The contrast between Blade covered in blood murdering monarchs and then Blade going “hello. you uh you look….. adequate” and then running away is one of my favorites!

Thank you so much!

Blade: his biggest need is knowing that MC is safe, well, reachable, and not going to die at any given moment. He is very needy and worried in that department and needs a lot of assurance to not go crazy!

Trouble: his biggest need is probably quality time and affection with MC. He’d be okay if they couldn’t see each other due to missions, but if they were in the same proximity but too busy to really spend time together/touch each other/just be affectionate, he’d get antsy and weird!

Tallys: her biggest need is definitely ALONE time with MC. In her mind, their biggest obstacle is [SPOILERS] their different lifespans [/SPOILERS], so she is GREEDY for time alone with them. She is very needy when it comes to this and not fulfilling this need enough would lead to fights and anxiety on her part!

Shery: her biggest need is probably contact and communication with MC, so while she wouldn’t necessarily mind if MC was away on missions a lot, she’d miss them a lot and would need them to stay in touch via letters and etc. She’d get pretty insecure that MC had forgotten about her or was not missing her or was enjoying being away from her, so if she (MC) couldn’t go out of her way to send Shery a letter, this insecurity would begin to eat away at her!

Riel: his biggest need is probably a healthy balance of together time and alone time. A relationship with him will not work if MC constantly needs to be with him/doing things with him: working together in the same space is okay, but if MC is constantly trying to talk to Riel or distract him when he’s working, he would get pretty worn down. So being able to understand when Riel needs to think and being able to do MC’s own thing is probably his biggest need!

Chase: his biggest need is trust in the relationship. Not only that MC trusts him without a doubt, and never questions or suspects that he’s doing anything untoward (within reason obviously), and also that he can absolutely trust MC and never have any reason to doubt them. Any whiff of infidelity or any other form of secret-keeping/deceit/betrayal is the end of the relationship, no exceptions. Obviously if Chase just like disappears for weeks without any notice, he’d totally understand if MC didn’t trust him anymore, but if he was talking to some vendor in a friendly way to get a gift for MC and MC accused him of cheating on them or checking the vendor out, it will not be a great time…

Red: his biggest need is probably someone who’s interested and respectful of his interests. They don’t need to be like enthusiastic or OBSESSED with his pursuits–like if he gamed in a modern AU, MC wouldn’t need to be a huge gamer–but they should be able to listen and engage him in discussion about them from time to time and show genuine interest. If they’re the type of person to get bored with listening to him talk about similar things a lot, or roll their eyes and go “UGH NOT THIS AGAIN, can we talk about something else for once?” it’s probably not going to work out.

Ayla: her biggest need is compassion and understanding and patience. A lot of Ayla’s past experiences and traumas cause her to lash out or run away from certain problems, and she needs someone who can see through all that and be her anchor until she can work through those problems and begin to heal. If her partner is the type of person to bail at the first sign of real trouble, it will definitely not work out.

Briony: her biggest need is someone who’s strong yet gentle enough to see through her forced emotions and push her to admit how she’s really feeling. Briony tends to try to bottle up her negative emotions, both for her own benefit and other people’s (“I don’t want to bring anyone else down,” “I’m being irrational about this and I know it so I won’t say anything,” “I need to be strong and deal with this on my own”), but she needs someone who can say “it’s okay, you can tell me how you really feel” or “that’s bullshit, you’re lying to yourself” rather than “okay I guess I’ll give you some space” and take what she says at face value, even when it’s obvious she’s feeling the opposite of what she says. It’s complicated, but basically she needs someone who can push her to be honest and break through her ingrained habits!

Lavinet: her biggest need is respect. She needs someone who respects her and views her as an equal, not someone who privately or publicly thinks she needs coddling, frets over insulting things (like she stepped in some cold mud and now she’ll get a cold), and who genuinely respects the work she does as a courtier and politician, rather than thinking it’s a trivial job or not really that hard or just “cute”. Basically she needs someone who doesn’t think of her as some damsel in distress to white knight over, but someone who is genuinely a peer to respect!

Me, offering you a gourmet spread of good and nuanced romance options:

You: I want That One

This is… the exact opposite of fluff lol but I imagine Chase says stuff like “I find jealousy to be an unproductive emotion” but then in situations where he’d get jealous, it has… a profound impact on their sex life? Like it uh brings out something kind of dark, and he’s suddenly eager to have sex all the time, everywhere, in a kind of… domineering way.

