#echoverse

echoverseaudio: 🪐 Episode 1 of “The Chronicles of Astrimos” releases tonight! 🪐

The Chronicles of Astrimos | Bloody FM, Echoverse

Starring Darren Criss as Martin, Maya Hawke as Calico Jones.

Martin (Darren Criss) thought his life was on track - he was about to become a partner at his law-firm and propose to the woman of his dreams - when his grandmother Maisie (Kate Mulgrew) dies, leaving him an old LP record that derails everything.  Playing it transports Martin into the fantastical, but shockingly real world of “The Chronicles of Astrimos,” a 1960’s sci-fi radio drama about the plucky young spaceship pilot Calico Jones (Maya Hawke) who is fighting to save her planet. Flipping involuntarily between Astrimos and the real-world, Martin realizes with horror that the life-and-death stakes in the story are real and his only hope of escape is to solve the mystery of his grandmother’s bizarre gift before it’s too late.

THE CHRONICLES OF ASTRIMOS

AUDIO DRAMA COMING SOON! Jaded, ambitious lawyer Martin Jennison’s life is turned upside-down when his grandmother bequeaths him an LP of a 1960’s sci-fi radio serial called “The Chronicles of Astrimos.” Playing it transports Martin into the vivid “technicolor” world of Astrimos and he soon realizes that the physical jeopardy in Astrimos is real and that his life literally depends on figuring out what’s happening to him and how to escape it before time runs out.

SCI-FI SPACE DRAMEDY

Could Tam be the next green-blue Planeswalker? What would this mean for Jace and Vraska?

Tam the Possibility, by Martina Fačková

Protege's Awakening, by Cynthia Sheppard

Jon steps into their humble home to hear a distant sound of a razor. Wandering the home to get to the noise he reaches the bathroom. Entering the bathroom he witnesses his fiance staring in the mirror shaving their head.

He stands in the doorway staring in shock about what Echo did to his head. Unsure what to say about his future partners bald head he just stares until Echo looks over.

“Do I look nice?” Echo says with watery eyes towards Jon. Jon didn’t know what else to do but agree.

“Yes I agree hon you look amazing.” He responds while stepping over towards echo and hugging him. He wasn’t sure what type of exstitental crisis Echo was going through but he was going to make sure they were still ok.

Taking his partner out of the bathroom and into the living room to sit on the couch. Echo looked to have been dealing with sore feat due to the pregnancy so Jon decided to massage his love and when done gets up and cleans up the bathroom. Making sure there was no more hair on the floor then washing his hands to start making dinner.

While Echo laid on the couch in the living room thinking about what they did Jon starting to prepare for making Chicken Fried Rice.

Edward Nygma's holding cell, along with every other cell on that block of the asylum, had been flooded. It was expected to happen every once in a while with a building with so little routine maintenance. But, as to be expected, there were no empty cells. Obviously, they couldn't keep all of the high-threat criminals without holding cells. So the prisoners patients that were lacking a room had to be relocated until the problem could be mended.

Crane was eventually placed with Jonathan Crane. Many of the orderlies were concerned about this arrangement, but Dr. Arkham had assured everyone that the situation was only temporary, and if anything looked suspicious about the inmates, everything would be handled. Not that his words especially sparked any ease.

Jon and Edward seemed peaceful enough. They didn't seem to talk much during the day. Edward was uncharacteristically silent with the other man.

Later at night, well after lights out, Jonathan sat on the stiff mattress staring at Edward, struggling to fall asleep in his uncomfortable cot. The cell was unbearably cold. Of course, the Asylum had a state-of-the-art surveillance system and practically unlimited funds from Bruce Wayne, yet still had zero insulation. To be fair, who would want to spend all the much money to install insulation to make the livelihoods of dangerous criminals better? They weren't worth such grace. They were barely people.

They didn't even provide adequate blankets to make up for the lack of heating. Edward was already uncomfortable enough with the rigid bedding in his cell and now he had to sleep in a cot two feet away Jonathan Crane. Not that he didn't like Jon; they were relatively friendly for being such drastically different rogues, but the close quarters definitely didn't do anything to put him at ease.

"Edward," Crane said, "I know you're still awake over there. What's keeping you up?"

Edward turned over to look at the bed. "What? Are you concerned?"

"No. Your tossing around is keepin' me up."

Edward rolled his eyes, despite the darkness of the room, meaning Jon was not able to see it. "I doubt you would sleep well even without it. It's cold and you're famously an insomniac."

"Arkham ain't exactly known for comfort." Jonathan laid back down in the bed and pulled the blanket over himself.

Ed, still cold and comfortable in the cot, stood up and moved over to Jonathan's bed. He looked down at the other man.

"What?"

"It's cold." Edward leaned over the bed.

So I talked about Arches and Echo, so I might as well talk about their prequel, the Smoke Room. Unlike the other games in the Echo series, aside from the side games, the Smoke Room is primarily made by writers who aren't Howly, who wrote most of Echo and all of Arches and Adastra. In this case, the main writer is GeorgeSquares. Howly did write the prologue and Redd, who's one of the main writers for another VN called Glory Hounds, wrote part of one of the routes, which was eventually partially rewritten by George anyways. There's also more artists working on it than there was for Echo.

