I am a new member to MFGG (I just signed up today) and have wanted to share an idea for a "Mario & Luigi" game that had been developing slowly in my mind for the past 6 months or so. Recently, I got it all written down on paper in a storybook mode. I started out with a 91 page hand-written draft and then put together a 169 page Word document going into much greater detail. Here's a basic outline:

***

It starts off with the Mushroom Kingdom preparing for a total solar eclipse. I plan to reintroduce the Mushroom King, as he gets abducted by a race of toad men known as the Sapians on Yoshi's Island when Mario and company went there to attend the Yoshi's Island Annual Fruit Festival. The Princess joins the Bros to Yoshi's Peak and they find the creatures interrogating her father. The toads escape into the Dream World, taking the King with them, but before they do, he conveys a crucial piece of information to the Princess as to why they were interrogating him. Peach figures it out after a minute or two, and she tells the Bros that they need to go into her father's study back at the Castle to retrieve an heirloom chest which must convey this piece of information.

As they were heading back to the Castle through the Toadwood Forest (with Toadette joining their team back at the Island), a group of Bandits ambush them and abduct the Princess. Following them, they soon encounter, to their great surprise, a benevolent Shroob. He assists the Bros in rescuing Peach and returns to the castle with them. They open the chest and find an ancient parchment with strange characters on it. The group now concludes that they have to go to Pi'illo Island to explain the situation to Prince Dreambert. They do so using the Odyssey as transportation. Dreambert agrees to join them to provide the means to enter the Dream World. But before they can return to the Castle, Bowser shoots them down from the sky in his Cruiser.

They wash up on the Kingdom's southern seashore and find that the Odyssey's Harnessphere, which contains all the ship's Power Moons, is shot. They go to nearby Dire Dire Docks, a bustling seaport, to find a replacement. While they were there, they happened to obtain King Boo's Crown (from Luigi's Mansion) as well! When they do obtain one, they return to the crash site to find that most of their Power Moons had been stolen by Boos, who retreat into Boo Woods to the north. The quartet soon arrive at a clearing in the woods where they encounter King Boo, who tells them that he had told the Boos to take them. He offers them a ransom saying that he'd give them back if they can find his Bejeweled Crown. When they produce it, King Boo betrays them by snatching it from them. However, Bowser appears moments later and bathes the entire clearing in a power searchlight, which weakens the monarch and scares away all the Boos nearby, dropping their Power Moons. Bowser takes the crown and leaves.

Mario then remembers hearing that Bowser had thought that the party was going to Star Hill and shot them down as a result. The group then decides to go to Star Hill and ask the Star Spirits what's going on. There they find them entrapped in nightmare chunks to Dreambert's horror. When they had all been freed, the Star Spirits tell the group that Bowser had taken the Star Rod, and that he may be going after a group of powerful entities known as the "Legendary Seven." Mario and company were already familiar with five of them: the Star Rod, the Dream Stone, the Dark Stone, King Boo's Crown, and the Beanstar. The other two were the Toadstool Gem and the Chinstar. Hearing this, Peach suspects that it might have been the location of the Toadstool Gem that the Sapians had been trying to get out of her father. The group decides to go get the Chinstar first, which was located in Sarasaland, as they still hadn't deciphered the parchment and Peach was going to be needed to awaken the Beanstar.

Arriving at Calicon, Sarasaland's capital city, Daisy comes out to greet them. They explain the situation to her, and Daisy tells them where they will find it - inside the Inverted Pyramid. The Sand Kingdom was really a subdivision of the Birabuto Kingdom, and the Pyramid was seen as one of the safest places to store it. Inside the Pyramid, Daisy explains to them that teamwork will be needed to reach the Legendary, since the door to it has to be opened by flipping four switches together at the same time, and they were all scattered throughout the structure. Along the way, the quartet encounters the Broodals, who were out for revenge - but knew nothing of Bowser's present schemes. But the four soon take possession of the Chinstar.

Before they leave, they explain to Daisy that they were looking for the Toadstool Gem and show her the parchment. To their surprise, Daisy recognizes it! She then tells the quartet about a young Toad named Nerr T, who works as in intern for the Palace and had become good friends with her, and is studying computer science at the Sarasacademy. She said that he also had an interest in ancient manuscripts and had actually deciphered that writing on their parchment, since he also had some manuscripts with it. They go to the Toad, and he tells them that it is a message by Peach's ancestor from many centuries ago. It said that the Gem could be found inside the Yoshi Sphinx in Gritzy Desert. Nerr T wants to join their group after hearing that they were going to head to the Beanbean Kingdom, as he wanted to see if they had some old manuscripts with that writing system on it. He soon got the okay from his professors (and Princess Daisy) and joins them.

