So have one now!
Today, I developed another take on God and Angels which would be for a story.
What story, heck if I know. Not the Rubyverse, not Phyrra and Cyrus, not Soano, so that disqualifies the usual candidates. Could be new, could be an existing story (but probably not), got no clue even what form the story would be; all I know is that the story would feature what I developed today.

And what I developed today was basically an origin story of roles and relationships which persist to the modern day.

God, in this setting, as per my usual, is agendered, having no actual gender. God is an entity, existing in a way transcending our understanding, neither male nor female. However, God likes to present itself in the form we are most comfortable with.

As most humans identify God as being 'He', that is the form He usually takes, and will be how I refer to Him for the rest of the ramble for the sake of simplicity. All of His creations are also agendered at their base levels. The souls of humans have no gender (even though spirits have gender), and so too are all angels agendered, able to appear as male, female, both, or neither, at will.

God has more to him than that. He is not the all-powerful God that we know.
​In this setting, God both did, and did not, create the universe. God gained awareness, but was blind to everything. He saw absolutely nothing. He could do absolutely nothing. But then, He noticed something--the event that we would come to define as being the big bang, as a possibility. Not a reality, but a possibility. And He could make that possibility become a reality, so He willed it to be, setting off a chain reaction.

In the resulting universe...God can't break the rules of reality, but He can bend them a bit, where He influences events. So, He is bound by the rules of the universe, thus, is not what we'd call all-powerful...even though He is able to do just about anything.

God can see everything in our universe...but in order to see a specific thing, He has to actually focus on that thing. This can be thought of as seeing the forest instead of a specific tree within--He sees the whole forest and thus has an idea for what happens within, but the only way for Him to know what happens to one specific tree within the forest is for Him to focus His attention on that tree.

Since the universe is a very, very big place, that's a very, very big forest for Him to be monitoring the trees within.

God can see into the future...but He only sees the probable futures that are most likely to happen. He is thus able to be surprised both by natural freak occurrences and of course by any creature with free will, including humans. We usually act in the way He sees us acting, but we can still surprise Him at certain times.

God both knows everything about the universe, and yet doesn't know everything about the universe. This can be thought of as an instinctive knowledge. He, by what we'd know as intuition, more or less knows what everything does...but He doesn't know precisely why they work that way, only that they do.

So when you combine all of this, He's not all-knowing or all-seeing, but He's still fairly close, in that He knows the general workings of the forest, the general happenings of the forest, and the most likely occurrences to happen in the near-future of the forest, and He is able to directly influence the forest.

...Just, not turn the forest into a fire, as it were. (Though He's quite capable of setting the forest on fire, should He so will it. He just...isn't.)

God has, throughout the history of the universe, been trying to influence it as positively as He can, but while He has capabilities beyond what any human has and his existence is far above our own, He is not perfect; He can both make mistakes, and have oversights which lead to bad things having happened.

To this end, He actually uses His direct creations as tools.
Angels, with a single set of wings and the ability to take on any form they please, serve as monitors of sorts. They observe areas of reality, interact with it on a more direct basis, influence it subtly rather than overtly, but also constantly and consistently rather than sporadically.

Cherubim, with two sets of wings, serve as more or less the 'workforce of the heavens' (if angels can be thought of as the 'workforce of the non-celestial'). They sometimes interact with the less-astral planes, but more or less do most of the "behind-the-scenes" work of running/influencing the universe for God.

Seraphim, with three sets of wings, serve as overseers. They are, more or less, the bosses of angels, but also are conduits. They serve as a direct line of communication. They occasionally communicate directly with God, and are more or less His direct assistants and underlings. They very rarely, but on occasion, interact with more mortal realms.

Arcangels, with four sets of wings, serve as almost-equals to God. Direct underlings, direct 'generals', direct advisors, who are full-time entities serving more or less as His direct "balance-checkers" as it were. It is literally their job to question God's decisions, more or less. Well, two of them at least. (Gabby, the third, more or less has the job of being the direct enforcer of God to keep unruly children in line, and serves as a balance and tipping point, keeping disarrest from happening.)

​Arcangel Lucifer, The Lightbringer, Satan of Hell, is "a bit" of a rebel, using his male name and pronouns but taking on a permanently-female form. (Why? Because.) He is not actually evil. Just...argumentative, and strongly opinionated. (He's the oldest of the three arcangels.) This puts him frequently in disagreement with God, but he's not always antagonistic with Him. Just usually antagonistic.

​And, interestingly, he is not always wrong. God is, as mentioned, not perfect. He can make mistakes. Usually, a fair indicator of this is when Michael/Michelle agrees with Lucifer, but even when not, sometimes, God admits that even if Lucifer's exact argument may not be right, he still raised valid points to take into consideration.

His eight wings are all white feathered wings, representing his element being pure light.

Arcangel Michael/Michelle changes every human life cycle between which form (s/)he takes, and is currently in a male form. Lucifer tends to be a champion of the greater existence thinking on levels of souls; Michael tends to be a champion for existence on a smaller scale--most notably to humans at least, that of our own, dealing with us both spiritually and physically.

This still puts him/her at odds with God on occasion, and at odds with Lucifer on occasion, but the two are actually fairly similar to one another, having a lot in common and getting along fairly well. Michael/Michelle is the middle-aged of the three, and has his/her wings be of different elements:

Two fire-wings, two ice-wings (all four feathered), one water wing which more or less looks like a liquid octopus tentacle with dangling squid-like-tentacle protrusions and a jellyfish-like membrane (all made from different types of water, but giving it an aesthetic loosely like that of a bat wing, only with anatomical parts matched to sea life), a matching wing made of energy, with what looks like lightning for the bones and the membrane more or less being visible static electricity (so, another bat wing).

His final two wings, both feathered, are one white and one dark wing, representing light and darkness.

Arcangel Gabriel/Gabrielle, Gabby for short, usually takes on the gender opposite of what gender God would be represented as when appearing spiritually, and takes on the same gender as what God would be represented as when appearing physically. 

This is more or less because Gabby tends to take on the role of both arbiter and enforcer: as a representative of God, s/he will want to appear as if an incarnation of God when walking among mortals. However, on a more spiritual level when individuals have a stronger direct connection to God, Gabby then represents the opposite side of what God is seen as, as to provide a sense of balance.

Since, as mentioned, most people see God as male, Gabby is seen as male when in physical form and as a female in a spiritual form. And since arcangels tend not to spend much time in the physical realm, it's usually safe to assume Gabby is a she.

Gabby's got four wings like the other arcangels, but one pair (representative of air) is invisible, and thus, can't be seen. She has two metal (feathered) wings, two rock (also feathered) wings, and two vine-like spines of wings with hordes of bugs swarming from them to form a vaguely insectoid-like wing. Think like a butterfly wing, except instead of millions of scales, it's millions of bugs. These represent various aspects of life:
Rock, as the raw building blocks; insects/vines, as the creatures created from it; metal, as the refined products made from the life.

...That's as far as I got on that.

Like I said.

I don't really have a story.

Well, I do.

I think me describing the above?

That counts as a story.

In that I have four named characters with numerous implied lesser characters.
I have these characters' backstories defined, as well as more or less what their abilities are, albeit deliberately vague on the exact nature and scope of them.

So there's the makings of a story.

But I didn't really take it anywhere.
Haven't built it further and I probably won't.
Haven't placed it anywhere and I probably won't.
So what you see here is probably what you're gonna get.

The next time I talk about God, Angels, or anything like that, it'll be yet another story. Maybe already existing, maybe another new one, but I can guarantee you it won't be this one because I really don't know where to go from here. This was all I had.

It's very hard to keep my life together. It's just...so difficult for me to do anything right now. I'm physically okay, albeit a bit battered. I'm mentally alright, albeit a bit tired. I'm emotionally...well, a bit dulled. Almost dead emotionally as in robot with no feelings, empty shell, barely holding on to happiness, but I manage, especially with support from my girlfriend (who probably doesn't know how much I rely on them even if they think they do because however much they think I rely on them it's more than that).

While the problem could in fact be at that emotional level, it actually feels like I'm tired in a way transcending all three. Not physical, not mental, not emotional. Like, spiritually, or something. Where I just am detached from everything, and yet attached to everything, all at the same time.

My mind goes hectic, racing about everything, everywhere, but there's a disconnect between it and reality of doing anything, where I drift off into the world of "this is what I want to have done" rather than "this is what I'm doing". Because what I'm doing is a flat load of nothing.

I'm just.

Really struggling to get things done.

I'm not overwhelmed.

Well, I have a little bit of that, between working the same long shift every single day and the amount of time/effort devoted to my extracurricular activities. (Such as playing, or rather far more time-consuming, moderating, mafia games.)

But the simple fact is, when all is said and done.

I have a lot of time free.

And I waste it.

Doing.
Nothing.

And more than that.

I often lie.
Sometimes, directly to people's faces.
I say I don't have the time, when I do.
I say I haven't read, when I have.
But while those are things which should be lies, they don't feel dishonest. How could those things which aren't truths yet be spoken not be the dishonesty? Because the real dishonesty comes more in a deeper level. A level of character. Where I am lying to myself about the problems.

Where it's just so hard to do things, for no apparent reason. So I decide not to do them.
In part out of a sense of perfection; I seek it when I do things, in spite of knowing I can never have it.
In part because of the time and effort.
In part because of inertia, of momentum having halted to a crash.
In part because of a sense of detachment.

Not in that I don't want to be there, because it's the opposite; I want nothing more than to be there.
But more because of a not wanting to do the thing associated with being there, and a detachment, disparity, between what I want to be there and what would actually be there. Because what's actually there is work, effort, hard stuff for me to handle; what I want to be there is me genuinely giving my all to give the absolute best, to give something as close to perfect as possible, so that things are positive and people, other people, feel better.

A great amount of my desires are born from some sense, deep down, of altruism. I want to help others. I want to give them something. I want to show them the best I have. I want to deliver something they enjoy. I want to have everyones' lives just be better because of me.

But I also have a deep sense of selfishness. I want others to have been helped by me. I want to prove that I can give it to them, that I live up to it, that I can do what I promise. I want to have done something, and have it be done by me, and that something be positive.

I'm in a bit of a rambly mood. I don't really have a direction with this. No greater purpose. Nothing tying this all together. I'm just kinda venting my thoughts out, pouring my heart out, and more or less trying to figure out why I am continuing to be a failure.

The more and more I dream of success, the further and further away success seems to be from me.
The more and more I want to help others, the less and less I feel I actually am helping them.
The more and more the thought of doing good exists, the less and less there's a reality of any good.

And I don't know how to fix it.
It's a problem.
I don't have a solution.

So many things I want to do.
And so few things, I am actually doing.

I'm existing, but only just.

I'm trying to find a way to put a positive spin on this. I've been toying with various things. Writing a song (which I've toyed with but never doubled down on doing). Rambling about all the reasons I'd have to, say, not do my job--and then at the last second, giving the twist for why I am committed to keeping going in it in spite of the hardships. Stuff like that.

But while those thoughts keep me afloat, it's hard for me once more to actually put them down and extrapolate on them.

A perfect example of "the more the thought exists, the less the reality does", in that the more I am thinking about such things, the harder it's becoming for me to actually blog about those things.

I don't want people to worry about me right now, because I don't want to be in a state which is worth worrying about.
I want to be in a state where I am at my prime, and doing what I do best. (Which is, at least in theory, being. Well. Me. And doing the things that I do. Like, uh. Generate stories? Tie interesting concepts together in new ways unique to me, e.g. the sort of person who would tie the four fundamental forces to the four classical elements?)

I don't want to be in a position where people have to give me advice, where people have to give me support, where people have to give me positive feedback and encouragement. I shouldn't need those things. I shouldn't need to have an ego fed, I shouldn't need to be propped up, I shouldn't need to be helped.

I should be the one doing that for others. Where I'm giving them support, even love.

Which makes it all the more pathetic that I do see myself as being in that position--where I constantly need others to tell me what I should be able to tell myself. I should be able to tell myself that I'm not a failure; I should be able to tell myself I'm not pathetic.

​But right now, I certainly don't have it in me, because that's the way I'm feeling.

And it was completely accidental, too; I wasn't really trying to soul search, but when I felt it, I felt like I was onto something, particularly during one moment which felt oh so strongly, undeniably, true.

I'm not quite sure where to begin; this revelation took me a while to unpack, but.
Basically.
You know how I identify as a median, right?
How there are many mes, and all of them are Bree?
And how while there are many of us, the primary two are identified as Ranger and mastina?

Well.

I think there's actually a third, and she's more dominant than both combined, especially right now. The reason I haven't noticed, however, is that she's really good at disguising herself as either of us...and more than that. She...on her own, by herself. Doesn't really have anything to think.

She's a bit of an empty shell, an empty husk. There's nothing in her, by herself. Yet she has this amazing ability. Ranger has the capability to talk to characters and get to know them. I've always known, however, that I have another ability, and this third me I believe is the source of it: when I actually become the characters.

And...this has been happening a lot as of recently. A LOT, a lot. Far, far, far, far, far, FAR more often than normal. The most it's ever happened since I was a young child, I believe. Primarily, the two I am becoming are actually becoming Ruby and actually becoming Phyrra, but I can and do become others as well. In this mode, I can think what they do, I can feel what they do, I can almost feel their powers coursing through my veins, and everything about their world becomes a reality to me.

Yet also during those same times, I feel a little bit of a sense of emptiness--as if there is a nothingness, a void. Which I think becoming the character is an attempt to fill. That the me who becomes these characters is literally attempting to become someone else...because there's nothing in her, nothing to her, nothing about her.

I actually have a hypothesis, that this third me who I only caught the faintest glimpse of is actually the first me, the first Bree, the original me. The me who is responsible for me having a core that all Brees derive from. The me who has the fullest control, the me who connects everything together in spite of not actually thinking for herself, instead simply summoning the thoughts of others to think for her.

This sounds like normal me delusions, yes. But what made me convinced that this might have merit was a moment.
There was a moment where I was able to release thought, control, and emotion to her. It was her, alone, in her thoughts, for just a split moment.

At first, there was literally nothing. No thought. No emotion. No nothing. But immediately following that. I felt the strongest fear I have ever felt in my life. It lasted for a split second. Only that long, because immediately following it I was promptly and immediately driving again, as if she was hiding herself intentionally from facing whatever thought could create that emotion.

But that was the most intense feeling I have ever experienced. A deep, primordial fear of something, mixed with a taint of sadness. My theory more or less developed that she was me before there were many mes, but was empty, isolated, alone. She was a vivid, perfect actor of sorts, capable of playing a part to reflect the circumstances and yet being nothing on her own. These parts she played were compartmentalized and from those raised the various mes. All originally her, but extensions of her that eventually came alive, more or less.

Of course, that's just the theory.
I think it's a good one, because it more or less matches my memory of my entire life, matches with my numerous mental conditions (autism plus bipolar disorder namely), matches what feels like it makes sense, and matches my recent experiences. (I've been feeling a bit detached from reality but more than that...I've been feeling a bit detached from myself in that I've been looking at me and just...not feeling like there's anything there.)

But while almost everything I've said is just conjecture, while almost everything I've said is purely speculation. I can still access the memory of that feeling, that sensation, of that deep, fundamental fear, with the tint of sadness attached. That was real. That was something overwhelmingly strong, even painful, to feel, and I know as much as I know I am Bree that it was a real feeling, one which originated from some very deep-rooted source.

If I had to self-analyze, what I'd get from it is that my guess is that I'm afraid of being nothing. I don't mean amounting to nothing. I don't mean dieing. (As in, suddenly going from existing to not existing.) Afraid of existing, but there being nothing in that existence at all. Which seems like a fairly reasonable fear to me.

I also don't think this is something I'll be exploring too much. I think stumbling upon this discovery was very, very healthy for my wellbeing, as a more or less, "Oh, so that's what's happening", in that it can help me better understand what I'm going through so I can manage my life a little more effectively. Yet I also feel that exploring much further would be detrimental since I get a kind of sense where, "leave the system undisturbed since I am happy with it", more or less.

In short, for much the same reason that I don't particularly care if people call me crazy or delusional, I don't particularly care to look further; I'm happy with this as it is, and that's all that really matters.

Specifically, I delved into the realm of "what if there were more than one type of these things which we normally only see one type of in a setting".

I came up with five unique ones for three critical aspects of good sci-fi settings: FTL travel (technically there's a sixth I could have also used, but I chose not to), weaponry, and defenses.

The first method of traveling faster than light is through Wormholes. Wormholes are tunnels through space. Go in on one end, appear on the other, taking a 'shortcut' from one location to another. They are naturally occurring in sizes too small to readily utilize, but can be artificially created in two ways:
Worm Gates are man-made gates (think like a space-stargate from the later seasons of SG-1) that transport ships from one location to another. They are the default method of transportation, because they are safe, require next to no power, have no charge time, and travel is near-instantaneous. However, the downside of worm gates is that you can only go from one worm gate to another worm gate, and obviously to use one you need to be near one.

It is possible, but far more difficult, to use a Worm Drive to basically manipulate a naturally-occurring wormhole and artificially increase its size and alter its exit point. This has the upside of being able to use anywhere, but requires a feat of engineering, is reasonably large (you might find one on a medium-sized ship, but this is mostly something reserved for a bigger ship), and eats up a lot of power, with a little bit of charge time.

Still, it produces the same safe, instantaneous, almost-charge-free travel of a worm gate, so it is a viable drive to have installed on many ships.

On a lesser scale, a teleporter, something to transport cargo and humans alike, uses a localized version of a wormhole for short-distance transfers. These can be ship-to-ship or even deck-to-deck in a single ship. (Think the rings technology from Stargate SG-1.)

Slipstream is basically a "network through space". It can be thought of as a series of freeways and highways. Slipstream portals are preexisting; they cannot be man-made. They are a naturally-occurring series of interstellar roadways of sorts. In many ways, they combine aspects of wormholes, ftl drives, warp drives, and hyperspace: they basically accelerate objects within at an incredibly rapid rate, bending through a network of a space which connects space together but allows for shortened travel between point a and point b.

Slip Drives can be installed in a ship of any size, but again run into the problem that you need to enter pre-existing Slip Portals in order to use the slip drive. It has the upside of also requiring next-to-no power (similar to a worm gate), and also absolutely zero charge time (similar to a worm gate), but the downside of travel not being instantaneous and furthermore travel being dangerous. You can take a wrong turn, and you can have your ship be torn to shreds if it has what can be thought of as a car crash within slipstream.

