I just wanted to say we all do appreciate all the work and thought you put in and these updates despite them being what you might consider negative.
We appreciate you and all the work you do and it’s important for people to say so.
20 Likes
That means a lot, bud. Thanks so much.
20 Likes
You’re working on an extremely complex and difficult project. It sucks that right now you feel like you’ve hit a bottleneck and then got sealed in with a brick wall. But you’ve worked through these things before and we know you can do it again.
11 Likes
What you’re doing sounds brilliant, and will be pushing the boundaries of these kinds of stories. I know the feeling of being very much in the middle of wading through more and more work, and how these things can expand exponentially - but keep at it, and when the time is right to share it’ll be well worth it.
13 Likes
It’s always sad to see another month pass by without Irduin 
. My excitement keeps growing together with the scope of the chapter, and I can’t wait to finally take part in all of the nefarious rebel activities you have planned for my MC to experience. 
I understand that deviating from the original plan and changing the scope of the chapter is quite tough. It’s really nice that you wish to deliver an amazing experience, and I bet it will be, but please don’t pull a Valve and think that people expect something out of this world and you never end up releasing anything (looking at you Half-Life 3 
)
We’ll be here on the day (or maybe the day after depending on time-zones and such 
) when Irduin’s gates open and we’ll be ready to break the game and absolutely terrorize the citizens of the town with our bugfinding and exploits. We’ll all work on improving and fixing Irduin together.
I’m really happy that you’re confident that it will be worth the wait. 
I can’t wait to see more dangerous rebel activities (which it sounds like there’ll be plenty of) given life by your amazing writing style. My COM MC is really itching for that duel you’ve mentioned.
Hopeful for an Augduin! (?) (Hope Augduin sounds good enough 
)
5 Likes
You are an inspiration to many of us @Havenstone, in many ways.
We know you are not perfect; your self-awareness and self-recriminations show us you do not think you are either, but understand we embrace you for who you are and not your ideal-self.
Even though you are far ahead of myself, your honest reflections and shared struggles in executing your vision helps keep me from despairing in the midst of trying to execute my vision.
So thank you, my friend.
We will be here with open arms to celebrate with you once you do reach your milestone, and we understand that the road less travelled sometimes takes you places that you did not foresee in beginning this journey.
12 Likes
Warning Mara is about to post embrace all of you fandom.
Havie, you are my Yoda. You have supported me a lot. Probably I wouldn’t be on this forum if not for you. Too many pitchforks even for me to handle alone.
You deserve time and breathe woth your people. You have created an amazing journey through an entire universe. That only thinking and planning is a gigantic effort.
Then coding and testing. And being a partner and a father.
So don’t feel pitty of your old butt and relax. If you need another year you need it.
And if someone wants to complaint they will have to pass over me.
You are a wise chap and a great writer. And most importantly for me a friend. Never forget that we have all people here that supports you and admire you.
Now I will turn silent mode again.
10 Likes
Let me also add my voice to thoose praising everything you have given this community so far! The complexity, realism, attention to detail and excellent writing quality combined makes this game absolutely amazing! Creating such an excellent story and indeed an entire world will of course take a lot of time, and we are here to support you every step of the way!
4 Likes
Shipping people together or shipping goods between locations?
7 Likes
This one. Irduin is landlocked and on a non-navigable river.
Thanks for all the lovely messages of encouragement, folks. The only thing I want more than to be done with this game is for it to live up to its potential. So grateful for your support in that, and for me as an author.
16 Likes
I’m a big fan as always, but I have to say I do miss the little excerpts you’d post. I’m not gonna say “just release what you have now to satisfy the voracious fans grah” because that’s silly, but getting little snippets to enjoy and speculate over was nice.
8 Likes
Well, I’ve been holding back on excerpts of what I’ve written recently because too many of them would be spoilery. But that doesn’t mean I have to be totally excerpt-free, sorry. 
Here for your hopefully voracious enjoyment are the opening of the chapter and a Cerlota vignette from Irduin, formatted for semi-easy reading as a forum post. (For the Cerlota one in particular, it may be hard to follow the dialogue tree logic in the end without proper indents, but I think you’ll get the idea.)
Feedback always welcome!
NB on the chapter numbers and names – my current thoughts on the revised schema have got as far as:
Game II: Stormwright
Ch 5: Chaos and Telos
Ch 6: Stormfighters and Stormbringers [the Sojourn chapter]
Ch 7: Dance of Shadows [the Riverlands and Irduin part one]
Ch 8: The Oak and the Blackbird [Irduin part two]
but I’m not totally wedded to the new chapter names yet.
Chapter Intro
Chapter Seven
Dance of Shadows
Even when you reach the sparse rank of poplars atop the rise, there’s no respite from the west wind’s parching heat. You pause in the shade with your eyes closed, ignoring the noise as best you can, and try to imagine yourself back in the Whendward forest country. There, even in summer the north-facing slopes emanated a damp, refreshing chill, and the springs were cool. Your nostrils flare. Is that a hint of the Brecklands you catch on the hot wind? Wild grass, salt fennel, and sheep, borne in from so many miles away?