At the Yoshi Sphinx, Princess Peach enters alone into its chambers and soon finds the Gem. When she takes it, it teleports her back to the Odyssey. They then head to the Beanbean Kingdom, where they are told that the Beanstar has been relocated to a security vault in Risus Grove to the west. After traversing the vault, they encounter the Beanstar and collect it. They then exit the complex through a Warp Pipe just outside the vault and find themselves at the Beanbean Kingdom Museum. There they find a Beanstar exhibit with a life-size replica in the center. As Peach is marveling on how real it looks, she finds that that was actually the real Beanstar! It was awake! Someone had done the old switcharoo. Bowser suddenly crashes through the ceiling in an attempt to take it before they could do anything, but Peach is quick to grab it. The group now has three Legendary in its possession. Bowser Jr attacks them with a Legendary-enhanced contraption, but the quartet destroy it. Explaining everything to Queen Bean on what had happened, several guards enter bringing with them three Sapian prisoners, who were most likely the ones that had implemented the exchange. All this time, the quartet had assumed that these toad men had been Bowser's newest minions, but after interrogating them, they find that Bowser never was their Master! In the next minutes, they behold a Dream Portal open up before them. From it emerged a Pi'illo, who had been investigating where the Mushroom King might be, and an eerily familiar fairy. He tells them that he found out where the King was being held. Seeing the fairy, Peach then figures out who the Sapians' Master really was . . . it was Wart!! 

Feeling prepared, the group heads back to Peach's Castle, where they find Professor E. Gadd there talking with the friendly Shroob. Dreambert finally positions himself for Luigi to sleep on, and soon the Portal appears, though it took significantly longer than on Pi'illo Island. Mario enters the portal along with the Shroob, who expressed an interest to see what the dimension was like. There they find the realm of Subcon, and its citizens all remember Mario. Reaching the capital, they find the King of Subcon, Osama - who is human, there to greet the two. He brings them to the main entrance to Subspace - the only permanent entrance, and tells them that their Mushroom King was trapped there. He also explains that he and his people had to exile Wart to Subspace after Mario and company defeated him and erect a barrier using the Legendary Seven. They find to their dismay as they try to enter Subspace that Dreamy Luigi was also subject to the effects of the barrier and couldn't enter. This means that, in order to stay together, the real Luigi would have to go into the Dream World, as the barrier only kept out dreamy beings since Mario could enter the portal. The Shroob then tells Osama that his people had been working on finding a way to enter the Dream World themselves, and that all the research was back at the Vim Factory.

Returning to the Castle and explaining the situation, the quartet heads back to the Toadwood Forest to find this research - led by the Shroob. They soon do find themselves inside the Vim Factory, specifically the basement. Before they start working on a Dream Portal generator, they have to research how to extract vim nonlethally, since most of the machinery is vim-powered. They soon figure it out, with Nerr T programming most of it. Soon they have an entire tank full of vim, and with both Nerr T and Toadette just fine (the Professor having created plenty of baby's tears formula for them). In due time, Dreambert is astonished to see a fully-functioning Dream Portal there in the lab! The quartet jumps in along with Nerr T and Prince Dreambert.

The King of Subcon greets the party and again brings them to the portal to Subspace. They all enter and make their way through the dark dimension. Dreambert becomes an asset to them when the door to a small fortress closes on the quartet and are trapped. He returns to Subcon to find the equivalent fortress and opens the door there (it is this that makes Prince Dreambert a semi-playable character). They traverse several fortresses in the same manner. Before reaching the great fortress at the end of the road, Wart confronts them and summons a trio of giant Birdos. The Birdos take the four heroes out, but Nerr T escapes with the Legendary and soon frees them (making him semi-playable as well). They all finally find Wart as well as Bowser at the top of a great tower in the center of the large fortress complex and engages them in battle. Despite the odds, the quartet finally puts an end to Wart and eliminates him permanently. The barrier is taken down, and his operatives are rendered harmless. They then return to the real world and enjoy the eclipse.

