So for Phyrra and Cyrus, from the onset, I've told you their orientations (Phyrra's bi, Cyrus is demi), but for a while I've wanted to share/reveal those of others.

Gora is straight.
Ace is bi.
Cedrick is straight.
Kaze is an asexual demiromantic, in that he doesn't much care for sex, but he's perfectly capable of having feelings for someone. This makes more sense when you know the blurb I have for him which I wanted to share as well. (Also new for today.)

Kaze
Homicidal Maniac
Kaze enjoys the carnage of a good massacre, killing dozens of people at a time just for fun. He is ruthless and relentless, striking with no mercy. The only things capable of impressing him are combat prowess and killing capability. However, in spite of being both amoral and unscrupulous, if someone holds conviction in their ideologies and is capable of backing them up, it is possible to earn his respect.

Myra is actually not someone I know the exact orientation of. I know she's not a lesbian and I get the sense she at the very least can like guys, but the specifics beyond that, I don't actually know; she hasn't told me that.
Bard is bi, but while he is bi, he does have a particular fondness for lovely ladies.
Clara is straight.
Hera is a lesbian.
Will is pan.
Lily is a lesbian.
And Alena is pan.

Now is this really that relevant to the story? Nope, not really! But these are little trivia facts that I learned just by really getting to know them.

For a beautiful story idea.

I don't have the time to post it today! (Work, so sleep. Also, health.)

​I'll get to it tomorrow, though.

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.

I was playing Majesty--specifically, I was playing a Southern/Original quest, and cheating, but then something began to happen. I was getting a bunch of buildings which had levels higher than they actually have (e.g. Library Level 3), and also a bunch of new buildings appearing that were variants on existing buildings--they had what you can fairly call palette swaps on the buildings they were variants on, but they had notably different effects.

And more than that, as if triggered by the quest itself, there were many buildings which appeared at their 1 HP base form to build up, which I was struggling to keep up with and build all of, in addition to a ton of heroes appearing out of what seemed like nowhere.

It was a great time, and I had the thought, "this is too good to be true!".
...And between that, and my grandfather's television blazing, I realized it was too good to be true, moaning and groaning and waking up, to remember that I was on vacation down in Oregon visiting my grandfather, as is a usual enough activity for me to do.

​And it was only after having done things shifting at a pace I was having an increasingly hard time keeping up with that I realized, "Waaaaaaaaaaait a second......"

​...This, in dream time, was probably like fifteen minutes which in real-life time probably translated to being an hour or two, of being on vacation there. And then I woke up, this time for real. That dream within a dream was quite something, because it was wholly convincing. I woke up in a way exactly mirroring the way I actually wake up from a dream, so the dream was tricking my sleeping mind into thinking I had woke up, allowing me to not question things going on especially as they started off normally enough.

The dream's main 'slip' as it were, was just the accelerated rate of 'scene shifts' as it were. There was still a chronological order to it, but because I was not able to keep up with the racing scene shifts, my mind was able to figure out that if this were real, that wouldn't be happening, at least not in the way it was happening in the dream.

It didn't even occur to me until I was fully awake that of course I wouldn't be down in Oregon on vacation if for no other reason than my grandfather died half a year ago, among other factors. Still, it was quite the deception; this is the kind of trick you see captors use in all those cliche sci-fi shows to fool their prisoner into thinking that their reality is something it's not.

Funnily enough. Making the dream more realistic? That dream-within-the-dream of Majesty? I've had one almost exactly identical to it before. The southern not northern quest, the numerous buildings with higher levels and new buildings that are variant on older buildings, with me exploring around to see what's new and what's different. I've had it be a realistic dream before, so that made it almost a recurring dream you could say.

Frankly, the whole dream and dream-within-a-dream almost felt more like a memory than an actual dream when waking up--a feeling I've never had when dreaming before especially as I know the exact chronology depicted in the dream never has happened before even remotely in the way shown.

But anyway.

Upon waking up.

I was having stiff, achy, soreness everywhere. Literally everywhere. Still do. I woke up dehydrated, still with my jaw hurting, having a violent cough which thanks to the soreness hurts extra (but I'm quite positive the cough could not cause the soreness since it is soreness in places a cough could never ever effect plus I slept WAY too soundly to have been coughing up a storm overnight), the running nose from yesterday, now clogged up to the point where I can barely breathe through it, and feeling thoroughly feverish.

On the bright side, I don't have the sore throat and in spite of my symptoms technically speaking being worse, I actually feel better than yesterday; what's happening feels like my immune system just doing its job ruthlessly efficiently. Still, this is something I suspected would be flu symptoms and my girlfriend shares that suspicion, so the moment I'm hitting submit here, I'm going to nap.

Did it help?

Not one lick!

Still sick.

Sore throat, and worse, the gunk in the back of the throat makes the sore throat worse.

I did have some good though. My sister made oatmeal for me; as far as breakfasts for sore throats go, that has to top the list of good ones. I took a reasonably long, warm bath, which was quite soothing and by my understanding does help quite a bit. And in said bath, I was struck with some inspiration.

For Dawn of Order, I was thinking that each Order (Order of Harmony, Order of Magic, Order of Religion, Order of Technology) would have a unique tower you could build, with said towers being some of the best towers in the game.

The Order of Harmony can build the Death Ray, beams of pure sun energy causing continuous rapid-fire damage to a single target. This is similar to the flame tower which all races can build regardless of Order/Divide choices, but has a much further range. These beams deal a lot of damage continuously; we're talking can-kill-an-angel-in-five-seconds damage. Also, these beams don't have a melee/range/magic classification and thus can't be resisted.

