Someone going after the MC’s RO would be interesting. But I imagine O, at least, would just destroy them (and how would they even figure out O/MC were romantically involved?). D would probably seduce them. L might put them at ease with innocent charm and then escape. K: see D.
Wouldn’t work too well for MCs without a love interest, though.
It could be another side plot, just like MCs without love interests are already missing out on certain side content, and if they don’t have a chosen RO, of course there’s no way to get under their skin this way in the first place.
My infatuation aside (hah, not really): I’d generally find it interesting to see two characters who are as strong and dominant as O and Winter show weakness or be on the receiving end for a change, just to show how they’d handle it and what aspects of their personality might see the light of day if the rules of the game are changed.
With Winter, there’s them losing their face on Sordwin, which happens very fast and for some players offscreen, and with O, there’s them losing control after you kill that god-thing, and no O fan can tell me they don’t LOVE how they lose their cool there! 
I can totally see something like a spell existing in this world, that would force a changeling into their natural state and stay in it, and thus prevent them from self-healing, too. And as much as I hate the idea of Hayden getting hurt, the option to save them from whatever shackles they’ve been put into while under a spell like that, would be pretty neat. 
I find “Imperion knows everything” a good rule to live by in this world.
Weakness? O?
Tries to compute. Fails.
Imperion: “Gadzooks! O’s eye twitched in a slightly different way than normal - they must be in love! How shall I work this into my Brilliant Plan? First step, as always, evil laughter: mwa ha ha…”
The MC obviously IS a weakness of theirs! 
Yeah, ok, admittedly, it’s a bit harder with O, because O’s the one who’d tell Imperion about all of the other ROs instead, and one of his main sources for info, but that doesn’t mean their his only source!
I mean, there’s always the chance of an inconspicuous changeling posing as a statue nearby…
If your character romanced O in Sordwin and you go with them to find Imperion’s daughter, you get the option to ask her something along the lines of if they’re really going to pretend that nothing’s happened between them and (when you’re on your way looking for Imperion’s daughter) if you’re really that easy to forget. If you do so, you get some surprisingly vulnerable admissions by O, and I would consider that be like a show of weakness from them.
I don’t know if I’d consider that to really be a moment of weakness, since they definitely can be really in charge in the “payoff” to that. But, yes I really enjoyed how that lead to them indulging in their more sexy and uninhibited side, so to speak. Actually, it was those excact scenes that started turning Oriana( always O’s name in my playthroughs) into my second favourite RO in the Evertree Saga. For me it started with my first playthrough with Ruby as an RO(actually my first ever Lux playthrough). I hadn’t really been a big fan of Oriana in Sordwin, but the combination of Ruby being se romantically “elusive” and at that point feeling unsure if she was even going to show up in Lux and Oriana showing such a passionate side I and my character’s never really noticed before lead me and my character to decide to just surrender to this moment of passion instead of just waiting for Ruby to show up and hopefully be a little less “elusive”. And since then, I’ve taken the O path in Sordwin plenty of times and learned that O is a more interesting, likeable andseductive character than they originally appeared to be.
I’m still holding out hope for the Ruby path to start becoming a bit less frustratingly slowburn in the next book(although I do think I understand at least some of the reasons for this path being so slowburn). And in addition to think that her romance path has a lot of potential when it becomes a bit less slowburn, I do really like Ruby as a character. Despite being a pirate, she seems to be a genuinely kind and caring person, which I always apprecate and her combination of roguishness and motherliness, is something that you rarely see in fiction and is something I find really fascinating. So, I think even most of my MCs who aren’t pursuing her romantically would be willing to burn Winter to the ground so to speak, in order to stop the changeling from killing her(although that would probably be a bit more difficult task for my more Guile/Perception based MCs).
So Ruby is yet another slowburner? Are there any romantic scenes with her at all in Sordwin? She seems to barely show up in Lux.
