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vg-sanctuary · 3 years

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Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling

Moonsprout Games - Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC - 2019

I don't like the core gameplay of 99% of all RPGs, but the ones I do like have been some of my favorite games I've ever played. case in point, Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling, a modern interpretation of the classic Paper Mario formula and an ideal example of indie developers adding to the legacy of a cult classic. its main feature is turn-based combat with action commands, like old Paper Mario or the Mario & Luigi series, and strategy in its intentional design and small health and damage numbers that goes way beyond "spam damage and heal every third turn, use mana items as needed". (in case you want to be 100% blind for your playthrough, past the Keep Reading link are some very minor spoilers: an item a specific cook can make after a side quest, some basic enemies, environments that are about halfway through the game, and the names of some medals.)

“wow, vg-sanctuary posting about a game that's not even two years old at time of writing? and it's an RPG? are you not a retro/legacy blog anymore? who are you and what have you done with the writer?” I still am a retro/legacy blog, mostly, just this time I thought I'd share something that its developers still get money from, and whose developers aren't mega corporations. and I just beat it, enjoyed it, and really felt like writing about it because it still doesn't have the popularity it deserves even after that puppet guy on YouTube talked about it. not that this post is going to reach any significant number of people, but still. I'll write about some more indie games sometime in the future. (and indeed I am writing about another RPG and you better believe it has a lot to talk about.)

anyway, Bug Fables starts with a brash little bee called Vi and a polite and honorable beetle named Kabbu wandering into an explorer's guild and not having a partner to join the guild with. they reluctantly decide they're going to fight together because companionship is a requirement for this guild, foiling off each other and sometimes off their third friend Leif, a blue moth they find in a cave, for the whole game. every character has a distinct personality and all the party members get some valuable character development through a side quest, which I really liked, but I'm no connoisseur of RPG stories. while I'm on story, people that come here looking for a well-made world will get what they want from the many optional lore books hidden around the world.

the plot becomes more complex and compelling as the game continues, though it generally lets gameplay take the spotlight. which is great, because the gameplay is also mostly great. about a third of it is doing puzzles on the overworld using the abilities of each character to move forward a la the Mario & Luigi series. they generally make use of whatever your newest overworld ability is, and some areas early on have inaccessible things you have to come back to, sort of like a Metroidvania except it isn't required to do this for progression. some puzzles take longer they could because they involve using Kabbu's horn to repeatedly fling an ice block many times over a distance. it's never egregious, but it could have been faster if the guy would use his arms. this is a minor caveat and not a majority of the game.

a lot of people probably don't know how the combat for this or Paper Mario works, and it's really important to Bug Fables, so I'll explain that here. it's turn based, which is typical, but basic attacks and skills need you to time a button press to do as much damage as possible. you can also time a button press when an enemy attacks to take less damage. Paper Mario and Bug Fables also both have medals instead of other equipment that give characters higher max HP or a new skill, for example. you have limited medal points and stronger medals require more points.

this is going to sound like a lot, but any RPG's combat will sound like a lot if you try to detail it in a single paragraph. the game introduces these things slower than I am here. in Bug Fables specifically, the character standing in the front of the group does one extra damage but is more likely to be attacked, and you can pass turns from one character to another in exchange for that character dealing one less damage (which is a lot because basic attacks only deal two damage by default). certain enemies can only be hit by certain attacks; some enemies fly, so Kabbu can't hit them until Vi knocks them down with her beemerang. not a typo, beemerang. and many of Bug Fables' status effects have upsides -- being paralyzed reduces damage taken everything by one, poison has many medals that make it a good thing, and being asleep heals the sleeping character every turn. there are others that are straight up bad things, though, and usually don't come until later. all of this adds up to even small encounters having strategic depth, which is great, and if you don't feel like small encounters you can just avoid them. skills that would typically be relegated to one character, like healing and support skills all going to one, are instead split between party members to make decisions more difficult in a good way. there's also a lovely medal that instantly kills any enemy the game deems too easy for you, sort of like in Earthbound.

I figure I spent more time doing housekeeping like cooking (simple A+B=C or A-becomes-B crafting), buying items, and arranging medals in Bug Fables than in any other RPG, which is because it was designed that way. by the way, cooking recipes start hidden, but a foodie at each restaurant will share some strong ones for free, which is a big help early on. anyone who's played The World Ends with You (i.e. me) will be spoiled by its excellent quality of life: no consumable items and you instantly heal to full after every encounter. it makes items seem like a ridiculous formality that RPGs only still have because they've had them for years, but in Bug Fables any item that isn't simple healing -- a lot of them aren't simple healing -- has great strategic use, and the exact way you spend your medal points can determine whether you win or lose any fight, especially bosses. for example, one character having one extra damage for two turns when they typically only do two is pretty important, especially when they use an attack that does multiple hits, and having it in item form saves valuable medal points and skill points. part of that time was kind of a waste, though, because I generally had one set of medals I use for multiple enemies and one I use for single enemies like bosses. being able to save loadouts would have helped a lot. I would like to compliment Bug Fables on allowing you to restart any boss with different medals without having to repeat cutscenes, and commend it for letting you do-over your level up bonuses late in the game when it starts to matter.

it's not like spending a lot of time on strategizing before fights is strictly mandatory. I was mostly playing on hard mode where enemies have more health and more difficult attacks, and mostly with a medal called Hard Hits that makes all enemies deal one extra damage in exchange for extra money after each fight. it can be less difficult if you'd like, but it's never mindless; even if you're doing a strategy that manages 20 or 30 damage (again, a lot in this game) in a single turn, it takes effort to choose your medals to do so much damage and actually play the strategy out in combat. the combat strategy is the best part of Bug Fables, and it makes each fight almost like a puzzle. I've typed some form of "strategy" six times so far, which is fair because it's the best part of Bug Fables. don't let it put you off, though, it's RPG combat strategy, not chess-like or RTS or something, so if you've enjoyed any other turn-based RPG it should be easy to get used to.

it's also worth mentioning the ample side content. each chapter of the game unlocks a handful of side quests, some about trading, some about combat, and almost as many bonus bosses as main bosses. you're allowed to fight them fairly early on, and a few become available after the final boss that are actually a bit harder than it in classic Paper Mario fashion. basically, if you like Bug Fables, there's a lot of it to play. there's even a trading card minigame because of course there is. it's fairly fleshed out, too, and unlike the one in Chocobo Tales the animations between turns don't take six years. the reward for the whole card side quest isn't something that's important for combat, so you can skip it if you don't like it; I didn't especially like it so I think that was a great decision on the developers' part.

rewards for some of the other side content, though, are so good it's kind of a wonder they can be completely skipped. it doesn't make the game harder to not have those skills or medals, but they are some of the best in the game and undeniably really useful. they make great side quest rewards in that sense, but it's important to know for the people that usually wouldn't do side content. I don't know if that's a common kind of player, but just in case. (this game's 100% achievement has been earned by a sky-high 5.9% of players on Steam. usually it's more like 2% or less. the point is none of the extra content is overly obtuse.)

I will complain about the forced stealth sections though. and be astounded that they fixed the main issue with them in the last stealth section. these are minor caveats and take well under an hour total unless you're really, really, really bad at sneaking, but they bothered me when I got to them. I mean, I understand why they're in the game, I understand why Zelda has them, but I didn't really like them. the main issue for all but the last stealth section is that there's no vision cone or other indication that "if you stand here they will see you" or even an opportunity to recover from mistakes which are incredibly important for playable stealth. the last stealth section does have a vision cone and does have an opportunity to recover from mistakes, which is a great step up. I would like to use even more italics to remind you that these sections total less than an hour of gameplay. Zelda: Breath of the Wild's forced-ish stealth was much worse than this.

I don't know where else to put it, so I'll add here that the soundtrack is great and the graphics are perfectly Gamecube-y and the sprites capture the cuteness of Paper Mario really well, even though they're, you know, bugs. each environment is distinct and themed well, and each one’s music matches well. I really wish I knew how to talk about music because there are a lot of different songs in this game that work well for what they go with. boss music sounds intense and boss-y and appropriate for each boss you're fighting, the not-music hits just right, and everything else feels good. some songs use Nintendo 64 MIDI instruments, which I loved. and the bee boss music has a synth that sounds like bees buzzing.

anyone that likes RPGs -- and even some people that don't -- will probably enjoy the story and strategy that make up the excellent Bug Fables. it goes beyond being a homage to Paper Mario and becomes its own thing entirely, though its roots are obvious from the art style. not that this takes away from it -- Paper Mario is a great legacy, and this manages to be even better. for all its little bad things there are a dozen great ones. I admit I haven't played the classic Paper Mario games, but this made me want more -- I guess I'll have to go back while I hope for Moonsprout Games to continue forward.

#bug fables #bug fables the everlasting sapling #my writing #this was also on amazon luna but i didnt figure anyone would care if i omitted it #also screenshots i took myself wow

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rodri11421 · 3 years

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I realised that I never wrote down my thoughts on SMTV. These kinds of things always help me to make up my mind! There are spoilers here, though, so be careful.

I’m going to divide this kind-of-review-but-not-really into three parts: gameplay, soundtrack and story.

1. Gameplay

I have played quite a few SMT titles before (SMT IV; SMT SJR, DeSu Overclocked and P3P), but I don’t think I liked any of them gameplay-wise as much as I did SMTV.

The exploration was definitely the best in the series: Da’at is divided into four main sections (technically more if you count the dungeons and the Egyptian side-quest, but I’m not sure if I would count them) and each of them is full of secrets and items. Did you know that those little guys that give you glory are failed Nahobinos? I also wouldn’t if I didn’t find the one that told you! Exploration in this game is not only encouraged to find new items like in any other SMT game, but also to learn more about the lore ane enhance your character thanks to the glory system, which I found really neat. However, the beautiful scenary of Da’at comes with certain issues.

The framerate sometimes struggles. Not always and I wouldn’t say that it is a game-breaking problem, but it is definitely noticeable that the Switch is doing its best to run the game. This can also be seen in the pop-in that occurs a few times in the first area and definitely more than a few in the snow area; as I said, I don’t think this is that big of a deal and it personally didn’t bother me too much, but it caught my eye just how prominent it became by the end.

The battle system is incredibly polished and I really liked how challenging it was while still remaining somewhat user (player?)-friendly: the addition of an item to see an enemy’s weakness without the series’ usual try-and-error was a great idea and I loved grimoires (they helped some of my favourites like Idhun and Loki keep up in the lategame). Nevertheless, I did find the final fights (specifically the “Destroy the throne” final boss) kind of easy. I guess I’ll do a hard mode run in the future to see if that problem is solved. Still, I prefer an easy finale to SJR’s final bosses (I still have nightmares about Mem Aleph and Shekinah) and the boring sidequest fest that was IV’s neutral ending.

2. Soundtrack

Nothing to say here other than excellent, really. No track comes to mind that I didn’t like to some degree.

3. Story

This... I think they tried.

The story began incredibly promising. We are introduced to the world and the characters in a really interesting way and then, suddenly, we are thrown into Da’at. I remember seeing the protagonist curl into a ball when they realised that they weren’t home just to get up and continue their journey, and thinking that this was gonna be awesome. However, while letting you explore as you like was great, the story’s pacing definitely suffered in the first area, which carried on all throughout the game.

We spent the first... 5/6 hours? without practically seeing another human except for some short cutscenes. Afterwards, the story seems to improve with Sahori’s introduction and the attack on Tokyo just to do something similar (still, I want to clarify that the second area was much better paced); the third area is the worst of them all (Yuzuru disappears to do who knows what, Tao and Sahori are dead, and Miyazu is relegated to the Fairy Village) and the fourth area is better, but I would have definitely preferred to have more dialogue.

I already talked in a different post about why I felt some of the endings (mostly the “Destroy the Throne” one) were unfairly treated, so I won’t go into that again.

If I had to say one thing where SMT V shines story-wise, though, it’s the game’s sidequests: from sidequests were you can choose to help one of two sides to others where certain characters are developed a lot (I really enjoyed the Fairy Village ones and the entire Khonsu/Miyazu plot-line). Dialogues are really well-written too, specially the ones to recruit demons.

4. Conclusion

Is this game my favourite SMT game? Gameplay-wise, definitely. Story-wise... Eh, not really. Maybe a definitive edition will come in a few years with an improved plot (a part of me hopes so, but a different part of me thinks it would be kind of scummy... So yeah, Atlus is almost 100% sure to do it), but the main story is really weak as it is.

#smtv spoilers #smtv #my ramblings

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feralphoenix · 4 years

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BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NOT PREPARED TO TRY

if you’re following my blog or if you read my fanfiction, you may have seen me talking in tags or comments about how the radiance hollowknight was a pacifist. “feral, wtf?” you may have thought. “she’s the freaking final boss and tries really, really hard to kill you and all her attacks do 2 entire masks damage. where on earth do you get pacifism out of that???”

to you specifically i say, that’s an understandable reaction! the short version of how i got here was that i started thinking about the story implications of radi not inflicting contact damage and took a deep dive into game mechanics and lore. when i came up for air i had made myself Very Sad.

if this intrigues you and you would like to know more, come along with me, i am happy to point out the things i noticed and share the Big Sad around.

this essay is also available on dreamwidth for accessibility purposes, since my layout’s text may be too small for folks on pc with high-res screens.

CONTENT WARNING: This essay discusses pseudo-zombie plagues and associated body horror, colonialism and genocide, horrible things that happened in real life Australian history... you know, the usual topics that come up when I’m talking about Hollow Knight.

ADDITIONAL NOTICE: TPK fans of the “TPK meant well/was working for the greater good”/“TPK and Radi are equally bad”/“TPK is bad but Radi is worse” variety please give this one a pass, it ain’t for you.

finally if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of this particular part of hollow knight worldbuilding/lore is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay

BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NOT PREPARED TO TRY: The Radiance Doesn’t Deal Contact Damage And That’s Kind Of Fucked Up And Sad

The vast majority of hostile creatures in Hollow Knight deal contact damage: This is to say, if the Wandering Knight (who I’ll probably spend most of this essay calling by their affectionate fan name Ghost) touches a hostile creature, this harms them.

There are exceptions to this rule. The most notable and most oft-memed example is the game’s literal actual true final boss, the Radiance. Not only will Ghost not be harmed by running into any part of her body, but during her stagger animation, where she drops to the boss arena floor on her front with her whole body splayed out, Ghost still isn’t harmed if she lands on top of them! What’s more, this holds true for her full-power form Absolute Radiance, the secret final boss of the Godmaster quest/endings.

A lot of people find this amusing, because it’s a little absurd that a game’s final boss is an exception to such a consistent element of gameplay! Hence all the “haha moth too soft and fluffy for contact damage” jokes. It is objective facts that Radi is very soft and very fluffy, so it’s very easy to understand why people don’t overthink this too much.

Thinking about things I like in gross detail is unfortunately my hobby. When it comes to Hollow Knight this usually leads to me making myself really sad. I’d like to share the fruits of my theorizing with the class, so other people can be sad with me.

Now, from a game design perspective I can think of a lot of reasons why Team Cherry chose for Radiance not to inflict contact damage. Her hitbox only covers the central part of her body. Her limbs are large, so because of the way she floats, if she did contact damage she would be protected from nail strikes from below and to either side. This would give a player who prefers nail combat a punishingly small margin through which they could inflict damage without also taking a hit, potentially forcing them to adapt to a new and unfamiliar play style at the very end of the game. That’s not fun for anybody and tends to make players feel very frustrated.

In addition to this, Radiance’s attacks are all bullet hell-style spells. All of them except the floor hazards inflict two masks of damage, meaning if you want to stay alive and identify points where it’s possible to heal, you need to learn the spell patterns and dodge a lot. Radi is a large boss. If running into her hurt you this would make the bullet hell elements of her fight extra punishing.

So, I think the purely game mechanics reason for Moth Too Soft And Fluffy is in interest of keeping her boss fight fair, and helping players feel like they have a chance of actually defeating her.

Part of why we all love Hollow Knight, though, is that there’s not much in the game that only exists for purely mechanical reasons. There’s always some form of story or lore integration.

So what on earth is the story reason behind why Radiance doesn’t deal contact damage?

OTHER ENEMIES THAT DON’T DEAL CONTACT DAMAGE

Radi isn’t the only enemy (here defined as fightable/killable creature) in Hollow Knight who doesn't inflict contact damage, so let’s take a look at her fellow exceptions to the rule to see what we can learn.

Broadly speaking there are two categories of Enemies That Don’t Deal Contact Damage. The first is enemies or bosses who used to be hostile, but have become friendly to the player. For instance, when characters like Ogrim and Hornet are not being fought in boss battles, touching them won’t cause damage to Ghost. These story characters who Ghost has more or less reconciled with can’t be damaged by the player out of combat either.

In terms of generic enemies who used to be hostile but have become friendly to the player, we have the mantises of the Fungal Wastes and the Siblings/Ghost’s Shade. We learn from the game’s lore that the mantises Did Not Like The Pale King and were hostile to Hallownest, but that they established a ceasefire conditional on their keeping the people of Deepnest (who were also hostile to Hallownest) from leaving through the area’s main entrance/exit in the Fungal Wastes - essentially the two native kingdoms were pitted against one another by the Pale King.

