How did you decide mc’s powers?
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Honestly I just wanted to make a Dragon Ball OC and I’ve been winging everything else
I- I mean, I went with what offered most flexibility, of course. Super strength, flight and energy blasting are rather vanilla abilities, sure, but they offer a lot of range with what the player would be able to do, while still allowing those who wish to the ability to go:
MC: Okay, so what if we punched him really hard-
Forlorn: We are already doin-
MC: Together!
Forlorn: …I hate you. I hate this. I hate everything. Let’s do it.
Plus, it’s kind of my wheelhouse, I think. I’m not the biggest comic book fan around, but I do read a lot of manga, especially shonen, so I have a bit of an idea of how to make it all work. In fact, there are actually quite a few references in the game as is, if you know where to look.
The blaster option in Chapter 3 when fighting Other!MC is a reference to Gilgamesh’s EA from Fate, as well as Piccolo’s Hellzone Grenade. The Koiwan Dojo in Chapter 4 is a reference to Kuroki Gensai from Kengan Asura (and later Kengan Omega), who’s the lone practitioner of the Kaiwan Style, an assassination style that originated in the Ryukyu Kingdom.
Of course, that aside, the battle-lust and apparent mid-battle improvements are things the MC has, and those aren’t quite as run of the mill.
There’s also a Watsonian answer to why the powers you have are these, but that will have to wait until later, when all cards are brought to the table.
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I think your set of super powers are perfect, @Jjcb …classic powers are classic for good reasons.
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Did you consider other powersets in the planning stages of the story?
If you don’t put that in the game I will never forgive you
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I did! Quite a few, in fact. Super strength was always going to be in the cards, but what I mixed that with was a matter of debate for a bit. I considered Atmokinesis, Solar Manipulation, Cloning/Self-Multiplication were some, to name a few. Precognition was considered as well, but I discarded it early on. It tends to hurt the narrative more often than not, I’ve found. These powers will still appear in the game, but not as abilities of the MC. They’ll be held by other characters, and not be relevant for more than one or two scenes, except for one.
Don’t worry, I have many plans for Forlorn to get sick and tired of all the dumb ideas that you and Lat keep suggesting, and to make it worse, keep working.
That they are! It’s all a matter of implementation, I like to think. As long as you can make it interesting, nearly anything is an interesting skill to have.
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As i said before of my favorite scene, when u can say “Chu Chu motfck!”, the MC is going to be a shonen protagonit with overpowered strength, i’m just glad the MC isnt a hulk in live, only saying; " mc smash" xP
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We need to burst through a wall and scream “oh yeah!!!”
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just finished reading the WIP i love this, also loved the TFS reference
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“Choo-choo, motherfucker!” is my MC’s signature move; like Colossus+Wolverine’s Fastball Special.
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My mc’s theory, certainly after what happened to him…as he seems to be possessed or at least forced to share his body with some blue energy alien in the guise of that creepy alter ego now.
So who is to say that in this universe the ancient astronauts hypothesis hasn’t at least got a core of truth to it? Certainly seems plausible to my mc, after what happened to him.
Wait…including Lat? 
I mean I seriously got the impression that one reason why Lat may be able to drag my mc anywhere at all…mostly to parties has been because she is a menace on the road and my mc cannot in good conscience let her get behind the wheel. 
So, good luck to Nova teaching her…he’s gonna need it.
Which also leads me to speculate again on why Lat may have a smoother time with her bodysnatcher as manifested in her more rapid progress. It may be the difference between say a 78% versus a 98% host compatibility rating or something like that.
Is that romance is complicated. My mc has his own fears and uncertainties regarding Mars and rather unfortunately getting to the core of them would mean touching the subject of the creepy alter ego and the fact that my mc thinks his “powers” aren’t really his powers but those of some alien residing in him as a creepy alter ego now. 
Well, except of course for the origins of the mc’s and by extension Lat’s powers…those matter a great deal, especially to my mc as he quite literally has to live with a creepy alter ego right now and those powers only manifested both late and at a most inconvenient time. So, yeah, he’d want to get to the bottom of that.
The mc’s powers all being reactive adaptation could also be an alternative explanation why they manifested so damned late and only in response to the earthquake. If that is the case mc’s powers needed actual, mortal peril to manifest themselves and mc, like many citizens of affluent countries has managed to avoid at least that, up to the earthquake.
