Why does that sound so much darker than it should do. . .
Well one of you has got to be right about pandas -
TheTrueKing? poison_mara? Only a panda vs black widow fight can solve this etymological conundrum. The outcome remains. . . unsure. .
edit: there’s some interesting stuff about animal qualities on Ihavenofries ‘Furufufu Magical Pet’s’ WIP page: Furufufu Magical Pets
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Oh my gods,
I think you just provided me with my Aegis comet creation myth:
a dog that could catch any prey, chasing a fox that could never could be caught, resulting in an endless hunt until they were turned into stone and raised to the heavens.
that has gotta fly. I am actually getting a bit emotional
edit - i’m trying to like your post twice, but for some reason it just keeps unliking you 
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yaaaaaaas, my impact
regarding virtues and vices, a bit of both I think (though like our lion and widow ideas, maybe some could be purely one way). The bipolarity of pandas on the other hand
Spiders can mean patience and criativity as well as deception and ruthelessness, and lions can represent pride and aggression (the spirit of a predator, mmkay?) as well as strength and majesty. Unless you really do want some to only represent one side of the coin, which is perfectly fine obvs.
Edit: Spiders can also mean hardworkiness! (Is that a word? It is now.) Making webs is hardddd. I assume anyways.
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The spider legend could be and old queen so ruthless and powerful who tried to overthrow all the gods, making humans worship her instead them. So gods transform her in a eternal spider in the night sky trying to trap them in her web of stars . Condemned to restart each night her work.
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I would love to hear would the personality groupings of the Chimera and Scylla would be.
Mmm. Chimera: transformation? Adaptation? They mostly appear to be stabbed, if I’m not misremembering, but they could represent a multi-talented individual plagued by a fragmented mind, or great indecision.
Scylla is a little harder, because in some versions she is throughly mounstrous, while in others she maintains her beauty from waist up. The latter version could mean seduction and treachery, while the former could mean… love lost? Beauty lost? Scylla just didn’t want to date the guy. Circe’s a grade A jerk :T
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I mean a goat, a lion, and a snake… Likes the outdoors? very prideful? and Silver tongue wrapped in one? Probably should have thought that through… The Hydra seems like a sound idea, multi personality or two faced, growing a head when the need arises, changing its personality to fit the situation.
The Scylla? that is a tough one… Most depictions are more monstrous than an actual person so if I had to id say, likes the water?
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Some thoughts, after having played the prologue and chapter one (disregard any criticism that’s addressed in subsequent chapters):
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I liked the opening letter, though it did make me think Ria was a sex worker. I’ll assume that, along with a character being briefly described as a cum-poacher, and Ewan offering to teach us how to ride bareback, are just another symptom of my filthy, rapidly decaying mind.
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Exposition. There’s a lot of it. At first, it was nicely integrated with Ria’s internal narrative, but then it was followed by pages over pages of infodump, which I think would be better suited for a documentation section in the stats screen, to be perfectly honest. I remember that after Ewan’s fullname is revealed, there’s an entire page talking about bynames in great detail, which broke the flow of the narrative very quickly to me.
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I liked Ria a lot. Have you considered allowing us to control her in the prologue? The options don’t need to stray away from her default personality and actions, but it would offer an illusion of choice that would help capture the player’s attention.
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While playing as a boy, I found at least one instance where my character could show interest in girls, but the option to be attracted to other boys was not present. Why’s that?
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I’m not entirely sure why we had to learn Ewan’s background through Anselm, and not Ewan himself, to be perfectly honest.
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The game does a lot of assumptions on the character’s likes and dislikes, and what they think about certain things. Naturally, a game can never truly surrender the main character to the player, or plot points would never be met, but combined with the lenghty exposition, it did make me feel as if I was just along for the ride, occasionally directing a character that was never mine. Not being able to choose our first name didn’t bother me greatly, but doesn’t really help with this particular point.
All in all, I really like your writting. I thought the Prologue was very haunting, and the characters are very interesting and colorful.
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Ah the pitfalls of animal conglomerates . . multiple possible shared traits.
You’re right though - the hydra thing is growing on me.
I’d actually like to maybe shrink the animal, maybe make it water-orientated to suit a later chunk of ‘The Aegis Saga - Blood’.
Sooo a mini-submarine-hydra thing . . maybe someone has a good idea for a name.
“Leviathan” is my go-to name for all my water-monstruosity-related needs.
ahh yes too many animals not enough traits… Atleast the animal kingdom learned to share (Sort of)
the Scylla Is regarded as an underwater Hydra, I remember player Age of Mythologies (Great game BTW) and just as the Hydra grew heads as did the Scylla, that isn’t in normal mythology but the many heads and personalities are transferable between the two.
I like the idea of the animals to be kept in one category, fire, earth, water, air.
Seahorse FTW…
Well im going to go play the Demo and ill have some feedback for you as soon as I have finished.
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Okay - maybe I like Scylla slightly more than spider. Maybe on Eris a Scylla has a touch of arachnid. Think instead of the dogheads sprouting from its body, it has spider-legs or something creepy, helping to say,
Seduction, cruel scheming, and the tail of a sea monster.
I’m thinking that could be much more visually interesting for Cog readers than a naked female torso.
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Oh, I like that. In my personal writtings I have a character that is basically a spider-centaur-thingie. I based her appearence on Forgotten Realms’ Aranea.
Self defence, basically. Or defence of their cubs(or whatever you call baby pandas).
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Trinnie - what a lovely, thought out, sensitive summary of feedback.
Will follow up in my Day 1 update, shortly to come.
I’m very grateful.
Your more than welcome x
DAY 1 update.
Okay so I’m cheating - my first post was 31 hours ago. But still, I drove down to London from Scotland for 14 hours yesterday, then had 3 hours sleep. So I’m jet-lagged.
Firstly I want to say thanks to all of you who made this such a great day for me.
You guys and girls and your generosity of engagement have brought this thread 58 replies and 1,212 views, (though half of those have got to be by me. . ) I’ve been blocked, unblocked, had my first ever likes. . and I have also been notified that I’ve run out of the last of my own likes for today. I consider that your fault.
I am amazed at what an incredible source of creativity and insanity you’ve been, and am touched that so many of you have taken the time to engage with a first timer. I think that says a lot about the people who hang out on the Cog forum.
DAY 1 has given me a lot of material to think about. At the moment I think that ‘The Aegis Saga - Blood’:
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could do with a slightly broadened stats page: I’m thinking about adding an animal based personality section: ‘animals of Mara’ to allow people to roleplay to specific character traits and get some kind of reward later in the story.
In the draft stats change you’ll be seeing more of Scyllae (of the watery variety), Wolves, Coursers (horses), and Jewelled Pandas. -
'Blood’s prologue is going to get some more choices, though at the moment these will be primarily for effect.
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Info dump. I’m going to try to think of a way to edit down areas which are effecting flow. This has gotta be one of the toughest things for an inexperienced writer to do, so bear with me.
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I’m going to introduce an ‘or choose your own name’ option at the start, and think twice about the feelings that are currently left to the story and not the reader to determine.
It’s going to take some time to work through these so wish me luck. You’ve also given me lots of other things to think about, including some material I want to use for the sequel ‘The Aegis Saga - Forged’.
So thanks minstrels.
And remember that in the kingdom of the blind, the jewelled panda is king.
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