Now, just because there was a ceasefire, that doesn’t mean the mantises take kindly to Hallownest bugs brazenly trespassing into their dang house; they will get in your face and try to kill you unless you have permission to be there. But once you’ve defeated the Mantis Lords in combat and proven yourself worthy of the mantises’ respect, they’ll let you pass through their turf unmolested. They are no longer actively hostile and don't deal contact damage.

(You're still able to attack them, though - maybe because you’d be locked out of receiving the Hunter’s Mark if you complete the Respect quest/achievement before you’ve successfully killed enough mantises? - and if you attack them, or if your pet charm familiars attack them, any mantises you aggroed will fight back and deal contact damage again.)

The Siblings, as well as Ghost’s Shade, are initially indiscriminately hostile. Our window into Shade psychology is limited, but we know that the Shade died violently and the Siblings probably did too; they may be lashing out. They’re also Void creatures, and Ghost looks a lot like the Pale King, whom we can guess from context clues pissed the Void off significantly by using it as his personal play-doh to make tools and toys with and also using its house as his personal garbage dump for baby corpses.

However, once Ghost recalls their past and breaks the mask of the Kingsoul charm to reveal the Void Heart at its core, the Void recognizes them as a part of it, and Ghost becomes able to direct/lead the Void to some extent. As an extension of this, the Siblings and Ghost’s shade become docile and can now be killed by any weapon in one hit instead of just the Dream Nail (which is made of Radiance’s Light and is the Void’s natural weakness). They don’t deal contact damage anymore either.

That’s it for “enemies that inflict contact damage at one point, but stop inflicting it after becoming friendly or neutral to Ghost”.

The generic enemies which don't inflict contact damage include shrumelings, maggots, maskflies, and lightseeds/lifeseeds. These enemies are incapable of inflicting any damage on Ghost whatsoever, because by themselves they are completely helpless entities with no natural defenses.

Shrumelings are infant members of the mushroom clan who are usually protected by adult fungi like shrumal warriors and ogres. Lightseeds and lifeseeds are harmless single-celled organisms. Maskflies are similarly harmless. Maggots, we glean from the Hunter’s Journal and dialogue from False Knight/Failed Champion, are the bottom rung of Hallownest’s society because they are weak and helpless, and are forced into menial and slave labor by other Hallownest bugs because they cannot defend themselves. The maggots’ plight is the whole reason why False Knight/Failed Champion stole Hegemol's armor in the first place, as he wanted to protect his people.

All of these enemies flee when Ghost approaches them. (Some maskfly groups’ flight triggers are set to specific areas on a map and won’t flee if you can avoid stepping on/passing through those areas, but this is clearly due to a programming oversight because their whole Thing is running away.)

But, there’s something interesting to be observed in the case of lightseeds and maggots: They can fight back against and harm Ghost if they use tools. The little flock of lightseeds you chase around the Ancient Basin eventually get sick of Ghost’s shit and take over Broken Vessel/Lost Kin’s corpse, which they puppet around to try to murder you. By doing so they gain access to Broken Vessel/Lost Kin’s considerable combat prowess and become very dangerous, contact damage included in the bargain. (The lightseeds’ doing this seems to evoke the vessel’s spirit, since they reach for Ghost when defeated. That’s not a gesture the lightseeds have any reason to make. The Lost Kin fight, by which the spirit seems to gain some form of closure, becomes available here too.)

False Knight/Failed Champion’s fights work on the same general principle. Now that he has a weapon he can attack Ghost, and his armor deals contact damage. The maggot inside the armor does not inflict contact damage; essentially both his boss fights consist of your whacking the armor until he’s stunned and pops out of the armor for a moment so you can hit his vulnerable real body, which is the only part of him that yields Soul when you smack him. In fact, his boss fights will last forever if you let him recover from being stunned on his own.

Between these two groups, Radiance very obviously doesn’t fit in the first, as she’s the final boss and is very vigorously trying to kill Ghost with various magic spells. You can tell from her Dream Nail dialogue that she’s furious about what the Pale King did to her and her people, and is afraid for her life. She is willing to use everything at her disposal to try to destroy Ghost so she can survive, go free, and get revenge for the Pale King’s crimes. If she could do contact damage to Ghost she would.

So, the only logical conclusion to make is that Radi falls into the second group of enemies that don’t inflict contact damage. She is physically incapable of causing any harm to anyone with only her body. Her magic is deadly as all get out and the 2 masks damage explosion noise probably haunts the nightmares of anyone who’s struggled fighting her, but without it she is helpless.

WHY CAN’T RADIANCE DO CONTACT DAMAGE?

It might be pretty hard to reconcile the fact that a character with Audre Lorde energy as potent as Radi Hollowknight’s is has a whopping 0 ATK. The biggest clues we get in terms of story context for her inability to inflict physical harm of any kind can be found within the culture of the moth tribe, who were her people.

Thistlewind, the backer-designed moth ghost who can be found in the Resting Grounds, tells you that the majority of moths were pacifists, and that individuals like them and like Markoth who learned to wield a nail were in the minority. Thistlewind appears to have learned to fight as a means of self-defense while they explored the crater area, and describes Markoth as having done so in order to “[brave] the edges of this world, hoping to uncover a truth long forgotten”. It sounds to me like Markoth was trying to recover parts of moth culture that were lost when their tribe was assimilated into Hallownest, or maybe even searching for Radiance or trying to learn what happened to her. (Judging that his corpse is hidden behind one of the Pale King’s shade gates it seems this didn’t go well. Thanks TPK.)

As far as fighting moths go there’s Marmu too, but she seems to be a special case, possibly raised in Hallownest's culture instead of with her tribe. We don’t actually get any sort of canon explanation for how a baby moth wound up as a child soldier who died defending the Queen’s Gardens, but given the overall tone of Hollow Knight as a game and all the colonization/Australian history parallel subtext, some horrifying possibilities come to mind.

So, if Thistlewind, Markoth, and Marmu are Outliers Lepidoptera and should not be counted, how did the majority of moths spend their time? According to Seer, who knows more about the tribe’s history than most (and to Quirrel, who points you to her if you defeat Uumuu before picking up the Dream Nail), the moths’ main prerogative was cultivating and developing dream magic. From the way the Seer describes dreams as a living history as you collect Essence, dream magic seems to be a parallel to the Dreaming (or Dreamtime), a spiritual concept in Indigenous Australian religion related to both history and myth.

To translate this into simple terms, the moths were by and large pacifists whose culture celebrated art, history, and spirituality.

Team Cherry tends to adapt at least some aspects of real-life bug behavior and biology into their sad cartoon bugs, so moths-as-pacifists tracks: Real moths do not really have any way to fight. They defend themselves from predators via their mobility and their markings, which tend towards either camouflage that helps them hide or bright markings intended to scare predators off by indicating they’re poisonous (therefore not good to eat) or look like the face of something much bigger and more dangerous than they are.

There's not that much we can glean about the moths in pre-Hallownest society aside from Seer’s dialogue, because Hallownest destroyed their civilization so thoroughly: Except in the Dream Realm (which is filled with Essence spirographs and the wisteria charms that decorate Seer’s room), their architecture can only be found anymore in hidden parts of the Resting Grounds and at the very top of the Crystal Peak where Radi’s statue and a fuckton of lore tablets Ghost doesn’t know how to read are located.

But, we know that the crater pre-Hallownest was home to a ton of diverse bug nations - the mosskin, the mushroom tribe, the mantises, Deepnest, the Hive, the flukes - and every SINGLE one of those had some kind of warrior tradition, as well as their own unique cultures. In the midst of all that it was only the moths who were pacifists, so from there we can tentatively assume that they were on good enough terms with their neighbors for there not to be any fighting. The mosskin in particular also had and still have a Higher Being on their side, though in the modern day Unn seems to be rather conflict avoidant to say the least.

And we know from Hallownest’s past dealings with the mantises and Deepnest that even having Two (2) Higher Beings isn’t enough to keep rival civilizations off your nuts if they hate you, so it’s improbable that Radiance just did all the moths’ fighting for them.

The only hint that the moths ever had beef with anyone at all is one of Radiance’s Dream Nail lines, “ancient enemy” - this is popularly theorized to refer to the Void and might be corroborated by the Void’s willingness to follow Ghost into Radi’s boss fights and fight alongside them. As the Void seems to be some sort of Higher Being/god of darkness and nothingness, and the Dream Nail’s only offensive ability is to kill Void creatures, the Void and creatures of Light appear to be in a position of mutual vulnerability. Some of the Pale King’s writings in his workshop, which identify the Void as a power in direct opposition to his, support this too.

It’s unclear whether the Void civilization and Radiance ever directly came to blows or whether they were just giving each other the stink eye over being natural enemies - personally I think the latter is more likely because the two civilizations existed on opposite sides of the crater*, and again, the moths were pacifists; plus when Ghost brings the Void along to Radi’s boss fight she is quickly and gruesomely overwhelmed by it.

What I am saying here is that if pacifism was such an integral aspect of moth culture, and Radiance epitomized her people’s culture, and she is 100% incapable of inflicting physical harm, she was probably a pacifist too.

DEEP DOWN YOU KNOW YOU WEREN'T BUILT FOR FIGHTING

Hallownest flourished for a long, long time between the Pale King and White Lady first establishing it and the initial outbreak of the Infection.

There’s no conclusive information in-game as to why this is. We can only guess: Maybe Radiance was so badly hurt or weakened by the moths’ assimilation that it simply took her That Long to become capable of the mass dream broadcast to Literally Everyone In Hallownest that would eventually become the Infection when Hallownest’s people tried to suppress it. Or, maybe it just took a long time for her to come up with a way to fight back. It’s possible that it took her a while to find the resolve to actually fight back, too, with her principles of pacifism in conflict with the necessity of defending herself and taking her people back. Maybe there was a change in the moths’ situation in Hallownest somewhere down the line that compelled her to step in - all the moths are super extremely dead at the time Hollow Knight starts, after all. Even Seer is eventually revealed to be a revenant like Ze’mer the Grey Mourner, only lingering in the world to pass on the Dream Nail and tell Radiance’s story. Maybe it was a combination of all those factors. Barring Team Cherry dropping in to explain this bit of Sekret Deep Lore, we are never going to know.

All we DO know for sure is that when we mosey into Hollow’s brain (and/or Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny our way to the top of Hallownest’s Pantheon) and challenge the literal actual sun to a fight, Radi takes the challenge with extreme prejudice and comes in swinging.

Something interesting I noticed while comparing the Radiance boss fights with the Pure Vessel fight is that some of their attacks are vaguely similar. Where warrior-mage characters like Xero and Markoth have physical weapons that they summon and manipulate with magic, Radiance and Pure Vessel both create nails and daggers out of Essence and Soul respectively. Both characters’ magical weapon attacks are similar in nature too: Some are used to create hazards that must be dodged or avoided, and some are fired directly at Ghost in radial patterns.

This begs a very sad chicken-and-egg question. Did Radi and Hollow develop these battle techniques independently of each other, has Hollow in their prime form somehow absorbed similar techniques to Radi through osmosis since they’re currently chained together by the brain... or is Radi mimicking and innovating on these attacks she knows Hollow can do?

All her other attacks seem very obvious for a light-themed character, after all: Beam attacks and blobs of light. A flash of bright light is also how she shakes off the Void the first time it tries to grab her, too, making for a strong argument that that’s the original natural defense she possessed, and that’s what she based most of her attack magic off of.

Making sword’s and knive’s from Essence when most of her people didn’t even handle these sorts of tools even at the height of her power and influence, though... that seems less like something that would come naturally to her. i don’t really know i don’t have a definitive answer or theory for this one it just Seems Possible and it’s fucking me up guys

Even the Infection - which began life as Radiance’s attempt to communicate, let’s remember, before it progressed to “The End Of Eva Disease Will Continue Until Someone Actually Listens To Me” and then finally Radi screaming “FUCK U LET ME OUT, GET THAT NEW SUNNY D BOTTLE THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME, HALLOWNEST EAT SHIT” during canon - does not appear to be fatal to living bugs until the tumorous growths grow so large they impede bodily functions, like real cancer. We can observe this phenomenon via a number of NPCs and enemies that are rediscovered as tumorous corpses after the whole Crossroads area becomes infected.

At least to me, all of this points to Radiance being a character to whom violence and causing harm doesn't come naturally, and who has resorted to these methods in desperation.

It actually reminds me a lot of False Knight/Failed Champion. It’s a very common theory among fans that when he stole Hegemol’s armor he killed Hegemol - this is a reasonable thing to believe, since Hegemol is the only one of the Five Great Knights of Hallownest who never appears at all in-game, not even as a corpse like Dryya and Isma. Like Radi, False Knight/Failed Champion is a character who rose up and turned to violence in order to protect his people, despite the maggots not being a belligerent species.

False Knight is one of the game’s first major bosses, sometimes the first boss that players encounter at all. And so Hollow Knight’s story bookends with two separate victims of a predatory system, one who lived within and was cannibalized by it, one outside of it who was deliberately targeted by the Pale King. Neither of them started out as a fighter, but both of them still adopted violence as a tool to protect themselves and their people. Radiance is as doomed as False Knight by the Pale King’s genocide, but just like False Knight, she has no intention of going quietly, and will rage against the dying of the light as only the literal actual sun can.

Cue Deedee Magno Hall voice clip. You all know the one.

*A footnote: There’s no conclusive evidence to tell us whether the Void civilization was contemporaneous with the other pre-Hallownest indigenous bug nations or whether it predated them. Mask Maker has a line suggesting that the Void civilization tried to expand throughout the crater in its heyday and that maybe this was linked to its collapse, but in general the Void lore is just too darn thin to draw firm conclusions - it’s like trying to speculate on the ancient stone age cultures of the Americas that came before pre-settler Indigenous countries when the only sources you can easily access are elementary school level US history textbooks. (To non-Americans: We mostly teach kids propaganda until they hit college-level courses and it sucks so much ass.) This is very realistic worldbuilding, but also please Team Cherry I want to know more about these ancient bugs who apparently got lost in the sauce

#hollow knight #hollow knight spoilers #hollow knight meta #the radiance #hk radiance #essay #long post under cut -#bad and naughty catholics go in the catholic wiggler

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strosmkai-rum · 4 years

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SKYRIM MOD LIST, enb included

have fun!

note: some mods, though very few and for the most part insignificant, were found on the steam workshop. so if it doesn’t appear on the nexus, you’ll find it there.

some general advice for new modders/just reminders -

- always check compatibility. some mods have patches to use in combination with other mods. always read the description too.

- if you’re able, cleaning plugins is always good. i was never able to get a hang of it but that doesn’t mean you won’t have better luck.

- never, ever test mods with an actual playthrough. the chances of corruption are small, but there. start a new game; if you can’t bother with the helgen intro, use Quick Start to skip past it and begin at the cave exit instead.

- load order. can’t go wrong with LOOT or Wrye Bash. imo LOOT is easier to install and use but it’s all up to preference.

OVERHAULS -

Noble Skyrim (a HUGE overhaul of basically all exterior textures. but, if you don’t like the look this gives, i’d suggest 2k Textures for a more vanilla feel but in higher res, or Tamriel Reloaded - Textures and Parallax.)

Realistic Water Two (get the enb textures, with the watercolor effect too. they have a non-enb version as well, if you don’t use enb.)

aMidianborn retextures (i use almost everything. weapons, armor, creatures, dragonborn dlc, except the terrain overhaul. i also use the differently ebony and glass variants plugins, which basically mean that there’s multiple variants of the armor with the different retextures. they’re so cool, it’s a must.)

RUSTIC ( i also use almost everything from this too. alchemy/enchanting tables, daedra, death hounds, dinnerware, east empire company signs (i really don’t know why), elder scroll, monuments/tombstones, nordic murals, pottery, silverware, standing stones, windows, and word walls.)

Immersive College of Winterhold

Book Covers Skyrim (best book cover retex ever.)

More Interesting Loot (adds in so many artifacts/ingredients/loot from previous games it’s unreal. love it.)

Realistic Room Rental Enhanced (a SERIOUS overhaul of inns and stuff. lets you rent rooms for followers, discounts for extended stays, and makes them look nicer! oh, washtubs too.)

Immersive Roads (amazing. beautiful. incredible.)

RSChildren (children remodel)

Moonlight Tales

Breezehome Fully Upgradeable (okay this too. makes breezehome huge. like, now you can have a markarth style tub upstairs, and a decent room for lydia too. plus a secret library, and another way to enter/exit your home outside of whiterun. and a lot of other stuff i’m too lazy to list right now.)

SMIM (DEFINITELY use some sort of installer for this. killed me when i tried to manually install it. totally optional, though.)

Ruins Clutter Improved

Thane Weapons Reborn

GRAPHICS -

Unique Grasses and Groundcovers (Verdant does a great job too.)

Hybrid HD Plants and Herbs Retexture (Tamriel Reloaded flora are gorgeous as well, so are the ones from Skyrim Flora Overhaul.)

AOF Detailed Mountains (my pref, but honestly, almost all of the mountain retex mods are amazing. go wild.)

Designs of the Nords Banners (the sickest retex of banners. ever.)

Skyrim Landscape Overhaul - Stone Walls (the BEST thing you will ever see. note, if used with Immersive College of Winterhold you don’t need the corresponding patch. at least, if this is the only SLO mod you’ll use.)

