WIP - Parasitical(sci-fi/vague cosmic horror, update October 13 2024 | 178k words)

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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DEMO
Currently finished—Prologue, Chapter One through Four. ~178k words, average playthrough ~48k.
———
His flesh, our sustenance. His blood, our drink. His bones, our foundation, His body, our haven.

Five hundred years ago, the Earth was dying. Water polluted, dirt infertile, forests and meadows crumbling to the wars of steel and fire. And so the Order called His Grace, the Lord of Communion, down from where he rested before and He allowed humanity to rest inside his body.

Or at least, that’s the story the Order tells.

You grew up under the masked faces of their Exalted, under the stories of Earth past. Rusted metal and cracked plastic; His bone and His flesh. Conflicting worlds, conflicting times, and soon, it might all come to a head.

Features
  • Play as a recruit of the Order, an Exalted.
  • Be male, female, or nonbinary.
  • Romance five separate characters.
  • Shape yourself—are you pragmatic or empathetic? Do you speak out or remain silent? Do you trust the Order, and do they trust you?
  • Align yourself with different factions based on moral imaginings.
  • Experience a world of greater things than you can imagine, but where your choices still matter.
Romance Options
  • Tallis/Talyn/Taira: Green eyes and long, auburn hair. Your childhood friend—Or, at least, companion. They aren’t the biggest fan of the Order. Perhaps that will have greater implications than simple complaints as the situation grows more dire.
  • August: Blonde, sharp, and severe, he’s the one who brought you into the fold. A zealot, some might call him. The Order doesn’t name His Grace as a God, but August certainly seems to think that He is.
  • El: Long, thick black hair, skin tanned and freckled. She’s a mechanic of the Order. Talented, there’s no doubt about it, despite her occasional airheadedness. Sometimes, you can’t help but feel that she’s hiding something.
  • Jasper: Gender selectable. Muscled either way, with dark skin and deep brown eyes. Loud and arrogant—and they have what it takes to back it up. As the first new arrival to the Commune in… all of history, they could pose as an omen or a savior. Either way, they might shatter everything that you thought you knew.
  • Icarus: The Head of the Order. Everything else about them is shrouded in mystery.
Content Warnings
  • Copious mentions of blood/flesh(Nonhuman, not caused by violence.)
Coming Soon/Changelog

DISCLAIMER: I’m a student and a slow writer in general, so updates might not be very frequent. Nevertheless, I’ll try to see this story through.

  • 3/7/23: First posted with Prologue and 1/2 of Chapter One, ~22k words.
  • 3/11/23: Chapter one fully updated. About 8k words in this one, ~30.5k. See post 11 for more details.
  • 4/27/23: Chapter two posted, about 16k words. See post 32 for more.
  • 9/30/23: Chapter three posted, about 30k words. See post 45 for more.
  • 10/3/23: Chapter four posted, about 95k words. See post 52 for more.

Up next: Chapter 5

For more information, see: Tumblr.

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Absolutely love it! Can’t wait to keep reading this.

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seems like the saves are broken

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I love this premise! Living inside of a cosmic entity as well as surviving on it?? It’s both incredibly believable and disgusting, and the exact right amount of disturbing. You’re a talented writer and I cannot wait to see where you take this story.

So far I’ve really enjoyed playing as a zealot warrior who would choose He over his friendships and I’m very interested to see how badly that bites him in the ass, or turns in his favour.

I’m guessing you probably already know about this (or something like it) but there is a “Wendigoon” YouTube video called Mystery Flesh Pit National Park that I couldn’t stop thinking about while reading this that may have some ideas you could bounce off of.

Anyway, good luck for your journey ahead!

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I love the premise. The cynic in me automatically dislikes the order, but I can’t help to find out more. I can see this one shaping up to be one of my favourite!

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Thank you so much for your words! And yes, Mystery Flesh Pit was a huge inspiration for this.

Hm, that’s weird. It seems to be working for me. Try opening it again?

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I really liked the Demo so far, can’t wait to read more :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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I love the unique concept! Your writings really great I can’t wait to see more and get to know the characters and see more of the fleshy world. Saves worked for me at first for awhile but then strangely were throwing an error:bad slot message.

