Chapter 6!!! Is Here!!! A Direct Continuation From The Previous Chapter, May Is Tasked With Saving Her

bringing my thread here in honor of the ballad of songbirds and snakes trailer today because the "lucy gray parallels katniss" people are out there and they are wrong, lucy gray baird is peeta mellark and sejanus plinth is katniss everdeen and i will die on this hunger games hill

⪼ Secret woods in the fall

Sorry about not posting I'm going through an oc Renaissance of some sort and I suck

Wuh

SAY IT FUCKING LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK, THIS IS WHAT WE N E E D RAH 😫😤

minecraft movie but it’s a ghibli-esque animated film about surviving in the wilderness with a healthy balance of legitimately tense monster sequences and relaxing building, farming, and mining. under no circumstances will it be longer than 90 minutes. steve will not be white

hey who wants to be friends, we can talk about ummm *checks notes* sambastian, let's see what else hmm *flip* sambastian and uhhh *squints* sambastian

i dont play stardew valley but shoutout to mr qi. i dont know anything about him but he's funny and blue

Mysterious Men squad

Them but on one canvas :)

Mr. Qi Friendship and Romance Mod: 4/19 Progress Update

It's a working title, I'm trying to come up with something less wordy that still will pop up in Nexus searches.

I wanted to be able to track my progress, mainly for myself, but if you're curious, this is the state of the mod right now:

Writing:

Heart Events - the 2 heart event is fully written (with blocking directions), and the 6, 8, and 10 heart events are outlined. The 4 heart cutscene currently has me a bit stumped; I have ideas, but nothing concrete yet. I definitely now understand why Sam's 4 heart cutscene is him dropping an egg. 14 hearts is on the back-burner as a little treat to myself once I get further into things.

Generic Daily Dialogues - about 1/3 done, probably the highest priority for writing. I'm leaving his vanilla casino dialogue as the two heart dialogue, and the vanilla Walnut Room dialogue as his four heart dialogue, with a few small changes. And, since it's me, I have more marriage dialogue written than anything else...

Day-Specific Dialogues - very few written, lower priority. Hoping to have a lot of these made eventually, and I have plenty of ideas, but they aren't necessary for the core of the mod so they're on the back-burner for now.

Gift Dialogues - all 5 generic gift response dialogues are written, with an additional 22 dialogue lines for specific items/groups of items. I'm also up to around item 530 in figuring out what item corresponds to which dialogue/whether or not he likes it. Certain item groups, like cooked food, still need more lines, however. This is definitely something that should be low priority, but also something I'm really enjoying working on. Some personal favorites so far are-

[if given a fish (hated)]: "Eugh, it's all slimy..."

[if given a legendary fish (disliked)]: "If you must give me one of the rarest fish in the valley, can you at least wrap it so I don't have to touch it with my bare hands?"

And I think that's pretty funny.

Art

Portraits - 3 new portraits finished: "deep frown" "glint" and "glasses-less". I'll probably be messing with "glasses-less" for a looong while; it's first shown at a dramatic moment so it needs to look good. Blushing portraits are next on the docket.

Here's "glint" btw, with a background thrown on so I can have a custom icon. You know I gotta make him do the anime glasses thing a few times.

Sprites - no progress yet. Walk cycle is up next after I finish the blushing portraits. Did you know he doesn't have a walk cycle at all? [1.6 spoilers] in the cheated Summit cutscene where he attacks(?) you, he literally just slides at you very fast. Anyways, I may also change his map sprite a bit as well, since it was drawn to match his old portrait and doesn't actually have the same color scheme as his sprites. Note to self: is it possible to make the sparkles on his outfit prismatic?

Maps - no progress yet. The 6 heart and 10 heart cutscenes both require custom maps, with the 6 heart one being a fully custom asset. 10 heart recycles some existing assets but will still need some custom stuff done as well.

Misc Sprites - in my head, there's a dream version of the 8 heart cutscene that has so, so many unique sprites. Like an incredible amount of stuff. I think it'll kick ass, but also that sequence could be done with a few lines of text. So, for now, it's low priority. But maybe in a few months I'll put out a request for help.

Implementation

Not totally sure how to split this into sections yet, as I'm very much still in the preliminary stages so far. To say that I'm feeling overwhelmed is an understatement; documentation on the wiki swings wildly between "an asset is a file in a video game" and "this is an advanced tutorial. Read these 4 other pages first before continuing."

I've started using Ms. Coriel's NPC Creator which has been good for setting up the basic file structure, but ultimately doesn't cover some of the more complex stuff I want to do.

