Previous Game History: While life in Exitvoid, specifically in the city of Zelien, wasn’t as bad as it could have been for Derek, it wasn’t particularly great by any standard either. Aside from a fair amount of weight loss, the result of several weeks on the bare minimum amount of food followed by a week and a bit with nothing at all, the werewolf’s appearance hasn’t suffered from the less than pleasant challenges present by COMPASS. The physical damage healed, from the skin-crawling bugs to a fatal gunshot wound, it’s the mental damage that’s managed to linger.
Within a week of arriving in the city the cultists turned up for their first attempt at human sacrifices. That in itself wasn’t the problem for Derek, the thing that really got to him was the method of sacrifice that they had chosen, being burnt alive. Given the fact that the majority of his family was burnt to death in his childhood home, the idea of people suffering the same fate didn’t sit well with him to say the least. Throw in mind control to force people into burning themselves alive and it’s a bit of a worst case scenario for the guy. While he was left unaffected, the fact that Scott and Isaac were made the situation so much worse for him. Strangers burning he could have dealt with just fine, but not people he’s familiar with. While dealing with Scott was more or less fine, a little unsettling but overall an easy encounter, it was staying the night with a half-crazy Isaac that really shook him up. Trying to keep his then beta locked in a room with him while attempting to talk the teenager out of setting himself on fire was a bit of a challenge. Derek’s not the best at comforting talks on a good day; throw in one his nightmare scenarios and it’s an uphill struggle to avoid saying the wrong thing. While he did manage to push the event to the back of his mind eventually, things were awkward between him and Isaac from that point on. Awkward to the point where they barely crossed paths with one another, let alone spoke.
What’s worse than people setting themselves on fire? Facing a SAW-esque ‘game’ with a couple of strangers and believing that only one person can escape. At the time Derek and his companions had been under the impression that one of them could leave the room and simply bring back help for the remaining prisoners. The reality of the situation? Shrapnel bombs the moment Derek left the room. Needless to say, Derek feels guilty about being the one to escape the blast, regardless of the fact that the choice to send him out had been a group decision. As far as he’s concerned he’d been stuck in the room with a pair of humans, his guilt is justified. He would have healed from the damage done by the blast, he could have prevented on of his fellow prisoners from gaining a life-altering injury. In his mind, as illogical as it might sound, he feels responsible for two archers being rendered half blind. If he’d been the one to stay at least one of the others could have been spared. Hindsight is 20/20 though. While one of the women left the city shortly after the event, he couldn’t look the other in the face again.
While not necessarily a bad thing, Derek didn’t exactly appreciate the fact that he lost his werewolf powers for a week. Being human didn’t sit well with him, it made him feel vulnerable and surprisingly fragile. That said, given the fact that his powers were transferred to someone else, it did give him the motivation to actively offer assistance for once. Over the course of the full moon night he bonded to a certain extent with a werewolf from another world, one who had retained her powers, and strengthened his tentative friendship with her. One of the few friendships he actually had during his stay in the city. On the less pleasant side of things he also clashed heads with Scott, something that would go on to be a running theme between the pair of them, over ideas on how to keep the newly ‘formed’ werewolves from murdering everything that moved. Derek kept pushing the idea of pain as a way to keep the werewolves from shifting, Scott kept refusing the idea.
Several weeks later, upon finding out that the mystery books inside the campus library had decoded themselves, Derek pushed aside his more violent, head first line of thinking and decided to hit the books instead. From this point onward he notably started to stray away from his ‘fight first, ask questions later’ method of operation and instead went for a more logical route. Any quiet moment he could utilise between COMPASS’ experiments, he spent either in the library or in a generally quiet area of the campus reading over the lore of the city, attempting to theorise out the cultists’ plan along with Stiles. Not as odd a choice for company as it might initially appear.
The next key moment for Derek wasn’t for a fair number of weeks after the book decoding event. The campus grounds were transported to the ruined city of London. While it didn’t offer much in terms of character development for Derek, or mental scarring as the case may be, the main point here is that Derek had his ‘major’ death here. Upon hearing voices from the ‘Great Old ones’ Derek agreed to lead Stiles to them, just on the off chance that the teenager might have be capable of hearing the voices too. It went as well as expected. Just when they thought they were safe, Derek was bitten by one of the infected ‘residents’ of the ruined land. The infection was passed onto him and he quickly began to succumb to the virus. While he was quickly put down by Stiles, who managed to shoot him in the head before the transformation process could finish, the werewolf does regret the fact there had to be a shooting in the first place. He doesn’t mention it, knows all too well that the topic will cause an argument if brought up, but he does feel a little guilty over how things played out. He let his guard down, he was bitten, he forced a teenager to kill another living being.
