Shogo: The Aftermath
Shogo: Mobile Armour Division (known as Riot during development) is a game by Monolith Productions that was created back in 1998 (Common Era, I would like to see a computer game made in the Before Common Era). It featured an anime theme as well as Japanese mecha. At the time that would not have intersted me, as I was not yet a fan of anime (Shogo partially helped convince me, before my first taste of Evangelion four years later; ironic given I stayed away from anime thinking it was weird), but there were two things that got me to play it anyway:A: it was made by the same people that made Blood and Blood II: The Chosen, two of my favourites, and it was made at the same time as them.
B: it was ported to my favourite operating system (GNU/Linux) by Hyperion Entertainment in 2001 (as well as to Mac OS and AmigaOS).
When I did play it, I rather liked it. The gameplay was memorable, the story was good and the characterizations were excellent. It has enough anime to interest fans, but not enough to have turned away people like me intersted in only shooter conventions. Though I was not happy with the ending, just a single text screen and a rather silly (and murderous) cutscene, no matter which path you chose. That is what brought me to undergo this project, this piece of fan fiction was written to make a more detailed and pleasant ending for my favourite Shogo path (Option 2, Selection 1). For more information, read the author's note at the start of the story. The story also takes a lot of inspiration from the truly great collection of Blood fan fiction; if it was not for those I probably would not have written this story. It may be unlikely that Monolith will ever make a Shogo 2 (despite consistent rumours over the years), but you may at least take the time to enjoy the work of the Shogo community. If you have never played Shogo than my story will make little sense, however I can provide help as there is a detailed description of the plot on the Blood Wiki: Shogo Sub-Section. These stories are not a constant and may be edited to improve spelling and grammar at a later time, and indeed many have been revised at least once already.
Download: Open Document, Word Document, Text.
The story was first written in OpenOffice.org Writer 2.3 on Fedora 8 GNU/Linux during late March, April, and early May 2008.
Oh, I should also mention that these stories contain traces of coarse language and violence. What did you expect from first-person shooter fiction? Actually there is less than you might think, save I suppose for Stragglers, Adauchi, and Never Too Late later on.
Note: once I upgraded to Fedora 15, I started using LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice.org, supporting The Document Foundation's mission.
Shogo: The Expanded Canon - Original Run
Okay, a few days after I began writing "The Aftermath" my twin brother wrote "Caleb on Cronus", a Shogo/Blood II crossover. It was actually uploaded as part of the "Tome of Blood" a few weeks before "The Aftermath" (the first story to start being written). Later, while being kept up late by a rather nasty cold, he also decided to pen, well, keyboard a Shogo short story that was a prequel to both "Mobile Armour Division" and "The Aftermath". That same night I also started a story set before "MAD" in which Kura finds out about Gabriel's identity; it took me forever, but I did eventually release it. Another story, written about a month after I started "The Aftermath", called "Military Academy", was written over a few days by my brother (though I contributed a key part of the finale). Later in May 2008, Hamish wrote a sequel to "Caleb on Cronus" titled "Return to Cronus". Soon after, Hamish wrote "Looking for the Next Best Thing", which is also a tribute to the musician Warren Zevon. In early February 2009 I found an old Shogo short called "The Fall of Gabriel" from 1999 on a small abandoned fan site which I then read, adapted and uploaded (and then later wrote a review of). It follows the other playable path so it adds a continuation of that plot line. After searching through the PlanetShogo and ShogoMAD.com forums (for Shogo Sub-Section archiving purposes), I came across a decent novelization of the earlier parts of Shogo on May 10, 2009, which I have adapted with more proper formatting (for archival rather than readability's sake I have included the original unformatted version). The edited version also has a novelization of the first Shogo level I once wrote. These were all that were released in the original run of The Expanded Cannon, though they have now all been revised as well.Shogo Novel: Sanjuro is sent out to defeat Gabriel, the new brash leader of the militant Fallen. (By CyHunter/Graham L. Wilson)
Download: Open Document, Word Document, Text, Unedited Version (Open Document).
The Fall of Gabriel: after defeating the Fallen, Sanjuro is left to deal with his new life, including those he thought dead (By Ron "eclip5e" Adams).
Download: Open Document, Word Document, Text, Review 2.0 (Open Document).
Life After Death: an insight into the mind of Sanjuro and Kathryn just before "Mobile Armour Division" (By Hamish Paul Wilson).
Download: Open Document, Word Document, Text.
Military Academy: a story set during the last days of the Shogo gang's academy training (By Hamish Paul Wilson).
Download: Open Document, Word Document, Text.
Looking for the Next Best Thing: Kathryn and Sanjuro face their inner demons after the Avernus tragedy (By Hamish Paul Wilson).