He sort of wants to do the latter all the time anyway though, so hopefully MC would be prepared for him to list out all the places he’d like to do it every time they go somewhere new! 

Okay, now for actual fluff–he can’t sleep if MC doesn’t kiss him good night, and refuses to get out of bed (or let them get out of bed) without a good morning kiss, too! After that he hops out of bed all chipper :) He doesn’t even need coffee!

Recruit #1: “does anyone ever notice how the Hero of Haven actually gets injured like… a lot?”

Recruit #2: “yeah, it seems like every other day they shatter their bones like glass?”

Recruit #1: “i wonder why that is”

-Trouble and MC kneel on the battlefield while he fiercely cradles their face, asking them in urgent tones if they’re okay while they bleed profusely from the scalp-

Recruits: Ohhhhh

Maybe each month should have DLC that just looks like:

January: The Shepherds go to the mall

February: The Shepherds go to the beach

March: The Shepherds find a baby in the dumpster

April: The Shepherds sink in a bog

May: The Shepherds have a holiday party

June: The Shepherds fiercely debate over fighting 100 duck-sized horses or 1 horse-sized duck

July: The Shepherds teach Trouble how to swim

August: The Shepherds get really really drunk

And so on and so forth until I die…

Hi there, I’m so glad you enjoyed the last update, I’m having more fun than I thought detailing the differences between Elven culture and the Shepherds’ way of life, and also HRGHGHH Tallys 💚🤎💚

And good question! When I first started writing the game, Briony (and Gonturan) didn’t exist yet, so my initial descriptions of Clarion were based on what I thought Gonturan was going to look like, if that makes any sense! Once Briony was introduced, I gave her sword Gonturan’s appearance because it fit her backstory better, and then I switched Clarion to a sword made of abyssal fire (which is why Chandry refers to it as blazing with red–I sort of imagined it as more ominous at the time, a void blade with a red flame), but that didn’t feel right either, so now I’ve changed it again so that Clarion is sort of crystalline in appearance, almost as if it’s made of iridescent crystal or glass, but edged with gold! This is its current description in my version of the game, which I don’t believe I’ve updated to the public version yet because I know my indecisiveness is tiresome lol:

You pick up the sword in question, feeling its hilt hum and vibrate when you wrap your hand around it. The blade is constructed of a strange, icy blue crystalline material, edged with gold.

Chandry gasps. “You want to buy Clarion? The Skyshard, Herald of the Heavens?” He speaks in a very hushed voice, his eyes wide. “That sword is rumored to have been forged at the Eye of the World, the tallest peak known to man. Legend says that it’s unbreakable, and when swung at dawn in the hands of a champion, it blazes with a radiant and holy light. Its edge is so sharp that it makes the air sing, almost as if it could cut the sky itself, and they say whole armies have been rallied by that piercing, maddening battle-song, as sweet and ancient as the winds and the turning of the world itself…” Then he pauses, looking a little sheepish. “But of course, that’s just a legend.”

So it’s sort of heavenly/celestial/dawn themed… I don’t really have a good visual reference for it at the moment, but maybe we can do codex entries for the legendary weapons when the time comes! This was the best I could do, but it’s more about the material of the blade rather than the weapon shape itself, since these are all wrong when it comes to the sword’s form and the gold detailing, etc.!

By the way, thank you so much for enjoying the weapon codexes, they’ve been so much fun to make!! 💖

Riding side-saddle is a preference rather than a custom, since trousers are fairly common between both genders; most women who ride, including aristocrats, do it astride the saddle and are taught that way, and there’s no particular controversy or commentary over this, as horseback riding is an acceptable thing for a young aristocrat of any gender to be passionate about! The ones who sit side-saddle tend to be seen as particularly elegant or feminine and not particularly outdoorsy, which can be viewed as an attractive thing among some circles, but the ones who don’t aren’t viewed derisively in any way, as I’d say they make up the majority rather than the other way around. Thanks for your question!

Sorry, I don’t know play Crusader Kings and don’t know enough about it to rightly say what kind of rulers they’d be in that context! I’ve heard a lot about it, though!

Not presently, since I haven’t programmed in a birthday present for him yet in the shop (and I’m not convinced I will, considering the amount of people who will either let him die or not have him join up); but I’m sure you all will persuade me before the game is finished! 😆