New Hope Episodes

Hello, folks! Starting today, we’re starting a special bonus mini-series for Rising Angels: Hope! It’ll be roughly 5 episodes long and will be the length of the existing game. That’s right, we’re going to be doubling the game’s length over the next couple months and it will be completely 100% free! The first episode starts with our young cadet as Yoi comes to her with a sports team in peril…

The second episode will release on December 19th. I’m not 100% sure on the third episode’s date as the holiday season keeps things moving slowly. Further updates will be announced once the second episode comes out.

In addition to that, we’ve some minor behind the scenes changes to the coding in order to improve things, fix a couple of odd bugs, and add new poses for our main characters!


I have a Fates update coming that I’ve rewritten quite literally 26 different times as well as an update on physical merch for Order of Ataxia. Things keep drastically altering what the announcements contain, so I’m hoping to finally have something definitive to announce soon. I also have a plan to start doing regular announcements again once my life stabilizes a bit and my future isn’t in constant peril.

I haven’t done a video of the post in such a long time…

Allegiance Update (a month or so late in posting…)

(This update was posted in late February but didn’t seem to actually post here. Sorry about that. Enjoy February news! More updated news will be coming soon; I’m trying to write it up now.)

Hello, folks! I hope you are all doing better than myself with this non-stop train of colds and flus that seem to be knocking myself and others out of commission.

Last update we talked about how what was going to be a little writing exercise turned into a full-fledged story. Well the good news is that now it is a story that you are able to play! Rising Angels: Fates Allegiance was release on itch.io and Google Play. There was a little bit of a delay getting this update out there (work and illness hinder me greatly), so I do ask for your understanding with that. The game ended up being a kinetic novel, but I do hope you will give the story a chance! A lot of heart went into it and it has been the first story I’ve written in a while that I had a lot of fun with!

 

It has been a month since the crew of the Katajion spaceship Nimross returned safely after a mission to recover a prized artifact went awry. Command’s support of how everything transpired is weak and many of her crew face disciplinary actions for their part in the operation. It all weighs heavily on Major Natalie Puccile, whose investigation led them down that route, but not nearly as much as the knowledge that she was forced to decide between the woman she cared about and her mission. With only a tankard and a collection of games to distract her from her life, Natalie begins to question why she signed up in the first place.

That’s when the first ray of hope in the storm of her life begins to shine through. A charming woman, Aria, comes to the suffering major with a dire plea. When taking a prominent researcher to a campsite, her shuttle went down and Aria needs the help of the KSS Nimross to save the lives of those now stranded and scattered on the planet. With a purpose driving her once again, Natalie sends the Nimross out once more to save the lives of the innocent.

Direct Sequel to Rising Angels: Reborn (the turning away ending; ending 4)

-Yuri kinetic novel (no choices)

-5-7 hours of excitement and adventure!

We are still working on getting it on Steam but you can currently download it on itch.io and Google Play.

So how is its brother, Fates Apostate, doing? Well, we lost our CG artists midway through last year and have had a drastically hard time finding someone to replace them and the writing is progressing at a painful crawl compared to Allegiance. We’ve been maintaining optimism, but things haven’t been very optimistic on that front, hence the drastic slowdown of updates. We’re determining our next course of action regarding the future of Fates Apostate and hope you enjoy Fates Allegiance while we work out a plan to either get Apostate out or refunds out to backers.

Until later, Chief out.

We need a video of the post! BEEP BEEP!

The Big RA Update

Hello, folks. It has been far too long. Before anyone asks, I am still alive and this is not actually my cat typing at my keyboard. Those rumors are completely unmeowed and I am offended. The good news is that even if Chief has been replaced by a dozen cats in a trenchcoat, work has still been moving forward! Let’s us talk about what big news events are happening in the RA development world, nyah?

Rising Angels: Fates:

Okay, this one comes with good and bad news. Let’s get the bad out of the way right from the start because it is both the most painful and the only piece of bad news in the epic update. Gonna rip it off like a bandage.