Hyperspace can be thought of as "traveling through another dimension", or "traveling through a different plane", or "traveling through a space between/outside of space". It is basically a type of space entered, which isn't normal space, and traveling through this special 'hyper' space allows for travel at a speed greater than light. Any ship can have a Hyper Drive and you can use it anywhere, but hyperspace is not without its disadvantages.

It requires a slight charge to enter--not much of one, but enough to cause problems if you need to escape on the fly. It requires a little bit of power, so if you're running low, you're dead in the water. It is not instantaneous; of the FTL methods, it's one of the slowest to get you from point a to point b. And it is also hazardous; travel through hyperspace subjects the ship not only to the dangers of space but also the dangers of hyperspace, at the same time.

Still, because a ship of any size can use it at literally any point with fairly little energy expended, it is immensely useful for a bunch of ships who have need of FTL travel on a regular basis to locations that do not have preexisting exits.

A Warp Drive works by warping the space around the ship--the ship, technically speaking, remains stationary, but space around the ship bends, warping, such that the ship 'travels' from one location to another at a rate faster than light. Travel through Warp Space is one of the most common ways to travel. It can be used on a ship of any size, requires absolutely no charge time, can be used anywhere, and travel is safe using it.

It does have the downside that it is slower than most methods and it requires a fair amount of power (more than most FTL methods), but it is a fairly reliable, functional way of traveling on demand.

A FTL Drive works essentially by working as a bit of an inversion to a warp drive: instead of modifying space, the ftl drive modifies the ship. It has the effect of fundamentally altering what the ship is made out of (essentially), and then slingshotting this material to the target destination. Think of it as kind-of like long-range teleportation, sort-of converting mass to energy, shifting the energy to a different location at a speed transfer much faster than possible with mass, and then reconverting it back.

All within the blink of an eye, because it's faster than light. Ship's there, ship's gone; ship's not there, ship's suddenly there. This method of FTL travel has a lot of advantages; it's instantaneous (one of the only ones which is), inherently safe as a result, and can be installed in a ship of any size in any location. The disadvantage is this takes quite a fair amount of energy and it has a huge charge time. You can't, if suddenly under attack, instantly use it. Which means it is a bad idea to rely on it to get you out of trouble.

Related to this technology would be the transporter, which is...well, exactly what it is in Star Trek.

...You may notice some...rather questionable...usage of logic in justifying these five different methods of travel. I'm doing my best to take from their source materials and extrapolate from them how they'd work, when many of said source materials don't actually go into much if any detail about them.

Sure, the Stargate series explained how wormholes work quite extensively (and I believe in Farscape they work much the same way), but it also features hyperspace which they don't explain to my knowledge, and if you treat Destiny as a show which exists, technically also a FTL drive that they also don't really explain other than saying "it's not using hyperspace, it's using something more primitive" (which just so happens to function identically to hyperspace).

Trekkies could probably dissect the usage of Warp, but while I know some of how it would work, I'm far from an expert.

I'm pretty sure they never explained how FTL Drives work in Battlestar Galactica.

They explain a bit about Slipstream in Andromeda, but don't really go into much detail about how it functions, other than maybe that it might be something vaguely similar to wormholes except being different enough to not be wormholes.

Star Wars probably goes into hyperspace quite extensively in the legacy expanded universe canon, but even there my knowledge is fairly spotty. 

I basically took some of the more popular works of science fiction that I am intimately familiar with (and did take some cues from other sources as well, e.g. Cowboy Bebop has gates of a sort as well), and tried to reason how a universe would work if all of them had basis in reality rather than just one, and thus, gave people options.

The one which didn't make the cut was the Space Dandy/Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (they're not quite identical but run on a similar enough premise) method of, "You travel from one universe where you were in one location, to a different universe where you are/just so happen to be in the target location. Technically, the old you dies in the transition, but you can't tell the difference". Which is a valid form of travel, just not one that I saw really having promising interactions with the others as much. (Also for symmetry purposes.)

As far as weapons go, I divided them into five types as well.
Projectile Weaponry is the "boring, but practical" default weaponry of the galaxy. This is a case of, quite literally, projectile weapons are just better. But there's actually justification for this! Projectile weaponry is just the most versatile overall weaponry of all.

For a start. It is one of only two types of weaponry which you can install en masse. A fighter can have half a dozen projectile weapons. A bomber, about a dozen. A medium sized craft, a few dozen; a large craft, literally hundreds. It can be used for point-defense, but it can also be used to bombard an enemy. Another advantage? Most projectile weaponry uses no power. Some does, but most can be used (albeit requiring manual operation) with absolutely no power at all, allowing for both defense and offense even when dead in the water.

Additionally, and this is the largest reason: projectile weaponry is, overall, the type of weaponry which can do the most damage to the most type of defenses assuming sufficiently energized projectiles. The equation relevant there is E = mc^2. Get a big enough mass of a projectile, and even if it's slow it can just plow through a defense (even if some of the mass is vaporized by the process); get a fast enough projectile, and so long as it doesn't lose all its mass (beit vaporization or from exploding on contact), it's guaranteed to puncture through.

Of course. Your average-day projectiles aren't gonna do that, so most projectile weaponry isn't that awesome, but it is still a pragmatic choice to implement. There's an obvious downside in that every type of projectile (aside from the hadron cannon) has ammo limitations (and if you run out of ammo, no more projectiles), but projectile weaponry is one of the fastest (well, with the exception of the hadron cannon) AND most deadly weaponry around, great for any purpose.

A sub-weapon within this type?
The hadron cannon. What is the hadron cannon? It generates a small black hole and launches it at high velocity. The hadron cannon is a special type of projectile weapon, however. It has two upsides: no ammo limit (you can fire as much as you want and never run out, so long as you have the requisite energy), and that if it hits the target, the target is destroyed. Understandably, a black hole has a LOT of mass. Launching it as a high-speed projectile adds a lot of velocity to it. No matter what your defenses are, there's no negating it.

This is not nearly as gamebreaking as it may sound, because it has many disadvantages.
For a start, it is a cannon. It is big. You might, MIGHT be able to fit one on a medium-sized ship, at the cost of great functionality to just about all other systems. You can probably fit two on a large craft, but three is nearly impossible.

It also takes a lot of energy.

You also have a tremendously long charge time. You can't just shoot it, then wait for it to recharch; you have to wait for it to charge and then discharge it eventually, minutes (yes, plural; it takes minutes to charge) later.

It is also borderline-suicidal for multiple reasons. First, if you start to charge the hadron cannon...you must discharge it. Failure to shoot it will result in it automatically discharging...at point blank, basically acting as a self-destruct for your ship because it will kill you if you don't shoot it.

Then, there's also the fact that as a cannon...it sucks at hitting rapidly moving targets. It might be able to hit a medium-sized ship if it's lucky, but anything smaller than that is a definitive no-go. Plus, given the long charge time...a common phrase surrounding it is more or less, "Hit your target, you win; miss your target or face more than one, you die".

Still, if you're in a situation where you need to take out a single large ship above all other targets, the hadron cannon is a fine weapon; if your target can't move, it's a fine weapon; in all other situations, it's "awesome, but impractical" personified.

A related, but separate, form of weaponry, what I dubbed:
Concussive Weaponry. What this basically is, in a nutshell? Explosions. Shockwaves. Force which rips apart the target, more or less. Where the damage comes from the blast. Nukes? Yep, they're concussive weaponry. They deliver an impact to the target.

Some concussive weaponry does in fact have limited ammo, but others can be unlimited, depending on the exact nature of the manufactured trauma force. Two forms of defense can basically nullify it, but the three other forms of defense can be torn to shreds by excessively powerful concussive force.

Like projectile weaponry, it can come in any size, from small to absolutely gigantic.

Heat Weaponry is basically exactly what it sounds. It is weapons which utilize heat to melt ships. Keeping in mind that weapons can be classified as multiple types, heat weaponry is often not purely heat. It most commonly overlaps with concussive weaponry (think the actual fireball part of a nuke in that it'd be ignited gasses) and energy weaponry. (Think beams, e.g. lasers, phasers, etc.) It is usually continuous, and thus, more likely to come in mid- to large-sized ships. (Though a small ship could have it if it were devoted to it.)

Energy Weaponry is next to projectile weaponry in how versatile it can be. It can be installed in any size, so like projectile weapons you can have half a dozen on a small ship, a dozen on a bombers, and so on and so forth. It can be rapid-fire, yet it can also be a continuous stream (think a beam weapon), or a ball, or basically...anything, really. It can use a little or a lot of energy, and the power behind it is proportional to the energy used. A little energy, a little damage; a lot of energy, a lot of damage inflicted. This makes it a secondary go-to weapon of choice.

Negating Weaponry is basically a disintegrator. Energy weaponry basically works by essentially overloading energy defenses and vaporizing the matter it makes contact with. (Namely, hopefully the other ship's hull.) Negating weaponry basically just makes energy and matter it contacts...no longer be there. There is almost no defense against this weaponry at all, and it can come in any size. It does have a disadvantage though; it requires more power to use than energy weaponry and it has a longer recharge time. Your first shot may be instantaneous, but there will be a gap between the first and the second shot, significantly longer than for energy weaponry.

Then comes what these weapons are put up against.
A ship could, theoretically, have all five types of weaponry, and even theoretically all five FTL methods. However, a ship cannot have all five defensive methods, as two are mutually exclusive with one another. Defenses are subdivided into two types--shields, and plating. The two hull platings are the mutually exclusive ones. The three shields can all be on the same ship...but only one shield type can be active at a time. If you use the reflectors, no deflectors or negators; deflectors, no reflectors or negators; negators, no reflectors or deflectors.

Organic Plating is exactly what it sounds like: living matter which not only can survive in space, but thrives in it, forming a type of exoskeleton around the outside of a ship's hull. (Notably, organic plating does not mean the entire ship is organic, simply that the outer layer of it has a 'skin' of sorts that is alive.)

Organic plating, being alive, is capable of regenerating itself over the course of a battle, allowing to heal from damage, softening the blows of early strikes having hit hard. This unique property is what makes it one of the only sources of protection against negating weaponry; it heals the wound almost as soon as it is inflicted.

Additionally, most organic plating has a property where it is capable of somehow absorbing shockwaves, negating the impact of concussive weaponry altogether. Organic plating also provides reasonable armor against projectile weaponry (both thanks to armor and due to gaps created healing), though this only protects against low-to-mid-level projectiles, and can still be severely damaged if enough projectiles get stuck in the organic plating (thus, interfering with the self-repair process).

However, organic plating provides absolutely zero defense against energy weaponry, and only the slightest mild protection against heat weaponry; the 'skin' is quite vulnerable to being superheated, charred, vaporized, and the like by a direct hit from those weapons, to the point where even small energy weapons can disable the plating.

Absorbent Plating/Conductive Plating has the effect exactly as you might expect: instead of energy passing through, when energy weaponry contacts this plating, it is absorbed, giving the ship energy. This means that a ship with this type of plating being blasted by energy weapons is actually gaining energy to use, with no limit.

This same property also provides minor protection against projectile weaponry. Small projectiles will have their kinetic energy absorbed as the projectile shatters on the plating, but it should be noted anything more advanced than a small projectile poses a threat. Medium concussive force also can be absorbed, but hit the plating with, say, a nuke and it'll still be torn to shreds.

The plating can also absorb a fair amount of heat weaponry, but an intense enough source of heat is still capable of melting through it. Also, this type of plating provides absolutely no resistance against negating weaponry, which can blast through the plates with ease.

Deflective Shielding does exactly what you would expect: it creates a shield around the ship, and deflects incoming weaponry to go elsewhere. This is one of the two main default forms of shielding, because it counters common forms of weaponry. Most projectiles, even ones with a huge mass, cannot puncture through the deflective shielding (after all, deflective shielding is used to divert large space rocks from hitting a ship), though a projectile with sufficient velocity and durability could accomplish the feat.

Heat weaponry is practically absorbed by deflective shielding, in that deflective shielding can basically suck the heat out. Energy weaponry is fairly effectively just harmlessly bounced off in a random direction. Concussive weaponry will have a warhead detonate upon contact. Even negating weaponry will when contacting the shield encounter difficulties.

It does have weaknesses, though. All deflective shielding operates on a frequency. Match the frequency, your weapons pass through. Concussive weaponry might have a warhead detonate on the deflective shielding, but the shockwave will still rip the ship to shreds because it'll pass right through the shield (so actually, hitting the shield makes concussive weaponry be arguably worse).

Negating weaponry can quickly cause the shield to disrupt and eventually fail, even if the shield generator is working perfectly. And even a sustained energy weapon will drain the deflective shield, in a match of atrophy: more power in the ship using the energy weapon, then the ship using the deflective shield runs out of power before the attack is halted.

Negating Shielding is the other common standard for shielding, acting as the counterpart to weaponry of its kind. (This is, for the record, Star Trek's type of shield, as I define it.) Projectiles touching the shield just cease to exist (unless they have sufficient mass to be protected). Energy contacting the shields is negated. Negating weaponry, meeting its counterpart, is itself negated.

However, negating shielding has its own weaknesses. It kinda sucks at negating heat build-ups. A single blast of heat will never do harm, not even if it is a super-intense form of heat, but a continuous blast of heat even if it is a weak blast will eventually melt through the shielding and pass on towards the ship.

Concussive weaponry works identically on it to deflective shielding, which means that hitting the shield actually helps the concussive weaponry destroy the ship. Negating shielding also works on a frequency, which if matched can be passed through. Furthermore, whereas deflective shielding can take a lot of long-term punishment and can be directed fairly effectively, negating shielding necessitates the usage of relays which if strained for too long are prone to failure.

Reflective Shielding can be thought of as basically a bubble surrounding the ship--and when something contacts the bubble, the bubble shrinks, shrinks, shrinks, and shrinks, slowing the thing down until it launches back out, forcing it at the original source.

This is really good for projectiles, though projectiles of a certain large size or speed can puncture through. (Especially speed.) It is also a way to altogether neutralize concussive force, as the concussive force simply bounces off the reflective shield harmlessly. Reflective shielding also has the upside of not operating on a frequency, which makes it impossible to bypass by matching the frequency.

...However, it has its downsides. Namely, reflective shielding can only reflect weak-leveled energy weaponry; anything bigger than that will destroy the shielding, as if popping a bubble, or tearing a hole in a beach ball, more aptly. Heat weaponry isn't nullified by it nor is it vulnerable to the heat, with them more or less canceling out if the heat isn't continuous. Any continuous heat however will absolutely melt right through. And negating weaponry tears through reflective shielding like wet tissue paper, as if it wasn't even there because as far as the negating weaponry is concerned, it might as well not be.

Other sci-fi stuff I threw around included at least two methods of FTL communication, from signal relays (basically like a future-cable-internet type deal of sorts, where the signal travels at a speed which is instantaneous so long as you are connected to one nearby), and from signal compressors (basically converting the communication in live time to an energy form sent in FTL travel).

And maybe for power, dark energy/dark matter if antimatter isn't enough.

Didn't really do much coherent beyond that though. Don't really even have a setting in mind. It's just...random stuff that I decided would be together, really, working with my absolutely atrocious understanding of the science behind sci-fi, blending various softer sci-fi stories into one.

Basically, I developed a handy metric to use as a reference point for approximations on what characters have.

The basic of the scale is a 1-10 scale:
3 is "this is the average capacity of a human". 5 is "this is the typical peak level of a human". 10 is "this is the typical peak superhuman level". * is "this is the peak level a spirit can reach". (Spirits, notably, are at their strongest, above superhuman which makes sense considering they're not human at all. Though, that being said. Not all spirits are above superhuman in all areas. In fact, none are. And many aren't even above superhuman in any. Still, they have the capacity to be higher than superhuman, thus the ranking.)
** is "god-tiered", as in, if a god were to manifest, this is the expected power level they would have.
*** is "godslayer", as in, if a god were to manifest, this is the level of power necessary to kill said god.

This metric is meant as a guideline. Not an absolute rule. It is not explicit word of god, so much as it would be to give a fair idea for what sorts of things are, and are not, possible. A reference point, but not an absolute reference point; a loose reference point for generalities, a way of being able to give some sort of comparison between things which you would normally never be able to compare otherwise.

There are sixteen categories which you can apply this scale on.

Strength: Self-explanatory. How strong someone is. Physical power. Might. Oomph to their punch. How much they can lift. How hard they hit. You get the idea.

Speed: Self-explanatory. How fast someone is. Note that this is unspecific as to the type of speed. So this is a bit of a broad category, but loosely, it can be thought of as "how rapidly you can act/react".

Agility: This is also fairly self-explanatory. This is how nimble someone is. Their maneuverability in combat. Able to jump over someone, spin, run circles around them, bend limbs in unusual ways. Their flexibility. Their ability to move around in a controlled fashion and know precisely where they are going and what they are doing. How precise they are in their movements.

Stamina: This is how long someone can go. Their physical energy reserves; how long they can continue to fight. This covers both the physical and mental aspects of it. It is how long it takes you to become exhausted.

Endurance: This is how much punishment you can take. This is not toughness; this is not stamina. This is the opposite of both, in that this is how much damage you can receive, and yet not collapse. It is, essentially, how unfazed you are by the damage you take. If you have high endurance, then sure the blows you take can break bones and cause internal bleeding, but you can keep going.

It is your ability to resist pain. It is your ability to push through the hardships of battle. It is not based on how much energy you have; it is not based on how resistant you are. It is based on fortitude, on willpower, on how well you can sustain yourself in battle when you are being continuously beaten down. (It is thus, notably, a common heroic trait.)

Toughness: This is your ability to tank damage. Or rather. This is, specifically, how hard it is to damage you. Someone whose skin is like armor? That's superhuman toughness. Someone who you can cut through as if with a butterknife? That's low toughness. Easily damaged, fragile, low toughness. Hard to inflict any harm at all, hard to damage, high toughness.

Basically, toughness is how hard it is to damage you, whereas endurance is how much damage you can take before you collapse. That should give you the difference between the two. Stamina is how much you can put out before collapsing.

Regeneration: How rapidly you recover from damage inflicted. 10 would be something like regenerating lost limbs to give a general frame of reference. This is a fairly self-explanatory concept. Humans have wounds which heal fairly slowly comparatively speaking compared to the supernatural entities in existence.