SLOD Wine Cellar (y'ever have an in-game crippling alcohol addiction?)

SLOD Potions/Poisons

Gemling Queen Jewelry

Barenziah’s Glory (crown and jewel retexs)

Unique Uniques (the reworks are absolutely gorgeous. i can’t even describe them. at this point, unique is an understatement.)

Bellyache’s Dragon Retextures (they’re the hell spawn of akatosh, gotta make ‘em look cool somehow)

Apophysis Dragon Priest Masks (holy mother of god, these dragon priest retextures are beautiful. if you’re more into a horror theme, Unique Dragon Priest Masks will definitely satisfy you)

Natural Eyes

Coverkhajiits Male/Female

Dawnguard Rewritten - Arvak (so many arvak retextures here, pick and choose what you want)

Makers Mark Ingots (an ingot retexture, with minting seals/stamps on them. beautiful.)

Better Shrouded Armor (okay, this. this. if you look at the vanilla armor and say, i hate this, then you’ll love this. the armor becomes more of an armored robe with black/brown touches, and the signature hand print on the front. it’s just cool.)

Stormcloak Revival (awesome retex of the armor)

Nightingale Prime and Nightingale Pride (a retexture for armor and blade/bow, respectively)

Windhelm - Legendary Kings

Alternate Summoning Visuals

Tenets Restored (so you can actually read the damn things)

Auriel’s Bow Retexture

HD Linens

QUESTS/NEW LANDS -

Falskaar

Shadow of Morrowind

Summerset Isle

Beyond Skyrim - Bruma

Beyond Reach

Voyage to the Dreamborne Isles

VIGILANT (there’s an english voiceover and a guide as well in the files section of the voiceover)

Project AHO (you need this. you do. the quest, the npcs, the oh god, everything, is so amazing. download it.)

Carved Brink (from the makers of Project AHO, equally amazing.)

Wheels of Lull (this was the best existential crisis i’ve ever had. funny, immersive, challenging, and very, very real, i’ll be at your door in a fortnight if you don’t install this mod.)

Aethernautics (with Wheels of Lull integration patch)

Gray Cowl of Nocturnal (want some oblivion nostalgia? here you are.)

Spectraverse - Magic of the Magna Ge

Dwemertech - Magic of the Dwarves

Ravengate (underground pit fighting, hell yeah!!)

The Tools of Kagrenac (morrowind fans wya. i have never played morrowind.)

Moon and Star

The Forgotten City (gonna be getting its own game on Steam by the same name!)

Fight Against the Thalmor (all 4 parts linked)

Sinister Seven

Konahrik’s Accountments

Blackreach Railroad (trains. that is all.)

Legends of Nchuak

The McMiller Chronicles

The Notice Board (ah, witcher fans might like this.)

The Paarthurnax Dilemma (for obvs reasons)

Localized Guild Jobs (finally, choose the city you want to do a thiefy job in.)

Missing Apprentices (a college quests never implemented in-game. there’s also another mod for another cut quest called Research Thief, but i don’t use that one.)

Barenziah Quest Markers (am NOT using the wiki again to find those floaty bastards. there’s a mod that puts the stones in quest-locked areas in accessible ones instead, so if you plan on collecting them all and being done with it i suggest Non Quest Locations for Stones of Barenziah.)

Jiub’s Opus Quest Markers (not chasing these down either)

Arvak’s Skull Quest Marker (only available through steam workshop)

an addition, Wyrmstooth, though it’s no longer on the nexus and is known to corrupt save files and cause general issues (i found a version of it, though i’m not very keen on trying it after what i’ve heard. still, if you really want it, it’s not that hard to find.)

IMMERSION -

Timing is Everything (adds in delays between quests. just a little breather in between saving the world, if that even exists.)

Northern Encounters (if you love encounters and spent a lot of time in the snow for whatever reason, this is for you.)

Extra Encounters Reborn + DLC (when you love exploring skyrim, this’ll make your adventures super interesting.)

Citizens of Tamriel (on god this mod is so funny and immersive. if you download this, stop by the abandoned shack. you won’t regret it.)

Honed Metal (lets you hire a smith to temper/craft and enchant armor and weapons for you, so you don’t have to invest in the smithing tree.)

The Hunting Game (y’ever notice how pelts are like, worthless? yeah. this changes that.)

Organized Bandits of Skyrim

Better Combat AI (there’s probably a better mod for combat out there, but this is what i use. also from steam workshop)

Increased Merchant Gold Count (plenty of dif mods for this, all of them should work just fine. also on steam workshop)

Black Horse Courier Reborn (hey, remember the uhh, couriers in oblivion? well, they’re back, babey! the more quests you complete, different editions will be released to talk about the amazing last dragonborn, and there’s a (expensive as hell) book that you can buy from a courier that had all the editions from oblivion in one tidy leather-bound book.)

Take Notes (a journal mod!)

Celtic Music in Skyrim (a music replacer. it’s so calming and atmospheric, but if you want individual tracks replaced with ones of your own choosing, you can download Skyrim Audio Converter.)

Book Covers of Skyrim - Lost Library (adds in books from other tes games too, along with the fancy covers.)

Books of Skyrim (a book store in solitude.)

Touring Carriages

The Thieves Guild: More Thieves (only on steam workshop)

Thieves Guild Former Glory Enhancement

Regifting Lycanthropy: Infinite (on steam workshop)

KJ Tattoos and Lore Tattoos (needs RaceMenu to work.)

Loading Screens with Extra Sarcasm (beautiful mod. doesn’t ruin your immersion at all, actually.)

We Are Legion (nice legion overhaul. workshop exclusive.)

Immersive Patrols

All Merchants Buy Stolen Items

Realistic Crime Radius

Beyond Skyrim: Wares of Tamriel

Morrowind Imports (makes it so dunmer vendors will sell stuff like ash yams and sujamma, just a bit more immersive.)

Morrowind Border Trading Shack (workshop exclusive)

Staves of Skyrim

College Students

Better College Application

Night Eye Overhaul (good regardless if you rp as a khajiit or not)

Enhanced Cities: Docks of Solitude (workshop exclusive)

Towns and Villages Enhanced: Riverwood

Project Populate Skyrim: Winterhold (workshop exclusive)

Raven Rock Expanded

MISCELLANEOUS -

SkyComplete (lets you keep track of basically everything, including quests, artifacts, undiscovered locations and read books. update, it looks like the original file has been taken down. i do have a copy of the file should anyone want it.)

The Choice is Yours (fewer forced quests! woohoo!)

Jaxonz Named Save and Positioner (lets you have named saves, and reposition objects. the best mod for home decorating.)

Unlimited Bookshelves (put anything you want on those bad boys now! coupled with Jaxonz Positioner, the sky’s the limit to home decorating now.)

Follower Map Markers Complete (so you don’t lose them. again. also works for mod added followers.)

Bandolier - Bags and Pouches (you look really cool, and get a bit of extra carry weight too!)

Insanitys Celtic Katana

Better Training (no more level req bs here)

No Required Perks (workshop exclusive)

Lightweight Potions and Poisons

Lightweight Scrolls (because half a point for a scroll?! it’s paper, not rocks, dammit)

Weightless Soul Gems

Telescope

Thieves' Guild Bounty Clearer

Scoped Bows

Font Replacement (i use fertigo pro but you know, preference)

City Forests (just adds a few trees in a few cities, this, combined with Noble Skyrim and the enb i use makes all of my screenshots.)

Save the Dark Brotherhood (saves your tears, too.)

Hold Border Banners

Lost Books of Voryn Dreleth (adds in a few books, scattered throughout skyrim. i don’t know, they’re nice to read i guess. totally optional.)

Halls of Dovahndor (an amazing house mod set in…sovngarde! that’s new!)

The Library of Paarthurnax (always thought this was mad cool)

Sacrificial Hunter (for the boethiah quest. also known as, when you’re too attached to your followers to kill them)

No Killmoves/Killcams/Killbites (totally optional, i just don’t like the animations.)

Big Leather Backpack (it looks cool. plus extra carry weight. bags are cool.)

Colovian Leather (just a lil extra set of armor)

Elder Scroll on Back

More Salt

Open Face Guard Helmets

Faction Crossbows

INTERFACE -

SkyUI (the menu layout give me a headache though, you can use SkyUI Away to restore normal menus)

Immersive HUD

A Matter of Time (compatible with iHUD)

Warburg’s 3D Paper World Map (forget the old poorly rendered map. a new paper one, a lot more simplistic and minimalist. but, if you do want the normal skyrim map, A Quality World Map is the way to go.)

Main Menu Background Replacer (oh, there’s a lot of these. so choose your favorite. but i like this best.)

No Bethesda Intro Logo or a replacer, the one i use was taken down but went by Ironclad Bethesda.

RaceMenu

Amazing Follower Tweaks

Follower Trap Safety (miiight be included in AFT, but not sure.)

FIXES/PATCHES -

USLEEP

Fuz Ro Doh (needed for some quest mods, something abt silent dialogue.)

No More Blinding Fog (if you have that issue)

Mindflux Particle Patch (if included)

Darker Dungeons for ENB (if included)

Revamped Exterior Fog

FOR ENB:

okay, here’s the thing. i’ve been modding skyrim nonstop for three years now. i’ve gone through, a lot of enbs. the big ones, the small ones. rudy, tetrachromatic, project enb, you name it. and here’s the one that i finally found that works great, lots of customizability, awesome fps, and looks fucking fantastic.

it’s called seasons of skyrim. easy install, easy uninstall if you don’t like it. nothing else. includes further darker dungeons as well as revamped exterior fog.

my configuration’s here.

but let’s assume you don’t want to use an enb. that’s fine! there’s a lot of other ways to get dynamic lightning too. i used to use Climates of Tamriel, or ELFX, or Realistic Lighting Overhaul. note that i’m almost certain that RLO hand places light sources, so i don’t know how altered cells would go. you might be able to avoid conflict by loading the changing mod after RLO? but i don’t know for sure.

if you want help with installing anything/with enbs or are new to it, i’m always down to help.

other stuff i use -

SKSE is an obvs one.

LOOT

Save Cleaner

7zip (it’s basically a free version of winzip. cause i’m not about to pay for anything, and i manually install everything.)

wow, you made it to the end? congrats! i spent longer on this than i did sleeping last night.

#skyrim #modding #a lotta mods lmao #tes #still...modding...three years later...

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rpgmgames · 5 years

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July’s Featured Game: Melon Journey 2

DEVELOPER(S): Froach Club ENGINE: RPG Maker 2003 GENRE: Story-exploration SUMMARY: Melon Journey 2 is a story-exploration game about revisiting a town full of adorable animals with eccentric personalities. Yet under its cute and nostalgic surface lies a dark tale of crime and corruption... Play as Honeydew, an employee of a huge melon factory, and travel to Hog Town where melons are illegal. While searching for a missing friend, you'll have to explore the town and its surrounding areas, and speak with suspicious characters in dangerous situations to uncover the truth.

Download the demo from the discord server here!

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! We're Froach Club! (Mario - @markeryjane, Karolina - @minipete, & Simon - @carpetbones) Our CEO is rude little roach who goes by the name of Froach. We've all been making games together and separately for a quite a while now and we're currently working on our magnum opus... To see our other games check out froachclub.itch.io & carpetbones.itch.io

What is your project about? What inspired you to create this game initially? *Froach Club: Melon Journey 2 is a story of crime and political corruption in a town where melons are outlawed. It's a sequel to our (Mario & Karolina) very first game we ever made back in 2012. Back then we had no idea what we were doing and were pretty awful at using RPG Maker 2003, so we had the idea to do kind of a remaster of the game. We accidentally expanded it so much though that it became a huge, fully-formed sequel.

How long have you been working on your project? *FC: Almost 2 years now.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *FC: Columbo, The Big Sleep, Chulip, Hamtaro Ham Ham Heartbreak, Kino's Journey, Twin Peaks, and Shenmue!

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *FC: This is our first real large-scale project, spanning multiple years of development, so staying organized was a huge challenge. At first we would just work on whatever we felt like, jumping from one part of the game to another. But once Simon became more involved in the project, he taught us his amazing organization skills and we learned how to use to-do lists efficiently and and keep our files straight. And now that we have, things go much more smoothly.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *FC: We started with a really bare-bones story, and as we built up the world by adding more characters, side-quests, and subplots to the main storyline, the game’s scope began to grow. The world of Melon Journey 2 is now much more detailed and immersive than we originally imagined.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *FC: Back in 2012, when Melon Journey 1 came out, we were just a two person team (Mario and Karolina). We continued making games together for a few years until we started calling ourselves Froach Club and added our 3rd member, Simon. We worked together on u1f439 (https://carpetbones.itch.io/u1f439) and Fish Fly Fever (https://froachclub.itch.io/fish-fly-fever) and now Melon Journey 2!

What is the best part of developing a game? *Mario: Making the music, when a scene comes together and the music fits the tone perfectly it's really satisfying. Karolina: Coming up with crazy ideas in the beginning and thinking of all the possibilities! Simon: Creating any form of a dense or rich world for people to interact with or experience.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *FC: Back when we started out, we played a lot of RPG Maker games on rpgmaker.net and it was a big source of inspiration because it helped us feel like our ideas were doable without any previous knowledge of programming or game making. Yume Nikki in particular gave us a lot of ideas on how to make the most out of RPG Maker 2003, like hacking together menus out of pictures, and creating complex animations using multiple charsets.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Mario: Bailey is my self-insert character kinda. Karolina: Lily. She has really strict Russian parents (who are actually based on mine) and she has a hard time finding a place where she feels like she truly belongs. She goes through a lot but never truly stops caring about what she believes in. Simon: I actually am Ham Ghost Jr.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *FC: At some point the project kind of outgrew RPGMaker 2003 and we really regretted using it, but we've come to appreciate the limitations and they've helped to shape the game in some ways so we regret it less now, especially since discovering easyRPG which we're using to port the game!

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *FC: We like to joke about making Melon Journey 3D, but who knows, it might actually happen one day! We are leaving the ending of MJ2 a little bit open ended~

What do you most look forward to upon/after the release of a project? *Mario: Being able to start a new project. Usually by the end of one project the only thing motivating me is getting it out of the way so we can start on the next thing. Karolina: Seeing if people enjoy our game! I dream about people making fanart and silly deep lore videos. That would seriously make everything 100% worth it. Simon: I cannot wait to get started on a new (maybe even bigger) project!

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *FC: All three of us have an intense fear of something going horribly wrong on the day of the release. That's honestly the scariest part of making a game - saying that you're officially finished with it.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *FC: Try your best to get your game done and limit the scope! Even if it's not perfect or exactly like how you imagined it, the experience and growth you get from releasing a game is the most important thing.

Question from last month's featured dev @midnighttrain-project: What do you value most in a game? (story, gameplay, art,...) Is that an important aspect of your game? *Mario: I think the interplay of the elements of a game is more important than what the individual parts are like on their own. Like, a simple animation can be transformed by adding a really good sound effect to it, so it's hard to separate elements or say that I value one more than the other. Karolina: I value the story most in games. Even when the art or gameplay is great, if there are glaring plot holes I always spend too much time focusing on them and get pulled out of the experience. That's why we spent so much time making a super well thought-out world and characters for MJ2! Simon: I really enjoy gameplay over most parts of any game, especially if the gameplay is well designed and interesting.

We mods would like to thank Froach Club for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Melon Journey 2 if you haven’t already! See you next month!

- Mods Gold & Platinum

#rpgmaker #rpg maker #game dev #indie games #pixel games #rpgm #melon journey #melon journey 2 #froach club #gotm #game of the month #gotm 2019 #2019

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wolfandwild · 4 years

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My Shadowlands Wish List

Now that we’re getting closer and closer to pre-patch and the inevitable launch of the expansion, I thought I’d rattle off a wish list of things I hope we get to see in Shadowlands, largely from a lore/story perspective. (Or rather, my stupid foot was hurting so badly I couldn’t concentrate on writing my fic properly, so I decided to ramble off some not-so-hot takes, honestly they’re pretty mild in the grand scheme of things). I was in the first alpha wave, so I’ve had a pretty good opportunity to play the game as it is thus far, and I did want to make it clear up front that I’m fully aboard the hype train. Shadowlands is looking like a great expansion for a number of different reasons, and while I do have a few areas of concern, on the whole I am currently feeling very positive. Please also note these are just my random, late-night personal musings - your mileage may vary, and that’s a-okay. Mild Shadowlands spoilers below the cut.

