mageparivir

Rewriting AMR Book 2

Hi everyone! I hope you’re staying safe and healthy.

I’ve been working a lot on the Arcadia cast scenes for the upcoming update, wrapping up their individual character arcs as we’re headed to the Arcadian act (aka Book 2) finale. That process has forced me to confront the characters’ personalities and arcs as a whole, and how their stories are presented throughout the entirety of Book 2. Unfortunately–and it’s a difficult thing to admit–I’m mostly unhappy with how things...

Saturday Devlog (April 22)

Hi everyone! Hope you're staying safe and heealthy, and a blessed Eid to everyone celebrating!

Progress on the update has sadly hit a bit of a wall this week, due to a combination of (a mild case of) writer's block and the general busy period surrounding Ramadan/Eid. On paper, I've managed to eke out another 7k words this week, but I'm quite unhappy with how the end result reads. It's highly likely that I'll need to take a couple more stabs at most of the work I've done on this update s...

Saturday Devlog (April 15)

Hello everyone! Happy Saturday once more, hope you're all staying safe and healthy!

Progress has been a bit of a mixed bag this week, with some elements that I'm really excited about and some that has unfortunately fallen short. On the former, I've finally found a way to integrate the Yu-F polyamory route into Book 2 in a way that I'm happy with! My initial instincts had been to go full angsty love triangle before we get to the fun part, and I've tried for five-ish updates now to hammer...

Saturday Devlog (April 8)

Hi everyone, and happy saturday once again! I hope you're staying safe and healthy.

Progress is chugging along somewhat slowly these days, as in the first third of April the bulk of my efforts have been spent on storyboarding this final arc's finer details. There's a lot I initially planned to accomplish in the 'day-off' segment before the arc launches in proper, but now that I've finally laid them out, I think it's likely that stuffing them all in will make the plot feel like it's drag...

[AMoG] Art: Mori

Included in this collage are:

[1] Full Artwork with character blurb

[2] Full-Body art on a blank background

Unlike their predecessor Satria, Mori's design process went very smoothly, as Fulminaire knocked it out of the park from the very first attempt!

Mori is a spellcaster hailing from the Jieshuang Deadlands, who has spent their entire life on a one-person struggle against the Deadlands' swarm of dark creatures. As you might imagine, they are both powerful and self-s...

[AMoG] Preview: Mori

Hi, everyone!

The second of the AMoG characters have been successfully commissioned. As per the results of the last poll (and deprioritizing characters of the same gender with Satria, who had been commissioned for the first preview), this time it's Mori's turn to get a portrait! Here was the blurb I uploaded on them ahead of the poll:

Mori is the heir to a famed but reclusive clan of spellcasters operating out of the Jieshuang Deadlands. Mori and their forebears are a gre...

2023-04-01 04:09:22 +0000 UTC View Post

[AMoG] Art: Lehya, Thundering Might

As promised, a full artwork of Lehya, the latest of AMoG's Scions to be commissioned!

Lehya is one of the patron Scions of the land of Aksara, which will be the first nation AMoG's protagonist finds themselves in (the Param of AMoG, if you will). Her influence has heavily contributed to the land's chaotic biome, making significant swathes of it impossible to settle, as nature there has become extremely hostile to human presence. At the same time, however, her blessings have helped shape...

[AMoG] Preview: Lehya, Thundering Might

Hi, everyone! I'm back with then third sneak peek of AMoG's series of Scions, this time featuring Lehya, otherwise known as the Thundering Might. As a deity, she presides over destruction and wrath. Those who have acquired her blessing will be able to wield some of the most brutally powerful abilities that exist in AMoG's world, while at the same time becoming prone to anger and violent outbursts, sometimes culminating in a slow descent into madness. A tricky deity to pledge one's devotion to...

Monthly Feature (March)

Hi everyone! As promised, the monthly features!

The concept this time around is an idol alternate universe! I've been listening to a lot of K-Pop and J-Pop while writing lately, and thought it would be fun to imagine what the cast of AMR might look like if their world had a bit less of swordplay and sorcery, and a bit more of song and dance! The monthly feature artist, Yesa, obliged me on the idea, and here's what we came up with:

2023-04-01 00:38:56 +0000 UTC View Post

[UPDATE] Demo ver 3.0 is finally live!

