[WIP] The Intelligencer’s Apprentice — Political Mystery / Fantasy (20k words demo)

[SkaldoftheEast]

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Title:

[WIP] The Intelligencer’s Apprentice — Political Mystery / Investigation (20k words demo)

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A king lies still beneath a borrowed crown.
A verdict falls before the truth is found.
The court departs, its conscience left behind.
Yet doubt takes root where certainty should stand.
And you are not the sort to leave it be.

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Premise

A royal murder. A rushed verdict. A dead man the court wants buried who may not be entirely dead.

You play as the apprentice to one of the realm’s foremost intelligencers, stepping into a case the court has already declared closed.

What begins as observation quickly turns into something more—conflicting testimonies, quiet contradictions, and a sense that the truth has been settled far too quickly.

The Intelligencer’s Apprentice is a political mystery set in Ozryn—a city shaped by conquest, where the past hasn’t agreed to stay buried. When a royal death is settled too quickly, you step in to question what others have chosen to accept.

THE CITY OF OZRYN

1. Patron’s Keep — the castle at the city’s heart, where the demo begins
2. Watcher’s Grove — the garden of defaced statues inside the Crown Quarter
3. Ashentide — the Ghat Quarter, built around the river that runs through the city’s center
4. The Ninefold — named for the nine merchant guilds that have controlled the bazaar district for generations
5. The Outer Ring — the ungoverned margin of the empire

FEATURES

Six Playable Races — Each One Changes How the World Sees You

Your race isn’t a stat package. It’s a lens the world looks at you through.

• Human — Adaptable and unremarkable in the best possible way. People underestimate you. That’s useful.

• Dwarf — Stubborn, disciplined, and taken seriously. People assume competence before you speak.

• Elf — Patient and long-sighted. NPCs carry assumptions about your loyalties that you’ll spend the game navigating.

• Half-elf — Neither world fully claims you. That distance taught you to read people. You’ve had to.

• Half-orc — Powerful and immediately visible. You’ve spent a lifetime proving yourself in rooms that decided what you were before you opened your mouth.

• Vanara — Rare in the capital. Exotic enough to be noticed everywhere. Impossible to pin down.

Every major NPC reacts to your race differently. These aren’t surface level cosmetic changes, they affect dialogue, relationship trajectories and what certain characters choose to tell you.

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Race-Locked and Contextual Choices

Some choices only appear when they make sense for who you are. Not because others couldn’t take them but because the context that gives them weight doesn’t exist for everyone.

Your background shapes what you notice, what others reveal, and how certain situations unfold. The same investigation can feel very different depending on the eyes you’re seeing it through.

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Companion System

You are joined by two companions, each with their own perspective on the investigation.

At key points, you will decide how to divide your efforts, choosing which lead to pursue while a companion follows another. What each path uncovers is different, and the full picture only emerges when those findings are brought together.

Your choices shape how effectively your companions operate, what they choose to share, and how much you can rely on them as the investigation unfolds.

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A Cast With Their Own Agendas

A war councillor who never speaks without purpose. A commander who trusts you just enough to be dangerous. A regent who wants the truth but not necessarily for the right reasons.

Everyone involved has something at stake. What they show you is only part of it.

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Current demo (~20k words) includes:

• Prologue + court proceedings

• Introduction to key figures

• Early investigative setup

• Initial branching choices

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I’d really appreciate feedback on:

• Does the court scene feel engaging or too heavy?

• Is the investigation clear, or confusing at points?

• Do choices feel meaningful so far?

• Any moments where your interest dropped?

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This is my first project, so I’m especially interested in early impressions and pacings.

To play the demo, go here: https://cogdemos.ink/play/abhishek-dey/the-intelligencers-apprentice/mygame

AI Disclosure:

No — This project does not contain the output of Generative AI
Yes — This project contains the output of Generative AI

[wenus]

Hi! There’s bug, no matter of what choice. Other than that; it’s a great start! Can’t wait for more, I love that we can choose our race.

[SkaldoftheEast]

I really appreciate your feedback :). I’ll get to fixing that bug asap.

[SkaldoftheEast]

Pushed a fix for several bugs and smoothed out progression so players don’t get stuck. Please let me know if anything still breaks. I’ll work on fishing out any more bugs in meantime

[SkaldoftheEast]

The bug fixing sessions are honestly quite embarrassing. I did not expect my work to be so sloppy. Especially one that I decided to publish. That said, I did end up fixing the major bugs, expect more bug fixes by tomorrow. By Monday I believe the demo will be bug free and finally lead to an overall enjoyable experience.

[Prawn]

First demo link goes straight to an error. Second link gets this “choicescript_stats line 3: invalid indent, expected at least one row” on the very first page. I’ll give my standard advice of using CSIDE to develop your game if you aren’t already, because it makes catching and fixing errors much easier than eyeballing a text file. Bugs are common enough in the early writing, imagine how bad they’ll get once you’re 6 chapters and multiple branching choices deep.

[SkaldoftheEast]

The first complaint is completely valid. I’ve removed the first demo link. Secondly, I couldn’t find any error on the first page in my playtest. Could you perhaps share a screenshot of the error? I would really appreciate it if you do so.

