RE: beatrix
iirc she does not have any relation to wulfric, but she did commit arson in the past. she used to work for Alastor and is strongly implied to be the one who started fire to the orphanage
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Hrist fans (all 6 of us) stay losing ngl
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Four hundred years ago, the United Kingdom of Tartaros was founded and reigns over the land to this day. A prosperous and open-minded monarchy, it rules vast lands from the duchies of Glamorgan to the west to the Marquisate of Zhu to the east. It is a land of freedom to its citizens and a guardian shield against tyrannies abroad.
In spite of it all, there is one rule which its citizens do not dare break. By royal decree, healing arts have been severely restricted and allowed only to a trusted few, officially because they are deemed too dangerous to pursue. Rumors on the streets claim that the enigmatic advisor to lines of Tartaros kings, Apate, personally dictated this order, despite her own knowledge of the healing arts. Few understand the reason for this ban, but even fewer question it, as the United Kingdom made sure to establish a system of hospitals to care for those citizens who are wounded or sick.
Deep in the forested outskirts of Tartaros, Sergeant Sandraudiga commands a small unit of Tartaros troops, with her second-in-command Lorenzo, dark mage Ioke, and childhood friend Antiope. They have been tasked to pursue the petty thief and brigand leader Alastor, who had been harassing villages throughout the area. Yet privately, Sandraudiga sees this as far beneath her station, far beneath her worth, far beneath what she deserves.
Charging after the bandits, Lorenzo ends up wounded, with the nearest hospital too far away to treat him. Then, to Sandraudiga’s surprise, a lowly beggar, dressed entirely in black, whom her troops had been protecting, waves a mysterious wand to heal her friend’s wounds. Healing magic, in violation of the royal decree. Once the fight is done, Sandraudiga’s allies apprehend the beggar, but she is not so resolute. With a smile, she asks to hear the beggar out.
The beggar reads her like a book, and promises her power, divinity, as long as she completes one task. To set out, unravel these four centuries of peace, and kill the enigmatic royal advisor Apate.
This… is Beggar in Black.
Spoiler
I was in a portrait making mood today, but my secondhack is not at the progress level where I can start making portraits for characters, so I decided to do something fun today. (plus with some color changes I can just reuse them for my hack… they only used F2E material, no I didn’t touch Hag’s Sandraudiga/Dolus portraits, they’re custom made without them, except for hair colors and trying to replicate some details) On discord with Rubenio I occasionally joke about Hag Bad Guys, and the idea occasionally springs into my mind since it’s pretty interesting to think about.
I decided to make portraits as fanart of Sandraudiga and Dolus in roles as “Kyra” and “Apate” in such a scenario. Sandraudiga is just a lowly sergeant in the Royal Army (well, lowly… daughter of the famed commander Eupraxia of course), there’s no Elias equivalent to serve as the instigator of the plot, instead she is ensnared into Dolus’s net through her own ambition and greed. Dolus was defeated by Apate when they first confronted one another over the Nosferatu spell, but survives, escapes and harbors an immortal lifetime of revenge. As means to stop Dolus, Apate silently orchestrates the unification of Tartarus under a peaceful monarchy and ensures it bans healing magic so Dolus cannot establish a foothold there.
I left him out from the open desc above, but Soter would also be a part of Sandraudiga’s group and have a reverse arc - rather than betray Sandraudiga, he’d be “converted” back to the side of good by a pep talk from Kyra and leave the group when Sandraudiga turns more villainous.
I also considered making portraits for Royal Advisor Apate and her personal commander Kyra, but i figured these two would be good enough. Perhaps I’ll give them a try in the future though.
Full portraits, with frames, though no minimug:
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Spoilers for an endgame continuity error
In the final camp conversation with Hestia, Kyra will still reference mourning Pheme even if she’s alive.
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Friggin’ love that Antiope is Phobos. That’s so what I’d do. The whole write-up is awesome but I enjoyed this bit in particular.
And, you know, the portraits. The portraits are delightful.
The option to save Pheme was added later, and it required a ton of conditional eventing and alternate dialogue, so I will admit there were a few places where I simply tried to word things vaguely so I could avoid having to do more conditionals. Notice that when she mourns Pheme, the dialogue doesn’t explicitly state she died. If Pheme isn’t dead, Kyra’s instead mourning the still plenty brutal tragedies that happen to her young friend over the course of the story.
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We farmin Ziyingcoins with this one
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Another thing I liked about the story: I loved how irreverent it was towards nobility. It really bothers me how pro-monarchy fantasy stories tend to be and how normalized this has become, especially in FE. I liked that the only good noble won his position through merit, and Dolus having a breakdown upon learning Kyra is a nobody was just delightful. Peasant solidarity! I also liked that Dolus’ backstory lays bare the fact that royalty had to start with an ordinary person, and the divine right of kings is a lie they make up to justify their rule after the fact.
Now that I’ve finished NG+ and the postgame, I’d like to create an easily-readable text dump, similar to those on the FE wiki. Unfortunately, I have no experience using FE Builder, and I’d like to catch stuff like stage directions and character expressions in addition to the raw text. Is there a tutorial somewhere that can give me a rundown on how to find and extract text easily?
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Need two more people for triangle attack (and also group hug🫂)
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Obviously, it is the bandit Alastor and his two close mates, Marina and Ziying! First a nuisance for Sergeant Sandraudiga, then, as circumstances turn and Apate’s trusted bow Kyra descends upon the camp with the Kingdom’s most elite troops to search for the suspected healer, they are forced to work together 
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this is nestor erasure
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Is Ziying also stinks.. 
(JK)
@ATHATH Nestor can’t do group hug with that wyvern of his..
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Nestor is Fructuoso, obviously.
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I stumbled through FE Builder enough to find the text for cutscenes and dusted off my rusty HTML skills to make a little proof of concept. Only have the first chapter + character descriptions so far. I’m open to suggestions for improving the UI if it makes your eyes bleed, and if anyone knows proper HTML they can probably make my code less messy.
https://afriendlyirin.github.io/hagarchive/index.html
(I formatted [A] as a line break and [Clear] as a paragraph break, but I think the latter looks a little funky with the spacing I chose. Might tweak it later.)
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Fun discovery: There’s failsafe dialogue for the very unlikely scenario that the thief unlocks Raleigh’s or Begona’s doors in chapter 2, and Rubenio clearly had fun with them. Speaking as a game designer myself, I can confirm that coming up with dialogue for obscure scenarios like this is an obscure but delightful pleasure.
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Ok but realistically speaking, what conditons would lead to this to happen?
I assume if you block the lower-right door, the thief’s AI will direct them towards another one.
I had the Raleigh one the first time i’m playing this, lol..
It’s really awesome that you’re doing that! I love the hack’s story and I’d love re-reading it at my own pace.
My favorite chapter is the chapter 23, especially with the opening between Alastor and Scion Dolus. It’s incredibly well written. Absolute peak writing.
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Still fiddling with the display. Would people prefer borders to mark areas with alternate dialogue? Here’s examples with and without the border.
I’m also wondering if it would be worth making a middle divider as well. My monitor is very wide so it hasn’t been a problem so far, but the two blocks might bump into each other on smaller resolutions.
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