I suppose it’s not really fair to call all these romances slowburns when the games really only take place over a couple of months. Some folks need more time to board the love train.
Depends on what you consider to be romantic scenes. There’s no scenes where she really declares or implies that she has feelings for the MC, unless you count that she can try to hurt the leader of the facestealers by sending out love/like vibes to you, but she can try to do that whether you’re romantically interested in her or just friends. And there’s no scenes where she gets physical intimate in any way with the MC either. I think the closest you get to anything even slightly resembling a romantic scene, is the scene where she opens up about the reason for her and Winter being enemies and that she can agree to you maybe going out some time, when she has the time. And for the second scene she’s wording her reply in a way that makes it seem she’s not even considering that this could be something like a romantic date.
I have to admit that the first time I got that last scene by the end of Sordwin, I was wondering if my character had done something wrong re:Ruby in my playthrough and/or hadn’t managed to get a high enough relationship score with her to get a more romantic scene with her. But I eventually understood that her romantic is meant to be that slowburn and that she’s supposed to be that “elusive” when it comes to romance(though Ruby certainly seems to be a character with a lot of secrets in general). I do think I understand why the Ruby romance is so slow burn, it probably has a lot to do with what she tells the character when she tells the story about how she and Winter became enemies. Still, I do think it’s frustrating, but I still have the feeling that the romance with Ruby has a lot of potential and will be really good when it gets past it early, slowburn phase, which it will hopefully do somewhere in the second Lux book.
Weakness not in the sense of it being a character flaw or being submissive, but in the sense that they lost control and succumbed to the temptation of a moment of passion, which obviously wasn’t on their radar originally nor something they had planned on ever doing, as far as I know them. (I once romanced male O half-heartedly to get an idea of what happens, and… well, I was hoping he’d tell me something about Winter I didn’t already know.)
I used to have a short but big crush on Agent 47 (Hitman) a few years ago, and O actually reminds me a lot of him, being the stoic, professional killer and all that. So, while I can fully understand being drawn to a character like him, personally he gives off “ex” vibes to me, and just isn’t what I’m looking for anymore.
But I clearly remember how appealing it was to indulge in fantasies of a stoic character like that losing control, even more so if you yourself were the reason for that. 
Btw, I wasn’t really kidding yesterday: If I were Imperion, I’d be deeply concerned if O of all people started to act unprofessionally. And if I were romancing O, I’d be just as afraid of the very real possibility of O losing their value for Imperion if O didn’t “work as intended” anymore. Falling in love and showing emotions turns them from a reliable terminator-esque machine into a safety risk.
Ruby… is… Ruby… I can’t really comment on her. The only slowburn she’d get from me is the same, very literal one Winter would get from your MCs. I can kinda-sorta see how she can be perceived as nice and likable, but my personal feelings are too overshadowed by my desire to keep Hayden safe and kill that dwarf to protect them, and to prove my love.
But I have no issue recognizing she’s a well-written character. And I’d actually prefer for no one to get hurt anymore, but their story still needs closure. I just hope if Ruby romancers get a chance at killing Winter, Winter romancers will have the same chance of getting rid of the dwarf.
Btw, it is a bit ironic how I, who hates her guts, had the doubtful pleasure of being kissed by what felt like Ruby’s mouth, while her actual romancers have to wait for the real thing. It almost made me gag, too. Never do that again, Hayden. Bleeeuuurgh. 
I didn’t know that, that’s interesting. Now it’ll be even more interesting what Imperion’s gonna do about it long term.
O has already shown they’re not entirely reliable - from Imperion’s perspective - even without Twu Wuv in the mix. If you decide to aid and abet Imperion’s daughter, O doesn’t interfere and is perfectly ready to lie to Imperion about it. I thought that was fascinating and it made me even more curious about what’s going on between those two.
