Jesus, i hope you’re OK man
Your health is more important. Good to hear you’re recovering but, the game can wait till you are up to it
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Oh damn, I hope you’re okay Onmi, I’m very intrigued by the update coming soon, but make sure to don’t overwork yourself, take care man! 
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So I wanted to wait until the April stuff had all let itself out before giving the update.
This update will be about Ilia, the arc, the maps the characters, and what we have planned and done around it.
First things first
Thea and Shanna are both rocking their promoted portraits this makes, to my knowledge the last of the unpromoted->Promoted portrait changes. A Juno update is planned this month to round it out. Next on the graphics side, we’ll be looking at standardization. Bringing any portraits that visually clash in line with the style. In short, just ensuring that everything looks very consistent and cohesive.
That’s enough about Graphics, let’s talk about Ilia.
The Ilia arc was one of the arcs that I’ve probably put the most effort into my writing of, this is due to tying it into the story of Zelot himself, the changes we’ve made to enhance his character, and the focus being put onto Ilia’s stage in the larger world.
One of the issues we needed to tackle was that Ilia and Sacae originally, effectively, covered the same broad strokes, going after the Etrurian traitors, starting with Arcardo and ending with Roartz. I believe I’ve mentioned before that Arcardo is made the sole target of the Ilia chapter, with Roartz being the arc villain for Sacae. The other issue was despite the two arcs being major moments for members of the cast their presence is absentee (as would be expected for a game where any of them could die, hoping to hold back on variant dialogue). This made both areas largely impersonal to the characters from that location.
We wanted to take a look at the structure of Ilian society, the Mercenary Knights, and the Pegasus Knights, and how they were intertwined. We determined that the Mercenary Knights were born from Barrigan’s original entourage. He passed the Maltet to his second in command, who laid it to rest in a hidden location, protected by the descendants of Barrigan’s closest allies. That man would be the first leader of the Mercenary Knights. The mercenaries of Ilia will elect from among their number one man and one woman to serve as the head of the organizations, they will then undertake a trial at the location where Maltet is located, overseen by the guardians. Upon completing the Trial, the ascendent knights will decide whether to take Maltet for themselves or to return it to its resting place.
The symbolism here is claiming the Maltet is paramount to taking up Barrigan’s burden and goals, to change Ilian society on a fundamental level and put an end to the mercenary culture. Zelot and Sigune were the last two to undertake the trial, and Zelot returned the Maltet rather than claim it.
This forms the core of Zelot’s character. He desperately wants Ilia to change, and to his peers, he was the best among them, but he lacks the confidence to take up the mantle himself, he fears making the wrong choice and leading his people to their deaths. This caused a schism between him and Sigune. She would resent him for in her view, abandoning the Ilians.
Many of Zelot’s base conversations deal with his readiness to take that next step, to declare that no more would Ilian’s trade blood for bread, that they would be their people, not beholden to slaughtering one another at the behest of other nations. This conflict is what forms the climax of Chapter 28, the battle against Sigune.
Sigune is a recruitable character in Maiden of Darkness, but her recruitment method is one of the more complicated ones. The easiest method is “Zelot is alive and is brought to Chapter 27, then, he needs to interact with Sigune” If he’s dead it’s not impossible to recruit her, it’s just far more difficult, requiring Thea, Shanna, and Roy to all interact with her.
Given what we’ve mentioned has changed for the Ilian history, the Gaiden chapter, 28x, also changed, naturally. Rather than… well… Walls, the Chapter takes place at the shrine Maltet is located at, protected by those descendants of Barrigan’s followers. This does require Zelot and the entire Ilian cast to be alive. If Zelot is dead, the followers will not agree to meet with anyone but the next Mercenary Captain candidate. Even then, it takes the appeal of both Pegasus and Mercenary Knights to convince the followers to allow Zelot to, in essence, change the decision he already made. No mercenary captain has ever come back after laying the spear in its resting place, and none has chosen to take it.
The map becomes a battle against these guardians, descendants of Barrigan’s followers, to prove the will and strength to claim Maltet and to change the nation.
This is my first time trying to do an update like this, let me know how I can improve it, I’m willing to answer any questions.
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I’ve got to say, this is pretty big worldbuilding for Ilia. I like it.
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Oh wow, I like this idea with what the Weapon represents to the Ilian society 
BTW, I noticed and strange lack of mention of Juno in all of this, until I remember that Juno is recruited after the confrontation with Sigune XD
Excited to see Sigune being recruitable
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Oh for real? Awesome, Sigune was always one of my favourite bosses, together with Jahn, as they always have this untapped potential story wise, seeing Sigune being potentially recruitable makes me happy
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I came across this MoD years ago (mainly while looking for anything that would integrate Guinivere as a playable character in the main campaign) and have been checking this page occasionally ever since to see all the discussions and developments around it. It’s an impressive journey and your dedication is admirable, so I made an account so I could I wish you the best of luck 
I’m looking forward to everything you will deliver!
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These images have died since links to files on discord now expire when used outside of it. Probably wanna re-upload these onto FEU proper.
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Thanks, this will take some time due to RL health issues. Long story short is I have Recurrent corneal erosion syndrome (RCES) Which has made uh… living, let alone doing anything, much harder the past few weeks.
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I’ll note that the image links do work if you copy-paste them into discord.
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I fixed up the previous update I’ll try to hit the rest
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I think it would be neat if you create a discord server dedicated for the hack, so you can show us there content and progress of the hacking of the game like you do here in FEU
Does this work have a Discord?
We do have a development discord but it isn’t open for the public. I do not intend to make a public discord or open it up until release.
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seems like a lot of images are lost media now
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Hello everyone it’s time for the monthly update! As usual we’ll begin with a new portrait, this is for Juno bringing her in line with Thea and Shanna.
Now while health complications made it hard to work a lot of the month sadly, we did get a lot done. We’ve started the scripting for 28x, we got all the portraits into the game and set up to be swapped on promotion and, oh yeah why not take a look at that?
the promoted portraits will swap for everything from status screen to dialog, with no need for me to code in 12 alts using different portraits just in case. That drastically cuts down on the amount of variants I have to write.
This following month I want to try hammering all the supports properly, get everyone’s lists updated correctly.
For story/plot discussion for this month, I actually want to ask you what you’d like me to talk about, a specific character, or a specific arc in the game. Give me a topic and I will post a second update focused on the plot and story.
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I would like to know how you’ll write about Roy and maybe lore of the legendary weapons for this hack
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This is just shaping up to be sooooo Epic I literally jut bet a FE6 remake nd I can’t wait to do this one! Portrait changing on promote…yes!
A topic I could think of is will there be added supports outside of new characters like if you always wanted two characters to talk in the original game or something. Have you added those in here?
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Second this, i’m very interested in how are you going to write the supports, are you going to add new ones or just rewrite old ones, and how much is going to change?
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