Oooh, I would love to see this as a fanfic story! 👀 Blade would absolutely amass an army to get MC back, or would blow into Gladius’s base with fire in his eyes, ready to put the beatdown on or even kill him if that’s what it comes to! He would be SUUUUUUPER pissed off and, sadly, it would not be very negotiable lol. Time to fight Gladius to the death! The only way to avert that showdown is if MC herself intervened!

Ahhh, thank you so much, both for your kind words and for replaying ShoH! It means the world to me when someone catches the tiny details I put in! 😍 Thank you again so much for your wonderful words, they made me really happy! :) 💖

GLflgjfdlg thank you, I’m so glad you enjoyed the opportunity to torment Blade! 😂 The innuendo used to just be “wow big sword!” and he would just roll his eyes and move on, but then I had to keep adding to it… 😂 Thank you for being so sweet!!

I’m going to have to brainstorm when they would ever have the opportunity to say that! 😂 Wait oh my God… the quest board… MC has to take a request from a cheesemaker… they mutter “My Trial of the Cheeses” while clenching their fist and looking off angrily into the distance!

I could have sworn I answered this before, but apparently not! Get ready for some chaos…

Blade: he is peak… him when playing Monopoly, because he keeps insisting on playing it like a war game and waging guerilla tactics against his competitors in order to bankrupt their “forces” and claim their land as his own. No one knows if he’s doing it out of malicious compliance from being forced to play, or if he’s sincerely, earnestly unable to play a game without making it about battle and violence. Anyway, he won one time and was silently insufferable about it–nothing is more irritating than the Commander’s stoic face looking just slightly smug without him saying anything–so no one wants to play with him anymore, which suits him just fine because then he can stay a champion without having to constantly defend his title. He also has fairly bad luck when it comes to gambling, so the dice seem to conspire to screw him over quite a lot. 

Trouble: he gets excited and jubilant to play every time, but hits a breaking point when the other players start playing “dirty” and not “playing fair”–IE using tactics and techniques that he can’t keep up with or manipulating him. Then it’s the time for Rage and shouting and violence and indignation. He insists on keeping a “judge” or referee around whenever they play so the referee can comment on whether or not certain moves are fair and allowed, but he always ends up bullying the ref and yelling at them, too, leading once to tears on Shery’s part, which led to Briony and Ayla getting into an all-out brawl with him. He won that fight, but has never won a single game of Monopoly. Still, his dogged determination to keep playing never wavers. More on his violence in the other entries.

Tallys: she played with them one time before realizing how unhinged they all were. Here’s part of her journal entry for that day: Never before had I contemplated what a thread-thin line it is that separates us from the demons. Each of us possesses the power to bring an entire city to its knees, and it would not take very much to tip us over that precipice. Even a mere game is enough to tempt us to the path of darkness. Pride cometh before a fall, and I fear we are all balancing precariously on the edge of a knife.

Long story short: she has the smarts to win, but it’s just not worth it.

Shery: she is actually very competent at Monopoly and is good enough strategically to keep up with Red, Lavinet, and Riel, sometimes showing an unpredictable streak of merciless logic. However, she tends to feel bad about rubbing things in or making others feel bad, so she sometimes quietly makes wrong moves and mistakes towards the end of the game. Riel called her out on it once, and she admitted she likes commiserating with everyone and having fun with them instead of winning, because everyone loathes the victor lol. But she could destroy at Monopoly if she wanted to! She puts on a pot of calming tea whenever they decide to play, but assures everyone it’s caffeinated lol. Regardless, it never helps…

Riel: he is not allowed to play with them. He is horrible with Monopoly. But not in that he’s bad… in that he’s way too good. And competitive. And ruthless. And the whole “he can think twelve steps ahead of everyone else” intelligence and analytical skill is combined with an insufferably condescending attitude (not even really on purpose… that’s just how he is). Imagine having an opponent who absolutely destroys you every time you play with him– sometimes yawning while you play, sometimes sighing and explaining to you what exact moves you could have made to actually put up a fight against him or even have a chance of winning, and exactly what you did to go wrong. Imagine buying a Monopoly property and glancing across the table at Riel, who looks like:

One time Trouble physically reached across the table, grabbed him by the shirtfront, and dragged him across the board game to throttle him. The worst part about it was that, when it upset the game pieces and overturned the board, Riel commented that he had memorized every piece position and each player’s money exactly, so there was no need to stop the game. Another time, Ayla actually stood and gave him a black eye for buying Reading Railroad when she had been saving up for it (well, it was really when he answered, “I know.”). This violence shocked Riel–who had never really been physically hurt by another person before–so deeply that he didn’t speak for the rest of the game. However, he still won, even with only one good eye. 

After that, it was decided that Riel can only play the game through a proxy, and to cap him further, that person has to make half of the decisions while Riel is allowed to suggest the other half, with no discussion between the two of them. Unfortunately for Riel, the only person who would want to be his proxy turned out to be Caine, whose blithe spiritual resilience and enjoyment of winning allowed him to withstand Riel’s controlling demeanor. However, he also drives Riel insane because he’s 12 and makes the unpredictable moves of a 12-year-old boy. 

Chase: Truth be told, he never learned how to play Monopoly or what the point of the game is, because any time anyone tries to explain game rules to him longer than five seconds, his eyes glaze over, or he even get bored and wanders off. Now he plays only to amuse himself by trolling the others; his favorite past time is to replace other players’ pieces with stupid things and see how long it takes for them to notice. The thimble becomes a button, the dog becomes a nut, and etc. Interestingly, he has extremely good luck, and whether by cheating or fortune, he can make the dice roll to any number he wants. Briony, Lavinet, and Red regularly bribe him to help them out with important rolls; thus, another rule has been instated that he can only roll another player’s dice once per game. Typically, they bribe him with more stuff to replace their game pieces with.

Red: he has a strategic mind to rival Riel’s, but he lacks the desire to crush his enemy under his bootheel in order to win at all costs. He tries to make it light-hearted and good, wholesome fun, but it never really goes that way. Still, somehow things work in his favor anyway, and he can cheerfully go, “Oh, I can buy Park Place!” as if just realizing it, an attitude which drives most others crazy. After Riel, he is technically in second place for most games won; he would be tied with Shery if she actually won the games she was in the position to without pretending to lose. However, everyone else being so competitive has made him reluctant to play, so typically he can only be persuaded to if everyone is extra nice to him and promises not to scream to the gods for the others to drop dead on the spot. 

Ayla: you might think Trouble is the likeliest to flip over the game board/table, but it’s actually Ayla. She gets easily confused and irritated, bending over the pieces and scratching her head furiously like “wtf is going on??” This makes her angrier, and when Riel starts to gloat, she’s lunging across the table and having to be held back by Briony or Blade; one time she even tried to bite him. She doesn’t even want to play nowadays, but can’t stand to be left out. When she’s not so angry the room is spinning, she does alright, and generally can do second or third-best if Riel or Lavinet are not involved (for some reason she does better against Red or Shery).

Halek: are you joking? you think he would play an hours-long game with those maniacs? as soon as he hears the rattle of the game board, he dissipates into the air like smoke

Briony: Briony’s got the spirit of things, but she’s not quite cut out for Monopoly. She keeps trying to bend the rules to work on teams with other people, proposing combining their finances and working together to win the game, like “yay okay let’s be allies ❤!!!” This works out in her favor like 50% of the time; sometimes someone like Red or Shery agrees, even though that’s not really how you play, and they might win; sometimes she gets absolutely burned, notably once by Lavinet, because her partner will then betray her in some way. This drives her to hysterical tears, but otherwise, she can generally handle losing with a smile and a desire to keep the peace. However, she can get riled up when the others get riled up, like “okay Trouble stop yelling and settle down, you’re going to knock over Shery’s tea…” *Trouble knocks over Shery’s tea* *Briony tackles him* “I SAID SETTLE DOWN!”