My mc himself still prefers his Star Trek energy alien theory though…as in the alternative explanation the creepy alter ego would be a sign of some serious mental issues that he’d prefer to avoid dealing with.
Lat seems to have gotten the less standard power set.
They’re also incredibly versatile. Still I do think my mc needs to learn some energy defence, as in shields, in addition to offensive things like blasting.
So gotta get Ignis to teach him the shield thingy, as that aslo comes in mighty handy for protecting non-superpowered civilians.
I treat strength like the dump stat. Energy power is too cool to ignore, but my mc still focuses mostly on smarts, wits and charm, not in the the least because he believes the powers he now has are likely not his and probably not his to wield forever too, so improving knowledge and making connections are two things that might actually be helpful in a potential post-superhero stage of his life.
Plus, work smarter not harder, something my mc copied from pre superhero Lat now. 
Not when you can blast them from a distance instead. 
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So do I, but like the Firestarter scene shows, while Tactics tells you how to best punch, you still DO have to punch a psychopath in the face from time to time.
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W-well, Idlun, that’s certainly an interesting take regarding things… Mayhaps it even has grabbed onto a bit of the truth there.
But you’ll have to give me a couple more chapters before we can see how close (or far!) to the money you all are. It’s gonna be a big reveal, and cause quite a shock for the rest of the team.
Including Lat indeed. In fact, it may seem like she’s too much a fun-lover, but she’s actually quite a good driver. Her parents forced into learning very properly before she moved to Giga all the way from Maine, but even if they hadn’t, the fear of totalling a vehicle and getting her mom to come visit, scream her head off, and then hang what remains upside down a tree means she makes sure to respect the traffic laws.
… Well, when it makes sense to, obviously.
Well, I can’t go too far in any confirmations, but the thing is, Lat also has that reactive adaptation power the MC does. And when you’re surrounded by people who could kill you with a quick breath (As Forlorn, Ignis and Seeker are still capable of, you’ll see this later), your body’s going to want to close the gap as fast as possible.
While you need to train, because you’ve already reached a more or less ‘acceptable’ baseline, Lat’s adaptation has been working on overdrive from the moment she got her powers, and has yet to stop. It’ll more or less plateau when she catches up to the MC, and then you’ll grow at the same pace.
She has indeed. You and Lat fulfill different roles. You’ll see what I mean later on.
He is not. Seeker’s an entirely fictional creation, except for perhaps the small bit of myself I put into every member of the cast.
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I’m still with my hypothesis of the MC being linked to the Broken King, with the Not-You’s eagerness for battle matching the King’s approach of “winning to save”.
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As you had said before (and I feel so dumb-dumb for not seeing the slight inspiration in dragon ball with the powers begin flight, streng, speed and energy spheres .-.) what others sources had inspired you to write the story, what are the things that you take from other medias and how exactly do you find the drive to keep writing and not delete everything that you don’t like xD (I really want to know the motivation, maybe it could help me find some)
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Well, as I’ve mentioned before, I took a bit of inspiration from the Superman stories. Same with Dragon Ball. There’s actually a bit of a mix there, but you’ll have to wait for some time before I can show how and where the mix happened. The world of BnHA, as… little of a fan as I am today, also got me to think a lot more on how a society with superheroes would adapt, and how I’d think it’d be most interesting to write.
The story of the Monarchs of Crete, while wholly something I thought up on my own (which is why I’m so passionate about it and why I am chomping at the bit to get to the point where I get to explore the two of them, their relationship, and how the King has survived the past few centuries), are based on The Lost Lenore trope, The Mourning After, The King in the Mountain, as well as an unhealthy dose of (and this is the important one, because as someone will eventually tell you, “The Queen built a dam, and while it’s lasted a thousand years, it’s about to collapse”) Morality Chain Beyond the Grave.
The Queen was also partially inspired by Estelle Bright, a character from the Trails… series. Their personalities, or at least ideals, are a bit similar, but the conclusion and direction I’ve taken the Queen on is different. More mature, I think, but definitely just as idealistic.