The Order of Magic can build Mage Towers, which amplify the effects of spells cast within the range of the tower and extend the range of spells which have ranges. Whenever the tower is attacked, the tower unleashes a magical blast hitting every enemy unit nearby. This makes it unique in that it is a tower with no ability to protect by default, only to defend itself from being destroyed...

...However, if gold is deposited in the tower, magical energies can consume the gold deposited over time to extend this effect into offense, allowing it to unleash the magical blast to hit every enemy unit within range even if the tower isn't attacked. This is arguably the strongest tower, but because to use this ability you need to continuously funnel gold into the tower, it is also the only tower with an upkeep and thus longterm the most expensive tower.

The Order of Religion can build the Tesla Tower, shooting divine bolts which can pierce through and chain to a series of enemy units (in fact it has no maximum number of units it can chain lightning to), dealing damage to all of them. Said damage is, similar to the Death Ray, not classified as melee/range/magic.

The Order of Technology can actually build two towers. The Gatling Turret is a rapid-fire turret capable of targeting up to four enemies at once and shooting bursts of many ranged attacks to the targets. The Rail Tower shoots a single, super-high-damage attack to a single target (an attack which is not melee/range/magic), but has a fairly high cooldown.

These towers have some fairly obvious explanations. The Order of Harmony uses the power of nature--all of nature, including the power of the cosmos, in this case, the sun, to shoot death to enemies at a long distance.

The Order of Magic builds Mage Towers, which are unmanned stations that mages can channel their energy through.

The Order of Religion once had a genius theologian, Reverend Tesla, who pioneered understanding of the divine, both harvesting the power of the gods for enrichment and for retribution; the Tesla Tower is thus an unmanned station which allows for divine protection through deliverance of the heavens: lightning bolts.

The Order of Technology pioneers technology, so they are at the forefront of weapons development; it thus makes sense for them to have two towers, and for one to focus on enhancing guns to their maximum potential and the other one to be a really, really, super-advanced gun.

The player can build numerous other towers, of course. Flame tower, guard tower, bolt tower, cannon tower, blast tower (crowd control, essentially). But the five towers from the four orders are meant to each on their own be tremendously strong. For instance, the Rail Tower can one-shot an Angel. However, don't expect a bunch of these towers together to do any good--their AI can cause every tower to target the same enemy, and thus waste a bunch of damage potential.

Or when you want them to target the same enemy, they can all target a different enemy, and thus kill said enemy at a much slower speed than preferred. Balanced defenses integrate the tower of the Order you selected IN ADDITION to the normal towers, to allow for protection against any kind of assault.

Albeit not much.
While I did some random hero work it didn't get far in Dawn of Order; my main contribution was making the hardest non-boss monsters in the game: Angels, with ridiculously high magic resistance and high melee resistance (just with no ranged resistance), ridiculously high health, and then in addition to their normal attack which deals high damage to one target, they have a unit-wiping-out attack dealing high damage to all units in a large area surrounding them, a healing spell to heal nearby monsters, and a revive spell to revive monsters with gravestones nearby.

...Yes. A monster which heals other monsters, can even revive other monsters, is ridiculously hard to kill, and can kill units with great ease. Oh and while not fast, it's not slow, either. The flavor text for it would say, "Once, it was believed there were two types of angels: Angels of Life, and Angels of Death. Further research revealed the only difference between the two was the mood of the angel."

Their bigger cousins, the Cherubim, would have half the speed, but double the health, double the damage, and half the cooldown time on their spells. A combination of Angels and Cherubim would be what is summoned by the cheat doh you wanna die. And, yes. Their spell can heal/revive one another. So a whole swarm of them could, in theory, chain-heal/revive to never die.

A Seraphim would not be a normal monster, but would be featured as a boss monster as having four times the health, eight times the damage, one quarter of the cooldown, and being fast. Basically something which if faced unprepared could level your entire kingdom all on its own.

​All three have a high preference for unit-destroying, but if not, will be defending other monsters.

For Phyrra and Cyrus, I mainly worked on villains, and what happens to them. I don't want to give it away though, even though I know I probably should write it down somewhere.

So I did do work today, just not much.

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.

...But before I do, I need to blog, and conveniently enough, literally less than five minutes ago, I thought of content. In this case, for Phyrra and Cyrus. The tech level for Phyrra and Cyrus is, overall, somewhere between "modern age" and "1600s". Let's average it and say 1800s. Of course, it being a fictional world which functions with magic intertwined with science to the point where a person talking about scientific theory will be referencing magic because magic is a part of their science because that's what magic WOULD be in a setting which has always had magic frankly.

I can basically pick and choose whatever I want in terms of what's in the setting and what's not. You should have a fairly loose sense of an aesthetic for what there is. Rifles exist, but are single-shot; muskets are more common; there's no multi-shot weapons; there's skyscraper cities; there's no cars, but magical beasts of burden for wagons work just as well, trains might soon become a form of transportation, an expensive spell for instant transportation is runic return, and so on and so forth.

And it being a fictional world. Its dates aren't going to correspond to ours.

And that's what I worked on. In our world, we've got 6,000-7,000 years' worth of recorded history, loosely speaking. And I decided I might as well steal from that:
The setting of Phyrra and Cyrus begins in the year 6829 LC. LC being what you can think of as equivalent to combining AD and BC: The start of that calendar's usage, which coincides with the start of recorded history. WE have that shifted into BC and AD because...well, no real good reason actually, just because, pretty much. This is a calendar more or less just removing the unnecessary break, more or less.

​I haven't really put much detail into it beyond that, but hey, give me some credit here, I'm literally writing this as I go to bed.