When I set out to make Fates, I wanted to make a much more interactive game. Tons of different things you could present to everyone, different little storylines in the evidence, and so many possibilities. It was going to be amazing. But then I started writing out most of these and… to make a long story short, they were boring as heck. There was about 20% good, solid story and scenes there and 80% that was utter waste of time. If it was boring someone who was as invested into this as I am, I hate to think what everyone else was going through. It wasn’t like it was just a little bit of work, there were so many items to present to so many different people. The amount of work being required by this dull stuff was threatening to choke the project out.

So… here it is. The bad news is that we are scaling down to a more traditional visual novel. I know this diverts from our original idea, but it is needed to not only get the project back on track for a release, but to make sure that release is a lot more polished and clean. I didn’t want to say this, I’ve spent the last few months trying to find a way to deny it, but I humbly have to admit that it was a bad idea. Phoenix Wright works because of the much smaller cases, where as Fates was all of the cases combined and all of the evidence never went away. We are going to be working as many of the best ones into the story and thinking about including some of the other ones as short stories in the book.

Like Chief lately, Natalie is about to get a sword in her face.
Like Chief lately, Natalie is about to get a sword in her face.

But this isn’t one of those situations where everything is bad and I’m trying to put an optimistic spin on it. During one of those moments when I was banging my head against the desk to try and loosen up some ideas, one fell out. I started writing the continuation of Rising Angels: Reborn with the ending where you hand it over to the government and the words just started to flow once more. What was supposed to be a short writing exercise developed into a full fledged story. So with the returning help of some of Reborn’s art team (Nuge and her sister), there is now a second Fates game. Remember, Fire Emblem Fates came after RA Fates, so we did it first!

It has been a month since the crew of the Katajion spaceship Nimross returned safely after a mission to recover a prized artifact went airy. Command’s support of how everything transpired is weak and many of her crew face disciplinary actions for their part in the operation. It all weighs heavily on Major Natalie Puccile, whose investigation led them down that route, but not nearly as much as the knowledge that she was forced to decide between the woman she cared about and her mission. With only a tankard and a collection of games to distract her from her life, Natalie begins to question why she signed up in the first place.

That’s when the first ray of hope in the storm of her life begins to shine through. A charming woman, Aria, comes to the suffering major with a dire plea. When taking a prominent researcher to a campsite, her shuttle went down and Aria needs the help of the KSS Nimross to save the lives of those now stranded and scattered on the planet. With a purpose driving her once again, Natalie sends the Nimross out once more to save the lives of the innocent.

Brianni, the Nimross's new co-pilot
Brianni, the Nimross’s new co-pilot

That’s right, unlike Apostate, the original Fates, you start in a really bad place with Zuri. New members to the cast, some new sprites and outfits for a couple of the existing crew, and new locations to visit. The main character role is shared a bit with Natalie, Zuri, Kika, and some of the others getting time as they play their parts in the mystery that unfolds. Our plan is to release them together in the upcoming months, so you will get the choice to decide if you want to remain loyal or strike out on your own with the support of your friends and allies.

Baby Draemon: Oria Trail:

If there is one thing that I love to do late at night to burn stress, it is coding. It’s cathartic because unlike most creative fields you have a much narrower goal. I want it to do this, here’s how this can be done. Much easier than writing when you are burnt out. Over the past couple years, Geckos and I have used those late night stress relief moments to make a small game. A game that is finally ready for a bit of the public limelight! It’s still in fairly early Alpha status, but we are at a point where we’d like to start getting feedback soon.

Danger lurks in every direction
Danger lurks in every direction

Baby Draemon: Oria Trail is a roguelike where you start off with a randomly generated draemon and have to take them through the grueling trials to become an adult. It’s a fun little game with a new draemon and a new terrible fate to put them through with each playthrough. Right now, it is mostly just the free mode, but there is a plan to make a short story mode where you play through as a young Zuri and get to go through… well, a rather dark experience through blistering heat, frigid cold, and a weird world that has get to be fully explored in the RA lore.

A warrior must fight...
A warrior must fight…

Rising Angels: Hope:

This one is only getting a small section. There’s not a lot new to announce here since the game was fully released several months ago. We are currently working on getting an android version posted up soon so that way people can enjoy it on the move. I know I have been going back through it when I have to enjoy my short lunch breaks at my desk! To celebrate that, I have been putting together some extra scenes (which will be included as an update to the steam version). It’s not a drastic increase, but I wanted to include some more Kika and supporting character scenes in the game. It felt like she didn’t get as much time as Yoi and Lenna did. We are also adding some more poses for several characters.