I think setting up his "schedule" will be a challenge, in that I don't actually want him to have a real schedule like most NPCs. Not to pull back the curtain too much here, but I want him to "exist" in both the Casino and the Walnut Room simultaneously, which is to say, he does not exist in two places at once in the narrative, just in the code. This will change after marriage, however.

My next goal is to set up placeholder cutscenes for each of the heart events, and then to implement the generic daily dialogues once those are finished.

Final Notes

God, this will be a work in progress for a while, but I'm enjoying it! Definitely enjoying the writing more than anything else, but hey, that's how it be. I've got around 70 lines of dialogue written, a bit of art done, and I've started learning how to actually get stuff in game. I've always been more of a designer than a coder, but it's getting there!

ADDITIONALLY I've decided that if I abandon this project for more than 8 months, anyone is welcome to request my work so far and use it for their own mod. If this blog hasn't posted in a long while, feel free to send me an ask or message! I may say no, however.

Ultimately, I want this mod to exist in some fashion. While there is an existing one, I have a pretty different take on the character and I want to share it with you all! Every line of dialogue, every heart event, every little detail needs to share something interesting about a character and their world. Yet, Mr. Qi is a mysterious guy, and I think some things should be left up to player interpretation. And I think it's crucial to be able to match his tone and voice to the vanilla game, while also expanding on his characterization. It's a fun challenge to write, and I hope the finished product, uh, well I hope it gets finished mostly, but I think it'll be pretty good.

Thanks for reading all this. This is largely just a stream of consciousness for myself, but I hope it's...interesting, or something?

Chapter 11!!! I'm getting close to having posted everything I've worked on up to this point. I NEED to get back to writing lol whoops.

This chapter explains a bit more of how Oryn came to be in the forest with the Witches in the first place.

tags: @skidotto @idonthaveapenname

tw: mentions of death, war, abuse

Ch. 11

The man was rugged; not the image of holy ambition and sanctity by any means. May didn’t know what to expect—gilded robes, braided hair, hard posture—but he was none of it.

Flanked by both Demetrius and Oryn, he sat beside the hearth as if his very bones craved the warmth it gave. His bony fingers shook as he held his hands before the flames, his cloudy eyes glowing in the soft light. They were heavy, thinking and turning and never quite still.

He swallowed another sip from the flagon Demetrius provided, coughing as he choked it down. His legs sat at odd angles in front of him, his bloodied and bruised feet emanating a smell that could only be a festering rot. He’d trudged through the mud on foot for far too long to make it there.

The tension was thick, flitted gazes passing between Demetrius and May as a deep and boiling heat was stoked in Oryn’s core. They all but vibrated with the anticipation of knowing what was to come; the iron smell creeping its way through their nose and to their brain feeling like a coil being wound tighter and tighter with each breath they took.

May’s jaw tightened as she shifted where she stood, the weight of her armor clinking as she settled. She turned the pin over in her hand: heavy, weighted with a dark blue stone at its bottom, the rest of it a soft gold.

“I’m sorry for the lack of hospitality, Councilor, but with the ongoing siege I’d hope you’ll understand my hesitancy.” She studied his face.

His bones all but creaked as he pulled his legs underneath himself, settling into a slouch within his tattered robes as he scooted himself closer to the fire.

He wasn’t deaf; she saw the way the weight in his eyes rattled as she spoke. No beggar would calculate himself so.

May took a deep breath, looking towards Demetrius’s hard gaze before continuing, “I had sent word to our good King in hopes of… Well, support of a different manner.”

That elicited what could only have been a laugh from the High Councilor, his ragged wheezing behind a smile quickly descending into a coughing fit. It took a moment for him to catch his breath, but his smile never left his lips.

Oryn watched closely as he pulled a muddy and deep brown-stained sleeve away from his mouth, a small trickle of blood and pungent saliva running down his chin.

He wouldn’t look towards May when he spoke. “The good King Terrance did not send me,” he sputtered, struggling to put the flagon back to his lips.

Demetrius rolled his eyes, his hands laying on the hilt of his sword.

“Then you’ve traveled all this way on foot with no supplies but the robes on your back for…?” May shook her head softly.

The man sighed. “I heard of the death of some people very dear to me,” he said, sitting up a bit as he reached into his robes and procured a tattered piece of parchment. “They thought I’d perished, too, but were right in their suspicions of my… continued existence on this mortal plain, with the God’s mercy,” a small, sad excuse of a chuckle left his cracked lips.

Demetrius sighed, tired of the Grandfather’s games right as they had started. “You still have not said why you’ve come, sir,” he clipped, ignoring any honorific if not those of who he directly served.

With a blink his body had snapped towards May, his long and dwindling arm extended towards her, his skeletal hand holding the all but unreadable letter that he’d carried all this way. As Demetrius jumped where he stood, the old man shook the wet parchment.

