"No, Yakah, you cannot dodge the grenade right when it's exploding point blank in your face, you're not Neo or The Flash. You should've thought about that before it got all the way up to you."
— Quiv', after Yakah realized way too late that the "metallic sphere" that rolled up to him was a grenade.
Shards of Stellmare/Terzial Heralds is the name of the campaign mastered by Quiv' after leaving Team Space Hobos RPG to focus purely on GMing, and retroactively the true name(s) of his previous campaigns as they are all connected despite their Massive Multiplayer Crossover tendencies, confusing timelines and alternate dimensions.
While the first six campaigns , Arcturus Chase (completed), Xeno-Equestria (aborted/failed), AA (completed), S.P.A.A.A.C.E (completed), Rider Dimension (aborted but technically completed) and Arcturus' Storytime (aborted); are part of the same continuity, this page only pertains to the seventh campaign onwards.
So far the players and GM are:
- Quiv': Pretty much the same guy as last time. Still fond of half-epic/half-silly storylines with equal parts of fantasy and science-fiction, very irreverent towards the usual rules expected from a role-playing game, and kind of blunt and unapologetic to his players. Takes pleasure in finding ways to confuse them or break their expectations when they're trying to be too Genre Savvy, but still gives them the information they need and lets them do as they please as long as they're asking the right questions and being creative, not caring about plot derailment as he tends to make his story as it goes with a very flexible main plot thread.
- Geoffroy: An experienced role-player who joined Quiv's campaign out of interest for the facts that it was advertised as both original and offering a lot of freedom. Makes full use of that freedom to let loose his tendencies by discovering, experimenting with and exploiting everything he can find in the campaign's setting.
- Sandra: Another experienced role-player who plays similarly to Geoffroy, but acts in a sillier way while also taking lots of notes about everything. Also the only girl in the group so far, although not in-game since Geoffroy plays a girl.
- Yakah: Still takes part in Quiv's campaign even after he went solo. Still doesn't play very well.
- Thibaud: Even though he was invited to be a part of Team Space Hobos and joined for one chapter of Dinomax's campaign, finally joined Quiv' when he went solo. Doesn't know much about roleplaying, and has a tendency to be more of an observer than anything else.
Shards Of Stellmare provides examples of:
- All Animals Are Dogs: After the flower dragon calms down, it starts acting like a very big puppy, even treating Arcturus's swords like a bone or a toy.
- Alternate Self: Fayde, the Kairnyd Empress introduced in the fourth campaign, is actually Xeno-Twilight Sparkle, the villain of the second campaign, set into a parallel Equestria; who evolved along with the remaining of her subjects into a whole new species altogether, and is now hanging around near the actual Equestria, where the original Twilight Sparkle lives. The original Twilight Sparkle herself is also different from the one in the show, since like all the other Equestrians, she's depicted in an anthro form and is shown to gradually become very similar to her Xeno-self, mostly because Xeno-Twi/Fayde is manipulating her.
- The young Hasegawa from the fifth campaign shows up again, and it's still not clear if he's this to the old Hasegawa from the original universe or not.
- BFS: Arcturus's sword is quite huge, even when not activated. It also contains his soul, and can still move around and communicate on his own.
- Big Bad: Prof. Hasegawa from the fifth campaign apparently came back from the Kamen Rider dimension and is trying to wreak havoc in the "normal" universe with the help of his robots.
- Butt-Monkey: Yakah, again. Quiv' has a tendency to ridiculize his character every time he gets the chance, but at the same time, Yakah has a tendency to make very uninspired or ill-timed decisions.
- The Dragon: Pulse to Hasegawa.
- Emergency Transformation: It turns out that 64V4N lost his body between the end of Rider Dimension and the current campaign, and somehow managed to upload his program into Chase, and then hastily transferred it into a new Cyber-Knight body with a Prismotron Torso since sharing a body with another android was pretty much turning both of them insane.
- Equippable Ally: Arcturus, as his soul is now stored inside his sword, which the players can actually wield and use with no real drawback aside from it being a bit hard to control.
- Musical Assassin: In a way. The Prismotrons's main way of offense is blasting powerful sonic waves at their opponents, and they use some kind of built-in speakers to do that. They even have a tendency to fire their sonic waves in a steady beat.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Subverted. Hasegawa may be a normal human and a physically weak scientist, he still has lots of tech on him and is able and willing to step up into a fight if need be, although he'll still try to avoid direct confrontation and leave most of the work to Pulse.
- Our Dragons Are Different: The Flower Dragon. It has butterfly-like wings made out of some kind of crystal or stained glass with floral patterns, doesn't seem to really have any kind of elemental breath aside from screeching loudly, and acts like a big puppy when not threatened.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Or rather, Sealed Chaotic Neutral In A Sword, when it comes to Arcturus current predicament, where he sealed himself inside his sword since he lost the ability to make himself a new body.
- Team Pet: Kry, the weird, crystal-dragon-butterfly-flower-thing creature found by the team in Kalyzto's temple. S/he mostly stays with the heroes because s/he has some kind of attraction towards Arcturus, but still obeys the other characters from time to time and helps them during battle, though it seems to hesitate attacking, and holds back when doing so.
- The Usual Adversaries: The Prismotrons have a tendency to pop up in the heroes way in one way or another, although they're rarely fought at their best since they're supposedly much more powerful than the player characters could handle.
- Zeerust: The Prismotrons are obviously very advanced and powerful, they have a somewhat "disco" look with all their blinking lights.
