At this point, some of our long-term plans were in flux. Flo was hoping to get to the winter elves, but we weren’t entirely sure how or if we’d find them. One plan was for the ex-Peacemakers to go on a much longer journey after the Altruists’ assassination attempts, sailing the seven seas without sky elf assistance and encountering sea monsters and novel races, until they finally ended up on Winter Elf Island.

On the other hand, we considered the possibility of skipping them altogether, leaving our heroes largely ignorant of the nature of the multiverse (triverse?) and their place in it. It’s not like they needed a lot of coaching to look at a giant angry cloud-head shrieking “I AM ALL” and think, “Hmmm, yeah, that could be a problem.” But it was arguably more satisfying to address cosmological matters at leisure before the grand finale.

At any rate, this Q&A was kind of a placeholder. If we ended up showing the winter elves, as we did, it would turn up the dramatic urgency of the story as a whole. But if we found we didn’t have a good place to focus on them much, then this explanation would excuse us for that. (We’d probably still show them briefly observing the action and one going “Just as the prophecy foretold” and another saying “Yeah, DUH, Frank.” But you know what I mean: they wouldn’t have a key role.)