You Get A Customisation! You Get A Customisation! Everybody Gets A Customisation! This one is pretty much a no-brainer. I don’t necessarily think Blizzard need to have absolutely every possible character customisation ready to go before launch, but I’d like them to continue adding further options over time. I move in a couple of different circles in Warcraft - I’m obviously involved in the writing/lore/character aspect of the game, but I’m also GM of a raiding guild and closely follow the gameplay/competitive side of things too - and customisation is one of those few things that gets everyone excited, regardless of their reason for playing the game. I’m looking forward to seeing a much more vibrant, unique and diverse Azeroth come Shadowlands pre-patch. (Mostly irrelevant side story - when Wrathion returned in the Patch 8.3 cinematics, my Twitter and lore Discords were basically going berserk with excitement, meanwhile there’s a hundred very confused dudes in my raiding guild who don’t read quest text being all, “What the hell is a ‘Wrathion’?”. I live in two different worlds, honestly). Another reason I’m excited about customisation (and I’m probably in a very small minority on this one) is because I actually really dislike allied races, and I think it gives Blizzard an option to add more flavour to character creation in the game without always having to cobble together a new race. I honestly think they should have simply gone for sub-race customisation from the beginning, to avoid having to ass-pull allied races out of nowhere. Using customisation over allied races also makes it far simpler to give something to both factions (e.g. high elves), or to add something for one faction without necessarily having to always add something to the other faction to keep things in balance. Giving an extra hairstyle to humans but not orcs generally isn’t going to cause that much of a fuss, but if one faction were given an allied race and the other wasn’t because there wasn’t a logical racial option, there would be a shitstorm of epic proportions. So you end up in a situation where one faction* gets saddled with a really random, sucky allied race just to be ‘fair’. *The Alliance. It’s the Alliance. Leave Britney Arthas Alone Arthas has never been a personal favourite of mine, but I respect that he has a fantastic story, and that he’s a cornerstone of Warcraft lore. His story is both satisfying and complete, and that’s exactly why they should leave him the hell alone. I don’t mind if he’s visited in flashbacks (like the Bastion cinematic), or if we explore how he affected still living characters (e.g. Jaina, Sylvanas, Bolvar), but I think it would be a mistake to try to make him a central character in the expansion. In contrast, someone like Kael’thas is an excellent choice for an additional arc, because his original story was a bit all over the place and there is still plenty of room for his character development. Arthas doesn’t need it, and I don’t think the minute potential gain is worth the risk of retroactively making the rest of his story worse. On a similar note... Warcraft III Was Released Nearly 20 Years Ago, It’s Time to Move On The Warcraft RTS was a landmark series of games, and was obviously without them we wouldn’t have the World of Warcraft. However, I think the future health of Warcraft’s lore depends on the ability of the writers to grow the story outwards and upwards, not to always default back to the same handful of characters for nostalgia’s sake. While characters like Jaina, and Thrall, and Sylvanas are great, they can’t carry the narrative forever. Shadowlands represents a unique opportunity to build up the next generation of characters and to blow the cosmology of the universe wide open. From what I’ve seen on the alpha/beta, Blizzard are definitely taking a step in this direction, and I’m hoping that’s what we get instead of Patch 9.2 - Oh Look, It’s Thrall Again. On an additionally similar note... Sylvanas Is Crazy, And She Needs To Go Down (I don’t actually think she’s crazy, but one should never miss the opportunity for an Avatar reference). One of my complaints about the recent lore developments in Warcraft its that it’s starting to feel a lot less like the World of Warcraft, and more like the Sylvanas of Warcraft. She’s playing 469D chess; she’s behind everything; she’s the sole driving force of the narrative. I don’t think that works in an MMO that’s meant to tell the story of an entire expanded universe. It makes things feel small. And before I get eaten alive, I want to be clear that I don’t dislike Sylvanas as a character - in fact, I think she’s very compelling and on a night when my foot wasn’t killing me so much I’d be happy to get into an argument as to why she’s actually one of the most consistent and well-written characters in the World of Warcraft. I don’t necessarily think she needs to die, either, but I think it’s time for her narrative to come to a close to make room for other characters in the story, and I don’t think Blizzard are going to get a much better opportunity to give her a satisfying ending than in a death-themed expansion. Justice for Tyrande (Or Vengeance, Whatever Uther Wants to Call It) Tyrande got done dirty in Battle for Azeroth, probably more than any other character. I’m not a massive night elf fangirl by any means, but their entire race was basically used as grist for the mill in Sad Orc Dad’s story, with no next to no narrative follow-up besides a cool cinematic that went absolutely nowhere in game. Outside the game, her character then got subjected to the cacophonous misogynistic crowing of the fanbase that occurs whenever a female character dares to be angry in the World of Warcraft. Much like Jaina, she’s decried for being ‘crazy’ or ‘irrational’ for, you know, being pissed that her people and her homeland were wiped out in an act of wildly disproportional aggression. I don’t know about you guys, but that would tend to make me a wee bit testy, but maybe I’m crazy and irrational too. In any case, I want to see her go off in Shadowlands. Fuck ‘em up, girlfriend. You Get One Villain. If You Drop It, I’m Not Buying You Another One I think most people will agree with me that the two weakest expansions (at least from a narrative perspective) were Warlords of Draenor and Battle for Azeroth. There are a few reasons for this, but for me one of the biggest issues was that they were chop-and-change expansions. Both were advertised and started off with narratives and themes that were wildly different from where they finished up. Warlords was part Iron Horde expansion, part Legion expansion; BFA was part faction war expansion, part Old God expansion... and that’s exactly the problem. Both times, I felt like we got two half-done expansions, instead of one single, cohesive narrative experience. If you look at expansions like Wrath of the Lich King and Legion, both of which were very well received, a lot of their success hinges on their presentation of a consistent narrative with a clear goal for players within the story. The Lich King, for example, was a consistent and very present villain. He menaced you throughout your entire journey, and so his eventual defeat on top of Icecrown Citadel was meaningful and impactful. Defeating N’Zoth, by contrast, felt pretty hollow, as we hadn’t had enough narrative build up to really care about taking him down. Part of the reason I’m excited for Shadowlands is it looks like we’re getting a nice, focused story development that builds up to a logical and satisfying villain in the Jailer. Why Can’t We Be Friends? Look, I bleed blue. I love the Alliance... but the faction war should not continue to be a driving narrative element in the World of Warcraft. I don’t want the factions to be removed, I think they’re a core part of the Warcraft experience and I’d be pretty sad to have to let them go entirely, but the cycle of hating one another then teaming up in an uneasy alliance in order to defeat a bigger bad, only to go back to being at one another’s throats the next day is... tiresome.

Ideally, the war would have ended after Legion - it was the most logical place to do so, and I think it was a big missed opportunity that they ran with Battle for Azeroth immediately afterwards. Unfortunately, I think this means the Alliance is going to just have to forgive and forget, which doesn’t really make a lot sense at this point given everything that happened in BFA, but for the sake of the overall story, it might be a necessary sacrifice. That said... I Am Once Again Asking for Alliance Narrative Agency I know there are a lot of (valid) complaints to be had about the Horde storyline, but the one thing the Horde has always had over the Alliance is that they actually get to drive the narrative forward. The Alliance are pretty much exclusively reactionary, and in a lot of ways are side characters to the main Horde storyline. I’ve made this argument elsewhere, but it honestly wouldn’t be too hard to remove Anduin’s part in Saurfang’s storyline in Battle for Azeroth and have it turn out more or less exactly the same way... which says a lot about the importance of the Alliance in the overall storyline. In short, the Alliance are secondary players at best, and downright irrelevant at worst. One of my biggest hopes for Shadowlands is that we’ll actually get to see some Alliance narrative agency. To be clear, however, this does not mean a simple rehashing of Horde conflicts with a blue coat of paint. Alliance stories are not Horde stories, and nor should they be. Having an Alliance leader turn into a genocidal despot is not the only way to create conflict or agency in the story - there are plenty of opportunities for character growth, development and conflict on the Alliance side without having to have one of our leaders do a heel turn (e.g. Tyrande as the Night Warrior, Anduin dealing with his experience in the Maw, Jaina confronting the fates of people like Kael’thas and Arthas, Taelia meeting her father, etc.), and I really hope we get to see some of those narrative threads come to fruition. I Want to Mount Everything Add a hundred new mounts. Two hundred. A pot plant with googly eyes, the four hundredth Alliance horse, your mum. I’ll ride anything; I don’t even care. (Please note this is the most important opinion I have).

#world of warcraft #shadowlands #shadowlands spoilers #battle for azeroth #lore #turns out i had a few more opinions than i originally realised #anyway shadowlands looks cool guys y'all should check it out #but i would always rather have some warcraft than no warcraft #so take that how you will

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subjectsix · 4 years

Text

Hitman 3 theories

OKAY so disclaimer that this will largely be my rambling thoughts, and I don’t personally put a lot of stock in all of these theories NOR do I think we have enough information currently to reach a complete conclusion, but they are fun to think about!

So the burning question is: is there a double agent in the main Hitman four? (47, Diana, Lucas, Olivia) Possible answers I’ve considered (read more cause I went on forever)

There is no double agent, and The Constant/Arthur Edwards is trying to seed doubt in everyone’s minds to drive them apart and keep them from working as a coherent team. (kip rating of likelihood as of now: pretty high! there could even be secrets being kept among the team from each other which might make the rifts even worse, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re still on the same team and Eds is trying to ruin it-- he’s a cunning dude) Lucas is the double agent, because - He’s not thinking clearly and blinded by his own goals and quest for revenge, and has decided that working with Edwards to end up as part of the “new providence” would be the best path (kip rating of likelihood as of now: not very high) - The Constant is holding him hostage in a way, using some sort of pressure point to make Lucas do his bidding, as eluded to by the cutscene after Sapienza when Lucas obtains the second Providence key (kip rating of likelihood as of now: a little more probable, but still not very high?) - When Lucas escaped the institute back in the day, Edwards found him and helped him but pressures him to do his bidding (kip rating of likelihood as of now: intriguing, but very flawed-- why go through all the trouble to meet with 47 and eliminate Janus? unless its an even grander plan than we know, and lucas is trying to break away from The Constant’s control somehow? but still, intriguing but not likely imo with the info we have, tho a fic about this would be fun) - He doesn’t want 47 to be distracted by the fact that Edwards is missing and instead focus on destroying the partners (kip rating of likelihood as of now: possible, but flawed-- unless Lucas is really that blindly driven to destroy the partners, he should know that Edwards has somehow stripped them of their money and identities, and would want to focus on taking him down instead, in theory)

Diana is the double agent, because - She’s on the rocks with the choices 47 is making, and we know she’s not afraid to make choices for him when she knows he won’t do it (see: the ending of blood money)-- maybe she saw him deciding to work with Lucas as a poor choice and after talking with Edwards on the boat, felt swayed enough for some reason to let him go and frame Lucas? (kip rating of likelihood as of now: intriguing but not likely-- I’m not sure Diana would make this brash a decision, and we don’t have enough information to clearly see motives she would even have to do this. I think she’s rather loyal to 47 as well, though her loyalty to him could be cause for a motivation to be a double agent, if she can manage to wrap her logic a certain way. But still, hard to picture as of now with the lore we have.)

Bonus evidence about character motivations I just think is neat: - I’ve talked about this before, but Lucas institutes a ‘no unnecessary deaths’ rule in the militia-- one that goes so far that the Delgados go to insane lengths to release a man they got info from, which Lucas checks up on (you can hear this conversation by eavesdropping in the Delgado office-- Lucas has voiced lines on a phone call with him), and one Alma openly complains about. She calls him ‘squeamish about collateral damage’. However, Lucas also admits to Diana he’s willing to work with shady people and criminals to reach his higher goal. He also talks about the weight things have on his conscience, and seems genuinely taken aback/grieved when he realizes he and 47 had a hand in killing Diana’s parents. Unless this is all an elaborate act, I feel like this is evidence that Lucas is trying to justify and atone for his actions to take down Providence-- and he’s willing to reach that goal however he can, which makes the idea of him working with Edwards shakey right now, with the lore we currently have. This could quickly change! akjhdkjahdf

- Edwards seems genuinely baffled by Lucas’ actions! Unless this is a ruse, of course. Spies and all that. You can overhear these conversations on Sgail in his private area

- On that note, there are reoccurring characters via phone convos! We never hear them, but other characters talk to them. The only ones I’m certain of at the moment is that Yuki and Edwards both call the same Providence contact. I would not be surprised to see them later. - I think this is mostly known, but Olivia met Lucas when she was 7! It was in Sierra Leonne-- where Edwards mentions Lucas did mercenary work. Chances are high that they met during Civil War there-- where it’s very possible, but in no way confirmed, that Olivia could have been a child soldier. The canon aspects of this are that they were both there, and Olivia was 7. The rest is conjecture based upon the fact that child soldiers were unfortunately frequent, to my understanding, Olivia is the only militia member to have direct, frequent, and face to face contact with Lucas, as well as KNOWING HIS NAME, which no other militia member knows-- she’s the only member of the militia to remain after it disbands, she has no fear whatsoever talking back to Lucas, and he seems to talk to her in a fatherly/parental way at times. Conclusion: Olivia is his daughter figure :’) Second conclusion: this has a high probability of breaking my heart - I have a sneaking suspicion we might have to shoot Lucas. If this happens I will cry that’s all! I’ll add more thoughts™ if I think of them later

#hitman #hitman 2 #hitman 3 #agent 47 #diana burnwood #lucas grey #olivia hall #the constant #arthur edwards #hitman 2016 #coffee talks

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jackdawyt · 4 years

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youtube

Dragon Age: Inquisition is one of my favourite games of all time. I love everything about this game, from the compelling hero’s journey, to the roster of lovable characters, to making the Inquisitor my very own unique protagonist. Few games compare to the experiences and tremendous moments that Inquisition provides, not to mention the Trespasser DLC which revealed the true intention of the game’s villain, and paved the story forward for future titles.

I think it’s rather telling how good this game is, considering we’re still talking about it nearly 6 years later after launch, discovering new theories and mysterious hidden deep within the lore. Heck, if Dragon Age: Inquisition was a mediocre experience, I don’t think I’d have a YouTube channel today with thousands of recurring views weekly talking about the game, and where the story is going to go since the events of Inquisition.

However, there is something critical that I feel is necessary to discuss regarding Dragon Age Inquisition’s original marketing demos and the expectations they set for the finished game.

Following up to the launch of Dragon Age: Inquisition, I used to obsessively re-watch the first original gameplay demo shown at Pax Prime 2013. At the time the game was in its pre-alpha build, however, there were many impressive features and dynamics showing just a glimpse of what we’d come to expect once we got our hands on the game.

In retrospect, these promises were scrapped before the finished project released.

This post is not meant to be a negative outlook, poking holes at BioWare’s effort, but an investigation and critique into BioWare’s game design, more specifically, the cuts the developers made tackling Inquisition’s complicated release, and how they’ve learned since.

For the uninitiated, Dragon Age: Inquisition released in November, 2014, a month after the next generation of consoles launched. As the game was jammed in-between two gaming generations, it was designed to ship on both the previous generation of consoles (Xbox 360/PS3) and the current generation (XB1/PS4).

In order for the game to predominantly run on the lower spec consoles, many gameplay cuts, downgrades and setbacks were made to the final project.

I’m not talking about conceptual ideas in pre-production that were drafted for the game, like The Architect making a cameo appearance in a “Here Lies The Abyss” alternative twist, or the Hero of Ferelden, Hawke and The Inquisitor meeting up in a potential drafted prologue. Of course, there were plenty of ideas, concepts and story threads that were canned and reworked because the developers had better, and frankly more relevant plans for the game.

I’m talking about actual features and mechanics that were incorporated and designed into the vertical slice demo that was shown off to the fans at Pax Prime 2013, and then were removed later on just before launch.

I would like to point out that the gameplay I’m going to show was alpha footage, and the developers made sure we all understood that it could easily change, nobody lied to us. If anything, BioWare were so eager to show off the next Dragon Age game, that perhaps this was the biggest detriment to the project.

I’ll have the full Pax gameplay demo linked for those who want to watch it fully. But without further ado, I’m going to be revealing the Dragon Age: Inquisition we almost got.

Cut Content:

The demo starts with a significant cut, originally Dragon Age: Inquisition would’ve featured stunning party member cutscenes when entering new areas for the first time. We see Varric, Cassandra and Vivienne discussing how prepared they are since the Inquisition formed. Varric banters that he’s outnumbered by the ladies once again.

We can assume that these dynamic banter cutscenes based on your party members were replaced with Scout Harding’s area report.

The models and textures for the characters and armours look very different too. Cassandra has a more angled facial structure, like her original concept art. And, the Inquisitor’s armour and textures don’t even exist in the final game, I remember attempting to recreate this look, a thousand times over, however, no fabrics in the game have this orange texture.

Helmets also appear in conversations, which is a huge pet peeve of mine, I’m still upset to this day that we can’t see helmets in conversations and there’s no mod to fix it. However, they added this feature in Mass Effect: Andromeda, so maybe we’ll see it in the future.

In general, this demo showed that there was going to be a lot more cutscenes when entering new areas, in party banter, and for minor conversations with smaller characters.

Upon inspecting the gameplay, we can see the camera’s placement was significantly adjusted. The demo had a third-person feel, whereas the game ended up with a pulled back camera, probably to suite the tactical camera for combat. Fortunately, there are mods that actually fix this issue.

The UI has evolved since the demo, there used to be a Skyrim-esqe navigation compass that was replaced with a radar. And the party member icons are different, but that’s just nit-picking.

The combat is more or less the same, however, it does seem more reactive and heftier in the demo. Most likely because the camera is more zoomed into the action. There are some tweaks though, the enemies react more to the Inquisitor’s attacks, the stumble, flail and even run away, as opposed to just taking the damage and then attacking you back.

