What do you think a djinn is, if not vermin? 
@stsword I do need to add some short moral-decision scenes in Part 3, which should help. Which Arts do you feel are the most difficult to master currently? Belonging to a particular jinn tribe is more of a personal inclination on the part of the jinni; they will have mastered that Art, but it doesn’t mean they have not mastered a second one, though most jinn are restricted to one (or at best) two masteries.
@fantom, @Ramidel, @stsword As for the Ark, well, there are a lot of in-jokes and homages in the game. Raiders of the Lost Ark is a favourite film of mine. But the image of a jinni as a corrupt fly and the Ark as a can of bug-zapping Raid is great, lol. 
so any progress?
@Roslyn_samalt06 Some, I should have an update out by the end of the weekend.
i will be here
Well, Tenryu, it’s not so much that any arts are harder to master, it seems to me that certain combinations of masteries are harder than others.
Certain masteries tend to be lumped together choice wise: wishing and fortune, flying and shapeshifting off the top of my head. So if you choose one to solve a problem, you neglect the other, which could be seen as a problem if you want to master both.
Although to be honest I haven’t tried to master both shapeshifting and flying, but I have tried wishing and fortune, and the game doesn’t want to cooperate with me there, at least when I go for possession first. Or at least so far, I don’t
I presume I could do both fortune and wishing if I ignored possession, but possession is my favorite mastery.
And no, the MC getting killed by the ark isn’t funny, the ark as a bug zapper is hilarious.
Oh, and if tribe is a personal choice, shouldn’t the game give us the choice to declare which tribe we see as family?
About saving the old woman’s husband on the Sabbat, that happens to be the same day that the brothers petition Solomon about the lamp. You would need to select the choice to go out into the city for some amusement on that day. I think you need to avoid seeing the boy’s mother and breaking Fasad’s possession, otherwise a night will pass.
By the way, which treasure would earn more prestige in the Celestial Court, the hippogryph or the feathers of the rukh?
As for the 4th Task, I did enjoy going about helping to create the song of songs, but in retrospect, it was only to be expected that Namaah would be so furious about Solomon presenting such a gift to Makeda. After that, I restricted myself to retrieving Makeda’s throne and creating Solomon’s wisdom.
After all, Kymaris, the Subtle One, worked hard to bring Solomon and Namaah together, urging Solomon to spend more time with Namaah, telling Namaah that Solomon would consider his words, reassuring Namaah during the archery tournament, praying for her success, telling Solomon that Namaah would be happy to see him, and finally healing Namaah’s arm and telling Solomon that Namaah was anxious to see him win while making neutral comments about Solomon when Makeda asked about his chances and then victory. Kymaris would refuse to help with the song of songs on principle because of how badly it could damage Namaah and Solomon’s relationship.
If it does become possible to choose one’s tribe, if the jinni has the Subtle One background, I imagine they would be quite welcome among the Maruts. As the embodiments of treachery, they, like their queen, would probably applaud your intelligence and cunning for instigating a feud between them and the Ifrits. On the other hand, it would be quite awkward to be of the Maruts with the Rapacious One background, seeing as how you would have dealt a bitter blow to their pride, as Vineah said.
Oh tenryu, if you included my little tidbit about the ark of the covenant having angelic pest control, you could include a gag ending where you get accepted into the heavenly host, and get assigned to ark pest control.
Also, Solomon getting credit for the song of songs seems a little awkward if the MC was the one romancing the Queen.
I hope choosing that service doesn’t mean it will turn into a love dodecahedron.
@stsword I see the cluster thing, and it’s intentional. There are several groupings: battle, travel, social; and these do overlap. I guess the general idea is to give players a chance to keep working at things over the entire game. With the song of songs thing, if a player is romancing Makeda, they should avoid the quest, I suppose. The initial description makes the outcome fairly clear.
@Gadriel Hippogryph or rukh feathers- uh, both? If you’re bringing Solomon and Namaah together, then the song of songs is a bit unpleasant to complete (though it really does not change any relationships gamewise, only descriptively). I included it because it’s famous (though the song doesn’t necessarily refer to the Queen of Sheba).
With regard to tribes, the jinni does not belong to any tribe currently because you don’t get to master any Art until you are stuck in the mortal world. Atm, the endings may either allow you to join a tribe if you wish, or I will leave that for a sequel (if any).
You know, I just realized the implications of the game’s setup; prior to getting summoned, the PC was a lucky and clever “little guy” who had managed to make one big score and humiliate two VIPs. It’s an interesting dynamic to fill.
Oh, Tenryu, do you see all seven tribes having current leadership like the queen of oceans and sultan of flame?
It occured to me that might be something to include in the sequel, becoming the emperor of pride, or ghul king, or whatnot.
Oh something you might want to edit, it’s perfectly possible to capture a hippogriff and then teleport to get the Queen’s throne.
So you may want to trigger that section about keeping the hippogriff whether or not the MC actually uses it.
