State of the Realms: May 2025

Hey everyone,

The current main storyline arc of Rise of the Paladin is now complete and fully posted! I sincerely hope you found it a satisfying point to pause for now. We covered a lot of ground, and I'm really proud of how the latter chapters turned out.

For stragglers stumbling in from Royal Road, please remember that new chapters will continue to appear there until about mid-June. Of course, as dedicated Patrons, you've already read it all!

As we look towards the next installment, I'm curious about your reading preferences for the rewrites. Would you rather receive chapters as they are written, getting that immediate access as I rebuild the early story? Or, would you prefer to wait until Part 3 is entirely finished in the fall, allowing you to binge-read the whole rewritten section and part 3 at once? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments! Your feedback here is really helpful.

To keep things interesting over the summer months, I have a couple of exciting extras planned to share with you. These will be posted first for Patrons on the paid tier. I'm still sorting out the exact timelines, but they will likely move to our free members about a week after their initial paid-tier release. Stay tuned for more details on those soon!

Speaking of Royal Road, there's some big news! I've finally received a set of final typography for the new cover and it's slick. I'm planning a proper cover reveal sometime in mid-summer, so keep an eye out for that.

On the writing front, I'm happy to report that I've already started working on Part 3 as well as some of the rewrites. In fact, I've developed a full outline that carries us through to the end of Part 4, which will bring Book 2 to its conclusion. This roadmap will likely evolve as I write, but several chapters of Part 3 are already penned. After all the intense action in the previous section, we're aiming for a somewhat slower, more slice-of-life pace for a bit to explore characters and world details before diving back into major events.

And finally, a heartfelt thank you to all the newer faces we've seen around Patreon recently! I know this platform isn't the most fun to read on, and I truly appreciate every single one of you who is interested enough to follow along here while the story is being prepared for a more polished and professional re-entry onto Royal Road this fall. Your support means the world.

Thanks again for your amazing support! Don't forget to share your thoughts on the release preference below.

PS. If the epub isn't posted by the time this goes up, I fully expect a chiding.

All the best,

MS Davidson