However, minor these cuts may seem to you; they did change the game a fair amount adding more immersion to the overall experience.

Even so, the most obvious and upsetting cut when watching this demo regards the entirety of Crestwood, the area has been dramatically reduced in the final game.

In this demo, the Inquisitor is given a conflict. One of the Inquisition’s soldiers asks the player how does the Inquisitor want to handle their armies' movements throughout the area.

The Inquisitor could send the Inquisition army to save the town of Crestwood.

They could lead the soldiers to tend to the nearby wounded.

Or they could bolster every solider to the Keep, leaving both the wounded and the town of Crestwood.

Each choice had a consequence, and both Mike Laidlaw and Mark Darrah spoke on having multiple ways to approach the situation. For instance, in the demo’s scenario the Inquisitor decides to leave the town while it’s under siege, instead, they find a secret entrance towards the Keep. Using Antivan Fire, they burn the invaders’ boats which would prevent them from escaping after their attack. The Inquisition take the Keep, and head back to the ransacked town filled with newly fresh corpses. A dynamic cutscene of Varric mourning the dead plays out, adding emotional impact and weight to the decision the Inquisitor just made.

And this was just a side questline...

The demo ends with the developers reiterated the tactical and dynamic approaches when showing the Inquisition taking over the Keep at The Western Approach.

According to Mark Darrah, you could weaken enemy defences by doing things like drawing out the troops or poisoning their wells.

Then, once you claimed the keep for yourself, you’d get a quest called ‘This Water Tastes Funny’, in which your Keep's well was poisoned and you’d have to go find fresh water.

The Keep’s themselves were originally designed to have a lot more influence and reactivity throughout the world. Once captured, the Inquisitor could choose a dynamic choice for the Keep’s overall goal, if you had enough Inquisition agents.

The Keep could be specialised based on the Inquisition’s advisors. You could choose to run your Keep as a Military outpost, boosting fortifications. It could be a Keep of espionage and secrets, for information gathering, or you could make it a Keep of connections and merchants for diplomatic purposes. Each different speciality had a different advantage and aesthetic to suit its purpose.

Adding more choices and roleplaying values for making the Inquisition your own army, having a say in what aspects it should grow in.

That sums up the majority of the cuts made since this demo. I will say it’s unfortunate seeing these unfinished features that shaped the game in a completely different direction, that inevitably couldn’t make it into the finished project.

But I think it’s wrong to pin the blame of this cut content on anyone because the developers were tackling a console generation shift, and they wanted everyone to have the opportunity to play the game without having to get a new console. Can you really blame them for that?

Perhaps many of these features may be designed into a future title since the developers wanted them so much in Inquisition? And speaking of the future title, at least the next Dragon Age game won’t be coming out in between a console generation, it is being designed strictly for next-gen, so there shouldn't be any console setbacks and limitations.

Even still, when Dragon Age 4 does eventually get a gameplay reveal, don’t set your expectations in stone based on that reveal. The finished project will look very different. These days gameplay previews aren’t always accurate, and that’s just a dilemma of the entire games industry, not just EA and BioWare.

Wrapping up on a positive note, BioWare have learned from this experience, and they’re approaching Dragon Age 4 with a “show, don’t tell” strategy. They will be proceeding with caution when marketing and revealing the next Dragon Age game, and that may play a part in why we haven't and won't see anything official for a while.

I don’t think I could end on a better note then the Narrative Director, John Epler’s message about Inquisition’s development. John said: “A good 90% of 'bad' decisions are, in fact, the best decision at the time. Game dev is all about making the best decision you can at the time, with the resources you have. A lot of stuff you thought was weird or awkward came down to a gut call of 'this is the best I can make this and I trust it's good enough'. Sometimes we're right, sometimes not.”

BioWare decided to make these cuts to Inquisition because they realised it was the right thing to do for the entire project, perhaps they felt they couldn’t deliver these features to their full capacity, or they wanted a change of direction. They believe these decisions were made for the greater good of the game, and I commend them for that.

Dragon Age Inquisition is an incredible RPG with tons of personality, that not many games can even mimic. Although the game had some minor setbacks with the fair amount of content that was cut, the game is just as amazing without those initial features.

Like I said, perhaps we’ll see these mechanics in the next game, if not, then at least it has been a learning experience for BioWare, that they can utilise for the development of Dragon Age 4.

In any regard, let me know your thoughts down below on this gameplay demo relating to the finished game, and don’t forget to check out my latest news update!

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rogue-hammer · 4 years

Text

ENTRY #2: ELDAR (PART 1)

“I watched the Forging of the Widow Makers, the 12 swords of Kaine, I watched as one was stolen and hidden far away.”

Eldar. The ancient Race, one time masters of the Galaxy and Seers without equal.

ELVES IN SPACE! SPACE….Space….space…

Believe it or not there is quite the history to this race outside of the typical hum drum of being the most powerful psykers, or, dumbasses who gave birth to Slaanesh. The history of the Eldar and their varied kin goes all the way back to Rogue Trader, and their lore has seen many an interesting tale told. The question is, do you have what it takes to make something out of it all?

Will you follow the Path of Asuryani?

Become a Exodite?

Mayhap an Outcast?

Or have you followed the path of Damnation?

#1 Study the history and model scope of the Eldar

As much as I love poking fun at any Knife ear, and their fans, I admit to a love of how otherworldly GW have made the Eldar over the years.

Going all the way back to the RT era, when the eldar where mostly but Corsairs and Enigmatic Xenos who seemed to materialize from the ether and sow discord for some unknowable reason, to the Golden Era of GW where these space elves where given a giant and truly inspiring background of triumph, a fall, loss, and desperate measures taken to keep their now dying race alive in the face of a hostile Galaxy.

For this reason I suggest to anyone interested in Eldar as a faction, to go back in time and visit some old books and codexes, as well as the classical ranges of minis.

Eldar once looked the part of eerie and almost frightening Alien creatures from a time before man crawled forth from his birthworld.

#2 Throw out the meta

First things first. Many of us probably grew up knowing the Eldar in their Post 2nd ed form. From 3rd ed’s chopped down Codex, to the easily abused expansion, and finally culminating in the 4th/5th ed incarnation of what has basically been the Eldar mold in modern times.

Hordes of Aspect warriors, spam grav tanks, spam Wraith-units, Spam Psykers and yes now a days, Spam Wraith Knights.

Or if you lean to the dark side, ummm Spam Raiders. Yeah just, Spam Raiders.

To put it blunt, Eldar meta is probably the most boring of all git-tastic play styles in the game of 40k, challenged perhaps only by Tau.

Throw it out. Read the lore. Apply it.

Eldar don’t have Hordes of ravening Aspect warriors to send in waves at their opponents.

Raiders are cool, if you can afford to have them and risk losing them in a raid. And your not likely to toss your most veteran Kalabite warriors into an attritional grind against Mon’kei gaurdsmen.

Wraith constructs are a nigh unthinkable resource to ever waste, and oh yeah did we mention not every fucking Eldar Force takes an Avatar of Khaine as it requires a heavy cost in order to even summon one of those things?

The Aldaeri have an interesting and sophisticated way of waging war, and they have highly advanced tech and powers in order to over come their foes, even if your actually trying to put some theme into it.

Lets discuss some interesting ways to look at your Eldar, seperating them into the 2 official factions, as well as ways to whip up an Exodite army or Corsair force.

#3 Craftworld Eldar.

Craftworld eldar are the main stay of the Aldaeri race, and the one lots of people tend to flock to when it comes time to game. And why not? Aspect warriors? Wraith Constructs? Tons of psykers and Autarchs? Whats not to like?

So how does one go about making a CW Eldar army worthy of a true hobbiest?

First things first, find a theme that digs deep into the lore. Are you;

-A Craftworld Defense force, using the might of your titanic space fairing world’s militia forces to fight off attackers. Squads of Guardians/Storm Guardians, backed by mobile weapons platforms and War Walkers. Your troops sailing into combat aboard Wave serpents and Viper Attack craft, all under the covering fire of punishing Heavy weapons platforms? Remember that all Eldar serve in the defense of their CW, and guardian and basic military based tech in an Eldar army is still some of the best around ( The best in certain editions).

-A Specialized Craftworld force, highly trained in a certain area of combat? Crack open the old 3rd ed Codex Craftworlds sup. And find some excellent ways to theme an army based off the major worlds, or perhaps mix and match certain styles in order to create your own world, with a unique color scheme, heraldry and history streching back to the fall, or even farther. House rule in the various advantages and limits of the old CW sup. And enjoy playing with the different styles of balance. (Just do your friends a solid, don’t abuse it.)

-A Doomed host heading into the Eye of Terror? Many CW Eldar have made the perilous if not downright suicidal journey into the Eye. Within that hellish realm, the Crone Worlds lay, the ancient now consumed home worlds of the eldar. Within them are many secrets, Spirit stones and other relics the Eldar greatly desire to have returned to them. Is your army such a quest? A brave Warrior Autarch, or Visionary Farseer having gathered those warriors of the Aspect temples to fight through the horrors of Chaos and retrieve something of unimaginable value?

-The Fist of Asuryani mayhap? The biggest and most powerful weapons the Eldar can bring to bear, hammering their opponents into submission by sheer might of their advanced fire power? Fire Dragons and Dark Reapers scorching the earth and slagging enemy armor, while Prism tanks and War Walkers streak and sprint ahead unleashing salvos of lance and Shuriken firepower into the enemy ranks. Batteries of Heavy Platforms annihilating units from a distance all the while the ground infantry providing cover support to your valuable aspect squads.

-Perhaps the Quick Death is all you need. After all what is more fast and fleet than the Eldar? Eldar on fast moving grav vehicles of course! Jetbikes and Vipers, Falcon tanks combined with the Shining Spear Cavalry and swift Swooping Hawk and Shadow Specter Aspect warriors to run circles about your slower more primitive opponents, cutting and blasting them to pieces before they have a chance to react.

-Maybe you watched Predator one too many times and have a thing for Stalking and killing your enemy from the Shadows or from unexpected angles. The hidden strike is a component suited to the crafty Eldar race, able to hit opponents with Striking Scorpions and teleporting Warp Spiders. Speedy hard to hit Harlequins and deep striking Autarchs and Hawks can be used to to tie down valuable enemy units while Rangers pick off targets of value from the safety of range and cover.

However you manage it, always remember that the eldar war machine is a finely crafted tool, with all units having a value within the force, not just the big OP units that so many others enjoy spamming.

Choosing a backdrop for your army is an easy way to find what units to select for thematic purposes, from Militia, to Seer guardians, Maiden World security forces to simple insertion armies meant to retrieve something stolen by lesser races or eliminate a target of future threat seen by the visions of the seer councils or Lost Wraith Engines on a distant barren world, awakened by a roaming warlock and his followers. Any unit in your army can become a core idea for your force’s history and reason for fighting. Thats the beauty of an army whose whole design is one of unique characteristics and fighting styles.

#4 DARK ELDAR

The Dark Kin, The Damned Path, The Drukari.

Dark Eldar are certainly a far cry from their CW kin, yet they have lost none of the potency and ancient power of their race, and indeed are far more arrogant and vicious.

However, different as though they may be, finding a unique concept in the Dark Eldar may come with a bit of a challenge.

In the earliest days of 40k, the Eldar where a unified faction, and in so much where a bit of a melting pot of all of what we see today across their various sub armies. The Dark Eldar seem to have been born out of GW’s need to mirror the High/Dark Elf style of WHF, and so sliced away the more destructive and often times treacherous and debased acts of the RT-2nd ed Eldar and formed a faction that, while having its own unique character is a bit on the smaller and often mashed together side. But there is unpicked fruit in the thorn covered garden of ideas for Dark Eldar. Lets have a look at ways you can theme and structure your own Kabal, Coven or Cult, or an unholy alliance of the three.

-A new Kabal rises: An excellent theme often over looked by most players is the concept of a new and young Kabal, lead by an aspiring Archon, only just starting to take his/her place in the dark city. This lends an interesting way to re-model an army and veer away from the typical spam of Elite warrior units and raider craft and focus more on the unique character of each unit. Basic Warriors making up the core of your force, backed up by the toughened meat shields of Wracks, sent into battle by a Haemonculus that has attached himself to this rising star. Meanwhile your Archon sits secure in his own personal Raider the only one at first in the army, directing the flow of battle as he sends in payed off Street gangs of Hellion riders and Scourges to do the work he himself would not dare put himself at risk for, waiting until the enemy is bruised and bloody before descending down from his craft to feast on the pain, guarded by alien mercenaries kept for ease of their greed and less ambitious minds.

-Mayhap you enjoy the idea of just going full gang? An entire force of wild eyed crazed Reavers, Hellions and Scourges mounting up on wings and craft, screeching across real space in thuggish raids to secure flesh and power to rise about the lower scum of the city streets. The various elements banding together for mutual greater gain before fighting over their spoils giving rise to powerful Leaders that take the street alliance higher and higher into the spires of the Dark City.

-If lowly gangs and young archons don’t suit, then perhaps Highborn power and elite warrior code is more the poison of choice. Few can match the ferocity and skill with a blade that the dark kin possess. An army that worships the blade, made of Incubi, Veteran Wyches, Succubus’ and maybe even a powerful Archon, much a Swordsmen in their own right as any proud member of the Incubi Temple. Holding to a code of seeking out the greatest challenge to sharpen their blades against, engaging enemies head on with raider and Venom craft to quickly close and slaughter their way to infamy and higher praise in the ranks, shunning the pathetic court intrigue and power plays of the other Kabals and cults, seeking only gain and perfection through bloody handed combat and death. A good alternative to the often typical Wych cult raid.

-Or the More Esoteric route? Haemonculus covens are all well and good, but do even these twisted flesh shapers come close to delving into the darkness that lies within the heart of the dark city? From the depths may rise an even more infernal and mysterious force for you to command. Born of the Beast masters who bend the creatures of the warp to their will, and the dreaded Mandrakes, sinister daemonic dark eldar who creep from the shadows and snatch their victims away. Truly an army lead by a Coven leader, so immersed in the dark arts of arcane science and flesh would be a terrible enemy to all sane life. Unleashing webway portals in the hearts of peaceful worlds, or worse, the middle of crowded hive cities for the vile things of the dark kin to reap bloody carnage on, dragging victims back to the benighted realm for sacrifice and experimentation too horrible to consider.

-Take to the air perhaps and rule the skies above worlds who fear the dread shadow of your lightening speed craft as it passes over. An army made of Raider, Ravager and Fighter/bomber craft, even it’s troops never setting foot on the ground except to reek carnage in it’s aftermath, once all has been pulverized by shockwaves of horrifying munitions and bombing runs, the enemy position reduced to smoking craters of gore and blinded wreck. Their ears ringing with the echoing screech of your craft’s engines as they sore across the grim skies.

-Or maybe the final and most deadly of all weapons. Fear. Does your army not even dine to soil its hands in the proud defenses of your enemies? Do they instead send forth the most hideous and perverse works of the dark kin to shatter the mind, and break the soul before the body is even touched? Floating Talos and Chronos pain engines, their sanity blasting bodies shrouded by the dark wings of Shrikes and raider craft filled with wracks and beastial creatures ready to be unleashed once the damage is done. Medusae and other strange contraptions born of the Dark Eldar’s crazed intellect striding alongside Archons wielding the most horrifying weapons to inflict the worst possible trauma on a foe.

To quote the 3rd ed. Dark Eldar Book. The Dark Eldar are not nice. Not nice at all.

When considering the theme and characteristic of your army, not unlike your CW Eldar, ask yourself, what is the history of each unit on the table? Then consider what perversity and malign goals have brought them forth. Then, multiply that by something ten times worse. Are even a thousand Imperial souls merely an appetizer for your Archon who has fallen to such depths of need he must draw out even the most simple act of pain infliction to its most perfected measure?

Does your haemonculous make it a private goal to break and torture Astartes? His ambition to see the very limits the super enhanced minds and psychologies that a Space marine have can endure? Do they prefer the sweet meat of psykers, or the flesh of their more noble kin? Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, is bellow a Dark Eldar and their arrogant quest for self sustaining torture and arrogant aggrandizement.

To be continued in PART 2 (Exodites and Corsairs)

#warhammer 40k #warhammer #eldar #eldari #dark eldar #drukari #xenos #aliens #lore #background #gaming #insperation #hobby #miniatures #a word in your ear

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gayregis · 4 years

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Oh yeah that reminds me of another question I've been meaning to ask (sorry to jump on you like this haha) but which vampire canon change in B&W annoys you the most? For me it's the whole 'even touching silver will harm a vampire' (when it's explained that Syanna figured out Dettlaff was a vampire because he wouldn't directly touch a silver candlestick). I just choose to ignore that detail bc I don't think it makes much sense haha

omg this is such a good ask im so excited to answer

first of all, i really agree with you, even when i hadn’t read the books fully i had read that one passage in lady of the lake where regis gestures with a silver fork at the banquet, and blood and wine tries to make it so like regis and dettlaff are the same “kind” of vampire, so this obviously doesn’t make any sense, and since it’s just such a small detail i tried to ignore it, like, maybe dettlaff just wanted to keep the silver candlestick fingerprint-free, ever consider that, syanna? you’re gonna pawn something, you don’t want like a billion fingerprints mucking it all up... and then syanna thought this made him a vampire, when in reality he was a vampire but the candlestick had fuckall to do with it

but yeah i think i’m gonna do like a top 5 style: TOP 5 THINGS CDPR GOT WRONG ABOUT THE VAMPIRES. im not gonna do a countdown because im a very direct person and think its best to get the worst out of the way.