We are still considering doing voice acting for Hope, but that is still very much in the air. If there is a strong amount of interest in it, please let me know.

We are doing a Kika daki for Hope, as well as an Iotor one.
We are doing a Kika daki for Hope, as well as an Iotor one.

Okay, so let’s just summarize all the key points.

-Fates is being scaled back in terms of gameplay, but getting an additional story. They will release together in Q1 2017.

-We have a roguelike that will be needing testers soon.

-Hope is going to get an android port and some story expansions.

This is the big push, folks. Chief is back to working himself to unhealthy levels to make progress, but RA games are going to be in your hands as soon as humanly possible. I am going to be doing updates again on a more regular basis, but I they will be monthly instead of weekly. I just don’t have the time in my life for weekly ones without stealing heavily from dev time. Until next time, Chief out.

We need a good video o’ the post! While I hate jumpscares, I really love this song. And it contains no real jumpscares! All the better since I don’t really want to replace the monitor after punching a jumpscare out.

Fates Weekly Update #71

Hello, folks. Like the half-drunk professor walking in fourteen minutes late to class, I am still here and I am still hard at work. Nobody gets to go home quite yet. It has been… an interesting couple of months. By interesting, I mean the worst possible definition of it. Hope’s epic failure about sank the studio. Real life has been mild emergency after mild emergency. Been pretty tricky making all the pennies line up in the right order. Then we lost multiple writers for Order of Ataxia and I had to step in and add to my insane work weeks. Bad. Just… bad. But we seem to be pulling ourselves together. I’m getting a reliable paycheck again (even if it means writing time is lost). OoA is almost out the door (releasing after the Steam summer sale, so save some money for it!). I’ve been getting back into the thousands of interaction scenes that await me. Never fear, folks!

Writing: There’s something in some of Sol’s investigation lines that have been drawing an abnormal amount of thought from me. When you present him Kika in the first act, he tells you about why he is so thankful that she came along and wishes Zuri hadn’t. Natalie, of course, directly questions this since Zuri has rapidly taken the place of her good friend or budding lover depending on how you ended Reborn. Originally it was just going to be a short story about how Zuri has nearly killed him several times, but an accidentally line made me think about it a lot more and flushed out that event.

Sol’s line is that he doesn’t know if Zuri will be there when the need is the greatest. When it comes to security, it is natural to think that she would be the much better choice than Kika. If someone is charging Natalie with a knife, Kika isn’t able to do much more than yell a warning and possibly throw herself in the way if need be. Unless it is one of the other stronger draemon or Agent Syl, nobody is getting through Zuri in CQC. While writing the story, it is very easy to see Zuri as the stone wall between Natalie and danger, not Kika. But Sol has the counterpoint.

Kika protects her friends, Zuri protects her beliefs.

A thread on Steam for Hope highlighted the fact that Kika does whatever she can to help her friends. {Spoilers for Hope/Reborn} Kika goes out of her way to keep an eye on Faye and try to help her with Yoi’s dilemma and Lenna’s heart. In Reborn, she devotes her final hours to find a solution to save everyone while everyone else is giving up. {end spoilers} She might lord herself above them for praise, but Kika gives far more than she receives. But that’s the kicker that I’ve slowly noticed. Her pride makes it really easy to ignore just how much she supports. Her personality can grate with even the fondest of fans, and I think that’s the interesting dilemma.

Zuri is softer, friendlier. She wants to have friends and expresses her emotions a lot more clearly than Kika. It’s easier to associate with her and see the good she does. What Sol highlighted though is that good isn’t always the best for Natalie. As she says a thousand times, Zuri is a warrior and follows a fairly strict code of self-discipline. Most of the time, protecting Natalie and saving the universe fit into that code. What has a hard time fitting into it is compromise and understanding. Where Kika might be willing to accept doing something that she doesn’t agree with if it helps her friends, Zuri will refuse to even consider it. The idea of letting a lesser evil go to get a greater one is a foreign one to her. If it is a black and white situation, Zuri is the best ally you can have. When you start getting into the gray area to save the world… Zuri might not be there. It’s something that worries Sol greatly and why he prefers Kika over Zuri in their adventure.

