So is the Fallow Queen the monarch of the Kingdom/Nation or is it more of a ceremonial title?
The Fallow Queen is the absolute monarch of the currently unnamed Eastern kingdom.
Her grandmother had made some radical changes many years ago by installing a council, then converting the absolute monarchy to more of constitutional monarchy, which would make the queen or king only a figurehead. The Fallow Queenâs mother continued this conversion, but after the Fallow Queen began to rule she quickly resized the power her predecessors had given up.
She did have her reasons for this, in her own mind at least. The kingdom was unstable and there was corruption within the government, her mother had been assassinated and she was only a child at the time of her coronation. She dealt with the government and any she considered unloyal by- you guessed it- locking them in a building and setting it on fire.
Sheâs ruled for eighty years now and in all that time there hasnât been more than a six month period where there wasnât some catastrophe happening, whether it be war, famine, plague, or purges. I wont go into much more detail than that because I can waffle on forever.
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Why would she interact with a simple weaver, or a small-time criminal and entertainer?
I mean both the noble and the pirate/privateer I can see as those guys can amass and wield significant wealth and/or power and while the church acolyte and warrior may not have much or even any wealth to his or her name the organization they serve likely would.
Congrats by the way, the demo is one of the more promising to come out recently.
Thanks!
I should probably mention now that Iâm perfectly fine with revealing the entire plot before chapters are posted, so beware anything I mark as a spoiler because it might be very spoilery.
I intend to have the story branch out in the *next chapter to the five(maybe six) individual origins (noble, trouper, sister, sailor, weaver), then meet up again midway through the chapter after that, in a way that should make sense. My biggest concern is having the plot be too streamlined, but there are things that simply need to happen, the best I can do is try to give the reader a lot of autonomy within these necessary plot points.
Now, youâre absolutely right that the Queen would never bother with the weaver or the trouper, I doubt sheâd even bother with the noble. When the story returns to present day, each origin finds themselves for one reason or another in the capital city of Waelfyr (the noble is summering in an upper district, the sailor is docked in a port district, the weaver is working at their adopted parents shop in a lower district), and for the past few months another plague has begun to spread. Some districts, which you may or may not be in, have been quarantined off.
(Major spoilers ahead)
Each origin will rediscover and solve the little puzzle box that the merchant gave them years before, and finally get the intwitgyren inside, which is ironically, a ring. The merchant has an odd sense of humour.
The world is low fantasy, but there is some magic (no shooting fire from your hands or anything like that). I havenât entirely worked out everything about the magic system, but itâs entropy/void based and not really useful or even usable by people, though that doesnât stop accusations of magic use. The Fallow Queen is extraordinarily superstitious and fearful of magic and the intwitgyren is, of course, tied to magic.
As you can probably guess, the Fallow Queen will purge Waelfyr. Youâll be heavily injured, but ultimately survive thanks to the intwitgyren. Unfortunately, youâll then be accused of using magic, and be brought to the Queen to stand trial.
*In the original outline the second chapter was supposed to quickly meet up with the main story, but I might add in a new chapter before that for the reader to become more acquainted with their adopted family.
Oh boy, that was a lot longer than I meant for it to be, and I skipped some pretty important stuff! Most of this is subject to change. I am concerned about the replayability when branches meet up, and itâs something Iâll need to keep in mind while writing. I just need to find a nice balance between choice and plot.
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Oooooh the whole promise deal, very very VERY well played, my friend.
Ohhh⌠
A fascinating little wip. I didnât expect it to draw me in this much, being as short as it is, but I liked it a lot.
This was an engaging read, and as others have mentioned, the writing is lovely. That interaction with the sailor was my favourite among the potential guardians.
I also liked how, depending on your dialogue choices, there were little things that could be referenced more than once when conversing with the merchant (like the chaotic nature of the world). Itâs a small thing, but I think stuff like that adds replay value, gives more weight to what you choose, and just makes things feel more real.
Will we ever find out what that promise was, or will it stay a mystery?
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Thanks! Iâm in love with trying to add as many call backs as I can, and Iâm happy you liked it! It can definitely make the coding a bit complicated, but luckily I thrive on making things difficult for myself.
Donât worry (or do), as of the current outline, the merchant will come back for his promise one day and youâll learn what it was. Itâll be quite a while before that happens and youâll be able to figure out a lot more about his nature in the meantime.
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Very interesting! I hope this does not end up to totally bleak 
Also since the Fallow Queen was purging the entire country, how did a significant amount of the population survive?