Recovery: How rapidly your energy reserves are replenished. High recovery can lead to someone who ran out of stamina ending up still being fresh in the middle of a battle, for instance; low recovery means that what you put out in the battle is it, and maybe then some with it taking a long time after the battle to recover what was lost in it.

Intellect: Basically how smart you are. This covers all aspects of smartness, from improvisation to planning, from intuitively picking things up to meticulous analysis, from understanding how things work to applying the optimal usage of what you have. This is usually a constant, based widely on the individual rather than the species, but there are some exceptions where beings have the ability to temporarily up their intellect (or in some even rarer cases, where entities sacrifice intellect for greater gains elsewhere), thus its inclusion.

Then come the magical equivalents to these stats.

Magical Power: How strong your magic is. For reference, Phyrra and Cyrus went from 0 (had none) to 10 overnight. 3 is the level of an established fullblown mage. Accomplished spellbladers are 2s; amateur spellbladers--even prodigies--are 1; this is the level that both Clara and Cedrick are at.

Yes, 1. Spellbladery is, as I have previously established, akin to using a single finger from a single hand instead of a full arm yet alone the full body. And Paladins are spellbladers; Cedrick's telekinetic control over his platinum spheres is a type of spellbladery.

Magic Casting Time: How rapidly you can cast/control your spells. Phyrra and Cyrus also went from 0 to 10 on this overnight. In contrast to Magical Power, this is actually an area where spellbladers tend to actually exceed the levels of mages.

After all, mages use a wide variety of magic; spellbladers specialize in a specific type of magic, so it makes sense that, naturally, spellbladers are going to be very good at their specific magic. Cedrick is a 5; Clara is a 4.

Magic Versatility: This is a combination of how diverse your magic is and how skilled you are at applying your magic to different types of situations. The former would lock spellbladers at 1 (because, obviously, they can only do one thing), but the latter--how creatively you use your magic--allows spellbladers to, potentially, reach slightly higher levels. (Because if you're gonna only do one thing, you get very good at learning how to use that one thing in creative ways.)

Phyrra and Cyrus went from 0 to 10 in this as well. (Note that, for all three of these, their 10 is 'potentially at this level', not necessarily 'is guaranteed to be at this level'. Phyrra and Cyrus have the potential to cast the most powerful spells in the least amount of time which can be literally any type of spell...but they have to train themselves to do that, first.)

Cedrick is actually fairly low on this, as a 2; Clara is a bit higher, as a 3, because Paladins are one of the most advanced form of spellbladery.

Magical Reservoir: This is basically the amount of magic you can cast before collapsing from exhaustion/potentially killing yourself. Phyrra and Cyrus went from 0 to a potential 10, but their bodies are unaccustomed to this level of power so their bodies have been slowly adjusting their way up. Pragmatically they start at around 3: average human capabilities. As the story progresses, they can tap into more and more magic, allowing them to use more and more and make bigger and bigger things. (Because the more powerful the magic, the more it taps into the magical reservoir, obviously.)

​Cedrick is around a 2; Clara is around 4.

This is thus the magical equivalent of stamina.

Magical Resilience:​ How much magical punishment you can take. Humans are notoriously low on this compared to spirits. This is the equivalent of endurance for magic.

Magical Resistance: How much magical damage is reduced. Very few beings, even spirits, have higher ratings on this, except for beings which have resonance with anti-magic (which is a thing, kind-of; it'd be more accurate to say magical reduction because you can't get rid of magic altogether).

It is thus the magical equivalent of toughness.

And last but not least:
Magical Replenishment:​ ​How rapidly you recover your magical reservoir to cast spells. Phyrra and Cyrus go from 0 to theoretically 10. Like with the reservoir, they start unaccustomed to their full potential, with their bodies slowly adjusting their way up. Pragmatically, they start at around 5: exceptionally fast for humans to recover, but still at notably human​ levels of recovering, so no unlimited casting of spells continuously.

Cedrick is around a 4; Clara is around a 2, maybe 3.

​Soyeah, that's the system I devised. From the descriptions I've given, you can probably already get a good sense of why I emphasized this is not an exact science. It's just a loose reference point for about what level characters can and can't do.

​And that's about all I can say because I'm pretty sure my computer's gonna try and restart again literally any second now. Every second is pushing it, but one last thing before I go.
​I'd like to say today is my one-year anniversary with my girlfriend, and I wanted to share that with the world. <3

WELL.

Anyway.

So I've been sick for over a week with the flu (well most likely flu), but while I'm not 100%, I'm like 98%. So I finally have the time to talk about Phyrra and Cyrus some more! Hold on for a sec, I'm gonna see if I can unbury ALL my notes on the subject, such that I can knock a bunch out at once.

Lessee...mentioned the each opener as element...still need to write the songs...
...Spoiler stuff I deliberately avoided blogging about because they are actual big huge spoilers...
...Unrecorded distribution of CommCrystals and the acronym I forgot, will get to this later...
...Unrecorded fate of villains...
...Ooh, here's one, minor villains! Will get to it in a sec. (I'm still pulling up my notes.)
...The bunch of stuff I didn't blog about a little over a month ago including some Paladin stuff I never researched...
...An old note about needing to still "draw" the characters...
...Bard...
...Yeah that should be it.

Okay! So. Starting from there.

So I am making a new tag for Phyrra and Cyrus. Now, you have to understand. This will be the first entry with that tag, because heck no I'm not going to retroactively go through all of my past Phyrra and Cyrus entries and retroactively add tags, that goes against my policy. Just search for some of my other tags. You shouldn't miss anything with tags like dream, sleep, gender dysphoria, trans, story, and similar since I'm fairly certain every entry has at least one if not all of those tags. (You'll get entries aside from Phyrra and Cyrus using them, but oh well.)

And frankly. Given that I've developed the overarching story of 95% of Phyrra and Cyrus...honestly. The tag's probably a waste because I'm probably not going to be blogging about it that much anymore because most of it I've already blogged about. It's a finite story. It's not an endless story. What I mean by that is. Basically. Most of the work's already been done.

I've still got details here and there to fill out, and I can talk about individual episodes. I suppose if in the future I develop more in the terms of technology/economics/kingdoms/etc. in the worldbuilding department, I've got that, too. But magic has its system fairly well defined, enchantments are fairly well defined, the plot is fairly well defined, and the characters are fairly well defined.

But, you never know. So I'm going to add it anyway. As the saying goes, "better late than never". And, hey. If I ever do change my mind and violate my current principle of not editing past blog entries, then sure, when doing that editing I'll add in tags. (You'll know if I've violated my principles if this is not the first entry with the "phyrra and cyrus" tag.) So who knows. Maybe down the line, it'll become useful, relevant, pertinent.

Where I do a BUNCH of additional stuff.

Oh and there's always art I suppose. I'm going to be doing art for a long time assuming I do art at all that is. (You know how it goes. Also, my art book is missing still, so I don't have my high quality art paper, only printer paper. Shame, because I do know where my pencil is.)

So I guess the tag won't be entirely useless, it's just that it'd have been useful to have done...much, much earlier than now.

Like. As far as things go. This is like taking notes when you're 75% of the way through the production. It's useful because that's 25% of the production you've taken notes on rather than 0%, but in hindsight you always wish you had started it earlier.

I didn't have any way of knowing Phyrra and Cyrus would grow to be this big of a thing! It was just a dream I had originally. I mean. It was a good dream. And admittedly, the story is a little more straight-forward than I was anticipating. (I was originally envisioning a reasonably high number of gender issues to come up, but the more and more I worked on the project, the more and more I realized that for the most part...Phyrra and Cyrus wouldn't care and their friends/companions wouldn't care especially since magic exists in this world and souls swapped in bodies isn't something which is as important as I thought it'd be because to everyone...it's just no big deal.)

The project has evolved so much since then, become something which in some ways is a lot more interesting and yet in many ways is more standardized than I was expecting. (I really thought I'd be playing a lot more around with gender and the like, but again, as I got to know the characters and the setting, those things just...were things they shrugged off. For the most part--except in a few cases of justified drama which are justifiable because the characters have actual concerns that are relevant rather than ridiculous.)

So in my defense, I had no idea it was going to be tag-worthy. And as the project began to grow, I still had no clue it was going to be tag-worthy because many projects of mine grow that way but ultimately after being worked on to the point of maximum maturity simply get filed away. (This is how most ideas I don't blog about get lost forever: I build them up in my head, then when I don't see how they can go any further, don't put any additional thought in, ever.)

And by the time I realized it was something special to me in a way most projects aren't...well by then, I simply didn't even think about making a tag for it, I was just too in the moment I suppose, where I wanted to get the information out so that everyone could see it.

Now, I need that tag though, because I need to have Phyrra and Cyrus be seen and known. I realize this blog will contain major spoilers if I ever do get the project going, and that starting the project might actually end up exposing my blog to the world. A risk I'd be all too happy to take, especially since I'm not sharing anything I don't want kept from people.

Everything I share on here, essentially, has thus been stuff that people can know in advance and not have their enjoyment diminished--if anything, knowing the things I talk about here would help their enjoyment even more because they'd have foreknowledge of what the things in episodes are, loosely, meant to be doing. (For instance, introducing members of the Thaukama. It's no secret Cedrick joins them, and in fact it's meant from the very beginning for people to look at him and go, "Yeah he's joining them" so people knowing it in advance actually increases the humor behind interactions prior to joining.)

So on that note!

Let's get to the actual...well. Notes!

​A month and a half ago, I wrote a blog on Bard but never got the chance to post it. It focused around his past. It's known from his introductory episode onward that Bard's father was a Spirit Demon--and that Bard has two forms: his human form (where Gunther King Slayer's demon magic doesn't work), and his Spirit Demon form.

What I didn't mention, but what I implied, was that his mother was not a Spirit Demon--and as is fairly common for giving childbirth to Spirit Demons when not being one, she died giving birth to him. So, Bard was raised by his father until Gunther King Slayer came into power...at which time, Bard's father killed himself before Gunther could take control of him, saving both the kingdom from him (Bard's father is implied to be an even larger genius than Bard, and he'd have been under the control of Gunther) and saving Bard from Gunther.

Something which worked for...oh, about four years or so until Bard reached puberty. He tried to hide, but got discovered fairly quickly and had been in Gunther's service since then unwillingly. Still, this left his heritage unknown to him. His mother, as far as everyone knew, looked human, and was known to not be a Spirit Demon and thus assumed to be human...but in truth, she, too, was a type of Demon.

Specifically, his mother was a Love Demon...AKA, a Succubus, which means Bard himself is a latent Incubus. His Incubus powers laid dormant (thus why he couldn't be controlled outside of his Spirit Demon form in spite of being a Love Demon; with the Love Demon powers dormant, it was as if he was human even though he isn't), and then only later does he discover his true nature by having a conversation with Will, who sees it and lets him know at an appropriate time.

Of course, discovering his powers doesn't awaken them; that happens in a part of the story I'll actually tell you about in a bit; I need to detail a few things like Inns/Taverns/AID Beacons/CommCrystals first so you can have better context for the plot point. Not quite done here, though. I wanted to talk more about Love Demons.

Love Demons have a skin-colored monkey-like tail: slightly thinner than a monkey's would be, but also slightly longer; they can control it like a third hand. (And, yes, being Love Demons, this manifests in pretty much exactly the manner you would imagine.) They can manifest claws, have fairly thin bodies, yet are very agile, with low-superhuman speed and highest-human levels of strength.

They're not nearly as strong and are just about as fast and not nearly as vicious as Spirit Demons (no fangs), and they aren't as tough as Spirit Demons, but they are very, very, very agile, nimble, and the like, able to jump much higher, faster, maneuver, and are all-around incredibly flexible. (Spirit Demons are, notably, quite agile and nimble, able to jump rather high, move fast, and the like, but there is a tradeoff. They're stronger and heavier which equates to more mass to move. Extra mass, extra bulk, extra oomph, but also extra weight to slug around.)

The two types of Demons are basically similar opposites, which work well in tandem. Even their powers work similarly. Love Demons drain love--and this can be any type of love. Familial, romantic, platonic, whatever. When draining, the more intense the emotion (the stronger the love), the more energy the Love Demon receives.

By 'drain', notably, I don't mean 'destroy'/remove/diminish/etc. In fact, it's quite the opposite. To compensate for the loss of energy (the person drained actually loses energy to give it to the Love Demon), Love Demons deliver an equal boost to the pleasure center of their target's brain.

That leads to exactly what you'd imagine.
Only a little love = barely any energy drained from the Love Demon's target + the Love Demon's target receives very little pleasure.
Lots of love = lots of energy drained from the Love Demon's target + the Love Demon's target receives a lot of pleasure--to the point where, if the love between the Love Demon and the target (the love is always measured as the amount between the Love Demon and their target, not their target and some third party) is strong enough...it is absolutely an experience which is better than sex.

And again, this works on any type of love. So in a group of true companions (the Thaukama), Bard can get supercharged by touching all of the Thaukama. And by 'supercharged', I mean, me talking about what Love Demons can do above? That's them at their normal level. The more of a 'surplus' they get, the more they get boosts to everything from regeneration (this is a biggie) to toughness to speed to the point where Bard supercharged can singlehandedly take on a whole squad of superpowered spirits and win.

​​I suppose now I get to talk about a little bit of the extras in the world.
CommCrystals (short for Communication Crystals) are exactly what you would imagine them to be: they are blue crystals, attached to something meant to fit in the user's hand. They are, in essence, a magical SmartPhone: their primary function is to communicate over long distances. They can pick up distress beacons (more on those in a bit) and project onto a screen details. Furthermore, when at either a leyline or plugged into a specialized device, they can act as a facechat between both sides, so in that sense they act as communication.

The way these crystals work, is that they transmit the data to the nearest leyline, which sends it to the target location. Given this premise, yes, there are dead zones too far away from a leyline or Nexus Tower to get a signal through other than picking up distress beacons. They're not suited for sending data over distance other than voice or with the appropriate (expensive) attachment video, but they can receive most data.

Leylines are not a hard concept to understand. They are basically a natural flow of what can be considered a 'magical hotspot', which flow around the entire planet. Think of them as basically akin to tectonic plates, geothermal energy, or something of that sort. The shift of magical energy across the world, naturally occurring. Like an ocean current, actually, just everywhere, underneath the ground.

They cannot be destroyed, damaged, or tapped into. They cannot be traveled, either. However, while nothing material can travel on leylines, immaterial in the form of data can be transmitted through them, allowing for long-distance communication to be established. Think of leylines, then, as essentially naturally-occurring cable internet/phone/TV, mostly phone but who knows someday maybe encompassing the others. (Just, that tech hasn't yet been invented.)

A Nexus Tower, is then, thus, something which can be thought of as a cell phone/radio tower: boosting the signal artificially. A sort-of artificial leyline, except it's not so much an artificial leyline as much as it is a signal boost to help connect CommCrystals to leylines from a much greater distance by acting as a link between the two.

Phyrra and Cyrus still has the flavor of a high fantasy setting, pre-industrial-age in that there are not multiple-shot guns invented yet and people do all the adventuring you would expect traveling largely on foot or on beasts of burden with intercontinental travel being done in wooden boats on the water, but it has many of the more "modern" aesthetics and cultural values of our world in terms of daily living.

Many people are farmers living a more agricultural lifestyle, but in spite of that, they live rather comfortably with rather advanced technology at their disposal--this is to be expected, because with magic at your disposal, technology advances in unpredictable-to-us ways and some ideas get invented much sooner when the magic of the world allows for those ideas to be viable and natural much sooner.

A cousin to the CommCrystal technology is beacon technology. Beacons come in three types; all of them function in the same way aside from minor differences.

SID/CURS/AID beacons are all distress signals, for ships/cities/individuals, respectively. SID beacons, short for 'Ship In Distress' beacons, send a huge red pillar into the sky, a continuous beam of pure red light, directly shining down on their location. This beacon transmits up to 50 miles away to every SID/CURS/AID beacon in addition to all CommCrystals. Each SID beacon has a unique ID, so that when it is activated people know exactly what ship it is; they are also programmable such that the exact nature of their problem can be described and given.

CURS beacons, short for City Under siege; Request Saving, is basically a souped-up SID beacon, working literally the same way. It sends a gigantic golden pillar into the sky (bigger than the red pillar of a SID beacon), transmitting up to 100 miles away to every SID/CURS/AID beacon and CommCrystal, with the unique ID of that city, and the ability to program it with the exact information.

AID beacons, short for 'Adventure In Distress' beacons, are basically toned-down SID beacons, sending a small blue pillar into the sky, transmitting up to 25 miles away to every SID, AID, and CommCrystal; they are unique to the individual and can be programmed to contain information. They are quite expensive, but considered an excellent adventuring tool.

Mostly because an AID being activated is, in spite of the name, most likely a merchant requesting an adventurer for assistance. In other words, AID beacons are used quite a bit to not only give quests, but receive quests. CommCrystals have similar capacities, but are a little less versatile in that regard.

Clara, as inheritance from her parents, received one, but didn't have it on her when she got with the Thaukama. (Nor did she have her CommCrystal, given to her as part of her apprenticeship.) Phyrra and Cyrus from their parents have a CommCrystal. Ace as a birthday present got a CommCrystal from his father. Cedrick has a CommCrystal as well.

Will and Lilian, both being rich, have an AID beacon.

This gives the Thaukama three of each; Alena has one of each as well, bringing it up to five (as Clara retrieves hers) of each by the end of the series.

Another adventurer-centric worldbuilding bit I did was about where adventurers stay.

Adventurers, generally, when traveling, stick to the roads, unless they have reason to go off of one. (This being a world which is fairly civilized, most spots aside from adventuring hotspots have roads. Adventuring hotspots being places where adventurers go to do adventuring, out in the wilderness to dungeon crawl, lair raid, and so on and so forth. The world is reasonably well-mapped-out, so they can travel on the road until they get fairly close to the location they want to check out which is off the road.)

As such, there are plenty of different types of lodging.

Obviously, adventurers can if properly equipped set up camp anywhere, but sometimes, this can be less convenient than they would prefer. As a result, especially at crossroads (locations where there's multiple roads intersecting), there are "crossroad camps". 

