The KidVegeta Anthology/Dragon Ball Z: The Forgotten/Characters

These are my thoughts on the characters in The Forgotten, ranging from what prompted their creation to how and why I implemented them into the story the way I did:

=Characters=

King Vegeta
Little of King Vegeta was known from canon. We all know that he challenged Frieza for taking his son and died for that rebellion. My interest, in this saga, was showing how he got to that point. He's essentially a blank slate character, even though he's canon. I had to essentially create his character from scratch. One of the things about the Prince Vegeta Saga is that, due to his age, Ledas doesn't drive the plot. He's the protagonist, yeah, but he's not really the a protagonist in the traditional sense. The more traditional protagonist of the saga is King Vegeta. His struggle to free his species is one of personal desire, of pride, and of necessity to protect his people. I had to show this from an early point, so that is why the prologue was written how it was. For King Vegeta, Prince Vegeta and Ledas are just two kids who can perhaps fulfill the legend of the Super Saiyan and help him liberate his species.

King Vegeta struggles with thoughts of inadequacy himself, because his own power level isn't that high. Now it is higher than his son's until basically the last couple of chapters of the first saga, so he doesn't have that much to feel bad about. But the fact that he does feel bad was me trying to characterize him.

He's involved in conspiracies to get rid of Frieza, too. He's the main driver of the plot of the first saga to get Vegeta as strong as possible - his end goal is to have Frieza killed and his species liberated. So King Vegeta is the main plotter of this saga, much of it going on in secret, and that is not something I really did on purpose. The plot worked out like that, but I wasn't planning the saga out thinking that King Vegeta should be driving almost all of it. That is a consequence of Ledas' age and the Saiyans' place as being slaves under Frieza's regime. This results in King Vegeta being pretty much the protagonist of the first saga, and it's quite interesting that he dies - he doesn't succeed against the main villain in any capacity. This brings up shades of Game of Thrones and Ned Stark's fate in the first season of that tv show, though when I wrote this saga (even the final edits), I had never seen nor heard of that tv show yet.

King Vegeta is interesting because he really doesn't have much power, politically-speaking. He may be a king, but that title is as empty as they come. So his struggle is one for agency, at least how I portray it. Like his son, he doesn't like to emote openly (though he is better at doing so than the prince). Thus, him wanting to rescue his son at the end of the first saga is about as emotional as King Vegeta ever gets. My goal was to build up to that moment - for King Vegeta is not acting normally in that moment. The payoff of his character is that he, like his son, begins to emote. The fact that his emoting, that him standing up for his son and for his species, results in nothing good happening for the Saiyans is almost beside the point. King Vegeta's arc was one of agency and finding himself, which is a character arc oft seen in TF (and in most stories ever published, to be fair).

Frieza
Frieza is a very memorable character in DBZ, and his personality of being this refined, psychotic, intelligent warrior is really cool. He's the strongest one around, and he knows it. This leads him to not respecting anyone else, though he does sometimes get fond of people. His fondness for kid Vegeta is based in canon, both from the Namek Arc of DBZ and from the Bardock special. The way he treated kid Vegeta in both of those canon things greatly influenced this story. The unfolding of the plot of the first saga was based around the fact that Frieza was fond of kid Vegeta and his burgeoning strength. It was important for me to show that he's fond of Vegeta. He doesn't so much care about Ledas, though he does see the value in having Ledas around.

Lots of Frieza's dialogue in this story is based on how he talks in canon, so there isn't much else to say there. Frieza has an air about him that brings others fear, though, and that was something I focused on showing. It wasn't exactly easy to do. Frieza's interactions with King Vegeta were fun to do, because we all know what the endpoint of their relationship is and how much stronger Frieza is than King Vegeta. He puts pressure on other characters because of his overwhelming power, and his power level is a goal for others because of that. Both Ledas and Prince Vegeta dream of becoming strong enough to kill Frieza and liberate their species.

Frieza's role as a villain in the first saga was therefore written in a very atypical way. He's idealized. His role on for the plot and everything is mostly thematic. He isn't defeated in the story or truly challenged at all before disappearing. Because of his massive strength and the way his personality is, he's separated from everyone else. He doesn't let anyone get close to him. So that's why him wanting to basically take kid Vegeta to be his new warrior - almost like a son - is greatly significant. This is a canon idea, but I tried to flesh it out in a fanon way to make it understandable and thematically interesting.

Like several other characters from this saga (including Cooler from the next saga), Frieza's death is not shown. This is because his death is known from DBZ, so I didn't just put it in this story for closure purposes. Again, a bit of The Sopranos ' influence on me can be seen with such a decision. It would have done terrible things with the pacing of the story had I shown his death, though, I think.

Layeeck
Layeeck's arc is much like King Vegeta's. It's basically what I would do with King Vegeta if I had complete control over his character. Layeeck lacks the power, physically and politically, that King Vegeta has (and King Vegeta doesn't have much, remember). He is desperate and scared and ashamed of his own power level. His grows paranoid as the story goes on, for he doesn't really know what King Vegeta is planning and fears for his son. And yet, at the same time he's jealous of his son's superior power level. Layeeck's arc is actually also like Guva's arc. He starts out powerful, noble, cool. And his character degrades over time. His is a slow ruination, one brought on primarily by his own thoughts and actions.

Layeeck wants to be like King Vegeta. He wants to be like Lascon. He wants to be like Ledas. He does not compare to any of them, in terms of the various things they are good at (political power, being a teacher, having a high power level), so he falls into a bit of psychosis because he doesn't know how to deal with his worsening position. One thing that is interesting is that his relationship with Ledas gets worse as Ledas gets stronger. He promises to take Ledas on a mission together, just the two of them, and yet he never fulfills this promise because he feels like Ledas could humiliate him, in the latter half of the saga. He puts his own pride before his relationship with his son. I don't know why I wrote Layeeck like this. I didn't sit down and plan it - it's just how it turned out. And it's weird, because it's not based on personal experience or anything like that (my dad is great).

It was important for me to have Layeeck redeem himself thematically at the end of the saga. He's one of the last Saiyans killed in the Genocide of the Saiyans, and he is certainly killed in the most brutal, horrific way possible. But he does muster up some courage and some honor and fight for his son even if he's no better off than any other Saiyan. Like King Vegeta, his arc resolves in a positive way, even though he dies. It's the idea that he was trying to exert his agency, trying to redeem his character, that ultimately results in his redemption. He wasn't able to defeat Frieza or The Benefactor, but that is not really the important part.

It was also important for The Benefactor to kill Layeeck, since that would mean that TB killed Ledas' father. I knew that such a fact would become important later in the story, though the way I actually used it in the final edits of the Fulfillment Saga was not something I had expected or really tried to set up. It turned out brilliantly - TB calling Layeeck a coward was a big reason Ledas went Super Saiyan 2 and beat that alien - but it wasn't planned to go that way. I knew that there could be an emotional outburst or some plot payoff for Ledas learning about his father's death later, and that is how my writing normally goes. I set things up, leave them open, without much of a plan of how I will resolve them. Certainly when I wrote Layeeck's death, I didn't think it would later influence the most dramatic moment in the entire story.

Layeeck's name is a pun on "leek". I came up with this after I came up with Ledas' name, and I knew that I wanted the boy's dad's name to be based on a vegetable related to lettuce as well as one starting with the letter "L". So that's how I settled on "leek".

Prince Vegeta
So after I watched the Bardock special in 2010, I was struck by how cool kid Vegeta is. That fact led to this story being created, to me joining this wiki, to my chosen username on this wiki... So yeah, kid Vegeta is my favorite Dragon Ball character. Even though he was barely ever shown, every scene he was in is amongst the best scenes in Dragon Ball history. So I wanted to capture this epicness in a story of my own. The excuse to do so was to create my own fanon Saiyan to train with Vegeta, to show Vegeta as much as possible. It was important for me to keep Prince Vegeta as accurate as possible, in terms of his personality. That meant making him arrogant, aloof, and not quick to change.

Lots of Prince Vegeta's personality had to be based on his adult personality. However, a key quote from Vegeta during the Namek Arc of DBZ, where he notes that Frieza made him the way he turned out by the early sagas of DBZ, made me work back from that point. So I looked at Vegeta and wondered how he got to where he was - how much of his personality was Frieza's doing, and how much was inherent. I had a little to work with from the Bardock special - but as we know, he only appears for roughly 5 minutes in that special. There are a few very quick scenes of kid Vegeta elsewhere, in the anime and in Battle of Gods, but nothing significant enough to take too much from, personality-wise. I had to create his personality to an extent. Him being arrogant and aloof is key - these are staple emotions that he's always had, even as a kid. So I built up his character around those two. I figured that his "evilness", his penchant for being the bad guy was what came from being in Frieza's army, as did his inferiority complex and other stuff like that. So this resulted in me making him an arrogant, aloof kid who doesn't want to become friends with Ledas but sees the value in training with the boy to become stronger himself. He's bold - he wants to kill Frieza (something mentioned by him in the Bardock special, as well), and he's not afraid of anything. He's not evil at this point. He's individualistic, and will kill aliens to become stronger, but he doesn't have a definitive concept of good and evil and doesn't seem to care about such distinctions. That becomes more important to him after his planet's destruction.

The big thing with Prince Vegeta is his relationship with Ledas. Their growing friendship was good, conceptually, in all versions of TF. The execution wasn't as good in the first two drafts, though, leading to a few people noting in reviews that the two became friends too quickly. During my final edits, I changed the story to have them become friends slower. Vegeta is cautious and not open to gaining a friend - unless Ledas can prove himself. So Ledas has to prove himself on several occasions, eventually leading Vegeta to openly consider Ledas his friend. This friendship is significant to both characters. It's what drives Ledas for the rest of TF after the first saga, to find Vegeta and return to their old, happy ways. This is also a significant thing for Vegeta, for when he loses Ledas, he feels like he has nothing left, and he feels isolated on Frieza's spaceship. That isn't shown in this story, but it is shown in His Majesty's Pet.

Lots of Vegeta's actions in the last three sagas of TF are based on his friendship with Ledas and all the pain it caused him to lose Ledas at the end of the first saga. Vegeta isn't quick to open himself up, so when he loses the one person he did open up to, that isolates him mentally and physically, and makes him feel terribly alone. And that goes back to the "Frieza made me who I am" quote by Vegeta in DBZ. Part of the reason Frieza was able to do that is because Vegeta was emotionally broken after the Genocide of the Saiyans, though he didn't make that known, due to his pride. So notice how I tried to use fanon characterization, built on canon characterization, to explain things for kid Vegeta as logically and accurately as possible. I think my characterization of kid Vegeta is the best characterization of any canon character I have written for, since I've spent a lot of time analyzing his character, and I think I know quite a lot about him to be able to work in both the overt fanon personality stuff, but also the subtler stuff. The blending of fanon and canon with his character is not really apparent. He looks and sounds like the canon kid Vegeta, and that is something I'm proud of being able to do.

Nappa
Nappa's a character I've always liked, so I had a lot of fun putting him in the first saga of TF. I had him involved in a lot of comedy as well, because that's how his character was in canon. The mixture of comedy/badass moments with Nappa is something I tried to execute, for to me those are two hallmark traits of the best Saiyans. Nappa's role in the saga was heavily influenced by the canon Bardock special, where Nappa was Prince Vegeta's trainer. Particularly in the scene with Prince Vegeta and the Saibamen, where Nappa watches casually, not doing much, but somewhat boasting about how strong Vegeta is to a PTO alien, is something I took to heart when writing for Nappa in this saga. I had to come with a lot of his personality, though, for very little of him actually training Vegeta is shown in canon. And in DBZ, Vegeta has grown up, so their relationship has changed by that point.

Nappa was a required character for TF. After watching the Bardock special, I knew I couldn't omit him. He's too heavily involved in Prince Vegeta's early life. So even when I was first forming my ideas about TF, I knew Nappa would be a major character, at least in the first saga. As it turns out, that's the only saga he appears in, and we don't get a resolution to his character (since that occurs in canon, anyway).

Nappa's brutality went well with Ledas' growth and for the themes of the first saga. He was the first one who really made Ledas work, made the boy sweat. Yet, Nappa is still rather respectful to Prince Vegeta and Ledas. He's the start down the road for Ledas dealing with powerful, scary trainers, though he doesn't reach the extremes seen in the Lauto Saga and Stomping Grounds Saga, for Nappa's position keeps him in line. Nappa has some really funny conversations with Ledas and Vegeta too, with lots of unintentional comedy. Both of the boys make fun of Nappa too, for how he acts, and this is in-line with how Vegeta treated Nappa in DBZ.

