Loved the update! Also loving Ravenna more than i expected to, tbh 
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The stat checks actually worked fine for me, at least in my most recent playthrough: In almost every scene there was one option I could pick with a successful outcome. My only problem is that sometimes my demeanor stats wonât get me the outcome I would like.
For example in chapter 1, when the Sorceress tells me she never really planned to help Vivian, I can either support her or defend Vivian. I would like to argue Vivianâs case, but to do that without the Sorceress getting angry at me my MC would need to be either lively or proud, which they are not. But since my MC is cautious I can successfully agree with the Sorceress.
Thatâs the one scene that stuck out to me the most because it was particularly frustrating, but I had a lot of similar situations where my MC could, in theory, pass a stat check but then didnât because I wanted them to take a different stance an on issue. I donât how know how much of that is intentional or whether my MCâs stats are just too weird, but to me that kind of thing can get annoying if it happens too often.
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Yeah, thatâs tricky! I 100% know what you mean, but itâs difficult to prevent that kind of thing from ever happening without having an impractical number of options for every choice. A lot of the personality stat testing choices in this game are actually either/or tests where you can succeed with either one of two stats, which opens up more possibilities, but not all of them. Iâll take another look at that choice in particular, and I always try to have enough stat variety in choices so that you can take multiple different approaches and still succeed, but like I said, itâs hard to keep that from happening completely. If there are other specific moments you were having that problem with, you can always let me know.
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I feel the same thing. When I tried to support Ravennaâs faction in chapter 4, I could only do that if my character was either Bold or Lively, which my character wasnât.
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Small feedback tidbit â When addressing our mother for the first time there were 4 choices âŚ
The first and the third were both choices I would want to convey to her because I would feel both equally.
I would want to call her âMotherâ to convey that I loved her AND I would want to call her Sorceress to convey to her that she was still the Queen in my eyes.
Having to pick and chose between the two made me feel like I was choosing between two halves of my soul.
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Thatâs an interesting point! From, like, a purely mechanical standpoint, you kind of do have to choose one thing there because itâs setting the variables for how you address her in the code 
. But I do get what you mean, and hopefully there are (or could be) other choices to convey that thatâs how you feel about her? Iâll think about that.
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Oh, thatâs a nice thought. If you do implement something like that, please add the opposite choice as well - for those of us who donât like Mom. ^^
Also, during that one conversation with Vivian, I think the obvious reason why he shouldnât enter a relationship with the MC is because Mom is certainly going to resurrect him just so she can kill him again once she finds outâŚ
Now that Iâm thinking about it, I donât think Mom would be happy with any of the ROs for her child⌠or any other mortal. Iâm definitely looking forward to that conversation. ^^
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A relationship with Vivian would be aâŚhard sell with the Sorceress, yeah. (ch 4 spoilers) But when it comes to relationships with mortals in general, itâs not like she can talkâŚ
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The baz_plan/baz_returns issue should be fixed now, thanks again for pointing it out!
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Another amazing chapter! Not gonna lie, the ending took me by surprise. First of all, I was expecting you to be cruel and cut it off just as they reached the top of the tower. I also thought âhuh, seems pretty early to be getting the main prize, maybe the second half of the game deals with how MC and/or the Sorceress handles the cityâs reactions to possibly getting taken over again?â But nope, that is not the next problem! And I did have my suspicions about the relationship with Baz, nice to see those confirmed. Glad I chose to have a good relationship with him.
Too bad for her, Vivian is a treasure and will be getting all the smooches from my MC once he is alive enough to appreciate them again. Petting the dog? His âlook, I might be into it but you are crazyâ responses to being flirted with? (âbecause youâre olderâ is the best thing to pick as a problem, hands down) That moment when he gets fired up and calls the people who built the climbing shaft cowards, because they wouldnât face the traps head-on? Thanks mom for murdering the future love of my life, it all worked out great in the end.
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Hello all! Writingâs been going pretty slowly for me lately owing to Present Circumstances, but I do have something else for you: more RO fun facts! Going in order of the popularity poll, hereâs Ravenna (all spoilered because what you learn about Ravenna and when you learn it in the game so far is a lot more variable than it is for Vivian):
- Ravenna is 33, the oldest of the love interests. Hers was the age I went back and forth about the most while developing the characters. I wanted someone old enough to remember the rebellion and potentially even the time before it, but I didnât want her to be too significantly older than the 25-year-old PC. (More for reasons of overall life experience than the literal years between them - the PC has, after all, spent almost their entire life in a cave with their mom.) Ravenna was therefore 11 at the end of the rebellion, and remembers it fairly well. Harperâs the only other RO who remembers the rebellion at all, and only the very end - at that point, he was 5, Em was 1, and Natalia was not quite born. (Vivian was dead.)