A crossroad camp is a little bit like a freeway's rest stops meet a national park's camping lots: some supplies are given, while others the adventurers have to bring with them. They contain fire pits, restrooms, and cleared land to set up tents, along with loading space to store goods and poles to help stable beasts of burden; many have wells for water as well. But the adventurers still have to pack their own lodging, from sleeping bags, tents, food, and the like. They're entirely free, though.

An Inn is basically like a motel: it is like a crossroad camp and found in many of the same types of locations (along the road, in places people will stop), but there's a tradeoff: you have to pay. You sleep in a real bed, you can get multiple types of food and drink, and you get the benefits of a tavern, but in general, most inns require payment; they don't accept tabs (because you're not likely to come back) and only a few will let you pay in alternative methods. They take actual currency to use.

(I'm ticked because I just lost about half an hour's worth of work on my blog because my FREAKIN' COMPUTER DOESN'T WANT TO SHUT UP ABOUT RESTARTING BUT I AM USING IT NOW AND IT ISN'T GIVING ME OPTIONS TO NOT RESTART AND IT TRIED TO RESTART BUT FAILED YET IT STILL CRASHED MY BROWSER THUS LOST MY WORK.)

​A tavern is basically like an inn, only it is in a town: it provides lodging and so on (various foods and drinks), and it is the adventurer's best friend. It is the main location (aside from the town square where bulletins are posted and occasionally a town hall or in some larger cities guilds) where adventurers can find work. It's the place where gossip spreads, tales are shared, and people can talk about adventures past and about dreams future, and be given tips and crowd sourcing and the like.

People talk, people chat, people make friends, people form adventuring parties, and the like. Taverns also offer lodging usually for free, albeit always expecting a form of payback. Adventurers can open up a tab, or pay off by doing chores or by running errands or by going on quests for the tavern. Beyond that, adventurers hang out at taverns to pick up patrons: people who need the help of adventurers to do tasks like be bodyguards.

Said patrons are the people often paying off an adventurer's tab. Basically, the system works because the tavern gets their money...eventually. Once the right kind of work shows up, essentially. Of course, taverns can lose money. Not all adventurers are honorable. (Though in a world with rapid long-distance communication, word spreads like wildfire so that type of adventurer who doesn't pay back their tab is not the type to last long before karma catches up to them.)

Not all adventurers make it big; they might get down out of their luck and take more than they can give back. Not all adventurers even live; adventuring is still a dangerous line of work because the world is filled with dangers, so many will die without having paid their debt back.

And taverns don't expect to have the dead pay them back. They accept the loss, take the hit, from those that do perish or become downtrodden, because overall, they still manage to get by. Business is good enough where they manage to keep going. Taverns aren't greedy; they are usually run by families, who make ends meet and don't need anything more than that.

So basically, while they can sometimes operate at a loss, they end up eventually making enough money where they can stay afloat. Adventurers are, after all. Quite happy to have these services, and thus all too willing to pay them back and then some, often. And wealthy patrons are quite willing to pay the tabs for adventurers they hire.

Which brings me (again, since I typed up everything twice and I still think I'm missing things and not explaining them as well as I did the first time) to a part in Phyrra and Cyrus called 'The Divide'. Which ties all of these things I've been talking about together.

At a crossroads, the Thaukama stay at the Inn and get to hear a lot of the local gossip. By this point, they are starting to deal with the third season's big bad, Archer Cross Hill, and there are two roads to travel on. Both roads end up converging again at a city later. (Let's call this City D.)

The Thaukama decides to split up--this is not done because of a separation in the group, tension, or whatnot, with them having disagreements or anything of the sort. Quite the opposite, their decision to split up is one based around trust, companionship, and friendship, with the promise and resolve to meet up again with everyone having done what they needed to do.

Will heads one way, knowing his family has influence over there and would be happy to have him run some errands. (Not to mention, he'd have resources there to help his friends forward on their journey, dealing with Archer Cross Hill.) Bard accompanies him because of gossip about someone being able to help him awaken his true nature there. Clara accompanies them because of rumors of her master in the major city on that pathway. (Let's call this City B.)

Cedrick accompanies the group to be a team leader looking out for them, and because he has one of the Thaukama's CommCrystals. (Will takes his AID beacon as well.) Myra accompanies the group to be a team mom and as part of Cyrus's strategy: if Myra's group needs help but can't use the beacon/crystal, then Myra can instantly transport herself over to Cyrus to get aid. Inversely, if Cyrus needs aid, he can instantly call Myra to his side.

The other group heads the other way. The path they go on eventually has a crossroad to it as well--Phyrra and Gora set up camp at the Camp Crossroad, with a CommCrystal to be a "base camp"/"relay point" for the others, as they would be the only ones in range of all groups. A hub, of sorts, for them to communicate messages to one another.

Lilian and Hera leave to a city (with Lilian taking an AID beacon), for a bit of a personal visit, but also to get in contact with some people to see if they know anything about the villain they at this point know as Archer Cross. (Let's call this City C.) Meanwhile, Cyrus, Ace, and Kaze (with Ace taking the third CommCrystal) go to the major city on the pathway they'll need to travel on to meet back up with the others. (Let's call this City A.)

They do this in part because of scouting, in part because of gathering supplies, in part to look for adventure, and in part to gather information of their own. Basically, all of the Thaukama at this point are doing their own thing, in four different groups, but all of them are trying to accomplish the same thing: stop Archer Cross and meet back up at City D together when everything is taken care of.

Unsurprisingly, this is the time period where I can take the most amount of time to do some individual character building, to show characters more or less developing on their own. 

I kinda lost my momentum there what with the whole restart lose my blog thing, so I guess I'll continue this another time. I've still got minor villains and chronology of the series to talk about.

One of the things which turns me from manic to depressed so often now in spite of medications meant to help with that.

Forgive the phrasing as it's something I'd normally not say unless in tongue-in-cheek because saying it seriously is a hallmark of arrogance, but I can't think of a better phrase to describe the issue:
"It's not every day you have a stroke of genius."

I don't want to call myself a genius because of how presumptuous that'd be. BUT. I think you can at least understand my sentiment here, what I'm going for.

It is not every day that you come up with a great idea.

It is not every day that you come up with an idea which is amazing.

And like.

I know I am a very creative person, who builds grand worlds. The World of Soano (The Descended's setting) is one of my favorite places. The Rubyverse is a conglomeration of my work across the years and takes the best of everything put into one place.

Heroes of Gistou takes what is perhaps the greatest achievement I've ever had as a writer and is a conglomeration of all my years of work as a writer; in the original mafia game I wrote the flavor for it was ambitious enough but as a novel which took things even further, it has literally every skill I've ever used in any of my stories ever in one place, while adding elements I've never used before including diversity in gender/sexual orientation (okay so that's touched on very lightly in one other story but only barely), racism, and hair/eye/skin color and whatnot.

It is basically my crowning achievement as a writer because the characters are humans I know (okay so to be fair, this was a bit of a cheat because when writing their characters some influence from the players who were assigned those roles leaked in), the setting is one of the most intricate ones I've built, the plot is one of my favorite stories, and the quality of the writing is the highest I've ever done; there's nothing to top it.

Though, coming close would be the other novel I was working on when my flashdrive failed and caused me to lose literally years' worth of work. (Still bitter about that, but if you're wondering, probably wouldn't work on my novel if I had the information, anyway. I'd back the information up, but my mood to work on the novel was utterly killed and having the flashdrive back and functioning wouldn't magically revitalize it.)

It is, in many ways, similar to Gistou in that it is the other story which touches on sexual orientation (albeit not gender orientation), and in some ways it actually is more of a statement. Some things which we might think are very unprogressive are shown even from the main characters...but this is more or less commented on in the book and you can tell that it is a deliberate narrative choice. (At least if I competently write that is.)

Racial divide, philosophy, the nature of war, the nature of fate/destiny, discrimination, eugenics of a sort (something I don't think I ever actually wrote down was a minor revision to dialog at one point where the protagonist notes that while there are 10,000 humans left alive, only about 4,000 of them are pureblooded humans with no genes from the other species which is closely enough related to humanity that they can have fertile hybrid children and said hybrid children's descendants account for the other 6,000 and the protagonist believes that in order to survive humanity needs that genetic diversity since humanity's gene pool is dangerously small; even his ancestors had a first cousin marriage).

It just touches on a lot of things, with some of the most powerful writing I've ever done, a full cast of characters who are actual CHARACTERS. They don't just have quirks. They have flaws. Most of my characters, well, they might have flaws but they don't get displayed in my writing. It's a bit of a weak spot in my writing; when I write characters, they don't tend to fail, they don't tend to have shortcomings, they don't tend to be in the wrong, and so on and so forth.

This story has all of that. And the question, of course, of "am I really in the right?", with ambiguous answers, rather than clear-cut ones. People. More than any other story, maybe even more than Gistou, people. Yet the world has a beautiful history to it and the plot progresses in this altogether philosophical way, where action is happening and yet you still get these little moments to know everyone.

The Perfect RPG for me is a setting I might have slightly tabled in favor of other projects, but I am still passionate about it because I really like what I made there.

I still want to make the Disneyesque Villain Song setting. I've toyed with various expansions, from extra characters (the protagonist, the seer, the love interest, the best friend of the protagonist, a cool old guy, and of course the villain among many others), how the beginning of the story unfolds, how the protagonist meets the love interest, how the story ends, and little things here and there including that the villain would be almost by-the-book following the evil overlord list (with some liberties taken here and there).

It is a wondrous, beautiful thing, envisioned as a film but also suitable for a miniseries. Probably not a full series, but could be done I suppose with tweaking.

And then there's the two most recent.

Phyrra and Cyrus.

And Dawn of Order.

I am passionate about them all.
Yet those ones really speak to me as, so to speak, "genius among the genius". Or rather. "This is the perfect balance of something which can actually be done (and is thus, pragmatic to do), and yet is something which is still grand enough to be ambitious, reach the masses, and inspire greatness", more or less.

Phyrra and Cyrus, and Dawn of Order, are both outside of my general comfort zone. I am a writer first and foremost. I am secondarily an artist. While those are used in animation and games, they are not at the forefront of them. Both have incredible ambition behind them, both have incredible ideas which make them truly unique and original, and yet because of what they are, are something which can be spread to the masses fairly easily and readily once made.

And more than that. I feel that they can actually be done. Not by me, alone, yes. But they can be DONE.
One of the reasons The Descended may never get off its feet is because it feels like a project which needs to be done entirely by me, but yet the scale of the project is such that while it's incredibly ambitious I'm probably never going to be able to complete it in my lifetime just as me alone.

Aside from how I've lost the art and scripts I've had multiple times, aside from how the site is (pardon the language) a clusterfuck and yet I have a strong desire to not nuke it and start from scratch. Aside from that. To tell the story I want to tell, I need to produce high-quality, almost professional art. Yet there's a ton of content for the story. I've forgotten a fair amount and with no usable notes that content is lost forever but even with it removed (or magically recovered).

The story isn't short. Compared to Red Hood Rider, yeah, it's short. But it's still something which if I were updating daily would take years of my life to complete and updating at a rate slower than daily would take...well. Longer than a human lifespan, honestly. 

Speaking of Red Hood Rider. What I just said about The Descended applies to it, too. Red Hood Rider, being a project which is mine. Just feels like something which should be done by me. I have also lost many notes of mine on the subject and what I have is chaotic, jumbled, scattered. Yet new content keeps being added even to this day, and content gets revised. And it's estimated to be about 80-100 episodes worth of content.

Each episode with 20-40 pages.

If that were daily updates that'd be potentially 4,000 pages. You know how many years that is? Ten. If I were releasing daily pages it would take ten years to complete Red Hood Rider. Now imagine less than daily. And knowing that the quality of art demanded for the project is even higher than that of The Descended, because Red Hood Rider is meant to be something which could be adapted into an animation (which is why chapters are called episodes).

My novels are, obviously. Personal projects. Can't outsource writing. Well, you could I suppose but heck no that's not something I'd do. So it'd have to be me doing them, by myself, alone.

All of them, I can reach out to others of course. Get a novel published, I can communicate to my readers. Start updating a webcomic, I can have dialog with my readers actively on a daily basis. But there's something in that which feels missing, actually.

And that is something not missing when I think of Phyrra and Cyrus especially, although also recently Dawn of Order.

Because on those. I would be creating my visions, but I'd be working with others, collaborating with them to bring what I envisioned to life. It would be my project, it would be personal, but it would have the touch of others on it as well and that would be a good thing. For The Descended, Red Hood Rider, and my novels, the thought of the touch of others on it feels WRONG.

But because it is literally a requirement for Phyrra and Cyrus (given voice acting) and Dawn of Order, it feels right. It feels good. The thought that I'd have it.

I'm not sure I'm presenting a very coherent thought here on what I am getting at.

What I am getting at is that many of my projects, I feel are personal projects.
Yet when it comes to a project like Phyrra and Cyrus.

What makes them strokes of genius.
Is that they are something which aren't personal projects. Yet in spite of not being personal projects. They feel like they are realistically achievable. I don't think anything I've envisioned in them is impossible, unreasonable, or really that hard to achieve if I really set my mind to it.

And I just.
Really, really like thinking about them.

And that's where the depression comes in--when I can't think of them, as it were.
Or rather. "I have thought of this great idea. Why am I not thinking of something just as good, or doing something just as good?"

By that, I mean.

Anything I do, I feel like it's less than what I could be doing.

I pretty much stopped playing Final Fantasy VII once I started envisioning the perfect RPG.
And now there's something similar for Majesty, Zeus/Poseidon, and the like.

Where I have envisioned a really cool game, Dawn of Order. Which I want to be playing, or at least designing. Rather than playing those games.

And any other game just feels...lesser than those, because those are some of my favorite games after all.

And there's something similar for Phyrra and Cyrus.

I've pretty much stopped rehashing most of my ideas (aside from the villain song one which is alive and well) since starting it. And when I think about them. I just. Want the moments I envision to be real.

I've even mapped out exactly how I could do it, too. The things I ask for, most I know explicitly can already be done because I have seen them done. And if I've seen them done, then it is possible for them to be done on my project. (For reference, this is also true of Dawn of Order. I don't think anything I describe is impossible, not even when putting it all together, because every element I describe exists in one of the games I was inspired by, and while I know code isn't exactly directly transferable, it'd be possible to more or less manage it if you were a competent coder familiar with the inspiration and knowing the intended result.)

​If I could, for instance. I'm like 97% sure that Phyrra and Cyrus could be hosted on ComicFury. Yes, it's a comic site, yes, Phyrra and Cyrus is an animation, but I am almost absolutely positive (thus the 97%) that a "comic" can be a video.

Specifically. A video which doesn't autoplay, which you hit play in order to play, and which has both animation and audio. There is a file format which allows that. Well, multiple file formats. But I am positive one of said file formats, ComicFury supports for comics, and thus, it would be potentially possible to upload an entire episode. (Might run afoul of the size limitation to uploads but I'm sure there'd be a workaround for that.)

If that were possible, then from there it'd be easy.
Each comic (except fillers in the form of character art or worldbuilding concepts) would be an episode.

The most iffy thing I'd want would be the ability to make a video fullscreen; I'm less than positive that'd be possible.

But I'd want a home page with disqus comments that'd display the latest episode and latest blog (easily done), the ability to leave disqus comments on every blog post (easily done), maybe disqus comments on some extra pages (easily done), and then for the comments on every comic...
Disqus comments displaying on top and ComicFury comments also displaying below Disqus as the default (seen it done so it can be done),
With the option to alternatively have ComicFury comments on top and Disqus comments below,
And the option to hide ComicFury comments (seen it done so it can be done),
And the option to hide Disqus comments (seen it done so it can be done),
And the option to hide both comments,
And the ability to save preference for comment display (the above options) between both pages page to page and visits  visit to visit (meaning not needing to manually click the preferred option each time; pretty sure this can be done),
And Disqus comments linked to every site I host Phyrra and Cyrus on with Disqus (seen it done so it can be done).

Optionally, with a domain purchased and used.
Premade layouts have a quick-navigation (dropdown menu) so I'd have that, and premade layouts also have the "save my place" function for saving the comic/episode location you were watching so you can "load my place" later, and optionally, I could maybe have non-intrusive advertising built into the site.

So that might seem like a fair amount. But given what I know ComicFury can already do. In that I've seen almost all of this already done. I'm pretty sure it'd be possible to do. And it'd be awesome.

This is what I mean. I mapped that out over a week ago. It's doable. Most likely, at least. 

It feels like something I can actually have made real.

It feels like something where I could have a blast.
Just interacting with viewers, with fans, with friends, and coworkers, to make a project, pouring pure love into it every step of the way. A project which is mine...but also more than mine. Something greater, built by a team, a community. Something to share with the world, and be remembered for.

Something unique, quirky, original, and ambitious. Yet not so ambitious as to be impossible. To be manageable. To be something that can be made.

That's what I want to make on a daily basis.

But it's not every day I make a Phyrra and Cyrus.
It's not every day I make a Dawn of Order.
It's not every day that I get to have those moments of genius for lack of a better term.
It's not every day where I can snatch that greatness and feel it.

But on those days where I don't have the greatness.

I still remember the feeling of it.
The sensation remains.

On days I am not making the next Phyrra and Cyrus. Or for that matter, making Phyrra and Cyrus. I am remembering the sensation of Phyrra and Cyrus. And that is where the depression comes in...because I feel empty, because it's just so real and something just so close to something I can see tangible...yet not actually existing. The ideas will die with me.

I intend to live a very long life, of course. But the ideas if I don't make them...well. Nobody else would. Nobody else could. They could make something which has all the elements my notes describe, of course. But it wouldn't be how I had tried to make it because my notes aren't nearly as extensive as they should be, and there are little things here and there that the only way I'd be able to bring up is if someone first was trying to do them wrong and I'd be able to tell them, "No, not that. This." to fix it.

And that's the frustrating feeling.

Knowing that I have these ideas. Ideas that are. No matter how much I try to be humble. No matter how much I try to avoid arrogance. No matter how much I try to be a realist, a pessimist, a cynic. Ideas which are just...good. Ideas which are genius. I have them. And they demand to be made real.

I feel them as real. I actually live with them as real. I don't just see episodes of Phyrra and Cyrus. I also see me interacting with viewers who watch the latest episode of Phyrra and Cyrus. Me commenting on their comments, engaging them in dialogs which are currently nonexistent. Talking to them, revealing miscellaneous facts, sometimes being a bit of a trolling creator, other times revealing tiny snippets which couldn't make it into the show, small Word of God things like that, you probably can get a sense of what I mean.

