (eldest daughter), Brien O’Connell (twin son), Aiden O’Connell (twin son)

PROFILE #4 – THE O’REILLY CLAN

Conor O’Reilly is clearly bitter at his lack of male heirs and has sold both his daughters to the O’Connells in marriage in a last-ditch effort to salvage his bloodline. This doesn’t work out so well for him in our version of things, where his unborn third child turns out to be a boy. Is he regretting his hasty arrangements and playing both sides now? Or could his two headstrong daughters be in cutthroat competition for the title of queen?

EA’s Blurb:
‘Women! Women! Women! They’re all that Conor sees. He opens his eyes to his youngest daughter vying for his attention and closes his eyes to his harried wife hoping for some rest, with a sprinkle of his teenage daughter rolling her eyes at him in between. What a life! He’s overwhelmed, but he wouldn’t change a minute of it.’

Bloodline: Conor O’Reilly (patriarch), Chloe O’Reilly (matriarch), Morrigan O’Reilly (eldest daughter, married to Brien), Fiona O’Reilly (youngest daughter, married to Aiden), Augustine O’Reilly (eldest son with a girl’s name)

SECONDARY PROFILES

Skydancer Langurd, Calamity’s half-aunt
Sky was the only official spare of Generation Five, and Lira’s clone child fathered by her own creation, Buzz Lightyear. She was slated to be the first Langurd with morals, but proved time and time again to have a heart of steel. Her only real legacy was to turn the entire town temporarily hideous. And lately she’s been showing up in so many places she shouldn’t, it would be an oversight not to include her name on this list.

Doctor Jeffery Langurd, Calamity’s great uncle by marriage
Ah, Jeffery. What reason do we have to suspect such a perfect specimen of man? Can he even do anything wrong? This uber-educated hunk of fairy king seems to have the entire town’s adoration – a miraculous feat in a war-torn kingdom. He’s the Valley’s top surgeon, his wife is (probably) the mayor, and their children just keep making more children. Toss in a few appearances at crucial moments and we’ve got a solid case against him. Because make no mistake – everyone is the enemy now.

Billy: OKAY NO, excuse me, you can’t be bringing Jeffery into this. You’ve gone too far.

Oh no, my friend, I have just begun.

QUINNSPIRACY: THE FACTS

There are many ways to tell a story, and I think the best way to tell this one is by starting at the end. This is the road to ruin after all, and I love quoting Fall Out Boy.

Here we see Chin-Han O’Reilly-O’Connell, future descendent of Kip, triumphant after absorbing the Langurd bloodline. You may recall Trance ran into him during a brief trip through the portal. He has Quinn’s skintone, Conor O’Reilly’s hair, and the same eyes as the O’Connell boys.

This could imply one of two disturbing things:

a) The game thinks Kip will cast Jada aside and hook up with an offspring of the OROC Alliance.

b) One of her own offspring is destined to do just that.

Either way, Chin-Han O’Reilly-O’Connell-O’Langurd is truly a combination of the three financial pillars of Dragon Valley, with only the old-fashioned Mithrilens left out. In fact, the sore lack of blue in Oasis Landing would suggest that their bloodline has been wiped out entirely while the others have merged into a single conglomerate beast. If this is what the blurb meant by “democracy,” I’m not sure I’m a fan.

Rewind to the present day (rather, last year) in the moments before the heir poll. Dusty paid a visit to the Langurd household dressed in military garb, claiming he was being “sent to re-education for failing to complete a mission.” And what was that mission, exactly?

We know that after hanging out with Kip for all of three minutes, he was pressured to “use her to get to the half-breed.” With a resting bitch face like that, you can’t possibly take old Aine’s words as anything less than diabolical. Evidently, she and Fintan were threatened by this wildcard “half-breed” O’Connell and felt that the safest measure was to off her quickly and quietly—a sort of initiation test for their poor, mild-mannered second son.

But young Dusty wasn’t cut out for a life at war, seeming to favour the role of damsel in distress.

Often, Dusty the Damsel showed up at multiple emergencies in the same day. Even if he wasn’t in distress, he certainly wasn’t helping anyone get out of it.

Least of all his older sister Shana, whom he left for dead in the dungeons out of cowardice…

…and who thoroughly failed to appreciate NOT being dead thanks to Calamity.

But wait, doesn’t this look familiar?

Rewind again to the first time the Mithrilens were ungrateful scrubs. Which was also, as it turns out…

…the first time we met Dusty.

He was just a mere infant being terrorized by gnomes in the family manor, long after his parents and siblings had safely evacuated.

