The characters were all thrown into Traverse Town at nearly the same time, for unknown note reasons. They were nearly immediately attacked by Heartless- veritable armies of them; the paths of the town were literally seething with Heartless, enough to turn the sidewalks black.
After some time fighting the Heartless, the group encountered Cid. note Cid took them into his house, where he showed them a useful tip; Heartless can't spawn if there is no darkness.
The group decided to head off to Merlin's. At the same time, however, several new characters appeared- notably, Launchpad, a character noted for his skill at crashing Gummi Ships.
The characters entered Merlin's House, whereupon Merlin cast a Year Inside, Hour Outside spell. He proceeded to take Vincent upstairs and examine his Keychains, curious to know why Vincent had Keychains, and yet, no Keyblade.
Eventually, Merlin decided that they should go see Yen Sid. They left the house, rushing ahead to the crash site, where Merlin had previously hidden a Gummi Ship.
When they got there, however, they found themselves confronted by a barrier. Inside the barrier, the Man in White was doing something. SHe had Leon, Yuffie and Aerith knocked unconscious, and was doing something.
Kaito proceeded to break through the Barrier with his Keyblade, allowing the characters to engage... the Heartless he had brought along. Merlin fought him, allowing the characters enough time to slay the Heartless and help him.
They fought the Heartless off eventually, and forced the Man In White to flee. They also managed to tame an Arch-Behemother. Encouraged, they opened the door to find the Gummi Ship- only to find the first surprise; the Man In White had left a bomb there.
Merlin was killed in the initial explosion. The characters fled the scene, returning to Merlin's House.
There, Cid agreed to accompany the characters to see Yen Sid. They proceeded to go back to the Crash Site, which was swarming with low-level Heartless again.
The characters made it safely away.
Once they arrived at Yen Sid's tower several days later, however, they found it to be quite a different story. There were Heartless swarming there- even more so than at Traverse Town.
They settled their airship down. Ignis, coming down from a Potion High, went into another Berserker rage and rushed off into the middle of the Heartless alone.
The others soon followed. Together, they dealt with the Heartless- there were no Boss-level Heartless. However, during the fight, Ignis was pierced through the Heart by a Heartless, and was forced to the centre of his mind to do battle with his Darkness.
In the meantime, the Heartless disappeared. The others were shocked to find themselves confronted by a Behemoth note .
However, when they turned, they soon found that the Arch Behemoth was not their enemy- there were three Twilight Thorns there. The Behemoth tackles one, while the characters fought the other two.
The characters were successful, and they rushed upstairs to see Yen Sid- whereupon they were confronted by the Man in White. Again.
Cassius engaged the three Nobodies that were keeping Yen Sid from fighting him again. He was successful, in that he managed to successfully save Yen Sid- but at the same time, Cassius was killed. For further information, look at Cassius' section on the Character page. The Man In White fled again.
Down below, Collette and J managed to get Ignis back on board on the ship. However, when they tried to locate Cid, all they could find was a cockpit covered in blood. note
On the horizon, a large Gummi Heartless approached. Several players fled and piled in the ship.
Which the help of the Ship's Artificial Intelligence Unit, Ignis fought the Gummi Heartless. The attempt was ultimately futile, however; the Gummi Heartless merely blew up the Tower and fled.
Several of the characters sustained damage in the fall. note
They landed the Gummi Ship. At that time, however, the Man in White showed up and successfully took Ignis on a trip to Sinnoh..
Collette, at this time, crashed. She broke psychologically.
They fled towards the nearest inhabitable planet—The Wizarding World. Immediately upon entering, however, they were attacked by a Dragon, who did serious damage to the hull (and the electronic systems), and melted their wing.
They crashed into a lake note , and tried to escape from the drowning ship. Only the core players were really successful, however.
At this point, several plot threads occur either concurrently or near-concurrently with relatively little interaction.
Upon their arrival they were ambushed by a small group of Heartless, which they managed to fight off after sustaining injuries, they were picked up by Charlie Weasley. Charlie revealed that one of his colleagues, a certain Lecroix, had been doing research into interdimensional magic; he might be able to help them. They arrived at his cottage to find him dead, and Ignis present; Ignis had also been directed to contact Lecroix, as he was one of Merlin's contacts. At roughly this time a force of wizards, seeking to arrest Lecroix for helping out Muggles, tried to attack; they were driven off in turn by another faction—Russian mercenaries led by Sergeant Kamarov.