When I think of them. I am actively doing that. Not just laying out the episode itself. But also the reactions to the episode, which I know would exist because. Well. I am confident in myself. Not arrogance. I know that, 100%. If Phyrra and Cyrus was made into a series. There would be fans. There would be people commenting. There would be a lot of them because in order for Phyrra and Cyrus to publish so much as a single episode. It'd need to get the publicity to get off the ground in the first place.

In other words. I know that if Phyrra and Cyrus existed. There would be people talking about it. It would demand to be watched. Demand to be seen. It would be popular, spread like wildfire. I know this because I know what I can make it be. If it existed, then it would exist at a high enough quality where those things would be impossible to not have.

And the depression more or less comes from.

"...So why isn't it so?!?"

So why don't Phyrra and Cyrus already exist.
So why doesn't Dawn of Order already exist.
So why doesn't this idea. Which is magical. Have its reality.
And why can't I have something like it, right now, in front of me.
Why can't I have something like it, or it itself, in my mind if nowhere else.

And that's what cuts deep. Not having it in front of me. Not having it in my head. And not having something similar to it in my head. Living in a world where it doesn't exist tangibly. Living in our world. A world close to the one they exist in. But they don't. Because I haven't made them exist yet, in spite of being their creator.

I think that describes my depression pretty well. And people might be able to relate to it now that I've described it in those terms. But I never know. Sometimes, it might just be I'm crazy.

Apparently my subconscious is genius, because the idea was spawned from a dream, too. Now, granted. Most of the fleshing out I've been doing over the last twelve hours has been a conscious effort, and given the nature of this, I can't claim credit for MUCH (just the original stuff such as the lore I'm beginning to build), BUTSTILL.

Anyway. Today, the new idea?

A game.

This game was inspired primarily by Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim (and some of the better elements from the hypothetically-if-one-did-exist-sequel which is a shame that they never made. What's that you're saying? Sorry, can't hear you over my lamenting that Majesty never was given a sequel game, you'll have to speak up louder)...

...But throwing in STRONG elements of Nemesis of the Roman Empire (a game literally nobody seems to know anything about existing pretty much; even MAJESTY is less obscure apparently), with fair amounts of Age of Empires II (plus a little from Age of Empires 1 I guess) thrown in for good measure. (Not really Age of Mythology and certainly not Age of Empires III, but the monsters in this game can I suppose take cues from Age of Mythology.) I suppose you can say Starcraft holds some influence, too.

Yes, that would mean that it'd have a bunch of mechanics which are RTS in nature and take from some more traditional RPG styled games, so this isn't "Me imagining Majesty's sequel as it should be"; this is a new game, with inspiration from Majesty. Inspiration, nothing more. You can see the aesthetic of Majesty in the game I envisioned, but you can also clearly tell that this is a separate game, not intended to be identical in any way.

Where do I begin?

I literally gave up my morning shaving/hair brushing/teeth brushing and critically nap in order to write down notes, and I wrote down three full pages worth of notes at work not to mention a fourth mini-page (mini mini page, half of a sheet which is I estimate 1/4th of a normal page, so 1/8th extra) continuing, and these pages were pretty cramped, so I got a LOT of work done on this idea; it was a borderline obsession and I am positive my performance at work was notably suffering (bad because my bosses were both present, but oh well for this I consider it worth it).

Hmm...I suppose I'll start with some of the mechanics.

So this is a game featuring a zoomable map: able to zoom in fairly closely, but also to zoom way out until the units are basically dots, and this zoom is designed to be functional and sane with every zoom in-between, a way to view as much as the kingdom as necessary. (And yes I call it a kingdom, because of the games I listed, Majesty still is the strongest influence on the game.)

Said map can be ROTATED, too. It can be rotated 360 degrees, viewable from any angle at any zoom. It has four "preset" rotations found on buttons, with the default being north (okay so this I took from Zeus: Master of Olympus/Poseidon: Master of Atlantis).

There is a minimap always visible, which has various different options toggled for how/what is viewed.
There is a tracking window below the minimap, to track something the player designates, including the option to rotate through things/places.

The commander would have various different flags (you'll get more about this later on why these are necessary): "Attack this target"; "Don't get near this target"; "Don't go near this area" (for things in the unexplored area which you know are there); "Go to this location"; "Defend this".

The game would have VARIOUS different speed options. Everything from 10% to 1000%; moving in slow motion to moving absurdly fast, faster than a human can realistically follow. The game would also feature the ability to PAUSE. The player can't issue commands when paused (no spells, no commands, no recruits, no upgrades, etc.), but the ability to pause allows for much faster translations between commands for the micromanager especially when paired with the slow game speed.

The game would feature hotkeys, easily set, to allow for fast tracking of specific units/formations/buildings, along with a command to zoom to the selected.

The only REAL resource would be gold--stored both in the treasury (max: 99,999,999), and in various buildings. Gold stored in a building can be used for any purchase IN THAT BUILDING (for instance, a hero building with gold can use gold to recruit a hero without depleting the treasury) and does so by default, BUT, purchases can also be made using the treasury.

In other words, there's a universal source which is used when there's nothing else to use, but you can use locally if you don't want to deplete the universal source. Said local sources feed back into the main source via the economy, anyway, but more on that later.

Said gold is generated over time--automatically a small amount deposited in the treasury as a 'daily income', some from certain items, and collected both from units/buildings (many buildings generate gold, other buildings have gold deposited in them, and both can have it collected; think tax collector from Majesty) and from harvesting gold deposits on the map or from trading. (Resources on the map aside from buildings are destructible; you can destroy them in order to build, but it's a bit wasteful since there's a limited amount you can harvest.)

Thus, it's never possible to run out of gold even though with careless spending it is possible to find yourself a bit short on gold for an inconvenient duration of time.

Every unit within the game would have an AI--every unit. Even units who, under normal circumstances, should never need to be artificially controlled. (Due to a specific level with the quirk of zero obedience, which you'll learn about below.) Each AI would be unique to that unit, but following a pattern. This is the Majesty coming out, you might be able to tell.

Even Peasants and Tax Collectors had their little quirks to them which made them act in weird ways. (Often stupid, but that's beside the point.) This would be that. All units have an AI setting which works on autopilot, and all units with that AI setting follow patterns which, at least theoretically, are optimal usage of their abilities. Non-heroes travel together in groups, for instance.

​In spite of said AIs, the majority of units can be ordered. Henchmen and heroes tend not to really respond to direct orders (though henchmen can be ordered to follow directives, basically, differing behaviors IN their AI), but even they can do so and if not, that's what flags and spells are for. (Still more on that below.)

Most buildings are constructed and thus destroyable, but some buildings aren't destroyed, just demolished/converted. These buildings can't be permanently destroyed, simply rendered currently-unusable by their current owner by whatever method (including being converted into having a different owner). 

Heroes can always capture/convert structures; some units also can. Alternatively, demolishing and then rebuilding can be done if not capturing/converting them. Obviously, there are a predefined set number of these per level. They are structures of importance. Settlements are the most important (as they are basically the equivalent of a Palace in Majesty), which often (but not always) are surrounded by permanent (rather than temporary) walls and usually have prebuild (rather than built) towers.

Yet others would exist to serve numerous different functions, including Outposts acting as mini-settlements giving some, but not all, of the abilities of a settlement and acting as a combination of other buildings as well including a trading post (something which there can be an unlimited number of, but it gets costly to build, so finding an outpost helps).

As mentioned, most buildings are built--when building buildings, a ring (let's call it the green ring because Majesty) surrounds all existing buildings to let you know where they are in relationship to the new building (which has its shape phantom-overlaid onto where it'd be) that has a circle around it so you know how to get things as exactly distanced as you want them to be.

Furthering that, the game would also feature the option to turn on a grid function, which would give a fair idea of where things are and thus allow for optimal building placement ease, among numerous other factors.

​There would be MANY buildings both built and constructed (found then built/converted) that would contain items--some automatically handed out, some for sale. And similarly, there would be various different magical items littered throughout the map which have various different effects. These items are mostly for heroes, but units can have some of them in limited quantities. (Heroes have unlimited capacity for items so long as there's no redundancy. The only redundant item they can have unlimited of is a healing potion.)

Some items are deposited in buildings for passive effects, e.g. passive gold regeneration. Items picked up not for buildings' usage can be either passive (provide a continuous bonus of some sort) or active (used and then the item is depleted by the amount indicated). Some items can even be manually triggered by the player, albeit mostly in those who have higher obedience.

EVERY unit levels up, regardless of type or task, getting better at their primary function and gaining health. 

Upgrades for equipment, items, units, buildings, and even heroes exist; many upgrades are automatically given to NEW units of the type and older units can pay to have them (heroes, they pay from their personal pocket; non-heroes, the player pays from the treasury). Heroes can do this automatically or in some cases be ordered to; non-heroes will never do it on their own because it would take from the treasury so they need the input.

Upgrades are also global--no researching the same thing twenty different times. Research it once, and it doesn't need to be researched again. 

But back to the AI...
...Every unit has an "act independently" setting. For many, this can be disabled--sometimes temporarily, other times permanently--in order to have them act in specific ways determined by the player. This is usually for units rather than henchmen or heroes.

Units have the ability to move in formation. (Heroes do not. Henchmen also do not, but peasants are classified as units so peasants can.) These formations can take...well, various different formations. Tightly clustered, spread out, single file line, double file line, you get the idea. They move at the speed of the slowest unit, together, acting as one.

Units have the ability to "attach" themselves to a hero (which automatically makes them a formation moving with the hero; heroes have the option of 'move at default speed' or 'move at formation speed' so you don't slow heroes down unless you intend to), which makes all the units assigned to the hero have +(hero's levels) levels for the duration of the time they are attached to the hero.

The units attached also get increases to all their stats proportional to the hero's stats, including accelerated XP gain rate. Formations attached to a hero can also be larger than formations with no attachment to a hero, allowing for a larger army to exist. These units will always move with the hero (to the best of their ability) and do what the hero is doing (to the best of their ability).

Almost every unit and the VAST majority of heroes has AT LEAST one upgraded form. (Heroes don't have more than one.) They usually have more than one.

ALL units have passive health regeneration. Heroes regenerate HP faster, with attached units getting that bonus regeneration speed to a lesser extent. Units (which include henchmen and heroes) can garrison--garrisoned units heal faster, among other benefits.

Certain buildings heal MUCH faster than other buildings when garrisoned within. And yes, this does stack so having units attached to a hero garrisoned inside a rapid-healing building can swiftly regenerate an army which was moments before almost all dead.

Permanent buildings never increase in cost (if they have a cost at all), and of built buildings...some buildings (towers, economic buildings, hero buildings) increase in cost whereas others (unit buildings, upgrade buildings, various defensive structures, etc.) don't. 

Units/heroes never increase in cost to recruit, nor is there a cap on how many can be recruited (other than whatever game engine limitations I'd encounter). Maps could be of varying different sizes. Small, medium, large, huge, gigantic, etc. 

In spite of what I said earlier, there are other resources...which are, completely, totally, 100% optional: they enhance things (especially playing as certain civilizations), but are never needed for anything. 

Food can be consumed to increase unit regeneration, or in the civilization with organic buildings, be used to repair/upgrade an organic building. It is NEVER used to create units/buildings...except, of course. A "food caravan" unit, which transports food from one location to another.

You can also trade food for gold. (And, yes, vice versa, too, but this is something the game recommends against.)

Stone can be consumed to repair buildings at an accelerated rate. In the civilization specializing in it, stone can also be used to provide a passive regeneration to said building if said building has a garrison, no need for a repair unit to be on site. This also applies to upgrades. It is NEVER used to create units/buildings...except, of course. A "stone caravan" unit, which transports stone from one location to another.

You can also trade stone for gold. (And, yes, vice versa, too, but this is something the game recommends against.) In fact, this is the primary purpose of it, to be harvested for extra cash.

Wood can be consumed to repair buildings at an accelerated rate. In the civilization specializing in it, it can also be used to repair/upgrade a wooden building. It is NEVER used to create units/buildings...except, of course. A "wood caravan" unit, which transports wood from one location to another.

You can also trade wood for gold. (And, yes, vice versa, too, but this is something the game recommends against.) In fact, this is the primary purpose of it, to be harvested for extra cash.

​Among other traits, heroes have unique names, FAR more independent AI, can carry more items, USE said items automatically, gather items on their own, among numerous other traits; they are the elites which make up the core gameplay, with all non-hero units (be it henchmen or regular units) essentially as cannon fodder to help support them/provide the backbone of the economy and military force such that heroes are placed in less danger.

Like units, heroes come in numerous different types. I've got 25 (maybe 29; maybe 34; maybe 30) heroes with associations (4 tied to one thing which if they have upgrades is instead 8, 12 tied to another, the four base heroes associated with the 12 which are their upgraded forms, five civilization-specific heroes which if they have upgrades is instead 10), and the plan is to have APPROXIMATELY one hero per basic unit type (plus upgrade to said hero) plus any "quirky" hero I want that's not a unit type, so if I had to estimate, I'd say I'm looking at somewhere in the range of 60 unique hero types as a fairly conservative number.

Why is it so conservative? Well, you'll be able to check my math on this later when you see how I got this figure, but by my calculation, when you tally civilization choice (five civs) with the other mutually exclusive choices, my mental math said that was 240 unique combinations. (5 * 4 = 20, * 2 = 40, * 2 = 60, * 2 = 120, * 2 = 240; five civs, and you'll see what the *4 and the four *2s are below.)

​BUT ANYWAY.

As I mentioned. There are different civilizations. These civilizations are not simply "one or two small differences but basically interchangeable". This isn't quite as extreme as, say, Terran vs. Zerg vs. Protoss would be (or more accurately, Roman vs. Carthaginian vs. Gaul vs. the fourth civ I can never remember the name of but which is my favorite to play as); you do use basically the same things.

It's more in the middle. Think more like Age of Empires (at least Age of Empires II Conqueror's Expansion, don't quite remember if the original had civ traits), but slightly more extreme than Age of Empires. All five civilizations have specialties, all five civilizations have quirks, all five civilizations have unique units/traits (PLURAL), but not really much in the way of penalties and absolutely nothing "off-limits" aside from the uniques of other civs, obv.

The player can and is pitted against both an enemy civilization and monsters. (There are various victory conditions. You could theoretically have a level with no monsters even though none exists; you could theoretically have a level with no enemy civilization and some do exist because there are plenty of monsters to challenge your kingdom.)

Monsters spawn from lairs which follow many building rules. They are not all destructible, but many (especially ones which appear after the map was created) are. They can be the entirety of the enemy for a level, because they present a formidable threat.

Monsters have "roaming" mode, "destroy building" mode, "Attack units" mode, "Attack everything" mode, "Specialized" mode for some, and "defend thing" mode. Kinda like the flags, except you don't get to see it in them; you just have to observe which mode they are in from their actions. (Making a beeline for your settlement? Probably destroy building. Chase hero? Probably attack unit. Engage on sight/when attacked and wander around? Roam. And so on.)

Non-hero units have various different "directives" they can be given. Directives aren't orders, per se. They aren't things which say "do this", so much as they are: determining which type of AI path the unit will use. Among these settings:
"Never attack, ever"; "Don't attack unless in self-defense"; "Attack only explicit threats nearby"; "Attack any threat, but do not pursue"; "Attack any threat and pursue".

Henchmen in particular have VERY strong usage of these directives. These directives, unlike for other units, can actually be globally set. (But can still be given on an individual basis.) "Value life over duty" (flee), versus "value duty over life" (ignore danger) would be an example, albeit not quite the best way to word it. 

A better way to say it would be: "Flee if danger nearby"; "Flee if attacked"; "Never flee". The first on line of sight; if an enemy is spotted, RUN AWAY to the nearest garrison. The second when an attack is sensed; if registering that they have been attacked, RUN AWAY to avoid being killed.

Units, especially heroes, may flee from battle, especially when low on HP. They have threat assessment; the accuracy of this assessment is based on stats, and accounts for their situation with all the information they have in their line of sight versus the situation of the enemy for as long as they can see in their line of sight. Enemy too strong, they will run for their lives.

Units fleeing seek to garrison themselves in the nearest building, ideally high-healing garrisons, but they'll take anything they can get. This is more specifically "seek best garrison to garrison", but 'best' is often just 'nearest'. It's MEANT to function as 'gets unit functioning at fastest rate', though.

​The game would have various different cheats (with a witty dialog for the cheat) easily used by control-C and with a quick method of entering them...say, by hitting. Well. Enter. I've thought up a little over half a dozen; the completed list would be probably closer to two dozen. I'll post them at the end because they're on page three and four of my notes and I'm not even onto page one of my notes (though I'm close).

The game would feature player spells: cast from the treasury, depleting gold reserves, to have numerous different effects. Some of these spells come from buildings which are mutually exclusive, showing that Majesty influence some more, and yes there is a high level of redundancy in them, great overlap even when choosing the other side.

Some units would have special abilities, but mostly, the realm of spellcasting is reserved for heroes, who have NUMEROUS spells/abilities they have access to; it is one of their main defining characteristics, their unique abilities that their hero class possesses which no other hero class has.

That being said, because all units follow some basic classifications, heroes follow some of these same classifications. It's not quite as simple as "magic melee range", but it's along those veins at the very least in that they take the same penalties/bonuses that units do when facing specific types of opponents.

Another benefit of heroes is (okay so this one is from Age of Mythology) that they do bonus damage against monsters--the main foe in the game, frankly, because while doing battle against an enemy is all fun and good and all, the main threat other than incompetent friendly AI is going to be competent unfriendly monster AI.

Now, that's just what I covered this morning.

Okay.

So.

This is a very long-ass ramble (sorry, language) as-is even to me right now as I'm writing it. But. Small confession to you as you are going to be reading it. I will be editing in content from the four pieces of paper above into the sections appropriate, such that related topics are, loosely, categorized together.

Meaning that from your perspective, there's going to be a LOT more in the above than from my perspective as I am writing this because from my perspective, that content is "below", down here, where I am writing right now except not yet written, even though to your perspective that content is in the above.

Hmm...lemme take a screenshot of the scroll bar. (This is an imperfect method, but oh well.)