“They left something to me,” he huffed towards May, his breath the smell of death and decay. “And I had to come and claim it.”

Demetrius let his sword slide heavily out of its sheath, the grating noise of steel on steel a warning to the man to step back.

May took a moment to study the man behind the tattered page before gently taking it from his hands and standing a bit closer to the hearth to get some better light.

Jonas,

We know not where this piece of parchment will find you, but know deep within our souls that it will.

It’s time to make pace, High Councilor. The boy has taken the last we have to give; we’re joining our sister and suggest you come to proceed to the next steps in this wretched plan of yours.

Do not mourn us. We wouldn’t have mourned you.

Maureen, Starla, Elisa

~

She clutched the babe close to her chest with all the might she had left in her small frame. Her legs shook exposed to the chill air, her feet numb on the frozen earth, her arms burning and tingling as she struggled to maintain to her grip on the bundle she carried.

The cabin was close—she could feel the forest closing in around her as she pushed forward, her blood boiling with the fear it instilled in all those who entered. She knew she could make it, if she could just keep putting one foot in front of the other, taking one more breath after that exhale…

You have to promise me, he’d said to her, you have to promise me with every part of your soul. Swear it on the Waters and Winds, swear it on the church, swear it on the love we share. Please, Grenia.

His pleading rang through her head like the bells upon the church towers, bouncing from one side of her head to the other over and over again, reminding her what her purpose here would be.

This is the beginning of it all, he whispered to her, pulling her hands into his own and leaning down to look into her eyes, into her soul.

I love you, Genia, he’d said, his voice but a murmur against the soft skin of her ear. He’d never said it to her before this, never once. Not when she’d saved his life at the Sanctum, not when as she cried in his arms, not when he’d finally told her about where he came from and his purpose was here at the palace’s chapel. Not even when he finally bed her, their first moment alone in the months since they had met, in a dark and cramped alleyway between a scribe’s office and the sanctum’s entrance.

She thought of it all now. Thought of it while she ran, while her feet bruised with each step she took and the blood trickled from the scratches and cuts across her arms and legs.

At first, the babe was silent. They lay in her arms all swaddled in blankets that must have been made with love by one wet nurse or another. Their breath was soft and steady, heat steaming from their tiny lips as they drifted into a deep sleep.

Now, though, they screamed. She couldn’t understand how something so small and fragile would wail with such strength for so long. The blood-curdling screams pierced her ears as she ran, mixing with the dark and malicious feel bubbling up inside of her as her thoughts bounced around in her skull.

Then, for a while, everything went black.

When the warmth started returning to her it was the soft linens and skins laid beneath her that told her she’d made it where she needed to go.

She shifted in the warm bed, her entire body beginning to throb and ache as it started to fully feel alive again.

“Easy! Easy,” Maureen shot up from the chair beside her, gently laying her hands against her shoulders to push her back onto the mattress. “Don’t move too much, it’ll hurt. And you get nothing for the pain until I know where you’ve been, what happened.”

The conversation didn’t start for another hour after she woke, needing to reorient herself before breaking into tears at the face of the sister she thought she’d never see again. But their reunion was short lived.

“The child, Grenia. Is… is he yours?”

She shook her head. Jonas’s voice rang in her ears. They must not know.

But how could she keep this from them all when she was asking so much?

She looked throughout the cabin from where she lay, the walls keeping all of the warmth and life of the forest inside of the dwelling for the four of them to feed their practice. It was a small space full of trinkets and bobbles of all sizes and shapes that could do any number of different things. Books and charts and maps were scattered across every surface, littered with sketches of the local flora and fauna, but also symbols and glyphs she knew weren’t holy.

That’s how the three of them found themselves out here, after all.

She swallowed the lump in her throat before looking down at her hands.

Swollen. Bony. The joints all red and enflamed, her fingers bend in odd shapes and the skin of her palms scratchy and rough. Those fingers, that just a few weeks ago were spinning threat and crafting needlepoint and practicing piano. Now so changed, so stained…

“You will not be happy with me, sister,” she said, her voice hoarse and full of sorrow.

Maureen nodded, standing to move the chair closer to Grenia, laying a hand on top of her own. “That’s alright,” she nodded, her eyes serious but soft, “What matters is you made it back home to us. To me. As long as we’re together, we can handle the messes you’ve made.”

Grenia’s eyes filled with hot tears as she looked up her older sister. She was both gentle and firm, loving and strict. She hated herself for knowing what she had brought here.

“The babe,” Grenia muttered, her breath hitched. “Is not what you think.”

And so, she told her.