Legend of Emilar

262 PA – 702 PA

The Felgarin Empire was, finally, founded on 262 PA after much consternation around the total powers that would be granted to the provinces and in which ways and the situations under which those powers could be curtailed by the state. The Felgarin government would be built around a parliamentarian system where citizens of the provinces would have equal representation in the Parliament by way of voting in a three-year election cycle. Each election cycle, all members of Parliament would be up for re-election. There were no term limits, you would serve as long as your constituents returned you to your seat.

Every six years, the political figurehead for the country would undergo a test of confidence via election as well. While there were no explicit rules, language was put into place suggesting that there was a Presidential term limit of 8 terms: 48 years. There was no enforcement mechanism to enforce this suggestion, however, so many saw it as purely academic. The President was responsible for making certain decisions of national importance, weighing in on parliamentarian legislation, though the office had no authority over the enactment of legislation except within specific situations, and was to be responsible for coordinating various parts of the government in times of national emergency.

While there were a couple false starts, the first elections went off relatively smoothly and the gears of political civilization ground into motion. Things continued this way for many years until a shift within Parliament began to occur. One that would test this new form of government.

In the year 390 PA, a faction arose to minor power within the Parliament. They represented a new religion calling itself the Children of the Eleven Point Star. It had arrived within the country a little more than a year ago, brought by traders from the Duchy of Tarkaan, a country far to the east. The President of the Empire at this time was an aging man named Tierel Noggs. He had been in politics for most of his life, starting at the age of 18 when he was elected to Parliament by his constituents in Latis Province. He was a tall and roughhewn man, six feet eight inches tall.

Many credited his rich bass voice for his success in politics; it conveyed a sense of security. He rose quickly through Parliament and amassed much political power. He used it to the advantage of his constituents to press for legislation the empower Latis province as a secondary trade hub to help support Westerly. He knew and played the game for nearly fifty years until he decided to run for President.

His opponent, at the time, was a Parliament Member from Jostrin province named Crias Felhorn. His opponent ran on a nationalist platform, he wanted to restrict immigration, tighten scrutiny on religious groups, and cut international spending and redirect those monies to the provinces.

Noggs chose a different, much more nuanced tactic. He agreed with his opponent that the immigration system had gotten a bit lax as of late and that some changes were needed, but also advocated for increasing the annual cap for immigration by 45%. Because only so many were approved per year, those who had been waiting for as much as a decade were entering illegally because the system was not giving them a fair deal; he backed this up with numerous studies.

He did not agree with his opponent that Felgarin should withdraw from the world by cutting their support for nations enacting policies or conducting operations beneficial to their own interests nor would it make moral sense to cut aid to countries in great need. Sure, there are always areas needing improvement and support within any nation. In Felgarin, the neediest person is still far better off than a person from an impoverished nation. He argued that the cuts to international spending his opponent sought would be heaviest on such nations.

In the end it wasn’t really a contest. Noggs wiped out Felhorn by the tune of 87% of the vote. It was the largest win in the history of the country in those days and started a rivalry between the two men. Felhorn felt he was entitled to win and now that he had lost and in such a spectacular way, he was determined to be a thorn in Noggs side for as long as possible.

These days Noggs once striking black hair was now going from grey to white in his early eighties, but his mind was still as sharp as ever. He had withered brutal political times in the past, most of them figure headed by Felhorn who did indeed make it his life’s mission to see Noggs deposed. The problem for Felhorn was that Noggs was well liked by the people and he ran his office smartly, attempting to not give any possibility for attack from Felhorn or the rest of his coalition in Parliament.

The whole rivalry culminated in an assassination attempt. Felhorn himself ambushed Noggs as the President was walking into his personal residence on a stormy autumn evening around 15 years ago. He had paid off his security detail to go missing for a few hours and attempted to sneak up behind his enemy. He brought along a .56 Keljourner Special, a massive handgun known and favored for its lethality. Noggs was saved by two things that night; the first was Felhorn’s ego, Felhorn wanted Noggs to know it was him that had killed him even though with that weapon he could have done it from sixty feat away. The second was Noggs’ size.

Felhorn did manage to get off a single round into Noggs’ midriff, but Noggs’ had heard someone approaching and had started turning around. While he had a grapefruit sized hole in his side, it ended up not being a lethal hit. He whipped around and caught Felhorn with his fist, sending him head first into the side of a wall where he died instantly from the force of the impact.

The event turned into a conspiracy and 25 members of Parliament, and 10 members of the Office of the President were eventually arrested and charged with participation in a plot to assassinate the President. All of them were found guilty in the court system and were executed. After surviving as close to a coup de tat as could be defined, Noggs would go on to serve as President for another twenty years; the longest serving President in the history of Felgarin at the time.

Given his experience with political intrigue, he had taken note of this new religion. He was uneased by it; he did not know why, but it worried him when it had begun taking such a fast hold within the country. Not that the spread of religion was something to be halted, but it is also true that with quick change can come massive upheaval. What he wanted was stability; stability is what had propelled Felgarin through the past to now with very little conflict, external or internal.

The caucus in question was not advocating for extreme policies either, but he worried about the possibility of such. He had found that throughout his long life that when devout believers obtain power of authority, usually they end up trying to obtain more. Currently, their major goal was to pass legislation giving the Ministry of Faith additional powers to police the registered religions. An odd goal, considering that their own religion was not yet officially through the registration process.

They would eventually find themselves with the votes to pass their bill. With it, they expanded the powers of the Ministry of Faith which would now have the power to perform audits of tithes and collections to ensure that proper taxes had been paid, they would have more power to investigate the individuals of a new religion seeking registration with the ministry. They would have the unilateral power to change tithe and collection taxes which had been the prevue of Parliament. A maximum number of registered religions was instituted, which could only be raised by three fourths vote in a parliamentary vote and if the advisory council that processed registrations for new religions unanimously agreed that the cap could be raised.

In addition to all of these, they also passed amendments to establish a small law enforcement organization under the command of the Ministry of Faith. Their mission statement was to monitor unregistered religions and if evidence of malicious action was found, they had the power to infiltrate, and monitor said religious organizations all the way through to the power to arrest the leaders given proper evidence.

While there was pushback for these changes, it was mitigated by the expansion the Eleven Point Star caucus, as they had named themselves, enjoyed. They were now a quarter of the Parliament and enjoyed certain privileges under the parliamentarian system, such as the ability to propose legislation directly and not through the legislative subcommittee responsible for taking legislative suggestions from minority caucuses and formulating legislation from those suggestions if they decided that there was merit in bringing such legislation to a vote. They also now controlled two seats on that subcommittee as well.

As time wore on, the Elven Point Star caucus started becoming more extreme. With their popularity came with it the attraction of those seeking to leverage their power for personal gains and ambitions. This eventually led to the election of a man to caucus leader who would forever change the nation, an individual that Noggs had worried would one day appear.

His name was Barthold Castillian. He was a charismatic middle-aged man from Veltin province. He was new to Parliament, having just been elected in the last round of elections. His platform was harrowing to Noggs who viewed his ambitions as nothing short of a hostile theocracy. He was a zealot through and through as far as Noggs was concerned. Castillian believed that the Children of the Eleven Point Star was the only true religion, all others were pretenders seeking to sway innocents into the clutches of evil. He believed that all facets of life should be dictated by one’s religious beliefs for if you did not live and act by your beliefs, you were condemned. This included areas of politics and law.

Castillian was a member of an extremist sect of the Children of the Eleven Point Star called the Ordo Diei Thantulus, or the Order of the Day of Thantulus. Thantulus was a major deity of the religion, the God of Light. Castillian’s sect believed that their religion was the one, true religion and that all others were false and subversive to their own and that they had been called upon to either convert or expunge the non-believers.

He had been elected after the previous leader, Swain Holstin, had been embroiled in a scandal involving exploitation of his parishioners. He had led a large congregation for many years before being vaulted to leadership over the caucus.

Barthold had been a fiery opposition against Swain; some would say he went too far in his advocacy for Swain’s removal. He often let his speeches against Swain wander into the realm of veiled accusations based on rumor and hearsay, with no proper evidence to back it up, but with just enough truth that his accusations sounded possible. Swain had no rebuttal to the allegations Barthold regularly launched at him; he believed that recognizing the ravings of a mad man would only ensure that his ravings would be validified just enough in the eyes of those that believed in them.

This turned out to be a mistake. Barthold spent months building up a case against Swain and, with no rebuttal from Swain, argued that his silence was acquiescence that Swain had no arguments to resolve himself before the Lords of Lords, a term used to refer to the deities of the religion. Bethold’s arguments found purchase in many of the caucus members, enough to trigger a leadership vote.

Swain was practically run out of his position; he only ended up with 3% support for his continuation as leader. From here, the EPS caucus became more radical under Barthold’s direction. Those with moderating views were ejected and eventually replaced by more radical voices come election time. They gave ever increasing power to the Ministry of Faith and began writing sweeping reforms to the organization.

Within three more years’ time the EPS caucus made up 54% of parliament, meaning they could pass whatever legislation they wanted to. Things eventually came to a head. Many members of parliament introduced a new bill that would require changes to the structure of the government to require a two thirds majority vote and the approval of the President before legislation passed was enacted into law; changes to the operations of Parliament were one of a handful of situations where the President had unalienable veto power over the will of the Parliament.

Arguments for this legislation were surprisingly met positively by all sides, there seemed to be enough support for it to be passed. Barthold was furious with the situation, he saw it as a personal attack on him and an attempt to stall his plans. He lashed out with the same fiery vigor that he had used to crush Swain, this time aiming for the other caucuses of the parliament, including some of his own caucus members that had publicly supported the legislation as well as Noggs who he knew was his ultimate barrier.