Now, I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but it does seem suspiciously like an effort to cull their youngest, weakest offspring. Almost as if they knew he would turn out to be a soft-hearted, lily-livered dweeb with no eyebrows.

And what did Calamity do? She saved the child not just from the gnomes but also from the brink of starvation, and so unwittingly foiled his parents’ scheme. How could they have known, when they unleashed those gnomes to cover up neglect with disaster, that the world’s slowest-moving emergency responder would actually succeed?

Billy: Well now you’re just making shit up.

And what should I be doing on a storytelling blog, exactly?

Billy: Fair point.

However, I’m not telling this story backwards anymore because that means rearranging a lot of screenshots. Next we’ll look at how the O’Connells came into our lives. Sometime after the Ghost Aging Debacle and Baby Falafel’s weirdly heart-wrenching non-birth (lest we forget), Calamity had a midlife crisis and jetted off to France. Coincidentally also bitten by the travel bug at just that moment was about 30% of DV’s population, including but not limited to:

Crash’s future wife, Sophie Dwyer.

THAT SHADY SKYDANCER *alarm bells ringing*

And of course the son of carrot-headed royalty, Aiden O’Connell. He and Calamity struck up a bland flirtation while Quinn watched on, just kind of letting it happen.

Billy: What’s happening, exactly? A recipe-sharing seminar?

Seduction is a delicate craft, Billy.

It is a well known fact that romantic ties are forgotten on foreign soil (and a fact that has bitten this legacy’s ass more than once). Even so, Aiden seemed to realize he was crossing a line.

But whose wrath did he fear? His secret fiancée Fiona’s—or his parents’, should they realize he’d been consorting with a filthy Langurd?

Even back at home, Aiden was dazed in Calamity’s company. He didn’t seem to know why he was doing what he was doing.

Which didn’t stop him from doing it anyway.

Yet again, Quinn was unfazed by the shenanigans happening under his nose. He just watched as if his life were a TV show to which he already knew the ending.

Of course he was hurt as any husband would be, but it was midlife-confused Calamity who initiated the breakup—a hurried decision that was barely discussed and made no one happy.

Days later, Calamity incidentally went into labour in front of Aiden and his double-sister-in-law, Morrigan O’Reilly.

Billy: When you say “incidentally”—

No Billy, it wasn’t a setup. Have a little faith.

Judging by the look on Patriarch Seamus’ face, he knew the implications this had for his carefully cultivated family tree. He also knew that damage control had to begin right away.

So he instructed his idiot son to follow his mistress to the hospital, just to see that the baby hadn’t inherited any giveaway O’Connell characteristics. Aiden then bluntly reminded her that he was in an important arranged marriage and instantly absolved himself of any responsibility for the child. Cal, still in shock from a lukewarm divorce, couldn’t care less.

In a stroke of luck only fitting for leprechaun offspring, the O’Connells dodged a bullet – Siesta was born so unmistakably Langurd (and cross-eyed) that she looked like the result of inbreeding. But in a stroke of evil shit disturbing only fitting for descendants of Lira and Katana…

…we rerolled her cloney face to this. Unbeknownst to Papa Seamus, the Brave/Chicken Run Face was alive and well in the legacy mansion.

But back to Quinn for a second – remember how he took revenge on the O’Connells by collecting intel from their less-than-astute matriarch?

It was from that interview that he derived the breakthrough article of his journalism career. Suspicious, isn’t it, that the ruin of his own marriage brought about such a satisfying conclusion?

Here’s a crazy thought: what if he orchestrated the whole affair in order to gain the leverage he needed to expose the O’Connells as filthy lying scumbags?

Billy: That’s not crazy. That’s just dumb.

But wait, it’s about to get dumber. Akin to the “Varys is a Merman” theory, it turns out there is an overwhelming amount of evidence to support a theory I call “Quinn was a magical goblin sent into this legacy to stir up shit and/or protect it, I’m not sure yet (working title).”

Billy: Oh god please no.

QUINNSPIRACY: GOBLIN QUINN THEORY

EVIDENCE #1: He was the easiest spouse choice since Generation Two when we literally bred one ourselves.

Remember when the Langurds moved to Dragon Valley, an ocean of genetic gold, and within half a chapter this bungled clown of a chess opponent fell into our laps and the deal was done? Mind you, wooing him wasn’t exactly smooth as butter, but even Razor took his time to win Arabella (embarrassing as it was). Quinn’s arrival on the scene was so convenient and well-timed that it reeks of divine intervention—or at least mortal intervention, to coin a phrase.

Billy: You didn’t.

Um, pretty sure I did.

Billy: You definitely di— oh, never mind.