- You can learn the basics of Ravennaâs childhood at a few different points in the game: her father, Vimal, was the Sorceressâs treasurer, who stayed loyal to her during the rebellion, and her family lived in the Tower itself. Her mother, Nila, found she couldnât countenance what the Sorceress was doing, fled to join the rebels, and eventually died in the fighting. Her father survived the war and was pardoned by the rebels afterward (a lot of the Sorceressâs associates were, in the interests of moving forward), but was so despised in the city that he eventually moved away.
- Vimal came from a moderately wealthy family whoâd tended to work for the Sorceress in various ways for a while, though he was the most high-profile. Nila was more middle-class, originally a carpenter who met Vimal while delivering some pieces to the Tower. Even before the war made their differing viewpoints much clearer, theyâd started to realize their marriage was based more on infatuation than love, but the rising tensions of the rebellion made separation difficult (though divorce is perfectly legal in Kelestri), until Nila got fed up and just left. Ravenna doesnât really remember much about her parentsâ relationship, though her older sisters do.
- I donât have a definite timeline for the rebellion yet, so these dates are all approximate. My basic idea is that the unrest in general ramped up over about eight years, but the first couple years were more protests and minor uprising and the actual battles and more severe retaliation by the Sorceress happened more toward the end. Ravenna and her family didnât live with the Sorceress for all that time - her employees didnât necessarily live with her. But when violence was getting more common and there was more of a chance of her allies being in danger in the streets, she invited more of them to live in the Tower with their families for their safety. That was mid-early in the rebellion, probably when Ravenna was around 6. Her motherâs departure was a couple years later, when she was 8, and she and her older sisters spent the last three years of the rebellion sneaking around the Tower to gather information on the Sorceressâs plans and then sneaking out of the Tower to carry it to the rebels.
- Her sisters, Sitara and Malina, are six and five years older than her, respectively. They did a lot of the actual spying and passing messages - Ravenna was a little young for a lot of that, and mostly tagged along occasionally or went out when the Sorceress or her guards were paying too much attention to her sisters and a younger child could slip under their radar. She might occasionally exaggerate just how involved she was for political reasons - almost everyone in the Assembly played a role in the rebellion, and it looks better if she has something to her name there. She definitely did sneak out to the rebel camps a few times, though, and met people like Renard Ghislain and Nobu Marden when she did.
- Ravennaâs mother died in battle during the last year of the rebellion. Her father is still alive in the present, but fled the city when she was about 14, after which she stayed with her sisters until she was old enough to live on her own. Thereâs a group of loosely-connected city states across a bay from Kelestri - Tieri (where the PC claims to be from) is one of them, as is a place called Kaara thatâs extremely briefly referenced in a couple places - and her father probably lives in one of them now, but I havenât decided on the details. Heâs not in contact with any of his daughters anymore: he views them as traitors, and Malina and Sitara feel the same way about him. Ravenna is a little more conflicted and used to try to write to him, but he never responded and she eventually gave up.
- Ravenna was always more conflicted about their actions during the rebellion than her sisters were: she missed her mother, and saw the violence the Sorceress was committing, but she also admired her father and the wonders the Sorceress created with her magic. As they grew older, that kind of reversed: Malina and Sitara had been strongly opposed to the Sorceress while she was in power, but didnât have many opinions on how the city should be run once she was gone, while Ravenna grew more and more adamant that the Starsâ power couldnât be neglected. Her sisters arenât particularly involved in public life or in Ravennaâs political campaigns now, though theyâre all still friendly with each other.
- Youâll hear more about how the Astral Assemblyâs elections work in future chapters, but the first official election was two years after the rebellion, and theyâve been held every five years since. Ravenna was first elected to the Assembly at the last election five years ago, and the game is set in another election year.
- Ravenna didnât originate the idea that the Stars should be used instead of locked away, but she advocated for it even before being elected, and she and some of her similarly-minded colleagues were some of the first delegates to openly discuss the idea as members of the Assembly. The idea of the Harnessers and the Naturalists as opposed factions didnât really coalesce until within those last five years.