Things began to turn ugly with Barthold claiming that this legislation was an attack on the Children of the Eleven Point Star and that this had been orchestrated by President Noggs who had never been one to hide his views about the Eleven Point Star caucus. It was designed to infringe on their obligations to the Lords of Lords as citizens of the country, practitioners of the faith, and as leaders within the government. That the legislation was designed to target them specifically and prevent the exercise of their beliefs.

His arguments were powerful and as with Swain, no one dared to touch the third rail of supporting or acting against religion mixing with politics out in public. Many felt that strongly voicing opposition to Barthold would only serve to prove him right, that they did in fact have the intent to target the Children of the Eleven Point Star. Instead, they attempted to argue against his statements using allegorical rhetoric about events that could happen in the future without this legislation.

No one listened and once again the lack of strong pushback on Barthold led to his victory. The outcry was so severe that not only did the dissenters within the EPS caucus switch to support the tabling of the legislation, so too did most of the rest of parliament; only 25% voted in favor of the new restrictions. President Noggs even felt the repercussions of this situation and saw his public support, which had never dropped below 90% since his attempted assassination, dip eighteen points. Bethold felt that his time was at hand, he had amassed support from this victory and felt that he could use it to his advantage.

He announced a bill that would fundamentally change the Felgarin empire. He claimed, without proof though that didn’t matter, that the President had been in collaboration with those that had tried to enact the largest suppression of religious freedom seen in the modern world. He claimed that the office of the President was too likely to be used for corrupt purposes, citing more than two dozen incidents in the past where there was indeed large-scale scandal and corruption within previous administrations.

He claimed that there was only one solution; a monarchy, controlled by a religious state, must be instituted. He stated that Parliament would still be responsible for legislating, though that any bill would require approval by the Church before it could be ratified. The Church would be formed from the Ministry of Faith and take on the same roles as the ministry. It additionally would collect tithes directly from the different registered religious organizations instead of through the provincial branches of the Ministry of Faith which were to be shut down. Unregistered religions would be taxed at higher rates and be heavily monitored.

The monarchy would be held for life by an individual selected by the Church. The Church reserved the right to depose the King at any time for reasons of sedition, treason, unbecoming behavior, corruption, or refusal of orders from the Church. If removed, the King would be imprisoned in accordance with the crimes he had been removed for up to and including death.

Most of these proposed changes were met with wide popularity. Large swaths of the populace had become soured to the current government after years of allegations of corruption, financial fraud, and all of the things that Barthold had alleged for years that had been going on. They no longer cared about the veracity of the claims, they just wanted change, any change.

The first king of Felgarin was emplaced in 408 PA; King Russart Vatlim, a man fifty two years of age and of average height and build. He was not particularly intelligent, but he knew his way around politics and was submissive to Barthold. Naturally, he was a strong advocate and believer in the Children of the Eleven Point Star; Barthold ensured that the first King would be a staunch ally to the Church and extoll the intelligence of this new form of government whenever possible. With Russart in place, Barthold began to slowly build support for further changes, biding his time for the opportune moment.

With his power stripped from him Noggs retired to his personal residence in Westerly and passed away of natural causes four years later. While Barthold did not like the man personally, he still ordered to have him lie in state, recognizing that he could moderate some of the negative opinions about him and by himself more time to execute his vision.

As is usually the case, patience bore success. In 415 PA small-scale fighting between the Children of the Eleven Point Star and several smaller religious groups broke out. Several EPS churches were burnt to the ground by extremists from these other religions. This led to larger conflict and fighting across the country as a religious civil war flared into existence.

Members of these two religions, Filstarism and Palisam, felt that the Children of the Eleven Point star were becoming too influential. They found their congregations being actively led to the Eleven Point Star and had been met with hostility when attempting to use shared communal spaces for spreading information about their religions.

Their complaints to the Church had been ignored for years. Even when there had been physical altercations resulting in injuries and deaths, no actions were taken against the Children of the Eleven Point Star practitioners that had committed those crimes. They were taking matters into their own hands.

Barthold could not have asked for a better scenario. He decried the attacks as religious persecution of the predominant religion of the country, one practiced by most of the population, and called it religious terrorism. He called for investigations into these religious organizations immediately.

Within two days the Church had revoked the registrations of both religions and sent out their enforcers to round up all of those who had participated in the burnings and attacks. Over two hundred people were arrested and sentenced to harsh terms in prison, some as high as thirty years.

Barthold then proposed legislation to help address the issues these conflicts had raised. He wanted to enshrine the Children of the Eleven Point Star as the national religion of the country. The Church would become the Church of the Eleven Point Star and be the seat of power for the religion globally. All other religions would be tightly controlled to prevent any further assaults on believers and while they would be free to operate, they could not use communal areas or public spaces for the spread of their religion.

Punishments were to be instituted for religions that had teachings antithetical to the Eleven Point Star. This included imprisonment for up to ten years and severe financial penalties. The Church would be granted even more power over enforcement of the law, with the judiciary being removed from handling cases where religious factors were at play and instead a panel created from and run by the Church would pass judgement in those cases.

While the legislation passed and was ratified, there were repercussions felt for years after. There was much unrest as religions found themselves targeted by Barthold personally, using his silver tongue to weave a tapestry of believable lies to get their religions banned and practitioners arrested. Over the course of a decade, almost all other religions other than the Eleven Point Star had been stamped out in Felgarin and the Church had amassed huge amounts of power.

Time passed and while tensions eased over the hostile takeover by the Church of the government, everyone played along to get along. At least, until the Felgarin Civil war of 680 PA. It was triggered by changes enacted by the Church, through their puppets in Parliament, to enact higher taxes on trade and increasing tithes by thirty percent. They would enforce these changes through the Ecclesiarchy, an organization built out of the Enforcement Bureau of the Church. After many years of stifling trade restrictions enacted by the Church, the populace had started to decline in wealth and prosperity.

These, and other factors, led to the proposed changes being the last straw. It started as a humble revolt in a town called Osterlin in Jostrin province. When the tax collectors came to collect, the people of the village forced them to leave. The Taxmen came back the next day with Enforcers who ended up in violent clashes with the people of the village. Things escalated quickly and the village was burned down; many lost their lives. It was a spark that triggered a conflagration the spread throughout the empire.

Willing members of the populace from towns and villages across the country joined up in Veltin to try to take over the Church and depose Archbishop James Alister, who had been leading the Church since the Great Reformation about seventeen years ago when Parliament transferred most of its remaining power to the Church. Alister had been a member of the Children of the Eleven Point Star since he was a child and was a fully indoctrinated member of the Ordo die Lenich; the Order of Lenich. Lenich was the Goddess of Ice, the tenants of her order were that there was no forgiveness, no salvation for the heretic. Salvation would only give rise to further corruption; the purity of the religion was to be maintained. As such, Alister was brutal in his actions.

The revolutionaries were met by the Enforcers as soon as they entered Shrig and a bloody battle ensued. Both sides took heavy losses, but the Enforces had won out. The revolutionaries that were still alive fled back into the Veltin countryside, searching for somewhere to hide while they recovered and planned their next moves.
After their defeat, the revolutionaries found it hard to recruit new members; many feared what would happen should they join. Most of the families of those who had been captured or slain during the incident in Veltin had been rounded up and thrown in prison as collaborators. Those who were lucky enough to face a trial found themselves sentenced to dozens of years of hard labor for sedition. Many were simply never heard from again.

It was not long before the Church sent out the Enforcers to hunt down the remaining members of the revolutionaries responsible for the attack, using information gathered by those with contact with the group. They were doggedly tracked down to the last man, no one escaped and those that had been captured were sentenced to public execution for treason against the state, their entire families sentenced to prison until they worked off the debts charged to their guilty family members who were held liable for the monetary value of the damage and death they had caused.

What followed was fifty years of abject terror on the part of the populace of the Felgarin Empire; the Church was ruling with every force at their disposal imaginable to stamp out any remaining embers of rebellion. Archbishop Alister was derided as a tyrant abroad, but back at home dissent was kept to a whisper in the dead of night lest someone overhear and report to the authorities. All they could do was hope that Alister would die of old age, which many believed should have happened by now; he was 78, well passed the average life expectancy for that time.

Information on citizens speaking ill of the Church was heavily rewarded monetarily. For information leading to any arrest, the reporter was awarded a sovereign; equal to 10,000 Geldir. The Church had augmented the currency system with new denominations of Geldir equivalent to prevent the wealthy in the country from undue influence nor the ability to finance a revolution. There was not much that the rich could do other than watch their fortunes turn to dust overnight, comparatively.

However, there is only so much push that a population can sustain before an opposite reaction is provoked; and that opposite reaction was about to be elicited. In 698 PA an unknown, relatively young man, aged 32, named Vasin Rafard was causing waves in Westerly in Ralsk, a small town southwest of the provincial capital. Vasin was a stout man with an athletic build and a height of six feet. He had raven black hair and piercing golden eyes that the residents of his birth province of Jostrin are known for. He was born in Marnin and had moved to Westerly eight years ago.

He was tired of the Church confiscating 80% of his profits because his business happened to be located next to a church and the Church felt that the increase in business from this location dictated that he owed more.
He was locally known for pushing the line every tax collection day, he would argue and physically stop the taxmen from doing their job up till the point that they would call in the Enforcers. It became a bit of a betting event for some of the locals; would “Crazy Rafard” get canned today or not, take your bets and no refunds! No one seriously believed that Vasin would do anything, that possibility was too outlandish to even entertain. No one in their right mind would fight against the Church was the common conceit, though they all knew that this was nothing but an excuse. An excuse to allow them to not feel guilty for doing nothing about the situation, both in Vasin’s case and more generally.