Sol is a lot like Kika, now that I think about. A very valuable aide to Natalie, but that personality makes it really hard for people to pay attention to what he says.

More updates will be coming as operations get back into full swing. Stay tuned. Until then, Chief out.

Rising Angels: Hope is out on steam!

Rising Angels: Hope has been released on steam! We are working to get the keys sent out to all backers/donators over the next day or so! At the request of many, direct download episodes 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6 have been merged and changed to two weeks between. We also will have a larger patch this Sunday as the gallery becomes live in the direct download.

 

Rising Angels: Hope is the story of Faye Moonfallow, her squad of somewhat loveable misfits, and their dreams of joining the Katajion Space Force. However, before they can get there, they have to first pass the rigors of the Space Sector Academy. Life is rough, non-stop, and the danger of getting the boot is ever-present. Can Faye and her squad overcome the challenges posed to them or will the group destroy itself in chaos? Each day is an adventure as the young researcher tries to find her new place in the galaxy.

Features:

– Expanded remake of the original Rising Angels story, Rising Angels: The Red Rose

– 8 – 10 hour adventure spanning Faye’s year

– Options to help guide Faye through her adventure

– Unlockable gallery with unseen images from both the original game and the remake

Rising Angels: Hope is a yuri visual novel with 3 parts that will be released as free updates. The combined parts adding up to an 8-10 hour adventure of love, mystery, and growth.

Part 1: Initial release Part 2: April 1st Part 3: April 15th

Fates Weekly Update #70

Hello, folks. It’s been an interesting couple of days. I finally got to hang up my flight suit and kick back as one of those civilians again… for about a minute or so before I had to put it back on as a guardsman. Of course, it is going to take a while before I get brought into the systems and get back to training, so I now have a lot of downtime. That means I can spend all day writing and doing those game development things that used to fight against the painful work hours before! Downside is there is now no income coming in for a while…

Writing: One question I have received is the question of linguistics. Everyone seems to be able to speak English and a lot of the diversity of language seems to have disappeared. Why is that?! Well, for this week’s section, I want to take a moment and explain how Natalie manages to communicate with her various crewmen without the never-ending headache of requiring a translator.

The first thing that is important to note is that all known species except for the elder species (Draemon, afrik, and certain frikon) share a common ancestry. Even though she wasn’t born there, Faye can trace her lineage back to a very specific group of humans in Western Europe prior to the virus attacks of Day of Death’s Veil. Kika as well can trace her history back to a group of people who spoke a Latin-based language. Same thing with Yoi, Sol, and most of the cast. Their languages all trace back to Earth, not something that was originated on a distant world.

“Wait, Chief,” I hear you cry. “Earth has a lot of different languages! Sure, they trace their history back to Earth, but different parts! Yoi, as shown in other visual novels, knows Japanese!” Excellent observation, but there is one major player in history that took care of that pesky business. Not too long after humanity fled out into space, the collective of surviving nations were suppressed under those nations who had the fortune of having the technology and ships of the lost task force. In order to survive, a lot of traditions of those different nations were quickly… purged… to make a stronger order. A lot of languages were lost under the oppressive rule of the United Confederation of Planets, and only a few of the nations who were able to retain their independence by force (the Trilani Rangers being an example) were able to preserve these languages. However, when most of the universe is forced into speaking one language, even these outliers were forced to learn it.

After the United Confederation of Planets dissolved into the three major powers during the rebellion, that forced common heritage still exists in most parts of the galaxy. Most holidays and limited religious activities that were common in those days are still shared among the different nations. Only those outliers create some trouble. The idea of birthdays is not one that most draemon comprehend easily. Poor Zuri might have been taught common when she joined the Katajion Space Force, but nobody taught her what to do when the girl she loves has a birthday.

Voice acting: Got all of the lines for the voice acting for Rising Angels: Fates! I’m going through right now and I’m pretty stoke about getting the last acts lines into place. Zuri in particular is too adorable during those final scenes.