When you open your eyes, all those fragile memories and scents are shattered by the teeming, obtrusive strangeness of the Serdre riverlands. Nothing within eyeshot is wild—nothing unshaped by human labor or Theurgy. The only trees are in gardens and groves, or planted (like the row behind you) along roadsides and field boundaries. Every inch of land that can be is cultivated; the vast, flat swathes of cropland and canals are interrupted only by clusters of shacks every few hundred yards, built on stilts above mud flats, or on rocky ridges, or on land otherwise unsuited to the plow.
At the heart of it all, a greenish-brown expanse of water nearly a half-mile wide hurls the sunlight back at you. The Serdre’s not quite as yawningly vast here as when you first met it near Vaulens, but it could still swallow all of Rim Square like a millstone dropped into a well. Your hometown’s populace could even more easily vanish into the throng of sculls, ferryboats, and rafts that ply the river out to both horizons.
And ${oath}, all around you there are people everywhere, not singly but in crowds—trawling nets along the riverside, chopping down ratooned cane in the fields, hauling carts along the great stone roads on both banks, selling tiny wares from tiny stalls to passersby. The only places where anyone could hope for a moment alone are the thin-walled, flimsy houses, and given the steady flow of visitors in and out of their canvas doors, you’re not sure you could count those.
You’d always heard from @{aristo visiting nobles|newly arrived helots} that the rest of the Hegemony held millions upon millions of people, but somehow you’d got the idea that most of them lived in great cities. You’d assumed the farm country in between would look something like the Outer Rim…like anything you’d recognize.
The relief of no longer having Xaos-storms anywhere on the horizon will, you think, be with you for the rest of your life. But you weren’t ready for the Southriding of Shayard to feel so utterly alien.
*choice
#I’d thought I was coming home…but this loathsome place is no home to me.
As much as you’ve tried to adapt, there’s one thing above all others that you find unbearable:
*goto unbearable [subchoice block just below]
#It dizzies me, but I’m slowly getting used to it.
*set srfeel 4
When it first truly sunk in that you wouldn’t escape the constant babble of strangers’ voices from the moment you woke up until hours after dark, it made you want to crawl out of your skin. Now, it seems halfway normal, as does encountering a new hamlet every thousand yards or so.
*goto drap
#It’s intoxicating. I couldn’t have imagined a world this grand and full.
*set srfeel 5
The fact that it’s so different from your home just makes it more fascinating. How do people ever get used to this constant buzz of conversation, in a landscape where everything has been claimed and reshaped for human use? A decade of staring and listening probably wouldn’t be enough for you to take it all in.
*goto drap
*label unbearable
*choice
#I hate the lack of anything wild or free.
No real forests, no wilderness hills, no empty plains. A host of dogs, rats, and crows living off human scraps, but no deer or wild sheep, let alone wolves. The roads are straight, broad, and stone-cobbled, rather than the winding tracks of the Outer Rim. Even if you hadn’t just come from Xaos, you’d have been repelled by such a thoroughly ordered, thoroughly inhabited landscape.
*goto drap
#I can’t stand the crowds. $!{oath}, so many people.
*set srfeel 2
Even out here in what the folk of the Southriding call “open countryside,” the constant babble of hundreds of strangers’ voices is inescapable until many hours after dark. It had never occurred to you that it was possible to be in a place where you literally couldn’t go five minutes without smelling another person—or that you’d find it so maddening.
*goto drap
#The heat down here is going to kill me.
*set srfeel 3
You’d not realized how much being close to the sea had gentled the climes around Sojourn. With every week of moving inland, you’ve found the winds more torrid, the nights more sweltering. The harshest summers you’d ever known in the hills of the Outer Rim, hundreds of leagues north and west of here, were cool compared to this. And you’re not even properly on the cusp of summer yet—it’s still two months to Langday.
*goto drap
*label drap
With @{((srfeel = 1) or (srfeel = 3)) the|these} unimaginably large throngs of people come horrors and threats on a similar scale.
*choice
#So many Harrowers, looming over the town squares and rolling past you down the road.
Any town with at least a thousand helots in its hinterland—and there’s an unbelievable number of towns that size in the riverlands!—will have a blood harvesting machine built atop a broad plinth in its agora.
*if harrower = 0
These towns see a steady trickle of sacrifice throughout the year, making fuller use of the helots who in a place like Rim Square would have died of illness or untimely punishment between Theurgic visits.
When there’s no Harrowing, the harvesters are kept behind locked steel panels, not just covered with oilcloth as in the Outer Rim. You’d never be able to @{(harrower = 2) crawl|see} into one here like you @{(harrower = 2) did in Attenyeard|could in some of the towns back home}—never truly see the obscene thicket of hooks, blades, and pipes in the machine’s innards unless you were being fed into it.
