Hello, folks! You know what time it is… It’s Saturday night and… wait. What? It’s only late Saturday afternoon? But I always write the update in the late evening when I should have gone to bed hours before. I guess we are stuck in some sort of time conflux. Perhaps it is because of the medieval airstrike I suffered through in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Took a hellfire ball to the face from a F-Dragon5 flying overhead; never saw it coming. Okay, bad jokes aside. Let’s get to the update!

-Wordcount: 36884 (4000 this week, I just had to hit that mark on the dot) Does anyone want me to talk more about Sol being the lovely man he is? He’s the hardest character to write, I swear. It’s easy making a knight in shining armor. It’s easy making a foul racist who is easy to hate. Merging the two together just makes life so difficult. Finding that middle ground, as is the case with people in real life, where they are good people with bad parts to their nature is tricky. Some of the scenes I worked on this week were putting Sol into that uncomfortable position where he is unsure where his views of his comrades really lie. Except for Zuri. His views on her will always lie somewhere near the scars she accidentally gave him and that happy he can’t tear out of her soul.

-Music: We have found our musician. We are still working out the details but it should be finished up today.

-Wall scroll: The final image for the wall scrolls is done! The image has already been sent off to the printers to get made! Tscbr, the artist who designed the scroll, will also be one of our CG artists.

-Dakimakura: Right now, we are waiting on the dakimakura artist to finish drawing the darkimakura for Natalie. He’s been behind and I’m trying my best to get him to finish everything up as quickly as possible. To help keep costs reasonable, I had to work a bulk deal for the dakimakura. Without the Natalie image, the printer doesn’t want start. After that, it is going to be two weeks to receive the dakis. As soon as they come in, I will be sending out a survey to the daki folks who only were getting one to choose from either Natalie or Faye (or Zuri, if my assistant isn’t looking and the CG artist is up for it). At that point, I will be shipping them as each survey comes in. I didn’t want to ship ASAP (wanted to get some of those other physical goodies (prints, poster, and a patch) done, but we are still too early in development). International shipping is expensive and I wanted to get the most for the shipping costs and some extras for the backers. However, I am willing to ship early for those who just really wanted the daki ASAP.

Long story short: Artist is behind and I’m trying to convince the producer to start without the full order. I’m highly confident we will have it resolved shortly.

For today’s topic, I received an e-mail asking me to talk about some of the different species and their racial traits in Fates. The first thing that needs to be mentioned is that all species mentioned so far in the series are sub-human. Now, I don’t mean that they are lowly monsters compared to humans, I mean that every race started out from the human template. There are no true aliens in the known universe at the moment. Lupide, elves, afrik… all of them can trace their heritage back to the humans from earth. How we ended up with the current batch is a topic for another day. Will there be aliens in the universe? I’ve considered letting some in, just as I’ve considered using that shiny awesome RPG engine I developed.

Lupide/Kitsune: The first group I want to talk about is the lupide and kitsune. I’ve never been fond of using the term kitsune for them. They aren’t foxes, but the term has stuck around since they were first allowed into the RP way back in the day. In the story, there are two lupide and one kitsune. Those of you who have been paying close attention should realize something in that statement, but that is a mystery being left unanswered. The first thing to know about lupide is they are very superstitious. With their close-knit families, stories of tales from beyond the stars are shared between them. How often are these tales true? That is something for Natalie to figure out. Every legend is based in true… not so true. Faye and her aversion to giving blood because her cousins told her stories of people losing their intelligence because of it probably doesn’t hold any merit. Stories of a monster that prowls around elven woods might be a little more important to ask about. Lupide and Kitsune also tend to think more with their hands than with their heads. With a few rare exceptions, they tend to be a lot more reliable taking care of the now rather than the later.

Draemon: The second largest non-human species in the story is the draemons with a gold, a red, and a green draemon. In terms of population, they are one of the smallest. With their shockingly absent parenting, harrowing trials to become an adult, and culture deep rooted in spirituality and a warrior mindset, most draemons don’t live to see the longevity that comes with their race. Being strong, agile, and able to fly, draemon are some of the best fighters in the universe. If there is a threat, having a draemon fighter between it and you is the best way to keep alive. The only problem with this is that draemon tend to be incredibly hard to reason with. There is rarely a moral gray area and it is easy to turn a loyal fighter into a dangerous enemy. Just like chocobos, different color draemons have different levels of physical and mental prowess, abilities, and status in draemon society. The ranking order goes…

Gold; Royality or draemon of high stature Blue; seers of the draemon culture and most of their artists, philosophers, and intellectuals Red; masters of the draemon fighting styles and the most physically able after gold draemons Green; the most common and weakest; often serving as guides for young draemon or wanderers

When dealing with draemons, you would do well to learn how not to offend to get the most information out of them.

Afrik: Out of all the species, Afrik are the least common and the oldest. If there is one species you should never trust out of all of them, it is an afrik. Rumor has it that they originally arrived from a future time and were the cause of the original human hybrids, playing havoc with the time-space continuum and being both the chicken and the egg. The average afrik is millennium old and, while they are harder to kill, they are not immortal. An afrik keeps themselves alive by playing the younger species, by manipulating events to ensure they get the results they want. The universe is a stage and the afrik are puppetmasters. The one afrik in Fates might appear to be nothing more than a bumbling idiot, but people are easier to play when they think their adversary does nothing but make mistakes.

There are three other species that will be playing with Natalie, the minotaur, the elves, and the frikon, but that is more for another day. Until next week, Chief out!