***

Please keep in mind, there are a lot of other things that happen in this story, but it would be way too much for a starting post. I get the feeling that this is a very unique story and have been itching to hear what others have to say about it. As you can probably tell, I have tried to weave together as much of the Super Mario Series as possible into a single plot. I have also tried as much as I could to avoid inconsistencies. I feel that the final battle is very powerful, there is plenty of humor worthy of a "Mario & Luigi" title scattered through the document, and I have even added a significant amount of mild romance - striving as hard as I could to keep it at an appropriate level. And no, it is not between Mario and Peach. Sorry.

Hopefully, this isn't too much for you to read. Please tell me if you're interested in reading my full Word document. I look forward to your feedback!

JaberandCamgar

Keep in mind, Evil Yoshi Toes. This is an abbreviated storyline. I was simply giving an overview of the plot. There is much more that actually happens that is all written down in my Word document. It includes expansive character dialogue, additional minor scenes, greater details in character abilities, and gimmicks.

I haven't yet done any level design yet, but if this game is attractive enough, I might start. I don't have any experience in video game creation, but my sister has made her own fan game (https://gamejolt.com/games/the_boss/208797), and seems to be interested in showing me how to use it. While the style of her game is much too tile-based to be used in my idea (it reminds me of the old Pokémon games for the GameBoy), she did tell me that I could use parallax mapping in the program, too. I don't really know anything about the program as of yet, but upon seeing the parallax stuff, it makes me hopeful. It looks much more like the maps in a Mario & Luigi title. Any additional commentary on world map design or anything else would be extremely helpful.

While the Word document form of my storyline is too large to attach here (it's about 2.5 Mb), I was able to compress the size onto a PDF at less than half of that: 
  Mario&Luigi_EclipsedMemories_20190524.docx.pdf (Size: 1.09 MB / Downloads: 10) . I've been told that I'm a good writer. Feel free to comment.

Thank you, VinnyVideo! It's nice to know that people have an interest in my idea. I did try to take aspects of several Mario games and make a connection between them. One of these game fusions involved Subcon being located in the Dream World. This would explain why Super Mario Bros. 2 was just a dream - it had been their dreamy forms that had gone and saved them. This also allows me to say that the Subcon had been closely associated with the Pi'illos before the latter were petrified by Antasma.

I also gave a reason for why Wart had not made any more appearances. After the events of BS Super Mario USA, the King of Subcon, Osama, had Wart banished to Subspace and erected a dreamy barrier around it using the power of the Legendary Seven. Only the power of all Seven could remove it.

As there have been several wish-granting items in the Mario franchise (the Star Rod, the Beanstar, the Dream Stone, and the Dark Stone), I figured that there must be a connection between them. King Boo's Crown with the big red gem also appears to give him a form of wish granting power. I also realized that there has never been some powerful item from the Mushroom Kingdom with that kind of power, so that's why I came up with the Toadstool Gem - and gave the Mushroom Kingdom some lore to accompany it. I then created a similar item for Sarasaland. The Legendary Seven should actually look pretty cool together, as they will all be of different colors of the rainbow: King Boo's Crown is red, the Toadstool Gem will be orange, the Star Rod is yellow, the Beanstar is green, the Chinstar will be blue, the Dark Stone is purple, and the Dream Stone is white. They're even categorized! Two gems, then three stars, then two stones!

I have recently been putting together what kinds of character-special gimmicks to utilize. Mario has his hammer, Firebrand, Cappy, and perhaps the Cat Suit. Luigi would also have a hammer along with his Thunderhand, and some other unique ability - at the moment, I came up with a cloud walking ability, though this might change if it doesn't work. Peach has her floating ability and could also use her parasol to take advantage of updrafts. She also could have what I call a "memory surge," which is a magical discharge allowing her to break very hard rocks where the Bros' hammers can't. As for Toadette, I have decided to give her an "Icyhand" to go with the Bros' hand abilities that she obtains in Sarasaland. As a Toad, she should also be the fastest character in the overworld, and have gimmicks involving speed. She will also obtain a spore counter very late in the game, and this will be a crucial means of defeating Wart in the final battle. In a way, this is a connection to Super Smash Bros, as it is much like Little Mac's KO Punch combined with the Wario Waft: The more damage she takes, the more powerful her spore counter becomes, but she can discharge it at any time. Additionally, she does not slip on ice.