Download: Open Document, Word Document, Text.
Hidden Life: Kura's spy mission, who is "Gabriel"? (By Graham L. Wilson).
Download: Open Document, Word Document, Text.
The following stories are part of the Expanded Canon "Alternate Universe" series. A place for any number of cross-overs anyone wishes to write.
Please note that these are not to be considered as actual parts of either the official or expanded canons.
Caleb on Cronus: Caleb from Blood enters a wartorn Avernus after a mishap with a singularity generator during Blood II (By Hamish Paul Wilson).
Download: Open Document, Word Document, Text.
Return to Cronus: strange events unfold after the events of "Shogo: The Aftermath" and "Blood: How Much Time Has Passed" (By Hamish Paul Wilson).
Download: Open Document, Word Document, Text.
Got a new story or just a comment: send it here or here! Or come and post on the Shogo Tribute Forums!
It is also worthy to note that one of the probable reasons that these stories involve a lot of insomnia is due to them being written in the middle of the night, so we are familiar with it. These stories break the adage "write what you know" as they are mostly a product of our fertile imaginations and have little to do with our actual lives, maybe someday one will involve cows but none right now. ;-P I have also looked through various pages on Shogo mods and no one has seen fit to make any storylines for them, so this page is the only source for more Shogo story that I know of.
Shogo: The Further Expanded Canon
Writing on The Expanded Canon did not cease when the uploads did, as Hamish in particular remained well motivated towards writing Shogo stories for quite awhile afterwards. Why many of these were not released earlier is a bit complicated. As Hamish developed his ideas further he started to deal with more mature sexual content (though none are even explicit), and he did not yet feel comfortable enough to release these newer stories (while "Stragglers", completed from June 18-23, 2008 and is more in line with the original stories, just fell through the cracks). As time went on, the structure of his character-oriented Trilogy ("Sex & Violence" completed from June 5-11, 2008 and "Thanks for the Memory" from July 5, 2008 to July 25, 2009) began to take shape and with momentum on the side of continued public stasis (indeed with the loss of our original host in the summer of 2009 all of the stories were down until May 7, 2011) it was decided that they would all be released together when eventually completed. On July 29, 2009 I began work on an idea for a sequal to "The Aftermath" I first had in May 2008, an action oriented story called "Adauchi", which I did not finish until August 14, 2011. Hamish finally finished "Never Too Late", the final part of Trilogy first started on February 6, 2010, on February 2, 2014 following numerous forced rewrites of portions of it due to file corruption. We were then left with the, by that point, rather hefty job of cleaning up our earlier drafts and getting ready for our new re/release and public push onto more websites which was finally completed on October 7, 2014 with its launch on the site.As one can see by page and word count, all of our entries steadily grew far larger than the originals, eclipsing the realm of short stories into novellas and then full length novels (with both "Adauchi" and "Never Too Late" nearing or topping 150 LibreOffice pages; though our varying styles of formatting make word count comparisons difficult). It was with these stories that both Hamish and I progressed from learning or novice writers into something of a proffesional quality (indeed, I am now reguarly published in a political paper, and Hamish is a principal game reviewer for GamingOnLinux). Furthermore, it is from this fan fiction foundation that we are both aiming to spring board into the world of original fiction, having already written a large amount of my first original novel and Hamish well into the planning stage of his own once he finishes "Scroll", his final peice of Blood fan fiction. So without further ado, here are the expansions to the expansions!
Stragglers: violence flares up again on Cronus, but from an unexpected source; an action story (By Hamish Paul Wilson).
Download: Open Document, Word Document, Text.
Shogo: Trilogy
For those unwilling to read through the above mountain of text: this is a trilogy of character-oriented fiction by Hamish Paul Wilson written between June 5, 2008 to Feburary 2, 2014. The first two are novelettes and the last expands out into a full novel. Incidentally, the second title is a reference to the Red Dwarf episode from Series II, while the last homages the Warren Zevon song "Never Too Late For Love" from The Envoy.Sex & Violence: Kathryn attends a communications conference on Earth, a situation Kura plans to take personal advantage of.
Download: Open Document, Word Document, Text.
Thanks for the Memory: Kura faces a bitter proffesional rival, Baku's girlfriend no less, as Kathryn is haunted by recollections of the past.
Download: Open Document, Word Document, Text.
Never Too Late: hoping to bring closure for himself and his family, Nathanial Akkaraju tries to correct his greatest personal, rather than proffesional, mistake. Meanwhile, Toshiro prepares to wed in a diplomatically charged ceremony aiming to bind togather more than just his he and his spouse, while Kura and Kathryn have an adventure of their own.
Download: Open Document, Word Document, Text.