Funny addendum, Estelle Bright is actually nicknamed ‘The Sun’ in the series, which is a term I’ve used to refer to a few characters now, but I actually started calling them that way before I got to the game where that nickname is bestowed upon her.
I take a bit from a majority of shonen manga, at least for fight scenes. Hajime no Ippo, in fact, was a big help when trying to figure out terms and how to explain the choreography of battles. I also take some inspiration from Cataphrak’s Dragoon Saga, though in our case we’re not exactly commanding cavalry in war. Kengan Asura was another that helped me understand how to make explanations of attacks more exciting or believable. Same with Kingdom.
I don’t know if my fight scenes are very good, but I try to pride myself on the fact that the action is easy to follow, if nothing else.
I write for myself.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am more than happy that you all enjoy my story, and it makes me ecstatic beyond belief that so many of you have shared comments of support for it, but…
The number one person, and the number one fan that A Tale of Heroes is written for is me.
Everything that happens in this story does so because I think it’s cool, or sad, or exciting, or whatever else. From the biggest mysteries to the most inane of interactions, all of that is something that I consider enjoyable. I don’t write to fulfill some… I don’t know, literary aesthetic or something, or because there’s a message that I feel the need to absolutely drill into other people’s minds.
Every single word in this story comes from my gut, and what I think would be “holy shit that’d be so fucking cool”. That’s why you have a drunk swordsman who dual-wields two swords with a massive weight difference and has a trust problem, or why there’s a guy literally called “Glory” who’ll drag the US to victory and survival, whether it wants to or not.
Aaaand, putting that aside for a second, because I know some of you are history enthusiasts and like this kind of stuff, I wrote a bit of an essay on how the Cretan Kingdom functioned. Have at thee:
World Lore
How Crete functioned as a nation, in the wake of the Andalusian defeat and the Monarchs’ Conquest:
The King and Queen, for all of their vaunted ability as fighters and tacticians, could only be considered, in the kindest possible interpretation, as passable administrators or economists when they took over Crete (though the Queen did eventually find a knack for it and became an above-average state manager, while the King was forced to as well by the Queen’s eventual inability to rule directly).
While it is true that Crete’s coffers were plentiful during the takeover, thanks mostly to the constant raids, the plentiful trade, and the support of other Arab communities to the Andalusian rulers, this didn’t present the newly minted monarchs with many ideas on how to enrich the nation. The Queen was evidently against expeditionary raids, and the proposition of slave workers turned the advocate for it into two cleanly divided advocates, their choices were few, and most of them bad, either for the continued existence of the nation, or for the state’s coffers.
Eventually, and with the propositions and suggestions of the few surviving nobles that weren’t felled in battle or escaped the island, the Monarchs came to a solution, one which was… not perfect, you could say, but managed to satisfy the Queen’s humanitarian side, and thus the King as well.
Being a rather similar model to the Obshchina system eventually used in Imperial Russia, the Monarchs formed ‘communities’ in the different parts of Crete.
These communities would consist of a set number of peasants, who would have the arable land divided between them more or less according to their need and/or ability.
These ‘communities’ would have an overseer, or ‘handler’, who would make sure to requisition the appropriate amount of taxes from the peasants, while serving as their direct link to the Queen and King, who likewise were part of a ‘community’, though their share of the land was obviously larger, and, despite the often voiced complaints from the newly ascended Cretan nobility, could often count with the King and Queen as laborers themselves, whenever they weren’t busy conducting official business in the Royal Palace.
Of course, this system did present an issue: the possibility of corruption. Normally nothing could stop the appointed overseer from pocketing part of the earnings, dividing the land unfairly in favor of their preferred (read: most capable of bribing) families, or simply of committing the abuses that the people in positions of power often do.
This problem was solved in two ways, one of them due to Crete itself, and the other due to the Monarchs’ already proven… ‘disregard’ to the commonly accepted practices or laws of the nations surrounding them.
The first thing that allowed this problem to not realistically fester was the size of Crete itself. Being a nation of middling size, at most, and ruled by two people who, if you wanted to be charitable, could be favorably compared to the Chicxulub Impactor, meant that touring the island and making sure the people were content was a matter of maybe two or three days at most, instead of the weeks upon weeks that it would take for any normal ruler.