Hi, everyone! Hope you're staying safe and healthy.

Demo ver 3.0 has now been uploaded to dashingdon! It clocks in at 24.5k words. Broadly speaking, there are three main pieces of content featured in this update: completion of the ercei paths of the latest fight scene, denouement of the Kantena arc, and the beginning of AMR's next arc. The final one for Book 2, in fact (though it will likely be gigantic, quite possibly the biggest arc up to this point in the series).

[Mil...

Sneak Peek (March 26)

Hi everyone! As promised, the double-feature sneak peek for this week.

First, the opening scene of the next update, just after the Imperials fled:

And second, a scene following a small timeski...

(Not) Saturday Devlog (March 26)

Hello everyone! Happy weekend, and Ramadan Mubarak to everyone celebrating!

My apologies that the weekly devlog is late; the first days of Ramadan ended up being more demanding (in both time and energy) than I had initially expected TT The first Tarawih (big prayer) of the month took nearly five hours to complete, and it left me in a catatonic state the following day. Not a lot of fun...

The good news is that the update is for the most part finished. I will be taking a break for a...

Saturday Devlog (March 18)

Hi everyone! Hope you're staying safe and healthy.

A decent round of progress has been made this week, with the bulk of it involving editing the already-written pieces of the combat scene. As alluded to in the last devlog, I've had to shuffle around a couple of the spells to allow for suitably impressive feats to be achieved given the 'lost' nature of the Arcadian spells. There are still a bit of kinks to iron out, but I'm generally happy with how things have been shaping up! I've also ...

Sneak Peek (March 11)

Hi everyone! As promised, the sneak peek for this week, featuring one of the ercei combat spells alluded to in the last update!

2023-03-11 21:19:59 +0000 UTC View Post

Saturday Devlog (March 11)

Hi everyone! Hope you're doing well!

Progress proceeds apace this last week, with a full 13k having been written since I began some ten days ago. I'm having a lot of fun describing the ercei spells in the combat scene, especially since most of them are new to AMR's canon! It's also been quite a bit easier to make progress because all the bones of this update has already been laid out, making the process a lot less storyboard-heavy. It feels a lot like answering fill-in-the-blank test qu...

[UPDATE] Demo ver 2.8 is finally live!

Hi, everyone! Hope you're staying safe and healthy.

Demo ver 2.8, featuring the new content for this month, has finally been uploaded to dashingdon. This update (24.5k words) contains the next segment of the Kantena arc, bringing us very close to the arc's conclusion. It features a lengthy and wide-spanning combat segment towards the end, which I'm very proud of - I think it might be the most satisfied I have been with a combat scene since the climactic fight against Sister in Book 1. H...

Patreon Subscription Errors

Hello everyone!

It appears that the current method for pausing payments on Patreon's end can create a weird limbo situation where patrons are unable to view content uploaded onto the page, but they also can't subscribe to the page (because payments are paused), hence leaving them with no way to access the new update and other features.

Hopefully these problems will be resolved on their own once Patreon charging resumes. But in the meantime, if you're caught in this situation, plea...

[AMoG] Art: Satria Prasidya

Included in this collage are:

[1] Full Artwork with character blurb

[2] Full-Body art on a blank background

[3] WIP 1: First draft sketches of the character design

[4] WIP 2: First pass result of the rendering process

As you can see, Satria's had several dramatic transformations over the course of the design process, but I'm happy to say that the final result is everything I wanted of the design and more. There exists a fictional nation named Aksara in the world ...

[AMoG] Preview: Satria Prasidya

Hi, everyone!

As you may recall, we did a poll a few months back with regard to which of the A Murder of Gods ROs will have their portraits commissioned first, which was won by one Satria Prasidya! Here was the blurb I uploaded on him the last time around:

The newest member of Exagis’s Four Shields is the youngest in history to have attained the esteemed rank, and possesses the formidable skills to match. A master lancer with lightning-fast reflexes and a talen...