There is a divide between Nappa and Ledas/Prince Vegeta, due to the age difference, personality difference, and power level difference. This becomes especially striking at the end of the first saga, when Prince Vegeta realizes that Ledas may be dead. At that point, Nappa takes on the role of Ledas, to a degree (we don't get to see much of that in TF, but it is an important factor in my other story, His Majesty's Pet), and the fact that Nappa has to take on that role is a big reason why Prince Vegeta isn't able to cope with Ledas' supposed death very well.

Zarbon
With Zarbon, his role grew a bit in the final edits of TF, but he was never a major character in any version of the story. Zarbon is interesting, though, because his role in the first saga is to mainly be a bit of a bother to The Benefactor. He also functions as the guy who gives Ledas and Prince Vegeta missions, sometimes. To that end, he is written based on how he acted in the Bardock special, in particular. He fawns over Frieza, and yet he hates Prince Vegeta and The Benefactor. He's a remarkably petty and jealous man.

In the final version, it became more clear that the aliens Ledas and Prince Vegeta fight in chapter 6 of the Prince Vegeta Saga are Zarbon's first team. He apparently doesn't know they were going to be used to test the boys, so this angers him greatly when he learns about it. Of course, they all die, so Zarbon blames The Benefactor for that. Zarbon is crucial in helping Frieza see that The Benefactor is dangerous and is a big reason why Frieza ultimately "executes" the alien. So even though The Benefactor gets the better of Zarbon at first, he does get Zarbon a new team (who are then used in the earliest saga of Hyper Zergling's fanon). He tries to amend things with Zarbon, but Zarbon will have none of that. He hates TB; he's jealous that TB is stronger than him and may be gaining Frieza's favor. So he does everything he can to quell that relationship. He ultimately succeeds, though it's not his doing. Zarbon's role in TB's fall was severely reduced in the final version of this story, and I did that mainly because I didn't think Zarbon should have much power over The Benefactor, physically speaking. It's fine if he has power over him in other ways, though, and that's how I changed his character in the final draft.

In Outbreak, Zarbon is quite jealous of the unnamed captain, just as he is jealous of The Benefactor in the first saga. Zarbon's jealousy gets the other captain killed and helps get him promoted. This, however, leads to Frieza finding The Benefactor, so that doesn't exactly go good for Zarbon. What I really wanted to portray with Zarbon in Outbreak was how petty and vain he was, not to mention the sheer level of desperation he has with nearly every action he takes. I'm not fond of Zarbon, so I did focus more on his negative attributes, but everything I did with him in Outbreak and in the Prince Vegeta Saga was based on and is accurate to his canon personality.

Lascon
I originally came up with Lascon, then named Noscal, for the early drafts of the Reunion Saga, where he would be featured in a flashback chapter helping Prince Vegeta and Ledas become conscious in their Great Ape forms. His role was similar to Nappa's and Layeeck's, though it was slightly different because he is not as insane as either of those two. Now Nappa and Layeeck have some problems, in different ways, but I won't be going into that here. Lascon is steadfast; he doesn't let his emotions guide him. He's a very straightforward teacher and this distinction allows him to impact Ledas in a different way than the aforementioned men. He's a more mature version of Layeeck (and also Nappa), with more experience and more to teach Ledas. It's also worth noting that even in the Reunion Saga flashback, he seemed to connect better with Ledas than Layeeck did. They had a better relationship because of Lascon's personality. As well, Lascon had a nice relationship with Layeeck in that flashback, where he played the role of the parent to his son. It's one of the few times where Layeeck's madness and egotism was checked by someone above him, so Lascon fills many roles and purposes in TF, even though he's only in featured in three scenes in the entire story.

I later added Lascon to the Prince Vegeta Saga as I did the final edits for that saga. He had basically just one scene with Ledas, which was a fight scene. This scene set up the flashback scene in the Reunion Saga, but more importantly, I used this scene to teach Ledas a lot about fighting. Lascon is a knowledgeable dude, so this allowed me to give Ledas some good battle info without making him a Stu. Lascon teaches him to not underestimate his opponents (for Ledas did that in their battle and lost to his grandfather, even though Lascon was much weaker than him), and this is a lesson that stays with Ledas for the rest of the story. It helps him develop his fighting form, his fighting philosophy and his personality. So the single scene with Lascon helps Ledas grow to a tremendous degree, and that's all because I portrayed Lascon as this knowledgeable and calm but stern individual. He breaks the mold of being a Saiyan somewhat, but his foundation of battle knowledge is certainly Saiyan-like and quite beneficial for his grandson.

Lascon's name is a pun on "scallion". He was originally named "Noscal" by Destructivedisk, but after some time, I flipped the name (almost completely) and called him "Lascon" because I wanted all of the males in Ledas' bloodline to have their names start with "L".

==Other Saiyans/Frieza's Soldiers== So with these guys, my influence from the anime is evident in how they talk, particularly with Layeeck's team seen in chapter 2 of the Prince Vegeta Saga. How the soldiers talk, how they interact with the main characters, was all written basically to mimic how lesser PTO characters interacted with one another and with others in canon. Layeeck's team in particular is interesting, for they were based on Bardock's team to a degree. All of these characters fulfilled roles on their own - they don't exist just to exist - and yet, their main purposes are to characterize the main characters. This is seen with how Layeeck's team comments on how Ledas performs on his first mission. Of course, for them in particular, there would be no reason not to have them - it's more logical to have them, actually. It softens the interactions between Ledas and Layeeck, having others there.

For lesser soldiers who are not Saiyans, there are not too many of them, so I won't be devoting too much time to them. These soldiers are mainly seen, but not heard, in this saga. This was not something I did on purpose - for the lesser characters have far more to say in Cooler's region - it's just how it turned out. One character I want to mention is the Saiyan Pod Commander, whose purpose is to try to reign in Ledas' attempt to just do whatever he wants. In the first saga, Ledas kills the Saiyan Pod Commander for annoying him, and this leads up to him being basically enslaved in the next few sagas. The Saiyan Pod Commander is a stern authoritative figure, but he was not strong enough to actually subdue Ledas, which characters in the second and third sagas were able to do.

Additionally, there was an alien captain in Outbreak who was a bit of a rival to Zarbon. I based him on the various Frieza soldiers seen in the Namek arc, who tried to over-exert themselves, which led to their deaths at Frieza's hands. That guy was textbook Frieza soldier. Zarbon's team in chapter 6 of the first saga were based on Dodoria's team in the Bardock special, to a degree. They were rough, arrogant, and loud, which is how many villains in DB and DBZ often are. So they were pretty standard.

Cooler's Soldiers
Nothing really new with these characters. They function much as Frieza's soldiers did. There is a bit of a difference though, since the stuff in Cooler's region take place on military outposts. Because of that, soldiers were more common in Cooler's region - in the Prince Vegeta Saga, there weren't really too many soldiers fighting alongside the protagonists (or against them). That was changed in the second and third sagas, with many more regular soldiers being featured. They still rarely had dialogue, though. Their main purpose was to provide entertainment in fight sequences and add some unexpected wrinkles to how those fights played out.

There were two times where I really had soldiers shine, though. The first was in the opening sequence of the Lauto Saga with all of those soldiers watching Ledas' space pod land on Planet Cooler 92. The dialogue in that section was based on the dialogue of various Frieza soldiers post-Saiyan Saga (but before anyone got to Namek). The second scene was during the trek to Lauto's planet. Admittedly, the soldiers having so much dialogue in chapter 11 of the second saga is because that was written in the first draft of TF, back in 2010, and wasn't changed much in subsequent drafts. Had I written that chapter from scratch now, I might not have had the soldiers speak so much. Them speaking does build up the suspense of the chapter, and it does give the whole place an eerie feel to it. I'm sure this was based on the early sequences of the movie Aliens, though I didn't realize that influence on me at the time of writing the scene. Again, much like the Frieza soldiers (and really any group of minor characters), these soldiers do not have arcs - they are there to serve the plot and tone of the story (like condiments in a meal) more so than the more important characters. They are treated with much less care, because they are expendable. They aren't given character arcs because that would ruin the pacing of the story.

In the Stomping Grounds Saga, this is much the same, though the soldiers in that saga are better warriors than those featured in the previous two sagas. So that led me to have more elaborate battle sequences with them, but that is the only thing about them that is distinct.

Payar
Payar is a strange character, and I'm not sure where the inspiration for him came from. As I have mentioned elsewhere, he's a character I can't visualize. I can pretty much visualize (roughly) what every other character in TF looks like. I do not have a good idea of what this dude looks like, in my mind's eye. A shorter version of Neiz is probably the closest possible look, although even that is not very accurate. Anyway, Payar is quite the unique guy. I knew even when I was forming the character list for TF (before writing any of the story) that I wanted one PTO soldier who could not use ki attacks. I wanted each Plantain to be unique, and so this was Payar's main thing. Of course, his personality and appearance is also unique, but his inability to use ki attacks is a defining trait. That fact gives Payar a subtle inferiority complex around those who can use ki attacks.

So Payar's sadistic tendencies developed around the early themes related to Planet Cooler 92's native species. Originally, there was an extended arc in the Lauto Saga about them and Ledas trying to free them (themes of colonialism, the "One vs. Other" debate, and stuff like that being centerfold in that plot). Payar being so cruel with them helped Ledas see the injustice of their position, see how he's not better off than them, and use his own agency and power to free them and himself. In the final draft of TF, this plot was mostly removed, though I kept Payar's sadism. It felt right for his character, and I didn't want to re-write him.

As he exists now, his bloodthirsty ways are used for other purposes, thematically and for the plot. But it's not just random that he is so cold-hearted. I worked it into the plot and themes of the story. For example, the way Payar treats Ledas in the latter half of the Lauto Saga really furthers the idea of Ledas seeing himself as no better than a slave and wanting to gain his freedom. This leads to an interesting confrontation in Lauto's cave between the two, with Payar's status for 10 chapters after that being left in doubt (the way the story's plot unfolded, Payar's anger at not being the captain of The Plantains and what that meant for the relationship he had with his governor is not resolved on-screen, and that leaves much of Payar's character arc and the resolution of his conflict with Guva up to the readers' imaginations). Again, this was me trying to differentiate the various Plantain members. I wanted them to be unique and distinguishable. They could not have the same exact history or personality. One of the more successful aspects of the Ginyu Force was that they were all so unique. And so I tried that with Payar. He certainly has the oddest arc of any of the Plantains, and this is reinforced by how he dies.

Payar also holds a grudge with Ledas from the start of the Lauto Saga and is particularly mean to the boy for as long as they are together. I put this into the story to add some interesting character dynamics and keep the drama constant on PC92. I never wanted there to be a sense of downtime on that planet. Ledas' safety - his well-being - had to always be in flux, and his rivalry with Payar was one of many ways I did that. Additionally, though the two do not get along well, Payar does act as a sort of teacher to Ledas. The way he teaches the boy is much different than the way Lieme does so, though. It's also interesting that Payar is a medic (this is shown in chapter 3 of the Lauto Saga), given his bloodthirsty inclinations and desire to kill many natives all the time. Him saving Ledas in chapter 3 of the Lauto Saga is quite the ironic moment, I must say.

Now the final thing of interest as it relates to Payar is that he has a weird relationship with Guva. Guva and him both like the gladiator matches and like seeing the natives die and get tortured. Yet, Guva miscalculated how loyal Payar was to him, so when he named Lieme the new captain of The Plantains after Banas was suspended, Payar's mood changed. He became much quieter, much more filled with rage. He was much more dangerous in the latter half of the Lauto Saga because of this. That is a big reason why his fight with Ledas on Lauto's planet broke out - it probably wouldn't have had Payar been the captain. But he felt betrayed. He is weaker than Lieme, and not as intelligent, and he can't use ki, so it's easy to understand why Guva promoted Lieme instead. Still, Payar took that as a slight, and that says a lot about his personality: he is prideful, insecure, desirous of agency, just like so many others. He may be a maniac and a genocider by nature, but at the same time, he shares many personality traits with others. The condition of trying to live and trying to deal with pain is universal, and that's what I was trying to show with Payar.