Kamarov managed to trigger Lecroix's Dead Man's Switch and tried to retrieve his research—by now confirmed to be relevant to the players' quest—via a sentient locket containing Lecroix's picture, which warned the players that "this was no world for heroes". He could not explain more because he did know more; he needed Lecroix's research notes to clarify that statement. Retrieving them involved a burst of Key magic that attracted the attention of Heartless forces all around, and the group made a hasty fighting retreat to Kamarov's safe haven—or tried to, anyway. An aerial Heartless attack leaves several of the players dead or wounded.
Lecroix, digging through his research notes, finally had enough to give an explanation about the world. For whatever reason, the Theory of Narrative Causality was especially weak here; individual heroes and villains did not have the fraction of the power of an organized army or nation, no matter how skilled or strong. This cut both ways: on one hand, the player characters risked being weakened permanently if they stayed too long here. On the other, the Heartless were permanently destructible on this world. This had the potential to alter the entire dynamic of the conflict—if they knew more about the phenomenon.
Continuing their retreat, the group is finally intercepted at night by a column of Russian peacekeepers, riding in armored vehicles and tanks. Among them, strangely enough, are a mixed force of wizards and muggle commandos...
After setting down at Yen Sid’s tower, Ignis ended up charging into the Heartless army on his own, suffering a stab to the Heart in the process. Rather than dying, he found himself in a Dive to the Heart, where he was confronted by his darkness, having grown stronger than he was because of the 10 years he spent on his own with little to no human contact. Despite the Shadow easily besting him, Ignis was able to call upon his Heart’s memories of a person he once knew to take out his shadow, who reminded him before fading that he was a part of him and wouldn’t just vanish. Waking up shortly after, he teamed up with several of the others to take down two Twilight Thorns, before passing out again once the threat was passed. Whilst the others went to aid Yen Sid, Ignis came under attack from a Dragoon Nobody, his shadow managing to take control of Ignis’ body because Ignis’ consciousness was sleeping and using the Powers of Darkness to chase down the Sniper and fight his way out of an ambush, losing an eye in the process. Before he could do anything further, Ignis’ body shut down, exhausted from the use of darkness which he was unaccustomed to. Near-death and with his Heart still under attack from a Heartless’ darkness, he was rescued by one of the Three Fairies and brought to Yen Sid, who, along with a figure of light in Ignis’ heart and Ignis himself, removed the taint and let Ignis arise. Almost immediately after, a Berserker left over from the fight popped up, Ignis inadvertently using the powers of darkness to help J take it down.
The fighting over, Ignis enquired as to how he had lost his eye, all memories of the goings on in his Heart inaccessible by his body. When Collette ran out of the room, Ignis pursued her to try and make her feel better, telling her he’d always be there to listen. The two then when and searched the Gummi Ship for Cid, finding nothing but blood and urine in the Pilot’s seat. Immediately after, Ignis had to take control of the Highwind using the assistance of the onboard AI in an attempt to fend off a Pirate Ship intent on destroying Yen Sid’s tower, to little success; no-one was killed, but the tower was destroyed and the Pirate Ship fled. Upon landing and everyone else disembarking to look for survivors, Ignis was confronted by the Man in White, who revealed himself to actually be a woman, and hauled into another world, whereupon he was thrown off of a cliff. Through a lucky break, he landed on a Snorlax and was knocked out when he hit a tree, awakening hours later and meeting a boy named Tim who handed him a Torterra Pokemon. The following day, whilst bonding with his Torterra, Ignis was met by a young girl, who he helped find a cave which she promptly through him into when he was distracted by an Invisible creature, the girl having actually been the Woman in Disguise. Even though he managed to get out, his freedom was short lived as the Woman was waiting for him outside and, after a brief struggle, straddled him and throttled him to death. In a desperate bid to escape the end, the guiding consciousness of Ignis’ Nobody Sword contacted those inside Ignis’ heart, who agreed to let him do whatever it took to save Ignis’ life. The Nobody promptly plunged Ignis’ heart into darkness, turning his Heart into an Invisible.
Ignis’ body, meanwhile, woke up in Twilight Town. Outside the Mansion, to be precise. Inside, he met Aqua and Namine, who explained what had happened to him after he was able to convince them he wasn't an enemy. Learning that he'd have to kill his Heartless so that he could become a full human again, Aqua suggested they go to the Keyblade Graveyard to learn how to find his Heartless from the Sentiments there and, after meeting Roxas and learning how to access Dark Corridors, they set off. At the Graveyard, one of the Sentiments contacted him directly, a disembodied voice that spoke to him in the centre of the field of blades as Aqua went to fetch Terra, the Sentiment hinting at what had happened to Terra. But before the trio could say anything more than introductions, they were attacked, Aqua knocked unconscious almost immediately by the Vanitas Remnant which then engaged Terra and Ignis. After a long and bloody (on Ignis' part) fight, the Remnant retreated, Terra sending Ignis back to the mansion to heal up whilst he would look after Aqua.