...Bonus points. If I edit any of the content visible in that screenshot, you'll be able to go, "hey wait a minute, that's not what I just read". (Well. Assuming you're masochistic enough to read the thing twice.) But ANYWAY. That gives you a fair idea of what the blog looks like right now--it is already long, but it is still only a FRACTION of what it WILL be by the time I am finished.

​SO.

Moving on.

All units have a "home" building. When garrisoned in their "home" building, units have accelerated healing even if this home building doesn't normally offer accelerated healing when garrisoned. Hero homes have a limit to the number of recruits they can have--I'm just gonna plagiarize and say that's four, in most cases.

All other unit recruitment buildings have no limits; you can have hundreds of henchmen and thousands (god forbid if the game engine could take it) of units and they could theoretically all spawn from a single location.

I want to do some research into Age of Empires and Age of Empires II to plagiarize units from them (I'm not gonna pretend otherwise), but some unit types I was able to come up with off the top of my head were:
Spearmen
Light Infantry
Heavy Infantry
Archers
Light Cavalry
Heavy Cavalry
Cavalry Archers
Converter(*)/Healer/Buffer/Debuffer (probably not all as one unit but probably not all as four separate units)
Armored Transport (one form which is easy to think about: a siege tower)
Armored Ram (battering ram)
Unit Siege (pierce) (Ballistae)
Unit Siege (spread) (catapults)
Building Siege (distance)
...And most, aside from some siege weapons, would have heroes of them.
*Heroes can't be converted and only some henchmen can be; conversion is mostly a function for units and some buildings.

​​When I designed the game, I designed the game to, like my inspiration, have four "Ages".
And get ready for this, because this is where things get important. You're about to get some rather important namedrops.

The first age: Dawn of Harmony. This is the age where civilization comes to fruition, where life begins to inhabit an area which was previously uninhabited. It is the birth of, in the current location, all that is to unfold.

The second age: Dawn of Magic. While magic is ever-present at all times, both in Harmony (before) and in all ages after, the Dawn of Magic represents the time where the existing civilization has established the roots necessary for branching into magic; magic is something best done with the support of a thriving economic settlement.

The third age: Dawn of Religion. While religion is ever-present at all times, both before its dawn (Magic/Harmony) and in the stage after, the Dawn of Religion represents the establishment of structure and continuity in the civilization. People strive to live for something "grander", and now have the resources necessary to accomplish it.

The fourth age: Dawn of Technology. While technology is ever-present at all times, in all the ages before its dawn, for technology to thrive, it requires harmony, magic, and religion to be established first. Because in order to be at the forefront of technology, you need to have the people, the roots, the support, the structure, the continuity, of everything else already there.

And from this...you get the game title.

WOW this far in an only now I'm namedropping it?

You bet.

Now granted.

This is a pretty good title. What that means is that there's like an 80% chance that a game by this title already exists. If it doesn't, then there's like a 98% chance that a game with this subtitle exists (e.g. "GAME TITLE: Dawn of Order"). Butstill. IN SPITE OF THAT.

The working title of this game that I invented today?

Dawn of Order.

The idea of that should be self-evident. You, as the player, are hoping to become the master over the kingdom, to establish order where before there was none. Conquer any rival kingdoms, and conquer any monstrous threats lurking in the wild, to establish an era of eternal order where civilization's laws reign supreme. Your goal, the goal of the player, is to bring about this utopia, to bring about the Dawn of an era of Order.

This can be done in any of the for "ages", obviously, but in terms of lore it would be a kind of "fifth age", coming after the other four, when a kingdom has achieved everything there is for a kingdom to achieve.

The victory screen for any level is thus, "Order Obtained!", a white and blue screen with glistening buildings; the defeat screen for any level is thus, "Chaos Consumes..."; it is red and black flames and ashes. While we're on the subject though, this game features unique introductions to every level with voice narration (same as Majesty and Zeus/Poseidon), and has unique ending screens with voice narration for everything except for freestyle; similarly, every level's defeat screen (while featuring no voice) has a unique narration outlying the horrible fate you just suffered and what will happen next.

​By the way, units when they die are, mostly, gone for good. They die, they're dead. An exception: heroes, when dieing, produce a gravestone to be resurrected within a window of time. Deaths are announced with a loud narration from the hero. (All units have dialog for doing every action in the game--hero dialog is unique to the hero type, thus each hero death can be identified as belonging to that specific type of hero, and their name displays on screen so you know WHICH hero it was.) You know. Just like Majesty.

Generals, when they die, also don't die for good. They can be resummoned. What are generals? Generals are heroes carried across levels. At the end of a level, one of each hero type you possess can be promoted to become a General. The maximum number of Generals you can have is (number of settlements you control) * (number of the age/"dawn" you are currently in), e.g. three settlements in the Dawn of Religion age = 9 generals.

Generals in freestyle are for freestyle quests only, but Generals are shared between Quests and Campaigns (including the bonus level).

Speaking of which! There's three types of levels: Freestyle levels are...well, freestyle. They're random matches, basically a single game with no story. Just complete the objective of the level which you set before generating the level. (I'd want to look up those victory conditions both in Majesty and also Age of Empires to see what they offer.) 

Quests are exactly what they are in Majesty: isolated self-contained stories, with very little relation to one another. Some quests are unlocked by completing others, and you can carry generals from one quest to another, but otherwise they have no tie with one another; they are each almost their own freestyle game, except there IS narrative for the level, and there's unique quirks not found in freestyle for every quest.

Campaign contains missions. Each mission unlocks at least one other mission; all missions require at least one other mission to unlock save the first one of course. For the most part, this is linear; complete one, do the next. The order is flexible in some cases, in that sometimes, say, three different levels will open up, but just as often as levels open up, they close up with the next level unlocking only after all the others are completed.

There are five campaigns (plus the bonus level). They can be done in any order, but the RECOMMENDED order is the order they happen in the story, because these being campaigns, there is a continuous narrative to them and they take the Starcraft route of "this campaign happens after the conclusion of the last campaign, and before the next campaign". Each campaign covers a race.

The first campaign doubles as a gradual tutorial (though, Quests offer tutorials on gameplay mechanics in much the same way Majesty quests do), and thus is the longest, at 25 episodes; the other 4 campaigns are 13 episodes each. Which is 77 + bonus level episodes/levels in the campaign mode.

Let's see...for henchmen, they are "Collectors" (collect from buildings), "Caravans" (transport goods to other buildings, usually gold), Gatherers (special units which must be manually recruited; can be converted; gather gold/wood/stone/food from the land and deposit it in buildings which can take those resources), Guards (self-explanatory; generated from specific towers mostly but also important government buildings), Builders, and Peasants (can do any of these tasks and also has a weak pitiful attack they can use; is a jack of all trades, which is manually recruited, has different AI, and can be converted).

Buildings change aesthetic with the four ages. Many (but not all) buildings also have upgrades. Some from the building itself, others from other buildings. (Imagine having to try and upgrade every single link in a wall--not viable; that's an upgrade done from another building. But there are plenty of buildings where sometimes you want the lower-level; that's an upgrade done from the building itself.)

There are never more than four levels to a building, which means there's 4-16 aesthetics for a building. (One each age for level 1, level 2, level 3, and level 4. Each level adds four possible aesthetics.)

As can be expected, some buildings/units are only available after other buildings/building levels/research are completed. Furthermore, some buildings/units/upgrades (both unit/building upgrades) only when reaching a certain age/dawn, also as can be expected.

And, true to Majesty: Some Hero Buildings are mutually exclusive with one another. There are twelve total such buildings.

Four of such buildings are the Buildings of the Orders. There are for "Orders". These are people who follow a set way, and refuse to settle in a kingdom which has set in a different way than theirs.

The Order of Harmony focuses on resources. They emphasize the importance of living in harmony with nature, and see magic/technology/religion as serving only one use: to further that end; any magic/technology/faith not serving this agenda they think to be an abomination standing in the way of their goal, thus their hatred of the other three orders.

In other words, they do not ban such things, but they live in the natural world, bringing out the most from it and allowing for a plentiful fulfilling existence. It is the oldest of the Orders, but also the smallest. It's certainly not the weakest though!

The Order of Magic focuses on Items. They emphasize the importance of pure thaumatic energies, harvesting the mystic arts in numerous enchantments, items, and spells to further civilization. They feel that nature should be harvested for its resources, technology should serve to simply further understanding of the mystic arts, and that religion is good only for instilling the learning process of magic.

Thus, any usage of those not following that agenda, they abhor, and the other three Orders have ways mutually exclusive with their own. It is both the second oldest and second largest of the Orders, but no mere second in power.

The Order of Religion focuses on Units, instilling within all a sense of inner strength from divine protection. They believe that faith in the higher powers allows for an enrichment of life, and feel that all resources should be used as offerings to this lifestyle. Nature should be harvested for sacrifices and for sustenance, magic should be uses by the faithful to inspire miracles, and technology should be used to spread the word to the masses.

Thus, if those things are not being used in the way the order deems appropriate, they are banned. It is the largest of the orders currently.

The Order of Technology focuses on Buildings, representing the march of industry to create a powerful economy in the modern world. They believe that the resources of nature exist only as fuel for their machines, that magic serves only as a source of power for new, interesting, innovating technology, and that religion serves as a fine way of providing divine inspiration, nothing more.

They don't see those ideals as outdated, but they do hold about them a certain level of arrogance in thinking all those things should serve them. So the thought of them existing independently, and even of them operating under the ideals they are superior, is taboo.

Orders can be thought of as loosely akin and equivalent to Races (Gnome/Elves/Dwarves) in Majesty: Pick one, exclude the others, and get some significant changes to the kingdom's functionality based on your choice. (More on that below.)

​Good news, just passed page number one.
Bad news, just passed hour number three on writing this ramble.
Oh well, continuing on.

Now would be a good time to talk about the races. Races are, explicitly, the "civilizations" of the game. Human/Zerg/Protoss, Roman/Gaul/Carthaginian/The one I forget the name of, the NUMEROUS different choices in Age of Empires from Huns to Britains to Franks and so on and so forth there.

​Each race has MANY unique buildings, units, items, and upgrades. Each race has AT LEAST one unique hero and AT LEAST one unique spell. So there's not just aesthetical changes; there's actual serious differences between them.

Humans are the default player race. The majority of quests use them, they are the first/longest/tutorial campaign, and generally the metric by which all other races are compared to. So, yes, stereotypical as it may sound, they have no real strengths nor any true weaknesses.

Elves have an affinity for the resource of Wood; some of their buildings are wooden, grown from the ground. (Wooden buildings do not require wood to build, because once more, the resource of Wood is OPTIONAL.) As a general rule, their buildings tend to be cheaper, but more fragile.

Fae (think insectoids meets zerg) have an affinity for the resource of Food; some of their buildings are organic, birthed, and consume food like any living creature would. (I'm not gonna stress this every time, but yes, NO FOOD REQUIRED TO BUILD; FOOD IS OPTIONAL.) As a rule, their units are cheaper, but much weaker.

Orcs have an affinity for the resource of Stone. As a rule, their buildings are sturdier, but also more expensive.

Dwarves have an affinity for Gold; as a rule, their units are stronger, but more expensive.

Again. THESE ARE NOT THE ONLY DIFFERENCES. These are not superficial changes. But before I can go into the details of changes more intimately I'd need to research various games to more or less lay out what those exact changes actually would be.

So yes. There are extensive differences beyond the ones listed; each have significant gameplay separation from one another.

Next on the agenda for this game is the rest of the mutually exclusives.

I call these the "Divides". Each Divide can loosely be thought of as "Open"(Selfless) or "Closed"(Selfish).

Harmony Divide: Gathering of Protectors (Open) vs. Gathering of Masters (Closed).

The divide in Harmony comes from Harmony not being a unified concept. You can understand the idea of "live with nature" well enough, but these opposing Gatherings have entirely different ideas of what that means. The Gathering of Protectors believes that it is the duty of all who accept Harmony to not only live in nature, but protect it from outside harm.

In contrast, the Gathering of Masters believes that to live in nature means to be the masters of nature. They still believe that nature should be preserved, but it should also be directed and controlled to the benefit of all who accept the way of Harmony.

Magic Divide: Council of Elements (Open) vs. Council of Enhancements (Closed). This can actually be thought of in another term, "elemental magic versus non-elemental magic", or "elemental magic versus pure magical energy". The Council of Elements believes that magic should be used to harvest the power of the elements. The Council of Enhancements believe such things to be superfluous and wasteful, and that the pursuit of pure mystic energy produces a more "pure" form of magic they feel should be taught to all who embrace Magic.

Religion Divide: Temple of Love (Open) vs. Temple of Wrath (Closed). I need not explain why there would be a divide in religion, but to explain those concepts, it is simply the thought of "God(s) is Love" versus "The Wrath of God(s)". Both feature prominently in all religions pretty much, and yet they are at odds with one another. Divine acceptance, versus Divine retribution. Caring for others, versus empowerment.

And this is thus the divide; the Temple of Love believes in protecting all who accept religion into their lives, whereas the Temple of Wrath believes in punishing all who stand in the way of those who accept religion in their lives.

Technology Divide: Company of Progress (Open) vs. Company of Profit (Closed). This is simply a choice between being idealistic and being pragmatic. The Company of Progress believes that technology should be used for the progression of all aspects of life. The Company of Profit believes that technology serves to make money.

Harmony/Magic/Religion/Tech Divides are akin to Temples from Majesty, BUT: Choosing one "open"/"closed" only locks out the corresponding "closed"/"open". Choosing one open does NOT make you choose all-open; choosing all closed does NOT make you choose all-closed; the only times you have all-open/closed are either if a level dictates so or because you the player specifically desired it for whatever reason (probably thematic).

Also, you can probably guess this, but:
SAID DIVIDES ARE UNTIED TO ORDERS.
It's NOT "Pick Order, then pick Divide" (e.g. Order of Harmony-->Harmony Divide); that'd exclude basically half the hero roster and like 75, 80+% of the more "specialized hero" list. The two choices are entirely unrelated to one another, just like the choices between races and temples are unrelated in Majesty. You can and will have an order of technology and then choose either a council of elements or a council of enhancements.

​So the good news is, I'm through two pages; the bad news is, the third got so cluttered I needed a fourth mini page so it's the longest. Also, I need a break to eat because I start fasting for bloodwork tomorrow. So small pause, invisible to you but not to me, as I eat.

​...Okay, fifteen minute break over. Coming up on four hours now, but loosely speaking you could say this is the home stretch. So ANYWAY. Continuing on.

Order selecting gives one unique hero and has the mentioned alteration to the game: Harmony gives greatly enhanced resource gathering, building an economy; Magic gives a bunch of exclusive items which are useful for units especially heroes; Religion gives a bunch of exclusive upgrades that buff units; Technology gives a bunch of upgrades which modify buildings.

However, they grant no spells and aren't fundamentally altering the very nature of the game like race selection does.

Four heroes have three upgrades: Purely an upgrade to their hero class, and then two choices between the two divides associated with that hero. (One hero has a Harmony divide between upgrading into a Protectorate and upgrading into a Master in addition to that hero's pure upgrade, a second hero has a Magic divide between upgrading into an Elemental or an Enhancement in addition to their third pure upgrade, and so on.)

The choice between Divides is thus fairly minor. Divides do provide some minor miscellaneous kingdom influences, but nothing as extensive as the choice between Orders. Mostly, it comes down to the two heroes they offer (one as an exclusive for their Gathering/Council/Temple/Company, the other as an upgrade to one hero) and the spells they provide.

We're nearing the end of the content I have.

One unique building is the Embassy--you can build only one and when you know what it does you can understand why; the Embassy allows for the recruitment of one hero from each of the four races the player is not playing as. So as a human, it allows the recruitment of 1 elf, 1 fae, 1 dwarf, and 1 orc.

Guards have numerous different commands to them, but among them are "Flee when low in health" (can leave units/buildings vulnerable without their meat shield) vs. "Attack to death" (can lose the meat shield altogether until the replacement generated arrives); "Pursue enemies" (can get Guard to go further away than you want) vs. "Stay close to radius" (can allow guard to be sniped); "Attack strongest" vs. "Attack weakest" vs. "Attack nearest" vs. "Attack furthest away" for targeting.

Peasants have the same commands as henchmen do: Flee if danger nearby; Flee if attacked; never flee, but in addition to that, have two unique ones: "if attacked, attack the attacker" and "if threat nearby, attack nearby danger". (The former leads to them soloing the problem; the latter, a swarm of peasants deals with the issue.)

I have two things left to talk about.

The first on the list is Obedience.

Obedience is a stat every unit--henchmen, peasant, hero, whatever--has in two values: "Base obedience stat" (what the unit's default obedience value is) and "current obedience stat" (what the unit's current obedience is and thus the pertinent information to have when dealing with a unit).

Everything leads up to this, because this is the most critical game mechanic of all.

Obedience dictates how responsive units are to both direct orders and to directives (indirect orders, the "sets AI behavior to do this instead of that").

At 100% obedience, a unit ceases all action and starts to do ONLY actions the player directly orders them to do. This is almost never used; only specific units can have it, that or the use of a spell I dubbed "Mind Control" (to control the actions of a unit you control entirely...for about ten ingame seconds. With a cooldown at least 3-6 times that length).

At 80% obedience, a unit will always follow directives to the best of their ability and will often respond to direct orders given: "attack this"; "go here"; "garrison this"; "join that"; "pick up this". Pretty much those commands only though. This is the level many units tend to be at, but not nearly as many as you'd prefer. At this level, a unit will always for FREE obey the commands of flags. This level of obedience is incredibly rare among heroes.

At 60% obedience, a unit will try to follow directives, but will do so sometimes a little unreliably. A unit won't really respond to direct orders of "attack this"; "go here", etc., but orders to do those things will initiate their reevaluation process, making them more open to the suggestion if nothing else. At this level, a unit will always obey command flags; they'll need to be paid to attack something, defend something, or go somewhere, but they'll stay away from something for free. This level of obedience is where the rest of units are for the most part and is the base level for heroes.

At 40% obedience, directives given they will try to uphold, but they still use their own AI judgement to do what they think is the best thing for them to do now, a judgement which will often run counter to the player's intention. No direct orders can be given. At this level, a unit will always obey command flags...if they are appropriately priced high enough. They still will stay away from things for free though. This is the level of many heroes.