Rising Angels: Hope adjustment: Okay we have three different updates for this one, the good one, the bad one, and the terribly ugly one.

Good one: This week’s part is out! Sadly, that really isn’t good news for most of you. I suppose the good news really is that there is nothing hindering the episodic experiment. We are planning on a Friday release for the game though! But there is some… ugly news…

Bad news: You might have noticed that last week there was no update. Turns out that leaving your flash drive behind after you go cross-country to move 3,000 lbs down three flights of stairs creates delays in the release schedule. Thankfully, I won’t be going anywhere any time soon, so no more risks there.

Ugly news: I didn’t open with the fact that the amount of work I have dropping to radically low levels for the usual banter reasons. It has put both my and Fuzzy’s food situations into what I would refer to ask drastically dangerous levels of starvation. Without seeing a decent paycheck for at least 3 months, I am being forced into a situation where I need to find a way to keep the kibble in his bowl before he eats me. The way we have decided to do that is by selling Rising Angels: Hope. Now, before you all call for my head, I didn’t come to this decision lightly. Making it so everyone can always enjoy my games is the dream, but dreams don’t keep the power on to make those games. I simply can only bow my head and ask for your support for this painful decision. We are looking at somewhere between $10-15 with heavy discounts while the episodes drop to encourage early support. With all six episodes, the game is roughly 7-9 hours. All backers of RA: Fates and studio donators (prior to this post) will get access to the game for free. That has not changed.

That’s all for this week. With Hope on the backhalf now, talks are going to slip back as we start gearing up for a big Fates release! Slow and steady wins the race (as well as having massive amounts of free time to write). Until next time, Chief out!

 

For today’s video o’ the post, we will celebrate my departure from active duty with Wild Blue Yonder! I wonder what the Katajion Space Force would use for their song…

Fates Weekly Update #69

Hello, folks! We are back running at something resembling operational here at the new place, so we can finally get back to doing our weekly updates. I’d love to say that amazing amounts of writing were done over the past few missing sessions, but we discovered something important over the course of this trip. If you don’t have a desk or any furniture at all, it is really hard to setup a computer to work. Really hard. Progress that was made was hard fought to acquire, but there wasn’t a lot of it. Most of what was made was either in cleaning up Rising Angels: Hope or upgrading some minor annoyances in the presenting parts of the game. Sorry, folks. It took longer to get full operational again than originally estimated. Good news is that things are done and we should be back up at full speed.

The Steam release will be out next week for Rising Angels: Hope! The adventures of Faye Moonfallow as she attempts to survive the Katajion Space Academy on Earth!

Sorry, everyone for the subpar update. Stay tuned next week when work starts up again! Until next time, Chief out!

 

This week’s video o’ the week is an old classic that I first heard from a good friend and just recently stumbled upon again.

Fates Weekly Update #68

Hello, folks. Coming to you is the very last Fates Weekly from Delaware. The papers are signed, the boxes are… kind of packed, and the travel plans are laid out. It has been fun, but the time has come for me to return to the frigid midwest and start back over from there. I’m hoping to have internet up and running by this time next week, but there is a possibility that our next weekly update will be either early (while I am still at the hotel) or late (when I has the interwebs).

RA: Hope update: I… hate… video editing. I hate it more than anyone here can possibly imagine. I’ve logged 30+ hours in the last week trying to make it good. Almost all of my writing time was devoted to trying to understand the program and make everything work. Honestly, I’m not very happy with the result. The result of the video, that is. The game I’m finally very proud of. I was going to share it with you all so you could laugh at me, but it is still trying to render. So since it is still driving me towards a mental breakdown, here’s a CG that shows in it!

Writing: So we enter the final part of our explanations of what lead up to the lack of discipline and loyalty on the Nimross. For those of you who have not played Rising Angels: Reborn and wish to avoid spoilers, now would be a good time to stop reading and I will see you next week.