As in Rim Square, the Southriding’s more remote plantations and villages are periodically visited by smaller machines on ox-carts. Every few days, one of those will creak grimly past you, smelling of ironmongery and the butcher’s block. So far, you’ve managed to avoid being drawn into the audience for any actual ceremonies; you’ve ducked into a wineroom or changed course whenever you’ve spotted signs of the local helotry being summoned or heard the Victory Liturgy faintly carried down the wind. But several times, you’ve been close enough to hear the screams.
*fake_choice
#Somehow they’re more horrible now that I have a clearer idea of what’s happening.
Ever since Cerlota explained the secrets of Theurgy to you, @{aristo your mind has been haunted by an appallingly vivid image of the splitting of victims’ skulls. What you’d always been told was a necessary, darkly holy sacrifice of blood is|it’s revived your horror at the cracked and gaping skulls of Harrowed helots. You’d always been told it was to draw out every drop of blood, that Harrowing. Now you know it’s} a mere pretense, under which the presiding Theurges knowingly harvest the living brains of the helotry. The idea makes your gorge rise and your flesh creep.
#I’m growing numb to them.
@{helot That happens to everyone sooner or later. How else could you live with the reality that one day, it’ll be you shrieking out your last agonizing seconds in the machine?|You’d witnessed enough Harrowings from a young age that the agony of the dying is by now bleakly familiar to you.} Since the rebellion began, you’ve certainly seen enough death and suffering to rob it of all its novelty, and much of its horror.
#I listen with quiet fury to each one, silently promising: One day we’ll feed your killers to the machine. One day.
@{(cerlota < 7) Listening to the Harrowed shriek away their last, lingering seconds, you close your eyes and hope that your rebellion somehow gave them hope that one day they’d be avenged. Spilling out the Theurges’ blood by running the mages|If you ever have magi as part of your rebellion, they’ll need to get their blood somewhere; why not from the criminals who sacrificed so many innocents to fuel their powers? Putting them} through their own machines will be fitting punishment for their atrocities.
#All I care about is not ending up inside a Harrower myself.
You can’t let yourself be pulled into feeling too much else, anything that might show on your face and betray you to an informer. You’re a stranger in this part of Shayard, and all your effort needs to be going toward returning safely to the Rim. Once you’ve found sanctuary with @{(wonfight < 6) whatever’s survived of|} your rebellion, you can start thinking about breaking Harrowers again.
*goto hidrap
#So many Alastors, interrogating folk on the roadside and seizing anyone they think suspicious.
*set southreat 2
You pass the enforcers of the Hegemony multiple times daily, truculently sweaty in their scale armor, checking people for weapons and wagons for contraband. With hundreds, even thousands of travelers on the river road, they can only inspect a fraction and haven’t yet landed on you. But you’ve been close enough to witness the Alastors claiming their “tolls” from scores of passersby, and whisking at least a dozen purported criminals away to a cell and the Harrower.
The Alastors appear in particularly large numbers near helot settlements. Down here in the Southriding, they’re not just quartered on the grounds of nobles’ homes or in little garrison stockades, like you’re used to. Rather, near the bigger plantations or towns with lots of grand farms around, there are whole villages of Alastors (with their spouses, concubines, and children), in place to quell the first hint of a helot uprising. @{aristo You’re beginning to understand what your father and his fellow nobles had in mind when they complained about how relatively few enforcers there were to keep the helots of Rim Square in line|What must it be like for the helotry here, you think queasily, with a host like that always hanging about them, close as the overseers on our old estate?}.
*goto hidrap
#So many spies and informants, eyeing passersby and eavesdropping on conversations.
*set southreat 3
In the far smaller towns and villages of the Rim, if anyone passed life-threatening tales about a neighbor to the Hegemonic authorities, the informant would likely be found out and ostracized for the rest of their lives. But from some of the muttered conversations you’ve overheard, you gather that most Souther-folk just have too many neighbors for anyone to be sure who’s taken the Alastors’ coin.
And the constant flow of strangers through the river towns multiplies the risk of betrayal a hundredfold. Whenever you see a squad of enforcers running along the road, truculently sweaty in their scale armor, they’re almost always being guided by a plainly-dressed civilian. In plenty of the winerooms you’ve visited, you’ve noticed men and women hovering on the edge of first one conversation, then another, like hawks circling hillside to hillside. They’re probably not Kryptast infiltrators—just ordinary spies, hoping to earn some advantage by reporting sedition, or theft, or a suspicious wanderer and possible fugitive.
*goto hidrap
*label hidrap
You linger for a minute in the shade of the poplars, reluctant to step back into the heat and the train of people trudging past. We used to tell @{(nothief = 2) anyone leaving the wilderness|our raiding parties} to be like shadows, you think blearily, easy to overlook, blending into the forests, leaving no trace. But here in the flatlands under the baking southern sun, every shadow is sharp and conspicuous. No real shelter, down here. Nowhere to hide. Only the crowds…and they’re as likely to keep you from seeing your enemies coming as the other way round.