At 20% obedience, directives are more like guidelines...loose ones, at that. They basically do whatever they want to, irregardless of what's best for them to do. No direct orders can be given. At this level, a unit will almost always obey command flags; the higher the price, the higher the chance. They need to be paid to obey stay away flags. This is the level of the lowlife heroes more or less.

At 0% obedience, no input from the player can be given whatsoever, though they will still acknowledge flags most of the time especially if the price is high enough. This is occasionally seen from heroes, but mostly is a special curse from hell to be inflicted with.

This obedience system is where the heart and soul of the gameplay lies. The cannon fodder units have higher obedience; they act on their own but mostly act on the players' directives. Henchmen have medium obedience because they have a higher level of independence; they act on their own primarily but take heavy input from the player.

And Heroes have lower obedience because they are potentially fully self-automated; they act almost exclusively on their own and only rarely do they take some input from the player.

This obedience factor is where the hybrid between the RTS elements of games like Age of Empires meets the fantasy sim elements of Majesty. Low Obedience = acts like Majesty characters, in that you can't do anything to really force them to do something. High obedience = acts like RTS units, in that you can tell them what to do.

And yes, these units will do things like raid lairs, attack enemy settlements, and the like all on their own.

This is what I feel makes my game I invented truly unique. I don't think anything like this has been done before, and yet I think that if it could be pulled off it would be absolutely amazing to see.

​So what do you get for sticking with me to the end? (Or skimming four hours' of worth and just skipping to the bottom.) Why, cheat codes, of course!

woodent ya know displays the message, "My bark is worse than my bite!" and has the effect of causing every building which can store Wood to have maximum Wood stored (999).
have a meating displays the message, "I'm sick of the bare bone necessities!" and has the effect of causing every building which can store Food to have maximum Food stored.
stone cold killer displays the message, "I'm off to a rocky start!" and has the effect of causing every building which can store Stone to have maximum Stone stored.
a golden opportunity displays the message, "All the Shinies are MINE! My own. My preciousesss." and has the effect of maxing the treasury out to 99,999,999 gold.

ranger guild displays the message, "I'm a cartographer! Who knew?" and reveals the whole map.

order of operations displays the message, "The chain of command whips you until you obey.", and has the effect of allowing for all normally mutually exclusive buildings to be built: all four Order buildings, and both halves of the four Divides (so instead of having five, you can have all twelve).

dawn of fun times displays the message, "Time flies when you're having fun!", and has the effect of everything being done instantly. Buildings insta-constructed; upgrades insta-done, units insta-recruited. Entering once enables it; entering it a second time disables it.

go away displays the message, "Shoo, fly, don't bother me!" and has the effect if instantly killing/destroying/dismantling the selected unit/building.

lets roll displays the message, "Never gonna give you up, never gonna level you down, or desert you." and has the effect of leveling the selected unit up five levels.

I would also need cheats for Instant Win, Instant Loss, Kill Monsters, Kill all other Kingdoms, Kill specific Kingdom, All Spells, and no cooldown on spells which have cooldown.

But then comes the fun ones:
this is a terrible idea displays the message, "Aaahhh!!! Monsters! MONSTERS EVERYWHERE! WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS?!?", and spawns monsters across the whole map.
trouble is coming (cheat name was something else that I forgot originally) displays the message, "Well...that's not good." and spawns monsters across all four edges of the map.
doh you wanna die displays the message, "Uh-oh..." and spawns the strongest monsters in the game LITERALLY EVERYWHERE.

So that is everything I have on Dawn of Order.

I hope you think the game idea is as interesting as I do.

Otherwise I just wasted four and a half hours of my life on nothing.

And yet in spite of it continuing to do so and even containing details I don't have written down (and thus, every time I don't write about them I risk forgetting), I continue to procrastinate about talking about them. Once more, I have a little bit of extra about them, albeit extra which requires me to blog about something which I was meant to blog about days ago.

And yet, once more, I am not going to be blogging about it, because instead I am going to be blogging about something else entirely. (Okay so there's a chance that I will, but that chance is so slim it is essentially none.)

Specifically, I have just...been wanting to talk about my identity recently. There have been a fair number of times where recently, I've either been just questioning who exactly I am (knowing that I am Bree, but otherwise being lost), or have just wanted to let it all out to people, to vent randomly in ways I just don't think about to vent to someone without a prompt--yet nobody gives me the prompt, or if they do, they give it to me in a public place where I don't want to give the rant.

Yes, technically speaking, this blog is public. But it is JUST private enough, it is just personal enough, that I feel comfortable sharing this sort of thing on here. Basically. There have been a fair number of times recently where I just wished someone would, in the right environment, give me the right lead-in to allow me to talk to them about some of the stuff below. Yet the lead-in I'd need is so specific that it'll never actually materialize.

Believe it or not. This blog? Was started very largely to make exactly this kind of entry. At the time, it was mostly to deal with me being a closeted transwoman who is both autistic and has bipolar disorder, and for me to unload it all on someone in real life, especially at work given my many frustrations there. That was one of the main contributing factors to me starting this blog in the first place.

It's something people often forget now that nowadays most of my entries are either related to my creations (stories, art, song, etc.) or non-entries that are more or less "sorry, stuff happened, so no real entry today". But part of blogging is telling stories from my life, or even just telling about my life. And this in particular is the latter because I just need to do that, in a way which is more conductive to a blog than, say, unloading on my girlfriend. (I mean, I could, it's just that this is the sort of content which works better as a blog than a rant to them.)

I'll start by talking a bit about my identity--as a refresher, yes, I do identify as plural. Specifically, the type of plural I identify as is a median. The, "there are many of us, but we are all Bree" descriptor is mostly accurate. (Mostly, because within me are at least two entities that are almost individuals who aren't Bree, but more on that later.) I have a core, the core "Bree", from which all of mes exist.

We are all women, we share most of our memories, emotions, and thoughts, and those are in the core. But there are things outside the core--memories, emotions, and thoughts unique to the personality. There are many of us indeed, but the primary two have come to be known as Ranger and mastina. mastina is the me most dominant overall, with Ranger at a very close second, and at some points having this be vice-versa where Ranger was more dominant even though she currently is not.

This is something which is, in many ways, similar to us being a transwoman--we have always been this way, as far as I can remember, with the compartmentalized thoughts and the division within us, not to mention the imaginary friend who never went away (more on that later). Yet like being trans, this isn't something we have known about consciously, actively, until relatively speaking fairly recently.

Specifically, the first inkling I'd say of us really having any semblance of an idea that we were divided within would be somewhere around circa December 2015. And I was confused. I didn't understand--I still don't! I have no clue what I really am, to be honest. But with help, I've been able to get some degree of better understanding, becoming more informed and also having done some searching and exploration.

My knowledge is still young. My experience is still growing. But somewhere circa 2017 I began to get much better grounded in having a more solid idea of who I am. Beyond that, I've been playing around with trying to figure out the differences between my mes.

Today, one of the things I figured out was that there is actually a difference in the way we think, and that we have different functions as a result. I mean. I knew there was a difference in the way we think; I've felt that before, where the very fundamental way I thought of things abruptly and suddenly shifted. (The shift between the different mes isn't something I control; I can't flip a switch and go from Ranger to mastina, nor is it that I go to sleep as one and awake as another. It just happens, that I'm one, then I'm another. These shifts can even happen in terms of seconds, where for a split moment I am one and then snap back to being another.)

But today, I think I figured out the way the thoughts differ.

I call the different thinking patterns "Linear" versus "Geometric".
You may recognize this as being, more or less, something from my perspective on art. And that's because it is! Basically, I have noted in the past that there are two ways to go about making art--the linear approach is, as the name indicates, focused on lines. You create things by the flow of lines.

It has the advantage of being fluid and dynamic, with good flow and movement, so when drawing motion, it's a nice technique. It has a disadvantage, though, in that accuracy tend to be hit-or-miss. Proportions, anatomy, perspective, the like, are all things which are potentially thrown off.

A geometric approach, in the art setting, is more or less taking the shapes, and building up the figure using them. This has the advantage of being accurate, but the disadvantage that it tends to be more stiff and rigid, coming across as a bit more artificial.

There's more to both than that (which I'll get to in a sec), but...I realized today that those approaches aren't just for art. They apply to a general view on the world in general. I mean, I always visualize things in those two ways, but I thought of said visualizations as an extension of art rather than extending the concept. The concept, though, works beyond just art for me.

Linear thinking, I realized, is more Ranger's specialty. It is organic, it is fluid, flowing, with movement, where things go with the flow, where things just come naturally and make sense, yet are sometimes a little bit questionable in how precisely they work. However, it does seem to work regardless of the flaws, and the flaws are what makes it actually be a thing of beauty.

When it comes to stories, I realize that the me who converses to characters is always Ranger. It's never me as mastina talking to my characters. Always, when I am having an actual conversation with my characters, as their equal rather than their god/creator, it is Ranger who speaks. (Me as mastina, on the other hand, I am always the god/creator.)

In this way, Ranger actually gets to know the characters better than I do--and without her, I wouldn't have the signature characters I am known for making that are so authentic they feel like they're real. Because to her, they are real, because she talks to them. I don't, not as mastina anyway.

Ranger is also, then, the one responsible for most of the actual dialog in my stories. I as the writer might give the general nature of the conversation...but she's the one who actually hears the characters speak, because to her it is people speaking (the perspective of the equal) rather than characters in dialog (the perspective of the creator).

This is also why when I snark it is probably because of something she thought of. Most of my puns tend to come from her. I can force puns through without her, but the best puns which come with the least reaction time are always hers. Because she just sees the 'line' to say, as it were.

So basically. Ranger is why I got to become a character-driven storyteller in the first place, in spite of originally being a plot-driven storyteller. She spends time to learn character quirks, to learn things that aren't necessary for the narrative. I can get away with a bare bones narrative not featuring the things I put in...but she insists on them, because she saw them, when she was actually there side by side the character in question. Or rather, to her, the person.

In contrast. When I am mastina. I am more into geometric thinking. It is constructed, it is built, it is structured, and yet, it is also isolated. All the geometric work I do in my mind is largely disjointed from other things. I just go inside my mind, and then in a particular canvas, build what's on my mind. Now, from that item I built, I can then build another. And then, build another from those. And so on and so forth.

I make the parts, one by one, until I have the whole assembly. Circles, squares, cylinders, triangles, and the like, to build a person in art. But also worldbuilding. I build worlds. Worlds have rules. Rules require structure. Ranger wings it in terms of that sort of thing, which is often why her stories run into problems of, "okay...now what?". Where the story ceases to progress due to writers' block, because she has an idea for what things should be like and she knows very specific things (because she saw them, and thus, those specific things are in her mind), but if she doesn't see every last detail then she runs into a problem of not being able to progress.

This way of thinking does have overlap with linear thinking--after all. To get from Point A (which is geometry; points are one-dimensional geometry) to Point B (which is still geometry), you need to...form a Line. That is two-dimensional geometry. But to further the metaphor, the line created using this method is straight, rigid and unmoving, whereas the lines created with linear thinking are more fluid and bent.

Now, the metaphor begins to fall apart when you introduce more advanced math (parabolic arcs, sin, cosine, tangent, and so on and so forth) not to mention the geometry of even just a partial circle allowing for curves in the form of arcs, there's at least a dozen way math nerds can poke holes in the allegory. But the basic idea I'm getting at is that there is in fact overlap, and that's where it is.

But there are things which are in the geometry only just like there are things which are in the linear only. Some of them are strengths, others weaknesses. Characters I build as mastina tend to be tools. They are characters--means to an end. I construct worlds, I construct their rules, and I make most of the plot. I know the overarching events which happen.

I don't know the exact manifestation of them. I might know the tone of a conversation. I might know the general content of the conversation. I tend to know why that conversation is going on. And many other similar things. I can know every detail of the conversation, except the actual words spoken. It's kinda strange, to even know the exact inflection and intonation of what is said yet not knowing the words. I can do that.

But for the conversation itself, if it's not Ranger, it's going to be very visibly artificially constructed because it was in fact artificially constructed. She lives it and thus records it and knows what's natural, and it's her instincts on dialog which I am using in things like Phyrra and Cyrus, but what she sees is only small snippets here and there, often only after I focus on a particular scene for a great amount of time.

The payout's absolutely worth it, of course. Because I never laugh heartily at conversations I have built, whereas when I am Ranger and I see the conversation happening, I laugh hard, especially if my characters are laughing with me. So it's not that Ranger is an artist/writer and I am a writer/artist. We're equal parts both, just...in different ways, with different strengths and different weaknesses.

And, yes.

This exists outside of writing, just like it's outside of art.

It's how we process information. I itemize lists. I have a very "listed" format. Structured, orderly. Ranger...messes it up. I tend to be the one writing our "scripts". I've talked about that before a bit (not sure if on the blog or not), but basically, whenever I am thinking about a conversation I'll have, or whenever I am in the middle of a conversation, I think up every possible variation on what I want to say, and every possible response I can think of that they'll say.

When I then promptly mess up no matter how much I tried to nail it, it's often Ranger who picks up and just wings it. But sometimes I mess up because of said winging it, especially if she jumps in without giving me the time to have built the script. 

Ranger's got a faster wit, after all, so it's no surprise her reaction time tends to be quicker. She just kinda sees things, and then puts it together, even if she has no clue how she saw them and put them together. "Oh, that is like this". With no thought in, she just makes the connection and then that connection is there.

I have...a more roundabout way. I link things together. I make an association: "this to this". And then I rely on that association to make a new one. For instance, in order to remember the band name Modest Mouse, I first think, "Band name...Mouse..." and then I jump to "Mightey Mouse", a user from the site I play mafia on, and then from there I go, "Ah! Yes. Not Mightey mouse, it's MODEST Mouse!" in order to get the right band name.

Yes, it is contrived. Yes, it is convoluted. But you know what else it is? It's consistent. I can, 100% of the time, using this method, remember a string of information, even a disproportionately long one. And that association tends to never go away. Once in my mind, it is almost impossible to remove, for better or for worse. I have never once failed to recollect the band name of Modest Mouse since my mind made that association, in spite of me having to mentally ask what the band was (and sometimes being asked) dozens, even hundreds of times.

There is a delay built in, though. I have to manually think it through, step by step. Some steps I can skip because they are internalized enough that my mind conceptualizes it fast enough that I don't need to spend time giving it a thought. (Basically, the concept of the step is enough; I don't have to spell the step out every single time in actual thought.) But I still run through every step to get that.

I can also do temporary versions of this by 'storing' data on my fingers. I can itemize things, and then even itemize the itemized things, and sometimes even itemize the itemized itemized things, though the deeper the list, the more prone to forgetting I am.

Concepts take form, take shape, one by one: each concept can be thought of as a single piece of geometry. And then my mind links the concepts, one by one, by building further geometry. And each concept is then fleshed out with additional concepts, additional geometry. And from this I form thoughts, form words, form ideas, that I can express in word form or whatever I may be trying to do.

Ranger's way is more. Well, she still thinks in concepts first, and struggles to translate concepts into English. It's just, BAM, there, and then, not there. There, then not there. There, and then from there, going here. But there's not really much of a direction when I do that. (Oh and yes I do slip from Ranger to mastina in the middle of a blog. Get used to third person, first person singular, and first person plural when I make a blog like this because I can be describing myself in third person, then slip into being that person.)

I just. Think. And the thought appears. Usually faster. But also more inconsistently and less coherently. It makes sense, internally, but externally when manifested it's more difficult to understand because while it has the general shape of something which is the right thing, the specifics are a little iffy.

I don't even really know how it works. It just does. And the results tend to be what they are. (A slight consequence of switching mid-project: I tend to lose the train of thought I was on, because quite literally the thought belongs to someone else and with the thought in that someone else I struggle to maintain it.)

Structure the specialty of one, details the specialty of the other. Things come faster when specific, yet are more coherent when waiting. And that coherency is easily broken, yet solved on the fly just as often.

Which brings me to a related concept.
I am still exploring this, actually. The concepts, intuitively, feel like they are different, and yet when I look at them, I can't help but feel they are intricately linked in a way where the amount of correlation between the two is such that they are almost synonymous.

And that's Instinct versus Reason. (Or Gut versus Logic if you prefer, but I have very strong reasons to prefer my terminology, that I'm not quite sure I can verbalize.)

Instinct and Reason have always been opposites within me existing strongly, and yet never having me be one; I'm always a little bit of both. Yet I've picked up that Ranger tends to be more instinct and I am more reason as mastina. (YES REALLY. If you know what my definition of Reason is, you'll understand.)

The way I wanted to talk about this was to actually go into stories a bit. In Red Hood Rider, Vampires represent the ultimate creatures of Instinct, masters of it who live on their impulses. They manipulate the rules of reality to serve them, bending the world to their will, but they are still confined to them. As basically-humans, they do have plenty of reason within them, but they are driven by what they feel.

This is almost identical to Monlows from the Bleach knockoff story I still need to talk about in a massive blog some time, and is a recurring theme in my stories. Werewolves in one story serve this function. Red Hood Rider is not my only vampire story where Vampires take on this function. It is an incredibly common motif: a creature of instinct, which is still capable of reason and yet is driven strongly by base directives.

In Red Hood Rider, the beings considered opposite of Vampires are Riders, who are considered on the top of the magical totem pole for Empowered Humans. They are humans who work on building structure, building order, on being the champions of reason, who exist always with logic and act in an informed way, making active decisions and calculating what they do.

​They still have instincts, and often quite sharp ones at that, but they never let their instincts take control and drive them; they have an internal control over themselves which prevents them from acting out in ways they know would be harmful. (Of course, they can still act in harmful ways if they don't realize it's harmful, but they are sharp and intuitive enough where they catch on quickly and fix the mistake when it's made.)

I forget on my notes on whether they break the rules of reality or temporarily rewrite them (I'm fairly certain it's one of the two and yes those two terms have a very important distinction in the Rubyverse, I just can't remember which is which in spite of them very much not being synonymous), but that's the source of their power--not something from nature (like vampires), but rather, something artificially created, manifested as a structured thing which has boundaries set by the user. They are still human, but they are human with help.

This model is more or less the same in the Bleach knockoff as being what the Montahame work off of. It is also the model which in settings where I have Slayers, they work off of. Beings who still feel, and have good instincts, but yet are driven first and foremost by reason, often with compassion thrown into the mix, yet with said compassion not getting in the way of doing their duties.

