Assembled in only a week, The Gerosha Chronicles: Assorted Heroes and Villains Coloring Book is a mostly-AI-generated coloring book that lets you imagine different characters and scenes from The Gerosha Chronicles, or color those scenes in for yourself! It's made in the same vein as any Marvel or DC coloring book.
Comic afficionados who love coloring, especially tweens, teens, and young adults, may have a blast with this vivid comic book world. Feel free to check it out for yourself.
There was a time when there was serious consideration to pitch a video game adaptation of Ciem: Ash Cloud to Insomniac Studios. They presented with their 2018 Spider-Man game the perfect formula for how such a game could go. A little more on that pitch in a bit.
In fact, some mockups were made with Wonder AI to demonstrate what different members of the Sodality of Gerosha might look like inside Spider-Man 2, should the PS5 game ever get a PC port as the first one did.
The first game was referenced many times in Dozerfleet fanfics from 2018 to 2023, including A Centipede Returns to the Spiderverse, Percolation Warriors: Spider-Faith, A Centipede Once Again Saves the Spiderverse, and A Centipede and Her Friends Save Two Spider-Men.
Unfortunately, this happened:
This is hardly the only list of complaints about the new game. YouTube, for a time, was saturated with videos filled with complaints about the smug, tone deaf, ignorant, clueless, self-righteous unrighteous new direction Insomniac has gone in.
Alas, like all major corporations, Insomniac can't pay its real estate bills unless it has certain credit qualifications. Which increasingly operate on a Chinese Social Credit-style system, courtesy of BlackRock and the Herodian Mafia. All of Esau's brats, Nimrod's ambitious, are at it, again. All their evil offspring: commies, wokes, the usual suspects; all up to the usual nonsense.
And that has cast doubt there ever being a Ciem: Ash Cloud video game in the Insomniac style of gameplay. While the work is willing to negotiate a little on gameplay mechanics and art style, the writing, the soul, and the God-centeredness of the story's message, are not interested in ever being sacrificed! The core of what Ash Cloud aims to be about is not negotiable! Yet, it's that very heart of its messages that would be the first things attacked, undermined, or replaced by the social credit club.
How Ash Cloud would work, narratively
Because Ciem: Ash Cloud is integrated into a greater schemata of mythology within The Gerosha Chronicles, it'd be almost impossible to tell the story's opening in a video game the same way as how the book would open. There'd need to be prologue missions to initiate the game with, similarly to how Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers for PS2 started players out with some of Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli's missions in Fellowship of the Ring before jumping players into The Two Towers' actual movie plot.
Unless Ciem: Inferno and Anarteq: Guardian of the Soo became games first, which would then require a Blood Over Water and a Purge-Flare: Stickin' It to Pencil adaptation prologue for Inferno and a few other prologues for Guardian of the Soo, then the most logical way to initiate an Ash Cloud game would require an Inferno climax prologue. This would be followed by a Guardian of the Soo prologue mission, a Sniperbadger: Fall of the Critter Resistance mission, a Goatgruff Kahoopiliana mission, an Anarteq Kahoopiliana mission, and finally, a mission involving Ciem and Goatgruff in Madison. The next would be a Rise of Korsicht mission for players to play as the Gray Champion. An Escape from Boston mission from The Gray Champion: Shaken Dust could also be included, but wouldn't be necessary.
After the Gray Champion mission in which Korsicht rises up, however, the plot would get rolling pretty quickly. A few small missions as Candi Flippo would play out, and then would come the Anitos. Playing as Goatgruff, players would fight the Anitos and Screwworms until it was canonically time for Candi to become Ciem again. She'd then become the main playable character for the rest of the game, with maybe one mission of playing as Purge-Flare, one as Flintirah, and one as Extirpon.
From there, the Ash Cloud game would follow the book's story pretty faithfully, right up until it was time to close everything down with the final mission of returning to Madison before time runs out. A DLC could possibly allow for Ciem: Caldera to be played as well. The epilogue to Ash Cloud could include a stinger of Tanya Woven's tragedy and Ajeerma Casey's death, teasing the arrival of the Ciem of Seattle. A Ciem of Seattle follow-up game could occur, set after the Caldera timeline. This would have a lot fewer playable characters, and be more focused on Tanya. However, side missions as Yong or even Plum Bixie could be possible.
Since Insomniac stated their desire to make a spin-off Wolverine game also set in Earth-1048, it wouldn't be unreasonable to build off of Ciem: Ash Cloud and its Anarteq and Nemara missions taken from Guardian of the Soo to create a spinoff Anarteq: Tropic Mercenary game that also borrows a little from Guardian of the Soo and Ciem / Anarteq: Kahoopiliana.
There's already artwork available for what an Insomniac-style Ash Cloud game could look like, AI-generated:
This is Candi in a hallway of Unit 5 of Madison Juvenile in 2016; right as things go haywire during Korsicht, the Anitos', and the Screwworms' raid.
Korsicht. The main villain.