Lavinet: Behind Riel, Red, and Shery, she’s the best at the game, since Monopoly is fairly similar to the work she does for the fiefdom. She’s also the best at manipulating the others and occasionally even flirting her way to Pennsylvania Ave. She doesn’t care about winning as much as the others–she is very good at dismissing any loss as “just a game” or “it’s not that important, darling”–but is a smug winner just like the rest of them, unleashing her ojou-sama laugh at the moment of her impending victory. Trouble once described that laugh as “the shrieking of a thousand harpies”. Other than that, though, she’s a fairly normal player, though she barely bats an eye at the violent extremes everyone else takes it to. 

Ahh, I’m so glad that part made you laugh; thank you for reminding me, I actually forgot all about it! 😂 I strive to live up to the stupidity and hilarity of that moment… I’m working on the next training sequence with the MC’s recruits, and there’s a part where Chase launches into an impassioned rant about how dumb Blade’s non-fraternization rule is when all of the Shepherds are weirdly sexy, and it keeps making me laugh! I hope it’s as dumb and funny as Trouble not figuring out the sex mushrooms… 

Thank you so much for the kind words!!! 💖💖💖

YEAH CAN YOU IMAGINE. For added deliciousness, imagine that it was MC’s murder that drove the Order to rebel and decide to burn down the world, and Dark!Blade finds out that our MC is alive and kidnaps them “to exploit our Blade’s weakness”, but also… 

But what if he has worse hair? He has no friends to badger him about his appearance…

😈

Hi there, good question! I haven’t really given that much thought to the dark!Shepherds AU, but I imagine (if we’re making it very similar to the Justice League scenario) something happens to make the majority of the Shepherds snap, and they turn against the Autarchy and instate a form of governance based solely on power and domination. They think they’re doing what’s right by preventing conflict and protecting the world from demons, just like the Justice Lords felt when they took over the world. That being said…

Dark!Blade: Dark!Blade isn’t all that different from teenage/young adult Blade, who was perfectly comfortable with the idea of assassinating and killing people for his cause, and because he firmly believed it would lead to the greater good. Dark!Blade would be like that, but even colder and more ruthless than his past self. He would rid himself of all personal attachments, such as friends, family, and romance, believing that such feelings made him weak and hesitant, and made himself vulnerable to his enemies in the way that the Autarch was made vulnerable through her sons. 

In a toe-to-toe combat situation, it’s hard to say who would win. Both have razor-sharp killing instincts and battle tactics, but I’m probably going to give it to Dark!Blade, because he would be willing to fight dirty (taking loved ones hostage, threatening kids or bystanders) and Blade would sacrifice himself willingly for others while Dark!Blade wouldn’t. So I’ll give it to him 90% of the time!

Dark!Trouble: I really can’t imagine a dark version of Trouble, not in the whole “bad Justice League” sense. I suppose he already walks a fine line between light and dark as it is; his relentless good, altruism, courage, and compassion make him a hero, but there’s that edge of temper, rage, and darkness (especially in his past–he was a criminal and killer-for-hire too, after all) that colors it as well. Like, now it’s fine for him to beat the everloving shit out of an asshole like Lazu Reen, but that could tip over to someone who’s not so black-and-white bad, too–he could turn that hatred towards an enemy who is more nuanced, like a politician who ultimately serves the people and does good, but who happened to make Trouble an enemy by personally slighting or hurting a friend, something like that. Trouble’s sense of loyalty tends to override his desire for justice in some ways, and I could see him supporting someone like Blade or MC to the end if they framed their endeavors in a way that could still be read as “good”. Like, yeah I had to kill this group of people, but it was for the greater good! And he’d be like “alright, I trust you!” He’s got your back even when the whole world turns against you, until there comes a point when he just can’t stand it anymore–but by then, he probably already did a lot of bad out of love of his friends.