Of course, once the Queen grew old, the frequency of these visits diminished. In fact, records state that, by the decade of 990, these travels happened perhaps once or twice a year, with the number diminishing as the Queen’s condition worsened, and the King stayed by her side to care for her, while organizing expeditions in search of something that would keep the Queen from her eventual death.
With the Queen unable to visit her lands herself, the King unwilling to leave her side, and the Byzantine Emperor Basil II’s gaze having turned east after suppressing the civil war ravaging his lands, this would have left the Cretan peasantry in quite the hard place. The King could not be bothered, the Queen was unable, and every night, they would have been left to wonder if, by the time they woke up, war had once more come to their shores.
If the once vigilant gaze of the Monarchs, one that had turned spotty at best, was the only thing they could count on, things would be very dire indeed.
But it was not the only thing they could count on, which leads us to the second thing that kept corruption from strangling the Monarchs’ rule:
The Free Right to Petition.
Now, on its face, this was not a new concept.
Even to the rulers of nearby nations, this wasn’t extravagant. There obviously was a need for a right for the citizenry of a nation to express, while not exactly concerns, questions regarding the current plans or actions of the ruler. Any decent state leader must be able to understand or hear the opinions of their people.
Yet this basic idea was where all the similarities and praises stopped.
Yes, the right to petition must exist. But only to some. Established administrators would be the ones to present these worries. They’d be the ones that the King, Queen, or Emir would bother to hear. Only these people could present themselves to the ruler. There had to be a limit.
But not in Crete.
Perhaps owed to its small size, or the fact that it’s population hardly reached a hundred thousand during the rule of the Monarchs, there existed no rules on who could request an audience with the Queen, who first presented the idea, or the King, who continued it when the matter of statecraft became his to deal with.
A peasant who was worried about his crops not doing well enough to meet the required tax, or who worried about the possibility of an attack from the Byzantines, or whatever other issue, had as much right and ability to meet with the Monarchs as the richest of the nobles in the country.
This presented the overseers with a serious problem. They could shut down a man’s grievances. The grievances of one or two dozen as well. But the grievances of a hundred? Of several hundreds? Of a thousand? That was not possible. If they ever went too far, it’d get back to the Monarchs. That was something they could not afford.
Of course, that’s not to say some didn’t try. There was absolutely an attempt early on from the overseers to enrich themselves.
At first, the Queen attempted a regular punishment. They’d be stripped of their title, and forced to work alongside their former ‘subjects’, who they had rightfully earned the ill-will of.
This worked, of course. Losing their position was one thing, but being put without protection besides the people that they had so clearly antagonized presented a real danger to their lives, one almost none dared to meet.
Then, for the very few that did dare, the King took over. And, depending on your point of view, this might have been the better deal. For while the pains and injuries of a beating by your newly made equals can carry consequences for months, or even years… being turned into ash is, unsurprisingly, both quick and painless.
When the King eventually took over completely in the late 990s, these attempts ceased entirely. The King was irritable, as one might be when they see the light of their life grow dimmer with every breath, and money always needed to flow, for his ordered expeditions did not come for free, or even for cheap. The Queen’s method of punishment disappeared. Stealing from Crete’s coffers, or inconveniencing the King in any way which the Queen, now ailing, could realistically suss out, meant you made the King angry.
And the people of Crete still had fresh on their minds what happened to the recipients of the King’s anger, for less than three decades are not enough time to forget a dragon’s roar.
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@Jjcb My MC is an orphan. I was just wondering if we get to visit the orphanage where we grow up with Lat (or going to visit your family, if that’s what you chose) in this book (don’t know if its only one book or a series)? Just read that line again and thought it’ll be cool if we could.
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tvtropes links? YOU MONSTER!
There are only cliffhangers. In fact, there are so many cliffhangers there isn’t even any room left for the cliffs. The cliffhangers just hang off each other.
See? What did I tell you all? Just cliffhangers. No cliffs.
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It’ll be a trilogy, or at least that’s the current plan.
And I don’t have too much of a plan for parents (or caretakers, in this case) to make an appearance, but there’ll be a bit of a timeskip when the book ends, so there could be a small scene there, perhaps. Up to player choice, of course.
Tbh I just like the quotes section of the pages, I don’t pay much attention to anything else…
Cliffhangers are about all I’ve got, I’m afraid. 
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