Also, the various adopted families seem interesting but how could I pass up the chance to become a fake noble!
Anyways, really intrigued and looking forward to more.
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This was an awesome WIP! I definitely felt like each choice I made mattered, even if I didnât totally understand what exactly was going on at the moment. I chose to go with the troupe because that was the only option the merchant thought that I could handle. I wouldâve loved to have gone with the merchant though! Hopefully we meet them again soon (and Iâm sure we will).
Keep up the great work!
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Thanks! There are going to be quite a few low points for the MC, but there will be some happy times as well. I have a few endings planned, some are happy, some are hopeful, and some are horrible.
Short Answer: Controlled burn.
Long Answer:
I still have yet to work out the fine tuning of the purges and the demographics, but I have my basic ideas that I need to eventually fact check.
There was a 37% death rate, almost half of that was confined to urban centres, and the rest was rural towns and villages near well travelled roads.
Urban to Rural Population ratio was 1,700,000:9,300,000.
Urban to Rural Death ratio: 1,140,000:2,860,000
I canât say I know how realistic these numbers are, but Iâm working on them.
Loooong Answer:
The kingdom had a population of about eleven million people before the purges, and seven million afterward. Thatâs about a 37% death rate. For the size of the kingdom, itâs sparsely populated because of past disasters, and that helped against the spread of the White Sickness in rural areas.
Because of the Fallow Queenâs predilection toward military tactics, the major cities of the kingdom are highly defensible, district by district. This isnât the first plague during the Fallow Queenâs reign so she was adequately prepared to deal with the spread in cities by quarantining off districts. In total there are six major cities, with the biggest having a population of around 400,000 people, and the smallest having a population of around 100,000 people.
Any districts that see a lot of traffic would have been shut down first (port, trade, and merchant.) If someone from a clean district was found sick they would be killed or moved to a diseased district, but if too many cases cropped up then that district would just be quarantined as well. Because of the Queenâs fast reaction, five of the six cities quarantined about 60% of their population, while the last one was fully quarantined by her army after those in charge had failed to follow her orders.
The MCâs small village was near a heavily travelled road, hence how the plague spread to it (and why so many people are travelling past in in one day⌠
), but plenty of small, isolated villages were able to avoid the plague altogether.
When the White Sickness turned out to be a lot more aggressive and deadly than any other disease the Queen had seen before, she began the purges. First, she set fire to every quarantined district and ordered the same in the other cities. Then she had her soldiers purge any settlement near a well travelled road, and any settlement that showed sign of disease, slowly making her way South. The final stop of the purges for her was the city that had failed to quarantine itâs districts, and itâs razing marked the end of the purges.
I would up the death rate, but the kingdom really canât afford it. Since the Fallow Queenâs coronation, the kingdom has more than tripled in size, but the population has halved.
For what it was, the plague was dealt with efficiently, but ruthlessly.
Sorry, I like to worldbuild.
Thank you! I love that you took his advice! Iâm really happy (and surprised) to hear how many people liked the merchant, I was concerned heâd be a bit too odd to like or trust. Itâs opened up my eyes to some new possibilities with him.
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Active Interaction & Stat Overhaul Update v1.1.8
Thanks to everyone for all the support so far! I just finished up the last of my essays and exams (yay!), so hopefully Iâll have a good amount of free time to write now.
This is only a partial update, just so that if you have any bigger suggestions I can implement them before the draft is finished. This update allows you to interact with the four of the five travellers on the road and also overhauls the stats. Any feedback, continuity errors, formatting errors, or bug reports would be helpful in these early stages.
Iâll likely update with a small patch in a few days for easy fixes, a larger one in week or two for bigger changes, and hopefully the finished act in a month or so.
Hope you enjoy! As brain-hurting as it is, Iâm really having a lot of fun writing this!
Wordcount
The wordcount per playthrough is difficult to count because the added dialogues are partially optional. The almighty randomtest puts us around 9,500 words per playthrough, but it can vary by a few thousand depending on who you talk to and how much you ask them. Each traveller conversation averages to about 1,500 to 2,000 words per playthrough. With code, Act I is at about 60,000 words.
Summary of Major Changes
New Dialogues
These dialogues will play into:
- What type of relationship your MC will have with their new guardian (eg. Parent-child, boss-employee, ectâŚ),
- Determine your âsecondary backgroundâ within a background (eg. noble with focus on intrigue, noble with focus on combat, ectâŚ),
- Have some effect the world (how you treat travellers even if you donât go with them),
- Effect MC knowledge (very minor).