Finally, I have also considered having an expanded elemental attribute system. Mario is Fire (natch!), Luigi is Thunder, Peach is Magic, Toadette starts off as Neutral, but becomes Ice after obtaining her Icyhand. Enemies would also have this attribute system and can be weak, neutral, or strong against certain other attributes. For example, Fire types are obviously strong against other Fire types as well as Magic types, but are weak against Ice and Poison types, and are neutral against Thunder. This is seen on a small scale in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga with some enemies either healing or take critical damage against either Fire or Thunder.

Please keep me posted. I really want to hear what users have to say about the details of the final battle! I feel that it's very powerful and emotional, too!

As I was working on the plot I did some research on as many places in the Mushroom Kingdom as I could find to get an idea on how the country's places were laid out, so I drew a sketch of it. It includes the locations from Partners in Time, Bowser's Inside Story, and Paper Jam. Additionally, connections to the Beanbean Kingdom and Sarasaland have also been added, as well as the Yoshi Sphinx and Boo Woods with Luigi's NEW Mansion.

I'd post it here, but I'm a little self-conscious about the 64 MB attachment limit, and this scan is about 1.4 MB in size. However, I did post it on my DeviantArt account here. In time, perhaps I'll continue to create some concept sketches. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what my Sapian creatures are going to look like - but I would like them to bear a slight resemblance to Wart. I plan to have Dire Dire Docks, which I hadn't created yet at the time of the drawing, be located due south of Boo Woods on the southern coast not too far away from Cavi Cape. Additionally, later I decided that I wanted the Vim Factory to be north of the path through Toadwood Forest rather than to the south as shown on the drawing. I also forgot to define the location of Gloomy Woods from Paper Jam, which according to the drawing should be located north and east of Mario and Luigi's House. The Mushroom Kingdom from Paper Mario is disregarded, as it is a universe all its own.

I'll do my best to keep you posted on any changes or any new ideas.

Ever since I started creating these characters in my story, I had considered giving them all Japanese names as well . . . just in case I wanted to have the game translated into the language for the Rising Sun fans out there. Just a heads up out there, I don't really know all that much about Japanese as of now, but I have been extremely interested in its localization into English.

I did some research today (blind research perhaps), and came up with a Japanese name for my character Nerr T: kinopiheishō (キノピヘイショウ). This is a portmanteau of the Japanese name for Toad kinopio (キノピオ) and jiheishō (自閉症 − じへいしょう), meaning autism, as he is an autistic Toad.

For my race of toad men, the Sapians, I see no reason to change it, as it works quite well in Japanese: sapian (サピアン). But for any of you out there that are familiar with Japanese, please let me know if there might be anything that would be suggestive, offensive, or inappropriate about it.

My ancient emperor of the Mushroom Kingdom, Agaricus the Great, I could call something like kōtei agarikusu (皇帝アガリクス). Similarly, King Phaseolus would be (パセオラス王).

As for the Shroob, I feel like his name could be something like hiroshi gedōsatō (外道佐藤弘 − げどうさとうひろし). I want it to be somewhat corny, as I gave him the name Charlie Shroobson for a possible English name (remember Starlow coming up with the pseudonym "Chippy" when she first addressed Bowser inside his body). If you can think of a name that is even more common, please let me know. However, using the name Hiroshi would be an appropriate nod to the late executive producer Hiroshi Yamauchi. The first two characters, gedō, come from the possible basis for the Japanese name for the Shroobs. It can mean "unorthodoxy, heresy," and can not only describe the unorthodox acts of the Shroobs on the Mushroom Kingdom, but also describe his unorthodox personality reversely applied to the Shroobs, as he is the only benevolent member of their race. Satō is the most common Japanese surname according to this website.

Please feel free to comment on my naming ideas or any kana spelling errors or translation errors — I'm still not quite as familiar with this system. Additionally, I'll try to draw and post some more concept art as well.

My latest sketch has my first concept for the Mushroom King. I tried to take Peach's features and go back a generation. Do you think he looks like he could be her father?

The Mushroom King plays a big role in my story. He gets kidnapped by the Sapians, Wart's newest minions, and they interrogate him to get the location of the Toadstool Gem atop Yoshi's Peak. The King manages to stealthily convey this when she and the Bros arrive at the summit before his captors escape with him - he is not going to be the dimwit that was portrayed in the comics or the TV show.

