In Chapter 9 of Shadow Dragon Marth invades a neutral kingdom and kills its immortal monarch. The story then moves on without ever giving a second glance at Pyrathi. Pyrathi 609 asks the question “And then what happened?” We get a view of what Marth might look like to the people who are considered his enemies and what unintended consequences are born from desperate decisions. Similar to Thracia 776, it takes a look at one part of the continent and makes it the main setting of the game. A lot of care was taken so that the game could be consistent with Archanean lore and character endings. Gameplay also follows a familiar Archanean style with a few additional add ons.
Story
*A story with your favourite Archanean characters (everyone loves Radd and Caesar, right?)
*A World Map that dynamically shifts with the plot
*A route split starting from chapter 13 (of 24 planned chapters for each route)
Gameplay
*Two separate promotion options and methods; one for classical Archanean promotions using Master Seals, one for unique Pyrathi promotions gained via praying Gaiden style
*Crossbows, a weapon type used primarily by the main character. They deal fixed damage based on the weapon, ignoring the user’s strength and enemy’s defense, making them a lot like FE1 Tomes (this is a lot more useful than it sounds).
*Skills via inventory items. Archanean games don’t have skills, but they do have stuff like the Life Orb that grants renewal. There are a host of items that grant skills, which means you need to be careful about inventory slots, but also that you can trade around skills mid battle.
*BEXP granted to undeployed units after every battle, so your back bench will passively get stronger, giving you more options as to who to take into battle each chapter.
Pyrathi 609 is looking for additional people to work on it if you have the time and interest. Particularly when it comes to support writing. But also sound and portrait editing are much desired.
Link to current Demo, up to chapter 19 has been finished.
Link to discord
Link to character recruitment doc
Original Post
Summary
So I’ve embarked on a new Fire Emblem Project, only this time I don’t want to quite do everything alone. Much like my last Fire Emblem fangame (Fall of Thabes), it’s going to be set in Archanea. But not in the distant past, instead it’s going to be set a after Mystery of the Emblem, focused on the nation of Pyrathi, where you fight your first dragon in the series. It’s a very brief plot point glossed over in Shadow Dragon (and literally skipped over in Old Mystery), but I think Marth’s actions in that chapter were highly immoral. He invaded and overthrew a non-belligerent, neutral nation who refused him asylum, and then, presumably, left it in complete chaos. Imagine if in Radiant Dawn, upon exiting the Kauku Caverns, Ike proceeded to slaughter all the Goldoians and marched onto their capital, killing Deghensea just because they refused to let him trespass on their land. Marth surely didn’t mean to do anything bad, but even with the best of intentions, he would realistically have created a huge mess in the aftermath.
So the game picks up a few years later where there are multiple factions striving for control of the land. These include
*The Mannu loyalists, religious cultists who worshipped Mannu as their god king and seek to reinstate a young manakete as their new king.
*New Age Radicals, people who think that Mannu’s overthrowing was a positive thing and want to force radical changes to the country (I’m thinking they might have been the ones responsible for the Wyrmslayer you find in that chapter in Shadow Dragon, having been a group that wanted to overthrow Mannu himself).
*Bandit King just trying to carve a name for himself in the chaos.
*Marth’s forces who see the territory as an annexed piece of Archanea and are trying to quell the violence but don’t really understand the people and are seen as outsiders by everyone.
*The protagonists, a sort of Dawn Brigade like group that don’t know how to fix things but are trying to help in any way they can.
The prologue takes place during the War of Heroes where you fight the Wolf Guard and expel Archanean forces from the land. Hardin tried to draft soldiers from Pyrathi during the war and responded to the resistance with force, which has further turned the people of Pyrathi against outsiders and Marth’s later attempts to bring peace to the region.
I’ve released five chapter so far, including the prologue, and I’ve also implemented the world map, which a lot of fan hacks seem to forgo. Now, in terms of recruitment, the project is free to work on from anyone who’s interested. But the thing I’m primarily interested in is someone to make portraits for it. There a lot of portraits available to use from the resources, but they’re all from different people and feature different styles. If at all possible, I’d love to have just one person, or two people with similar styles, do the portraits. There’s also going to be quite a few Archanea characters in the game, so if anyone already has experience or a back log of characters from Archanea done, then that would be great.
Maps are another thing I could get help with. I can definitely make maps myself, but I find it time consuming and other people can definitely make maps that visually look better than my own.
The last, and least important thing, is characters. Fall of Thabes had a relatively small cast, but I’m going to go more traditional Fire Emblem cast this time and have a good forty or fifty playable characters. I’ve already made a Thread on Serenes asking for suggestions for characters and received some positive feedback. So if there’s any character concept you’d like to see implemented into a fangame, especially if you’re willing to write supports for your character, then feel free to suggest it.
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