#Dear emperor

[kafkaoftherubble]

SUPPORT SYSTEM!!!!

Between chapters, you can walk around. It would be like a mixture of a pokemon game (gen 1-5) and triangle strategy, like how you can walk on the battlefield before battles.

During these parts of the game, you can talk to your party and other NPCs. There'd also be some stuff you could do but most important right now the cooking minigame.

Every character gets three endings, one alone and two paired. Eg, Edith can either be paired with Ira or Brandi or she can also be alone.

If you play the game without doing anything extra (eg a speedrun), the character will get a solo ending.

If you do stuff like paired up attacks and have characters do activities together like cooking, they'll get friendship points.

During exploration phase, you can sometimes get a character to follow Ira and bring them to another character and have them talk. This activates something similar a support :3

When characters get close, they'll have stat bonuses and attacks they can only perform together.

Oooh! So an overworld map! To talk to allies, survey the fields for materials or loot, stuff like that. Fire Emblem Engage actually has this exact mechanic. In that one, it has the Castle to explore between chapters—and the Overworld map on the battlefield where you can talk to your allies and collect stuff. Meanwhile, I'd just played an SRPG game demo going by the questionable name of Unicorn Overlord lately, and it also features an overworld where you can walk around, gather resources, talk to characters, unlock chapters (to get new characters), or even have those Pokemon-style chance encounter where a sprite of your enemy roam around until they see you and chase after you. When you "bump" into them, it's a single battle!

And here I thought the Fishing Minigame (TM) would show up before the cooking one, ahahha!

That's good. Though I love seeing an abundance of paired endings because it both showcases some lore regarding the character and gives them closure with people they have rapport with—I also think that limiting paired endings will vastly improve the quality of endings as a whole!

Oh, I love paired-up attacks. It's just cool shit. I'm superficial like that! Ahahhahaha.

I like the idea of leading one character to another for extra conversations, brutha! I'm seriously nosy about character conversations, hahahaha.

The increased stat bonuses for being near your friends is typical Fire Emblem mechanic, so I approve! Also, will dual attacks be shown in some sort of special animation? This would require a lot of work to write for attacks, but it gives you a chance to add individual and/or rapport flairs in a pair's attack!

[these-detestable-hands]

Problem with dear emperor is that yuri people would be like "Lewis is ableist so Brandi should just date Edith" while completely ignoring the fact that Edith is aroace. Brandi x Lewis is the canon one BUT if Brandi were to date a woman, it would be Helena

[kafkaoftherubble]

First off, the desert!

My brother and I were discussing the geography and I made a big mistake saying that Ira's home is good for farmland. See, Odeda is south of the equator and Ira's home is just in the perfect location for a desert. My brother and I did not want to change the geography very much and just rolled with it.

North of Odeda is country called Pylark. Mostly, they stay in the mountains but they have part of this desert. It's shared with Odeda but because the land isn't valuable, there's never been any solid borders drawn.

Enter, the symbol.

Odeda (goddess) was upset that Pylarkians didn't worship her, so she erected pillars in the desert. These pillars are also a source of water, so she created a huge oasis for the Pylarkians who were suffering with an incredibly dense population and drought.

The Odedans were greedy though. They saw this symbol of Odeda and thought it was for them, so they went to war with the Pylarkians over this oasis.

This was the war that killed Ira's family. He grew up very isolated so he hardly knew about Pylark or Odeda at all but was manipulated as a teenager into becoming an Odedan nationalist.

Some interesting results of making the desert and pillars: my brother and I have to make an entire pantheon, more monster lore, flesh out the world history more and read up on color theory.

A little stuff about the gods too.

All countries worship all gods but each country has one god they worship a little bit more, eg Habad worships all gods equally except Kenelm whom they worship a bit more. Odeda obviously has Odeda, but they took it to the extreme and almost completely neglected other gods. Pylark has the opposite problem where they worship everyone but Odeda, hence her decision to help them in hopes of gaining their favor.

The gods each have a set color palette and their respective countries will have a color palette like that. For example, Odeda is orange and red so a lot of Odedan plants are red all year around and the people wear warm colors. Kenelm is green so as a devout worshipper of him, Edith wears lots of green.

Hold up. HOLD UP. So Ira... isn't actually Odedan? He's Pylarkian?! Or was he actually... stateless? But the Odedan government told him he was one of them and he became a nationalist from that biased narrative?

From what I know about religious psychology, "the more uncertainty, the more the faithful." Places that are less optimal for human habitation like the desert, or places that pose more danger to humans, will always foster communities more religious than those found in a more stable environment. In the face of adversity, it's common for humans to look everywhere for boon and help... including a higher power. I find it pretty logical that the Pylarkian people therefore worship almost everyone in the pantheon!

However...