1. their society and relationship with humans.

the thing that upsets me the most that cdpr changed is how vampires exist on the continent. stuff like tesham mutna and the unseen elder breaks canon lore so hard it makes me physically upset.

this is a bad thing because not only is the trope of “vampires control everything from the shadows as a secret society so they can feed on human blood” incredibly boring and overdone (it’s a trope, so it’s something that the witcher should stand to invert since that’s pretty much the purpose of the witcher), but it also has origins in antisemitism (the myth of the illuminati or “reptilians/secret societies controlling the world”, blood libel), so it’s super gross! i don’t want the vampires to be that trope, that’s completely unfair.

they already were something other than that trope, they already HAD their own society (or lack thereof) as part of the canon lore. maybe it is personal preference, but i think that their “anti-society” is super interesting. how does something like that function with no rules or figures of authority or customs? it’s incredibly different to the ways humans function in this universe, who are mostly bound around their nation, city/town/village, and home unit, and abide by strict custom and systems of authority. it’s really something to be explored from a lore perspective, there wasn’t a whole lot explained in canon (for good reason: see #2) so it has perfect potential to be elaborated upon in the adaptational spinoff that is the witcher games.

it makes them super boring and trope-y to have them all kowtow to One Figure Of Authority in the area. plus CDPR states that the reason toussaint is so perfect is that this secret society controls toussaint as an area to perfect blood, when toussaint literally existed as a fairy-tale duchy to be an OBSTACLE to geralt and his hansa in the saga. it was the “leave-your-quest” test. think of the island of the lotus eaters from the odyssey. it’s a perfect place, there’s no reason as to why it is perfect, it just is, and it keeps the company hostage there for months so they will get distracted and eventually forget what they came there for.

in canon as well, vampires do not seem to care much about humans. regis certainly does, but he is regis :). there was little conversation about how vampires view humans, rather about how humans view vampires and project their innermost fears and desires to them. further breaking some vampire tropes. in blood & wine. instead of that trope-flipping, we get... “vampires tortured humans out of curiosity and selfishness.” what? why would they do this? there is not much to gain, and it would take a lot of cooperation and effort to get to this point, which leads me to ask, HOW could they do this? as regis says in bof, there were only about 1,200 vampires when they arrived on the continent, so they were completely and utterly outnumbered as they were likely scattered around. they wouldn’t be able to build a castle and re-engineer toussaint to fit their needs. i understand that he is massively biased, but i feel like regis calls these first vampires “hapless survivors” for a reason, and also since regis is regis, i do not feel like he would feel this way about them if they committed massive crimes against humanity.

tl;dr for this point: not only is it fucked up for no reason but to be gross/shocking to the audience, but it also removes their purpose as a metaphor, which is #2.

2. the removal of their purpose as a metaphor in the story.

originally, the vampires are not meant to be the focus of the witcher series or even a smaller part of the series at all. they are simply a metaphor for aspects of human society so that regis can have a backstory. the vampires are nothing more than a fictional means of exploring the effects of alcoholism, and a thought experiment as to what an authority-less, family-less, custom-less society would be like. the question “what do youth do when they have no support and no guidance?” already is one of the witcher’s major questions as a saga, the vampires and regis’s backstory serves to be another one of the stories within it that fits this theme. except we add more conditions to the thought experiment this time, like “what if these youth never aged and were powerful enough to survive on their own?” there would be no reason for them to ever change or grow out of their behavior. it’s quite interesting, because it’s meant to reflect upon human nature, the vampires are metaphorically humans. there is no reason for regis to even be a vampire, except that he needs to be able to survive death and learn from his mistakes. a human would have died had he hit rock bottom like regis did, but since regis wasn’t human and could rise from the grave, he had the chance at a new life. humans don’t get second chances. this is the point of the entire story being about vampires.

now, i understand that the purpose of the witcher games is to entertain, unlike the point of the witcher book series, which are like any other books and serve an author’s message. so, it stands to reason that the vampires do not have to prove a strong point here, but they should retain their essential traits and serve as the metaphor which was already really interesting and deserves more explanation and thought. i think using a fictional lens to take a look at real-world issues can be helpful sometimes, when done respectfully and when still using creativity. even if it’s just to entertain, that doesn’t mean it should be brainless and throw all of the commentary out of the window.

the vampires as a subject for the game to focus on should really be a vessel for thought and critique. it should mean SOMETHING for them to be there, because they were originally a message and a metaphor.

but in blood & wine, they are incredibly shallow, only there to exist for the attention-getter of gore.

does it MEAN anything that dettlaff regenerated regis from his own flesh and blood? or does that just happen because we needed a convienient way to bring regis back and tie him to the antagonist? does it MEAN anything that dettlaff cuts off his own hand? or is that just because it’s cool and kinda gross. does it MEAN anything that the vampires attack beauclair? or is that just because there needed to be some violence and conflict.

there is no deeper meaning! it’s all just flashiness to shock the audience! it’s incredibly shallow and because it is shallow, it becomes boring and forgettable.

blood & wine focuses on details about the vampires that are gross, gorey or bloody, uncomfortable because of how nasty they are. and these elements have NO PURPOSE to the story other than to gross you out, like regis being regenerated, dettlaff skewering regis like a kebab, dettlaff cutting off his hand and that hand being handled by the bruxa, geralt, and regis, regis going crazy in a cage, syanna also getting skewered, etc. ... it’s this focus on the physical action that is happening on screen with little thought as to any deeper meaning that makes me tired and nauseous. why treat the vampires as savage animals?

as a mention in this topic, i am going to comment on how they deliberately changed the lore to “make childrens’ blood taste better than adults’ blood,” because that is mega-gross. why change it to focus on child endangerment? that’s nasty! why make orianna feed on children when it was LITERALLY canon that the “best” blood was that of strong adults? if you want to make orianna morally grey, she could have owned any other kind of place to get blood from. see #2 for more discussion of this.

3. their focus on the conjunction of the spheres.

the vampires never had this obsession with “returning home.” i... have no idea where this comes from. remember how i just said that i appreciate a metaphor for real-life when it is done respectfully? CDPR gave us this awkward metaphor for the vampires “wanting to go home” because they have to “assimilate” in this new world, apparently every vampire ever misses their homeland. ... it’s the story of immigrants who didn’t have a choice to be born in The New Land, but they were anyways, and now they want to go home. and it’s the story of minority groups, who are overshadowed by the society they live in, but cannot be themselves in, because it would mean violence.

this is an incredibly awkward metaphor just because it’s not done well, but also CDPR literally just focused on how extremely violent the vampires are, and how they also control everything so they can use the humans they were thrown in with to their own fancies. this is... i didn’t know that the metaphors for fantasy racism in the witcher could get any worse than sapkowski’s were.

also, there’s some weird lore-breaking moments when regis says he misses the vampire homeworld or whatever, and i just am left staring at my laptop like. you’re only like, 4 centuries old, regis. the conjunction of the spheres occured more than 3 times your age in the past. plus the fact that regis in baptism of fire calls himself a “descendant,” it’s obvious that someone at cdpr just didn’t do their research when writing those lines.

4. their power level and exactly how powerful they are.

let’s take a moment to think about a grain of truth. the second story in the witcher books, it was written before sapkowski had a lot of the vampire lore down-pat. geralt says things like “it’s silver, this blade is silver” and “an ordinary vampire couldn’t come out in the sun,” which are incongruent with what we learn in baptism of fire about vampires. but nevertheless, there’s a lot which is still accurate to the vampires, such as that VEREENA ABSOLUTELY KICKS GERALT’S ASS. geralt very nearly DIED in that fight, he was ABOUT to die, but nivellen saved him at the last split-second. geralt finds out that vereena is a bruxa, and he is alarmed, he shouts and then falls on his ass. he scrambles, he’s unprepared to deal with a foe THIS powerful. he manages to land his sword on her during the fight, but it barely harms her. she dodges incredibly, and swipes of his sword that should have hit do not. she screams terribly, and geralt is in incredible, writhing pain. he uses his signs to help him, this is no normal fight with a normal foe. flash forward to in baptism of fire, when geralt meets another vampire, one that is considerably more powerful and unique than vereena was. dandelion asks geralt, if ... potentially... maybe... and geralt responds that he sincerely doubts that he could beat regis in a fight, and he really does not want to have to try.

geralt was BESTED by vampires in the books. he was as close as a witcher can get to being INTIMIDATED by their power. but what happens in blood & wine? there’s like 8 bruxae and alpors ganging up on you and you can easily vanquish all of them with your silver sword and by knocking back maybe a glass of black blood and white raffard’s decoction. it’s fine, it’s easy to kill vampires. geralt doesn’t hesitate to fight dettlaff. he doesn’t worry, he doesn’t tell anyone that he sincerely doubts that he could beat him in a fight, that he doesn’t want to have to try. instead, it’s regis talking geralt out of the fight, trying to advocate for peace.

CDPR massively nerfed the vampires just to make them easier targets for the player. i think this is unfair to how the vampires were powerful threats to be reckoned with in the books, foes that even geralt, a witcher, did not want to face. not even out of geralt’s pacifism and apprehension to slay innocent and/or sentient beings, but out of not wanting to fucking hit that die button

i also understand that regis was supposedly less powerful now because he was just tired from being regenerated, but vampires like bruxae should have been able to turn into giant bats. there’s nothing stopping them besides cdpr not wanting to code it in, just like how they didn’t want to code in bruxae or alpors wearing clothes (because vampires do wear clothes in canon).

5. their classification: adding new vampire species, distinguishing between “higher vampires” and “TRUE higher vampires”

just plain annoying to me. there’s only seven types of vampires, as regis says in baptism of fire:

“In the case of higher vampires, never, I agree,” Emiel Regis said softly. “From what I know alpors, katakans, moolas, bruxas, and nosferats don’t mutilate their victims. On the other hand, fleders and ekimmas are pretty brutal with their victim’s remains.”

“Bravo,” Geralt said, looking at him in genuine admiration. “You didn’t leave out a single class of vampire, Nor did you mention any of the imaginary ones, which only exist in fairy-tales.”

so there are seven classes... five of which are higher vampires which can probably be classified by having sentient thought and not harming their victims, two of which are lesser vampires, which are quite violent with their victims and more animalistic for this reason.

also i am confused as to why CDPR made fleders the least likely to sustain flight, when their name i’m pretty certain is taken from fledermaus, the german word for bat, which just means flying mouse (feel free to correct me if i’m wrong, idk german), so “fleder” should just mean “flutter,” or “to fly.”

SO. it’s total bullshit to be like “there’s some higher vampires and then TRUE/REAL higher vampires, which cannot be killed...” and it confuses everyone as to who is ACTUALLY a higher vampire and who is not, when the system we had before wasn’t broken at all!

BONUS. general changes to vampire powers

it annoys me how they turn into puffs of mist/smoke instead of vanishing, simply vanishing. no deeper reason why, it just bothers me because you’re not supposed to be able to see them at all, that’s the point of turning invisible/incorporeal.

there was no mention or demonstration of how regis can hypnotize people, even though that was probably his most frequently used vampire power in the books asides from turning invisible/incorporeal. it showed that even though he was very powerful, he opted to use his passive powers and nonviolent routes of dealing with people.

i think it also makes the vampires way overpowered to be able to regenerate each other with each other’s blood ... and it takes away from the finality of stygga... also them just flying and turning into bats whenever they want, as if regis didn’t say that he can only turn into a bat during a full moon. they made them overpowered and still made it super easy for geralt to kill them. alright

#ask #vamp squad #regis #dettlaff #dol--blathanna #long post /

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dappervolk · 5 years

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May Progress Update!

Hello everyone! After a few months in development, we’re back to show you some progress and outline how development has been coming along. We'll be covering each section of development and showing some visual progress!

We have a pretty extensive to-do list for the painted assets required for launch.

This includes:

All artwork for the 5th town - Town Map, NPC's, Pets, Clothing, Items

All peddler NPC's for Peddler's Port

All peddler wares for Peddler's Port

All Adventuring Backgrounds for each town

All new item art

Various additional avatar item rewards for features throughout the site (Affection system, alchemy, some new features, etc)

Event Art Assets (Items, Clothing, etc)

A few month's worth of items for the monthly shops

Kickstarter Backer Design Rewards (To be completed over time before/after official launch)

So far, we've completed all artwork for the 5th town, all peddler NPC's for the Peddler's Port, and are currently working on Peddler wares, Adventuring backgrounds, item art, and misc new assets.

We're working at a good pace to get all assets finished before launch!

Here are some previews of currently completed art:

The NPC’s of Peddler’s Port will be selling various wares not seen in the rest of the Dappervolk world!

3's Forest Adventuring Background!

Silvie's Mine Adventuring Background!

We're holding back on the 5th Town's artwork in order to keep the spoilers at a minimum!

Since we have a big Adventuring play style update in the works, we're working on adding new sprite actions and appearances to all class sprites. You'll be able to unlock new appearances while adventuring and explore new adventuring areas after encountering travel gates, among other mechanisms!

Along with the new Adventuring backgrounds, we're also working on new pixel npcs for each distinct area as well as gates and obstacles.

Here’s a preview gif of one of our new sprite appearances!

Our guild feature is coming along well, here are some screenshots of what the general layout will look like!

Guilds will be fully colour customizable and have a leveling system that unlocks new upgrade perks which the guild can collectively work towards.

Each guild will have a myriad of features available to facilitate a customized community within the larger Dappervolk userbase.

At higher levels, guilds will unlock the ability to duel other guilds for exp and currency wagers!

We've completed much of the music needed for our new town and later features such as Housing. Our composer is working at a steady pace to create a cohesive sound for Dappervolk.

Interested in listening to our existing Dappervolk music? Visit our talented composer’s Dappervolk page over on Bandcamp! https://stijnvanwakeren.bandcamp.com/album/dappervolk

New music for later features and the new town will be available after site launch!

Our writers are hard at work with the continuing quest line going into the 5th town as well as its side quests! We're excited to share more of the world's lore and introduce the new NPC's to everyone through their quests, it's been a blast to develop!

Over the last few months of development, some members of our developer team have had various changes in situation that have affected their availability. This is why we have a hiring post up to potentially bring on some more developers to increase efficiency. Meanwhile, our current team is working hard on the many features and adjustments to existing features that we have planned for launch.

Click here to view our hiring post!

We’ll be posting more updates on this in the future!

Due to various aspects of development not being concrete, we're not yet able to give an exact launch date for Dappervolk. We were originally aiming for the first half of 2019, but we may need to extend to the second half of 2019.

We're committed to making Dappervolk the best it can be for official launch, and more time is required for development to be completed smoothly. We'll be providing more updates with info on our progression as well as small sneak peeks over the next while.

Once we have a launch date we can announce, we'll be doing so on all platforms at least a month in advance with emails to all subscribers and users, as well as posts across all social media, so you won’t miss it!