2023-02-03 02:51:05 +0000 UTC View Post

Art: Leon - XIX - The Sun

Hi, everyone! The first of the tarot card series of artworks has been completed, this time featuring Leon, represented by the major arcana The Sun (XIX)!

In the interest of full transparency--while I do think the new artist did a great job with the brief given, it's not quite the vibe/art style I had originally envisioned for this feature. I think it's likely that moving forward I'll be searching for a new artist to collaborate with on this; if I do, then Leon's piece will also be recom...

Art: Lenne (Full-Body) (Monthly Feature Replacement)

Hi, everyone! Due to our usual monthly feature artist (Yesa) falling ill this month, she hasn't been able to complete the monthly feature we had planned. Instead, our character artist Khutilust has kindly agreed to take on an extra illustration, this time featuring Lenne Niollere, the shadow-mage featured quite prominently last update. She will have a greater role in the second half of the Kantena arc, alongside a second member of the Imperial Hand, namely Resnik the Holy. Can't wait for you ...

[UPDATE] Demo ver 2.7 is finally live!

Hi, everyone! Hope you're staying safe and healthy.

Demo ver 2.7, featuring the new content for this month, has finally been uploaded to dashingdon. I did end up going ahead and cutting the polyamory scene for now, meaning that the update sits at a lower wordcount than expected--roughly 24k words altogether. It consists of F's day-off scene (which constitutes a good 1/3 of the update on account of lateral variation), Ilya's letter-reading scene, as well as a pretty significant amount of...

Saturday Devlog (January 28)

Hi everyone, hope you're staying safe and healthy!

The edits progress healthily apace, and I've managed to cobble together an update that's mostly satisfactory. I say mostly in the interest of transparency, because there's one scene that won't work itself out, and at this point I'm mostly convinced it's better to rework it entirely. And I don't mean only to rewrite the scene, per se, but to also set it up elsewhere in the story, where the mood and flow better accommodates for it. That s...

Sneak Peek (January 21)

Hi everyone! As promised, the sneak peek for this week, featuring a trio of familiar Nightsaber agents. Please be warned that this scene contains a relatively graphic recount of a murder towards the end!

2023-01-21 19:13:31 +0000 UTC View Post

Saturday Devlog (January 21)

Hi everyone! Happy Saturday, and Happy Lunar New Year for those celebrating! I hope you're all staying safe and healthy.

Happy to report that I've made respectable progress on the next week's update. I have the whole thing written out, and a majority of it edited to the level of polish desired. I'm currently left with the scenes with more fundamental problems—ones that will require whole rewrites or replacements, rather than pruning nd trimming—but I have a comfortable amount of tim...

Monthly Feature (December/January)

Hi everyone! The next set of December goodies are here, featuring a look into what the Arcadian squad would look like if their classes were swapped.

First of all, Flyss as a mage-fencer, similar to Eli's 'class' in AMR:

Secondly, F!Eli as a pure thaumer, similar to Yu's 'class' in AMR:

...

Sneak Peek (January 14)

Hi everyone! As promised, the sneak peek of the next update, featuring the opening scene of the next big plot point. I hope you enjoy!

2023-01-15 21:09:22 +0000 UTC View Post

Saturday Devlog (January 14)

Hi everyone! Hope you're staying safe and healthy.

My apologies that this devlog comes one day late. Despite churning out content at a healthy rate, I'm still finding it difficult to produce prose I can be satisfied with. The happy news is that the next update currently sits at 30k words altogether; the sad news is that they remain far from being refined enough to see the light of day. As a result, I had a difficult time picking a scene to present as a weekly Sneak Peek. It's only after...

Art: Isha (Full-Body)

And here is the first of December's holdovers: a full-body art of Isha, the foremost deity of the Ishavak Faith. You may have seen her described in the book two or three updates ago, and I think Khutilust did a great job, both in following the (admittedly exhaustive) physical descriptions given in the scene, as well as in capturing the feel of her character!

Sneak Peek (January 7)

As promised, the sneak peek for this week! This one features the opening segments of F's day-off scene, which includes a fun little isle of worldbuilding that I'm quite pleased with. I hope you enjoy it!

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