When we start RA: Reborn, the important thing to note is that Natalie Puccile is an outsider. In a land of mini-fiefdoms, Natalie is entering as a complete outsider who comes from an organization that has run afoul with the current shipmaster, Vice Commander Rasoona. As she eagerly tells Natalie, she did not hold this rank that long ago. No, she was once in charge of a small task force as a Commander of the Wings before one of our routes in Fates, Anton Rogers, lead to her transfer and demotion. That’s a lot of rank to lose, especially for someone who used to be a fast-burner up the ranks. Right from the start, Natalie has one person who is very begrudgingly working with her and secretly wants her to fail. Her bitterness is what forces Natalie to disobey the orders running directly against her mission. If things would have been different with Rasoona, Natalie wouldn’t have been forced to take over command.

One of the most common culprits brought up for lack of discipline is Kika. Kika Starr is another person who wants to hold proud her heritage and get to the top (where she tells you she deserves). With privilege, a brash personality, and drive, Kika easily rubs people the wrong way. This means she has to work harder, which keeps the cycle going. You advance in the KDF with results, not humility. This leads her to disobey orders and ignore the chain of command in favor of what she thinks gets better results.

Faye… Faye is naive and a fair bit lazy. Since her mission reports to Research & Development, not the space sector, she doesn’t need to get involved in ship politics. She might have gotten more involved with the actions of the crew, but her previous relationship with the executive officer, Sol Hackett, is still rocky to this day. In doing what she thinks is right for them both, Faye stays away from him and the rest of the leadership aboard the Nimross. Her lack of presence means that a potential voice of reason has been removed from the equation. The same thing applies to Alphonse Tenzin, the other major on-board the Nimross. As he has worked with Sol before and knows of his dislike of non-humans, he takes a laissez-faire leadership and does not call out Sol or Natalie when the situation calls for his input. With his own mission hiding in the background, another leader who might have brought the Nimross to order is removed from the picture.

The two biggest culprits for the lack of control on the Nimross are the other two deck-grade officers, Sol Hackett and Stan Nelson. Out of all the characters, Sol is the one trying the hardest to keep things in line and functional. Even when things looked their worst, he attempted to keep everything running smoothly. No matter what you think of him personally, Sol is an effective second-in-command and devoted to his cause. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Sol grinds the gears of his crew the wrong way and his occasional speciest remarks turn people against him, despite him never acting on any of them. With no support, even from his own childhood best friend, Sol is unable to stop the chaos from consuming his crew.

Stan is an easy one to figure out. He is intentionally sowing discord among the ranks. Though fairly new to the Nimross, he quickly used the easier influenced members of the ship to erode the leadership of Sol by highlighting his racism and Rasoona by having her focus on Sol and Natalie instead of what he was doing. With a hand of friendship, he swung Kylie to his side and made Zuri focus on her squabbles with Sol. Kylie isn’t going to argue, she is one of those fast burners who skipped a lot and has virtually no life experience. With Sol unable to gain control of the crew and support him in stopping the colonel’s corrupting influence, Stan had free reign to solidify his regime. One thing to note is that Stan is veeeeeeeery obvious in what he was doing. One of the most common things I hear is that he was too obvious a villain. Yes, he was. Intentionally so. Almost like he wanted Natalie to focus on him. I might be overthinking it though…

Zuri… I wish I could talk more about Zuri without getting into Fates spoilers. All I can say is this. Zuri openly tells you that her last post was as a security forces officer and that she was demoted. There could be a correlation between her overwhelming desire to be a strong warrior and events that transpired in her past.

Rank had no effect on the Nimross’s failure. It was the natural born conspiracy between no strong leadership and too many people with different personal and professional agendas. Everyone had a different stake in the results of the Nimross and forced it to fall apart. One of those things I’ve always hear in the various training sessions I’ve gone through is that laissez-faire leadership will destroy a mission. With everyone playing against each other and nobody putting boots to heads, Natalie was doomed to fail. The biggest question going into Fates is can Natalie take control of her group now that she has direct control. She’s going up against Anton Rogers and his SITO team. They’re well-trained, cohesive, and though Name would like to disagree sometimes, completely under his direction. Zuri, Kika, Alexi, Akurel, and Sol… Natalie still has her work cut out for her.

That’s all for this week and the end of the three part lore special. I really hope it was educational for you all! Until next time, Chief out!