After Roxas was able to bring him back from the brink, Ignis spent the night there, tensions between Ignis and Roxas running high, neither trusting the other. Roxas departed the following day, leaving Namine and Ignis behind. After an hour passing the time waiting for Aqua to return and Namine apparently avoiding him outright, Ignis left the mansion and headed into town, exploring the area, stocking up on potions and, now that he was given time to think, pondering exactly what he was going to do now that he was a Nobody, eventually deciding against throwing himself off of the Clock Tower and resolving to find his friends. When he got back, neither Roxas nor Namine could be found so, after worldhopping to Sinnoh and learning his sword was missing (likely taken by Erin), he returned to the Graveyard. The Sentiment that had spoken to him earlier was silent, and Ignis was able to have a long conversation with Terra, learning the circumstances of why he was bound to the Keyblade Graveyard: he couldn't leave until both of his friends were safe. Volunteering the group's assistance to help Terra save his other friend, Ignis was informed they would need to slay a group of Sentiments known as the Tatters, Terra explaining them to be the last remnants of a group of Nobodies: Organisation XIII. Agreeing to this task and telling Terra to give him as his friends a chance, Ignis collected Aqua, promised he'd return once she was awake and left the world.
The Mansion was still abandoned when he returned. Several hours later, that changed as Roxas returned, chased by an monstrous Heartless that forced them out of the Mansion, Ignis opening a Corridor to the ruins of the Mysterious Tower and barely escaping. Roxas in critical condition and Ignis possessing a badly damaged leg, he took them back to Merlin's house before passing out. Eighteen hours passed, and he awoke to find Roxas up and about, Aqua still unconscious. Tensions ran even higher between the two as Ignis learned Namine was kidnapped back at the Mansion, Roxas still unwilling to trust Ignis as he left to go about his own business. Following Yuffie's depressed reaction to Cid's apparent death, Ignis grew tired of waiting and scanned Merlin's study for any locations his friends may have gone, coming across several books. Taking a gamble on the most likely one, he opened a Dark Corridor to the world and took Aqua with him, hoping he could find medical attention for her.
Two long days followed, Ignis first having to find away to escape from a magical barrier preventing him from using Dark Corridors and then spending two days trekking to the nearest town with Aqua on his back, leaving her in the care of Whitby's hospital as he used information contained in the book to determine his next move: journeying to meet a contact on the world, quartered in Romania. With the help of the Town's seedier elements, he was able to fly to Bucharest, then spent several more hours walking until he found the house.
As it turned out, the contact was already dead, killed by one of the Men and Women in White who left a Golem there to learn of any visitors. His memories having subconsciously solidified his old personality, Ignis engaged the Golem, then over a Dozen of its comrades, a long, hard fight seeing him a bloody victory. Crawling his way back into the house, he healed up before he was promptly confronted by Charlie and Vincent. He was back with the main group.
Dantae and Altairen Draconis both found themselves in Traverse Town, much later than the others. Dantae was badly wounded fighting off a Heartless, before meeting with Altairen and then with Aerith and Yuffie. Traverse Town itself faced attacks by Nobodies, specifically a reconnaissance-in-force of Creepers. The groups had to separate, with Aerith and Yuffie covering one sector and the PCs covering another. Around this time the Creepers changed their tactics to take advantage of the fact that they could fly and inflicted serious injuries on both PCs due partly to a miscommunication, and partly because neither Dantae nor Altairen had much experience facing coordinated waves of dive-bombing enemies. They won out by a slim margin before being rejoined by Aerith and Yuffie, who assisted in healing them up and began efforts to shore up the town against future incursions.
Outside the warehouse, Stitch had just woken up in the burned-out shell of a bus, after a Dream Sequence involving a certain man in blue, who rather enigmatically hinted at work to be done before he woke up.
The vampire attack was driven off very quickly by Zeron and Stitch, who then encountered a force of humans who ambushed and killed two car loads of vampires. Los Angeles, it turned out, had been turned into a post-Apocalyptic wasteland, with vampire gangs and clans roaming the city, and small bands of human survivors as a makeshift resistance. The humans offered safe haven for the two, but were quickly joined, as portals opened in succession, by Mordekaiser and Kazuma (who instantly started fighting), and then Mami Tomoe, in all cases preceded by glimpses of a man in blue.