After one particularly bad week, Vasin was about to see most of his holdings confiscated to pay the fine for not being able to meet the minimum tax for a business of his size. He had gone well past his usually self-imposed lines and had clocked a Taxman clean off his feet, knocking him unconscious. A sizable crowd had gathered to see what was going to happen to him when the Enforcers arrived.

Vasin was quick of mind though; he had gotten a torch from the nearby blacksmith’s, doused a rag with oil, and wrapped it around it. He threw it at the church next-door to his business. It was an excellent throw that landed upon the roof where it caught the building ablaze. The speed that the structure went fully up in flames was almost supernatural.

Upon seeing what Vasin had done, the remaining Taxman drew out a tiny stiletto and lunged at him. Vasin barely saw the flash of the blade and if it were not for the adrenalin flowing through him from lighting the church on fire, the blade probably would have stabbed him in the side. Instead, he sidestepped the attack and, without thinking, grabbed a sword that was lying nearby and ran the Taxman through with it.

The crowd around him gasped, they didn’t know what they had expected from the situation, but apparently murder wasn’t on their radar. When the Enforcers arrived at the scene, they found no one around except the dead Taxman on the ground and the smoldering ruins of the church. They fanned out through the village, looking for Vasin.

The place seemed deserted, they saw no one; not even children playing in the road or shopkeeps tending their stalls. As they neared the townhall the silence was shattered by an ear-splitting scream as dozens of men flooded out from the building carrying weapons of all kinds. The Enforcers were not prepared to deal with this many malcontents and while they managed to kill some of them, the villagers won out at the end.

Vasin waded out from the middle of the mob and stood atop a nearby cart exclaiming that they had succeeded in doing what they thought impossible, fighting back against their oppressors. His plan had worked only because everyone agreed to take part and played a part in the success. The Church was not unbeatable and they should be answering to them, not the other way around.

He asked for those that wanted to join him to accompany him on a journey through the kingdom to build up a new rebellion to topple the Church and return the rule of their country to something resembling what they had had in the past; the current government was corrupt and nothing but a lap dog to the Church.

Vasin’s message spread like wildfire as did the tale of their deeds in Ralsk. The success they had had and the non-reaction from the Church, who were caught off guard by the ferocity of the events that had unfolded and were unsure of how to respond in the immediate aftermath. It also helped that Vasin was a very charismatic speaker, he was able to bring forth the repressed anger of the people of Felgarin and focus it on one entity: the Church. Vasin’s goal was simple; destroy the Church and everything it stood for, strip it of its power and bring to justice the tyrants that had abused the power they now held.

The Church recovered from their initial shock quickly, but not fast enough to stop the uprising that Vasin had triggered. They would have to stamp out yet another rebellion and prove again that they were in control of this country. Archbishop Alister called up every Enforcer at his disposal with the intent of razing Westerly to the ground if that was what it took to stop Vasin and his followers. He gave specific orders that no one was to be spared, nothing was to be left standing. If the Enforcers encountered hostility upon entering a town, that town was to be destroyed.

Those in the South, while supportive of Vasin’s intentions, did not outwardly support him; they were too close to the seat of power of the Church and did not have the same level of support from the general populace that Vasin did in the North, though sentiments were changing. Meanwhile, the North was awash in chaos. The Enforcers were sweeping toward Westerly, using extreme prejudice against anyone that stood in their way for any reason.

Vasin had been moving his forces South to meet them in combat, eager to stop their advance and prevent any more destruction and death. It was clear to him now that the Church was completely rotten. To issue the orders that they had was as tantamount to evil as could be, while the Church may not be inherently a horrible idea, the leadership must be torn up from the roots. Vasin knew the power of Humans who believed they acted for a righteous cause.

So, he began talking about the need for the Church, that it had been founded for good intentions, but was now being run by individuals who had sought their stations with corrupt intent, for power and nothing else. He stated that his goal was not just about restoring balance in their government and control of it back to the people, but it was about saving the Church from itself.

His words had more impact than he believed they would; people were flocking to join him from all over the northern part of Felgarin. It felt like the whole of the able-bodied country was joining him and he began to feel the weight of that responsibility. It wasn’t something he ever thought about when he started this movement, but now he was responsible for the lives of tens of thousands of people. He knew that he was motivating many of them to their deaths, even if they won. These were mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, aunts, and uncles; all of them had families who cared for them and relied on them in some fashion or another.

Their loss would impact those families greatly. He was asking for individuals to follow him into the Shadowrealm, potentially, and all of these people had agreed to do so willingly. The enormity of it kept him up at night. More than once he considered ending the whole thing and turning himself in to beg the Church to spare his followers. He would then remember that these people had not joined him on a whim and that the Church would give no leniency to them even if he surrendered.

They had joined him because they had been trodden on by the Church just as he had. They had felt the bite of tyranny and sought change. They all knew the consequences of joining Vasin, no one in this country could not know after what the Church had been doing these last years; lest they had been living in absolute seclusion.
Vasin needed an actual plan, winging it was not going to work as they got closer to Shrig, the capital city of the country. The Church was sure to have elite troops stationed waiting for them to foolishly conduct a frontal assault. Instead Vasin went to his followers and asked for those with the most military experience to join him in forming a war council.

They were no longer fighting for freedom from repression, this had and would become the second Felgarin Civil War, a true one this time and one that they could not afford to lose. Everything was at stake and all options had to be on the table. He asked that they consider the ramifications and then join him in a tent he had constructed for the council if they still wanted to volunteer.

As people streamed in, hoping to make a name for themselves, five individuals stood out during the questioning Vasin put them to. In the end, the five Vasin asked to return to him were a diverse bunch.

Gerlow Tarlin, a low-born farmer who had organized a local guard to help keep monsters out of the fields. He was middle aged, but his tactical awareness was impressive, and he had a good mind for strategy. He knew how to place troops, when to pull them back, how to use different formations, and more theory you would not expect a farmer to be knowledgeable of. He had some interesting answers to the questions Vasin had asked him. Vasin had asked what he would do in a scenario where the Church had surrounded him in a village. He would have thirty archers, fifty foot soldiers, and ten cavalrymen. Vasin had expected an answer within the realm of withstanding a siege until such a time that inclement weather would shield an attack against the attacking forces.

Instead, Gerlow stated he would wait until early morning just as the siege camp would be stirring from rest. He would move his archers around the city, stationing them as high as possible while allowing them to remain as hidden as possible. He would give them an order to fire arrows to cause panic and then focus on one area of the blockade to try and thin the enemy forces enough for the cavalry to break through. He would also send half of his foot soldiers with them to secure the opening while the archers provided ranged support.
He would then have the cavalry attempt to charge down the nearby blockade forces while the archers picked off the spearmen and the foot soldiers focused on taking out any other ground forces designed to counter enemy cavalry.

Vasin was impressed; it wasn’t a completely sound strategy, but, for a farmer, he showed an unusual creativity in his thought. It was something that they would need to win, not fighting in a practicable manner, using methods and strategies that, while seemingly crazy on the surface, were deadly when executed correctly.

Marly Hington, a foreign-born woman from the United Nations of Gol, she had been a commander in the UNG military for ten years before retiring and migrating to Felgarin twenty years ago. She was old, but her mind was as keen as a fox’s. She had proper experience in leading men into battle and knew proper military stratagems and theory. She had led assaults on pirates, bandit organizations, she had even participated in the war between Minsor and the UNG forty years ago.

It was where she had gained her promotion to commander when leading her platoon as acting commander when their previous commander, a famous tactician named Henris Gostlion, was slain in action. She came from a military family and so had been raised with her enlistment in mind. She had many shrewd comments about the state of their forces compared to their enemy. She also said, though, that the belief that a cause is righteous and just can overcome a lot of adversity; she would know, her country was born from such a hopeless cause.

It was this history and this knowledge that all those born on Tilrin knew to be true that led Vasin to bringing her on. If someone from the UNG believed a cause was just and righteous, then it must be so; this was a common belief held globally due to the hardships and tribulations during the Galardian era on Tilrin.

Ostil Waeinfroth was an interesting fellow and an unexpected ally, a half-elf looking to prove he bore no ill will to the people of Felgarin and that he was no danger to them; Elves and Half-Elves were heavily discriminated against. Being of Elvish blood, his magic was more powerful than a normal Human’s and that would prove beneficial as the Church forbade anyone of Elvish descent from participating within it.

Vasin hoped that including Ostil would help in four ways; first to reduce the racism against the Elvish and Elvish descendants. Second, that his inclusion would get other Elvish to join his cause, the more of them they had, the more powerful his forces would become. Third, Ostil was very intelligent; some of his initial insights had surprised Vasin for their bluntness and accuracy. Fourth, and most importantly, inclusion of the Elvish and Ostil being an integral part of the revolution would help to signal to Eldawine that Felgarin was changing, that they need not worry about threats from the North.

Carne Hinst another man from Marnin, Jostrin province whom Vasin has known of as a child. He was well versed in magical theory; in fact, he was something of a savant. He was joining because the Church had been clamping down on the practitioners of so called “Black Magic”. He had always hated this term due to the connotations it held. Vasin had not thought about it prior to his discussion with Hinst, but quickly came to agreement that the name was born from an ignorant past. Hinst’s philosophy impressed Vasin, he had many complex views and while he did not completely disagree with the Church and what they had done he did agree that the Church was going too far.