 

The video o’ the post is the best contrast between Natalie and her foes…

Fates Weekly Update #67

Hello, folks! So this week is my final week on active duty in the military. It’s weird to think I will soon by hanging up the uniform and stepping back to the civilian world. I’ve been doing this for so long that it does make the whole situation surreal. I always said it would come one day, I just didn’t really expect that day to be this soon. Oh well! More time to write! I’ll be able to be home on a regular basis and the words shall flow like waterfalls!

Rising Angels: Hope update: Finishing up the last tweaks this week. I’m fairly happy with how the story is going along, happy with the new expanded scenes, and just happy with how things are going overall. Considering how rough things have been lately, this is one of those few moments when I got to be just happy. Most of the work is finishing up and I’ve been building the trailer video this week. It took a bit to get my software working again to make videos, but things are doing well. Hopefully, we will have the video done by Weds and will do an out of cycle update when we get the Greenlight up. I love the song for the video, I hope you all will as well.

Writing: So last week in our talk, we were going over how the Katajion Directorship teaches people and advances them through the education system. We started at junior academy, went to senior academy, sector academy, and finally wrapping up with specialized training. At this point, we have a fully qualified member of the Katajion Directorship. Different sectors have different amounts of training. From the start of sector academy to completion of specialized training, anywhere between one year for smaller sectors to eight years for highly technical and specialized fields can pass. What does this mean? If you add in fast burners in the junior/senior academies, you can end up with some very young members employed into some decent ranked positions. Not incredibly common, but it does allow people like young, naive Kylie to end up in a position where a more experienced person might reside.

Now that we’ve explained how people end up in the positions they are in, let’s address the giant elephant in the room about rank and discipline in the Katajion Space Sector. Even I have to admit that there isn’t a lot of it to go around. But that is part of the biggest ideals of the KSS. The first thing we have to address is rank. One thing I am very surprised that nobody has ever mentioned is that there are no task-grade troops on the KSS Nimross. No flight sergeants, no troopers, nothing. The most junior officer is Kylie as a Flight Officer. They have her, two lieutenants, a captain, three majors, one colonel, and one deck-grade officer to command it. There’s a lot of brass, not a lot of people who get things done. While Commander Rasoona has the official command, she barely outranks Colonel Nelson and holds a tentative grasp on her majors.

One thing I do hope everyone also remembers from last session is that ranks are dependent upon the position. This has a bad tendency to cause the mentality of “I outranked you two weeks ago! Being a pilot now doesn’t make you a better leader then me.” If you pair this with the history of independence and freedom in the ranks, you get a situation where you get fiefdoms in the ranks. The Katajion Space Force is a meritocracy. If you do amazing, you get put into positions to do more amazing things. You blaze up and bring your friends who helped you up. Sooner or later, you hit a point where you can’t get up and start to set your roots there. Worse yet, if you are moved to a lower ranking position, those roots are still there and that authority tends to create conflicts. While the situations are often brokered behind closed doors with the assistance of the Intelligence Sector, it does nothing to stop that breed of insurrection. The joke since it was nothing more than an RP between friends is that the only people we stab harder than our foes is ourselves.

Which is why the Katajion Space Sector often hires third parties to help with their war efforts. While it is often hidden under the guise of supplementing existing forces, mercenaries are hired on a regular basis to help ensure that the mission is completed. They are the fallback option when Commander of the Wings John Doe took his air wing to liberate a captured position without direct orders from his chain. Pirates, freelancers, professional mercenaries… if they can be counted on to complete the mission and defend the directorship, they can find good money. An example of this is elven ranger Yoi Mono. While she is brought to the Katajion Space Sector as an exchange officer, she is kept on by Anton Rogers as a hired unit. In order to keep some sort of semblance of a chain of command, all hired units are given a campaign (temporary) rank in the Space Sector. While this does keep things easier to keep track and manage, it, yet again, breeds unrest and independence in the ranks.

So where are we at? We’ve got officers who are talented at their jobs, but often outside their experience levels. We have senior officials who are in lower positions because they weren’t able to keep up their burn. Experienced, but sometimes jadded. We have outside units that have authority over regular units. While this creates units that are very effective at what they do, it often creates turmoil and the occasional insurrection in the ranks. You’ve got a regular military force that operates like an irregular one. The modern idea of a professional military force does not apply to how the Katajion Directorship, especially the space force, operates.