It is an interesting dynamic to fill, though you do not necessarily humiliate both Samodai and Vineah. As the Unseen One, you help her profit by giving her the Pearl of the Padishahs.
It was only after further tinkering that I realized one could gain both the hippogryph harness and the rukh egg without their Akasha dropping into the negatives. Still, I think I will forego the rukh egg. As avaricious as my jinni can be, he would never stoop to such blatant robbery. Speaking of treasures, will there be chances to buy more phials of incense in the subsequent parts?
Oh thank you Gadriel, I found the old man and managed to save his life, I think, although that wasn’t listed in my accomplishments, so I’m not 100% positive.
Tenryu, does it matter which art we use to help the old man? I’d hate to think I didn’t save him with edict just because I was trying to up my fortune crafting.
And perhaps it wasn't your intent but using charm to convince the man he wasn't sick just seemed iffy to me.Oh and about the powers, Tenryu, from my point of view it’s all about problem solving, the powers are so varied that I don’t see them as combat, social, or travel.
Charm: combat, I can make someone attack you, heck with mirage shouldn’t the MC be able to make people feel like their limbs are too heavy to lift or give them enough pain people go into shock or die, travel, well you could make someone give you a ride.
Fortune: Combat, heck with probability manipulations you could kill people with brain aneurysms or heart attacks, travel, well again someone will show up to give you a ride when you control probability.
Wishing: It seems to give you command over matter itself, creating or altering it. Combat wise, forming armor and weapons, pits to trap people, giant anvils to fall on peoples heads, or just turning their blood into acid, their bones to pudding, it's a potentially nasty nasty power. And if memory serves with wishing you can wish yourself away from the Sultan of Fire, so it's obviously good for travel directly.
Flight and Teleportation: Tackling someone at the speed of sound is something, or heck pick someone up and then drop them from low earth orbit, teleport them to inside a volcano or Antartica.
Shapeshifting: Even without the storm powers that come with mastery, stomp on someone as an elephant, bite them as a water snake, fly almost 200 miles an hour as a bird, use the senses of an animal, shapeshift into the most gloriously beautiful or hideously frightening thing someone can imagine.
Wind: well combat options are obvious, but if you can make winds this powerful shouldn’t you be able to lift yourself ala Storm? Of course you’d probably be carrying stray animals and carts and people with you…
Possession: With control over objects with edict, you should be able to kill someone with their own weapons, paralyse someone, command animals to attack someone en masse
Now if those give you any ideas that’s great, but I wanted to explain where I was coming from. Perhaps I’m the only one who doesn’t see them as social, combat, and travel, I don’t think like a normal person I admit.
You know it occured to me that my thinking up ways to horribly kill people with all seven powers is making people wonder if I have a torture room in my basement.
Fear not people, I don’t even have a basement.
@Ramidel Yup, you got it. Plus, it gives me nice background characters to work with as antagonists, so no wasted space in the story.
@stsword Not all of them are structured the same way. The marut and ifrit are actively hierarchical, the sayatin are nominally so (with Iblis as their titular head, but they’re too lazy to do more), while the gul are free spirits. The others fall somewhere in between. Thanks for letting me know about the hippogryph bug. I’ll fix that.
@Gadriel There will be chances to obtain more incense.
@stsword No, using a particular Art to save the old man only benefits you. ‘Saving’ the old man through beguilement is intentionally written. A desire to live is not the same as surviving, after all. One of those morally-iffy things.
Those are interesting ideas, and yes, you’re right about overlap. I guess I have certain limits in mind for each power which may or may not come through in the writing. You fly far slower than the speed of sound, which is made clear in the pet/rukh quest; though you can drop people from on high. The mirage does have battle options, and you could kill someone with the fortune mastery. Shapeshifting is limited by size. The larger or smaller the animal form, the more akasha it uses, and it is limited to humans and natural animals. Windshaping is leashed rage, and is limited to blasting or cutting.
That’s a good point about truewishing in the Samodai battle. I’ll change that one, since I don’t intend for it to be able to do that. Wishgranting mostly allows you to recreate things you previously obtained. As there aren’t a lot of materials in the Celestial Court, this is limited to things you have found on your previous mortal world ‘visit’. As for why not claim an anvil or a pit, well, the jinn are picky and don’t want to collect such things?
or somone’s on a LOT of drugs @-)
You obviously haven’t read any discworld novels there, Roslyn.
Maybe the world is flat, on the back of three elephants, on the back of a giant turtle swimming through the void of space, frolicking with the space dolphins…
Okay thanks for the response, Tenryu.
The way I saw the saving the old man options I figured using Edict would definitely save the old man, fortune crafting would probably save the old man, and charm really didn’t sound like a good idea.
I was surprised there wasn’t a “have his wife wish him well” option, but not a big deal.
Oh and for the record, Tenryu, I know flying isn’t normally that fast, but I kind of figured that at the point you master it to get teleportation, that your flying would become much much faster as well. Or is that an unsafe assumption?