Monthly Progress Update [JULY]

Hey gang, hope you’ve been doing well and enjoying your summer so far ✨

I posted this a couple days ago on my Tumblr blog earlier and almost forgot to post it here as well haha. This will be a more general summary of the more detailed ones I've been posting on the Patreon every week, so if you're a member of that, this won't contain any new info for you 🙏🏼

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been chipping away at CH14 and making steady progress. After wrapping up CH13 and handling a round of bug fixes, I took a short breather before jumping back in, and so far it's been going well!

During the start of July most of my time went into outlining and building out the structure of CH14, which comes with a lot of variations at the beginning depending on your previous choices. These include things like:

• A scene for R’s belated birthday gift, with a special variation for R romancers 💖
• Differences based on your choices regarding Kham/Eshkar
• Whether Yekbûn is still alive or not
• Whether you got any citizens killed in CH9
• Whether you had Ishrah spy on Bazo
• A small extra variation for X romancers
• Variation depending on your choices made during the public petitions last chapter

And that’s just the beginning of the chapter lol. There will be variations for A and D incoming too at later points in the chapter. It’s all necessary to tie up loose ends before the Crown and their companions set off on what I've lovingly decided to call the Road Trip for CH14/15 🤪

Basically, the Road Trip is gonna be a big shift in tone from courtly intrigue to more adventure and exploration, and it’s been super fun to work on so far. It’s also a great chance to dive deeper into the relationships with the cast, especially romances and friendships. You can expect a lot of bonding time, character moments, and new scenery as the Crown travels through Rojan's wilderness 👀

I’ve also started implementing a feature I meant to insert much earlier but hadn't got around to until now: letting you define your Crown’s hobbies and interests! These will come into play during the journey and help shape the flavor of different scenes to help shape your Crown in more fun ways for once haha

In terms of actual writing, I’ve gotten a few thousand words in, mostly on the scenes I’m most excited about. That includes:

• A pretty major romance choice with R that’ll impact your relationship going forward, like how X and D got last chapter
• A scene with X that shows their popularity among common folks for the first time, since we haven’t seen much of that side of them yet
• Some variations in how the public reacts to your expedition, based on the decisions you made in CH13
• And the return of the Crescent Blades! Expect lots of interaction with them throughout this chapter and the next, especially with familiar faces like Heval, Tûjo, and Şanazî 🫶🏼

This past week specifically I’ve been writing some of the Kham/Eshkar variations and refining how those storylines split based on how you handled their arcs earlier. There's a lot of nuance there, especially depending on whether you worked with Kham, blackmailed her, or cut her out of the loop entirely. Eshkar’s role is also expanding a bit—he’ll be dragged along as a prisoner during the Road Trip if you chose that path.

Just imagine your Crown and their friends having fun picking flowers in the meadows or whatever while Eshkar is miserable in the background lmao

At the moment I’m still thinking how to best pace the final stretch of ACT I. CH14 is already shaping up to be a long one, and I might extend the Road Trip arc into CH16 instead of wrapping it by CH15, just to make sure it doesn't feel rushed. We’ll see how it all turns out!

Thanks so much for your support!! Hope this update gave you something to look forward to. X’s POV drop for CH13 is releasing on the Patreon soon too, while A's was already posted last week 🫶🏼

Catch you next time 💖