Contrasting the beings of instinct, who are under no obligations except for the self-inflicted ones they place upon themselves--sometimes, out of morals, but other times, simply out of a desire to survive, knowing that breaking said self-inflicted rules is a death sentence.

Ranger works more off of instinct. She can just have a sense for things, and that sense is often right, but while she can try to explain, when she tries to, she has difficulties. I'm no better, but for different reasons. I can figure out something, but when I figure it out, I don't figure out how to explain. I need to spend the time to create a different link in order to make the connection be tangible in words.

Another way of putting it--we all suck at wording things. Ranger gets flashes of beautiful words which are great but often broken/disjarred, whereas I struggle to get things but once I form the link I can throw together some elementary idea of what's the thing I am meant to do. 

Yet the way we suck at words is different. We approach things and react differently. Ranger has a first impulse and usually goes for it; I first think, then from the first impulse, further think, and from this, go for what I think. Yet Ranger still has to think, and I still have to go for what I feel is correct. Working in tandem, both present yet one dominant.

Yet there's more to Instinct versus Reason than just Ranger/mastina.

There are entities within me that aren't just those two, after all. I am many mes. They are the most dominant, but not the only ones. I don't even always know who is speaking, so to speak, but I can sometimes tell I am neither of them. Yet predominant entities within me are two individuals who never take the reigns.

They are the only two entities that I clearly know, aside from Ranger and mastina. They have been there for almost as long as I can remember. And yet. Neither has ever driven in my life, nor am I sure it's even possible for them to. They exist in the distance, in the peripheral. And never go away. They're always there.

I don't always have their counsel when I am talking amongst myselves (which is a thing I do, by the way; I do in fact have many a conversation where the many mes have full dialogs on a subject which could have been handled by just one person but wasn't because I wanted them to give their input), and in fact. Usually when I have their counsel it is just one or both of them with the current driver rather than a full council of mes talking side-by-side with them.

God pronouns are confusing even me so I hope you can follow along.
Basically, many mes talk to me at many times. But two entities, which I don't really consider "me", exist within me, that can also talk. And they have been manifested as instinct and reason. David, instinct, hasn't quite been around as long. My first memories of him are in my tweenaged years. But he (and yes, he is a he) has come to be a bit of the darker side of me.

He is not pure instinct. In fact, he is sharp with reasoning that cuts deep because I can never counter him when he speaks--because deep down, I know he's speaking the truth, more often than not. He just has the instincts for knowing what the case is...even if I really, really, really hate to admit that he's right. Because he's not a pleasant individual.

He is rude. He is condescending. He is demeaning, looking down on me, trash-talking me often. And he tells me what I don't want to hear, about all the things which I don't like to acknowledge come from me. Darker thoughts, darker impulses. He is there, reminding me that yes those exist, inside of me, and that he is the living proof of them, both as a manifestation of them and yet as something more than that.

Thankfully. I don't talk to him that often anymore--not because I've tuned him out. But just because he often isn't around when I don't need him. (And yes. I do need him sometimes, sad as I am to admit that.) Where he is when I don't talk to him, I don't know. He's never fully gone, but he just stays silent. I don't even know what exactly triggers him to give me a talk. I can have my life in a rut and have him be silent and yet not be in a rut and have him be quite talkative.

Yet every time, the feeling I have is the same: I hate, I loathe, the talk, yet feel better once I manage to recover from it. Talking to him rattles me each time, talking to him makes me miserable every time, often when I am already miserable, yet somehow because he is my deeper instincts or something like that I always end up stronger.

Basically, he beats me down and yet when I build myself up again after being beaten down, I am stronger than before. I guess when I don't feel like I need to get stronger he isn't around, would be my best guess. And that, I do admit, I have a lot right now. That "I know I should have a need to get stronger...but I am fine with my strength as is". I imagine with that mindset I am in for an awfully rude talk sooner or later, but for now it holds as silent.

Plus, one thing I am thankful for having him is that he is a safeguard against something worse. There is an entity within me that is me. ME. Not him, who is divorced from me. ME. A me, deep within Bree. Which is part of the median system. That is so bad that I bury it (not sure if it's a he, she, or neither). A me who has thoughts so terrible that I actively suppress trying to access what those thoughts were. (No, seriously. It's blocked off. I can't remember why this version of me is so bad. I just know it is that bad.)

I've tried guessing. "Is it a suicidal me?" Felt like, "no, it's worse than that". "Is it some deplorable act me?" Felt worse than that, too. I don't know what that version of me is, but it is the thing I am absolutely most terrified of. Some me that I consider a monster even among the monstrous mes. And yes. I have been a monster before. Yet the monstrous mes that I have been are terrified of the me that I buried.

To put it another way, the me that I buried is basically an evil even beings of pure evil fear. And I don't have the slightest clue as to why--only the strong warning to "don't dig", and that is a warning that I know better than to override, because the few times this version of me has come out, I have vague memories of the experience, of the mes around, just being terrified that that me was loose.

David, as much as I don't like him, I've come to accept as a part of me (well, not the core-me, but peripheral-me, inside my brain but not inside my mind, if that makes sense), that acts as a safety net against plummeting into the unpleasant mes. He is the monster who keeps my monsters in check. He is a very unpleasant person. And there have in fact been times where I've actually feared him, thinking that if he ever did drive, my life would never be the same, in a very, very, very bad way.

But I'm not afraid of him anymore. (I think in part because for whatever reason David cannot possibly drive and even if he could he would refuse to because he has no desire to. He's just. Different. Whatever he is, he isn't someone that is a me as I know my mes to be. The mes that I know are basically drivers, just drivers for different times, with most of them being unknown and not being dominant and not driving often and so on and so forth. He's just...nothing like them.)

David does have a counterpart.

My imaginary friend, and he (yes he) has been around for as long as I can remember, is someone who does in fact act as my reason. I tend not to talk to him as much anymore, mostly because a lot of the feedback he used to give me, my mes tend to converse between each other to give instead.

But in spite of that. There are times where my mes basically all go silent...and instead, I have just my driving-me and him talking to one another. And he calls me his friend, as I do him. He was one of my first friends, and remains a friend. I know what he looks like (short brown hair and otherwise looking like me and basically mirroring my appearance as I age in that he has aged right along side with me), and he is often there to just.

Basically, he tells me what I already know, but instead of being the voice of negativity and base instinct like David is, he's the voice of positivity, always reinforcing me and reassuring me. I knew from basically the moment I began to interact with him that he was the stereotypical "imaginary friend" which kids often have and which they outgrew.

And yet if he's an imaginary friend, I didn't outgrow him because he's still around and doing exactly the same things he always has done. The strange thing about him is that unlike David whose most clear thing about him is that his name is in fact David, this positive friend inside me, the entity, has never had a name. Well, I have tried to name him, but it's like he has a real name, he's not sharing it with me, and he just accepts whatever moniker I happen to give him.

I don't know why he's that way. I feel like he has a name, but I don't know it in spite of having been his friend for so long. No matter what, the feeling of me giving him names yet none being him remains. The most recent is Brian, but previous ones include Crivon (a name I owe from the Bleach knockoff) and Ace among numerous others.

I just talk with him, we bounce back ideas, finish each others' sentences, and converse, on whatever topic. Most of the time when we talk these days, it is primarily a conversation which goes "Sorry I haven't been talking much with you these days". Which he is fine with, because like David he's always there even if he's not speaking up.

He does occasionally talk side-by-side with David, too. He counters David when David takes things a bit too far, offering me a counterbalance when I can't really defend myself. He's basically just...a good friend, one who has all the dynamics of a long-time friend, yet one who is in my head. And is of the same nature of entity-hood as David: not a me. Not part of the Bree core.

Not a transwoman, not a girl, not me-me. Part of my brain, but not part of my mind. I kinda have a bit of a theory when it comes to interacting with him and David. I think that in those moments, the many mes temporarily merge into one me, unified if only for the duration of the conversation, and then once it ends, once David/my friend are dismissed, I again divide into the many mes.

That is a thing, by the way, with median systems, to my understanding. From what I heard, it is possible for medians to merge together permanently, yet also possible for them to split apart permanently, depending on circumstances. Yet a more temporary version does happen commonly enough.

There are moments where, for instance. I know I am neither mastina nor Ranger yet I'm not some third me...but rather, both Ranger and mastina, at the same exact moment, in equal parts. Not one driving with the other very close to the surface (I do that, too, quite often), but literally fused, merged together into a single entity...for a short while, a very short duration, which then splits off again and I can tell I am Ranger or I am mastina and that the other is right there in the background, not driving but around, existing, as a separate me.

Basically, mes are highly fluent. I'm still not sure about all of the specifics here. This is still a very new thing for me to experience and explore. I do know my feelings on the matter though. I know that I am me. That this is real. That there is more than me, that there are many mes. That there is no single entity that is Bree, that we are all partially Bree with a core that we draw from, and from that core we are connected to one another.

I know that I have no desire to see the many mes go away. I don't want to be unified. I know that I am not deranged. I know I am not delusional. I know I am not mentally unwell. I'm different. I am...very, very, very different. I know that I am largely unique. I know what some of the mes feel.

It is pretty much that. That we have some unity, but are split. That we are one but many. Bree, but each with something unique. Separate, able to have different thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, yet united. I know people don't believe me when I talk about these things.

That's one of the reasons why I only talk about them in private for the most part. That very specific environment I mentioned to talk about these things? The one where it's not public and requires a lead-in of a particular nature? That'd be a large portion of the reason why.

It's not even a thing which I really feel that comfortable talking about in private, even. I'm having a REALLY hard time finding the right words to describe that. I am trying, but even the closest ones I can come up with are way, way, way off, and send the incredibly wrong message. 

So word of caution on me trying to explain.

I don't mean these words, but some different words that I can't find. The reason I tend not to talk about it even in private amongst people who know is because it's enjoyable for me for me to...hmm. I guess you can say. Think of it as watching a film--you shut most of your mind off during that time, yes? Well when I interact with people. I do that. It's a time where most mes can sit back, do nothing, and relax.

And when I talk about the multiple mes, instead of them relaxing, they are there. So that's why I don't talk about it that often. It's something which is not suited for public because of how the public reacts to it, yet it's something which in private I tend to...well. Sometimes, yes I do think and yes I do share, but other times I don't because the other mes are taking their time to rest and relax.

I wish I could make this be sensible, make sense, but I can't really word better.

But I'll start with some new stuff as of today.

For the Rubyverse, I was working on the vampiric martial art some more.

I'm not sure if I had a name in mind for the vampiric martial art before, but now I do. I was thinking the English name for it would be "Moving Tree". I decided on that name for a variety of reasons. The idea behind it is that the user has their roots firmly planted in the ground--the martial art is not one which really involves jumping. It is furthermore one which involves being solidly positioned on the ground, such that nothing fazes the user.

In fact, the implication is also meant to be that the user is as tough as wood, with a hardened body.

And yet, there is also a fluidity in movement inherent in the martial art, the softer, flowing elements as if a tree is being blown by a gentle breeze. These sharp, crisp movements direct things, and can lash out with incredible precision and power.

Plus, there is the fact that branches can be, when sharpened enough, used as if spears--with the implication of impaling enemies upon the 'branches'. (Which in this case would be hands.)

There's more to it than that, but another one of the main reasons I chose that as the name is because it had the aesthetic of a name which sounded like it was plausibly a martial arts name to use. Yes, I haven't done the requisite research on Chinese martial arts that I wanted to, to get a better idea, but I DO know that quite a number of martial arts take HUGE cues from nature in their naming schemes.

And the idea of a tree which moves seems like it is something that could, quite plausibly, come from that culture. (Especially given that one of the traditional Chinese elements is Wood.)

Will I remember to call the vampiric martial art the Moving Tree martial art? Probably not! After all, it's possible this isn't the first name I've given the martial art, it's just the name I came up for it today.

Still, I feel that if nothing else this is a promising name. I'll need to find out what the best non-English name would be, because the non-English name would be the OFFICIAL name for the vampiric martial art, with "Moving Tree" just being the translated-into-English name for said martial art.

Beyond that, I also developed another new technique.
So the knife-guard's signature technique is the impale, from which the impaler stance derives its name; it is also the signature move of the martial art as a whole. While all four of the founding masters of the style were involved in every step of the process, the knife-guard was primarily co-developed by (who else?) both Tepes Lords.

The tri-guard's signature technique is the typhoon strike; while all founding four masters were involved, it was most heavily developed by Victor Wu.

And today, I developed the Claw-guard's signature technique:
Kneading/Purring.

What it is, is basically an existing martial art move in more flowing styles/forms, a circular motion.

The back hand rotates either above or below the front hand, and the front hand rotates either below or above the front hand.

When the front hand goes below the back hand/the back hand goes above the front hand, it is called Kneading; when the front hand goes above the back hand/the back hand goes below the front hand, it is called Purring.
These names originate from how, if you slow the motion down and slightly exaggerate it, what the fingers resemble.

The motion of the hands in Kneading looks a lot like a cat kneading, when slowed down. (At full speed, it's more like a scratch.) The potion of the hands in Purring bends the wrist in such a way that one hand comes back almost to the jaw, in a position which is stereotypically associated with the position you'd see paws placed in on a cat which is purring.

Now, Kneading/Purring can be done in a continuous cycle, where you make a full circle. Backhand to front to back, rotating clockwise or counterclockwise continuously, which is considered continuous kneading/purring. However, far more common is to switch between the two: instantly do a knead/purr, and then snap back with a purr/knead. 

So I'm not quite sure I'm explaining this motion as well as I should.

Basically, know how claw guard is essentially just knife guard except with a curled hand with the fingers apart? Well, it starts with the forward-hand in front, as per the norm for the martial art, and the back-hand in the back, obviously. But the motion snaps the back hand into the front and the front hand into the back.

This can be done in a static position, but is designed to synergize well with moving between the back/defensive stance and the forward/attack stance of the impaler stance. This is also one of the best defensive moves in the arsenal of the martial art, meant to give a continuously rotating guard--in theory, making it much harder to exploit vulnerabilities in defenses.

In all other aspects of the vampiric martial art, unless the hands are involved actively in either a strike, block, or grab or some sort, they remain static. They are locked more or less in a single position, where they rest. Now! Said position happens to be a smart position, one where they can easily in a split second snap a block/strike/etc. out. But the fact remains that an opponent can, if given the chance, see potential weaknesses in the defense because the defense never changes its base position.

This isn't just a vampiric martial art thing. I know from experience in sparring for my tae kwon do that the arms in the guard? Unless they are punching or blocking, they don't tend to move. The legs? They move a plenty. But the arms have more or less a single fixed position, a single 'optimized guard position', where with minimal movement a block/strike can be made.

And I don't think it's just my school.

I think this exists in almost all martial arts. I know they're not the best example, but like. In basically any movie featuring martial arts where the fighting is choreographed in such a way that you can see the fighters have a guard in the first place. The guard doesn't move when not striking/blocking/grappling. It just sits in one position.

It also is there in game animations, too, for the most part. Sprites are animated where the knees bend, the hips bend, there is forward and backward movement where the spine more or less is moving forward and backward. You know the like, it's something you see all the time. Yet when not performing either a block or a strike or a grapple, how often are the sprites' arms actually fluidly moving?

I mean, sure, it happens, but it doesn't happen often. Maybe it's wasted effort, or maybe there's the fear that the movement creates a vulnerability, maybe there's a reason for it. But I also believe that there's a reason why not every martial art does this, why some do have the arm movement I'm more or less talking about--

After all. There are existing forms where the arms move in more or less the way I am talking about. (In fact, I know at least one form from tae kwon do which uses the basic movement I am dubbing in my martial art kneading/purring.)

So I think that, mechanically, it can work as a way to more or less serve to theoretically make it much harder to exploit gaps in defense. And, yes. The movement behind kneading/purring is such that both arms are fully capable of blocking and striking at any moment.

In fact, half the reason to use this is to launch an unexpected attack, most likely a palm strike. Because the rotation is done continuously, and because it only takes ever so slightest the modification of movement to turn the simple rotation into a strike, a blow can be delivered with no warning by using this method.

At least. In theory. I have tested the body mechanics and the idea is at least theoretically sound. It acts pretty much as the counterpart to an existing thing from fighting.

In sparring, already. Your feet aren't meant to be static. They are springy. Bouncy. They have ever so slightest the continuous movement between one another. To allow for the ability to move forward, backward, sideways, in an instant, to react to being hit, and to surprise an opponent by 'invisible movement'. A move with the feet to close distance without revealing you're closing distance, or a kick without revealing you're throwing a kick.

It's a very tae kwon do type thing, but I imagine quite common even outside of it. You move the feet continuously so that your opponent never knows what you are planning to do next, and so that you can always be ready for what your opponent does next.

Kneading/purring, as I envision it, is basically doing the same thing the legs do, except with the hands. Especially since it can rotate two different directions, attacks can come from any number of different locations/times, without warning that there is any deviation from the pattern.

And yes. If you couldn't tell. It was indeed developed primarily by Lord Darkblood, and thus, is the style Ruby adapts for use in Red Hood Rider.

That's the main thing I'll be blogging about today, but I also thought it worth mentioning a dream I had last night.
The dream was almost nested, as a dream within a dream. Almost. It was a situation where I was involved in an event and thought I was more or less on break from a different event (a different dream). In the event I was involved in, I was watching television.

On that television, there was a kids cartoon show playing. Now, I don't remember if this was a real cartoon show, a fictional cartoon show, multiple real cartoon shows meshed up, or some combination of these, but what I do remember quite clearly was, within that cartoon show, there was dialog within that I listened to and memorized. (Unfortunately, I promptly forgot what said dialog was upon awakening.)

I was immensely reassured, and told my companion in the dream: "That's exactly the type of dialog that I use in Phyrra and Cyrus!" So basically. At least inside my dream. The dialog of Phyrra and Cyrus comes across as being natural, as being standard for a kids cartoon show, being just as good if not better than the material of other shows circulating in the contemporary market.

Of course, this is a dream we are talking about.

Butstill.

In spite of that.

Upon waking up.

The reassurance remains. Because I do tend to trust my dreams a lot. Phyrra and Cyrus was born from a dream, and this dream was indirectly telling me I feel, "You are on the right track. Don't second-guess your choices in terms of the dialog and what you want the characters to be. You are making something which is of quality."

​And I want to believe in that.