Quick update and a ‘how you can help’ request 
As I’m writing City of Lies (which is maybe 25% done?), I’m also rereading the rest of the Evertree Saga to check continuity. This has helped me find a lot of little bugs, as well as tweak some of the variables to be more balanced/fair. I hope to release a big update to the first three games soon to implement these fixes. (These will not be story changes! This is about making sure the text is good quality and that the mechanics work as originally intended.)
So, if you’ve found any bugs or typos, please do DM me a screenshot or send direct to the series gmail (evertreeinn) and I’ll get them fixed in the next update.
<Disclaimer: This is for bugs/typos only. Opinions and thoughts on the series are always welcome and I read everything people send me (even if I can’t always reply), but I take these thoughts into account moving forwards, rather than trying to retroactively change past games. That way madness lies! Also, requests for more scenes with your favourite ROs don’t count as bug fixes That’s what Lux Part 2 is for!>
Thank you to everyone still engaging in discussions about the series and keeping this thread alive. Your support means the Worlds 
Oh, that’s a relief! I was actually wondering if you were secretly hoping for some very big rock falling onto my house and making me shut up by now.
Moving on!
I have something non-Hayden-related! (@o@)/ This post a Hayden free zone! Not once will Hayden be mentioned or even the name Hayden dropped in it!
To anyone who’s playing MCs with strong faith (and anyone else who wants to share their thoughts): No offense, but religion makes me personally very uncomfortable. I can tolerate it in fiction, but I still avoid it whenever possible. Which resulted in me not visiting the temple in Sordwin for the longest time, but when I got bored and had run out of other things to do, I decided to check it out. Once I got there and some statue of Kin (which I felt most drawn to for very unshocking reasons) started acting all sus and the priest was totally baffled, it seemed completely logical and self-evident how it was also Kin who saved me from the hooded lantern at the end and who also said the infamous “No, he is not yours to take” while doing so. I mean, you would assume it’d take the power of a deity to wipe the floor with a cosmic horror like that, and here there was that deity conveniently trying to bond with you in the temple. I didn’t even think it was supposed to be a mystery, just an obvious fact I had missed before due to my aversion towards religion. From there on onwards I assumed this was my gift and special talent, this strong connection to this god-goddess and being able to channel them somehow, just like O seems to be able to channel Cri.
In Lux it’s even made more clear right from the beginning that you are expected to bond with one of the deitys, by forcing you to choose one while investigating the shrine, and there’s of course also the entirely new relationship / faith stats bar in the menu and the option to pray, but I barely ever used that, so - to come to the point:
The only thing that made me doubt my theory of the one responsible for my dreams and the voice in my head being Kin, was the fact that this very patent thought not once occured to my MC. And I genuinely can’t tell if I’m being super smart here and ahead of him as a reader, or if there is a strong counterargument to my theory which I’m not aware of, because I didn’t dig deep enough into the faith path during my playthroughs.
On a related note, I sincerely hope we will be able to get rid of this bond or at the very least stop the dreams and intrusive voice. I hate “parasite mechanics” in choice games, by which I mean having some other entity attached to your mind against your will and never shut up. It’s so intrusive and uncomfortable, it would severely dampen my ability of being able to enjoy the series in the future. And what a patronizing, possessive voice it is! Thank you very much, I can totally decide on my own, whose I am to take, STFU!
In an unprecedented and possibly unique turn of events, I second Winter. The only use of religion is so I can tell it to fuck off my life and go die a painful death somewhere I don’t have to put with it. This also applies to nearly every god, with Hades and Persephone being notable exceptions.
Whaddya know, an excuse to replay the saga! Maaaybe while you’re making some changes you cou-
Drat. Got ahead of me there. 
I’m exactly the opposite in that I love playing MCs with strong religious faith, though sometimes I choose to go the agnostic route. I’ve been wondering since the second game came out whether our strange abilities are tied to one of the gods; having played both strongly devout and strongly non-devout MCs, I’m still unsure, and I’m actually leaning toward one of two options: either there’s something else entirely going on with the MC, or there are multiple things going on and the gods are just one part of it.