If it were a death match between Dark!Trouble and our Trouble, I’m betting our Trouble would win, purely because Dark!Trouble’s desire to live would be just slightly lessened by the weight of all the deeds he committed. I don’t think he’s truly cut out to be bad, so our Trouble would probably win… 

Truthfully, though, if we’re following the Justice League formula, I could see Trouble being the one dying to trigger the domino effect that leads to the Shepherds turning bad. Like the Flash (I’m pretty sure it was Wally West in JL), in a way, he’s one of the hearts of the Order that bridges them to the civilian population and vice-versa. If he were killed, I could see them falling into the path of darkness (with a lot of other factors involved, too).

Dark!Shery: we already know that Dark!Shery and Shery are one in the same, lol. I don’t think Dark!Shery would be so much like the bad Justice League; I think what would be dark about her would be her indifference, her total passive indifference to their quest for domination “for the greater good” and their thirst for revenge. Dark!Shery is more just personally angry, aggressive, loud, forceful, and selfish, but I don’t see any world where she sets out for power or world domination. If anything, I see Dark!Shery (in that AU) being petty and mean, ripping lollipops out of kids’ hands because she feels like it and not batting an eye at seeing a beggar collapse in the street. 

That’s not to say drunk Dark!Shery is like that, I’m just taking her badness to an extreme in an AU where all of the Shepherds are bad!

In a fight, Dark!Shery would absolutely win, lol. She doesn’t have any better combat abilities than our Shery, but her sheer rage would be terrifying and would lend her crazy strength, lol.

Dark!Tallys: Tallys, too, already walks the edge of the path to darkness a little bit, I think. Obviously she’s chosen the good side, but in a different world where a demon promised her revenge for her fallen family and an opportunity to burn the Autarchy down, I think the younger her would have taken it. In a dark!AU where Trouble was killed or something, I think she would be like, “okay, fuck it” and give in to that doubtful, vengeful side of herself and just go apeshit on the world. She would be one of the people spearheading the plan to take over the world. She’d give lip service and say she was doing it for the greater good, but another part of her would revel in the blood and chaos. It wouldn’t heal the wound in her heart, though, and would only make her even more twisted and angry. 

In a head-to-head first, I’m going to give it to our Tallys 60% of the time. Part of the thing that makes Tallys so effective in battle is her ability to sever herself from her emotions and maintain a cool head; she can detach herself from personal feelings and analyze combat with cold clarity. I feel like dark!Tallys would be easy to taunt into a rage, or she would let her hatred and thirst for blood cloud her mind, so I feel like our Tallys would have the advantage most of the time!

Dark!Riel: I say this in complete seriousness: in a world where Riel decided to turn evil or fall to the dark side, everybody is already fucked. He would absolutely be the most effective and terrifying villain out of the entire cast. He will rip, slash, and burn entire countries with the easy ruthlessness of an accountant making budget cuts. He knows a dozen ways to starve, lay siege to, and lead public campaigns against the enemy. He would be the scariest Autarch the world has ever seen. If you think he’s mean to his enemies like Ebert now, wait until he has no moral code holding him back…

It’s difficult to imagine a battle between Dark!Riel and our Riel, but I’m going to guess the utter dispassionate cruelty and lack of compassion in Dark!Riel would win 90% of the time. Our Riel has a little less edge than Dark!Riel, so for that reason, I think he would lose. And so would the world…

Dark!Chase: I feel like Dark!Chase is very similar to our Chase, just colder, more ruthless, and bloodthirstier. He’d take genuine pleasure in torturing and killing his enemies, and I think he would cut out the flirtatious aspect of his personality in favor of a crueler and more sadistic sense of humor. He would also probably be batshit insane, like, somewhere on the Joker’s level but not obnoxious; in fact, quieter and calmer and deadlier, like you could never really know what he was thinking. People would be afraid to look into his eyes. I think it would take a lot more to push him to that point than the others, though; but once he tipped over that cliff into darkness, there’d be no going back or remorse for him. He’d love to kill his enemies with a kiss and a smile.