I have also drawn my first picture of Wart, but I haven't posted it yet, as I might want to digitize it. Though I might simply make one with the exchange between him and Bowser, whom I have also drawn. I have given Bowser what I feel to be a very well written rant:
 

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Those are some really good questions, Ostrich101.

Feel free to leave extra feedback if you have any more questions. I'll continue making some more concept sketches, and maybe, if I can get in touch with some of my sister's development team, put together a few sprite sheets as well. In fact, she seems to be looking for more people to make sprites for her upcoming Glitch in the System fangame. Perhaps I could contribute if I can learn how to make them.

Will post more soon.

I have just posted another picture with the exchange between Bowser and Wart. As the conversation takes place in Subspace, I put in a dark background. Most of my thoughts have been put into the picture's description. Feel free to check it out! It's perhaps the most professional-looking picture I have so far - I've given it that cool background! If you like it, feel free to leave a 1-Up!

I thought I'd mention another interesting idea for my game: The addition of card games. I feel that people should know how trick-taking card games work, so I thought it would be interesting to have the quartet play Hearts while they were waiting for Nerr T, Professor E. Gadd, and the friendly Shroob to do their vim research in the Vim Factory's basement, as they don't have anything else to do and are unable to assist in the research.
However, I'm sure it would be much, much more interesting if I included Scopa into this fangame. Scopa is a popular Italian card game using the Italian card deck (10 cards per suit for a total of 40 cards; suits are called clubs, cups, swords, and coins). Since Mario is Italian, I felt like this would be a unique and appropriate addition to the game. Scopa has only two players, but there is a four-player edition called Scopone, that all of them could play. It might take too long to describe it, so I'll simply give the Wikipedia article on it.
Here's a little exchange from my story about it:

***
At the end of one round, while Mario was computing high-card primes, Nerr T came out and went over to them.
"I think we've done it! Come —" He stopped upon seeing what they were doing. He scanned their cards momentarily, then said, "Peach's team gets the high-card point. Come on over!"
"Wait," Toadette told him. "Did you just look at our cards and calculate their score? You couldn't have seen them for longer than a few seconds!" Nerr T looked at her.
"Yeah, so?"
"Nerr T, that was incredible!" she said. "Does autism really make you that smart?"
The Toad chuckled bashfully. "If you say so. I'm familiar with Scopa since I had once played this one detective game starring a teenaged girl sleuth who went to Venice. She wore a bunch of disguises, and once she met someone that would only discuss business with her if she won a game of Scopa. I think the case had to do with a stolen —"
"Okay, Nerr T! That's enough!" Starlow interrupted. "You don't have to go into detail. Just say that you saw it in a video game and leave it at that. That's all!"
"Sorry. Sometimes I get carried away." He turned to face the heroes. "Come on! I think we've reached a breakthrough!"
***

In this exchange, Nerr T is basically telling them about how I found out about it, too. He is referring to Nancy Drew: The Phantom of Venice. I've never played any of the Nancy Drew games myself, but I have watched my sister and brother both play them and am quite familiar with many of the stories.
I could also have someone at, maybe, Dire Dire Docks also have them play these two card games. To encourage the player, I can have them win special gear from making certain achievements. Here are a handful of examples:

This idea would give me the freedom to apply my Captain Toad Treasure Tracker card deck concept as well. Let me know what you think.

So today I came up with an interesting idea to expand to the storyline: After the quartet defeats Madame Broode and the Broodals inside the Inverted Pyramid, I thought it would be extremely unexpected to have Peach turn to the rabbits and offer them a job organizing the eclipse festival. I haven't written this down on my document yet, but I thought that maybe the exchange could go something like this:

"Those Broodals are all real brutes!" Starlow said. "Were they this bad during the wedding?"
"Pretty much," Peach answered. "They really live up to their name: A band of brutal Broodal brutes!" The group laughed lightly at the silly jingle.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah!" Topper moaned. "Watever ya say!"
The Princess went over to Daisy, untied her, and brought her to her feet.
"You guys can take anything down!" Daisy cheered, giving her a hug. "Thanks to you, the Chinstar is safe!"
"What in tarnation does it take to take you down?" Rango muttered.
"No wonder they call you Superstars," Spewart groaned.
"I think I pulled a muscle . . ." Madam Broode gurgled.
The five of them finally manage to stand up. Peach looked back over at them, thinking.
"You guys organized that wedding . . ." she said. She took a few paces towards them. "We have an eclipse party coming up at the Castle in a matter if days. Would you mind organizing that? I'll probably need some overseers."
The rabbits all looked at her, stunned.
"What? After we had just attacked you?" Hariet asked. "What kind of lunatic are you to ask us something like that?"