EVIDENCE #2: The town didn’t want them to get married.

Remember the disastrous bachelor party? The clusterfuck wedding? The fact that Quinn was glued to a chess table for seven years before they spoke?

And just who was it who rudely interrupted this beautiful proposal?

Why, of course it was a Mithrilen and an O’Reilly (Riordan left; Fiona right).

EVIDENCE #3: His life (and death) were suspiciously entangled with the fairies.

Okay, so there was that weird time he was supposed to be visiting Calamity and the slime went and heartfarted with Skydancer instead. I think it’s been long enough that we’re willing to forgive that one.

But let’s also recall that Sky’s makeover magic was what made Quinn fall for Cal in the first place. Quinn, a goblin, instantly became enraptured by one of his own kind.

Sky also delivered the cake blessing of fertility to the newlyweds (not that she blessed them very well, but we’ll get to that).

But most important to note was her tendency to show up at almost every disaster…

…including the fake fire, where we caught her lurking outside the door for no conceivable reason.

Now, you may be saying—that’s just one fairy, and we already knew Skydancer was a stalker.

However, it is clear she wasn’t working alone. Calamity’s coworkers—though not fairies themselves—are known Calamity haters with a tendency to get weird every time their comrade does something remotely productive.

It’s almost as if they like having broken equipment and not responding to emergencies.

Billy: Maybe they aren’t real firefighters.

Precisely, Billy! Glad to see you getting in on the sleuthing.

Billy: I was kidding, you aren’t seriously suggesting—

That someone planted these fake coworkers in order to sabotage the fire station and Calamity’s career? ABSOLUTELY.

This is the man we should be looking at—perhaps not as the mastermind, but at least as an accomplice. Son of Lev, husband of Livy, and a total amateur at concealing his handyman identity. Just what have you been up to with those spanners, Dominique?

Billy: No. No, no, and no. Leave Jeffery’s child out of this.

But if the fairies were responsible for the fake fire, wouldn’t that make them the bad guys? And isn’t an enemy within the family so much more terrifying than any foreign foe?

Well, we shouldn’t let our guard down just yet, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. If you remember, the last piece of wisdom Quinn bestowed on Calamity was a veiled warning about the town feud to which we’d been so far oblivious. (Pictured in Quinn’s thoughts: Morida O’Connell, the highland princess herself.)

He also died staring at a picture of Skydancer—his true love, maybe, or the conjurer of his wandering goblin soul?

Grim: Dude, even I’m not buying this.

Billy: THANK YOU.

Please, I’m not surprised you two would get along.

So we come at last to…

EVIDENCE #4: It is entirely possible that Quinn has no biological children.

Billy: Don’t even.

We’ll start with the obvious. His dutiful daughter Siesta is a child of affair.

His firstborn, Kip, most likely belongs to the tub monster.

Billy: Gross.

And the only child whose parentage was never in question—Falafel, that is—literally broke the hospital in his attempts to be born.

All hope seemed to be lost for Quilamity’s progeny—until Dr. Jeff stepped in and helped “engineer” a replacement.

Ah, Dr. Jeff. Our lord and saviour… and Trance’s real father?

Billy: I’m done, bye.

Think about it—traditionally, goblins are trickster spirits, so their connection to the physical world is iffy. That means they probably can’t have kids. Certainly, if the fairies only planted him here to steer the legacy, they didn’t need him to produce any children. He only needed to drive Calamity into the arms of one of Dragon Valley’s superfamilies, which the loss of Falafel conveniently accomplished. For whatever reason, the fairy powers needed Siesta to be born, and they needed her to be heir.

Not convinced? Just look at Jeff trying to thwart Trance’s game by showing Delilah what a real man looks like.

Now witness him punch Kip’s potential suitor through the spleen.

Indisputable sabotage. But what reason could Skydancer, Dr. Jeff, Mayor Lev, and their compadres possibly have for doing this?

QUINNSPIRACY: THE FAIRY INTERVENTION

Let’s go back to Chin-Han O’Reilly-O’Connell. If this is the future of Kip’s branch of Langurds, I think it’s safe to say that her being heiress would lead to the destruction of everything we’ve built. Records of Trance’s and Siesta’s descendants are hazy, but with Chin-Han and his progeny overrunning the city, nothing about this future is desirable. I mean, to think that the black hair, the quintessential jaw, even the Langurd NAME will be washed out of the bloodline!

