One Thousand Blooms — (ON HIATUS)

Well, if you play your cards right, you can call off the whole thing. It won’t be easy, though. You will have to either convince your mother (which isn’t easy), or get enough power to reject a Countess (the title she will inherit). You can also elope, or just marry and make her life as miserable as yours.

For a lot of reasons (personal and plot related), Rhona will be very keen on marrying the MC :imp:

Nope, I wasn’t going to let the MC become a Thorn; I was going to let them get positions usually only occupied by Thorns ('cause most of the nobles don’t want them).

I don’t think so? In the terrible demo I made for the CSComp, it was quite vague how Aquilegia got the money. I guess that it was kinda implied that after the betrothal of the MC to one’s of the Faerwald, they would helpt their fiancee…

Mmmm… the MC will think of them as an anonymous benefactor, and they will have to discover the truth, then :wink:

Nah, most likely they don’t want the MC’s cousin as the Head of the family 'cause they are not very suitable for it. The MC only has to show they are better, and if they manage to outrank Rhona, they can get free of that scam of a marriage :wink:

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We likely won’t get to do that by taking positions normally occupied by Thorns though, which means my mc will have to become a rotten officer after all (and face the horrible abuse of those who should really be his “brother” officers in the process). I’m just afraid it’s going to take years to disentangle ourselves from that marriage and by that time Maetthere may have a wife and children of his own and then who is left for the mc?
At least mine wouldn’t want to rob the cradle and get some eighteen year old brat then.

Possibly seems like eloping is still the best solution or else my poor mc might up miserably married to Rhona or a miserable old single guy.

You do realize that if my mc thinks his rotten grandparents wouldn’t help him out when it mattered (when he was 18) he’s not inclined to have anything to do with now.

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Sorry, but I thought that it fitted, to have limited options :blush: The game is going to be bittersweet in a lot of senses, so in order to achieve something, you’ll have to make sacrifices. The most… dulcet route would be the one where the MC follows every. single. social. rule. and do everything expected of them, which itself leaves a bitter taste, don’t you think? :wink:

Sadly, that’s the most likely scenario. In the demo is badly explained, but since Maynard isn’t suitable to be the next Duke Faerwald, the responsability falls on him. So regardless of what Maetthere wants, he has to marry a proper girl, have children and carry on as the Head of the family. And said girl is Cherry, who is a lot of fun :wink:

You wouldn’t need to go for a youngster, maybe you could try for an old flame, if they feel the same :wink:

That’s why they’ll be anonymous :smile: And even if the MC didn’t want their help, they have little next to no options; at the age of 21 it’s their last chance of becoming a part of The Society, so if the MC rejects the money, they won’t have an Efflorescence. They’ll became Sere (outcasts), worse than Thorns, and there’ll no way of marrying Maetthere that way :wink:

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Yeah, but Maetthere is the only old flame the mc really has and the only one who seems to accept him for who he really is. :cry:
He certainly wouldn’t want to shack up with one of his old bullies from the army at that point, even if they pretend to respect him by then, I think.

In the worst case scenario we could even (somehow) have brats (my mc wouldn’t want or want anything to do with) ourselves with Rhona somehow by that time. :worried:

Well it seems like there’s no way to marry him with a male mc at all at this point.
Also if our goal is to elope and get away from the society to somewhere foreign our status within it won’t really matter (anymore). :wink:

Very bitter indeed. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Wow, all these people talking about future plot point, and I can’t even get past the prologue, it always said that it is the end of the demo after choosing our reaction to the days spent with our father, am I doing something wrong?

no… it looks like they are refering to the previous version… (you could find it from this thread : CSComp Winners 2016 - #2 by Lordirish)
this one as i know is the new version (which i like more than the previous one coz this one is more polished and i love the childhood scenes :heart_eyes:)
FYI… i’ll include a quote from Author of the story (@Lycoris)

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True but since my mc really doesn’t like having Rhona as a wife I think he’d just date guys more or less openly, provided he finds some other than her brother, that he can actually stand. :wink:

Okay I’m curious now, just what do we need to do to get rid of that “stigma”?
Though keep in mind my mc really isn’t out to please his grandparents in fact I don’t think he can even stand them, after all they didn’t help him when it really mattered.

Presumably we won’t be able to call the whole thing off before we’re actually stuck married to her, so we’ll have to go through the worst day of our lives, aka the whole rotten wedding.

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can’t denied that i myself am agree with @idonotlikeusernames, and my MC doesn’t give a d*mn bout their mother’s financial problem :smiling_imp:

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@Nightgazer when the demo pops the option “play again”, it means it’s the end of the demo :disappointed: A lot of people asked the same over and over :disappointed:

@Curious_Boy I’m glad you like it! :blush:

Oh, sorry, but that was more from a female MC playthrough :smile: In their route, it’s Maetthere the one who wants to marry them, so of course they need the social standing :blush: Though things aren’t so easy, either :disappointed:

:tada: Be successful :tada: Have a good reputation, do things right, don’t make a fool of yourself… that kind of stuff. Grandma and Grandpa Nightshade have learned from their child that if they try to dictate someone’s lovelife/marriage, it will have a terrible end.

Kind of; as for now, the MC themselves can’t, because;

1)It’s a social suicide.
2)Their social standing is lower than Rhona’s. The Society is unfair in a lot of things, 'cause it’s very, very classist; the lower ranks have it much worse and can’t go againts them.