"You seem to have been out for revenge solely because you felt that no one would ever hire you again!" Peach told them. "But I'll bet that whomever it might have been that Bowser hired, they would not have been any more successful than you. Don't be blame yourselves, though - it sounds like you guys are really good at what you do. You just happened to be working with Bowser in one of his schemes, and Mario has thwarted him every time. Mario's reputation precedes him, but it doesn't have to affect yours either. Come work with me on this festival! That is what you guys had wanted, right . . . a job?" 
The five of them looked torn. The gravitation between both vengeance and her offer were quite strong. After several minutes, Hariet approached her uncomfortably. Peach took a few steps toward her, an inviting smile on her face and hand outstretched.
"You're right," Hariet replied. "It was all about the employment . . . I see no reason why we shouldn't." She finally did manage to smile and reach her hand out to meet with Peach's, and upon doing so, all the Broodals suddenly had an unusual feeling of satisfaction.
"Well . . ." Daisy said. "Wouldn't have seen that coming!"
***

I would like to know what your thoughts are for this interesting addition to the story. Love trumps hate, right? Feel free to share with me any of your own ideas, too! Feedback would be appreciated.

I would try to make some sort of teaser trailer for this story to give a more vivid visual idea, let alone try to do some preliminary development, but I don't have a team of any sort to assist me with that yet.

By the way, today (June 14) is my grandfather's birthday. I thought I might digitize a sketch for him as a card.

Will try to make some more sketches. I might want to look for someone to give me some pixel art and sprite creation tutorials sometime, now that I have a Photoshop program.

  ShroobConcept.png (Size: 1.92 KB / Downloads: 289)

This could technically be classified as the first sprite concept for my game. I wanted to try to visualize what color my friendly Shroob would be, so I came up with this 3DS style color palette today along with a generic Shroob for comparison (taken from ML3DX on The Spriter's Resource). I had already decided that he would have green eyes as opposed to red as all the other members of his alien race . . . similar to the difference between the Lakitus from Super Mario World versus the Lakitu Referee in Super Mario Kart, which had the same difference.

As I had mentioned, this unusual Shroob would play an important part in my story's plot, as it would be Shroob technology that would allow real Luigi to enter the Dream World (and even if Dreamy Luigi could enter Subspace, he does not have Thunderhand like real Luigi does, and would not be able to do any of the puzzles inside that require it) and his expertise on this technology would be invaluable to the team. I have even given him an emotional scene not long before they head off into the Toadwood Forest:

***
After Mario and company returned from the Dream Portal, Dreambert explained the situation to the rest of the party. "So it looks like we are going to have to return to the Toadwood Forest and find this research. I would be quite surprised if it actually works." Peach looked concerned.
"But Dreambert," she said. "All the Shroob technology runs on vim. Mario and Luigi can certainly tell you how terrible that was."
"I remember reading about it," Toadette added. "It was horrible! The trees would catch unsuspecting Toads and start sucking the life out of them. And if they themselves didn't get caught directly like Toadiko, the Shroob Saucers would abduct Toads from all around and bring them to the forest and entrap them themselves! I'm glad I wasn't around to see it; it was before my time. Are you sure we can't find some other way to get into the Dream World?" She looked over at Charlie.
The Shroob hung his head down and sighed. "Yes . . . it was despicable. But as E. Gadd had said earlier, I had no power whatsoever to change it. I was seen as a freak for my compassion towards your people, but they still kept me on their team for my expertise, and because they knew I couldn't do anything about it. And look at where their aggressiveness got them! The Princess Shroob Sisters, my colleagues, all the Shrooboids and Shrooblets and other Shroobkind, all the mushrooms, every last semblance of my people - all gone; eradicated; whipped off the face of the earth . . . all except me. And why? Because I have this thing called compassion! Something no other Shroob I knew ever seemed to understand." The party saw tears starting to form in his eyes. And them the most unusual thing happened: Toadette walked up to the Shroob - and gave him a hug!
"Aww! How touching!" Peach thought to herself. "How unexpected, too!"
***

Happiness is loving your enemies!