And I should also mention that Payar is killed in a very interesting way. Ledas mortally wounds him and then presents him to the PC92 natives, who then proceed to brutally murder Payar. This is perhaps the last bit of justice for the natives, the last hint of a plot for them resulting in their freedom. Now, they aren't freed anymore in the final version of TF, but being allowed to kill their chief tormentor like they do is perhaps a small comfort. Payar was always killed like this in all versions of TF, but with the removed natives' plotline in the final version, that gives this last scene between Ledas and the natives more weight. It's a conflicted scene, a complex scene, and not one that leads to full resolution for the natives. They do get their revenge, but in the end, they are not set free, and this leads to their disastrous revolt, which takes place between the third and fourth sagas. It's more brutal this way, but more realistic, and Payar's death is tonally in-line with his character arc and the themes of revenge and agency in TF. I have a high sense of justice, perhaps to a fault, and Payar's death was my own moral viewpoint influencing the plot and character arc of this alien in a specific way.

Payar's name is a pun on "papaya".

Meloon
Meloon was based on both Dodoria and Recoome. I wanted him to be slow and stupid, but powerful. He fulfills the role of the big, fat, slow, clumsy guy on The Plantains, which is a team slightly based on the Ginyu Force. He's archetypal in that sense - pretty much every saga of DB and DBZ has a warrior like Meloon. And, in DB/DBZ tradition, Meloon isn't as strong as he appears (he's the weakest Plantain). There wasn't a lot to Meloon in terms of personality. He presented a physical challenge to Ledas from the start of the Lauto Saga. He's symbolic of the PTO threat that the boy has to eventually deal with. One of the cool things about Meloon is that he serves as reference point for Ledas' growing strength. As he fights Ledas several times in the second and third sagas, this allowed me to show how Ledas gets stronger and stronger in each fight, until, in the final one, he easily dominates and kills Meloon.

Meloon's actual personality was left deliberately underdeveloped, when compared to all other named PTO soldiers on Planet Cooler 92. His big thing is that he likes to fight. He also likes to eat and likes to overestimate himself and underestimate his foes (this allows Ledas to use what his grandfather taught him when he fights Meloon in their two major fights of the Lauto Saga). Another thing I added in during the final edits was showing how he has to inject himself with a chemical solution every now and then to help his breathing. This gave him a unique, alien appearance that I am quite happy with.

Ledas' arc, in relation to Meloon, is one of overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds. At the start of the Lauto Saga, Meloon looms as this hulking, scary beast - one that Ledas has no hope of besting. And so when Ledas, after all his years of training, finally does overcome Meloon, that is a great, satisfying moment of character development for him. Meloon's death (and really, all of The Plantains') was based on this scene from the movie adaptation of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (particularly the moment where Sam takes on and defeats those Uruk-hai in an emotional moment of willpower and bravery).

Meloon's name is a pun on "melon". I specifically used that fruit for Meloon because a melon is big and round and Meloon is big and fat. I actually considered having Meloon be the name of the Payar character in the very earliest stages of TF, but once I realized that a melon gives a sense of a fat thing, I made Meloon the name of the big fat member of The Plantains.

Aprido
Aprido was created simply because I love Appule from DBZ and wanted another alien of that species for my own story. Originally, in the very earliest concepts of TF, I considered giving Ledas 10 Cui-race aliens and 10 Appule-race aliens to be his warriors. That was pretty much abandoned by the time I began to seriously plot out the story, though Aprido is the last remnant of that idea. He's a unique alien on Planet Cooler 92, because he's stronger than the regular soldiers, but he cannot compare to Ledas, Guva, or The Plantains. He's in that middle ground with perhaps a few others (though no one else of Aprido's level is shown in the story).

I developed Aprido's character on instinct. He has an inferiority complex and doesn't get along well with Ledas, yet he lives in the same room with the boy. There is a bit of a rivalry between them, though it is mostly Aprido's doing. For the final edits of TF, I focused Aprido's character more on Ledas, and pretty much every scene he's in has him trying to fuck up Ledas somehow. The last scene, of course, in the Stomping Grounds, leads to Aprido's death and Ledas' Super Saiyan transformation. And while Aprido is petty and vain and jealous, he's not a horrible person. He does kill the natives on occasion, but in terms of the various people on Planet Cooler 92, he's one of the more tame ones.

In the Stomping Grounds Saga, I developed an idea that he would want to replace Ledas' position on The Plantains, but he lacked the power to do so. For all of the years that Ledas had been gone, Aprido had been trying to get stronger and trying to get on that illustrious team for glory's sake. He was never successful, so when Ledas returned to the outpost, he became horrified that the boy was going to take the one thing that he was working towards. Taking that into account, Aprido's actions in that saga are rather straightforward and understandable.

It is interesting though that Banas valued Aprido - he didn't want Ledas to kill him under any circumstances, and when Ledas did, that was enough to make Banas want to kill the Saiyan boy. It's quite interesting, considering the fact that Aprido was never strong enough to get a spot on The Plantains, but he was able to endear Banas to him. This implies that Aprido has some other worth to the captain. That was more apparent in the earlier drafts of TF, but even in the final draft, it is somewhat clear that Aprido was working as a spy and/or scout for Banas, helping the captain watch Guva and learn about the conspiracies and gossip permeating through the outpost. So while Aprido had worth to the outpost and to various characters in this story, his role was highly complicated and a bit contradictory.

Aprido's name is a pun on "apricot".

Banas
Banas was created to be a bit like Captain Ginyu, although the comedy involving him is a bit more in my style instead of Toriyama's. He's cheeky, irreverent, casual, and lazy - all things I value in a leader. Early in the process of creating TF I came up with the idea that Banas and Guva would have conflict - and this fueled much of the plot of the Lauto Saga. Of course, I considered this to be like King Vegeta's plot in the first saga. At the time I originally created Banas and Guva, I did not know where their conflict would take them, but I soon got an idea for that as I began to write out scenes for the Lauto Saga.

So early in the creation of Banas, I was considering making either him or Guva female. But after I developed their rivalry a bit, I realized that there would be sexual implications in their rivalry if one of them was female, and I didn't want that. So they were both made males as a result. Banas in particular was based on my own sense of comedy and my distaste for authoritative figures ruling my life. He's the anti-PTO officer, to many degrees. Part of this was based on the fact that Banas is located on a distant PTO outpost, and thus his "professionalism" at the edge of the empire is not required as much as it would be in a world closer to the center of Cooler's empire. Banas' struggle is that of the individual against society, to a degree, and that was an interesting struggle to portray from his perspective, not Ledas'. Banas is part of the establishment he is annoyed so much by.

Banas does have an inferiority complex, and he struggles with the fact that Guva is the governor of Planet Cooler 92, not him. This is particularly seen in the early section of the Lauto Saga, or when Banas faces off against the rebels in chapter 8 of the Lauto Saga (when he calls PC92 his planet). He desperately wanted to be the governor, but since he's weaker than Guva and lost out to Guva in the trials to win the governorship of the planet, he does have some resentment.

Banas' backstory with Guva was more pronounced in previous versions of TF, with flashbacks to before Ledas arrived on the planet and more scenes with the two of them. There was also a planned special to show Guva's and Banas' struggles to win the governorship of Planet Cooler 92. That special was deleted, as were most of the flashbacks with the two and some of their scenes together. The thing I tried to do with Banas and Guva's relationship in the final version of the story was to portray it subtly, leaving much to the readers' imaginations. Their relationship is portrayed in gentle strokes now, as opposed to the poorly-written, heavy-handedness of the early drafts. Every scene they are in together now has more weight, because there are fewer such scenes.

So Banas' big thing is his friendship with Guva; this also has certain parallels to Ledas' friendship with Prince Vegeta, thematically. Banas considers Guva his friend, and perhaps Guva did at once - they certainly had a past together that hints at that. But the past is not the important part. It's the contrast between the past and the present, shown solely from the perspective of the present, that is important. Guva, as of this story, does not consider Banas his friend. He doesn't like the dude anymore. This is a stunning deterioration of their friendship, for Guva originally chose to make Banas his installation captain after becoming governor of the planet. He didn't have to do that, but he chose to do it. Now, he would like nothing more than Banas to die. This is tied to Guva's own personality and his growing paranoia. Guva becomes scared that Banas wants to kill him and take over the planet, which of course is not true (though Banas resents not being the governor, he would never kill Guva to take over the role - that's just not the kind of guy he is). This paranoia and the political maneuvering of the two as a result of Guva's belief is a major plot point in the Lauto Saga, and also in the last three chapters of the Stomping Grounds Saga. A lot of this stuff was just me having fun with the characters, doing what I wanted to do. However, after I developed this rift between the two, knowing that I could have all this paranoia and conspiracy stuff going on, I developed the plot around it.

Banas is closer to Ledas, even though Ledas prefers Guva, because Ledas was put on his team. So Ledas develops his fighting form more based on Banas. I formed Banas' fighting form, with his razor blasts and random fighting style so that I could have Ledas use aspects of that as he grows as a fighter himself. This of course is contrasted by Guva's calm, elegant fighting style.

Banas' plot arc was mostly improvised - him getting removed as the captain after it comes out that he met with rebels many years earlier and later orchestrating the plot to frame Ledas for his supposed misdeeds was all improvised based upon his character. I like to develop plot based on the natural unfolding of a character's motives, and that should be very apparent with Banas. Like his personality, Banas' plot is random, unexpected, and a bit humorous.

Banas' relationship with Guva takes a dark turn once he learns that Guva was trying to use Ledas and some of The Plantains to kill him. At that point, Banas finally accepts what he had not believed could possibly be true - that Guva is no longer his friend. Thus, his fight with Guva in the Stomping Grounds Saga as well as their conflicts in the Planet Earth Saga, is more than just an existential conflict - it's one built around their lost friendship. I wrote Banas to want to rekindle that friendship in PES. He went into that saga hoping that the two could become friends again, hoping that if he beat Guva, things would return to how they were. Unfortunately, that never happened, and he died in the ensuing battle. That is thematically significant in and of itself - the good guy or the good idea does not always rule the day.

Still, it is important to note that Banas goes out like a hero, in some sense. He goes out optimistic and happy that he still considers Guva a friend. Guva is villainized by killing Banas, even though both of them were villainous forces in previous sagas (to Ledas, specifically). Guva's death, of course, is contrasted by Banas' - Banas goes out like a man and retains his honor in death, while Guva decays and dies pathetically. So even though Guva beats him, Banas gets the last laugh. Banas is the more complex character of the two - his moral compass can point any direction on any given day - but in the end, he dies more like a traditional hero.

Banas' name is a pun on "banana". As a note, the fighting force he leads, The Plantains, is also related to this pun.

Lieme
Like the other members of The Plantains, Lieme fulfills a vague archetype. He's the "brainiac" of The Plantains. He has a distinct way of speaking that was influenced by Jun from Halo: Reach. I wanted Lieme to be very different from Meloon and Payar. Both of those two aren't very smart and are driven by their desires (though Payar is smarter than Meloon and is more obsessive). Lieme was going to be unlike them, to make him unique. He was going to be hyper-intelligent. Now, it's quite hard to write hyper-intelligence, so I had to be very careful with his dialogue. Notably, Lieme makes many observations in his dialogue, and this observational awareness is what I consider to the basis of any intelligent being (this idea, related to awareness, is also seen in Spindlerun: The Tale of Yajirobe). Much of his intelligence is based on awareness, though some of it is understated in his actions and dialogue.

The big thing with Lieme is that he can sense power levels and can raise and lower his power level at will. Early in the conceptualization of TF, I realized I needed a way for Ledas to learn how to sense power levels - scouters just wouldn't do beyond the first saga or so. Even from this early point, I realized that just giving Ledas the ability to sense power levels felt cheap. I didn't really know about Gary Stus when I came up with Lieme, but his effect is, in essence, a counter to a Gary Stu move. He teaches Ledas how to sense energy in a logical, fluid way so that Ledas earns this new ability. He isn't just given it. Ledas' adaptability as a Saiyan (based in part on his Zenkai ability) allowed him to quickly surpass Lieme, in terms of quickly lowering and raising his power level, though.

Lieme is also a character who assists others, like Banas and Guva, with a logical perspective on things. He is the most logical being in TF, so his advice is invaluable to them. Considering how irrational and emotionally-driven the characters in TF can be, Lieme is quite the voice of clarity... to an extent. He still has his own biases. He is threatened by Ledas' rising power level and by the boy's growing battle intellect. He is disturbed by what goes on on Lauto's planet, and also might've talked with Lenomi telepathically about Ledas. So there are some things about Lieme that make him not that straightforward of a character. He has internal contradictions, which makes him more realistic.