Patty Trean. Betrayed by her father and left owing a lot of money on a fraudulent check, she finds herself in Unit 5. Scared, Patty is relieved to make friends with Candi quickly.
The Screwworms. Compromising other prisons.
Flintirah.
Long, straight-haired variant of Nancy Hizrah.
The original Taterbug: Meagan Amez.
Why a woke Insomniac would be a bad choice
Intihar's mad vision for things would be total toxicity to any part of The Gerosha Chronicles, and that's in spite of the fact that its canon already makes several emasculation concessions:
Goatgruff gets killed by the Anitos.
Korsicht captures the Gray Champion.
Extirpon isn't shown doing much until almost the very end.
Anarteq is barely able to defeat Wishpon.
Yet, modern Insomniac would probably still not be satisfied! The following changes are consistent with Intihar's "genius," and would totally butcher the plot and heart of everything:
It's very likely Tanya Woven would be introduced into the plot way too early. While it narratively makes sense for Miles Morales to be included in the 2018 Spider-Man base game, Tanya isn't introduced in Ciem mythos until just before the Caldera timeline. This is to be narratively consistent with the fact that Tanya is inspired by real life Taryn Twine. Therefore, she can't be in prison until February of 2017 at the earliest. As such, telling her story set after the events in Ash Cloud as happening earlier makes little narrative sense. Yet, it'd be consistent with the desire by the studio to have her phase Candi out.
Simping for Tanya wouldn't end there. There'd be racial bias for preferring Tanya. Both Candi and Tanya are half-black; but Candi was raised primarily by a white older adoptive sister and by a Japanese inventor godfather, so she has "white" speech mannerisms. Tanya at least talks "black," so they'd dote on her instead. Tanya's hairstyle is more "black" than Candi's as well. On top of that, Tanya had a black father and a white mother. Candi had a white father and black mother. Stan Flippo being experimented on by aliens is literally how Candi inherited her centipede powers, but woketards care more about not letting white straight men have credit for anything!
Speaking of aliens, the Phaelite Society of Earth subplot would be too complicated for the studio. They'd probably just have Candi get bitten by a radioactive centipede or something instead. Weak.
They'd make Anarteq suck at everything, not just at keeping his cousin out of trouble. They wouldn't be able to find enough ways to emasculate poor Isitoq!
Mary Sue-ification of Nemara. They'd make Jissika "Nemara" Sundue a smug little taint, unable to accept any responsibility for her own screw ups. In canon, when she goes to juvie in Sault Ste Marie, she equally blames herself and Wishpon for her being there. She doesn't deny that her own impulsive actions were partially to blame for what happened. But Insomniac would make her try to place ALL the blame on Izzy! In canon, she only faults Izzy for not taking the threat of Wishpon more seriously sooner. But she still admits she screwed up by attacking Wishpon without backup!
How many gods do we need? They'd make Pakulihi Lekaho as "Kamohoalii" a literal god, instead of an elaborate Marlquaanite imposter of one. They'd also remove his canonical hatred of Hawaiian Democrats over the fact that they murdered his fourth wife back in the 80s. Instead, they'd have him rant about generic something something "racism."
More emasculation: They'd make Goatgruff be miserably incompetent, rather than just get unlucky because the Anitos overpowered and outnumbered him.
No white father figures allowed! They'd completely change Candi's entire motivation for going to Cincinnati, even in ways that make no sense for her character; because they'd be much too butthurt to adapt a story about her risking her life for a white father figure in Bruce Almin, the only father figure she had left with Stan dead and Imaki denied contact with her. Not even the fact that Korsicht is half-Russian would convince them that Candi should risk her life to stop Korsicht from murdering an elderly white prison warden!
More Mary-Sue-ification: They'd probably also try to turn Cynthia Trenson into a total badass. Which is insulting to her actual role!
Even more emasculation and character assassination: They'd make Jordan Grentzwell a jerkwad, so that Candi and Cynthia could abandon him in the rubble and feel no guilt. In canon, Jordan was pretty respectable as Candi's supervisor. The girls make every reasonable effort to save his life when he gets injured.
Sociopathic Girl Power: Even more insultingly, they'd not only have Candi leave Jordan for dead; but play up Candi leaving Jordan for dead as some sort of "girl power" moment! Because nothing says "female empowerment" like showing women to be unable to rise above petty hatred for a bald man that did nothing to them!
In conclusion
Insomniac's new creative direction has proven quite a disappointment, one which may very well doom any chance that Ciem: Ash Cloud ever had to be adapted to a video game. The art style and gameplay looked promising; but a game based on any part of The Gerosha Chronicles would require godly writers that have a love and passion for the art they're making. It would require competent writers as well. Writers who aren't into a satanic BlackRock agenda. And writers who would never dare place such an agenda over and above the need for good storytelling!
In so many ways, Spider-Man 2 got gypped. And so did the players. Dozerfleet Labs has no intention of letting Insomniac make the same mistakes with a Ciem game!
