shepherds-of-haven - Tumblr blog

[shepherds-of-haven]

She's so beautiful! 🥺 Future heartbreaker and troublemaker for sure... 🥺

✨Golden Child✨

[shepherds-of-haven]

hi i hope you're having a good day! this may be quite silly but i'm curious, what are some typical dances for the peoples of blest?

Hi there! This was actually sent in for the Patreon Q&A in April, but something horrible has happened to Patreon's site in the last several months, where after a certain amount of text, the text editor becomes horrifically laggy and crashes constantly, meaning I did all the work (i.e. watching so many medieval and ancient dancing videos and reading all about various cultures and their dances) to answer this question, but the website stubbornly would not let me type up my answer in the existing Q&A post... 🥹 So I kept losing all my progress on this one and ultimately ended up giving up, but I still wanted to answer it, so I hope it's okay that I answer here!

The short answer: the typical dances for the people of Blest obviously are going to vary widely between cultures as well as classes within those cultures. People from the southern isles dance quite differently from people in the Eastern Continent, who in turn dance differently from people in Jalis. I'm not going to cover too much of the kinds of dancing that we don't see much of in the game, though I will note that Ket and Hunter cultures tend to favor dancing more as a form of story-telling or individual expression (often seen in plays or festival rituals where specialized dancers are playing specific roles or parts), with elaborate costumes and dance techniques being employed in each culture (some traditional Ket dancers use fans and masks, Hunter dancers often dress in swirling costumes with rattling beads and employ hand-drums), rather than the communal dancing we might envision in, like, ballrooms or barnyard line-dancing. The Elves have a mix of both, with dance as "performance" as well as dance as "socializing" utilized in equal measure, and performative dancing is seen as a high art form that deeply utilizes perfectly synchronized music, color coordination, and movement to create mesmerizing group displays, almost like synchronized swimming or Cirque de Soleil type experiences. Mage culture, in general, doesn't put a lot of emphasis on dancing, as many Mages tend to trend introverted, solitary, or unathletic, so as a society it's not viewed as a really vital skill or even a part of their larger culture outside of the usual school/festival dancing, which isn't so much taught as it is just stumbled into.

Anyway, the two primary forms of dancing we seen in the game are what the nobles do and what the commonfolk do. I imagine dancing among aristocrats (formal balls, the Trade Minister's gala, parties at the Sun Court) to be pretty similar to what you'd see in Regency-Era dancing, with waltzes, quadrilles, and cotillons being the most common style.

However, it should be noted that the "English country dance" that was typical of the Regency era (where men and women form two lines, facing across from their partner, and are not permitted to dance alone as a couple, but side-by-side alongside others) is not something that is present in Blest. If you've seen any Austenian movies like P&P 2005, you know what I mean.

^ So not this!

It may factor into a dance a noble has to do once or twice in their lifetime, but it's pretty unusual, and a guest without a noble background (like Riel or the Shepherds at the Trade Minister's gala) wouldn't be expected to know it.

Among the commonfolk, dancing typically takes place during festivals and holidays, in the streets or on the village green or town square, not within a formal venue such as a ball. As such, there are really no formal moves or styles ascribed to this kind of dancing--it's primarily dictated by what kind of music is playing, and you basically just jam out to it however you want, in a group, couple, or as an individual--but the closest real-world equivalents I could liken it to would be the medieval carole or free-style polka. But there are no formalized rules other than basic proprietary/decency, and even then that can be pretty lax once the drink is flowing.

However, while I don't have any formal name for it, mostly I just imagine the dance scene from A Knight's Tale. :)

[shepherds-of-haven]

Just for headcannon purposes, could the MC theoretically burn a word of power to resurrect someone? Like say a certain childhood friend who they accidentally killed?

[shepherds-of-haven]

my MC is romancing Riel and bffs with Shery. His friends are always home while he goes out on missions 😭 Born to do boring administrative work, cursed to be a badass battle mage

MC having to wade through mud, swamp creatures, blood, and demonic gore out in the field while Riel and Shery are back home like

[shepherds-of-haven]

thank you everyone

had a dream that Blade was in his feels, but then he tried a chicken tender for the first time and he felt a little better. (he specifically rated it a 7/10)

[shepherds-of-haven]

Out of Town!

I'm unplugging for a vacation/wedding in Costa Rica for the next ten days or so, so I'll be away from my computer and unable to answer any asks, bug reports, or messages until I'm back! However, the queue's all full, so everything else around here should proceed as normal!