Omg. Just read the series again. Way too many thoughts in my head. Mainly about Winter. Kinda liking Kyran though. I just hope you can actually finish a case by end of the 2nd half of book 3. I need closure.
Wanna share them? 
Speaking of sharing, I really hope Thom is going to share some music with us that inspired him while writing the characters in Lux 2, just like he did last time. As much as I love “I feed you my love” (and I do), my neighbours are writhing in pure agony. At first they only knocked against the wall to stop the music, but since then they’ve moved on to banging their heads against it to stop the pain. I might be exaggerating. Slightly.
I can confirm that all cases opened in part 1 can be closed in part 2. Although that doesn’t mean there won’t still be some questions that need answering…
As for songs, will see what’s been most played on my writing playlist and get back to you
@Hayden_Winter I’ve only had four hours of sleep so my thoughts are a bit jumbled. I do LOVE that I noticed more things about the stories as I read the again. They always feel new and exciting.
I hope we find out if Winter is capable of being sincere. I must know his end game with MC. I must!
[spoiler]Pretty sure Impy didn’t ask him to get help from MC. When he said likewise about wanting to see MC I almost died. God I have it bad. There are just too many questions, but that does make it exciting doesn’t it?
[/spoiler]
I wish I knew how to code dive so I could see all the choices. It’s important for research purposes.
@ThomB Thank you for answering that. I need to know what’s happening to those missing kids.
Also, thank you for your stories. I love how obsessive they make me feel trying to discover all the secrets, branches and different roads I can take.
I think there’s actually a lot of sincerity in their words, it’s just not always easy to tell in which. But I’m pretty sure, for example, all their cynical, callous remarks and quips regarding things like marriage, parents, faith etc are them expressing their true feelings on these matters. They even tell you not to trust them. 
As for generally being sincere… Oof. I mean, it’s a bit like you said earlier in this thread, contrary to O, they’re pretty much WYSIWYG, which sounds a bit ridiculous at first, but being able to predict the unpredictable, the betrayals and the outbursts - does that count as being reliable, even sincere? Certainly not at first, but surely after Sordwin.
(If Hayden really wanted to shock me at this point, they’d have to come up with, I dunno, something disgustingly romantic. Now that I wouldn’t expect, and it would be so much worse than any violence. Blergh.)
Wasn’t it the exact other way around? Winter wants you to believe they played a way bigger role in you coming along than they actually had? I remember there being some dialogue outcomes that basically confirm this, for example when directly asking Imperion after the mission, but there’s also Hayden acting all awkward when you confront them about it. It’s all very suspicious and pointed out multiple times, but I have to admit it also always left me very confused. But my impression was the exact opposite of yours. I’m sure we’ll find out.
Yeeeees! Or, one of my favorites:
“I get you’re trying to play it cool, but you want me, don’t you?”
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!
That caught me so off guard, it was almost 4th wall breaking! (+_+) And SO! TRUE! Because, YES, it was all I could really think about while pretending to care about some bumfuck village’s economics.
Saaaaaaaaaaame!!! 
I’m actually hoping for this user to return:
They seem to be such a kindred spirit!
There is something about Winter that… I don’t even know, it’s like a virus… I can’t remember the last time I felt this way about a fictional character, and even then, they didn’t trigger this submissive response in such a way.
(I’m not a code-diver, though. Personally, that would ruin the fun for me. I don’t want to start seeing Hayden as a “mechanic” or a pile of code lines, and this is how it would feel to me)
You get this when you ride to Dree together and chew their ear off (which I tend to do).
Speaking of cases, I wonder what are the ones people pursued.
IIRC those were the ones for me:
Day 1 Morning and Afternoon: Imperium’s Daughter Kidnapping case
Day 1 Evening: Daisy’s case
Day 2 Morning: Duelist’s case
Day 2 Afternoon: Investigating Geoffrey Gubrick case
Day 2 Evening: Bordello