OK, as I was saying before our historical military interlude…
And in that spirit: Happy Xthonosmas! 
Have another 370K or so words of Rebels.
As a decade ago, this isn’t in the shape I’d wanted to have it before I shared it with you all… but I just can’t keep sharing it in dribs and drabs forever. Almost all of the core Irduin exploration is here now, with just a few bits of the last Priest and Inn sections left TBD. I haven’t playtested half of it (and not at all since hacking the irduin chapter in half this evening to get it to upload) so expect it to have plenty of room for improvement–too long-winded in some bits, short or disjointed in others.
Below is what’s unfinished from Irduin – much of it in the 50K-ish words I’ve already written but temporarily cut to turn this into non-spoilery, working code. I’d encourage you to not unhide the section below right away. Go have a read through the new draft first, so you understand where we’re going.
- When you get back from your final Rim rendezvous, Lady Alasais will decide on certain courses of action. This will be shaped by the advice you gave her (and how much she trusts you) as well as how much money she’s got left.
- Then we get the fallout from various exciting plots you might have set in action or let roll ahead – the elopements and heretical books and sabotage and lynch mobs and duels and assassinations and…
- If you’ve got through all that and you’re not yet dead or on the run, there’ll be a check of ird_sus to see if the authorities try to arrest you. (Almost all of the consequences of said arrest are written – with YOU KILLED IRDUIN as placeholder text for one of the winding-down bits I haven’t finished yet – but I’ll save that for next update.)
- If you’ve not been arrested, our friend Theurge Seichareis returns, and there’s an ird_unity check – along with some specific story outcomes – that determine whether any of the villagers crack and try to betray the village’s secrets to him.
- If you’re still in Irduin after all that, we finally get to Telone Baldassare’s comeuppance and the decisions you get to make about his fate.
- And I have to go through and add cred_h, cred_a, etc. to your decisions in Irduin, so that by the end of the game (when it’s probably known that you were behind whatever happened there) those are affecting your reputation.
So yeah, that’s what’s left for Irduin – with a good-sized chunk of it already written. (I had to jump ahead to get a better sense of the direction some of these characters were heading.) And then for the whole game to be done, I need to finish:
- The five sections in which you try to remotely steer the Rim rebellion, and see the consequences.
- Going back to the Xaos chapters and writing the starts of the Erjan, M’kyar, and Jev romances into them.
- Writing the “gamgee” arcs (whether romances or friendships) across the whole game, fleshing out what’s already there and giving those relationships some satisfying growth.
- Writing in Erjan’s sister Dilek – I’d originally planned for her to appear in Grand Shayard, but that would leave too many Halassurq stereotypes in the air until next game. So now she’ll join her brother in Xaos, and if you’re willing, join you for the first bit of your time in Irduin. (This will also involve another Erjan and Jev visit, mid-Irduin.)
- Extending the stories about MC trauma and gender self-discovery through Irduin and making sure they hold together.
I think that’s it? That’s about it, anyway. Probably a couple more things I’m forgetting. But I really do think 2025 is going to be the year I finish this thing.
Happy New Year’s Eve to all, and happy reading.