Thank you for your patience and support as always: I hope you all are having a great May, and I'll be back very soon! ☀️😎

[shepherds-of-haven]

just discovered shoh and pledged to the patreon after getting like. four pages into the public demo. i knew it was gonna be a blast immediately, and i was so right. if only i didn't discover it in the middle of finals week.... anyway! just wanted to say i absolutely love your writing, and i love how reminiscent shoh is of my favorite crpgs and jrpgs in terms of mechanics and atmosphere. you really take advantage of both the "fiction" and "interactive" aspects of interactive fiction!! and don't get me STARTED on the characters. every time a new wave of characters got recruited, i had a new favorite. i think briony is my absolute favorite, which i sort of expected from reading through the character bios, but if you had to ask me for my next favorite i expect it'd be like. a four or five way tie. it's impressive how you juggle such a large cast and make them all feel so distinct and likable. again, gotta commend your free time mechanic, i don't think there's a single IF where i've felt like i had the option to genuinely get to know all of my companions in one run, nor where i've felt as motivated to get to know each and every one. and they feel like they're friends with each other too!!! even some of my favorite rpgs fall into the trap of making the characters revolve around the MC. and, hey, i like to feel like the center of the universe as much as the next girl, but i'd like to feel like i'm at the center of a real group of people with their own lives and friends. you pull this off SO well. i could go on and talk about how fun it is to look at all the art and music you've commissioned. but i won't. because i'm still on chapter 7 and then i am going to be reading through all the short stories you've posted on patreon. ANYWAY!! thank you so much for sharing such a lovely story with us all!!!!!

Thank you so much for your incredible words... It's always messages like these that keep me motivated and my spirits high! Thank you so much for taking the time to share your enthusiasm and support for ShoH, for supporting the project and my work on Patreon, for taking the time to explore all of the different characters and to leave such a sweet and thoughtful note about everything you like about the game! (And yes, Briony is the greatest too!) It means the world to me to hear that you're enjoying it all, and I hope you enjoy the short stories when you get started on reading them! Thank you so much again, and good luck with your finals!! 🥺💖💖💖

[shepherds-of-haven]

had a dream that Blade was in his feels, but then he tried a chicken tender for the first time and he felt a little better. (he specifically rated it a 7/10)

[shepherds-of-haven]

hi! what you said about halek flirting with wintry by being a brat made me wonder, how would he react if mc did the same to him?

I don't think Halek tends to be attracted to the bratty type, depending on how far one goes with it: if I'm thinking of him interacting along the lines of someone like a Prihine, I think he'd just sort of be tired by it and would either view it as a turn-off or he'd just be oblivious that there was any romantic tension/attraction there; he'd just assume that person didn't like him or was just generally disagreeable, lol. I can't see game!Halek acting like a brat the way book!Halek did to Wintry; I could see him being a little cheeky and mocking, like, "Why don't you make me?" in response to a particularly bossy order, but, perhaps hypocritically, he probably wouldn't "get" it if he were on the receiving end of that kind of behavior. He'd probably just be like "...It's fine, I'll just do it myself" and would go away vaguely because he doesn't have the energy to get all riled up back like Wintry would in the books, lol. In short, his buttons aren't easily pushed, which I think is key in a bratty flirtatious dynamic!

[shepherds-of-haven]

What is the general reaction of the inhabitants of Hael to the death of all the Faceless Lords? I guess they are terrified of the Hero of Haven 😅😅

You can get a good guess as to their reaction if you play Soldiers of Hael and listen in on Ancila's council about the Revenants who get wrecked (by MC) at Prihine's wedding! It's a general feeling of concern and consternation for sure. But if the Faceless Lords are dead, the general inhabitants of Hael aren't going to find out about the details of their deaths, or that they were all caused by a single person, since there aren't a lot of demons around in each case to "report back" on the specific circumstances of the Faceless Lords' demise. But the upper-class Cacophant generals and rulers have their spies, so they're eventually going to put two-and-two together once word spreads throughout Blest (which also takes some time, since most people aren't even aware that the Faceless Lords exist/were around to begin with. It takes the people who were directly there, like Briony/Tallys/Ayla did at the Lockwood estate, to spread the word and impress upon people what actually happened. Otherwise most people just know MC does big things, like taking down Black Sun or saving the kidnapped children from cultists, without knowing specifically their struggles with the shadowy Faceless Lords behind it all).

All of this is a roundabout way to say that no one in Hael is really clued in on MC specifically and who they are/what their name is/their role in each of these events (which is a good thing for MC, because otherwise they'd have a very large target on their backs), but the Endarkened higher-ups do know someone is going around murking the Faceless Lords: they just chalk it up to the Shepherds in general. As a result, they're treading lightly and scoping out the Order from afar for now, but, true to their nature, they're also taking the opportunity to scope out whether they could fill the power vacuum and become a suitable Faceless Lord replacement!

