Shepherds of Haven (WIP) (DEMO UPDATE: 3 Aug 2021)

Well I have completed the demo and it seems pretty solid, story telling and world building is done the right way. Tried to not join the Shepards and that just led to my execution. I thought I read that I could refuse and later be coerced to join, guessing that is not installed yet? Anyway I don’t know how anyone could be talking about who they might or might not romance as we have barely met any of the options yet. Unless I missed a big chunk of story somewhere. The demo ends right after joining the Shepards correct?

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you will be FORCED to join the dark side!

yes

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@Mxm124 Thank you so much! :slight_smile: Yes, down the road there will be an opportunity to be really petty and get back at Ebert, but only if you happen to encounter him again (the story forks and branches at so many points that he only shows up again in a specific route)!

@2xs Thank you! Yes, you can try not to join the Shepherds, but you will ultimately have to be conscripted into them in order to save your life. In order to do that, before your execution you have to say, “Wait! I’m a Shepherd!” Otherwise they will just execute you haha. And yes the demo ends just as you join the Shepherds!

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Thank you oh godly author for providing a way for my reluctant potato to refuse then be coerced. It’s great :slight_smile:

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Just had a quick read through and decided to ask, before I get too attached, is Croelle a romance option?

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Unfortunately no, but there’s a lot of other interesting sounding romance options!

Personally, I’m torn between Blade and Chase.

Edit: Frick. I just remembered that quotes don’t retain bolded lettering, but since I quoted this from the top post, you can just scroll up there to check.
Sorry if I caused more confusion!

Edit 2: I am a damn fool. You can manually bold in quotes. You just gotta do it yourself.

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Yup, as @rose-court said, Croelle is not romanceable for reasons that will become clearer later on! He’ll definitely be someone you can build an interesting relationship with, though!

PS: Blade and Chase are two of my favorite routes! :stuck_out_tongue:

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That sounds both great and terrible because now I’m certain I won’t be able to choose! :sweat_smile:

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I am lost here, I see people asking things like is Croelle a romance option, and I have played through 3 times and I haven’t even met this person. Makes me wonder if everyone is playing a different game than me. I have only met the 3 Shepards, Shery, Caine, Ebert, Prihine and that Watcher dude. What am I missing where people are saying I hope this or that person is a romance option and I don’t even know who they are.

Edit: Nevermind, I just noticed that Croelle is the name of the Watcher dude. Ugh, can’t see how anyone would want to romance that piece of cow dung. Just my opinion of him.

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Out of curiosity, what did people do during the attack on the church? SPOILERS FOR ANYONE WHO HASN’T PLAYED

  • Ran and saved yourself
  • Stayed and saved Caine
  • Stayed and saved Prihine
  • Stayed and saved both
  • Stayed and watched both die

0 voters

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Originally I ran off because I didn’t know it would kill Caine, but I save him and Prihine in every subsequent playthrough.

I mean, he’s such a sweet kid! How could I do that to him? And not even Prihine deserves a death like that! :hushed:

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Stayed and saved Caine, for all the reasons @ParrotWatcher already mentioned somewhere above: “brave, surrogate little brother versus whiny, spoiled brat” is what it boils down to. Also with magic already being super-illegal my mc isn’t anxious to advertise a possibly world-shatteringly powerful, but rather limited use ability he doesn’t even quite understand himself to the magic-hating government and general-public. :unamused:

True, but my mc had to make the call.

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That’s definitely fair, and I wasn’t trying to judge. Perhaps I should’ve been explicit that I was referring to my MC rationale rather than my personal ideas.

irl I definitely agree with you, and it is how I played my MC initially with her running away to avoud having to expose her abilities, but Caine’s death was an honest to goodness gutpunch to me irl because he reminded me a lot of my little brother, so I tweaked my MC a tad…

Summary

Basically, as she is now, she tries to be aloof because she’s afraid of letting people near just in case anything like her Flower Day massacre would happen again. Originally this was to cover up her crippling fear of the demons that ruined her life, but now I’ve reworked her so that her aloofness (which is chipped away by Caine, the lil rascal) instead covers up guilt and a sense of uselessness that she never intended to come to terms with, but faced with running away or Caine’s and Prihine’s death, well, essentially she’s trying to make herself fel better by going above and beyond what she could or should do and be the hero she wishes she was on her Flower Day.

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Rather more noble then my more mercenary mc who saves Caine simply because he’s taken a shine to the kid, he still wouldn’t have risked using a word though, not even to save Caine. Fortunately we can save the kid by a simple combination of gunplay and magic instead. Unfortunately that ultimately leads to my mc having to become one of the Autarchy’s pet enforcers, a position he’s rather less than pleased to find himself essentially herded into.
Again, if there’s an epilogue to this where the Sheperds are transformed into a more “normal” special law-enforcement agency, like say the US FBI my mc really would want out at that point, because he’s got exactly zero appetite for enforcing the Autarchy’s more mundane laws or investigating mundane crimes.
In general expect my mc to cleave to the narrowest possible interpretation of his oath and contractual obligations and decline the stipend.

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Ha, that sounds like a fun MC to play as!
I can imagine him frantically glancing in the last ten minutes of the work day and just vanishing the very second the clock strikes Quittin’ Time.

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Hello. Great game. I’m on my iPad. Scrolled up only to find I’ve voted, and can’t unvote. I saved Caine the first time I played. Not a fan of what’s her face. Second time I played through. I saved them both, mostly because I want to see the outcome from these two choices and the consequences of using ‘the’ power. I won’t ever save the bride on her own but unfortunately that’s what I’ve accidentally voted for.

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To be honest, I ran through about a half dozen times and by the end, I had done all of those, so I chose the choice that I went with the first playthrough. I rarely ever let kids die if I can help it in games, unless I am playing evil and really go for it.

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Unfortunately I don’t think that, much like for FBI field agents, the Sheperds their “work-day” works like that, if he was a beat cop on the day-shift and it did though, yeah, then he’d be liable to ignore a bank-robbery that started at 5:01 to be the next shift’s problem to deal with.

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to me i love helping people but shepherds to me bad feeling by out them

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prihine can go rot :slightly_smiling_face:

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