Thank you so much everyone for your patience and support for the game, it's all because of you that we've been able to get this far! ♥

#dappervolk #gamedev #updates #game development

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tainbocuailnge · 5 years

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ive played all the story chapters and a bunch of side missions and tried out a handful of characters so now it’s time for The Official Lance Tainbocuailnge Review Of Fate/Extella Link if you’re like me and were kinda on the fence about buying it after extella massively let you down

tldr; gameplay is actually fun and varied with loads of different objectives and the same servant can be played in different ways so it doesn’t get boring. main story is a bit disjointed and most servants only have a quick cameo but it gets charlemagne’s plot beats down well enough and the silly everyone-knows-everyone banter is delightful. everything looks better, the world actually feels populated, and there’s a lot of care put into special interactions. link will not disappoint you like extella did

the gameplay has much more variation than just press button use moon drive repeat. you’ve got a mix of regular attacks that lead into various combos and active skills with cooldowns. each servant has like 7 of them, generally some combination of damage skills buffs and debuffs, and you can set 4 at once so there’s a degree of customisability to how you play each servant even within the fighting style they’re inherently geared towards. servants with similar regular movesets (like cu and scathach) still have decidedly different active skills so they don’t feel interchangeable. certain moves from servants that were already in extella are generally reused either at the end of some combo or as an active skill which for me goes a long way in still making it feel like the same game, just better

attacking builds moon drive meter, and fighting enemies while moon drive is active earns you np meter. this means you can use your np as often as you can charge it instead of the pathetic One time it was in extella and you can just blow up a whole sector without remorse. you can also end moon drive early with a weaker version of your noble phantasm. some active skills are labelled as class skills and if you use those in a combo against a servant you get the button mash attack that extella had. altogether it really gives the sense of an all-out servant battle

allied servants are much much much more proactive. they’ll actively go out and conquer sectors for you and will try to join you wherever you’re fighting the boss servant. if your allies are nearby more of your active skills will get the class skill property and they’ll join you in the button mash attack. before the battle you also set two support troops, who will randomly join in on your combos or defend you when you’re in a pinch. hakuno is also out on the field, so combat is much more a team effort than before

stage objectives are varied too, there’s field effects, map jamming, hunting down messengers before they can call for reinforcements, escorting allies to specific locations, waves of shadow servants, lancelot disguising himself, robin or lishu going invisible, iskandar or darius with endless armies, drake or gilles bombarding from afar, all often used in various combinations too. on top of that the extra stages will provide random additional challenges so even replaying the same stage will be different every time.

there are four difficulties (that I’ve unlocked) but I haven’t tried any of the higher ones yet so I don’t know what they change to make it more difficult other than enemy level. there are like. i think at least 50 maybe even 100 extra stages to play after you’ve cleared the ~30 main story battles that continue until servant level 200 or something so there’s a lot to do even after you’ve gone through the story. servants unlock by clearing story battles and I didn’t realize this until very late and was very pissed off that the game wouldn’t let me use cu but that’s on me. the money is power system is still in place so you don’t have to manually train any new servant you want to try out you can just powerlevel them. install skills are also still in place and you do need to level servant bond if you want to use any decent number of those

there’s a pvp mode too but I haven’t tried it yet so no comment on that beyond i bet skilled lancelot players are The most annoying motherfuckers to fight against

graphics are a huge step up from extella. reused areas got a complete visual makeover while retaining the same feel. everyone’s models got spruced up and now they don’t look plastic anymore. there is an unreal amount of care put into sculpting karna’s asscrack. the ost actually slaps beyond the main theme this time as well as featuring some ol reliable CCC tracks. everything looks much more polished

the story is somewhat disjointed because of both the large cast and the splitting routes. the story splits up at various points to create an excuse to make different battles but it means a lot of things happen at approximately the same time in slightly different ways and it can be confusing to keep up with what happens in which order. for that reason I suggest looking closely at what path leads to which ending and playing all the quests of each converging branch before moving to the next day. the story seems to go out of its way to be ambiguous in when what happens exactly and how it’s even supposed to follow the events of extella so I think it’s best to look for the themes and the fun lore details over the linear coherence

overall the atmosphere is pretty silly and servants constantly banter back and forth even during tense situations, but it lands the occasional serious moment well enough imo. charlemagne and karl are the only ones who have any significant story focus but since they’re the only newcomers it’s not like the other guys particularly need the screentime. charlemagne himself is a pretty silly and lighthearted guy so he goes along well with the general feeling and it actually works in favour of his heavier plot beats because of the contrast. I grew attached to him incredibly quickly, not in the last place because he gets hyped about every single person he meets and it’s hard not to get excited too

the servants who weren’t already in extella generally get to show up more in the main story than the already familiar faces but most of them don’t have much more than a cameo. having a lot of people just randomly roam around with no idea what’s going on goes a really long way in making the moon cell feel populated beyond the people directly involved in the story so I actually like it a lot. they came up with like 3 different convenient plot devices to give you servants to fight without worrying about what that means for the alliances and it gives room for a lot of cool character moments

a good chunk of the extra stages come with their own mini stories told through the combat dialogue which adds to the liveliness of the setting. my favourite so far is the one where liz and nero try to hold a concert and hakuno frantically tries to explain to charlemagne in the middle of combat why it’s absolutely vital to keep them from doing that

everyone seems to know everyone so a lot of story dialogue is banter in varying degrees of playful versus vicious between both likely and unlikely combinations of servants and there’s a lot and i mean a LOT of care put into specific interactions. if two servants even remotely have an opinion on each other there’s special dialogue for it, and I even picked up unique dialogue for when archer acts as support troop for cu which no doubt means it exists for other combinations too (altho that’s not subtitled so i dont know what they’re saying there i could just tell it was the usual bickering because of the tone lol). some servants have unique win quotes from hakuno, she calls gilgamesh by his nickname ‘gorgeous’ for example. servants will sit around your home base and have a default line to say but sometimes they have lines that refer to each other instead. compared to how barren extella was, link is overflowing with the sense that these people have lives outside the current conflict and se.ra.ph is a thriving and vibrant world for them to live in

there’s a scene where karna and arjuna use their noble phantasms against each other in mutual destruction and it fucking RULES

#lance link tag

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pepperstrawberry · 5 years

Text

Verdant Flame (working title)

Okay, I’m running with the suggested title.

This post is going to be just putting thoughts out there about how I’m going to do this project, possible ideas of how to publish, and what major changes I’m going to roll with.

I’m going to put it all under the cut so I’m not wreaking havoc on your dash. X3

Before the cut: For those somehow not in the know (like, how could any of my followers on Tumblr or Twitter not have caught wind of the bonfire of gnashing teeth much of the Magic LGBT+ community is dealing with right now, I don’t know, but just in case, and especially if this post is seen later): WAR Forsaken dropped and with it Gruulfriends went from canon to retcon in a way I didn’t expect: Biphobia and erasure among other issues. I’ll talk about the mess itself later, but for now, lets adress what we are doing as a community and what I”m doing in particular.

The basics is that we are kinda rebelling against Wizards in what small way we can; but being creative, interesting and having fun with the canon. Take the means of production, canon is ours now!

But for me in specific, I’ve been playing with using Chandra and Nissa as well as the world of Magic to create frame works for stories I wanted to tell, but until now I boiled down everything to its basics because I just wanted to use frame works and use tropes as jumping off points. But now? Fuck that, I’m thinking about pulling an E.L. James, but good.

What does that mean? Well, E.L. James literally wrote a fanfic, changed some names, and published it. So screw it, going to do the same over here. I’m going to take a step or two further back then she did, since 1) Wizards/Hasbro might not be as nice as Stephenie Meyer and 2) I feel like I can be a better writer then E.L. James.

So, how will this project play out? This is where I make a cut and we get down to business:

First: How to publish?

I think if I’m going to make this a thing, I’m going to have to go with self publishing and do these in short stories. I’m not sure how short, but I feel like once I get the ball rolling, I want to just keep going. If I’m taking years to put out one book and you guys are waiting that long for it, I’m going to loose steam and you are going to loose interest. This is definitely a ‘strike while the irons hot’ situation.

And the iron is near melting right now.

Second: What is going to be the basics and how will it differ from MtG Lore ‘Canon’?

First and most obvious is that I need to figure out what I can keep and what needs to be changed.

As I said above, while I am definitely in the mood of ‘you know what, this is ours now, fuck off’, the fact is, the law is the law. If your work is too similar to another, you can get in some heavy trouble.

I’ve covered some of this in my other posts about this, but I’m pulling this into one spot with the new info to make it easier for me and others to find.

World: I’m going to use analogs of each of the planes of MtG to make countries and kingdoms. It’s a lovely short hand and will make the world building go that much faster... Tricky part (much as the characters) is renaming things and setting it enough apart that it isn’t exactly the worlds and what not from MtG.

The main ones I’m going to use are:

Zendikar: Still going to be the land my ‘Not-Nissa’ hails from. First step is to just fully expunge the eldrazi history and effect. I am thinking about having some sort of ancient thing buried there, but in a very adventure-y feel of like an old dragon or some other powerful creature.

Kaladesh: Still home to ‘Not-Chandra’, still a place of one-ness with nature and artifice. Debating on how much I should carry over the sense of Indian aesthetic. Like, I don’t want to be window dressing like the actual Kaladesh is, but at the same time I’m not sure how well I can make it feel ‘right’ in that regard. I think I’ll keep the plot idea they started, but carry it through right.

Theros: Not-Gideon and Not-Elspeth will definately have history here. There won’t be actual gods, though a great power they attribute -to- gods will exsist. Which brings me to wonder how I should handle the cosmology... especially when we are talking about

Innistrad: I envision a very gothic, germanic country side, probably bordering Not-Theros. There will be a cult that worships a great power hidden on the moon. I’m going to use this as an opportunity to do a thing that came to mind when Emrakul locked herself away...

Vryn: I’m not sure if or how I’ll use this since we know so little about it. Might just cut it and have my ‘Not-Jace’ come from somewhere else. Hell, might just cut to the chase and make him connected with my Not-Ravnica. And speaking of...

Ravnica: Obviously a major trade hub and likely a center piece of the setting. Not-Jace, Not-Vraska, Not-Kaya, and Not-Ral all would be seen here. I think i’d also take all of the Fiora stuff and fold it into this so that I don’t have too much going on in the world and can pull together a lot of neat characters from that set too. Not-Marchessa might be fun as a side... well not ‘villain’, but definitely not helpful to our heroes... usually. X3

Ixalan: Pretty easy; coastline adventure. Just use any ideas from the block for pirate based shenanigans. Not sure if I will write enough to get to this sort of craziness, but it would be a lot of fun if I do.

Amonkhet: Not sure if, when, or how I am going to use this. Though a desert region might be fun. Might combine this with Regatha and that plan that Teyo comes from.

Kamigawa: I mean, really, this is ‘japan: the setting’. They went so hard on the Japanese lore here that it’s not going to be hard to make my own with little effort or consideration. Do expect there to be a Not-Tamiyo. X3

Alara: To be honest, I was never too big on this plane, but then it was a big deal years ago and I never really ‘set foot’ there. I mean if I did use it, I could use it to sorta map the bigger world’s zones? But that feels too much like the silly ‘elemental nations’ angle. Worked well for Avatar, but won’t work here.

Eldraine: I’m thinking about using this as a rough overlay of the main areas and goverment and what not tied to and surrounding my not-ravnica. Not sure. I haven’t finished the book yet, and it’s hard to get a solid bead on the details of the world without the old uploads, the clear posting of lore that used to happen (remember how we all knew what was going on with the color pie/race spread of Kaladesh?) and just having mostly the cards to go one leaves me wanting a bit. Not to mention they aren’t making the art books anymore. FUCK. I liked those. They needed to be improved not canceled T3T ... anyhoo...

Dominaria: Given what Dominaria now is to magic lore, I think I’ll set it as the history past. This world IS my Not-Dominaria.

I’ll figure out other planes as I go along, though I might just stick with what I got here. Adding in more is going to muck up the world I’m crafting. I may be taking parts that aready exist and remixing it (which, if we are honest with ourselves, is really how we tell stories in the first place, I’m just leaving my ‘mix’ lumpy XD), but I do need to concetrate more on the characters. I can’t introduce a new land every book. I need familiar ground, routes that readers can follow, places characters can be from that matter.

Speaking of characters:

Characters: Again, the idea here is that you should be able to recognize them to some extent, but I sitll have to work with the ‘legally distinct’ Not-Gatewatch... So here is what I got so far:

Chandra: What we keep: Fire based magics, brashness, cute. What we change: Not much. Most of her changes are going to be involved with the way I change the world around her. I think the big difference is instead of having her ‘planeswalk’, when her family gets hunted, they end up traveling toward the border, and she ends up running, getting lost, and finding herself on the steps of a (monastery). Also... no one would hate me for going ahead and making her trans, would they? Like, by the story proper’s start, she’ll have a woman’s body (or maybe that could be a part of her quest?), but I do like the idea. X3 It adds more of a personal touch to my Chandra.

Nissa: Debating on if I should keep her an elf. Keeping her an elf AND keeping the nature magic might be too alike. If not Elf, what should I make her? Still, the basics of her story are that she is looked down on, shunted to the side. stuff that leads her into being more comfortable on her own. Chandra is going to help her out of her shell, but only due to her honesty and clarity.

Gideon: No inviciblity. But definately going to keep him being the classic hero type, but with a genuine heart of gold. Going to change up his armorments from the sural to a short sword, buckler, and a lance/javalin? something like that. Hails from Not-Theros, has taken residence in Not-Ravnica

Jace: Trans man. Doing that right from the start. I know it was some folks head canon for a long time, and I see nothing wrong with making it canon here. Going to have to play with his past a bit. I think I’m not going to bother with the memory erasure. Instead, he trained as a spy with some mental powers and illusions. After betraying his original handler (someone that was a part of a different country), he defects to the not-ravnica and gets wrapped up with that stuff, eventually going out to help other nations in an effort to unite the continent or something... I’m kinda forming stuff as I write this. XD

Liliana: Still a necromancer. Going to cut out the deals with the devils. Maybe one, but not four. Might still have marks, but it will be more from her own magics rather then a contract. Still served a terrible master, but maybe with less strings attatched (or at least she thinks so). A friend in a discord suggested I have her have a binding on her bother as a lich vampire hunter. I’m warming to the idea, but still need to work out the details. I like the idea of her regaining her youth, that might even be the first story where Not-Chandra and Not-Nissa interact.

Vraska: Will end up in a relationship with Not-Jace... but I’m not too keen on keeping her a gorgon. I like the look of her ‘hair’, but I might just go with straight up dreads. Someone suggested making her some form of Naga, and though I’m not big on taking away her legs, the idea of some snakish relation is not out.

Ral: Inventor. Jackass. Friend of Not-Jace, has a Gay lover? yep, keeping all that. I think most of his changes, like Chandra, will be more about how the world around him shifts do to how I write rather then actual character changes.

Kaya: Keeping the Assassin, and can fight Ghosts. Still fleshing this one out. Likely to have ties with whatever I do with the Orzhov still. I adored the whole being hired by Teysa and ending up in charge thing, though I’m not sure I’ll go quiet that far? Mmm

Jaya: Still a mentor to Chandra. Less mystery around her though. It’s going to be less ‘she was the founder of our group’ and more ‘an adventurer that chose to settle down in her old age’ or something. And yes, the cookie scene I drew a comic for a while back will be in the story X3

Karn: Golems are a thing in fantasy, I don’t see a reason to stop now. But the Urza history is going to be retired. I think he might be an invention of someone in the current world and ends up as a helper to Not-Chandra and Not-Nissa at some point.

Jhoira: I’m thinking grand daughter to Not-Jaya. I like her and I want to keep her, but I like the adventure her. Might have a rivalry between her and Not-Chandra. like a friendly one. She might even have a bit of a chip on her shoulder as she doesn’t have fire magic, but Not-Chandra does.

Rat and Teyo: Might might not. The cast is getting big already, we’ll see. Might have them as a duo from the start with a sort of ‘adventures in the sewers’ thing going on.

Ugin: Not a dragon, but definately a powerful being. and still has that stick up his ass. Often wrong about what he thinks should be done, but his heart is genuinely in the right place. Going to make Not-Mizzet his son maybe?

Nicol Bolas: Bastard, got a plan, and it will be similarly a slow build, but he is going to be less ‘has his hands in everything’ and more a ‘mmm, I could use this’ sort.

Alesha: Fuck timelines! This woman is a friend of Not-Chandra and helped her discover herself. Whether she rides with her people near... wait... OH GOD I LOVE IT: Something I literally thought up while writing. She and her nomadic bandit team travel the roads between many lands, and they find young not-Chandra. After coming out as being a girl, Not-Alesha is what helps solidify her sense of Identity. After showing off her fire magics and how uncontroled they are, adding in how young she still is, they drop her off with the (monastery) XD I’m loving this change already.

Oviya: Still Chandra’s Auntie. Big change? Her lover is still alive, because fuck that noise.

Olivia: Plans. Hungry.

Avacyn: Doesn’t exists at the start of the story, but thinking about having her be created during it.

Sorin: Not sure....

Still thinking about a lot of other characters. I’ll get to them as I go.

There is also the Guilds of Ravnica to consider... With those, I think I’m going to keep the identity but not quite the orginizations. At least not so directly. Like not all of them are absolute ‘guilds’. There is less straight up organization. But there are definately a strong sense of jobs and a loyalty to those you work with...

Story:

And then there is the story itself. I think I’m going to start it with Not-Chandra meeting Not-Gideon much like before, but the goals are that he is traveling on a mission to see what is going on in Not-Zendikar. The seers/mages/whatever have been sensing some shit going down in that area and it’s close enough to the boarders of not-ravnica to check out. He and Not-Jace pass through and Not-Chandra gets curious and follows. She is going to meet Not-Nissa on the way. The four become a team and face down a nasty threat to the land and uncover a old history of Not-Zendikar that might need to be followed up on.

That can be book one.

Book two can be Not-Liliana’s introduction. The four, having worked so well together, are made a team by Not-Ugin and charged with trouble shooting all around the realm and seeing about maybe making more allies for Not-Ravnica. They find an old woman and they help her regain her youth... and in her they find an old villain. But the world has changed since last Not-Liliana walked the lands outside her keep. And it turns out that Not-Olivia, a vampire queen, has been making a name for herself. There are other darknesses afoot in her territory. For now, she would offer the team aid... as long as it suits her.

I think that can be book two

A return home would be the third story. Yes, this is kinda following how the stories were flowing at first, but after this one things are going to shift. The return home will bring Not-Chandra in direct confrontation with her past. The big changes I made to that and to Not-Kaladesh become big here. I’m thinking this is also where Not-Jhoira hangs out. The war behind the scenes is brewing, but it’s only starting. The all out mess won’t be till a later book.

What will happen in the story though is the confrontation with Not-Baral, Not-Chandra almost nuking herself in grief, and Not-Nissa being the anchor she needed. This will be the point of confession.

And so on... I’m not sure how far I’m going to go with this, but I want to try to push as many stories, but with as high quality as I can. Can I do it? I have no freaking clue.

I’ll post more as I go. For now, the working title is Verdant Flame. If I change it, I’ll continue to use the title to tag all the stuff I do till I go back and add the new title to old posts.