A convoy of larger boats appears from the north, sending smaller vessels scattering toward the riverbanks as quick as they can paddle. As they come closer, you can see that each sixty-foot barge is mounded high with wheat, barley, metal ingots, and other cargo under canvas. The fifth and rearmost has a great wheel at its stern, churning the water white; an implacable-looking Theurge stands under an awning next to it, hand outstretched. Virtually every daylit hour sees one or two of these mage-driven convoys coming downriver, bearing the wealth of the Rim and upper Southriding toward Grand Shayard.
“Don’t see many of those where you’re from, good${woman}?” inquires a sardonic voice at your shoulder.
You force a @{(srfeel < 4) chuckle, hoping your distaste for the Southriding wasn’t too visible on your face,|chuckle} and cast your gaze further along the north road before turning to the speaker. “Just scanning for a place a ${woman} can get something to drink.”
The scraggly-bearded stranger wears a simple linen tunic and leggings, and his carry-sack is unadorned, but the dagger on his belt has an onyx in its finely wrought hilt. “From the Rim, eh, my ${girl}?” A shrewd gleam enters his eyes when he hears your accent. “And homeward bound? What’s brought you south, then?”
25 Likes
Orchard Keeping
The next morning, you and Cerlota arrive together at the de Irde mansion and seek audience with lord Joet, Alasais’s cousin who oversees the management of the family lands. The noble @{(offering > 2) greets you with languid benignity, looking like he’s slept late after the|has deeper creases than usual in his brow—you suspect from sleepless hours spent attending to the aftermath of the ill-fated} festival yesterday. “I hear there are some services you wanted to offer to the House, @{male goodwoman Lotte, goodman ${alias}|goodwomen}?”
“Yes, kurios.” You’re the one who’ll need to speak, of course, even though Cerlota was the one who’d urgently insisted on the meeting. “Yesterday we heard you’ve some pests in your orchards.”
“Ah yes. Bloody sapsuckers.” Joet sighs. “Our grovers are doing what they can.”
“Well, from the talk we heard, they might welcome a bit of outside help.” And we need to ensure it doesn’t come from a Theurge of the Hegemony. “Kuria Lotte holds the secret of crafting a special apothecarial paste that would quickly and thoroughly resolve the problem.” At your shoulder, Cerlota smiles with mute confidence.
“Ah. Very kind of you to offer, I’m sure.” The de Irde @{(offering > 2) hesitates, seemingly unsure of whether the problem’s serious enough to warrant such a remedy.|hesitates. “But as the House may need to pay much more than expected for the repairs to the Naos roof, I’m not sure…”}
*fake_choice
#“Won’t saving this year’s lemon crop more than pay for itself, kurios?”
After a moment’s consideration—thinking perhaps of the impact of Telone Baldassare’s presence—Joet nods.
#“I think it would ease the minds of the yeomen whose groves border yours.”
Joet @{(offering > 2) gives a slow nod, clearly wanting to preserve the goodwill that made yesterday such a success|grimaces, clearly uneasy at the thought of further alienating the House’s smallholder neighbors}.
#“If even a single sapsucker survives, or a single tree sickens, you need not pay @{(sralibi = 2) us|her} anything.”
Lord Joet’s eyes brighten at your guarantee; perhaps it seems rashly excessive to someone who believes Cerlota would limit her treatment to herbalism.
“Very good. I’ll inform the orchard-keepers.”
“We’ll need to apply it at night under the full moon for the best results.” That’s two nights away, enough time for you to concoct a reasonable-seeming remedy. “You won’t regret it, kurios.”
Cerlota sends you @{gam and ${gamgee}|} off to collect the ricin plants that grow along every roadside up here, then has you crush them and throw them into a vat of hot water. @{(me_lit > 0) Take care—poison she scrawls in the dust, nodding to the mash.|She points to the mash, sticks out her tongue, and mimes dying of poison, as a vivid and somewhat amusing warning.} While you’re hard at work with the bulk of the unguent, she gathers other aromatic additives.
The next day, the de Irde grovers spend hours with @{gam you and ${gamgee}|you} in the orchard, painting every tree with the oily, strong-smelling ricin extract. “Now there’s a secret ingredient the kuria has to add at midnight under the full moon,” you explain to them all when you’re washing in the stream after the job’s done. “Only a little, to kindle the purifying influence. I’ll be the one to help her with that.”
“Better you lose sleep over it than me.” The chief orchard-keeper gives a chuckle, clearly dubious about the whole endeavor. “If your kuria truly can oust those damned bugs with nothing more than an afternoon’s work and a late night, she’ll have earned every drachem the de Irde give her.”
You @{gam send ${gamgee} back to the Chesnery to get a good night’s sleep, and then|} rejoin @{cerlover your lover|Cerlota} among the trees. “They’ve all left, ${cername}.”
Her eyes are oddly @{cerlover unfocused—something you’ve only seen when she’s in trance or at the peak of her pleasure|unfocused in Theurgic trance}. “Indeed. The only animal life that I can readily sense is infesting these trees.” She uncorks the phial in her raised fist. “Keep your distance, young ${lname}. I would not wish you to be harmed.”