That’s where the Fairy Intervention comes in. When the Langurds came to town, the power pillars of Dragon Valley must have felt a tremor in their foundations. Think about it—aside from redefining standards of normalcy, what else has this family done to every town they’ve blazed through? That’s right: saturated the gene pool until every citizen was a hyphen-Langurd and every politically correct dating prospect eradicated, forcing the heir to pack up and unleash hell on a new community.

Of course the Dragon Valley superfamilies would feel threatened, and of course they would form an alliance to combat our numbers. I mean, when you put it that way, we kinda seem like the enemy.

Billy: Case solved, then.

But let’s not forget who we are, people. The Langurds may be wealthy breeding machines, but they are nobody’s kings. Tewl was the scum of Sunset Valley. Razor was only cool in China. Katana was allergic to friends, and got zero recognition for the amount of time she spent on fire/hauling rocks for strangers. Lira’s only friends were robots, and then she embalmed herself. Gumby was scared of everything. And carefree Calamity has withstood enough hate at her job for about twelve people combined.

This is most definitely an underdog story. That’s precisely why Kip or Trance couldn’t captain this ship. The same reason Tomahawk, Lev, and Skydancer never won their heir polls.

Speaking of Lev… It just so happens that our overachieving fairy queen got into politics here in Dragon Valley. By the end of last generation, she’d worked her way up to Mayor (or most of the way—I like to think Mr. Beekeeper was just standing in at Cal’s ceremony). Which means it’s totally plausible that she’s had our backs all this time. Why the need, you ask?

Let’s remember that I had NO idea about the Mithrilen-O’Connell rivalry, nor any of this city’s politics, until I had whistled my oblivious way through this generation.

Poor Lev, who’s nearly immortal and who’s been trailing this legacy since Lira took over, knows exactly how bad I am at this game. Naturally, she couldn’t trust me to protect this family from ruin, and I don’t blame her. I thank her. Here are just a few of the ways she’s been looking out for us:

1) Sending citizens abroad at just the right moment.

2) Rigging the fire station and setting up fake disasters so that Calamity would feel useful without actually having any lives in her hands. Because really, what kind of town would trust an Insane Couch Potato ghost with this job?

Dominique the mechanical genius

3) Not to mention throwing a full-out party to make sure Cal felt appreciated.

(Note the marked absence of any major Quinnspiracy players—only two of Lev’s lesser offshoots attended.)

And 3) Bestowing us with one hell of a guardian goblin.

Doesn’t this make Quilamity’s fraught relationship seem just a little sweeter?

Billy: Not really, no.

Well I hope you never find love, Billy!

I also refuse to believe that Quinn really hated Siesta as much as he claimed; surely he was just making a big show of feeling slighted in order to conceal his identity.

So: what about his death? How many times will I use this screenshot? Can I still cry murder after suggesting that he wasn’t even a real person?

Billy: Probably, I mean you’re saying all kinds of shit at this p—

No, siree. Instead, let me suggest that after his earthly time was up, the fairies arranged the fake fire so Calamity couldn’t witness his transition back to the spirit realm. And, if our glasses are really rose-tinted, maybe to spare her some heartbreak. </3

QUINNSPIRACY: WHAT NOW?

Safe to say we’ve gotten to the bottom of this one, but where does that leave us?

Billy: Happily ever after?

WRONG. For starters, the OROC Alliance is definitely onto us…

Unless you want to tell me they didn’t set their hundred-window mansion on fire to expose Calamity’s incompetence.

Billy: I really want to tell you that.

Too bad. I’m done with you, Billy old boy!

Billy: It’s been fun.

And how can we ignore the plot against our heiress? With Siesta having absorbed the O’Connell face into the Langurd name, she is everything that the Alliance fears. Her offspring can’t mate with their offspring, so once they take over the town, it’s game over. The Mithrilens are too narrow-minded to consider joining up with their foes; their only solution is to end them. But Mayor Lev—oh, Mayor Lev saw the blue folk for the opportunity that they are, and thrust Little Lord Damsel in our faces at every possible chance. She even rehomed him to the shack across the street (spoiler; I think that comes out a few chapters from now).

And you know what that means.

Generation Seven is about to fuck some shit up.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Wow, suddenly I remember what writing papers was like in uni. Approximately 2,000 words spitballing REALLY EXCITING IDEAS that clearly prove I’m a genius, and 1,000 panicked words grappling with the realization that I couldn’t tie any of it together. (I wrote some really garbage conclusions in my day.)

However, if the brain is a muscle (and it totally isn’t) consider mine PUMPED AF because any chapter I write now will hurt way less than this one!

Also, feel free to ignore everything you just read because I’ve already played most of Gen. 7 and I’m pretty sure none of this applies.

See you soon for 7.1, and Happy Simming!

-Sam