Hinst argued that there was a place for the Church and that their intentions, when not tainted with lust for power, were meaningful and properly intentioned. Vasin and Carne had several extended debates on the morality of the actions undertaken by the Church. It was interesting to Vasin that someone so thoroughly persecuted by the Church would be an advocate for it, at all. Many that had joined them did so because they wanted to remove the Church entirely from its existence as a governmental institution. Vasin had not considered that there could also be a range of views on this topic within his forces.

He was forced to consider the fact that potentially more of their members had similar beliefs to Hinst but were afraid to speak up given the somewhat radical nature of many of the others that he had attracted. He made it a point to figure out how to resolve these differences in opinion before they made their move on the Church; it would do them no good for a portion of their forces to abandon them mid-fight because they couldn’t condone what they were doing.

Hinst also impressed Vasin with his knowledge of magic, he was only seconded by Ostil, though admittedly Vasin didn’t know many mages. In his explanations, Hinst would expand upon how certain magical theories could be manipulated, or even broken, given enough skill with the base elements of a spell. He also talked about how Elvish magic was fundamentally different from Human magic, which was surprising to Vasin.

He had not known this fact, and in fact it wasn’t common knowledge. Hinst explained that while everyone knows that Elvish magic is stronger, it isn’t because the Elves have some kind of genetic factor making it stronger. It was stronger because it more closely resembled the magic of old told in many myths and legends. It was something hidden from the general citizenry of the country to prevent further subjugation of the Elves and to prevent a second Arcanum War from occurring. It made sense though, why Ostil’s magic was so much more potent than most Human mages. Even more reason to get more of the Elvish on their side.

Finally, there was his biggest prize; Garreth Dorin, a defector from the Church. Not just a defector, but a Paladin; one of the strongest warriors in the country that had one of the highest commands in the Enforcers. Dorin was a massive man, almost seven feet tall and an extremely muscled physic. He was one of only a handful of people who were known to be able to wield two-handed weapons with a single hand and Dorin was well-known for his unique fighting style that incorporated two pikes. He had fiery red eyes that seemed to bore into your being and radiant golden hair that reached his midriff.

Dorin could no longer condone what the Church was doing to the people of Felgarin. For years he just followed his orders, putting aside his disdain for the atrocities he was ordered to commit. He could no longer uphold his vows and continue fighting for the “corrupt bastards” as he called them.
Vasin had no idea he had attracted such an individual to his cause. Dorin had made no grand entrance; he had just shown up one day, heavily disguised. He knew the kind of people he was joining, if he did not hide his real identity until the right time, there was going to be trouble. He had hopes that Vasin was a reasonable man; his hope was rewarded.

The intel Dorin brought with him was invaluable. Battle plans, contingencies, operational strengths and weaknesses, supply line locations, information about unit formation, composition, and strength. So much information that at first Vasin thought it was a trap, that Dorin was sent as a double agent. Dorin swore on his oath to the Gods and on his families’ souls that he was here in good faith and Vasin could do nothing except believe him; Paladin’s take their vows seriously, not one of them would tarnish their honor by swearing on them in falsehood.

In exchange for all the information that Dorin bought, Vasin would get so much more in addition. That a Paladin of his stature joined them would further cement their cause as righteous in the minds of those, like Hinst, who still believed in the ideals of the Church. It would further validate Hington’s position as well. It would serve to shock the lower rank and file of the Enforces who were sure to have been told nothing of the defection; it may well lead to individuals laying down their arms and not fighting back.

And in exchange all Vasin was required to do was do what he had intended to do from the start, remove those currently in power from it. This was a boon he had never expected, and it would be a critical one in the times to come.

With his council selected, they began formulating battle plans, starting from initial skirmishes to announce their intentions to the Church all the way through to their final strategies for taking over Shrig. Obviously, these plans would need to be malleable as war is a fickle beast, you never know what you will find behind that unopened door and once open it is hard to close once more. They needed plans that could be altered or even completely redesigned should the need arise; with the minds he had collected, it was a relatively easy task with many counterplans for potential situations. Dorin’s knowledge of their enemy’s tactics and how they would respond to various situations would be instrumental in their success going forward.

Over the course of four months Vasin’s forces fought against the Church and pushed them back into the South. Their numbers swelled each day as the liberated more territory that had been held by the Enforcers. While Dorin had command of the front-line forces, Vasin would penetrate behind enemy lines with a select group of warriors to prepare the next push but sabotaging supply lines, introducing fake intel into their knowledge pool, and taking out mid-ranking officers whose absence would go unnoticed until it was too late.

Archbishop Alister was terrified of the progress the insurgents had made and that the notable voices of the World seemed to be in support of them. He desperately wanted to maintain his power, more than almost anything else in his life. That said, he was also deathly afraid of all of those around him, the defection of Garreth Dorin was a shock to his perceived invincibility. How many others secretly detested him as well?

Because of his paranoia, the resistance put up by the Enforcers was sloppy. Alister had, had all the upper chain of command brought before him to swear loyalty oaths. Those that had refused to show up, no matter the reason, were hunted down and imprisoned even though most were much too busy attempting to prevent the destruction of the empire Alister had built. Many attempted to inform the Archbishop of this, but he refused to listen to them and branded them traitors.

As a result, almost everyone with the experience to fight this war properly had been removed from the battle and the Church’s army was effectively being run by conscripts. It was no wonder that they were being steamrolled by the highly experienced forces that Vasin had put together. More experienced commanders would have noticed company commanders going missing, contradictory information suddenly reaching their desk, and all the other small actions Vasin had been taking to sow chaos. By all rights, the Church should have been winning this fight but for the paranoia of one man.

One month later Vasin and his forces had blockaded Shrig. Almost all of the Enforcers left in the South had either escaped north, defected, been captured, or had been killed. Defying the pleas of the cardinals at Saint Rideon’s Cathedral, the seat of power for the Church and their headquarters in Shrig, Alister refused to release the forces he had imprisoned even now. He had even had the cardinals arrested. He sat now, practically alone, on the Golden Throne of his one great empire, staring out across Shrig at the forces of commoners, traitors, upstarts, and usurpers that had come to end his rule.

He would not be trounced around in public like a common deposed ruler. He refused to accept the humiliation of being defeated by the means of mortal men. If he was going to lose his power then he would do so by answering to a much higher authority, one no man had rule over.

As Vasin and his troops entered Shrig everything was eerily quiet. Vasin knew there were people around, he could see movement within houses and people scampered away from shrouded windows as they passed by. There were no guards, no Enforcers, no resistance of any kind.

Vasin sent word throughout the army for everyone to hold position. Vasin gathered up his five generals and the seven warriors that he had fought side by side with throughout most of the campaign; they would proceed while the rest took up positions throughout the city in case of an ambush or attack from outside of the city while his group headed for Saint Rideon’s.

Saint Rideon’s cathedral was an enormous structure. It rose hundreds of feet above the city like a towering behemoth. It was the largest building aside from the castle in the city and had cost almost six years’ worth of Geldir to build. The design of the building had meaning, it wasn’t just big to be intimidating. It was a temple to the Earth God Rideon who ascended from a commoner to a saint and was rewarded with apotheosis into a major God. Saint Rideon’s was supposed to both symbolize the commoner origin and ascension to Godhood as well as represent Rideon’s protection of the Church in the mortal world.

When Vasin and the others arrived, they found the Plazza de Rideon, a large square area leading up to the cathedral, empty. Normally there would be elite guards stationed all around this place. An unease fell upon Vasin as they continued; why was this so easy?

They entered Saint Rideon’s main atrium, as deserted as the rest of the city; they could hear the clanking of Dorin’s armor booming off the massive, vaulted ceiling as they proceeded through towards the massive triplet staircases that lead to higher floors. Dorin parted with the group here, he was going to check the lower levels to try and find some answers as to what was going on.

The Archbishop’s office was on the tenth floor of the cathedral. It was a long climb up the polished wooden staircase. Every so often a loose stair would creak as they passed and make everyone jump; the tension was at an absolute peak. How could they have encountered no resistance, this deep in the enemy stronghold? They had to know that they were here by now.

Finally, at the tenth landing, Vasin pushed open the massive ten-foot-tall bloodwood doors that lead into the Archbishop’s office. The walls were lined with bookcases filled with ancient looking tomes. Throughout the floorspace were desks and tables with odd looking relics and gaudy furniture.

At the very back of the room was a massive desk that was supposedly carved from a single palo santo tree hundreds of years ago. Laying across it was the body of Archbishop James Alister, his head facing the to the side. His face was contorted into the most disgusting face you could imagine, his hands were clenched tight in a death grip, his fingernails had dug into his palms enough to draw blood. He had been dead for some time, possibly since the morning; his body was cold.

As they sought a reason for his death Gerlow warned everyone to step back. He asked if the others smelled anything unusual. When no one could come up with an answer he said that there was a pungent scent of Ilex in the air, one of the telltale signs of Jhedimar poison. Vasin ordered everyone to back away from the body into the middle of the room. He had heard of this stuff, it killed by skin absorption and very quickly. It was designed to be absorbed into surfaces easily and once it had, be almost impossible to remove. Assassins used it when they wanted to contaminate a crime scene and render it unusable as well as to kill anyone that came looking for their target.

This deluded man believed that he alone should rule over the Church and was determined to ensure that anyone that tried to succeed him would meet the same fate as he did. Gerlow said that the desk, chair, and other objects near the back of the room had been soaked in the stuff. It had started turning the wood of the desk a deep black color as the morning sun shone down on it.

One of the other peculiar side effects of the oils in the poison; they would cause materials saturated to turn black in sunlight. This led to its common name, the Black Death. It was odd that the Archbishop would have this substance at hand; it was considered an underworld-spawned substance due to the affect light had on it.

