Deadline: Canan and Sofiya’s Path

I didn’t realize this until the usual game planning meeting last night but apparently there is a deadline today, namely finishing the preliminary description for the last Imperium Heir and the preliminary storyline for Sofiya’s path. Possible spoilers abound so those not on the dev team and planning to play this game may want to avoid reading the second half of this post regarding Sofiya’s path.

Name: Canan Comnenus
Gender: female
Age: 18
Role: Civil Security, Intelligence, Assassination/Elimination [Heir]
Available: automatically joins ??when??
Distinctive Traits: Playful, Seductive
Blood/Zodiac: ?/Gemini
Likes:
Dislikes:
Other Notables:

• Keeps herself looking pretty gender ambiguous so that she can go on recon missions as either gender
• Dual personalities. Pretty playful and sometimes seductive in public
• Her speech becomes very blunt and scary as she gives her victims their “eulogy”
• responsibility of acquiring information and locating the Imperium Heirs

Supernatural Ability: magic (medium-high potential)
Combat Ability: medium-high potential

• Uses pair of daggers and support-type magic to go for the kill
• Her specialty is utility spells, such as detection, location, charms, and glamor

Starting Rank: rank unknown but acts as an independent operative for the Arcanum enforcement units before the insurgency
Starting Location: ?

I’m not too sure of some of the details since we currently do not have a path writer for her story arc. Despite the fact that Canan will play a major role in Sofiya’s path, I doubt I will be able to commit to writing a full-fledged story arc for her although I have some interesting ideas I want to see be made. (Work to be continued later)

Now onto Sofiya’s path:

• (SCENE): Sofiya was stationed at the Archiry Steel Legion Military Intelligence Headquarters before it fell to the insurgents. Due to its significance and the heavy fighting that took place, Archiry still masses a large quantity of Federation troops. However, intel indicate that Tae and the First Guard Corps inflicted devastating casualties upon insurgent forces before been obliterated. Because of the heavy losses, the Federation units in the area are still being reformed, thus command and control is rather disorganized. Lothair believes they can sneak into the Intel HQ directly thru teleportation, locate and rescue Sofiya alongside other Legion personnel they can find, and evacuate out before the Federation could respond in force. His divination also confirms Sofiya’s general location and that she’s alive, although in poor health.
• (BATTLE): Archiry Headquarters – Exelar and co. teleports directly into the building and a timer begins (enemy reinforcements begin arriving in waves once enough turns expire). Once inside, Exelar’s close range location spells allow him to pinpoint Sofiya’s location. The group must fight their way through multiple guard patrols to reach the location. Upon reaching it, they discover that Sofiya was currently being interrogated, tortured, and by her appearance – about to get raped, not by Federation troops but several Fateseekers. The Fateseeker Captain confirms Lothair’s belief that their organization is behind this war, and he also personally killed Alarick with surprising ease. The peace did nothing except bury a time bomb which they exploited for their goal, to decrease the planet of its non-magical population by provoking them to annihilate each other. Aorin soon realizes that their foe was buying time for reinforcements to arrive and they need to end it now. The Fateseeker Captain informs that he placed a lockdown upon the entire level in which no teleportation could come in or go out, and Lothair claims that he only needs to kill the caster to end the spell. Goal is to finish the Fateseeker Captain (and other units for XP) before evacuating the building. Exelar manages to master conjuration magic for the first time as he creates some robes to put around Sofiya before the group teleports out.
• (SCENE): During the fight, the Fateseeker mage mentions something about Sofiya being a fake, artificial mage, and that if the information they dug out from her mind is correct, so are Exelar and Lothair. He claimed that the Arcanum was despoiling the magical bloodlines with such experimentation, and in cooperation with the commoners nonetheless. Exelar demands Lothair to clarify on this, but Lothair tells Exelar that it’s a long story, and that it would be better for him and everyone else that it wait until they at least get off Earth and out of danger. He also promises Exelar that he will give Exelar the whole truth then.

This is essentially where Sofiya’s path starts and since it is important for the main story, it won’t change. Keep in mind I don’t know how these scenes will match up with the main story.