In a fight between our Chase and Dark!Chase, I feel like it would be 50/50. Dark!Chase would be more reckless, unpredictable, and have even less of a fear of death than our Chase does; our Chase would have the edge in terms of strategy. So yeah, I think it would be 50/50!

Dark!Red: I can’t even imagine what Dark!Red would be like, lol. I just can’t imagine him being truly evil or ruthless without feeling guilty about it. I guess I could only imagine it if, like, he messed around with some spell and it robbed him of the ability to feel love or empathy?? But even then, I feel like he doesn’t have any inclination to go around conquering the world or hurting people. He mostly just wants to chill and read his books. I feel like he’d be the only one out of the group (besides probably Trouble if he’s not already dead) to be like uhhh guys what’s going on here, this isn’t like us?? He’d probably defect and lead a small underground rebel force with Pan and Neon. OMG and he’d be the one to figure out worldwalking and travel to our Blest to get our Shepherds to fight his because they’d be the only ones to stand a chance at taking down the evil versions of themselves!!! OMG!!! IT ALL FITS WTF. 

Dark!Ayla: I could see Ayla Hulking out and becoming full of rage, but it’s difficult for me to imagine her doing something like supporting the death of innocents or using dirty-handed maneuvers to conquer the land. She’s also among the most independent of the Shepherds, so I feel like she’d be the most vocal of their opposition… it’s realllly hard for me to imagine her casually killing anybody except for scumbags who hurt other people, like murderers and kidnappers. In a war between different political factions or a bid to conquer the world, I just don’t think she has it in her–no matter how angry and aggrieved she was at whatever turned the rest of the others bad.

I think she would either be on the good side, such as supporting Red’s rebels, or vocal enough among the bad guys to have been killed as a dissenter; she might not be around by the time our Shepherds made it to the dark dimension. But if she was, I’m pretty sure our Ayla would win against her 80% of the time. Our Ayla still has the courage of her convictions and the scrappy desire to survive no matter what; dark!Ayla probably wouldn’t. 

Dark!Halek: Also hard for me to imagine Halek turning truly evil; I feel like, if something bad were to happen to turn the rest of the Order bad, Halek would give himself more to grief instead of rage and revenge. He most likely would remove himself from the situation rather than try to take over the world; they would probably have to go hunting for him in the wilderness, kind of like when Luke was a hermit on that blue milk island in Star Wars (spoilers I guess?). I guess dark!Halek would be sort of tired and indifferent Halek, not able to go up against his old allies; our Shepherds might regard him as a coward, but he wouldn’t be evil like the others. 

Our Halek would definitely beat that Halek in a fight, but they’d probably have no reason to fight in the first place!

Dark!Briony: did any of you ever watch the Flashpoint Paradox (another DC movie about the Justice League–well, the Flash–finding out about a really evil parallel universe)? There’s a scene in it where Dark!Wonder Woman–Queen of the Amazonians and waging a war against Aquaman and the Atlanteans–like, beheads Aquaman’s wife Queen Mera and holds her head up to Aquaman like “fuck you”. I won’t link the gif because all of the violence in that movie is pretty gruesome, but that’s how I feel Dark!Briony would initially be. Super strong, running through the enemy army like a knife through paper, annihilating whole forces and landscapes with just her fists, and not giving a shit just how many people she’s killing. I feel like there’s already a tenuous grasp on her emotions in our Briony; beneath the happy-go-lucky, sweet exterior, she feels so much and loves so much that there’s also the ability for her to snap. It wouldn’t take that much (a few more Nathes) to unhinge her and decide to hurt the world as much as it has hurt her. I think she would sort of black out into an all-consuming, heartbroken suicide run where she just decided to do everything in her power to create as much destruction as possible, to somehow soothe the destruction in her heart. 