An acrid steam, barely visible even in the bright moonlight, begins to rise from the mix you painted on the bark. Cerlota walks slowly through the orchard rows, pausing in front of each tree until satisfied that every pest on it is dead. You wrinkle your nose at the suddenly intensified bitter, earthy smell, and follow carefully in @{cerlover Cerlota’s|the mage’s} path to avoid inhaling too much.
*set blood -10
*if blood < 0
*set blood 0
By the last row, Cerlota has had to cut open her palm. She’s soon swaying on her feet from the effort of using her own blood—especially since she’d had to drain herself when you first settled in Irduin to fill the phials she just expended.
You suspect that if you @{gam or ${gamgee}|} had been willing to give her your blood, she’d have been able to clear the whole grove with phials to spare. @{gam But you strongly doubt ${gamgee} will be willing to change ${ghis} mind.|}
*label rethinkcerblood
*choice
*if not(cerlgrovehelp)
#@{gam And nor will I|But I’m not changing my mind}. My blood stays in my body.
*label cerlricin
To your relief, she makes it to the final tree without losing consciousness. “There,” she rasps, bending almost double. “I would vouch for the fact that…not a living insect remains…on those trees.”
“Well done, ${cername}.” You help her lie down without collapsing, and feed her some of the wine and bread you brought with you from the Chesnery.
When she’s eaten nearly the entire loaf and taken half the bottle, she eases back into the grass and speaks more normally, if with a slight slur.
*goto changeanything
*if (cerlgrovehelp)
#No. My blood stays in my body.
*goto cerlricin
*if int > 1
#I offer to help with my own ${wisardry}.
*set cerlgrovehelp true
“Have you made a close study…of the properties of aromatic poisons…young ${lname}?”
“I have not,” you confess.
“Then…I would advise you…to restrain yourself…lest you kill us both.” Cerlota doesn’t even look at you as she speaks through gritted teeth. “If you are…desperate to help me fend off disaster…I could suggest that you reconsider…your earlier resistance to contributing…a few drams of blood a month.”
*goto rethinkcerblood
#I feel guilty and doubtful…but not enough to let her drain me.
*goto cerlricin
#I can’t let her keep protecting us alone. “I’ll help you refill those phials on the morrow.”
*set cerblood 3
Her smile is instant and genuine-looking, though trembling with the effort of her Change. “Better late than…never, is I believe a saying…here in Ciarra?”
*goto cerlricin
*if blood > 5
*set blood -5
She glances over to you as she approaches the end of the final row. “An unpleasant way to pass the night? Since by @{(cerblood > 2) your|${gamgee}'s} @{((cerblood > 2) and (sim or bre)) and ${gamgee}'s|} generosity I am well-supplied with phials, let us take a less repugnant approach to clearing these last pests.”
The northeasternmost tree in the orchard begins to sparkle. Thousands of tiny lights ignite on branch and leaf, and rise like embers into the sky. Soon this corner of the grove is twinkling as if home to fireflies rather than sapsuckers—but these ‘fireflies’ are actually warm to the touch, and begin to wink out around you in countless minute wisps of smoke.
*fake_choice
#It’s beautiful. I watch with my heart in my throat.
Cerlota smiles when she sees the expression on your face, though the strain of the ambitious Change is clear on her own.
#It’s fascinating. How is she setting so many alight at once?
Cerlota maintains a ferociously intense expression throughout the ambitious Change.
#It’s terrifying—a reminder of how fragile life can be in the face of Theurgy.
You shiver despite the warmth of the summer night, and resist the urge to run as far from Cerlota as you can get.
*if cerlota < 9
#It disgusts me. She Harrowed countless humans as readily as she’s killing these pests.
Cerlota’s face takes on a grim expression, as if sensing something of your continued hostility.
When the last light winks out, she tucks the emptied phials into a pouch, then sits back in the grass and rubs her temples as if fending off an oncoming headache.
*label changeanything
“There is a perhaps-common perception that ${magia} can Change anything. The truth is, Theurges can only do that which we have researched thoroughly enough to understand. And sometimes the blood cost of doing it is still too great to be practicable. It is our good fortune that I served for some years in the vineyards near Moschos.”
You nod, staring out across the orchard. Thanks to your story, the de Irde retainers expect you to be here until midnight. Cerlota and you will need to pass the time somehow until then; you wouldn’t want anyone rising from their first half-night’s sleep to spot you leaving early.
*label orchardchat
*choice
*hide_reuse #“It was worth @{(blood > 0) using so many of your phials|exhausting yourself} to keep them from calling in a Theurge?”
Cerlota @{(blood > 0) nods at once|manages a nod}. “If a Theurge came to Irduin, I would @{(blood > 0) likely need|have likely needed} to destroy my aetherial blood supply in any case. I have not yet found a secure enough hiding place outside the Chesnery, and the risk of it being spotted and recognized in trance there is too great.”
“A Theurge will come, sooner or later.”