(SE): After rescuing Sofiya, Exelar begins noticing small problems with her but is unsure of the cause nor what to do. These problems don’t seem to be very major and Exelar doesn’t want to be too rash so he decides to wait it out. Once Hikari joins, Exelar has her perform an analysis on Sofiya. She tells Exelar that there are signs that she has been physically and mentally abused recently. Upon hearing this, Exelar asks what can be done about it and Hikari briefly and cautiously mentions the idea of memory alteration. Exelar is faced with the dilemma of what to do with Sofiya; should he keep her the way she is now, emotionally and mentally scarred, or attempt to help by messing with her memory. This key decision will determine which version of Sofiya’s path you enter. Scenes marked with an asterisk (*) will only be available if you choose to alter her memory.

(SE*): In order to tamper with Sofiya’s memory, Exelar goes to Hikari with his decision. He finds her eating breakfast and after a short scene, the mood becomes serious. Hikari tells him about the gravity of the situation and asks Exelar a few times before joining in. She creates a memory suppression system (MSS, tentative name) consisting of a pair of head ornaments for Exelar to give Sofiya. Exelar gives them to her and she puts them on. Immediately she falls to the ground in pain (something Hikari had not anticipated) as the devices cast several powerful sealing spells targeted directly at her brain that block access to her time as a captive. To keep the seals from degrading, the ornaments drain magic from Sofiya herself to maintain them. When the system is finished integrating itself, Sofiya wakes up to see Exelar extending his hand to her and with no recollection of her captivity nor what just happened. All the while Exelar is forcing himself to smile while he questions the ethics of what he has just done.

(SE): Several days later after Sofiya’s rescue (about a day after the preceding scene), Exelar can’t seem to fall asleep so he heads toward the bridge to do some work. There he find’s Sofiya doing analysis and plotting out strategies for the upcoming battle. The two begin to talk and you find out a little bit about Sofiya. Every night Exelar comes to visit and talk with Sofiya and gradually finds out that she hasn’t been sleeping for the past week because of nightmares regarding the deaths of all their parents.

(SE): On one of the night visits, he finds Sofiya sleeping on the floor while she is having an especially vivid nightmare. He calls for Hikari and has her do an examination on her mental and physical state. She determines that although Sofiya’s vitals are all over the place, that she will be fine. Hikari then tells Exelar that during the examination, she came across a strange spell aftermark that was probably the result of Sofiya’s stress (it was actually left behind during Sofiya’s mind probes).

(SE) Two or three days later, Sofiya wakes up and Exelar is there to greet her good morning despite it being around 2 AM. Alone in the infirmary, Exelar tells her that she shouldn’t bear things alone and that he is always there to support and comfort her. He then tells her that they all have to face the truth together instead of hiding it as if it never happened. If not on memory-altering path, this leads to Sofiya’s (lesser) good end in which they become good friends. If on the memory altering path, Exelar has an internal monologue in which he shows disgust over the hypocrisy of that statement.

(SE*) Against Hikari’s warning that the MSS is interacting with Sofiya’s magic strangely, Exelar suggests that Canan help Sofiya in her recovery by teaching her how to refine her magic. All seems well as Sofiya rapidly makes progress but a few weeks in, Canan notices some strange things. Sometimes Sofiya arrives late for her sessions and can’t seem to maintain her concentration as well as in the beginning and informs Exelar. At around the same period in time, Canan learns from Hikari that some of the ships’ systems have periodically failed and that during these times someone has been accessing classified info about Sofiya and the MSS. Canan decides that Sofiya represents a security threat to the entire fleet and plans to kill her.

(SE*) Canan coerces Hikari into cutting off main power and sealing off the bulkheads in order to trap herself and Sofiya together so that she can kill her without distractions. Unfortunately for Canan, Exelar overhears Hikari regarding the plan and starts heading to where Sofiya and Canan are. While he attempts to make his way in, Canan enters Dark Mode and has a monologue about how worthless a person Sofiya is while she is cowering in the corner. When Canan is about to go for the kill, Exelar breaks in and stops Canan in her tracks with a mid-level restraint spell. He goes to Sofiya and she collapses in tears while Exelar embraces her telling her how sorry he is for making her suffer so much. Canan is disgusted with this scene and easily breaks free and leaves as if she has no more interest.

(SE?*) Possible development scene with Hikari and Exelar. If I decide to make Hikari not cooperate with Exelar, they would have a scene in which she would reveal why she went along with Canan in the first place.

(SE?*) Another possible character development scene in which Exelar has Canan explain to him why she didn’t just kill Sofiya despite being able to escape his restraint spell so easily.

*May add one more final scene later*