Still, there's an air about him that distances Lieme from the others. He has odd interactions with everyone, even Banas and Guva. He treats them, subtly, like they are his inferiors, even if he does show them lots of respect. He doesn't seem to really care about the gladiator matches, and the politics of the planet don't really concern him (notice how he doesn't seem to say anything about being named temporary captain by Guva, whereas Payar can't shut up about that; this is also seen when he refuses to stand down when Guva orders him to in chapter 12 of the Stomping Grounds Saga - politics and authority figures don't matter to him much - he does what he wants to do). It is notable that such a character is the one who connects with Ledas the most - even though Ledas doesn't really get along with anyone on Planet Cooler 92, he does get some inadvertent training from Lieme. Lieme isn't as hostile to Ledas as everyone else is. That is a consequence of Lieme's personality and of course the need for him to teach Ledas how to sense energy (that's pretty much the whole reason I created him, but after he was created, I then expanded his character and gave him an arc and made him thematically relevant and all that jazz (or so I hope)).

There are two other things I want to mention: one, Lieme's death was culmination of his character arc, just as it was for the other Plantains - the way he dies is the resolution of his character, so the way he dies should give a hint as to what the resolution is (as well as the build up to it); two, I'd like to think that Lieme only got to be temporary captain of The Plantains because he was secretly Guva's lover. Can't confirm that, though it's an intriguing thought I've had since the final edits of the Lauto Saga, where I saw a possibility for such. It was never written or expanded upon in the text of TF, but it's not like it couldn't have happened. I never wrote a deleted scene featuring them because that's gross as fuck, but I'm sure they could've been the subjects of such a scene had I really wanted to go down that path. As it stands, it's just vague why Guva chose Lieme to be the temporary captain instead of Payar (though, as I mentioned in Payar's section above, there are logical arguments for Lieme being picked), and I doubt I will ever get any more specific than that, as it doesn't interest me to.

Lieme's name is a pun on "lime". Incidentally enough, his skin color and general appearance were based on the fact that I used that fruit to pun his name on. Had I used a different fruit, he would have looked markedly different.

Guva
Guva is a traditionalist PTO soldier, similar to Zarbon or Cui. He has a certain elegance to him that was based on my own sense of quality - I specifically made his sense of elegance different from Zarbon's (which I don't consider to be that notable). Guva was always going to the be the ruler of Planet Cooler 92, even when I just had a list of names for the various PTO soldiers - the name itself seems like the name of the guy who rules the place, in my opinion. When I originally created Guva, I wanted him to be a Cooler-like force, albeit with less authority and power and presence.

I won't talk about the "Rise of Guva" special that was deleted or the flashback scenes in older versions of the Lauto Saga too much here, as I touched on most of that stuff in Banas' section above. The one thing I do want to mention about it, though, was that in those flashbacks and in that special, I was going to portray Guva as being more carefree, more chummy with Banas. He was happier then. Becoming governor, despite being a desire of his, is not something that positively impacted his personality and emotions.

As I mentioned in earlier sections, I briefly considered making Guva a girl, but after realizing that I was going to go all-in with his conflict with Banas, I decided against it, for I didn't want their rivalry/friendship to be sexual in nature. I developed the two to have pretty much opposite personalities so that their conflicting ways would be more apparent and easier to write. Banas is carefree, random, and irreverent. Guva is calm, elegant, traditional, and no fun. He was slightly based on the old 1950s archetype of these stuck up rich dudes who have lots of political power and are elitist as fuck. Of course, Guva's power is not just political - he is physically the strongest being on Planet Cooler 92 until chapter 9 of the Stomping Grounds Saga.

Guva was meant to be a contrast to Banas as a teacher to Ledas, as well. He teaches Ledas conflicting fighting philosophies and life lessons, compared to Banas. He also is the one who forces Ledas to take part in the conspiracy to kill Banas. Guva erroneously thinks that Banas wants to kill him and become the new governor of Planet Cooler 92 - while Banas would like to be governor and resents that he lost that title to Guva, he would never kill Guva for it. The fact that Guva doesn't know this shows how little he knows about his former friend. Guva's paranoia is definitely a knock against him. I wanted to show, subtly, how his paranoia is not based in reality and how this reflects on Guva's own sense of jealous and inner fears.

So Guva was this looming presence in the Lauto Saga. I held back with him, never having him fight until the rebels come to the planet. Then, he effortlessly defeats them, showcasing just how strong he is to The Plantains and Ledas (who struggled to fight off the rebels). Like Cooler and Frieza, Guva's power is vague, though it is accepted that he is unbelievably strong. He doesn't fight, he doesn't spoil his image, like Banas does. He only reveals his power in rare circumstances, resulting in awesome, dramatic displays of power. Restraint is the key with Guva, both in personality and execution as it relates to plot - at least in the first two sagas he's in.

Guva somewhat takes on a "father" figure for Ledas while the boy is on Planet Cooler 92. This greatly influences Ledas' fighting style and a bit of his development as a person as well. Note that after he leaves PC92, he keeps Guva's left arm guard with him. This is a physical reminder of his time on PC92, though it has symbolic meaning as it relates to their relationship too.

Guva is a static character in the Lauto Saga, but he breaks the mold in the Stomping Grounds Saga (very few characters are static in one saga and dynamic in others - it's usually one or the other for their entire time in the story) when he saves Ledas from Digranite. Guva does a risky move there, and it pays off for him down the road. This is the first evolution of his character. It's the first hint that maybe he can change. So he commits treason to save Ledas, and this is greatly ironic and hypocritical on Guva's part (he suspended Banas because of suspected treason - which wasn't even true! - and yet he commits actual treason in the Stomping Grounds Saga).

Guva of course is irrational. For all of his elegance and restraint, his hatred and fear of Banas is irrational. Thematically, I wanted to show how irrationality can drive stuff - notice how Guva's desire to kill Banas forces much of the last three chapters of SGS to happen. Banas' rationality and Ledas' rationality did not force this stuff to happen. It was primarily Guva's irrationality. And when we let the madmen be in charge, many bad things will happen. That is what I wanted to show with Guva's character at that point.

Guva's later battle with Banas in the Planet Earth Saga is focused on symbolism and thematic stuff, as I mentioned in Banas' section above this one. I won't repeat most of what I said there. As it relates to Guva, that fight is illustrative of how unaware of things he is. He didn't know that Banas still considered him a friend, wanted to rekindle their friendship. When he kills Banas in cold blood, that really makes Guva fall. It's interesting, since both of them have gone from being the villain to the hero (and in Guva's case, back to the villain). This is emblematic of me portraying the characters as grey characters - not defined black-or-white guys. Realistically, they both have good and bad things about them. Although, I must say Guva killing Banas after Banas says that he still considers Guva his friend is quite horrible. Though Guva won that fight (he had to, as he was physically stronger than Banas throughout TF), he lost in the end. I wanted Banas to go out nobly. Guva does not.

Immediately after the fight, he is captured by The Benefactor, and that begins the slow descent into madness for him. Guva becomes his slave to highlight his fall. He was once a powerful governor, but he loses all of his soldiers, the worth of his outpost, and his own freedom, after he kills Banas. It is no accident that after he completes his life's goal, his life collapses. I tried very hard to show how pathetic he's become in the Reunion Saga - even his death is pathetic. He's this major character, and yet his death is out-of-the-way, and written pretty much only to re-introduce The Benefactor. Notice how Banas' death (and most major characters' deaths) was the focus of the last chapter he was in, whereas Guva's death was not. Guva dies as the slave he tried to make Ledas into as Ledas watches him, as a free person.

Lastly, it is significant that in the Planet Earth Saga and Reunion Saga, Guva is physically wrecked in the fights he takes part in. This is a contrast from his clean, distant image in the Lauto Saga, where he refused to get involved in fights. He was once very noble and powerful, but him getting involved in so many fights, as well as getting heavily wounded in all of them, highlights his fall. As well, the fact that Guva is basically defeated by Yamcha and Chiaotzu and Tien in the Reunion Saga highlights how pathetic he is, since they are the three weakest Z Fighters (by far).

Guva's name is a pun on "guava". Part of the reason I chose him to be the leader of PC92 is because I love guavas.

Cooler
Cooler serves much the same role in saga 2 that Frieza did in saga 1, though Cooler is more laid-back than his brother. He has the same threatening persona, but he's a cooler dude. He has more awareness of how he can induce fear in others and seems to savor how he can subtly troll them. This is seen in chapter 2 of the Lauto Saga. I was very deliberate with his dialogue, and his line "tell me governor" is one I've had with me since the earliest point of TF. It's something that he would say and I built his entire scene with Guva around that quote alone.

In the Stomping Grounds Saga, I expanded Cooler's role during the final edits just because I thought it would be cool for Ledas to fight him. Of course, this was a bit difficult since Cooler is so much more powerful than Ledas at that time, but I found a way to make it work. During this scene, I continued on the earlier theme of having Cooler be very deliberate with his movements and be very "cool". That is seen with how he finds Ledas in chapter 2 of the third saga. I based his personality on how he acts in his canon movie, and I didn't deviate from that too much. Like Frieza, Cooler is a static character. The way he deals with the PTO rebellion, though, is interesting. It seems to be wearing on him, and the way he pursues Ledas (and even has Ledas come to the stomping grounds) shows that he's desperate to get this rebellion over with. He's scared for the future of the PTO. This is subtly portrayed in this story, though it is far more overt in my other story, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Planet Trade Organization (the PTO rebellion is finally defeated in chapter 17 of that story's first volume).

Planet Trade Organization Rebels
One thing I tried to do with the rebels was to show how they aren't much different from the regular PTO soldiers. Their dialogue, mannerisms, and fighting styles are all pretty much the same as the PTO soldiers'. Indeed, I didn't change much of anything when I wrote for them. The only difference is that these guys don't want to be slaves anymore. To that end, they are the most enlightened of the soldiers, though they die as easily as any of the loyal ones. Thematically, that contrast is important. I had fun with them in chapter 3 of the Lauto Saga, where several soldiers have an extended conversation with Banas. Those guys served a foreshadowing role as well as an expositionary one. They were not developed on their own, since they are so minor and that's not important for the story. As such, minor characters in general (and these guys in chapter 3 of LS are the best example of that) serve to move the plot forward, without an emphasis on character development.

Lauto
In the original two versions of TF, Lauto was a mysterious presence. Almost nothing was known about him, and indeed, I myself knew very little about him. I didn't know what or who he was, and his reasons for giving Ledas power (or, in the case of the 2012 draft, The Benefactor's power) was not well-thought out. So during the final edits I sought to create a distinct character for Lauto. What immediately came to my mind was that he could be a fallen Supreme Kai. This was slightly based on SSWerty's story, Dragon Ball ST: Origins of Serroli. But for the most part I just wanted to write about a Kai, and the idea of it got me thinking and got me excited, and thus Lauto was born.

I came up with an extensive backstory for Lauto, some of which is in KidVegeta's Theogony: From Silence to the Greater Kais and some of which is presented in TF based merely on my own fancies. I didn't base Lauto on anyone or anything in particular. The idea of this fallen, powerful god-like being works well to foreshadow Verlate and also serves the themes of this story quite well. Lauto is actually quite a bit like Verlate - the extent of his villainy is vague, and it's not clear if he is truly bad. He needs to get a new body to live, so can you blame him for wanting to continue to persist? Everyone's goal in life, primarily, is to remain alive. However, he does subvert another being to do so, which is villainous.

The cool thing about Lauto is that he's a villain in conflict with another villain. His stuff with TB makes it hard to pick sides, since both of them are bad dudes who want to do bad things (maybe). Their struggle is as much a physical one as it is a philosophical one. With Lauto, I wanted to show that I could quickly and carefully construct a complex character. His monologues reveal much about his past and what kind of person he is; this is pretty much the same idea I used for quickly characterizing Verlate, too. And he has all these thoughts and actions that show that he's not entirely good, not entirely bad. He's out for himself. Depending on one's moral views, that's can be a good or a bad thing.

Lauto is also quite elitist, even after he's defeated by The Benefactor. The way his hallucinations turned on him at the end was also done to give him a little more backstory in a unique way. The fact that he was the last Grand Supreme Kai to be demoted before Majin Buu appeared is a cool little tidbit that actually says a lot about his character. He's like Verlate and the Daman to an extent - they tried to play at being gods, though Lauto took it to an extreme. I certainly considered the parallel between the Daman and the Kais (specifically Lauto) during the final edits, when I made Lauto into who he is now. The past repeats itself, and people never change. These two ideas were important building blocks for Lauto's character.

Lauto's name is a pun on "old man" or something similar (perhaps even wizard or magician) in Japanese or Chinese. I can't find the word I punned his name on, but I'm pretty sure it was based on one of those aforementioned words.