“But the later they come, the likelier that we may already be gone, or close to it.” Cerlota stares up at the silver disc of the moon. “If one comes and I am recognized, we will almost surely be dead. I cannot hope to prevail against a Theurge wielding blood in the quantities Harrowing makes possible.”
*goto orchardchat
*hide_reuse #“If the de Irde had called in a Theurge, is this how they would have gone about the job?”
@{(blood > 0) “With the ricin steam?”|} Cerlota slowly shakes her head. “Theurgy in provincial villages like this is never done solely for its ostensible outcome. It is always a public performance as well. Most Theurges would have @{(blood > 0) applied my final, fierier approach to the entire orchard|increased the elemental fire in the pests until they filled the grove with tiny stars}, even though it cost one hundred times as much blood.”
You clench your fist tight around a fallen branch. “Why?”
“It would create awe. Or fear. Or other powerful emotions that will serve as well for their purpose.” The mage lies back, closing her eyes. “Igniting the pests does not give the villagers any role in solving their problems, even so small a one as applying unguent to trees. And it casts the Theurge as a creator of deadly beauty, rather than a deadly stench.”
“But in the vineyards of Karagon where you served…?”
“There is far less need for awe, and more for efficiency.”
*goto orchardchat
*hide_reuse #“How many Theurges have spent years serving on farms or orchards?”
“Almost all of us.”
“Truly?” You wrinkle your brow.
“It is a common first-Kyklos occupation, acquainting us with many of the teloi of living things. And there is far more need for it than for most other ${magia}.” Cerlota’s eyes are distant in memory. “I have heard Ennearch Lacevra complain that she cannot bring enough Theurges to the Halassur front because so many are continually employed in the work of feeding the Hegemony.”
Mage-farmers should be less menacing than mage-soldiers; it takes a few moments before you can put your finger on why her comment sent a shiver of fear through you. “Just how much ${wisardry} does it take to feed the Hegemony?” How many folk will starve if we chase out the Hegemony’s Theurges?
“It has never been my responsibility to count; my experience was with fruits, not staple crops. But to feed a continent of some two hundred million souls? I think it is safe to say that it takes a great deal of ${magia}, ${fname}—not just to speed the harvests, but to preserve the grain and ship it to where it is needed.”
*fake_choice
#“Then we’d better get you training apprentices who know how to do all of that. A lot of them.”
Cerlota’s matter-of-fact voice has nothing of the tremble you hear in your own. “Bring me to a place with enough clever young outlaws, and I will start as soon as I safely may.”
You’ll not solve the problem of how to supply them all with blood tonight.
#“If we spread the secret of ${wisardry} to the masses, would everyone be able to boost their own harvest?”
Cerlota looks both uneasy and skeptical, but says, “If you find a way to provide them with enough blood, then perhaps, yes.”
“Can’t they use their own?” You @{(blood = 0) point to her bleeding hand|mime cutting a palm}.
She shakes her head. “Self-fuelled ${magia} is sufficient for many small-scale tasks. Getting millions of plants to mature at the same time is not one of them. Using only the blood in your own body, it would be hard to coax enough extra wheat out of the ground to feed even yourself, let alone anyone else.”
You let out your breath in a long, shaky exhalation, and tell yourself this isn’t a problem that needs solving tonight.
#“There must be other ways than ${wisardry} to feed everyone from their local farmland.”
“Fewer cash crops, for example. Couldn’t the Southriding grow a lot more grain and a lot less cane?”
“Even if that proves true…I think we will find that involves a great many people having to move closer to a farm.” Cerlota sounds matter-of-fact. “The emptying of cities, as millions of people pour back into places like your Rim when they can no longer have the grain brought to them.”
You’re not going to solve the problems of mass hunger or refugees tonight.
#I’m not going to think more about this—not just yet.
Instead, you change the subject.
*goto orchardchat
*hide_reuse #Even by moonlight, the lines of fatigue are etched deep on her face. “Can Theurges keep themselves looking young?”
“You are asking why I do not look younger, ${girl}?” Cerlota’s voice is dry.
“We passed through Xaos together, ${cername}. I reckon that put lines on both our faces.” You shake your head, slightly mortified. “No, I’m just curious. Don’t the stories call Thaumatarch Hera the Ever-Young?”
“Hera did not need to worry about being able to cross a City-Ward,” Cerlota points out. “Yes, she likely began renewing her flesh, preventing any further aging, from about the age of thirty.”
“That’s hardly young!” you @{helot exclaim, almost laughing at the incongruity. By that age, a helot might well have had seven or eight children, and be starting to worry about being Harrowed if they didn’t keep up a strong enough pace in the fields|respond incredulously, thinking of all the outlaws who would share maddeningly tolerant glances when they thought you and the other youngsters were being brash or unwise}.
The mage gives you a level stare, then sighs. “With a bit of luck, young kuria, you will spend half your life envying the vigor you had at that age. But I will not ask you to strain your mind with such an impossibility now. Since the Wards were created, Theurges usually wait as long as possible to extend their life with major Changes to their flesh. No one wishes to have to go through the endless indignities of a Wardgate search every time they enter or leave Aekos.”