[Prawn]

I’ve just tried it again now and the error didn’t pop up this time. Maybe I clicked on it while you were actively updating it? No idea.

[SkaldoftheEast]

Glad it’s working now. Like you said, it must have been when I was actively updating the game files. If you run into any more bugs feel free to let me know, I really appreciate any feedback or criticism.

[SkaldoftheEast]

Update (Playable Build Ready)

Hey everyone quick update.

The demo is now fully playable end-to-end. I’ve run through randomtest and quicktest, and most of the major bugs should be ironed out. If you ran into broken paths earlier, those should be fixed now.

At this stage, I’m mainly looking for feedback on a few things:

Does the investigation flow feel clear, or confusing at any point?

Do the deductions (especially around the hall scene) feel satisfying to piece together?

Any moments where you felt lost, bored, or unsure what to do next?

Of course, if you still run into bugs, please let me know, I’ll fix them as quickly as I can.

Appreciate everyone who’s checked it out so far.

I’ve also started work on Chapter 2.

Aiming for the next update in about a month if all goes well.

[SkaldoftheEast]

OZRYN

The city existed long before the New Empire arrived. It had once been Anvael.

Not just a place, but a people.

Built in a different tradition, oriented around water, shade, and the quiet logic of something that had grown rather than been imposed.

When the Empire came trampling onto its lands, it did not erase what was there.

It overlaid it.

They sought to carve from the Anvael a reflection of the world they had lost—a city shaped in remembrance of older ways, of distant homelands they had fled. Wide ceremonial avenues were cut through living neighborhoods. Native stonework was defaced, repurposed, pressed into unfamiliar symmetry rather than torn down outright.

But the effort was never completed.

Somewhere between ambition and reality, the Empire realized the futility of remaking an entire living city in the image of memory. The scale was too vast, the foundations too deeply rooted. What began as transformation settled into compromise.

The further one moves from the Crown Quarter, the more Anvael reasserts itself. By the Outer Ring, the imperial vision has thinned to little more than a trace.

Every street in Ozryn is an argument—between what was built to endure, and what was forced to remember.

Anyone who noticed the architectural shift in the abduct scene was reading it correctly.

This marks the first of many worldbuilidng dumps that I plan do in between chapters. It serves the purpose of sharing bits and pieces of the world I’ve created for the readers to put together. And while most of these shall find their way in the book itself, they may not go into much detail there. Hence this is a clever way to do so.

Work on chapter 2 continues to progress well. Thank you for reading along.

[Guerra]

Ngl so far this game looks so interesting!! I can’t wait to read more of this, the investigation is so well made and the characters interesting to read, I need to know more about them (I already adore Vikky lol)

[eveelution]

This looks really fun! I also think it’s so exciting to see a political/mystery IF, because they are really fun and impressive.

My first comment is about the character creation with Chancellor Fillian: on one hand this is just a game device for us to pick a name, species, etc. On the other hand, the Chanceller is asking us our name and our personal values, etc. I wish there was at least a qualifier line similar to “whatever you choose to tell him, the truth is” or actually multiple choices that let you pick whether what you tell the chancellor is the truth. For example, when he asks the PC name and the choice is “a name from memory” or “my own name” I assumed this was a test of the player’s honesty. Or when he asks of you value freedom or promises more I’d like to say “promises” but believe in freedom. (Because who tells a government official that you don’t respect authority?).

Also, I’m not super familiar with Hinduism or Pathfinder and therefore had to look up what Vanara are. Consider whether you want to give more description of the species, or not?

There are several times you don’t capitalize a sentence immediately following someone speaking/quotation marks. I first notice it on the page after character creation when Fillian is speaking.

“Yet.. the notion that one day you would have to live upto his name haunts you.” The ellipses is three dots, and “upto” is usually two separate words not a compound word (unless you use a dash). This was on the page immediately after character creation.

“You are unceremoniously led into once they rifle through your contents.” [When the guards search the PC before entering the castle.] The “to” is missing the noun. I would say “into the hall” or take off the “to” and have it say “led in”.

“She was draped in fine silk, her green robes flowed in the air without restraint. You swear you see her robes change thier hues,” change to present tense to match the rest of the story, and “their” is misspelt. Oh! “Their” is misspelled again when introducing the trio.

Regarding the trio: Willdrum rubs our chest on first meeting and I think you were trying to describe it as, like, a friendly gesture? But it reads as kind of inappropriately forward?

When describing the half-orc, you use “illiterate” when you mean “literate”.

Super minor thought, but we spend the investigation running our bare hands over sooty windows and arms deep in a dead body’s sword wound, so I imagine my character must be a mess when Fillian storms in and demands all the investigators to the great hall. I would love somewhere a comment about being careful not to get dirty, or not caring, or cleaning ourselves up after? What do you think?

Wait, that was only the prologue!!! Oof wow the writing was so fun and engaging I was completely prepared for a short little mini story of a one night investigation. I am stopping my comments (for now!) at this spot and will add more later. I do want to say that I am suspicious about the king regent, because he seems so young? So is he a puppet and if so for whom?