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The behemoth of a wolf had been struck with several blows that would prove fatal to most creatures yet still he stood. Normally with him being wounded as he was one would think Lindow's block would have been enough to put a stop to his attack. And it was true that he was able to, with great effort, push the claw away from its intended path. However the wounded beast let out a pained snarl and twisted to swing his other arm back at Lindow. In doing so the wounds Lindow had delivered opened up more but it didn't stop Lucas. The lycan hit Lindow with his arm, unable to easily reach with his claw due to closeness, and sent the Chosen back several feet and into the ground. With some of his organs pierced, a large wound in his abdomen and back, and other various lighter wounds it was almost impossible that he should still be fighting. And yet there he stood. "Pathetic." His distorted voice came from his muzzle. "Do you really think you can stop me? I am a Lycan! We are born to hunt. Born to kill! We exist to fight beings you humans weren't able to! I won't be put down by a pathetic race that could not even fight their own battles!" This gave Keres pause. She knew the stories, rumors some might say, and the things Lucas was saying sounded awfully similar to some things that had been written about the history of the world. She wanted to know more...yet it was far past that. There was no time to try and get more information out of him. And he wouldn't stop until he was dead. When Lindow had said what he did Keres had snapped out of her uncertainty and immediately merged with Flux. Even with the powers of a Chosen she could tell that she was pushing herself. This entire journey into the forest she hadn't felt she had truly been able to rest but she wasn't going to let that stop her. Not here when it was most important. She had to be ready for a final push. Similarly Cym was pushing herself as well. Pushing herself up off the ground by planting her sword into it. She was dazed, yes, but she could still stand. And if she could stand she could move. And if she could move she could fight...At least that's what she hoped. Lucas seemed to sense that Keres was up to something and, after letting loose a chilling howl, he made the decision to take her out first. He wasn't ignoring the others, and in fact when he began to move he headed towards Ryia first, but he quickly changed course and began moving faster than before towards the young mage.  

"Didn't think you knew how to the sneaky..." Lindow smirked at Ryia's ingenuity as he dashed forward the moment Lucas's attention was split by the clever use of her spirit's magic. It was his turn to show off his spirit's gifts. Gripping his right wrist tightly with his left hand, the familiar chirping of thunder magic danced around him whilst he reached out towards his target.  "Third Blade!" Lindow's voiced rang with power. The Third Blade's cyan light appeared in an instant, racing forward in jagged arcs before finally stabilizing into a blade of magic that pierced cleanly through Lucas's torso. "Tsk," Lindow's gaze narrowed as he locked eyes with his foes once more. He was sure his attack and hit something vital, but it seemed it still wasn't enough to put the other man down... How much longer could the could keep fighting with such a wound though? Lucas let out a viscous snarl even as blood began dripping from his maw. Lindow snarled right back, gripping his wrist to begin dragging the Third Blade up through the Lycan's massive torso towards the heart. He found himself unable to make a serious progress however, with Lucas flexing his monstrous physique to halt the blade's advance as he begun slowly trudging forward towards Lindow despite further impaling himself.  "What are you waiting for, little Keres!?" With Lucas closing the distance, Lindow could only spare a second to glance the Water Chosen's direction. "Show me that same power that stopped the Fire Elemental." Drawing his Cleaver, Lindow shifted his the Third Blade to an underhanded position before running forward to meet Lucas in the middle. As he approached with the Bandit Cleaver over his shoulder his senses scanned feverishly any signs of Lucas's next move. The window would be brief but with all the compounded injuries and the Third Blade hindering his foe's movement, Lindow was betting he could manage a counter this time. His opportunity came the moment the pair were at arm's lengths. In an instant a massive hand appeared inches from his face, forcing Lindow to veer to the left to avoid having his head palmed like an apple. Lucas's claw grazed his cheek as he retracted the Third Blade and quickly shifted its shape to a cutting edge before aligning it with the Bandit Cleaver. With another roar, the Thunder Chosen sprang forward with all the speed he could muster, slicing into the lycan's abdomen with blades of steel and magic on the pass.   There was no moment of reprieve, however. Responding was outstanding quickness, Lucas turned and swiped at the Thunder Chosen's back despite the attack he just suffered. Lindow responded instinctively, stepping away whilst hastily positioning the Bandit Cleaver's flat side over his back cover himself and divert the werewolf's attack towards the ground. 