Planet Cooler 92 Natives
As I've mentioned several times already, the stuff with the Planet Cooler 92 natives in the Lauto Saga was once one of the most important plotlines of the story. I changed that during the final edits, reducing the natives' role in the story significantly because I didn't like how their stuff was in previous versions of TF. However, the role of the natives is not tremendously different now than it was back when they were in a lot more chapters. Basically, the natives are slaves to the PTO, and they lack the power to defend themselves from the cruelty of those aliens, particularly Payar. Part of Ledas' arc in the Lauto Saga is him realizing that he's a slave just like them, and this makes him both sad and angry. These characters are pretty much faceless, and they have symbolic worth instead of individualistic worth within the confines of the story.

Nothing goes good for the natives, just as very little goes good for Ledas - though I would say Ledas has it much easier on PC92 than the natives do. There are moral grey areas with them, such as when Ledas has to fight them in the gladiator match, when he chooses to kill Aprido for killing some, when he eventually goes Super Saiyan at the goading of Payar... all of this is basically written to make the original themes on colonialism, agency, and individuality more nuanced in the final story. These themes existed in the previous versions of TF, but they took up too many words in those versions. I streamlined the plot and themes as it relates to the native in the final version of TF, and thus the natives' arc is actually still quite similar to how it originally was, even though everything is portrayed more subtly.

Another thing of note is that Ledas doesn't save the natives. In previous versions, I considered doing that, but in the final version, it is specifically noted that he does not save them. He does kill The Plantains and leaves Banas for dead, but he leaves Guva and the regular soldiers for the natives to deal with. He doesn't seem interested in helping them find the personal liberation he sought himself. This is part of Ledas' arc and his portrayal as a grey character (he's not good or evil, but he does do both good and bad things). The natives later rebel, and they actually win because of their overwhelming numbers. They manage to kill all soldiers on PC92 aside from Guva, and when Guva finds out, he basically eradicates them (though a very small population of them persisted beyond the end of TF, though they may go extinct some time after the story's end, due to how low their numbers were). The natives are one of the "the forgotten" because of how they are treated by all characters in TF and how their arc concludes.

Ledas' Saibamen
I don't remember exactly how I got the ideas for these guys, but I remember that once I had the idea, I was very excited. These Saibamen were essentially like Pokemon for Ledas - a little more intelligent and dangerous than mere pets. And that seemed really cool to me. It would give him a small measure of comfort on PC92 for the short while he had them while he was on that planet. They were his only friends there, so Ledas bonded with them well. It's no accident that only he out of all of The Plantains had his Saibamen survive the battle against the rebels on the vanadium mining facility. He saw value in them to give him comfort at his loneliest point. So beyond the mere coolness of him having pet Saibamen, Ledas did use the Saibamen to comfort him and to grow as a character. It's telling that he treated them well, despite how he was being treated by those above him. It is thematically significant that the training "devices" Ledas and Prince Vegeta used in the Prince Vegeta Saga, which they did not care about very much and killed by the scores to become stronger, turned out to be Ledas' pets/friends in the next saga. And to that end, his Saibamen also helped him grow stronger, though not physically.

These Saibamen like to have fun, fight, and be raucous. They are like little kids with perhaps slightly more awareness. Their one scene in the Planet Earth Saga where they talk (in Saiba-speak, to be sure) reveals a lot about their personalities. The respect Ledas showed them was mostly reciprocated (at least by Wilde, Carawa, Ses, and Ame), and that's a cool character-building moment for them. That was actually based on the episode of Pokemon where Ash and Misty and Brock lose their Pokemon, leading the Pokemon to be the protagonists for the episode. That episode provided good insight and characterization of those Pokemon, and I tried to do the same with the Saibamen scene in PES.

The scene with Sonfla redeeming himself in the Planet Earth Saga is based on his guilt for disappointing Ledas. He wanted to repay his master's kindness and loyalty with the ultimate sacrifice, and it's a very moving moment to me personally, though I expect most readers don't care that much about him.

Aside from that, there's little else to say. I'm not sure to what capacity these Saibamen will appear in future stories, but they probably will appear in some way and get some resolution (that probably means dying, to be fair). I find the various "levels" of Saibamen fascinating - like what colors they turn when they get stronger, and that was a fun issue to tackle in this story. I may do more of that in future Ledas stories.

Lenomi
Lenomi didn't exist until the final version of TF. Because of that, I was able to look over the entire story and see what types of characters were missing from it that I wanted to add. In this case, I saw a role for a female PTO warrior. Lenomi's character was then created around the PTO rebels, and this gave her a unique personality. She's a rebel, yes, but she's not fanatical. She calmly and logically explains to Ledas how the PTO is just a massive slaving operation and how she will not allow herself to be a part of that. This explanation is influential on Ledas, for it gets him thinking more about how he's really a slave (which later leads to his Super Saiyan transformation). Lenomi is a static character, because she's only in one chapter of TF, but her role is to educate and influence Ledas, even if he doesn't understand he's being influenced by her. In fact, he overtly rejects her rebellion (and ultimately kills her), but subconsciously, he lets her words influence him, and that gives Lenomi significant worth beyond her single-chapter appearance.

Also, one other thing I want to mention is that Lenomi is the same race as Lieme, and their species can communicate with one another telepathically. During the two chapters where The Plantains are infiltrating her base, it is implied that Lenomi and Lieme are in communication with one another. What their communication is, and if they knew each other from a long time ago, is not stated. However, I would think that Lieme, like Ledas and Banas, rejected her offer to join the PTO rebels.

Lenomi's role is also based on the themes of the story, particularly the one related to the PTO rebels that not everything in life is resolved neatly - that's just not realistic. Lenomi is a mid-ranking member of the PTO. She's not its leader or even one of the higher ranking members. So when she dies, the PTO rebels are not defeated, even though they take a major blow. Thus, I created Lenomi's character to serve a highly thematic role. This is again the influence of The Sopranos on my writing, for that philosophy is a hallmark of that series.

Lenomi's name is a pun on "lemon". I chose that fruit in particular because she's the same race as Lieme, and his name is based on "lime".

Digranite
Digranite was based on the Armored Kantus from the Gears of War series and the Skirmisher from the Halo series. The concept behind this guy was that I wanted to make the baddest motherfucker this side of the space Mississippi. The PTO soldiers in the Prince Vegeta Saga and Lauto Saga were pretty cool, and some of them had some nice, epic moments. But none of them were as intense as I wanted this guy to be. I knew that there would be one big bad guy for Ledas to fight in the Stomping Grounds Saga, and it wasn't going to be Cooler. So I wanted to make a memorable villain who is unlike any of the other PTO soldiers in TF, and yet is cooler than all of them.

Digranite is intense, but he has a sense of confidence perhaps unmatched by anyone outside of Cooler or Frieza in the PTO arc of this story. He's also not arrogant, like most warriors in this universe are. The difference between confidence and arrogance is a small thing, but it's what separates Digranite from everyone else. He is a natural-born leader, unlike many of the other villains of this story, such as The Benefactor, Verlate, and Lauto. He's a ruthless, yet adaptable fighter. He's also very loyal to Cooler and to the PTO cause, even to the end, which is shown by the last beam struggle before his death. As can be seen, there's a somewhat odd combination of personality traits that I came up with for Digranite, and that is no accident. I wanted him to be a memorable guy.

Digranite's dialogue was difficult for me to write. It's not that hard to write one or two badass quotes - anyone can come up with a line within the vague archetypes of what is badass. But I needed like a dozen lines. I remember it being a struggle to write for him. He has to be badass, but there has to be restraint there. He can't be too cheesy. Now, being a little cheesy is fine, since most villains are like that, even the ones who take themselves far too seriously. But I wanted his dialogue to be amongst the best of any character, so that was a struggle. I think it worked out great in the end, but it's never really for the author to judge.

I spent a lot of time working on the fight scenes with Digranite and his foes, and that is due to his status of being a big bad guy - a final boss, if you will. His battles are amongst the most dramatic and memorable in the series because his conflict with Ledas is the climax of a massive plot arc and a characterization arc for Ledas. Digranite is a character I was very careful with. I built him up and foreshadowed his importance in several scenes in earlier chapters before he meets Ledas.

Digranite's character fills a tonal void in TF as the intensity of him and his fights harken back to the times of Goku vs. Frieza in the Namek Arc, when things really got serious in that series. The fights he has with Ledas and Guva are tonally different from the fights that came before them, and they are the precursors to Ledas vs. The Benefactor in the Fulfillment Saga, as well as SS3 Vegeta vs. The Benefactor, amongst others.

Digranite's name is a pun on "pomegranite". I knew as soon as I came up with that name, out of the list of 8 alien names I came up with when I prepared to create the Stomping Grounds Saga, that it was going to be the name of the leader of the aliens whom Ledas would have to face in that saga. Sometimes I just know with a name: how it looks, how it sounds, etc. (this was also true with Guva). So yeah, that was the case here.

Nepar
Nepar was one of those guys I made just to see how radical I could get with character design. I was sick of creating so many alien bipeds, so I went a different route with him. His appearance was influenced by this Magic the Gathering card. That was just a starting point, and I made Nepar a good deal more interesting than that dragon looks. His smokey, dark, demon-like appearance was a slight precursor to the Screechers seen in the Fulfillment Saga. I'm an aesthetic at heart, so it should come as no surprise that some of my ideas for what looks cool would be similar to one another. His appearance was set up so that I could have a different way for Ledas to combat him than he normally used to fight most bipeds. This also allowed me to have a cool battle with Great Ape Ledas and Nepar. His Great Ape form would be quite ineffective against smaller, faster beings, so this was the best foe to have Ledas use that form against.

Aside from that, I decided to not make Nepar sentient. He's an animal - basically, a guard dog or pet owned by Cooler. This fact made the encounters between Nepar and Ledas unique, and of course, since Nepar can't talk, I was forced to have Ledas think out loud quite a bit, when he was around Nepar. Nepar's overall purpose was to create some really awesome fights, and I think I accomplished that in part because of how unique his body is.

Nepar's name is a pun on "pear".

Grif
Grif was fucking rad to write for. He's another comedic PTO character, and his comedy is amongst my favorite I've ever written. His sarcasm and laziness was based on Grif from Red vs. Blue, to an extent, although much of his sarcasm is my own style of humor as well. His laziness and general "I don't give a fuck" personality was something based on me, and his dialogue was very easy to write as a result. I liked the idea of Ledas facing a type of foe he had never encountered before, especially one physically weaker than him. Then, the fact that he actually loses to Grif makes it all that much funnier to me. Because I like to mix drama with comedy, in traditional Toriyama style, I had several expansive scenes with Grif. Remember that around the Grif scenes were scenes with Mullpy and Cooler, so Grif's presence really holds the first arc of the Stomping Grounds Saga like glue. His comedy was really fun to do, and considering all the dramatic scenes I knew would be in the Stomping Grounds Saga, I wanted to use Grif to his maximum potential to balance the comedy and drama as closely as possible.

The way I had Grif die basically symbolizes his entire life, though it's interesting that he's the only named character in SGS whom Ledas does not kill. Grif's entire arc is one of sheer laziness and ineptitude. It's lucky he's even on that planet to begin with (I'd speculate he was a vermin on one of the space ships coming to the stomping grounds and then got marooned there). There are certain deliberate parallels between the luck he has in life and the luck Ledas has.

Grif's name is a pun on "fig", and it's also a reference to Dexter Grif from RVB, mentioned above.

Mullpy
Mullpy is a weird fellow, with surprising (yet, at the same time, disappointing) strength, and he's unintentionally comedic. He's really a "Toriyama-style" PTO villain, and if you don't know what that means, then you need to re-watch DB and DBZ. As I've said before, I wanted to make true "alien" characters for the Stomping Grounds Saga and Mullpy being a floating octopus-like alien was one way to do that. His physicality is a big part of his character.

Mullpy is not in much of the story, which is why I had to use his mannerisms and dialogue to quickly characterize him. I don't think he ever knew what hit him, given by how he acts around Ledas. Also, I'd like to think that Mullpy's silliness explains why Grif is the way he is (since Grif is Mullpy's soldier).

Konatsu
Konatsu was my attempt to make a cool villain - a vicious, fearsome warrior. Like many other aliens on the stomping grounds, he looks quite weird, physically. Again, this is me trying to make the aliens on the stomping grounds appear a little more wild and a little more "alien" than those on Planet Cooler 92. He's got four arms and is furry and has a weird appendage on his face, and it's rad. On a side note, the Malik picture of Konatsu irritates me because it looks nothing like what he actually looks like. He's not a furry, cuddly yeti. He's a sleek, feral space tiger. He looks quite different from Malik's interpretation of him.