“And when they do make those Changes, do they reverse the signs of age?”
She shakes her head with disdain. “That is extremely costly, and thus taken as a sign of excessive vanity. Only one or two of the Ennearchs are both conceited enough and powerful enough to ignore others’ judgment of their shallow self-regard and pour vast amounts of blood into feigning eternal youth.” Cerlota’s broad lips curve wryly. “Even were I an Ennearch, I would not be such a fool.”
*goto orchardchat
#Cerlota’s beautiful, and I’m @{(chaste > 0) growing tired of the struggle for chastity|lonely}. @{nocheat I can’t resist any longer.|There’s an obvious way to pass the hours.}
@{((chaste > 0) and (chaste < 3)) You’ve been holding on for the right time and place…and here, alone with Cerlota under the full moon and lemon trees, it feels right.|} @{(chaste > 3) All the reasons you had for staying chaste…they’ve been hard to hold onto, through all these months on the verge of death, hiding in places where almost no one knows your true name and there’s none to shame you. Here, under the full moon and lemon trees, you let them slip.|}
*if chaste = 3
You’ve always said you only wanted to sleep with someone you trusted, @{(cerlota = 8) but your loneliness has finally reached the levels where you’re ready to make an exception.|and you’ve decided Cerlota is that person.}
“You know how the orchard keepers will assume we’re occupying ourselves until midnight, ${cername}.”
*if male
*gosub mnna
*label nospcerl
You sit without speaking again until midnight, then walk back to the Chesnery.
*goto round2
*set cer_rom 2
*if (bred_here and (bred_lover >= 4))
*gosub tastebet
*[label tastebet
The words leave a taste of betrayal on your tongue. But
*return]
you can only wait for Breden for so long.
*if (k_rel = 4)
*gosub tastebet
will ${kalt} have been waiting faithfully all these months?
*if ((s_rel > 0) and (s_lover >= 5))
*gosub tastebet
${simon} de Firiac never came close to giving ${zhim}self to you, for all your promises and efforts.
Cerlota slowly turns her head to meet your stare. There’s a heat in her eyes, stronger than the weariness.
*if gam and (((bred_here and (bred_lover >= 4))) or (((s_rel > 0) and (s_lover >= 5)) or (k_rel = 4)))
“${gamgee} told me once that your heart was spoken for, young ${lname}. By someone back in the Rim.”
*choice
#Guilt lands on me, hard and sudden. “It is, yes. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
She raises an eyebrow, and her lips twist. “Let us agree that you did not mean anything, then. And that I duly apologized for my misunderstanding.”
*goto nospcerl
#“$!{gamgee} talks too much,” I say sullenly.
Cerlota waits to see if you’ve anything to add, but you’re too caught up in a swirl of conflicting emotions. At length she says, “$!{ghe} may have kept both of us from a mistake. You should thank ${ghim} in the morning.”
*goto nospcerl
#“I @{(s_lover >= 5) unsuccessfully wooed|shared a bed with} a rebel in the Rim, ${cername}. That doesn’t mean my heart is spoken for.”
“Are you looking to give your heart, then, girl?” Cerlota asks warily.
You @{(chaste > 0) swallow and|} say, “Tonight I’d settle for sharing my body.”
*goto cerlsed
#“My heart may be there, but the rest of me is here, and lonely.”
You’d half-expected that line to bring an abrupt end to the conversation, but it doesn’t.
*goto cerlsed
*else
*if chaste > 0
*goto chascerl
*goto cerlsed2
*label cerlsed
*if chaste > 0
*label chascerl
But she seems to sense your nervousness, and raises an eyebrow. “Have you lain with a woman before, ${fname}?”
The heat in your cheeks is so intense, you fancy it might even be visible. “I know well how to give pleasure with my fingers, ${cername}.”
“To yourself, you mean. Angeloi.”
The ${erretsina} mage gives a long, shaky exhalation.
*label cerlsed2
“I had thought that I was being very virtuous by not trying to despoil you in the Xaos-lands.”
@{(chaste = 0) You shrug. “I was tempted to despoil you, too.”|“I don’t see it as a spoiling.”}
@{(blood = 0) Hazy with wine and exhaustion|Sprawled back on the grass}, Cerlota looks more vulnerable than you think you’ve ever seen her. "Young ${lname}, let us be candid. I have spent the last several months in near-constant fear for my life. I am as wholly alone as I have ever been. All in all, I admit that I am in very little condition to resist the propositions of a comely slip of a Ciarrena.
*if helot
Even a rebel helot.
“But I have no reason to think you could actually mean anything to me. Or that this would be more than a dalliance to defer for a few sweet moments the fear of being caught by a Theurge and burned alive. If we are not captured alive, to be put to the question and then Slow-Harrowed.”
*choice
#“$!{oath}, ${cername}.” I blink at her. “You killed that tender moment as if it were a tree-pest.”
Suddenly it seems as if there’s nothing in the orchard but menacing shadows. You shiver despite the summer warmth.