Throughout the collapse of COMPASS Derek reverted to more of a self-preserving line of thinking. While he had no objections to helping those he met along the way, he didn’t go out of his way to find people in danger. He stuck close to Stiles, the first person he’d run into after the buildings come alive, until they were transported to COMPASS’ headquarters. Whilst there Derek wasted no time in pushing forward, passing through the tests one by one as quickly as possible without needlessly sacrificing someone else’s life. He waited long enough to meet up with the other Beacon Hills residents before heading home. Well, before heading to what he thought was home at any rate.
With the major events out the way I’ll touch upon the topic of relationship changes. For the most part Derek kept his connections within the city relatively small, a few of the people from Beacon Hills and a couple of select individuals outside of them. He wasn’t social by any means and if anything after the first couple of weeks he managed to become worse at interacting with other people. That didn’t stop him from talking to people who happened to start conversations with him but it did place a strain on his home-based connections.
The two relationships that underwent the most noticeable changes during his time in the city were his ones with Scott and Stiles. He and Scott suffered from numerous clashes on opinion, more so after the library started to decode itself. Scott had wanted to take action, to try and protect everyone; Derek had wanted to lay low for a little longer, to spend more time gathering specific details. It was a bit of a role reversal to say the least. The final straw was reached following an impromptu blood shower, Scott put his foot down on playing the hero and Derek essentially called him an idiot for rushing into the unknown. After that their contact was minimal at best, although they did come together to save a mutual acquaintance, even then it’s using the term ‘together’ extremely loosely though. They did not mend their ‘friendship’ before leaving the city.
In comparison to the downhill slope with Scott, his standing with Stiles had the opposite sort of development. Initially they fought, a lot and on most if not all of their interactions. It wasn’t until after their exploration of the recently discovered Egyptian cavern that they started to form a tentative allegiance. The more weeks that passed by, the closer they became. Derek assisted Stiles with research and attempted to teach him how to fight, Stiles provided food supplies right up until the city ran out of food and generally provided Derek with a little bit of company. Company which he was sorely lacking by the end of his stay in the city, seeing as the majority of his ‘friends’ had left the city limits earlier on.
All in all, Zelien didn’t change Derek to a huge extent; he wasn’t really there long enough for it to have completely broken him. Less than 23 weeks by the end of it all. It has however tweaked a couple of his canon interactions and it has added a little more weight to his already guilt-ridden shoulders. On the plus side it has taught him to be a little more patient, to use his time wisely and plan things out ahead of time, but in comparison it’s also dented his ability to really ‘bond’ with other people. On initial meetings at least. Seeing your friends leave shortly after finding them tends to put someone off the idea altogether after a while.
no subject
Within a week of arriving in the city the cultists turned up for their first attempt at human sacrifices. That in itself wasn’t the problem for Derek, the thing that really got to him was the method of sacrifice that they had chosen, being burnt alive. Given the fact that the majority of his family was burnt to death in his childhood home, the idea of people suffering the same fate didn’t sit well with him to say the least. Throw in mind control to force people into burning themselves alive and it’s a bit of a worst case scenario for the guy. While he was left unaffected, the fact that Scott and Isaac were made the situation so much worse for him. Strangers burning he could have dealt with just fine, but not people he’s familiar with. While dealing with Scott was more or less fine, a little unsettling but overall an easy encounter, it was staying the night with a half-crazy Isaac that really shook him up. Trying to keep his then beta locked in a room with him while attempting to talk the teenager out of setting himself on fire was a bit of a challenge. Derek’s not the best at comforting talks on a good day; throw in one his nightmare scenarios and it’s an uphill struggle to avoid saying the wrong thing. While he did manage to push the event to the back of his mind eventually, things were awkward between him and Isaac from that point on. Awkward to the point where they barely crossed paths with one another, let alone spoke.
What’s worse than people setting themselves on fire? Facing a SAW-esque ‘game’ with a couple of strangers and believing that only one person can escape. At the time Derek and his companions had been under the impression that one of them could leave the room and simply bring back help for the remaining prisoners. The reality of the situation? Shrapnel bombs the moment Derek left the room. Needless to say, Derek feels guilty about being the one to escape the blast, regardless of the fact that the choice to send him out had been a group decision. As far as he’s concerned he’d been stuck in the room with a pair of humans, his guilt is justified. He would have healed from the damage done by the blast, he could have prevented on of his fellow prisoners from gaining a life-altering injury. In his mind, as illogical as it might sound, he feels responsible for two archers being rendered half blind. If he’d been the one to stay at least one of the others could have been spared. Hindsight is 20/20 though. While one of the women left the city shortly after the event, he couldn’t look the other in the face again.