That’s going to wrap up part two of the lore of the Katajion ranks and why exactly the events on the Nimross played out exactly like they did. We have one more part to go and that’s why exactly things fell apart exactly as they did during the events of the Nimross’s expedition. We are going to talk about the characters themselves, why the cards played out as they did, and things to notice in upcoming stuff. Until then, Chief out!

The video of the post is fitting for this week. Very fitting.

Fates Weekly Update #66

Hello, folks. Any fans of the board game, Secret Hitler, in here? I was roped into playing it this evening with several EVN personalities. I have some bad luck when it comes to that. For two of the five games, I was Hitler. I even got shot during the last game by Tryinmorning. It left me in a weird place where I wasn’t sure if he had done a great thing by stopping me or if it sucked that I lost. It was with this sense of confusion that I entered this week’s update.

Pretty quiet week for developing. It was mostly just chugging along writing, so this week will be more of a lore posting than actual development. I was hoping to have the promotional video ready for you all to see, but it turns out that having to completely wipe your computer because the hard drive wants to die slows you down. While I didn’t lose anything other than work time thanks to frequent backups, it did delay me a couple of days while I fixed parts and reinstalled everything. Soooooo… lore day!

I’ve got an interesting topic of lore to talk about today. One of the most common things I hear about RA: Reborn is the lack of “professional” military discipline. That I haven’t done my research into how the military acts and how things are done. Every time I hear it, I chuckle a little bit. Apparently eight years in a flying steel tube over warzones doesn’t teach you how the military acts. A couple relationships in Reborn are born from real life experiences with crewmen in that combat zone. That’s only one thing though that makes me laugh. The biggest one is that they are correct that the Katajion Defense Force does not operate like a traditional military force. It isn’t, and that is something that takes a bit of understanding to wrap your mind around.

First off, let’s talk about how one becomes a member of the space force in the first place. From the age of four to the age of graduation, children of the Katajion Directorship are educated in a junior educational academy (four to ten) and a senior educational academy (ten to late teens). Tests to advance are incredibly challenging and almost everyone does a couple years two or three times. Senior educational academy is where Natalie and Sol met, becoming childhood friends. While it is possible to be exempt from these academies (Faye Moonfallow is an example), all children are to be given tests each year to advance to the next segment of their learning. These tests also help gauge a person’s talents and aptitudes, which determines what sector academies than can apply for after graduation. Those who have already graduated an academy and wish to join another sector or were educated outside the system are also given tests to determine if they can join a specific sector’s academy.

When coming into a sector academy, cadets are either given a promised position or an open one. Promised positions are given to those with exceptional talent or with special circumstances. They know what position they will be given upon completion of their training. As they know their position, they also know what rank they will have as Katajion ranks are directly tied to their positions. Open positions don’t have the same luxury as promised. They are forced to compete with their educational academy scores, their sector academy scores, and any other external factors against the other open candidates. While this means some can get lucky and land higher level positions with hard work, it also means average and below average performers can end up in grunt positions and risk never moving up.

Sector Academy is a mix of a traditional college and a very vague technical school. Cadets are taught about the basics of their respective sectors, specialized knowledge in fields of study that were previously covered in educational academies, and some initial classes that are used to determine if they are qualified to advance into more advanced professions. There is a high amount of rigidity in sector academies and a lot of personal freedoms are restricted to ensure that their focus is on the material. It is closer to a strict boarding school than what most people would consider to be “basic training”. Part of the reason for this is the long held belief in Katajion independence and individuality. Most sector academies are only one to two years long. After the cadets have shown their competency in the basics, open position cadets are given their positions. All cadets are then sent to their respective training schools and given brevet ranks. These ranks are either their position’s rank or given up to the deck officer rank of captain. Those who would be promoted higher are temporarily held at the brevet rank of captain until completion of their profession school.

Okay, this is going to be a really long talk, so we are going to have to come back to this next week. Next week we will cover from profession school to official posting. This might be a three part special as we show why things on the Nimross unfolded the way they did. I don’t mean to rant, but a decade of lore has left a lot of things to talk about. Until next time, Chief out!

 

What’s this week’s video o’ the post? Come more old country songs! Let the world bask in your guitar strings.