(Endarkened on that level have no friends or allies, only rivalries and covetous enmity. Most are pretty unfeeling about the Faceless Lords, like, Damn, I always hated him anyway. Maybe I can take his job, but I'll have to be careful not to get taken out too... So mostly the news has just generated more scheming!)

[shepherds-of-haven]

Alpha spoiler!

About Halek's day-off will it be possible to tell him the truth about the gods/god? that they are one and the same, and they are gone?

Hi there, actually, it doesn't play out this way because that specific day off interlude will be locked off if you try to access it past Chapter 7, so it can only be played prior to MC learning what they do in the swamp! A few different companion interludes are time-locked in this manner! Hope that makes sense!

[shepherds-of-haven]

Heya there!! Is the stopping point of chapter 9 after the part where we go over our clues for the swamp investigation? Lol idk if I just missed it but... i don't remember seeing it say it was on chapter nine, so I just wanted to make sure!! 😅

Hi there, please check the Incomplete Routes guide linked in the same post as the alpha build! It sounds like you’re on an incomplete route in Chapter 7, not Chapter 9, so you’ll need to get past that to get to the true stopping point in Chapter 9! :) Hope that helps!

[shepherds-of-haven]

Getting told by MC of all people that no one likes snitches must be (on some level) terrifying due to their (potential) reputation if it weren't played off

Like imagine the literal HERO of the Haven telling you no one likes snitches

Trouble walking past MC and overhearing them telling their recruit that no one likes snitches: 🤔❓

Trouble remembering that he definitely watched MC beat and loot a kidnapper half to death and neither of them ever told anybody the full details:

[shepherds-of-haven]

Some fresh hot propaganda for you as well! ✍🏻

Shery is the dear literature teacher of our teacher AU! Let's keep building this school...

[shepherds-of-haven]

Shery is the dear literature teacher of our teacher AU! Let's keep building this school...

[shepherds-of-haven]

I'm a new player here and I've been trying to find some info on this through the tags but I wanted to ask: are hunter birth rates low in general or is more that people arent having 100% hunter kids? Idk why but in my mind I've been comparing them to pandas 😂

Hi there, that's a good question! The problem is multi-faceted, but simply put, Hunter birth rates aren't that high compared to other races, but not necessarily due to fertility reasons, if that makes any sense.

Here's a visual representation of pure-blooded Hunters who are capable of having pure-blooded Hunter kids:

⬤⬤⬤⬤⬤⬤⬤⬤⬤⬤  But consider that many of these will enter service as initiated exorcists, and of these, some won't survive the rite of passage (which takes place around 15) and others will be killed in the line of duty before they settle down, marry, and have kids:

⬤⬤⬤⬤⬤⬤⬤

Now consider that, of the ones who do marry, some won't marry other full-blooded Hunters, meaning the kids they do have won't manifest Hunter powers (which is actually the main concern here, not necessarily that the Hunter people will necessarily go extinct, numbers-wise, but that their powers will dwindle out of existence over time):

⬤⬤⬤⬤⬤

And then consider that Hunters have a shorter lifespan than most other races, with old age, illness, and death beginning to occur in the 50s and 60s, meaning the period of time they even have to settle down, raise healthy kids, and protect them until adulthood is drastically shortened, especially if they also want to pursue their own careers and livelihoods, requiring they either start having kids pretty young (which not many Hunters naturally want to do unless pressured to do so) or meaning many Hunter kids are left orphaned young, which also affects their own survival slightly:

⬤⬤⬤⬤

So all of those factors kind of come together to make it difficult to maintain a burgeoning population of pure-blooded, full-powered Hunters who inherit grace (again, not necessarily that people with Hunter blood are in decline). It should be noted that when two Hunters do start trying for kids, their fertility and reproductive rates are normal! It's just that the circumstances and odds leading to such a coupling (and the fact that more and more Hunters to fall in love with don't have full blood or grace with each passing year) are kind of stacked the opposite way, unless you make it your life's goal to have pure-blooded Hunter kids. That's why Halek faces such enormous pressure to marry Moonsilk and have kids: her clan is one of the last that have the high-born, pure Hunter blood that would suit Halek's line and would guarantee full-powered Hunter children, but it comes, of course, at the cost of Halek feeling like he doesn't have the luxury of falling in love with whomever he wants, since this urgent need has been impressed on him from an early age.

Hope that all makes sense! It would be hilarious if their problems were more panda-orientated ("we'll just show them videos and demonstrations of how to have sex! someone put on white wigs so they can learn, they're just clueless on how to do it") though lol!

[shepherds-of-haven]

Hi, I was wondering which specializations get unique added scenes during the game? I know wild mages and diviners do but do any of the others? thank you!

Hi there, I'm pretty sure that at this point in the game, every specialization has at least one unique added scene, if not more, though of course there are many choices and moments of flavor text that change according to your specialization, too!