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Such a unique premise :hushed: Will keep an eye on this one. (the saves are still broken btw :sweat_smile:)

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Saves should be fixed now. Sorry for the delay on this!

A warning that I constantly add variables as I write, so most updates will make saves unusable.

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ok so basically were in the zeal kingdom from chrono trigger only they also live inside the lavos standin instead of just worshipping him in exchange for power. sounds cool!

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UPDATE
Pretty small one, but it delivers what was promised - the latter half of Chapter 1 and the Stats Info page. Around 8k words, putting the total wordcount at ~30.5k and average playthrough of 10.5k.

  • Meet the final two ROs - Jasper and Icarus!
  • Experience an attack.
  • Learn some uncomfortable truths.
  • Um… see what your stats mean?
    I did write a lot of this very late at night, so any feedback on typos/bugs/inconsistencies would be appreciated! Besides general pacing/character issues. Those will be a job for 2nd Draft Ena. Up next will be, of course, Chapter 2.

Link to the demo.

…And it seems I don’t have enough permissions to edit my post, so the changelog and title won’t be updating to match(Fixed—Thank you to the mods!)

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@EnaMeena – I have converted your first post to a wiki, so you should be able to edit it now.

This work-around is due to your user-level being basic. Once you achieve level 2, you should find all editing restrictions resolved.

If you have further issues or concerns, please contact any of the moderators or tag the moderator team (@ moderators)

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I’m sorry, but could a moderator change the title to ‘updated March 11th’ in place of March 7th? It seems to be the one thing I still can’t change.

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Got an ‘invalid token’ error here.

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It seems to have been some sort of character issue. Should be fixed!

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Now that I finished reading: I’m disturbed, well done!
The prologue nicely sets up the members of the Order as otherworldly and the twist of MC joining them works splendidly.
Some questions about the world:

  • I’d love to know what the city looks like: are the roads paved?
  • Are people with blue eyes rare?
  • What are MC’s eyes and hair or are we going to be choosing that?
  • Do people have a duty to procreate or something like that, what’s this setting’s stance on relationships? If there are only 500 people in the colony surely that would lead to some aggressive inbreeding :thinking: but at the same time can’t really avoid that.
  • What are clothes made out of?

Btw the saves are broken again.

Typos

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which
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the one grinding paste?
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capitalization

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Thank you so much!

  • So the city is set up in a concentric arrangement, with the Order’s spires at the very center(three of them) and then everything spanning out from there. There are five ‘rings’, each one defined by a road, and on four sides, a straight path cuts through them all—the throughway. Roads aren’t paved and are more just the clear spaces where there aren’t buildings.
  • They aren’t too rare, but in the MC’s small sphere from before, they would’ve been notable at least.
  • I’m trying to integrate character customization into the plot instead of having a chunk before the story—Maybe something to reconsider later, if I can’t find a way to really fit in everything that most reader’s expect as customization. So far, though, you can choose your hair length, type, and preferred method of upkeep.
  • Thinking about things like this is why I hate worldbuilding :sweat_smile:. Relationships are generally encouraged, though there’s no larger expectation of marriage—moving in together is usually the largest milestone. It’s sort of drilled into people that too many children would be bad, due to constant talk of famine/conservation/‘old Earth had way too many people’ so more than two is uncommon. Interbreeding… is a topic that probably exists in the Commune but that I’ll pat and put to the side.
  • The farms grow primarily food, medicine, and fibers to make clothes. Things like flax and all that. The process of making them is a job for the Order, and they’re handed out by request at Rations.

Btw the saves are broken again
Saves, my eternal enemy. Pretty sure it was me forgetting to un-comment the *sm_init command this time. Should be fixed.

Thank you for all the typos!

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Oh… Oh I feel so bad for August… like… i know some people who’ve had beliefs (both religious and non religious) shattered and it’s a very tough thing to witness couldn’t imagine being in that position.
this is gona sound silly but i imagined the creature we’re in like a giant space whale :laughing:
will we find out what they look like?

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I really like what you have so far. A very unique concept and a enjoyable writingstyle. I’ll keep my eye on this one. Good luck with the further development of your story!

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