The main inspiration for him was a tiger - although I wanted him to be a water tiger. Obviously, there are no water scenes on the stomping grounds, so he's a fish out of water, so to speak. But the concept of his character remains. The ferocity of a big predator, like a tiger, was an influence on how Konatsu talks. He's very threatening and very calm. He's Digranite lite. He's the archetype of what I would like to see most PTO officers be like.

To further this idea of Konatsu being based on a tiger, I had his whole arc with Ledas be a cat-and-mouse chase with the hunter becoming the hunted near the end of it. Because of this, I built up the last confrontation into a nice bait-and-switch moment where Ledas gets the better of Konatsu by outsmarting him. Indeed, Konatsu is powerful and ferocious, but he's not that smart, and he's outwitted more than once in the two chapters he's in. The last time costs him his life, when he thinks he has Ledas cornered and lets the boy get away and then kill him with a ki sword. What's also interesting is that Konatsu is very patient (just like any true tiger), and he was patient to a fault in chapter 5 of the Stomping Grounds Saga when he called for Anango's help. It's not clear if he actually needed help to defeat Ledas. And by calling in Anango, the whole cat-and-mouse chase began, resulting in both Anango's and Konatsu's deaths. So Konatsu may have poor judgement, which is quite the personality deficiency for someone of his rank.

Konatsu's name is a pun on "coconut".

Anango
Anango's a nerd, yo. He's less intelligent than Lieme and a bit more stuck up. He doesn't have that much of a defined personality, since he's only in a chapter or two, but what he does reveal about himself is interesting - he knows the Saiyans' tail weakness and some nice tactical fighting techniques. He's also way too confident, based on the readings his scouter gives him. He relies too much on technology, and he pays the price for doing so, in the end. He does not anticpate that Ledas could lower his power level to fool the scouter's readings. And that shows that Anango is not quite as intelligent as Lieme, even if he is smarter than the average alien. Anango is an amalgamation of various PTO traits (the thing with the Saiyan tail was based on Piccolo, though); he's the prototypical PTO officer, and as such, he's easily taken out by Ledas, who is not prototypical in the slightest.

Anango's appearance is atypical as well. Though he's a biped, the way his legs are situated and the structure of his face were all deliberate choices on my part to make him look "alien" and fearsome - this is a re-ocurring theme with the stomping grounds aliens. Though he has four arms, like Konatsu, this is a coincidence - I came up with their appearances at different times (I think weeks apart), and only realized I had made them both four-armed creatures after I began writing Anango's scenes in the Stomping Grounds Saga. That said, they don't really look alike. Anango is a good deal more grotesque, while Konatsu is a fine beauty.

Anango's name is a pun on "mango".

Sika and Sarpack
Sika and Sarpack were written to be Digranite's hot bodyguards. They were based on female Twi'leks, somewhat. I wanted them to be fearsome and sexy. Knowing they are twins, that meant they weren't going to be that distinct from each other. I did try to make them a little different in their dialogue, and that can be seen with the energy the two put into what they say. Sika's a bit more laid-back and logical, whereas Sarpack is a bit more impulsive and bloodthirsty. These differences are very minor, though. Overall, the two are quite similar. I wanted them to be seductive and loyal. I wanted it to be clear to the readers that they aren't Digranite's bodyguards for protection purposes - he is far stronger than their combined strengths, of course. Their primary purpose is to keep Digranite company and provide him with sexual pleasure.

On a related note, I considered writing a deleted scene involving these two. I didn't know if it was just going to be between them, or if it would feature Digranite or Ledas. Suffice to say I didn't see a good opportunity to make one with Ledas, and I didn't feel like writing one with these two and Digranite, so the scene was never done. A Ledas scene with the two of them could be pretty cool, but it would have to be alternate universe, and I'm not interested in things that don't actually happen.

So aside from that, these characters are pretty straightforward. They look sexy, but their main plot purpose is to introduce Digranite. After Digranite is introduced, they are killed off pretty quickly. These two are some of the strongest fighters in the PTO as well (probably in the top 5%, if not top 2%), and Guva takes them out easily. The way they die symbolizes their purpose not only to the plot, but to Digranite himself.

Sika's name is a pun on "watermelon" (in Japanese). Sarpack's name is a pun on "satsuma". Incidentally enough, when I created these two names, I thought that there was a good possibility they could be related aliens. This was when I had just the 8 stomping grounds aliens' names, and didn't have any of their personalities or roles figured out yet. But, the names sounded similar enough to me, so I knew even before I had much of an idea of where to take the Stomping Grounds Saga plot or its alien characters that I wanted these two to be related.

Nurse Yorokobi
The nurse is a classical sexual archetype, so that's the main reason Yorokobi originally existed. She is based on Nurse Joy from the original series of the Pokemon anime (she looks similar to Nurse Joy, has the same profession as her, and also has pink hair). I developed her to be sexually aroused primarily by young, pubescent boys. She is a hebephile, and is a woman, so that is an atypical combination shown in literature. This was an easy excuse to get her interested in Ryori and Ledas. What she does to Ryori and Ledas could legally be considered rape, but I don't consider it to be so - reality always trumps legality, in my view. The reality of the situation is that both of them wanted it. Her main purpose was to give both of them sexual pleasure, but not take Ledas' virginity (I wanted him to lose his virginity to a pure-blooded Saiyan - and that turned out to be Chaiva). Her dialogue and all that jazz in the deleted scene was not meant to do much other than further the sexual fantasy - she does not develop as a character; she is a static girl.

In the final edits of TF, I did put Yorokobi in several scenes in the Fulfillment Saga to build up her role a bit. Her hebephilia is on display in all of these scenes, showing how her sexual orientation, like anyone else's, does drive many of her actions in life. She is a professional, though, as is seen with how she deals with Cardinal and Ryori medically. However, she's not "perfect", for she takes a bribe from Cardinal to give him more meds. I personally don't have a moral issue with that, but some people would. I think she's just a person. She doesn't fit an archetype of good or evil, as pretty much no one does. She does what she thinks is best for her, and that is a normal thing. Due to her position, though, the fact that she can be selfish may give some readers pause. Still, I think she is quite good at her job and doesn't let her sexual orientation or sense of morality get in the way of that.

Yorokobi's name is a pun on "joy" in Japanese. This is again a reference to Nurse Joy from Pokemon.

Screechers
The Screechers were mere fancies of mine, not really based on anything in particular. I liked the image of these little, sharp-featured, black-colored demon-like creatures, and so they were put into the story. They are emblematic of Verlate's insanity, and of her more devious side. She does not let herself descend into deep emotion during the first couple of chapters of her arc (when the Screechers are around), and lets her emotions be released within these creatures. Remember how, after she revealed herself to The Benefactor and Ledas, Verlate at one point conjures up a Screecher as she is having a debate and squeezes on it, hurting it greatly - this is a metaphor for how her wild, emotive side (the Screecher) is at odds with her preferred state-of-being (the calm visage of Verlate herself). This is even seen in the name "Screechers". They like to screech, to let themselves be known. For Verlate, who is forgotten and quiet and logical, this is at odds with her normal personality. She later descends into ranting form in the latter half of her arc, but she mostly rants to herself and doesn't let The Benefactor and Ledas know what is going on. So taking that in mind, it is most curious that the Screechers let themselves and their intentions be known (by screaming) rather plainly.

The Screechers are certainly odd and seem to be like Gremlins, in a way. I think that reference was unconscious, though. The Screechers can be restrained when they want to be, and can go absolutely crazy and be quite vicious when they want to. They are at Verlate's mercy. I thought it was more fitting for Ledas to fight them, instead of The Benefactor, for it looked cooler to have Ledas fight them, in my mind's eye. As well, they are closer in size to him. The way they attack Ledas in "Ye Mighty", as well as they way they just act in that chapter (with them sitting in the dead trees, then screeching, then attacking The Benefactor and Ledas when the two try to attack each other) sets the tone for Verlate's mind prison, so they are crucially important to the story, beyond their purpose of just fighting Ledas (and sometimes The Benefactor). Like the Lurker and Verlate's tentacles, they are not real things - they are figments of Verlate's mind, so they cease to exist when she does.

Verlate
In her special, Forever Alone, I wanted to show Verlate going through troubling times that were beyond her control. Despite her power and her position as a "mortal god", she is unable to save the Kais or herself. This feeling of helplessness directly leads to her being "forgotten" by the time of the sagas of TF. I wanted to give her a personality that makes her seem alien to the readers. The way she speaks, acts, and holds herself is not how a human would do any of those things. More so than with the other alien characters in TF, this was important for her, for Verlate is thematically isolated as well as physically isolated from the rest of the universe. I also wanted to humble her, for she is rather arrogant and elitist. This is seen with her losing to the Kais and also learning about riddles from Korin - despite her intelligence and arrogance, Verlate doesn't know about riddles and has to be taught about them by Korin. In the third chapter of Forever Alone, Verlate takes a subverted role intellectually, whereas in the previous two chapters, she was being subverted physically and philosophically. So the main arc of her character in that special was to subvert her and make her be forgotten. It's a striking fall for someone of such power, intelligence, and worth in the universe.

I originally was going to make Verlate a male, but after I thought about it a bit, I realized there weren't enough female characters in TF, so I changed her to a female. This impacted how I portrayed her character, I'm sure, but I'm not sure to what capacity, for I never wrote about Verlate as a male.

In TF, much of Verlate's characterization occurred during the final edits. The first two chapters she is in were completely written for the final edits. While those chapters were greatly influenced by my own aesthetic inclinations, I also wanted to characterize Verlate as someone who's become insane during her time in the mind prison. All those millions of years of isolation have made her a bit crazy, and she's become impatient since meeting Korin - she wants to get out of the mind prison more than anything. I wanted to show that she no longer considers her punishment in Forever Alone fair. In that story, she willingly went into her mind prison. She had no concept of the hell the mind prison actually was. That development of her character mostly happened off-screen.

Verlate was Shakespearean in nature, which perhaps only Lauto had any hint of, of the other characters in TF. Her character is thus unique. She likes to monologue in eloquent fashion. This hints at her educated, god-like upbringing, but it also serves to show how her character has been changed by the mind prison. She's significantly different as a person in Forever Alone and in the Fulfillment Saga. Her monologues serve to characterize her quickly in the Fulfillment Saga, primarily. Since her actual "real" self exists in only two chapters of the saga (roughly), it was important for me to get through her arc quickly and coherently. Having her monologue, emoting her thoughts openly, was a good way to do that. The fact that she is doing that shows the burden of the mind prison - she is no longer able to keep her feelings and thoughts inside her.

Despite being in only five chapters of the Fulfillment Saga, Verlate has one of the most cohesive arcs of any character in TF. The resolution to her arc is also quite unique - she settles on the idea of suicide primarily as a way to fulfill her character. It's not a rash, emotional decision to escape the pain of life. She realizes that there's no escape from the mind prison. Her arc fulfilled itself when she agreed to be punished millions of years ago. She's persisted beyond thought and time, being one of the "forgotten" who has actually survived beyond her legacy. Obviously, her arc is tied to the themes of the story because of that, and that was something I considered heavily when I wrote for her. I wanted to show that her decision to commit suicide was a rational, calm one. She has all this emotional, loud, obnoxious stuff before she decides to do that. But when she finally decides to kill herself, to give in to mortality, Verlate is numb and calm. She has moved beyond her emotionally-charged personality seen in earlier scenes. Thus, the suicide is the fulfillment of her character arc.

One last thing that is important to note about Verlate is that though I made her a villain of the Fulfillment Saga, she's not overtly good or overtly evil. She doesn't really care about the morality of Ledas and The Benefactor; she doesn't take sides in their conflict, and even when she dies, she doesn't care which one of them will get stuck in the mind prison after she's gone. I specifically made Verlate one of the greyest characters in TF because she was a former god - so her sense of morality is one that matters. Even in her mind prison, she's the god lording over The Benefactor and Ledas. Still, her lack of a traditional sense of morality is thematically relevant and perhaps shows a bit of the Damani ruling mindset (albeit corrupted to an unknown degree). Verlate's struggle is one of agency and of finding freedom. She wants to atone for her sins, but she doesn't want to be stuck in the mind prison forever. She tries to do anything to get out. Morality is not something that matters to her in the mind prison, though it did seem to matter to her somewhat in Forever Alone (though even in that story, she was mostly amoral). Verlate's lack of conventional morality is not a good or bad thing; her actions were mostly forced upon her.

Verlate's name is a pun on "Verlaten", an island in the Krakatoa island chain. Why have all these puns and references to Krakatoa with the Daman characters? Well, The Daman in general are based off of the Rakata species from the Star Wars universe, and that species' name is a reference to one of the islands of Krakatoa.