In the Smoke Room, you play as Samuel Ayers, a gay prostitute in 1915 in Echo in furry Utah and/or Arizona. Sam falls in love with one of his clients, Jack. Together, the two hatch a scheme to use some hidden away gold in the mines in order to leave Echo and start a new life somewhere else. Jack is, however, tricking Sam and tries to kill Sam in the secluded part of the mine where he pretended there was gold. Sam miraculously survives the murder attempt and ends up killing Jack in self defense. Unfortunately, he's a gay prostitute in 1915, so he knows better than to try and report what Jack did to him and especially the killing. However, several weeks later, somebody drags Jack's body into town and the mine workers riot over the news. When the riot happens, Sam is stuck in the brothel with three potential clients and another on the way, one of which is a miner who saw him the day of Jack's killing and another of whom is the sheriff of the town.

The four clients are:

William Adler: The coyote sheriff who plays by his own rules, specifically the rules that allow him to plow Sam's ass

Nikolai Krol: The badger miner who's a big softie and great cuddler. However, he saw Sam the day of the murder

Clifford Tibbits: The chipper and naïve stoat who's on an anthropology trip to study the nearby furry Navajo

Murdoch Byrnes: The witty fox who happens to be the town's only photographer

The Smoke Room excels in a lot of respects. Its protagonist is very interesting, the branching narrative is very divergent, it's surprisingly historically accurate, and the supporting cast is very filled out. Let's go over each of those. Unlike many VN protagonists, there's practically no attempt to make Sam even resemble a player-insert. He's a prostitute who's simultaneously ashamed of his job and proud of how good he is at it. Even when he's off the clock, he's a very service-minded person with those he cares about and although he's pretty lost and out of his element with most other work, he's very confident and sure of himself when he's providing sexual services. But this also applies to his ability to be a good romantic partner as well. He also knows how to be patient and caring even when he's allowed to take the lead as he's very respectful of other's boundaries when it comes to sex. Unlike most dating sim protagonists, it takes no suspension of disbelief to see why he'd be able to romance so many characters. He's genuinely a great romantic prospect for any of his clients and if he were an option as a love interest himself, he'd probably be quite popular.

The branching narrative is another positive. Every route is extremely different with very few overlapping events. This makes sense as unlike with Echo, the main characters aren't a real friend group yet. Nik sometimes plays poker with Will, Murdoch sometimes does crime scene photography for Will, and Cliff doesn't know anyone at the beginning of the game. The only reason they came together at all is they happened to be trying to book Sam around the same time. Now, depending on the route, they can become closer. Will's route especially works for this, because it's the only route where Sam isn't trying to avoid Will, who's basically the connecting thread for everyone else. However, each route goes in its own direction and has basically its own side cast. Nik's side cast involves his fellow mining union members and his bosses/supervisors as they clash over labor disputes while Nik tries to help find enough gold to get Sam out of Echo. Cliff's side cast involves the expedition crew he acquired and furry Navajo members he meets along the way in his journey to investigate the troubling conditions of the nearby reservation. Murdoch's family as well as his childhood friend make up his side cast along with a star student at the school Murdoch's sisters work at who blackmails Sam into helping her solve the mystery of her classmate's disappearance. And Will's route follows him investigating the mysterious death of Huxley, an abusive drunk with a wife who might have killed him, but the details just don't seem to line up, and that's on top of Will's ex-wife and son moving to Echo without warning. So you can be sure that you won't see any route repeating itself too often.

The historical accuracy is the last point I want to go over, because it does go to a lot of lengths most westerns won't even mention. For example, as was actually the case in the Wild West, brothels are not considered dirty or debased. In fact, the brothel Sam works at, the Saguaro Hip, doubles as a saloon and it's considered an upstanding place for upper middle class families to socialize. Also homosexuality is not THAT frowned upon. It was sorta treated the way marijuana was and still is in some areas. It's illegal for sure and being too brazen about it can get you arrested or beat up depending on the company, but keeping it private would more or less be doable under certain circumstances and letting it slip occasionally isn't the end of the world. Also, it wasn't uncommon for working class guys to be brazen and open about it when not around decent folk, especially in the West. A lot of care was taken to try to accurately depict queerness before WWII.

A positive I want to mention compared to other Echoverse games is that there's no solid expectations of paranormal stuff. The hysteria in Echo is not common knowledge in this era. Murdoch is the only one in the main cast who's lived there long enough to at least know for certain that there's a uniquely high amount of paranormal stuff going on, but even if he does know about the hysteria, it's clear that it's not common knowledge to residents or outsiders, unlike in Echo where there's at least one well known case of it or in Arches where the town is actually famous across the country for at least two cases of it, one of which happened less than a decade ago. And because the routes diverge so much and there's no clear timeline, there's no frame of reference for when it might be coming. The only clear indication is in Nik's route, but you would only know of that if you played the prologue of Echo AND connected the clues set up by the inaccurate summary of the events of the Smoke Room within the prologue of Echo. Otherwise, all bets are off and there's no telling when it will happen, which is further helped by the fact that unlike Echo, the Smoke Room doesn't keep explicit track of days and isn't afraid to do timeskips that throw off the chronology of events.

Although the Smoke Room is not really that close to complete (it's suspected with pretty good evidence that it's barely halfway done), I do highly recommend it. It is however the first VN I've recommended that really isn't close to a satisfying pausing point for any of the routes. If you have a high tolerance for incomplete visual novels, I'd say it's definitely worth the cost, even though it's free. If not, just check out other games in this series like Echo and Arches. Until next time, keep on yiffing.

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