- Per my earlier notes on middle names, Ravenna is the sort of person who might have one, but I donât have any particular ideas as to what it would be. Iâll have to give that some thought.
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Will the PC have the chance to meet Sitara and Malina at some point?
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No current plans, but itâs possible! A lot of the stuff here is more background information that wouldnât otherwise appear in the game, as a bonus, but if thereâs an opportunity for them to show up, then sure!
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While Iâm quite sure this is deliberate, I have to ask:
Did you just name Ravennaâs sister âstarâ?
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You know, Iâm genuinely not sure. It was a while ago that I made the original notes on her family and I donât remember the rationale (if there was one) behind any names. It does sound like something Iâd do on purpose, though!
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Thanks for the info an Ravenna! She has been growing on me through chapter 4, but Iâm still struggling with the whole political angleâŚ
I have absolutely no idea whether I should try to support the Harnessers or the Naturalists. All we really know about them is what they want to do with the Stars, and since I donât agree with either of those factions Iâve been kind of ignoring those parts of the story so farâŚ
Random thought I had the other day: If we do end up ruling Kelestri in some way, will we get a cool title like our mother? It kind of bothers me that everyone calls her the Sorceress of the Skies and all I get is a boring human name. That said, I hope star-brat doesnât stickâŚ
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Part of the thing with the Assembly in general is that theyâre putting together a political system with very little to go on - the Sorceress was the only ruling power for centuries, and she didnât tend to encourage researching other governmental systems. So theyâre essentially figuring out everything theyâre doing as they go along, and one of the biggest and most contentious issues in the city is the Stars, so thatâs what their major focus is. They do cover other political issues, of course, but what to do with the Stars is the main thing that divides easily into organized factions, hence the Naturalists and the Harnessers. And this year in particular, with the Gravediggerâs Star about to fall, the fate of the Stars is particularly contentious.
If, perhaps, you were interested in joining the Assembly, you might be able to encourage turning their focus elsewhere. Or if you want to rule like your mother did, you could just tear the whole thing down.
It would certainly be within your power to get some kind of cool title if you take control of the city. Whether that will be covered in the span of the game isnât 100% determined, but it probably wouldnât be hard to fit in!
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Did the Reminders ever try to join the Assembly, or were they a part of it in the past? I feel like their views wouldnât have been that unpopular before they actually started flying and shooting lightningâŚ
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Ariel and Natalia certainly havenât. Theyâre pretty opposed to the Assembly as a governing body in general, for a few different reasons. The Reminders as a whole havenât had an official presence in the Assembly, but whether any individual people associated with the Reminders have ever tried to run for office is something Iâm not sure of. I havenât specifically come up with any time itâs happened, but itâs not out of the question as something that could have occurred in the twenty years the Assemblyâs been around.
A lot of Kelestri came out of the war very opposed to magic and the Stars, because the Sorceress was essentially wreaking havoc on the whole city with her powers in very destructive ways by the end. (Some more discussions of this in future chapters.) Plus Renard and Nobu and their associates were the heroes of the rebellion for personally taking down the Sorceress, and they were very vehemently anti-Stars. There certainly were and are people who were interested in more widespread use of the Stars, but that was a very unpopular viewpoint to publicly express just after the war, and to some extent has remained so up until the present. (Whether things stay that way during the events of the game is up to you to determine!)
Also, the Reminders have existed in some form since not too long after Vivian died, originally rebelling against the Sorceress rather than the Assembly. Theyâve always positioned themselves and been viewed as opposed to the ruling powers, so for them to become part of the government isnât really something most people would consider. (At least on a broader level - like I said above, itâs not impossible that individual Reminders have wanted to change this in the past.)
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Wow! Just finished the demo. This game is truly amazing! There are hints and secrets all over the place that have me wriggling with curiosity. I enjoyed playing as a super naive, but also kindhearted PC. I will admit, I went in blind, so I was surprised to discover Vivian was an RO. For some reason, I imagined him as older in my head 
But now heâs my favorite. (Close second is Harper, because heâs sharp as a tack and I like that.)
The ending of the demo especially left me with my jaw dropped! Like my PC, I knew in the back of my mind, but I couldnât really accept it or was wondering if there was another, more mystical explanation. But seriously, the reveal was cool, and I enjoyed spreading a little angst by reacting in confusion. I canât believe this is only the start of the story. It feels like the whole world just opened up, because all my preconceived notions have been torn down. Iâm excited to see where it goes next!
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