Dorin arrived a few minutes later and had relayed what he had found down on the basement floors; he found many of his fellow paladins locked up in holding cells. They had told him they had been arrested on suspicion of treason. When he learned what had transpired with the Archbishop he was aghast; such malevolence was unbecoming of a leader of the Church and for him to have had possession of some Black Death was even more worrisome.

For now, they would have the room sealed until they could deal with the Jhedimar; now they had a monumental task ahead of them; rebuilding a shattered country, for they had won. It was not an easy process. Many in the capital were still loyal to the Church, even after the revelations of what had been happening in the north. They would spend a total of four years bringing the rest of the high-ranking officials of the Church to justice and dealing with the disparate groups of Enforces spread throughout the country who were attempting to re-establish a foothold from which the Church could operate in exile from Shrig.

Yo! I have not forgotten about the lore blogs! I have been working on the first one, but a couple of things lined up into a perfect storm which has delayed it a bit; however, it is coming soon and the format will be changing a little bit.

I have been fiddling around with what I currently have for the first lore blog to see what kinds of issues or limits I might need to be aware of with the blog system here on RMN. Reason I need to know this is that these lore blogs are going to be so much more massive than I thought they would end up being.

I initially thought what I would do with these was a super abridged version of the history/overview for each topic. The first topic area for these will be the countries of the game world and their histories.

When I cut the first draft together and had some people read them, they felt that there wasn't enough context and instead of an understanding of events it felt like they were looking at something that felt like an overview of a timeline; it didn't really give them an idea of the formation of the countries, the different cultural adaptations around the events, and how that all culminated into the present-day game synopsis of the country.

My goal with these is to give you just that, what each country is currently like and the major events that occurred before, during, and after its founding that molded the culture and goings on to what you will see within the game.

Instead of the super-high level overview, I decided to go waist deep into various foundational aspects of the history for each country. So, much more than just a brief overview, but not quite to the level of novelization. What you'll be reading is almost kind of like a story told from only the third perspective; no, or very little, direct dialog from the historical figures and a lot of scene setting of events.

This is a much longer format. To give you perspective, the original draft was 16 pages long in Word. This new draft, for the first nation (the Felgarin Empire) is 28. Yeah, 28 pages in word (17,000 words) for just one of the three countries.

This brings up another issue. RMN has a max character limit of something around 65K for a single blog post. The current version of the blog in Word is 100K characters. Yeah, we're going to have to split these.

I would just have started pushing the first lore blog for Felgarin out today, but I want to try and figure out the best structure for this. Where the best break points are, if I need to reduce the lore can it be done but still give the proper context, that kind of stuff to polish out these blogs.

So, next week I will be posting the first part of the lore for Felgarin. I will have to figure out if I want to do this in two or three posts and determining the breaking points will help with that. I kind of like the 3 post option because then we can do something like pre-foundation history, events during and just after the foundation, and then post-foundation history.

That kind of works well for Felgarin, not so well for Gol because Gol will have much more pre-foundation lore to the point of potentially needing that time period split in order to fit it in a blog. I would like to find something that can scale to any size I need it, but still be a good format for posting.

In any case, expect a lore blog post next week and we will see where it goes from there; I suspect I will need to make modifications as we go and I run into new challenges with the lengths and pacing.

After a bit of a delay, it is time for part 15 of our on-going blog series. We are definitely nearly at the end, I think we just have two or three more to go. Today we're going to be talking about the Character Skill and Magic Upgrade systems as well as talking about how tools are going to work.


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Repetition is key

We talked about the World Systems a while ago and then brushed up against this system while discussing the item crafting system last week. This is technically an extension system of the World Systems mechanic. It plays several important aspects in the gamification of those minigames.

First and foremost, character skills are a means of giving you a goal to achieve. It isn’t enough that you can make stuff, for example, you also need additional incentive to spend the time doing it. In terms of crafting, there is a multitude of systems that make it worthwhile to craft items.

The crafting level plays a part in those systems. For other skills, this is also true by varying degrees. In most cases, your skill levels will impact the success rate depending on the difficulty of the task, the rewards you get from completing the task, unlock more advanced versions of tasks, or give you additional bonuses for completing the task.

In the case of crafting, your crafting level has a tangible impact on item crafting. It can cause you to use more items than you would otherwise need to, it locks off certain types of items from being crafted, it can impact bonuses on your crafted items, and acts as a gate on the manual inclusion of those bonuses.

In all, there will be six-character skills, one for each world system:

Crafting
Mining
Fishing
Agriculture/Farming
Foraging
Excavation

Crafting has been covered extensively so we’re going to skip that one. Let’s go over the rest of these, we’ll also be digging deeper into the world systems themselves here as well.


Mining Skill
The Mining skill will determine the number and class of resources you are able to acquire through mining. Mining is undertaken at specific points; these points will be indicated with a floating icon indicator.

When you interact with these spots a check will be conducted. Generally, if the mining level of the lead character is up to 2 levels off of the required level, you can still mine a mining point, you will just receive less from doing so and any specific material types only minable at the required level will not be given to you.

You will also need to have the tool required to mine that point. For example, to mine a rock mining point, all you need is the hammer tool, but if you are trying to mine a metal point, you need the pickaxe. If you do not have the required tool, you will not be able to mine that point.

If your skill level exceeds the required level for the mining point, even by one level, you will get bonus materials. In some cases, mining certain spots with more advanced tools may yield different returns. In these situations, some kind of indicator will be present on the tool selection menu. Oh, let’s talk about that as well; that will be our third mechanic topic.

For the most part, mining is just a means to get stuff for item crafting. The exception is Magicrystals. We talked about this a few times before, but Magicrystals will play an integral part in upgrading some of the systems in the game. Right now, they are used for improving the Amulet of Iskandour, the secret detection item, and, probably, adding in more spell loadout slots.

Magicrystals are formed in locations where the ambient concentration of magic is high, and they take many years to grow from their seed crystals. Once they do start growing, though, they grow quickly, and they can be harvested in such a way that they are able to regrow after a time.

To harvest Magicrystals you’ll need to have five levels in Mining and have the specialized tool needed to harvest the crystals without destroying them. You CAN harvest them without the tool but each crystal you harvest in this manner will never regrow. This allows you to get the crystals a bit earlier, but for a tremendous downside. Magicrystals will probably be a component for some of the more exotic craftable items, so keep that in mind as well.

Magicrystals won’t exactly be rare, but they will only be found in specific locations; they won’t be found as quest rewards or in chests. You may also not be able to harvest them right away; the crystals must be of a certain size first, so you may have to wait until the story progresses some time before certain Magicrystals can be collected.

Here is a list of the tools that can be used for mining:

Hammer
Pickaxe
Mythril Pickaxe
Composite Pickaxe
Magicite Extractor

The quality of the materials mined will determine the amount of skill exp you receive. The more advanced the material, the more exp. As such the exp given for an item will be configured per mineable item. Generally, though, it will break down something like this:

Tier 1 Materials – 100 exp
Tier 2 Materials – 200 exp
Tier 3 Materials – 400 exp
Tier 4+ Materials – 500 exp

Example of these materials are:

Tier 1
Rock
Granite
Basalt
Limestone
Iron

Tier 2
Marble
Aluminum
Tin

Tier 3
Silver
Gold
Cobalt
Obsidian

Tier 4
Magicrystals
Mythril
Platinum


Fishing
As with other games with fishing minigames, you will require a rod and some bait. Depending on the rod and the bait used, different qualities of fish can be acquired. Once you have obtained a rod, fishing tournaments will be unlocked. There will be several on each continent and will have some interesting, and unique, rewards.

If a cooking system is implemented that allows cooking of food that can impart status buffs, fish will be used as ingredients in that system. For now, fish are intended to be caught and sold for gold when you are not partaking in a tournament.

Depending on the size and quality of the fish, you will get skill points. Each fish will have a size range that it will fall in. If the size of the fish you catch is in the bottom 30%, you will get 10% less exp. If the fish is in the middle 30%, you will get the configured exp. If the fish is in the top 30%, you will get 10% more exp. If the fish is in the top 10%, you will get 30% more exp.

What this means is that if we have configured a Bass for a pond to have a size range of 1lbs to 10lbs and the EXP for catching is 20, the following will be true:

For a Bass sized 1 – 3lbs you will get 18 Exp
For a Bass sized 3.1 – 6lbs you will get 20 Exp
For a Bass sized 6.1 – 9lbs you will get 22 Exp
For a Bass sized 9.1 – 10lbs you will get 26 Exp

Each fishable area would have it’s own config for the fish and sizes so these can scale based on where the fishing area is located. Some dungeons may have fishing areas as well. I am not sure how these areas will be identified yet.


Farming
The Farming skill will control how many items you can harvest from a crop tile. Only specific tiles can be used and will have a floating indicator icon to identify them. Generally, you will be able to grow food stock, though some rarer things may also be grown. You can also grow plants and fungus as well.

Farming technically encompasses two skills, Faming and Harvesting. The act of reaching the final growth cycle gives Farming exp while harvesting the thing you grew will give you Harvesting exp.

It is possible to create farmable tiles, but the item required to do so is very expensive and can only be bought and then can only be used in specific locations. These locations may also require you to complete some kind of quest, think of these as locations you can unlock for helping a town, ala Skyrim with the homes you can earn. As such, these will likely be tied to side quest related things.

To farm, all you need to do is bring some water to the farming tile every so often. Each time you water the tile, a growth cycle will execute. Once you reach the fourth cycle, you will get Farming exp and will be able to harvest the grown item given that you have the right harvesting tool.