When that wouldn’t work, I think she would come back to her senses a little and start to slowly realize how fucked up and evil the things she’s doing (and the people around her) have become. It would be slower than someone like Ayla or Red, but gradually I think she would start to nurse a secret doubt in her heart, and if someone like Red was still around, he’d be able to convince her to start working for the good guys in secret, as their mole within the dark!Shepherds. However, I feel like cleverer minds like Blade, Lavinet, Chase and Riel would find her out, and she’d probably be executed for her treason.

In a fight against Dark!Briony and our Briony, I feel like it would depend on what stage of her development she’s at. If it’s still full rage mode, Dark!Briony probably wins like 80-90% of the time!

Dark!Lavinet: I could see Lavinet turning evil, but it’s sort of hard to imagine because she takes her duty to serve the people so seriously–it’s difficult to imagine what would need to happen to make her forget that, or to make her think she knows what’s best for them, even if that means doing bad things. It would already be so easy for her to do that in our world that she’s very conscious of it, so it would take a lot for her to fall into darkness. However, it’s still possible, and I could totally see her agreeing to be installed as a figurehead Autarch in order to maintain order and peace, slowly becoming more callous and ruthless over time. She would totally execute the old guard loyal to the previous Autarch and make their heads roll publicly to instill fear and respect for her reign. She does have that streak of ruthlessness in her; in our world, it’s reserved only for her enemies, but in that world, she’d slowly start to view everyone as her enemy–even past friends!

In a fight between Dark!Lavinet and our Lavinet, I would guess that our Lavinet would win 90% of the time. In that AU, I feel like Dark!Lavinet would let others do the fighting for her, and she would get used to ruling and being behind the front lines; in a way, she’d lose her fighting edge, something our Lavinet still has in spades. So in a direct combat situation, I think our Lavinet would win! In a game of wits and politics, I’m not sure–I would give that one 60-40 in favor of Dark!Lavinet!

Hi there, thank you for your question! I’ve talked about this over on my writing blog before, but for coding ChoiceScript, CSIDE is unspeakably invaluable! It was developed by a COG user and now mod and has incredibly nifty features like wordcount without counting coding commands, playtesting the game in the same window (without having to upload it anywhere), packaging the game in HTML, customizing color schemes, and much more! I literally could not use any other program for ChoiceScript. 😂

For other text-based IF games, I use Sublime Text Editor. It’s basically a plaintext program like Notepad+ but with more customization and great color options for readability and highlighting. 

Here’s a post where I talk about how I outline the different aspects of ShoH!

And thank you for the kind words, I’m so glad you’re loving Trouble! I miss him so much… 😃

“Brooding man with untamable cowlick” should absolutely be under Blade’s description in the game, but yes, absolutely!! He cares just as much for his friends as he does for his romance interests ❤

He turns into Dark!Halek 😅

Hi there, thanks for your question! I just want to let you know that you don’t have to write in any choices that you wouldn’t enjoy writing: your player-character can be just as defined or as flexible as you want! For example, I think Fallen Hero is one of the most successful Hosted Games, and the player-character is fairly defined according to the author’s wishes–there aren’t really choices to play the MC as a healthy, happy individual with no cares in the world, because that’s what the plot is centered upon: the MC’s defined past and mindset. Long story short, don’t write MCs you wouldn’t enjoy writing, or don’t provide choices to the player that you don’t want to. Just do whatever you want, and the right people and readers will come to your work naturally and accordingly.

That being said, I do understand being hesitant about writing an IF MC, period. It was something I struggled with when I first started writing: it can be tedious to provide choices that you personally wouldn’t agree with or find boring, and it’s hard to find the balance between offering too little choices (frustrating readers) and providing too much (creating too much unnecessary work and branching for yourself). I would just examine what you truly want in your MC–there are games out there that have succeeded with both blank slates and preset, defined characters, so don’t feel too pigeonholed eithre way!