Verlate's Tentacles
These characters come from Hermaeus Mora's realm of Apocrypha in Skyrim's Dragonborn dlc. As I was playing that game around the time I wrote the final edits for the Verlate arc of the Fulfillment Saga, I was influenced to put the tentacles into this story. These guys do a bit of damage to The Benefactor and show the darker side of Verlate. As well, their encounter with TB shows how The Benefactor can get himself damaged when he underestimates his foes - and this later becomes important during the last battle between Ledas and The Benefactor. These tentacles ultimately aren't very important - they are by far the least important of the three creatures Verlate creates in her arc - and yet, they do have value in foreshadowing later events. They also set a creepy tone for the inside of Verlate's mind prison and show how she's become somewhat insane. I'm certain a sane Verlate would not have created masses of tentacles springing out from cracks in stone in a water-logged ruin to attack The Benefactor.

Lurker
The Lurker was influenced by the Lurker enemies in Skyrim's Dragonborn dlc. I wanted there to be a huge, "final boss" kind of character for The Benefactor to face in Verlate's mind prison, and I also wanted him and Ledas to face different enemies so that their divergent storylines in the mind prison wouldn't be repetitive. I was playing a lot of Skyrim around the time I was writing the final edits for the stuff in Verlate's mind prison, so that's why I referenced a mighty foe from that game. I wanted a big baddie for The Benefactor to face, which would put him in a situation he's never been seen in before. As well, I wanted the Lurker to be able to really punish The Benefactor - and this wouldn't be as apparent had he fought a bunch of Screechers - so that Ledas would have a better chance against him in chapter 9 of the Fulfillment Saga (this is also a Skyrim reference, for when I first played Dragonborn, the Lurkers were very difficult for me to fight and beat, and I tried to recreate that with The Benefactor's fight against the Lurker in this story). So the Lurker primarily fulfilled plot desires of mine in this story. His fight against The Benefactor is legit though. I really like how their beam struggle went.

Tournament Announcer
The Tournament Announcer is a classic character, and his role as being the commentator of tournament fights is legendary. He was put in this story, during the tournament fights of the last chapter of the last saga, for nostalgia's sake, mostly. Most of his dialogue comes from his dialogue in Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2, word-for-word. I like this guy a lot, and I've featured him significantly in Sink to the Bottom, so I never felt forced putting him in. In fact, to make writing the last chapter a little easier and to make Ledas' fight against Trunks a little more fun for me personally, I decided to add this guy in. Lots of unintentional comedy with him, even in the last scene he's in, when he commentates Ledas' fight with Vegeta, but no one can hear him because his microphone is unplugged. Great stuff there. I didn't develop this guy, for he's a canon character and he only appears in one chapter - so he's a static character, but an entertaining one at that. Him being in the final chapter has tonal implications, for he makes everything a little more lighthearted.

Master Loriphim
Loriphim takes on the role of the Old Iyxan from the old versions of Outbreak: Paved In Blood. He's somewhat of a fatherly/parental figure for The Benefactor. He's not a good man, and he's not a bad man. He's a grey, complex character, and he's based on one of my teachers whom I never liked very much. The Benefactor learns from Loriphim how to hunt and how to kill, though in the end, he doesn't like how the man treats him, so he kills him. This would be like Ledas killing King Vegeta or Nappa. Loriphim does shape much of The Benefactor's personality, making the boy hate most living beings because of how terrible a man he is. That is The Benefactor's first major test in Outbreak. He exerts his own agency against Loriphim's and forces the man to kill his daughter before committing suicide. This was all done to hurt Loriphim emotionally as well as physically. While Loriphim fulfills much the same role as the Old Iyxan, his more complex personality is a good example of how my writing has grown throughout the years. He is the first major person to oppose The Benefactor, and he pays dearly for that. Loriphim's name was inspired by the Seraphim and Nephilim.

Nico
Nico is a foil to The Benefactor, showing how odd and out-of-place TB's bloodlust is. He's a normal kid, and I didn't develop his personality much. The fact that he's so young and relatively well-mannered makes his death that much more horrific, and all of these decisions were made in order to develop The Benefactor's character development and further the tone of Outbreak: Paved In Blood. His name comes from a person on my high school soccer team.

Igear
Igear is somewhat indistinguishable from Nico. Both are just boys who serve as foils to The Benefactor, and him killing them has massive character development and tonal consequences for the story. The two do have subtly different ways of talking, though, and I made Igear quieter, humbler, and a better speaker. His death is also more gruesome than Nico's in order to build up The Benefactor's development. I couldn't just have the same kind of death twice in a row - that doesn't show progress. Igear's name comes from a vendor in the Undercity on the planet Taris in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. This name was originally a name for an unused Cardinal lackey, though I re-purposed it for TB's special after I realized I wasn't going to use that Cardinal lackey. It definitely sounds like an Iyxan name to me.

The Benefactor's Mother
The Benefactor's mother is an interesting character and one of the most enigmatic beings in TF. Because so little is known about her, even from The Benefactor's perspective, she is held in an idealized state of being. She is the ideal of the motherly figure, the missing motherly figure whose lost presence has caused her son to descend into chaos. She appeared to be the only one who could control The Benefactor, and her disappearance/death was the impetus leading to The Benefactor destroying his species.

Everything about her was ambiguous. Why she cut herself is ambiguous. What happened to her husband is ambiguous. Who killed her is ambiguous (was it TB, Frieza, or unnamed Iyxans?). But her influence over The Benefactor is profound. His cut himself up to mimic her and spent almost all of Outbreak looking for her. Indeed, he destroyed his species just looking for her. So that shows how much she mattered to him. In fact, she is the only person whom The Benefactor seems to have cared about. The ideal of her brings out the more emotional side of The Benefactor. But I was careful to never give specific closure to her character, for thematic reasons.

The Benefactor's mother also appears in a hallucinatory form in the Lauto Saga and is mentioned in the Stomping Grounds Saga. This was all done to give The Benefactor character development. Notice too that the main reason he went after Lauto and wanted to kill that disgraced Supreme Kai was that he brought up TB's mother. TB doesn't want to think about his mother. It's the one subject that truly hurts him, to the end of his life. He cared about her so much. He loved her so much. We know so little of her character, so how she has affected her son is the most important quality of The Benefactor's mother. The Benefactor's mother also serves to show how not every question in the universe is answered. She could probably be considered one of the "forgotten" as well. But to think that such a minor person, just a regular female Iyxan, could be the root cause of her species' near extinction, is very cool to me.

Ayale
Ayale is pretty much just a plot device. I wanted to build up to her having a romantic relationship with The Benefactor but then not paying that off for a twist. Her main purpose is to have Loriphim kill her to truly show the depravity of The Benefactor. It's a dramatic moment when TB uses his powers to force Loriphim to kill his daughter. The Benefactor turning on Loriphim would not have been nearly as dramatic without Ayale there. She's not a likable character, though. I made sure to not have her and TB get along so that the readers wouldn't feel very sad when she dies. It's unclear if she knows that what she tries to feed The Benefactor is poisonous to him. That ambiguity does make her character more complex.

Judge Sertung
Sertung represents the noble side of the Daman, and is one of the last vestiges of power of that dying species in Forever Alone. He is a dogmatic being, though he abandons his dogma when his species dies. He is one of the most important characters in the history of the Dragon Ball universe, as well, for if it wasn't for him, the Kais would not have gotten the training they needed to assume the mantle of the mortal gods of the universe. He sacrificed a lot at the end of the second chapter of Forever Alone to train them, and he's quite the noble dude, in my opinion. I'd like to think that he taught the Kais about the Spirit Bomb technique as well. Sertung is very nuanced, very subtle, so it's hard for me to really explain what I was doing with him without giving everything about this story's themes away. What I will say though is that Sertung is a god-like figure, both because of his power and intellect, and because of his role as a judge - a judger of worth. Sertung is remarkably steadfast in personality and countenance, and that was a deliberate choice on my part, so that he could assume that authoritative role as well as possible.

Suffice to say, I consider him one of the best characters in the series and think that he's quite the tragic character. There's certainly beauty in the austere desolation of his existence, especially after Verlate is put in her mind prison and most of his peers die. Sertung is one of the last Daman to die, and that was done as a sign of respect on my part. The Daman did not go out with a whimper in that regard. He was one of the greatest Daman in terms of intellect, power, and influence on the universe. I wouldn't put him as the best ever, or perhaps even in the top 5, but he's definitely one of the most significant members of his race, and it's fortuitous for the universe that he was alive at the time his species' empire collapsed... otherwise, the universe would have descended into chaos, had he not stepped in to train the Kais.

Sertung's name is a pun on "Verlaten", an island in the Krakatoa island chain. Sertung's name is a pun off of the same island as Verlate's own name. Why have all these puns and references to Krakatoa? Well, The Daman in general are based off of the Rakata species from the Star Wars universe, and that species' name is a reference to one of the islands of Krakatoa.

Damani Delegate
These guys were purposefully underdeveloped. I wanted to give just a hint of the old Damani leadership. These are the guys in control of the universe, but they are petty, stupid, and corrupt. And they are dying. Of course, they die by the time Sertung's point-of-view section comes around, further showing their fall. They symbolize the passing of the guard, the fall of the Daman in general, and how the Kais are going to have to replace them. These delegates are a shadow of the former Daman leadership and empire (think of Anaku, who, for all his evilness, was a strong, willful leader - these delegates are neither of those things) The Kais turn out much different than the Daman, and that says as much about them as it does about the Daman, particularly this delegate of old dudes.

The Kai
This Kai is greatly symbolic in many ways - his meeting with Verlate being one of the elegant, reformed god meeting the base savage. He is also quite a complex character, seen by him getting a whole point-of-view section in chapter two of Forever Alone. That is significant, for he's the only character other than Verlate and Sertung who gets such a perspective. I wanted to show him as just a normal guy, a worker who's not very high up on the social ladder, but got a little lucky with absorbing Verlate's power. He doesn't know what to do with that because he's not a good - not in mind nor body. Later Kais will be considered gods, but this guy was not raised to think he was one. He later tries to get vengeance on Forty-three, one of his inferiors, and fails, leading to his death and to the deaths of nearly every other Kai. The Kai is deeply tied to this theme in TF of revenge and how destructive it is to all involved. But this Kai is not a bad guy. He made some mistakes and perhaps has some morally questionable moves. But even in his point-of-view section, it's clear that he's just a regular dude who got put into bad situation. He isn't innocent in the proceedings - he tried to take Verlate's power. But his end goals were just him trying to gain more agency, more liberty, and that is something I can't get too mad about.

Forty-three
This minor character is just like any fool you have dealt with in life. He's not based on anyone in particular. He's an archetypal character, I suppose. It's certainly maddening that he screwed up the Kai's life and then ultimately stole Verlate's power from that Kai. The fact that Forty-three did that is significant, for it caused the whole planet and most of its population to die not long after. It is not clear if the same thing would have happened had the Kai been able to keep Verlate's power. But yeah, this guy is a bitch and I hate him and his existence shows that there is no justice in the universe.

Savage
Savage was unnamed in early versions of Forever Alone. Either Hyper Zergling or Destructivedisk made this a con in their review of the story, being confused by who exactly Savage was. So during the later edits of this story, I gave Savage a name just to please them. The name isn't necessary, but I suppose it does make things a little clearer. He is not one of the previously seen Kais in the story, after all. Savage is representative of what happened to the Kais after Verlate's power was stolen. Savage himself has descended to a near-insane level of consciousness. He's like a drug addict. And his name itself speaks to the themes of colonization and the subversion of "inferior" species by the Daman, which are both hinted at in Forever Alone. Who Savage actually is doesn't matter. He represents what happened to his species after they gained access to power they shouldn't have. It's not all his fault what he does in Forever Alone, but he is also not entirely innocent either. A man chooses, and a slave obeys. Everyone, even Savage, had a choice in their actions, and he chose to give in to the power he got and become a maniac.

Little Purple
Little Purple's name is a reference to Piccolo's name from the AB Groupe dub of DBZ (his name in that dub was "Big Green"). I'd like to think that this little guy is going to be the first Supreme Kai ever. He doesn't have much of a personality, though he does have some cautious, violent tendencies seen with the other primitive Kais to make his personality consistent with them. Little Purple doesn't have much of a personality or role, though he does symbolize the resurgence of the Kais. Him being so young is important, for he is the first one whom Sertung trains to be a new caretaker of the universe. This shows how the focus is primarily on the newest generation of Kais, not the older ones.