There will be no tools needed for farming, just a farming spot and a Farming Kit (purchasable for 65,000 gold) if the tile is not farmable yet. There will be farmable tiles for you to use without needing the kit; there will be a few around your house in Cleria and some scattered around the game world.

The Codex will keep track of the ones you find, set up, and keep track of their state and if they are ready to be watered again.

As with mining, the quality of what you grow determines the exp you get. Examples below.

Tier 1 Material – 50 exp
Tier 2 Material – 125 exp
Tier 3 Material – 250 exp
Tier 4 Material – 400 exp
Tier 5+ Material – 650 exp


Tier 1 Materials
Helmsleaf
Acacia Berries
Lennet (flower used to make Mental Potions)
Various sellable items

Tier 2 Materials
Climbing Vine
Valca
Eitar

Tier 3 Materials
Ghlot Pods
Mistshadow

Tier 4 Materials
Calstori Flower
Vertism

Tier 5 Materials
Jhalla
Roanleaf
Mystile


Foraging
Foraging will be the act of collecting things that have been grown on a farming tile or that you find out in the world. Certain items may require specific tools for collecting. As with Farming, the exp you will get for foraging will be based on the tier of the material collected.

You will have the option to collect three different amounts of resources from foraging spots:

A few – 1-2 items, the spot will regenerate the fastest
Several – 3-5 items depending on tier, the spot will take a while to regenerate
Many – 4 to 8 items depending on tier, this spot will regenerate after a long period of time.

I am not sure how the time will be tracked, but I am thinking it will be done via the timer plugin I am using for the Lantern. I can set up multiple timers with it. The only question I have is does that have any impact on performance and do the timer still run while away from the maps they were triggered in (I would assume so, but it is something I need to test).

Tier 1 Material – 20 exp
Tier 2 Material – 60 exp
Tier 3 Material – 140 exp
Tier 4 Material – 300 exp
Tier 5+ Material – 480 exp


Excavation
At specific points, you will be able to excavate a tile. In many cases you will have the chance to find items. What you find will be entirely random, you might find something really trash or hit that one in a thousand chance and get a good item.
I am still thinking about how best to implement this system. Currently this is where I am headed in my thinking.

Several factors determine the chance of finding an item. Items will be the most common, accessories will be the next least common, then armor, followed by weapons which will be the least common.

Next the item tier will play a factor. Any items capable of being found by excavating need to be configured with a tier or rarity; this might be able to leverage the crafting system as well for this. The rarer or higher the tier of the item, the less likely it is to show up.

In certain areas where quest items need to be excavated, I need a way to allow those to be found more easily. If you must dig for a quest item, you should be able to find it quite easily compared to something of moderate rarity. Same goes for stealing.
I also think the location you are excavating should play a part as well. If you are in a high-level dungeon, that should influence rarer items to be excavated more often.
Contemplating if excavation points should be single shots or if they can be re-excavated after a time. Leaning towards single time digs.

Some secret areas will be found via this mechanic as well.

Not sure if there will be a tool set or if you will just need a shovel and that is it. Leaning towards just the shovel or having the shovel break after 10-20 digs and making you need to get another one. Possibly some dig spots could allow you to dig multiple times depending on your excavation level, kind of like the Mr. Digg mechanics from Last Remnant.

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Push it to the limits!

Those who have been following the project for a while and watch my streams of the game’s development know that I had been working on a plugin for Magic Crafting for the game/public release. This system allows you to pre-configure spell combinations using elements are crafting materials. Once you know the theory of a spell, you can then take the elements required and creat that spell.

The crafted spell takes on some traits from the selected base spells as well as a portion of their base damage, which gets added to the base damage of the crafted spell. There are item catalysts as well that can be used to enhance various aspects of the spell.

For example, you can increase the number of hits, make a spell cast faster, increase the damage, add elements, even upgrade the spell from a single target to multiple targets.

There’s just one problem. I won’t work for my game anymore. Decisions about how the classes are structured, changes to the Magic Schools plugin, and general gameplay design decisions for the Legend of Emilar mean that Magic Crafting is out. It would be much too complex and complicated to implement into the game now.

But I really want to keep the positive aspects of the system I designed for that plugin because I feel that allow you to modify your spells allows you to further differentiate your characters from each other. For example, Character G might have Sola Ard, so might Character H. But Character H also has an upgrade to Sola Ard that makes it hit enemies three times and increases the chance of inflicting Burn. Character G’s version of the spell doesn’t have those attributes but does 35% more damage and can be cast 15% faster.

Where as without the system you would look at these two characters as the same and just pick who you liked for a battle with a boss weak to fire, now you have to choose “do I take the higher damage and faster casting time, or do I take the higher chance of Burn which does more damage to this boss too along with multiple hits?”.

These are the kinds of scenarios I want to for you into while playing the game. I don’t want you asking “which character do I like more?” I want you asking “which character is better for this fight based on the way I have built them?”.

Enter the Magic Upgrade system. A much simplified version of the Magic Crafting plugin that keeps the upgrade aspects but does not create new magic spells in the game’s data. How it is going to work is that every mage will use the database data for the main information on the spells they use. Then, on that character’s data, I will create and store the upgrades to their specific spells and those changes will be added onto the normal spell data when used.


How does this system work?
Like with the original plugin, this system will act like a crafting system, just without the actual crafting. You will select up to three catalyst items which will apply various effects. Based on the catalysts used, you will need to pay some gold for the upgrade.

The more powerful the effects, the more gold and the rarer the catalyst item required will be. Some effects will only be possible using crafted catalyst items (effects like adding absorb, changing the hit type , and larger boost values).

At higher levels, catalyst items will start adding multiple effects; some good and some bad as a balance. For example, Amplifier Σ will add 10% more damage to your spell but also increase the MP cost by 2.5%.


Types of Effects
The following the list of effects you can add to spells so far. More may be added as the game development continues.

Damage Up
Defense Down
Shield Penetration (if the enemy has a Ward Shield , this effect will cause more damage to it)
Shield Nullification (bypasses Ward Shields entirely)
Hit% Up
Increase Casts
Add Element Damage Type
Remove Element Type (in case you add an element that negatively impacts damage due to bad synergy)
Magnify Element
Amplify Element
Reflect Element
Absorb Element
Increase Element Resistance
Decrease Element Resistance
Change Targeting
Decrease MP Cost
Decrease TP Cost
Change Hit Type
Increase Casting Speed
Decrease Casting Speed (slower, but will make spells much more powerful at higher levels of the effect)
Add Status Effect
Remove Status Effect
Increase Cooldown Time
Decrease Cooldown Time


Are there any limitations?
Very few. That means you need to be careful of what effects you’re adding. If you add Reflect to an offensive spell, you’re going to be casting reflect on the enemy, for example. Some effects allow you to undo certain upgrades, but that doesn’t apply to everything. For now, you can only do this for element damage types and status effects.

In addition to that, removing an unwanted or accidental effect still adds onto the upgrade counter. For example, say we add on an ice damage element to a fire spell, let’s say Bast Ard. This negatively impacts the damage because there is a negative synergy between the two elements.

Bast Ard is now Bast Ard +1 because we upgraded it. We want to remove the ice element we added, so we use the catalyst item required to do so. Bast Ard goes up one upgrade level to +2.

Why do we care? Because each spell has a max upgrade level. This section is titled “Push it to the limits” for a reason and this is it. Each spell can only be upgraded a certain number of times and as spell strength increases, that number gets lower. This is not a hard and fast rule, but in general the upgrade limit breaks out like this:

Standard Classes
Low power – Mid power spells: 15 upgrades
Mid power – High power spells: 10 upgrades

Compound Classes
Low power spells: 10 upgrades
Mid power spells: 8 upgrades
High power spells: 6 upgrades

Grand Classes
Low power spells: 4 upgrades
Mid power spells: 3 upgrades
High power spells: 2 upgrades

Once you reach the upgrade level that spell is restricted to, you cannot add another upgrade to it.

Unless you do this specific thing.

There will be an exceedingly rare item that can remove an upgrade level from a spell without removing the effect added. It doesn’t mean it makes the upgrade permanent though, you can still remove something you don’t want. It just allows you to have an extra upgrade level.

The catch is that you must use this item in an upgrade before your spell reaches its max upgrade level and as mentioned, this item is rare and hard to find. I don’t know exactly how you will get it yet but I am leaning one of three directions:

1. This item is only obtainable from winning super boss fights. This gives you a bit more incentive to take on the super bosses.

2. It will be the most difficult item to craft and require a massive amount of resources and time to make.

3. Obtainable from very specific quests.

If I go with option 3, there will be at most 5 of these items obtainable in the game.

If I go with option 1, there could be up to 12. If I go with option 2, there will be an unlimited number available, but the limit will then be the time you want to put into making them.

I am leaning towards 1 or 3.

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There is, almost, always more than one way to skin a cat

The final topic we’ll talk about in this post is how tools will work. At various points in the game, you may come across obstacles that you can remove using tools. I think we discussed the topic of Obstacles a while back, but if we didn’t then we’re going to cover it now. If we did, then it’s a needed refresher because I can’t remember what blog it was in.

Obstacles are an exploration mechanic in the vein of Legend of Zelda and Pokemon. These are objects that can be removed once you have the proper tool for the job. Interacting with these obstacles will bring up a tool selection menu. From here you can pick the tool you want to use to deal with the stuff blocking your path.

Obstacles will normally take the form of fallen tree logs, rocks, plants, and other things that prevent you from proceeding. Most of the time they will be obvious, they will be blocking a chest or some area of the map you can’t get to any other way. Sometimes, though, they will be vaguer. Not all instances of an object that can be an obstacle will be one.