“That is what I do.” The vulnerability doesn’t disappear; nor does the question in her eyes.
*choice
#I slide my hand up her thigh. “I wasn’t looking for anything lasting, either.”
*set cer_rom 7
*goto cer_romz
#“Still. I’ll take the risk that this doesn’t last.”
*set cer_rom 9
*goto cer_romz
#“I’m sorry. I don’t think it would be a good idea.”
“I do not doubt that you are right,” Cerlota says bleakly.
*goto nospcerl
#I smile. “That’s just what I’m after as well, segnura Viore.”
*set cer_rom 7
*label cer_romz
*set cerlover true
*set cername “Cerlota”
*gosub cheatcheck
Without another word, Cerlota pulls you down and into a ferocious kiss. Her legs briefly twine around yours, holding you in place while her hands attack your clothes. While you’re still fully engaged in your kiss, she bares your shoulders and breasts to the summer air. Then she slides you up her body until she can take the peak of one breast between her broad lips, while her fingers curl up into you.
Afterwards she says nothing for a long time, white-streaked hair drifting like a veil over her aquiline features. For your part, you find
*if (cer_rom = 6) or (cer_rom = 8)
yourself:
*choice
#Wrung with shame. @{b_cheat Breden|} @{k_cheat ${kalt}|} @{s_cheat ${simon}|} What have I done?
*label cergret
Finally words break out of you: “We shouldn’t have…I’m sorry, segnura, but…”
Cerlota doesn’t argue, just closes her eyes and says huskily, “It will not happen again.”
*set cer_rom 5
*set cername “segnura”
*set cerlover false
*goto nospcerl
#Regretting my decision. With my lust spent, I can see we’re wrong for each other.
*goto cergret
#Tongue-tied, lost for words with someone whose experience in every way exceeds your own.
*goto deaddis
yourself tongue-tied, lost for words with someone whose experience in every way exceeds your own.
*label deaddis
Just when you feel the discomfort might reach deadly levels, Cerlota murmurs, “I am…glad I found you, ${fname}.”
No one is awake to see your return to the Chesnery—much slowed by kisses and caresses in the moon-cast shadows—and you sleep soundly and dreamlessly once you’re finally back, unshaken by shame or regret.
*set chaste 0
*goto round2
#I nod slowly. “Well. I don’t know how much it could mean to me either, but I’d take that risk.”
*set cer_rom 9
*goto cer_romz
#I shake my head. “No. No, I need more than that.”
“Then you should seek it elsewhere, not with me. Though I say it with regret.” After a few moments, she adds in a muffled voice, “Severe, and sincere, regret.”
*goto nospcerl
*if cerlover
#“Lie back and let me ease you.” I run my fingers along her thigh.
Cerlota tries to sit up and kiss you, but you lightly push her back onto the grass. “You’re the one who’s done all the work tonight, my dear segnura. Take your leisure, and let me take my turn.”
It’s a tribute to the peace of Irduin that you’re both able to let down your guard so fully in the orchard. If any enemy had arrived a few minutes later—your face lost deep between her legs, her @{(hair = 4) kneading your smooth scalp|gripping your hair} as she fights to keep her gasps from getting any louder—neither of you would have noticed until it was too late.
But your early response to the orchard pests should further delay the day when you confront any active threat here.
*goto round2
#I sit in silence until it’s time to go.
*goto round2
*label round2
Edit: sorry, should have tagged that this one gets a little NSFW at the end.
21 Likes
I’m on board with everything except the Ch. 6 name. Feels like a bit of a mouthful, maybe just “Stormbringers”?
(Stormfighters sounds a bit silly imo, while Stormbringers connects to the principle characters of the chapter. Cerlota most directly obviously, but also the foreign agitators.)
Also, mute Cerlota (sorry, Lotte) is a delight, and I eagerly look forwards to more antics from her with an illiterate MC. Hope she likes charades.
8 Likes
Yeah, definitely looks worse up on the screen here than it did in my text file. Stormhaven? I’m not sure about one-word titles.
Captain of Storms?
4 Likes
Ooh I’m really into that.
“Port in a Storm” is maybe a bit silly, but the proverb is on brand for the chapter, and it connects with the whole seeing the ocean for the first time.
6 Likes
Lovely excerpts as always! Can’t wait to finally see them on my screen when playing. 
Also, if it’s not too much of a bother, could you please elaborate more on the replayability aspect of the Chapter? Will there be a lot of paths and subpaths? Different endings perhaps?
4 Likes
There will be only two paths - allies of the most noble de Irde family and filthy disruptors of their compassionate and kind social order.
5 Likes
Looks great so far! I really like how carlotta is constantly stressing how risky a theurgic duel would be, but after playing trough game 1 as a theurge most players will be itching to test what they can do as INT3.
On a separate note can our actions in this chapter lay the groundwork for further conspiracies with factions in Grand Shayard, or is the story mor self-contained?
5 Likes
My MC has an absolutely unhinged risk appetite so this is fine.
5 Likes