While not necessarily a bad thing, Derek didn’t exactly appreciate the fact that he lost his werewolf powers for a week. Being human didn’t sit well with him, it made him feel vulnerable and surprisingly fragile. That said, given the fact that his powers were transferred to someone else, it did give him the motivation to actively offer assistance for once. Over the course of the full moon night he bonded to a certain extent with a werewolf from another world, one who had retained her powers, and strengthened his tentative friendship with her. One of the few friendships he actually had during his stay in the city. On the less pleasant side of things he also clashed heads with Scott, something that would go on to be a running theme between the pair of them, over ideas on how to keep the newly ‘formed’ werewolves from murdering everything that moved. Derek kept pushing the idea of pain as a way to keep the werewolves from shifting, Scott kept refusing the idea.
Several weeks later, upon finding out that the mystery books inside the campus library had decoded themselves, Derek pushed aside his more violent, head first line of thinking and decided to hit the books instead. From this point onward he notably started to stray away from his ‘fight first, ask questions later’ method of operation and instead went for a more logical route. Any quiet moment he could utilise between COMPASS’ experiments, he spent either in the library or in a generally quiet area of the campus reading over the lore of the city, attempting to theorise out the cultists’ plan along with Stiles. Not as odd a choice for company as it might initially appear.
The next key moment for Derek wasn’t for a fair number of weeks after the book decoding event. The campus grounds were transported to the ruined city of London. While it didn’t offer much in terms of character development for Derek, or mental scarring as the case may be, the main point here is that Derek had his ‘major’ death here. Upon hearing voices from the ‘Great Old ones’ Derek agreed to lead Stiles to them, just on the off chance that the teenager might have be capable of hearing the voices too. It went as well as expected. Just when they thought they were safe, Derek was bitten by one of the infected ‘residents’ of the ruined land. The infection was passed onto him and he quickly began to succumb to the virus. While he was quickly put down by Stiles, who managed to shoot him in the head before the transformation process could finish, the werewolf does regret the fact there had to be a shooting in the first place. He doesn’t mention it, knows all too well that the topic will cause an argument if brought up, but he does feel a little guilty over how things played out. He let his guard down, he was bitten, he forced a teenager to kill another living being.
Throughout the collapse of COMPASS Derek reverted to more of a self-preserving line of thinking. While he had no objections to helping those he met along the way, he didn’t go out of his way to find people in danger. He stuck close to Stiles, the first person he’d run into after the buildings come alive, until they were transported to COMPASS’ headquarters. Whilst there Derek wasted no time in pushing forward, passing through the tests one by one as quickly as possible without needlessly sacrificing someone else’s life. He waited long enough to meet up with the other Beacon Hills residents before heading home. Well, before heading to what he thought was home at any rate.
With the major events out the way I’ll touch upon the topic of relationship changes. For the most part Derek kept his connections within the city relatively small, a few of the people from Beacon Hills and a couple of select individuals outside of them. He wasn’t social by any means and if anything after the first couple of weeks he managed to become worse at interacting with other people. That didn’t stop him from talking to people who happened to start conversations with him but it did place a strain on his home-based connections.
The two relationships that underwent the most noticeable changes during his time in the city were his ones with Scott and Stiles. He and Scott suffered from numerous clashes on opinion, more so after the library started to decode itself. Scott had wanted to take action, to try and protect everyone; Derek had wanted to lay low for a little longer, to spend more time gathering specific details. It was a bit of a role reversal to say the least. The final straw was reached following an impromptu blood shower, Scott put his foot down on playing the hero and Derek essentially called him an idiot for rushing into the unknown. After that their contact was minimal at best, although they did come together to save a mutual acquaintance, even then it’s using the term ‘together’ extremely loosely though. They did not mend their ‘friendship’ before leaving the city.
In comparison to the downhill slope with Scott, his standing with Stiles had the opposite sort of development. Initially they fought, a lot and on most if not all of their interactions. It wasn’t until after their exploration of the recently discovered Egyptian cavern that they started to form a tentative allegiance. The more weeks that passed by, the closer they became. Derek assisted Stiles with research and attempted to teach him how to fight, Stiles provided food supplies right up until the city ran out of food and generally provided Derek with a little bit of company. Company which he was sorely lacking by the end of his stay in the city, seeing as the majority of his ‘friends’ had left the city limits earlier on.
All in all, Zelien didn’t change Derek to a huge extent; he wasn’t really there long enough for it to have completely broken him. Less than 23 weeks by the end of it all. It has however tweaked a couple of his canon interactions and it has added a little more weight to his already guilt-ridden shoulders. On the plus side it has taught him to be a little more patient, to use his time wisely and plan things out ahead of time, but in comparison it’s also dented his ability to really ‘bond’ with other people. On initial meetings at least. Seeing your friends leave shortly after finding them tends to put someone off the idea altogether after a while.