There will also be some instances where you have more than one tool that can get the job done. In these cases, all of the applicable tools you have access to will be shown in the Tool Selection menu; it is up to you to decide which to use and when. Be aware, though, that some times there may be consequences to the tools you choose to use.

There will be indicators used within the selection menu. Usually these will be used to tell you when using a tool will consume an item or destroy a tool (such as when a shovel wears out), other times the indicator will be used to indicate if a more advanced tool can be used on the spot you are interacting with.



That’s it for this mechanics blog. I think we probably have two or three left until we are done. We have a few related systems to talk about along with the Advanced Weapon Plugin. I hope you are ready for a wall of text; I am not looking forward to typing it.

Yo! Another week or so has passed, time for another edition of the game mechanics blog series.

Tonight we will be talking about boss battles, quests, and how story branches will be handled. Let's get into it.

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Boring Bosses? Not on my watch
Boss battles are an integral part of any RPG. What a boss battle is has evolved greatly since the days of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy I. These days many games treat boss fights as spectical set peices.

Which is cool and all, but kind of hard to do with RPG Maker. So I am opting for the next best thing; interesting boss fights.

Every boss fight in Legend of Emilar will have at least two phases. Most will have more; mainly the first three or so will be only two to get you introduced to how the battles will work.

Normally some kind of battle event will happen at each phase shift and not all phase shifts will be large scale. In most cases, these are just a means to let you know which third of the battle you are in so you can attempt to predict when the difficulty will ramp up. That's also a purpose shared by the HP gauge system.

Other times, these phase shifts have practical implications for your strategy. A hypothetical example might be that an enemy that had a weakness to fire nullifies that weakness once you reach a certain point in the fight. There might be an event scene during the battle when this occurs (usually there probably will be).

As I have mentioned a number of times, there will be three boss types. Regular bosses, super bosses, and optional bosses.

Normal Bosses
Regular bosses are your standard, run of the mill boss that you will run into every so often throughout the story.


Optional Bosses
Optional bosses will be tied to certain side quests and non-quest/story related encounters. Generally optional bosses will be harder than normal bosses, but not insurmountable without preparation.


Super Bosses
Super bosses are end-game content save for a few you can run into earlier on. Super bosses are intended to be extreme challenges on any difficulty that will require you to understand the battle mechanics of your character's classes, be able to utilize advantageous status effects, have counters to common negative status effects, and to take advantage of every weakness that the boss has.

These boss fights will not often be gimmicky fights where they are immune to all things under the sun except this one obscure skill. Most will have certain immunities, but there will be a multitude of ways to beat them. Obviously there will always be a certain golden strat, maybe a few, that allows you to taken them down quickly or with less preparation than others.

Most super bosses will have high stat values and millions of HP. Grand classes will also most be a necessity against these due to their unique abilities and their damage output. A couple super bosses will have sub-1m HP which you can run into and fight around mid-game. Those specific bosses will be designed to be beatable with Compound classes.

Each super boss will have at least 8 to 10 abilities which will include charge abilities that will do major damage if not interrupted.

Ideally it should take between 15 and 30 minutes to take down a super boss if you are not overpowering them. Using the specific tactics to defeat them should also cut down the time by 25 to 50% depending on what the strat entails. For example, enhancing an elemental weakness will make the fight end sooner than exploiting a weakness to Slow or Stop.

Rewards from super bosses will include the usual gold and exp. You will also get some unique items such as stat/level increasing items, rare materials for the crafting system, unique equipment, and more. Defeating some super bosses will also lead to new lore discovery and can unlock new side quests.

On top of all of that, each super boss will unlock an achievement upon defeat.

In most cases you will be required to hunt down super bosses, though in some cases it is possible to stumble upon them by doing certain actions. You will find a bit of seed information to start out. This will be something like a mention of a powerful creature, maybe some kind of myth or legend, or historical reports of some sort.

This will add an entry into your Codex. As you find more information about a target, it will be added to the codex entry. At a certain point, you will gather enough information that you will be able to start deducing the location that the creature had/has been spotted in. This might be a lengthy process or you might find something that points you to a location quickly; it depends on the super boss, what information you find, and what you know about the game world.

This is where the hunt starts. Once you track down the creature you will usually be given a choice to attack it or not so that, if you don't feel ready, you are not immediately thrust into the battle. Sometimes you won't have a choice, though, so be sure to be ready for such situations.

You can run from any super boss fight and return later to fight it. If you are beaten you won't get a gamer over. Instead you will exit the battle and then a retreat event will occur, sending you to the nearest town.


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The meat and bones
Quests are very important to RPGs, a lot of the time these are the means by which the player learns a deeper level of understanding about the game world. They can also be responsible for the downfall of a game if not done correctly. Next to actually writing the story for the game, I would say quests are the next hardest thing to do well because placing the wrong quests at the wrong time will destroy the pacing of the game.

In the Legend of Emilar, I will be taking a holistic approach to quests, while also having some of the more divisive traditional types as well. What are these divisive types of quests? Stuff like fetch quests, monster hunting quests, and all of the other typical things you would associated with padding or MMOs.

Fact of the matter is that I hate MMO quest structure. I find it dull and unimaginative. The problem is that those types of quests are quite easy to do and in many games the side quests are treated as throw away tasks only there to give you more exp and gold.

We're going to have those, though usually they won't be tied to anything and you won't be required to do them.


Quest Types
There will be five types of quests in Legend of Emilar:

Main Line Quests - These are quests directly related to the plot of the game. Doing these quests will advance the game forward. In most cases this won't have any affect on accessibility of other types of quests, but in some cases areas may become inaccessible for a time. In those situations you will be told ahead of time when you are entering a part of the game where your ability to travel may be limited for an extended period.

Requests - These are the general side quests. They will range from kill, escort, and fetch quests all the way up to mini-story lines and lore related quests that aren't usually part of the main story.

Hunts - A hunt quest is at its heart a bounty quest. You are given a target and a general location
of where that target was last seen. In many cases your targets will be in that area, in some you may have to track them down. These will usually be harder fights as many of the monsters you will face will be variants that are causing problems, though you may find yourself hunting down outlaws as well.

Character - A character quest is a quest related to the one of your party members or a potential recruit. Each party member will have a series of quests that, once completed, will allow them to put their full effort behind your mission and unlock their full potential. Some recruitable characters may request that you assist them before they join you as well.

Expeditions - Expeditions are a unique type of quest where you will be contracted with an NPC to investigate what amounts to a dungeon. These could be anything from lost ruins to underground cave systems. These are a good way to gain some levels mid-game and give you access to areas of the world needed for some super bosses.


Quest Chains
A quest chain is a series of quests that are related to each other and are unlock by completing them in sequence. You will be able to see if a quest is part of a chain or unlocks a chain from the Request menu.

Most of the time quest chains will be built from side quests, though there may be times where a main line quest unlocks or is part of a sub-chain, or a side quest chain started from a main line quest.

For example, say you finish a quest that has a world changing event. As a result of the changes you caused, a side quest chain is made available dealing with these changes. This would be a sub-chain.

Generally you will only see these for main line quests that have a large impact where the after effects are not going to be dealt with within a main line quest chain. There will be some outcomes with main line quests that will essentially pause the main plot of the game until they have run their course.

These types of events will generally have large impacts to the game world.

While I don't like having to do it, there will be some instances where quests that will give you certain key items will be included in quest chains with the more "padding" styled quests though I will attempt to minimize these.

There will also be several Ocarina of Time styled trading quest chains that will give you access to some useful items, so be on the look out for the tell-tale signs that you've stumbled onto those.


Hidden Quests
Not all quests will be handed to you on a silver platter. In many cases, you will find a few NPCs per town that, throughout different parts of the game, will have tasks for you to complete that won't be available through the Request system. These quests won't generally differ from requests that much, but some will.

Then there will be the other type of hidden quests, ones that you will stumble upon while playing through the game and exploring the world. At first you probably won't think that you have found a quest location, or maybe you will. Early on in the game, during the prologue, you can find one of these quests. The idea behind including one early on is to expose you to this game mechanic early on so you can recognize them when other events happen.

For these types of quests, you'll start out with something added to the codex. As you play through the game you will be able to learn more information about the quest until you have enough to try and complete it. Generally these will be lore-based puzzle quests and the answer to the puzzles will be found through exploring the lore. In many instances you will also need to find certain items, a lot of them you'll only be able to find by exploring.

These are designed to feel similar to Super Boss hunts; you won't immediately know what you need to do or won't be able to do them because you will lack the required information/items to complete these quests; though I wan to try and limit the instances where if you know what to do, you are prevent from doing so because of magic character knowledge.

Let me explain that term. Magic character knowledge is what I call it when you, the player, know something, but the characters do not. As a result of the characters not knowing, you are prevented from carrying out an action until they do know. I find this sloppy when it comes to puzzles and certain quest types.

For the main story; fine, sometimes you need plot McGuffins, but for side content no; if I know the combo to a safe, I should be able to open it without finding the combo first.

In most cases, hidden quests will be a mid to long-term effort and will require some level of exploration of the world to complete unless you already know how to deal with the puzzles, though if items are required then you will need to find those first.


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All aboard the MQL Express!
Okay, that joke physically hurt me; I hate terms like "Main Quest Line" and "Main Story
Quest". It implies that these are the important quests and that the other quests are not worth your time. In an MMO, maybe, but in a single player game you should endeavor to build your quests better.

That said you still have to have a way to tell the player that doing this specific quest will progress the story; so I shall continue my emotional damage and be using Main Quest Line to describe these types of quests.