=Deleted Characters= These are major characters who were deleted before the final version of The Forgotten. Some never existed in writing, some did, and others were never actually put up on this site.

Detective Ishida
Detective Ishida was going to be the person called in to find Ledas in the original draft of TF. He was going to work with Cardinal, though he wasn't necessarily politically-aligned with the old man. He was based on L from Death Note. I really loved that series and was watching it around the time I began working on TF, so I wanted to create a "Death Note" saga. This was going to occur after Ledas killed Mr. Kyokatoshi. After the man was found dead, Cardinal and Ishida would be called in and spend a very long saga (like 30+ chapters... it was really ridiculous) hunting down Ledas. I wrote several scenes for this saga and had it in my TF works document in 2010. This was all during the fourth saga of the time, known as the Kyokatshi Saga. It was written in brown text color (a text color later used for earlier drafts of the Fulfillment Saga). I wrote maybe 3-4 scenes involving Ishida in that saga before getting rid of the saga.

So Ishida was going to be this very smart man who was anti-social and didn't exactly get along with Cardinal. He would certainly challenge Cardinal. I wanted his arc to complete with him finding Ledas and then not wanting to go through with getting rid of Ledas. I never came up with what happened to him after that, though. He was supposed to be a good guy, and some of the stuff in his personality was utilized in how I characterized Cardinal in the final version of TF. He was going to interrogate people like Aka, like Ryori, maybe even Ledas himself, but he was never going to be the bad guy. He's like this guy stuck in the system. Part of his arc was going to be him rebelling against Cardinal and struggling with the ethical aspects of what he's doing and the moral responsibility he has to capture Ledas (to protect the world).

I realized rather early on, before I posted any text of the Kyokatshi Saga on this site, that this saga wasn't going to work. The idea of a "Death Note" saga isn't a bad idea, but it's just not one I felt was right for my story. So I eventually got rid of it. Ishida was completely eliminated along with it. He is the most significant character to be deleted from the final version of TF. His stuff was mostly about chasing down Ledas, hunting him down, in a thriller-like way. Ledas is still hunted down in the Planet Earth Saga, but Cardinal and the New Red Ribbon Army now find him within a few chapters. There was no place for Ishida in that final plot. Ishida could only exist if the hunt was stretched out over a saga or so. I think it was good that Ishida was eliminated, for as it stands, there are plenty of characters in the Planet Earth Saga already who have minimal roles. There didn't need to be another repetitive character. That said, I do like Ishida and do miss him a little bit. I think my later story called Spindlerun: The Tale of Yajirobe may have featured a character (named Elijah) who was slightly based on Ishida.

Aka
Aka was going to be Ryori's sister. She was also known as Aiko in some early scenes of TF that were never posted on this site. I actually wrote scenes with her and Ledas and other characters on my old Microsoft Works document of TF. I no longer have that document, and probably deleted her scenes on it anyway. So I don't have access to them anymore.

Aka was going to be roughly the same age as Ryori - perhaps even his twin. She was going to be a romantic interest for Ledas. She was also going to be involved in the plot with Cardinal and Detective Ishida trying to find Ledas. One of the scenes I wrote that involved her was actually a scene with Ishida interrogating her. I remember that much. With the removal of the Ishida plotline, though, Aka didn't really have much of a purpose anymore, and as I thought it over more, I didn't want Ledas to get romantically involved with such a young girl (I like it when he's with older females). So she was deleted. This had significant impacts on the plot, notably with Ryori's character development. His character would have been much different had he had a sister. Also, this removed any romantic plotline from TF, which is not something I regret doing. Romanticism was always very low-key in DB and DBZ (think of Goku/Chi Chi or Vegeta/Bulma).

When I realized I didn't want Ledas to end TF with a romantic partner, that made it easier to deleted Aka (as well, in 2010, I was less confident writing for young girls, so it relieved some pressure to remove her from the story). Sexual encounters for Ledas still exist with Nurse Yorokobi and Miki - two women older than Aka. As well, the mother of Nir, a girl I have yet to give a name to (though I do know at least that her name starts with an "A" like Aka's), will be somewhat based on what I originally planned on doing with Aka, although she will be years older than Aka. So even though this character was deleted, she existed spiritually in TF, to some degree, and will kind of be reborn to be the mother of Nir.

Ryori's Parents
In the original concept of TF, Ryori's parents were going to be shown. I removed them as I didn't see a place for them. Now, he still has parents, even in canon, since he's a human being. But his parents are never shown, and it's implied they are dead or gone. Shoekki was taking care of Ryori, and after he died, Ryori was scared he was going to be put in an orphanage. I chose not to delve into what happened to his parents in the text TF, though I imagine it's likely they are dead. They weren't going to be gone in early concepts of the story, and would have been somewhat involved in the Ishida investigation as well. But once that plotline was removed, there was really no reason to have them. It's thematically more interesting to have Ryori have this pain in his past that he doesn't talk about, like Ledas. It also makes Shoekki more interesting, knowing that he's raising his little brother. That's surely not easy and yet he never complains about it. So by removing Ryori's parents from the picture, I was able to give both Ryori and Shoekki some interesting character development.

Ledas' Other Earth Friends
I never named these characters, but they did exist in one or two scenes I wrote for later sagas of TF. One scene featured Ledas taking Ryori, Aka, and the others to Planet Cooler 92 on his space ship. By that point, the outpost is wrecked, but he takes them there primarily to show them where he came from. Additionally, other characters were going to exist in school. None of these characters ever panned out. In many different drafts of TF, various other Earth friends for Ledas existed. Even in the final version of the Fulfillment Saga, I prepared for two chapters to be about Ledas and Ryori at school, and that would have introduced several Earth friends. But those chapters were removed and replaced by other chapters, so that never came to be. Even in earlier drafts of TF, I considered having an expanded plot for Ledas at school. There just wasn't room for it, and as I wrote the story out, I thought having such scenes wouldn't add anything to the story, so these characters were never put in. Now, had the Kyokatshi Saga been written, more human friends would have been introduced. Many would have, probably. But that saga being deleted meant that all of the fluff was removed - all of this extraneous stuff at school wasn't put into the story. There were still of course scenes at school, but those were few and deliberate, so introducing new characters who have no further plot relevance wasn't something I wanted to do. Some of Ledas' and Ryori's other Earth friends may be seen in the first couple of chapters of my (as of writing this commentary) unnamed story about Cooler's children, Raimie and Haimaru, which also heavily features Ledas. But that story won't be written in the near future (I'm writing this commentary in mid January 2016), so I can't promise anything.

Old Iyxan
This Old Iyxan existed in the old version of Outbreak: Paved In Blood, the special about The Benefactor that was nearly completely re-written during the final edits of TF. And during those final edits, the Old Iyxan was completely removed from the story. He served the role as a parental/guardian figure for The Benefactor, similarly to how Mrs. Fanshi served that function for Ledas. This guy's role was supplanted by Master Loriphim and by The Benefactor's mother, though they both served slightly different roles than this guy. That's just how the story developed during the final edits. He was a bit too static, too soft, to interest me, so I did something different with his successors, though they both died just like he did, in the end.

Genocide Monster (TF Special villain)
I had remarkably little planned for this monster even when I began writing his special. Hell, the main reason I got rid of his special is because I couldn't visualize what he looked like and couldn't think up a good backstory for him. He was supposed to be an animal, though, not a sentient being. I don't think he would be able to talk, either. He was just going to be some clever animal preying on a planet that The Plantains go to in order to see what's going on. When they find him, they battle him, and the rest is history. So the setup for this guy was a lot like any DBZ movie, although I didn't even come up with a backstory for the monster, which even the worst DBZ movies did. I didn't get any inspiration for what he would end up looking like, either, and that prompted the special and this character to be abandoned. In my mind, all I can picture is a sinewy, tentacle-clad, red mass. But I just didn't have the drive to develop him into a more coherent villain, so he was abandoned.

Stomping Grounds Instructor
This guy was going to be somewhat old, harsh, and a little fat. He was going to be a man past his physical prime, and he was based on a math teacher I once had. He would help both Guva and Banas, though, to show his sensitive side. When the Guva special was abandoned, so too was this character. A bit of his harshness and charisma bled over into Digranite's character. I didn't plan much for this character, but he was going to have a complex personality so that he could be a mentor to Guva and Banas and shape their view of life, to an extent. That said, I was planning on having Cooler kill this guy at the end of the special (for a reason I never came up with, for I never wrote the special). He was also going to have purple skin and be balding, though he was not of the same species as Guva. He would have looked like an anthropomorphized plum.

Cardinal's Other Assistants
Shortly after I came up with Dewberry and Kindler and File, I created a list of the other potential associates of Cardinal in a notebook of mine. I do have that notebook still, and if I ever find it, I'll upload a picture of the associates list below. The concept was that each associate would be tied to a letter of the alphabet, though if my memory serves, I don't think I went past the letter "L". Kindler, File, and Dewberry took up three letters, but that leaves quite a few others. The associate for "I" was Igear. This name was later used for the name of an Iyxan child whom The Benefactor killed. Now as to if these characters actually exist, beyond the mythos of just TF, I cannot say. I will consider using them for my Death Note story, though. I did consider that the ones who didn't appear in TF would appear in my Death Note story and vice versa, but I never got that far in the planning to make that happen. There are only three Cardinal assistants in TF. Surely, he had others, and they may appear in my story about Haimaru and Raimie, two children of Cooler, which also features Ledas. In that case, I will adhere to this idea that each assistant's name starts with a different letter. And if I ever write my Death Note story, I will also adhere to this and have his assistants be people whose names start with unused letters, with a priority on letters coming before "L".

Just from the way TF played out, though, there wasn't a need for more assistants than the three who exist. Even File is a bit tenuous as a character. Had there been more of a need, I would have used the aforementioned method to create more of them. I did name Igear, and I may have named one or two others (I seriously do not remember, though), but they were not given personalities or histories or any of that stuff. So if I need anymore for future stories, I will basically need to create them from scratch. I will probably use a different name for the "I" slot as well, since Igear became a name I used for a different character.

Dodoria
Dodoria once existed in the old version of Outbreak: Paved In Blood, though he never had a very large role. He was deleted from it when the special was mostly rewritten during the final edits of TF, for I didn't have any purpose for him. He could have also been in the Prince Vegeta Saga and/or in the flashback chapters of the Reunion Saga. However, I saw no purpose for him in those sagas, either. If I had had a need or place for him, he would have been in the story. I had no need for him, so he was not put in the story. However, Frieza does reference Dodoria a few times, and the scene direction in the Prince Vegeta Saga at one point does hint that he may be just off-screen for one scene. So Dodoria is out of the spotlight of TF, just to the point where he never actually appears. But I'm sure he's "around" Frieza's space ship during the Prince Vegeta Saga. Just, as luck would have it, he was never seen in the flesh.

Android 17
In one of the (now) deleted versions of the Fulfillment Saga, Android 17 was a major character, and he fought The Benefactor in a very important battle in that saga. He eventually lost the battle and was taken out by Vegeta, who wanted Gotenks to fight The Benefactor instead (and Gotenks was on a time crunch, yo). His personality would have been pretty much the same as it always had been (he only appeared to save his sister), though perhaps he was written to be a bit of a psychotic tryhard. Suffice to say, as the plot of that saga was updated through the various drafts, the place for Android 17 disappeared. Hyper Zergling also hated Android 17's inclusion in this story, citing his seemingly incoherent power increase from his last canon appearance - he went from being on par with Android Saga Piccolo to being stronger than Super Saiyan 3 Goku - as being a terrible idea on my part. My excuse at the time was that I liked 17 and wanted to give him a moment to shine. However, doing so at the expense of logic was unacceptable. That's an example of my bad writing in the old versions of TF, which I tried to fix in subsequent drafts. Also, spending many years writing DB fan fictions on this site also improved my writing capabilities, and I didn't make such basic mistakes thereafter ever again.

Hyper Zergling's argument that 17 shouldn't be strong enough to fight TB essentially caused the character to be deleted from this story. Because 17 is truly unable to challenge The Benefactor, there is no reason for him to appear (he wouldn't appear with the Z Fighters to fight Guva because he's an anti-social loner). Having a pointless battle with TB where he couldn't do anything added nothing to the plot, so he was just completely removed during the final edits of the Fulfillment Saga. He once served an important multi-chapter role, and now he's not in TF in any capacity. That's just how things go. Still, Android 17's fall from importance to irrelevancy is quite striking. While I didn't get to glorify him in this story after all, I did itch that scratch I had for writing about Android 17 in a one-shot called Derelict. And I'm happy with how that turned out, all things considered.

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