Dev Update #8: The Prologue(s) (yes, AGAIN), A Better World Map, and Some Thoughts on Levels All I've got for pics this time is the world map, since everything else is super WIP. So let's leave that for last and return to the tradition of posting PeriTune music at the start of these for now. We are officially back on our bullshit! After a bit of a rocky phase getting back into the swing of things, I've done enough work and had enough thoughts that I'm comfortable doing up a post for it. The changes I've made at present are few in number, but pretty significant in both scale and impact. Over the last couple of weeks, I've... Redone the world map by using one of MV's premade world maps as a base (we'll get back to that later). Rewritten some behind-the-scenes lore, both to account for the new world and also because some lore stuff just... didn't work? Tidied up the database a bit, though I expect it'll be a mess again before long. Completely redid Carol's intro from the top down, with the rest to follow, in order to keep the database just a little bit neater. Set down some grounds (literally) for stuff to do at endgame levels besides the final floors of the Clock Tower. Hopefully I can take this solo dev thing far enough to utilize those spaces. Made one itty-bitty change in regards to how I want to handle start-of-game levels & kits, which I think is definitely for the better. So, let's take it one thing worth talking about at a time... The new intros & level changes... New world map means new world lore to accommodate the changed geography (this makes sense, I swear), which in turn means I had to redo everyone's intro texts since every relevant location was either moved, removed, or some other minor hiccup. This also lets me conveniently change how levels work at the very start of the game, while I'm rehashing everything anyway. At present, the plan is that every intro features... Some backstory on the character, including their motive for getting the Hourglass A brief and usually dungeon-like area, which features... A couple battles to get you used to the combat system, raising the character to level 2 right before a small boss fight Some useful items (different characters get different items) after the boss in an optional treasure chest, and Sort of a narrative hook to help explain how your chosen protagonist secured the means to get to the Clock Tower, given it's on a floating island As for the changes to the level setup. The plan with skills in this game has always been as follows. Each character starts with three skills, unlocks a fourth at level 2, then after that, every multiple of 5 is another new skill. This will be the case all the way up to level 95, the highest multiple of 5 RPG Maker MV allows by default. However, with Yanfly's Core Engine added to the mix, we can take it one further to 100. I'd like level 100 to be locked behind finishing a character's questline; once they hit 99 and you've done the rest of their questline, you can do the final quest, which will level them up to 100 and unlock one final, ultimate skill. But level 100 is, in every conceivable way, far off over the horizon, so let's come back to now for a bit. Right now, the idea of giving characters a fourth skill right before their intro bosses lets me get away with a few things. I can give everyone a fourth move that rounds out or finishes their early-game kit and helps against the boss in some way, for example. And, I can give the bosses new moves that account for the characters' new skills they just unlocked. Having tested this idea out with Carol, I think it's a lot more fun to hit level 2 immediately before the intro boss than it is to get the level-up after, so I'll be sticking with this idea for the other seven intros. You also get a nice chunk of EXP for beating the boss. I plan to keep the EXP totals consistent across all 8 characters, but Pupa has, among other things, 50% more EXP gains. I looked at the numbers, and Pupa will almost be level 3 by the time it steps out into the overworld for the first time. That's pretty neat, actually! And that also brings me to... The new world map... I've learned over the course of this RPG dev experience that I'm really bad at making world maps. Like, I'm just absolute dogshit at it. Ferdinand Magellan would shoot me on sight if he saw my world maps. So, rather than continue to try and iterate on something I'm awful at, I decided I'll do the wiser thing. RPG Maker MV comes installed with half a truckload's worth of pre-made maps, so I opted to take the smallest one of the five world maps, and turn it from a barren rocky wasteland to the map you see below. There may be some small tweaks here and there, but this is the general idea for the final look of it. As it stands, the map is split into ten distinct regions; one for each playable character, then two for exploration stuff later in the game. Each of the former has only a few settlements, averaging out somewhere in the 4-6 range, which is intentional because less towns means less work for the same percentage of progress. The latter... I'm not worried about yet. The things I'll do with the rest of the map are as of yet undetermined. I'd like dungeons other than the Clock Tower to mostly be quest-related, one-time things, for one. All of the details here are future me's problem, though. Right now, I'm focused on the intros again. Also, I've noticed that because Discord is a fuck that can't leave well enough alone, all the images here are broken. I'll get around to fixing all of them at some point, though right now I'm hoping the one just above isn't broken. In fact, the world map is the only image here partly as a sort of test for that.   UPDATE: Some of the very "recent" images from the last couple posts another one or two things scattered across the thread appear to be lost to history, but otherwise, I've fixed all the images.