The MQL progresses the story; fairly obvious statement. How they do this though, is a bit more interesting. As spoiler free as possible, throughout the first 10 to 14 hours of the game you will be on a linear quest progression. Each new segment of story leads directly to the next. Once you reach Chapter 3, though, you are given your choice of how you want to proceed.

Think of it kind of like a Mega Man game, you get to pick the order of how you take on the Mavericks.
Similarly, in Emilar you will have the ability to choose how to proceed with the story starting in Chapter 3. Certain paths may be harder than others, maybe you won't have a particular set of abilities that would make enemies in an area easier to kill due to an elemental weakness, for example.

The story will be chunked out similar to Mass Effect 2/3. You will have a series of destinations to choose from, then some mid-game events will happen that will pause the main quest while they are dealt with. These are not events caused by you, but story related events that are designed to break up the two halves of the game and give you a break from total, unfettered freedom and bring you back into linear story-telling land.

Then, in the second half, you again will have free reign of what you will be doing until all of your objectives are completed and the end-game is upon you.

All throughout this process, you can trigger cascade events that will thrust you into events that will prevent you from continuing with the main story. These events may even trigger a branch to occur.


Story Branches
A story branch is when an event shifts you onto a new path within the progression of the story.
Most of the time, these are minor deviations which will eventually feed you back into the main quest path. Other times, however, these may represent adverse shifts that take you down a series of cascading events that change how the story progresses and ultimately will end.

These types of branches can be triggered by both actions during the main quest line and also by some side quests, those those will be very limited.

Most of the time, causing the story to branch off will, by necessity, prevent other branches from occurring if they happen around a similar time frame in the story. There will be a few cases, though, where a story branch can branch off of the main quest line or also another story branch, causing a series of compounding world events.

These types of complex interactions have the greatest chance to permanently alter the story progression.

In all I have planned out 13 story branches. 5 of them are minor branches that represent a small portion of time and only cause minor changes before you are thrust back onto the main quest line.
another 5 a more mid-length versions of these minor branches that will take longer to work through, but ultimately won't change much with the story; these ones though, will change more about the game's world.

Finally there will be three branches that will cause major changes to the story or unlock an entirely unique story progression that will lead you to a unique ending to the game or change the main quest line story drastically. These three will be requirement-heavy to unlock and require you to pay attention to story beats, information discovered during earlier related quests, and things that those quests unlock in order to find them.


Another week done, another set of mechanics explained. Next week we're going to be talking about item crafting, the magic system, and magic loadouts.

Welcome back for part 11 of this game mechanics blog series. Today we're going to be discussing equipment types and the equipment system, the magic naming convention I mentioned in part 10, and go over how the Steal and Snatch mechanics will work.


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1 slot, 2 slot, 5 slot, 6 slot
The Legend of Emilar will feature a custom equipment system powered by YanFly's Equipment Core plugin. Similar to the way equipment is handled in ARPGs like Diablo and Torchlight, you will find that you will be able to fully equip your characters with gear.

Available equipment slots will include two weapon slots, one of which can also be used for a shield, a headgear slot, body slot, leggings slot, and a boot slot.
In addition there will be four ring slots, five accessories slots (1 pendant, 2 earring, and two armlet slots).

Most of these are self-explanatory, but let's talk specifically about the accessory slots and accessories in general before going over all of the equipment types.




Accessories
You probably noted above that there are what amounts to 9 accessories slots. The game will allow a massive amount of customization of your character through the use of accessories and each type of accessory has a specific purpose or a set of them.

Pendants, for example, will generally deal with status effect related options. These range from reducing tiered status damage, to nullification of a status effect, to auto-abilities that are put into effect at the start of battle.

Rings have two main focuses: magic stat buffs or elemental effects. You may find rings that increase your MP, enhance your magic attack/defense, or that might give you elemental resistance buffs and even some that will allow you to absorb elements and amplify elemental damage.

Armlets will be focused on the physical side of things by granting attack and defense buffs. Some may even give you access to new skills while they are worn.

Earrings will be exclusively used for increasing max MP, reducing MP costs, and elemental resistance buffs.



Armor
There will be a number of armor types. These include Light Armor, Medium Armor, Heavy Armor, Magic Armor, Robes, Boots, Shoes, Greaves, Leggings, and other types.

I won't break down the type of armor by class as we kind of already did that in a previous blog, but I will explain some of these groups.

The different weight-class armors are body armor for non-mages. As you work your way up these class trees, you will gain access to heavier types of armor, usually. Some class trees, like the Thief tree, can only use Light Armor and then Medium at Tier 2.

Magic Armor is a special category of armor that is planned for use with specific Compound classes and the Grand classes. These pieces of armor are incredibly rare and usually very powerful. That also means getting them is generally going to be hard.



Weapons
There will be a number of weapon types in the game including the following: one-handed swords, two-handed swords, daggers, scythes, maces, rods, staves, short bows, long bows, crossbows, tomes, gloves, lances, guns, and claws.

Each weapon type is used by at least one class and each type of weapon has special traits that affect the stats for that weapon.

One-handed swords are your bread and butter sword type. They have all-around good stats, but don't excel at anything in particular. They can be dual-wielded with other one-handed swords or any other equipment that only requires one hand such as a shield or dagger.

Two-handed swords take up both weapon slots. While they have greater attack power, they also are heavy and so they reduce your agility slightly. Some two-handed swords will have armor piercing traits.

Daggers are small, light-weight weapons. These can easily be dual-wielded and while they feature low damage, they increase your agility.

Scythes are one of the heaviest weapons in the game. They feature a fairly decent penalty to your agility, but feature high damage and more armor penetration than two-handed swords. These also take up both weapon slots.

Maces are a stable of the Cleric tree. They offer a solid, weighty weapon with good damage for a small reduction in agility.

Rods are primarily for magic casters. They feature both physical and magic attack damage buffs, though the physical side is lower. There are some rods that are full staff and take up both weapon slots. These ones feature greater magic damage and may have unique traits.

Staves are pretty much the same as rods, though they have equal parts magic and physical attack buffs. As a trade off, staves generally reduce your agility slightly.

Short bows take up both weapon slots and feature slightly higher agility and average physical damage buffs. These bows cannot fire more than once.

Long bows are just better versions of the short bow, although some of them can fire multiple shots.

Crossbows are the high damage bow-class ranged weapon. They do high damage and have good armor penetration. They do have a modest impact to your agility though.

Tomes are the high-powered magic caster items. They take up both of the weapon slots and feature higher magic damage, but cannot be used to attack physically. Some tomes also have extra magic buff traits in exchanged for increased MP consumption.

Gloves are the main pugilist weapon and can be dual-wielded. Gloves will increase your agility and feature good physical damage, but will leave you open to taking more damage.

Claws are pretty much the same as gloves, but they do more damage. Most claws also feature bleeding abilities.

Lances are the weapon of the Dragoon. Jump abilities can only be used when a lance is equipped and most lances require both weapon slots, though some rare ones can be dual-wielded.

Guns are the strongest ranged weapon, but lower your agility and require ammo that can be hard to find at times. Most guns feature some level of armor penetration, but some of the stronger and more specialized ones can be quite nasty.



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Cracking the magic name code
In Emilar, most magic will be named based on a convention system that replaces the name of the element with something more unique and also contains a level naming system inspired by Dark Ages/Final Fantasy.

Each element has a lore-based name and those are as follows:
Fire - Ard
Wind - Pho
Earth - Rhys
Water - Waise
Light - Tial
Shadow - Jor`Bal
Ice - Cyl
Thunder - Zal

Non-Elemental doesn't have a name in this system. Each of these element names is paired up with the level of the spell. There are currently 6 level designations and more will likely be added over time:

Level 0 (Novice magic) - Estol
Level 1 - Baes
Level 2 - Bast
Level 3 - Sol
Level 4 - Sola
Level 5 - Scran
Level 6 - Tsvar

So if you see something casting Sola Ard, you're about to be hit by a level 4 fire spell. Each level gives a damage buff to the spell:

Level 0: none
Level 1-2: +0 base damage and +15% ~ 25% Magic Attack
Level 3-4: +15 base damage and +25% ~ 50% Magic Attack
Level 5: +24 base damage and +50% ~ 75% Magic Attack
Level 6: +38 base damage and +75% ~ 120% Magic Attack

The base damage buff is added to the elemental base damage and then added to the base damage of the skill or spell. The Magic Attack is an additional calculation added to the damage formula for that spell level.



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Steal from the rich
Emilar will feature two stealing systems. The first is a traditional steal system where you have a chance of stealing a random stealable item. The second is the Snatch system, if you have played Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass you may have seen this in action.

Both systems are implemented through YanFly plugins. Each enemy will have at least two items that can be stolen. The type of item depends the class of enemy. Stealing from a bat isn't likely to bag you a weapon, for example.

There will be gear, class traits, and status effects to help improve your chances of stealing stuff.

Snatch is a bit different. The Snatch system shows you a list of the items you can steal and the chance to steal them. This allows you to do pin-point stealing so if you are grinding for certain items, it becomes a lot less RNG-based and you don't have to worry about grabbing something you don't need.

Another additional feature Emilar will be using in certain battles will be the steal debuff system. This is a system where stealing certain gear from an enemy debuffs them.

As an example, say the boss is wearing a piece of armor that you can steal/snatch. If you manage to grab it, the boss will lose the benefits that armor provided it and be weakened.

Right now I am only planning on using this on Humanoid variants, bosses, and super bosses. I might expand it to other enemy types though.



Well that is all I have for this week. Comments/Questions below, as usual. I will see you next week for part 12.