Why do the Pylarkians single out Odeda? Is there a historical reason for this? A mythological reason? A legendary reason?

If the Pylarkians did not worship Odeda, wouldn't the god(s) they worship be a little pissy about Odeda trying to reach their followers? Or maybe a suspicion that they are being upstaged by her because she created pillars of water and an oasis, while these gods didn't seem to have given the Pylarkians such obvious boons?

Additional queries:

are there other characters who are explicitly Pylarkian? Tell me about them too!!!

What kind of work do Pylarkians usually do? Trading? Mercantile business?

How did a big city (big enough to garner a dense population) come to be in Pylark? I'm curious about this because, instinctively, an arid area like a desert doesn't support an overgrown community, since resources are scarce. So, there is usually a river or an oasis before a densely-populated city is formed. If the oasis is born after the formation of a densely-populated city (Odeda gave them), then something else must have supported the city's growth. I got curious about what that might be!

What I love the most about this new lore:

It's interesting that Ira's basically someone who was suckered into imperialistic propaganda despite possibly not being Odedan in origin. It really goes to show how arbitrary the idea of citizenship is and how hollow narratives like "the proud sons and daughters of a nation" can be. It also gives a window into one of the quieter things colonialism can do to the native people it takes hold—sometimes it makes the most ardent supporters out of erstwhile outsiders.

The correlation between colors and gods is intriguing! Lotsa real-world cultures featured favored colors too.

Is Odeda "orange and red" because of her hair or something?

[kafkaoftherubble]

You don't get it I love Edith more than words could ever describe

[reads all letters]

[ponders like The Thinker]

[caressing my invisible beard]

[clears throat]

[presses palms]

[takes a deep breath]

I'm sorry, I didn't quite get you. So do you like, love Edith or what?

[these-detestable-hands]

Genuinely I just revised the dear emperor playable character roster and there's one white playable character. It's Edith.

[kafkaoftherubble]

HELLO!!!! Did you want Habad and/or invasion of Odeda lore????

YES YES! I WANT BOTH! I AM VERY GREEDY!

[kafkaoftherubble]

Re read our Lyndis posts and oh my GOSH HOW DID I FORGET ALL THAT. I MEAN I'VE BEEN BUSY WITH OTHER STUFF BUT. WOW. I really wanna design her now

[kafkaoftherubble]

In early November: haha this dear emperor idea is cool but I'll probably lose interest after a week

Now:

HA! THAT'S BECAUSE YOU'VE GOT HELP AND EARLY FANS WHO WILL WRITE ESSAYS WITH YOU!

[kafkaoftherubble]

I'm gonna be honest I have no clue what brother has going on other than the Edith theme (it's very good btw) so I'm just gonna continue working on a script, character designs and character interactions

YES! Work on the stuff that you're good in, cause' that will complement whatever he's working on!

The romhack is still on pause since π Bro is still nurturing the video game idea, right?

[kafkaoftherubble]

Thinking of having the dear emperor cast only have maybe 10-15 characters so you use all of them

I LOVE LIMITED CHARACTERS! It means I get to properly understand them and use them well. I don't actually like how swollen Fire Emblem casts can be. My brain is better suited at working with limited options (because that's the situation I always find myself in) instead of with abundance.

[these-detestable-hands]

See I'd love for a video game company to make dear emperor but I know that they would make more romantic paired endings than I'd want. Also sexualize Edith. And Brandi. And turn all the disabled characters into the butt of jokes

[these-detestable-hands]

Wound heal fast? NO you impatient loser! 💥 STIFFNESS IN JOINTS 💥 SKIN DISCOLORATION 💥 RASHES 💥 ROCK HARD SKIN 💥 LOSS OF FEELING 💥 ANGER MANAGEMENT ISSUES 💥 ORGAN FAILURE 💥 CANCER 💥

[kafkaoftherubble]

Volkaire: I hope you die. I hope you fall out of a plane. I hope your sweater is always damp. I hope you get hit by a car and have a slow and painful death. I hope your family hates you

Jasmin: bro I am literally just teaching your nephew math

Figure 1: Jasmin's reaction

[kafkaoftherubble]

TAKE YOUR TIME! SHOW ME MORE! I AM JUST SOOOOO PSYCHED, GODDAMN IT!!! Edith had shorter hair than I thought. I didn't think Ira's length would eclipse hers! Also, is her right eye suffering from that calcification process due to the stone she used?

[these-detestable-hands]

Twas wondering what to do with the middle part of dear emperor then I remembered that in the world building phase of this project, I added dragons and an entire culture of systemic racism and slavery around the dragons. I should use and address that issue in this story that is (amongst other things) about imperialism. How did I forget about the dragon farming and slavery.

[these-detestable-hands]

THE PARALLELS ARE PARALELLING