So you can either run away/elope, work very, very hard to become the Nightshade heir, or get someone else interested in them with a title equal/more important than Rhona’s (Countess). They can either (currently) hold it, or have it as a courtesy one (because the current holder is very much alive/ did not step down).

Though for plot reasons, the marriage with Rhona is much harder to call off than with Maetthere’s :imp:

But that’ll take years and the wedding is in what, weeks, months?

Kind of difficult when that sham of a marriage and the fact that we’re three years late have already made a giant fool out of us and if he needs to go through with it my mc certainly isn’t planning on behaving himself during the worst day of his life (aka that wedding).

I hope that is interested in Rhona not the mc, cause as I understand it the mc can’t gay marry and he isn’t quite interested in another woman, unless it’s a strategic contract with an understanding lesbian.

Drat.

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With the new coding and storyline… I’m thinking… Because I’m realizing a lot of things that need to be taken care of (that’s why I like having people poking around, to find all the plot holes :blush: ). Mmmm… I kinda need the MC to… flourish later than normal for a lot of reasons. So, even if the MC can start early-ish to work towards taking over the Nightshade family… it will take at least a year. Well, it’s not like a wedding is prepared ipso facto.

The shame is more the MC’s family’s than the MC’s own, because it was the mother (the one who was in charge, then) who was unable to provide for her child. Maybe instead of it being Aquilegia’s 100% fault (though she still can’t handle money), I’ll kill Datura when the MC is 18, which very much excuse their failure, and still keep them behind their peers. …I’m not sure.

Well, if they have a greater title than hers, Duke Faerwald will 100% make her marry them, to hell with what Lady Faerwald wants for her baby daughter. I plan to add more nobles, with a very varied cast, so the MC can have friends and do their own deals.

If the MC becomes the Nightshade heir, they have to marry someone of the opposite sex 'cause they need an heir, but if it’s the cousin, then the MC will be free. Given the circumstances, I’ll have to remove the nb option from birth, though later on adolescence the player will be able to explore their gender.

I like that :joy: I’ll use it as the official curse word :blush:

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I am another person who thought they’d check the game out. For some reason the demo ends fairly quickly while several of the people on the form are talking about reaching the MCs adulthood as if they had reached that point in the game. Can someone clarify?

The version everyone is talking about is the version as it had been entered in this year’s edition of CS Comp. That one went from the MC’s birth to after the MC’s efflorescence party. Unfortunately that version was plagued by quite some bugs, so the author decided to cut the story off before the point where the first bugs began popping up. Because of this the current playtest on this thread is a lot shorter.

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@Cecilia_Rosewood hehe, it’s a good thing that you keep an open eye on the thread and answer all these questions :blush: As for now, I would have totally lost my patience after getting asked the same over and over and snapped at them; in just 200 posts I have the feeling they have asked that about 5 times, that and why the demo ends (and if it’s buggy) :sweat_smile:


Alright, I have a name for the MC and their cousin! 'Cause I don’t like referring to them with these terms, they feel so… impersonal! :persevere: So for now, the MC will be Shade (from their surname, 'cause I’m original like that), and their cousin, depending on whether they are male (Oleander) or female (Baladre), though the universal name is Nerium. …Let’s go with just Nerium, until I finally write them.

So let’s talk about the cousin! If your Shade is male, then you’ll get Baladre, and if you play as female, you’ll have Oleander :wink: WHY? Because of REASONS! Also, their remaining parent is your uncle-in-law (I’m thinking of calling him Strophanthus; yes the name IS ugly, but that’s the intention), from the Dogbane family, though I’m thinking of changing it to Matacanes. Anyways, Strophanthus doesn’t like Shade because he believes that they want to “usurp” what’s rightfully his children’s. Drama ensues!

Since I’m still making changes, I realized that the nb option doesn’t fit in the beginning; since Shade is very much Datura’s only child, and The Society is very much into gender roles (kind of? It’s not truly sexist as in “men are breadwinners and women homemakers”, but they have an idea of “girls do this, boys do that, because traditions, but if they don’t we won’t make a scandal” way…). Shade has to get married and produce spawn; they don’t have the option to be something else outside the binary genders. That is, in case they become the Head of the Nightshade family, but since they can very much rebel against The Society, that will change. Still, sorry for the inconveniences :disappointed_relieved: Do I make sense? :sweat_smile:

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Hm…you say the nb option doesn’t fit in the beginning…does that mean that MC will have the option to identify as nb later on or something similar?

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Exactly! In their teenager years, more or less. They will be able to identify as nb or transgender :grin:

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I always think for my character, given the frowning on same sex marriage for the heir to the family:

[Signs over control of the family to her cousin and merrily skips away to find a wife] win/win! :smiley:

No, not win/win; if you don’t have status (besides the honorary title, which isn’t even yours but Datura’s), chances of Shade (the MC) being able to choose who they want to marry will be next to impossible. It will be a total and utter win for Oleander (the cousin). But! If they actually become the Head of the family, they can’t marry someone of the same sex, either! :scream_cat: I wonder what could you do :smirk:

Burning the existing social order and rules?

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What if we do it on the condition of forcing them to extend us an honorary title again?
Then it may be a win/win, right?

Also if our same-sex lover is powerful enough couldn’t he give us some sort of (honorary) title as well?

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