Now to transfer these notes... and figure out names. you don’t know how tiring it was getting adding ‘Not’ to everything.

And for those really keeping score: Why yes, some of this -was- what Dragon Quixotic was. There is enough difference between the two worlds that I feel confident that I can keep them as separate stories now.

#Verdant Flame #Gruulfriends #fuck canon

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rosethornewrites · 4 years

Text

Fic: Morass

Relationship: Zelgadis Greywords/Xellos

Characters: Zelgadis Greywords, Xellos

Additional Tags: Pre-Slash, Hurt/Comfort, Natural Disasters, Bathing/Washing

Summary: Zel's travels are interrupted when he gets stuck in an unnatural natural disaster.

AO3 link

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The peace of the mountain that loomed above the foothills where Zelgadis was hiking was broken by a rumble that shook the land so hard that at first he wondered if it was a volcanic eruption. He hadn’t thought this was a volcano, and there was no smoke, though it was rumored to have an abandoned temple beside a reservoir at the top—his goal—so it could be. He knew some cultures had once worshipped the fire gods they thought resided within volcanoes.

The noise gave him just enough warning to Raywing into the air, right before a massive mudslide hit; he couldn’t understand what had caused it, as there hadn’t been rain in the area. He didn’t have time to find out—he didn’t get high enough in time. The remains of a massive tree, propelled into the air by the seething mass of debris, grazed him, its jagged broken branches scraping painfully against his chest. He was sent careening, the spell broken.

Downward. Right into the earthen maelstrom, and it sucked him under.

Desperate, he managed to cast Windy Shield, the only spell he could think of strong enough to shield him. But debris and mud were trapped inside with him, whirling due to the spell, and Zel couldn’t break through the tumble of rock and mud beyond his shield. All he could do was fight to survive. Keeping the concentration for the spell wasn’t easy, the mud blinding and deafening him, coating his skin and every crevice, making it nearly impossible to even breathe, but he knew without it, he’d be crushed by the sheer force of the moving earth, stone skin or no.

As he was swept along, Zelgadis lost all sense of direction, the force of the slide buffeting him. Time became meaningless as mud coated his throat, leaving him desperately rasping for breath even as each wheeze brought in more. He could sense larger pieces of debris smashing against the shield, threatening to overwhelm it, and the magical cost of the spell was a fast drain on his reserves.

The shaman wasn’t sure he could hold out, barely maintaining enough concentration—one bad hit could leave him crushed by a boulder, buried permanently in a grave no one would ever find. The thought was terrifying, and he fought against panic.

Just as he thought he might lose the battle to keep the spell going, the movement of the earth surrounding him changed, slowly grinding down to an oozing, shuddering halt, leaving him trapped beneath the surface.

His only chance of getting out was casting Raywing again, but only if he could determine which way was up. A wrong guess would leave him deeper in the mud, and with his strength flagging and magical capacity pressed to the limit, he wouldn’t get a second one.

Gathering his wits, Zelgadis concentrated, forcing the Windy Shield surrounding him to push outward, hoping it would be enough. After an agonizing stretch of seconds, a hint of fresh air reached him… wafting from his feet. He let his spell dissipate and quickly cast Raywing in the split second before the muck could completely engulf him, propelling himself out and away from the mudslide blindly, unable to wipe the mud from his eyes with coated hands. He was fortunate not to hit anything. It took several to find dry land by checking whether the earth held beneath him.

The spell sputtered out, his magic burned out, and all he could do was collapse, coughing up mud, to his hands and knees. The taste of earth was joined with the taste of his own blood as he hacked the debris from his windpipe. What little strength he had left him, adrenaline spent. A wave of pain swept him into unconsciousness.

Zelgadis came to with a jolt. He was still blind and deaf, his eyes caked with mud, his ears full of it—and, he realized, he couldn’t even smell; it had apparently even invaded his nostrils. But he could sense someone or something was near him. He could barely move, his limbs lethargic with pain, with the mud starting to dry and solidify. He was helpless to defend himself from a possible foe.

His head was lifted slightly, and water trickled into his mouth—a person, then? He gulped at it, cool and clean, removing the remnants of filth from his taste buds. The water stopped too soon and he tried to ask for more, unable to do much more, unable to tell if he had even managed intelligible words.

Then his stomach roiled, and whoever it was pushed him to his side just before he learned he’d swallowed mud as well when his stomach forcibly rejected it. The acid burned, his throat already sore and damaged. The heaving seemed to go on forever until his stomach was finally satisfied.

Zelgadis was almost ready to succumb to exhaustion, until the impossible happened—a voice in his ear, whispering.

“You do get into the most interesting trouble, Zelgadis-san.”

Of course it had to be Xellos. He wanted to be relieved, but the Mazoku was generally trouble. Xellos could decide to help him, or could make things worse. Or both.

Zelgadis tried to ask Xellos how he could hear him, but only managed the first word. It was strange to only know from the vibrations of his own vocal cords whether he was speaking.

“How did I find you? Hm, well, I’m a bit… attuned to you, so when Lina-san’s Dragon Slave burst the reservoir at the top of the mountain, I sensed your distress. You’re rather lucky you were on this side of the mountain, really. The other side is even worse. She certainly causes a lot of damage!” The Mazoku even managed to sound gleeful in a facsimile of a voice.

That wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it explained how the mudslide had occurred. He doubted the temple he was seeking had survived Lina, which meant his quest for whatever lore it might contain was over. He hadn’t realized she was in the area—he had parted ways with the others, and had been travelling alone for the last several months.

He also didn’t know what Xellos meant by ‘attuned,’ but wasn’t sure he wanted to.

But Xellos wasn’t done. “Or did you mean how can you hear me? It’s rather simple to use vibrations. Despite the mud, your eardrums are undamaged.”

That was a relief; he probably had enough other injuries to worry about.

“Really, I’m surprised you managed to get out of danger yourself. Anyone else would have perished, though it took all your magical capacity and energy to survive. You are rather helpless right now, and with that thick layer of quickly-drying muck encasing you, by the time you are able to help yourself you might have even more difficulty.”

Zelgadis wanted to prove him wrong, and tried. He tried to move, and found that not only was it difficult due to exhaustion, but the mud was adding resistance. Judging by pressing his thumb and forefinger together, there was at least a centimeter of mud coating him, perhaps more in different places.

And magic… he knew he was spent. The Raywing had barely held together long enough to find a place to land.

Even breathing was difficult, and he was sure he had breathed in more than he’d managed to cough up. He may have survived, but being helpless, particularly with Xellos around, wasn’t healthy.

But Xellos wasn’t done. “Fortunately, I’m quite willing to help you, Zelgadis-san.”

The shaman knew better than to trust that—Xellos’ idea of help, more often than not wasn’t at all. The Mazoku generally had an ulterior motive, and Zel couldn’t even defend himself this time. Time had taught him wariness.

“So untrusting.” How he managed to get the inflection of mock hurt in his voice through eardrum vibrations, Zelgadis had no idea. “I can at least clean you up a bit. Regardless, you’re in no position to refuse.”

That was hardly something that needed to be pointed out, but was nonetheless frustrating. Realistically, even at full strength Zel knew that he wouldn’t be in a position to refuse a being as powerful as Xellos—something he tried very hard not to think about most of the time. He couldn’t help also being curious as to what would lead Xellos to decide to help him at this particular time, though he was also certain he wouldn’t like the answer.

He decided to ask anyway, hoping he managed the ‘why’ through his pained throat.

“Well, why not?”

A fantastic non-answer, but at least it wasn’t a ‘secret.’ That usually implied weird Mazoku plots. Regardless, Zelgadis didn’t trust his intentions.

With that he felt his body leave the ground, movement through the air—quicker than Raywing, unless his senses were lying—before he was dropped into water. For a moment he panicked, until he realized he wasn’t sliding fully underwater; it stopped at his chest, and he was seated against what felt like a riverbank of some sort, with a gentle current sliding across his body. A stream, perhaps?

“Not all of this is mud, unfortunately. If allowed to dry, you’d be in a bit of trouble. Perhaps pursuing a new career as a garden statue?”

Zelgadis wished he could glare, since that was the most of a reaction he’d be able to manage. He worked his fingers together, the layers of mud slowly thinning.

He was suddenly pulled off balance as Xellos pulled off one of his boots, then the other. He almost slipped under the water, but the Mazoku steadied him.

“What are you doing?” he managed to rasp.

“Your clothing is coated, inside and out,” Xellos answered simply.

Zel sensed his sudden proximity and flinched, but the priest only unclasped his cloak and peeled it and his pack away. Literally peeled, as the fabric stuck to him slightly, proving Xellos’ point. The burden of his pack lifted with it.

His fingers were at least partly clear of mud, and he brought his hands up with some difficulty, fighting against exhaustion to try scraping away the mud covering his eyes. He managed to smear some of it away, but not enough to open them. Even that much movement hurt, but he tried again, managing to open one eye. But he had to close it against the glare of the sun on the water, the world too bright.

Xellos helpfully wiped more from his face, getting enough off that his other eye was free. Zelgadis squinted, trying to let his eyes adjust, not fighting when the Mazoku grabbed his hands, one at a time, and peeled his fingerless gloves off.

“I admit I’m surprised you were caught in that mudslide in the first place.”

It was strange to see Xellos, who didn’t bother with the facade of talking, hearing his voice without seeing him speak. The words took a moment to sink in, and he remembered getting hit.

“Tree hit me.”

He brought a hand to his chest, remembering the pain, and found holes in the fabric of his shirt, one that stretched across his chest. Zel peered down, but could only see mud and debris clinging to the skin underneath; he couldn’t tell if it had broken the skin.

That was, until the Mazoku reached forward and pulled at a piece of debris, and Zelgadis hissed in pain. Blood joined the murky water. It was a piece of branch imbedded in his skin. The world spun a little, and when it stopped he found himself shirtless, Xellos examining the area of the wound.

“Not life-threatening,” he said with a sort of mocking cheer. “But probably uncomfortable. And with all that muck in the wound it could become an issue.”

Dark spots were obscuring his vision, and each shallow breath seemed to try to suck his awareness away with it. The shaman knew he was on his way to unconsciousness, but he struggled against it anyway, not certain whether to trust Xellos.

The Mazoku’s face appeared in his swimming vision. Zel could hear him, or at least sensed the vibrations, but for a moment they made no sense to him. Sense returned to him in time to comprehend the last of it.

“—won’t do anything untoward, Zelgadis-san.”

His mind groped for meaning, finding it with difficulty. Zel hoped his guess at the beginning of the sentence was right. His tenuous hold on consciousness slipped, and Xellos’ face faded into darkness.

Zelgadis had snatches of awareness, of water rushing around him, of gentle hands, a soft voice. When consciousness returned, he was warm, no longer in the water, and he could feel the muck that had encased him was gone. He was surprised to be able to feel its absence, but apparently even his stone skin could feel suffocated.

Despite that, his limbs felt like lead, his energy sapped. The sound of a nearby river permeated his hazy awareness, and he realized breathing came slightly easier, his nose clear of mud as well. His lungs still ached and he couldn’t take in a lot of air, but it would take time for his body to handle whatever he’d breathed in, assuming it could and he wouldn’t have to cough it up.

This would be a new test of its healing capabilities, Zelgadis realized bitterly, and he would probably keep finding ways to test it, with his luck.

When he tried to open his eyes, he had to close them against the glare of the sun—that was why he felt warm, he realized. The sun’s rays and warmth had seeped through his stone skin.

He flinched when something heavy draped across him, opening his eyes to find Xellos peering at him, his face too close, his eyes partly open and revealing his true nature. Zelgadis felt pinned, like an insect at the mercy of an entomologist.

“Ah, good. You’re conscious. You certainly took a beating, Zelgadis-san. Cracked ribs, some internal injuries. I don’t suppose you have enough magic for a healing spell?”

Zelgadis was too exhausted to even shake his head. “Burned out,” he murmured.

“Of course.” Xellos sighed, drawing back a bit. “Perhaps your natural healing abilities will handle it. For the moment, you’re in no danger.”

He wasn’t sure he wanted an expansion on ‘for the moment;’ he couldn’t do anything about it anyway.

“Why—”

His voice broke, and it was suddenly hard to breathe through the coughing and fire in his chest. Zel couldn’t even hiss in pain when he was pulled into a sitting position, but after a minute the coughing eased. Something touched his lips, water trickling in, and it helped clear the muddy taste that had invaded his mouth again.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked when he had caught his breath. It was unsettling to have a creature like Xellos helping him through a coughing fit, of all things.

Xellos tilted his head, easing him back to the grass. “Doing what?”

“Helping me. Isn’t this beneath you?”

Part of him expected to be told it was a secret, for this to be the prelude to Mazoku manipulation.

Instead, Xellos frowned slightly. “Well… It would be a bit disappointing if you were to die in such an ignoble way, I suppose. As for the other, perhaps should take you to Lina-san… though she may not be happy to see me! Or you, given that she is something of a prude and you’re naked.”

Zelgadis had managed not to notice that in the time he’d been conscious, and the exposure added another layer of helplessness, one he felt in the pit of his stomach like lead. He was surprised when Xellos stood and removed his mantle, draping it over him like a blanket—even more by the fact that he could feel the fabric draped across his skin more than he could even feel the grass at his back. Faux fabric, he realized. He tried very hard not to think about that.

“Although, you’re a bit of a prude yourself,” the Mazoku chided lightly.

Zel suddenly remembered his earlier comment about Lina, about her causing the mudslide.

“Lina cast Dragon Slave?”

Xellos crouched next to him. “Ah, yes. I did mention that, didn’t I?”

“Why?”

It was a bit more diplomatic than asking what Xellos had done, and easier for him to say. His throat and chest still hurt, exacerbated by the coughing fit, each breath painful, lending credence to Xellos’ theory he’d cracked a rib.

Xellos rubbed his head, at least feigning a sheepish look. “Ah, well, you see… It seems the temple atop that mountain was infested by giant slugs! There’s a species native to this area, you know.”

Zelgadis gaped at him for a moment; perhaps, had he not been caught in the aftermath, he would have found it mildly amusing, but he rather doubted it. The damage this prank had done was on a different level than most of the others the Mazoku had pulled. He’d nearly died in the unintentional aftermath of a prank; it felt like a bizarre metaphor for his life. An ignoble way to die, certainly.

“You’re going to kill me someday,” he muttered finally. “And it won’t even be on purpose.”

Xellos turned away, gazing off into the distance. Zel could’ve sworn he moved slightly before that, almost a flinch. Probably a trick of the light and his exhaustion.

“That is not my intention, Zelgadis-san.”

“That’s the point.”

A wave of fatigue crashed through him, and he couldn’t keep his eyes open. What was left of his adrenaline was long gone, the ordeal and his injuries catching up with him. The steady sound of the river seemed to fade in and out with each breath he took. Zel tried to fight it, though he knew it was a losing proposition.

He felt the cloak being adjusted more snugly around him. A hand touched his cheek, and he could feel it as though his skin wasn’t stone.

“Rest, Zelgadis-san. I already promised I won’t do anything untoward.”

The hand didn’t move, just resting against his face, almost a comfort. And though Zelgadis didn’t trust the Mazoku… he didn’t distrust him now. He stopped fighting, let his awareness fade.

Much later, he woke to the early morning sunlight trickling through a canopy of trees that towered above him. Zelgadis found himself in an old-growth forest beside a well-kept fire. He sat up with minor difficulty, his ribs still pained, confused. Xellos was nowhere to be seen.

Underneath him was a brand new bedroll. Pooled in his lap was a well-made blanket. He realized he was partly dressed, pants made of good quality fabric—even underwear, which was more than a little embarrassing. He hadn’t even stirred. He didn’t have a shirt on, and he found the gashes across his chest had only mostly healed. The shaman could only guess that burning out his magic had slowed his body’s natural healing.

The scent of something cooking caught his attention, and he moved closer to the fire, nearly tripping over boots—also new—and his pack on the way. Near the embers was a pot of stew; just the sight made his stomach growl. He searched through the pack for a bowl and spoon, setting aside what looked like a folded map.

The stew looked hearty, and it would help him recover, giving his body energy to work with. Zel didn’t even care that it was almost too hot, not slowing down until he had tucked in a full bowl and was well through the second. Then he opened the map, and nearly dropped the bowl when he saw the doodles.

A Z to mark where he was, halfway across the continent from where he had been. And symbols from Zelgadis’ personal shorthand, which he’d developed from a mixture of dead languages, on other parts of the map—“demon temple,” “abandoned library,” and the like.

Zel set the bowl aside and fished his journal, discolored from mud, from the pack. He flipped through it, unease shifting to dismay when he found notes throughout. “Already destroyed,” “Not the Claire Bible,” “Very helpful, Zelgadis-san!” next to his notes on rumors of Claire Bible manuscripts. The very ones he’d been on that part of the continent to check out.

At the very end, a longer note. “I quite enjoyed deciphering your code. Well done! Payment enough for my help. In fact, more than enough—so I’ve replaced your damaged equipment and clothing for you. You may appreciate some of the places I've marked on the map.” Followed by a crude chibi doodle of the priest himself.

Zelgadis wanted to scream.

#slayers fanfiction #my fanfiction #zelgadis greywords #xellos #xellos/zelgadis #slayers #the slayers

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