New Origins
So, you may not have even noticed this unless you checked the stat page at the end of the demo, but if you chose to go off on your own at the end, there were a few new names and titles for the MC. There are three unique origins if you head off on your own: beggar, stablehand/courtier, and hunter. And there is some variation within those based on your choices.
Providence & Volatile:Controlled
Itâs now possible (but unlikely) to fail at convincing a traveller to take you with them. This is to introduce a stat Iâm trying called providence. Providence is in essence, a second chance mechanic.
Volatile:Controlled is the ratio between all of your points in volatile dispositions and controlled dispositions. Right now itâs main purpose is to add possible consequence to using providence.
More information in the Understanding Stats page in game.
Stats
The stat system Iâve added (and need to improve on), was made to dissaude the reader against stat management and feeling the need to only use the same one or two stats in order to pass checks. Most stats are shown in rank rather than exact number and are not visibly weighed against each other. Still a major work in progress.
Right now, the stat screen is a bit difficult to read, and I am working on that.
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The âpsychicâ interaction with Wolfgang is very funny, he and the mustachioed man caught my eyes!
Careful, his mustache will doom us all! Sign me up, captain!
You are a beggar if you refuse all 5 of themâŚ
Right now the three refusal backgrounds are pretty crudely set up, and beggar happens to be the fallback origin, so I wouldnât be surprised if you get it a lot of the time.
As it is, thereâs a count which weighs the hunter vs beggar backgrounds. You can add to the hunter count by asserting your independence. Itâs pretty unbalanced and I canât say Iâm happy with how itâs setup at the moment, so thereâs a lot of work to do on that front.
The stablehand/courtier is a bit more of a hidden background because it requires specific actions. You need to pickpocket the Lady Grimhild, and show the letter to the troupers and the sailor. Keep the letter both times, and the second time youâll be given the option of what you want to do with it. Sell it to Martain Haight, and the stablehand/courtier origin will override hunter/beggar (and to get courtier over stablehand, you need to have chosen fairly charming or manipulative responses).
Or was it the background itself that you are put off by? Because beggar is sort of a loose term for where that origin is going. Like the other backgrounds, itâll have secondary backgrounds, meaning that you may be less beggar and more artful dodger, among other things.
Hmm⌠I just saw the front page and there were only 6 origin that were actually named not 8. So since I refused all 5 people I am going to get beggar origin since other 2 are not implemented yet?
I hope our origin will play a big role in the story. Personally I want to spend some time in our origin. At least one chapter(act).
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There were originally six, but I guess it felt unfair to just lump anyone who wanted to go off on their own into beggar, so I added the other two.
All eight origins are currently implemented. But beggar, hunter, and stablehand/courtier only alter a few things in the stats screen and the final paragraph in game.
The first two parts of the next act are going to be solely dedicated to exploring your origin, with the third part merging back into the main story line. So Iâm thinking at least 10,000 words for you to spend getting to know the origin and characters.
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BtwâŚif I am not mistaken, courtiers are nobles who attend the royal palace and high society gatheringâŚhow did MC become a courtier???
So, that variation of the origin is going to be a bit difficult to get, the MC not only has to choose to sell the letter to Martain Haight, they also need to be fairly self-serving and/or charming (I should also note that thereâs a time-skip of twelve years, so the MC has had some time to work their way up in society).
Lady Grimhildâs late husband was Martainâs elder brother, and the letter (which suggests the death of his brotherâs heir) gives Martain a valid claim on Eastern StĂgand, the Haight wine business, and the title of Viserae. So if the MC goes to Martain Haight with the letter, his reach and fortune will increase tenfold, and he has the MC to thank for that.
The idea is that, if the MC has shied away from manipulating the travellers on the road theyâre given a job as a stablehand in the Haight estate and they stick with it. But if theyâve had no qualms about using manipulation or charm to get their way with the travellers, it stands to reason that they are willing to milk every last drop of gratitude from Martain in order to get ahead.
So with the favour of a now-powerful Viserae and the charm or guile, the MC works their way up through the ranks from stablehand to a member of Martainâs court during the twelve year time-skip.
Iâm playing a bit fast and loose with the word âcourtierâ, being that the MC isnât in the Fallow Queenâs court, but rather the court of a Viserae (which is second below the queen and technically of royal blood if you go back far enough).
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