Hello once again. Since a long time ago, I had a summary of an important event that would have taken place after the second adventure: the council of the various tribes at the Passion Temple, so let's start today's post by pasting it and giving it some format:

--- The Council of the Confined Valley ---
Representatives of all the tribes of the Confined Valley are summoned to the Passion Temple to discuss the Lizardlin menace. The following characters are present:
- Drishtya, Shrezdill, every Candidate.
- Nersmias, and depending on the ending of the first adventure, another Shapeshifter, who may be more or less hostile to the Passion Temple.
- Dirillsur, Eshir (Ashwalkers).
- Cneve, Sethra (Gaanidans).
- Dultselor (Padmiri's old gardener, very aged) and Eyfrein (another gardener at the Leirien tribe, sister of the previous High Priestess).
- Relentless Scourge (chieftain of the Beastkin tribe) and Unending Pain.
- Lainomia (Aiishen Matriarch) and Fufngu (Aiishen Priest).

Drishtya has two goals: to make the other tribes agree to cooperate to fight the menace, to gain time until the Candidates finish their training (since Candidates who have finished their training will be far more useful at driving the Lizardlin out), and to create scout teams to overlook Lizardlin movements and organize the defense of the tribes when appropriate. Once there's a new High Priestess, she would decide how to deal with the Lizardlins.

Several of these characters have different agendas and loyalties. Shapeshifters, Gaanidans and Ashwalkers are the ones with the lowest incentive to cooperate, since they're the furthest away from the Lizardlin attacks.
- The Shapeshifters might be more willing to cooperate if they agreed to keep Valtan as their Candidate, or if the Candidate with the highest merit didn't defend Valtan.
- The Ashwalkers won't be able to cooperate much, but they will be most willing if the Candidates supported them by the end of their crisis.
- The Gaanidans will be willing to cooperate minimally if they weren't asked to support the Ashwalkers, and will refuse otherwise.
- The Beastkins will demand the Passion Temple to stop harboring rebels, to which Drishtya will refuse, arguing that she, as a Regent, cannot interfere in the internal matters of other tribes. The Beastkins ultimately refuse to cooperate at all, and will organize their own defense.
- The Leiriens and Aiishen will agree to cooperate unconditionally. Lainomia will show mild discontent about Drishtya not agreein to Scourge's demands, arguing that it is only up to each tribe to decide on their own social hierarchy.
- Padmiri confronts Scourge about oppressing his own people. The Leirien representatives mediate to prevent the event from evolving into a larger discussion.
- In the end, the negotiations barely achieve anything because not enough tribes are capable or willing of providing enough help, but they agree to provisionally establishing regular communications between different tribes and the Passion Temple, depending on who decides to collaborate.

Other events during the Council:
- If Sillan stayed at the Shapeshifter tribe, Nersmias will be cold and interactions with him will be short. Otherwise, he will ask Sillan if she is enjoying her new life, and reprimand Valtan that the morals at their tribe have relaxed due to her crimes. If Valtan was accepted as the Shapeshifter Candidate, he will also tell her that he nonetheless intends to work together with her, if she is so willing.
- Padmiri cannot help but notice that Dultselor, her previous gardener, is considerably aged and close to his death, which might be akin to realizing that your father or grandfather is going to die. Since Dultselor had become the most revered gardener in the Leirien tribe, Eyfrein has been working to occupy that vacuum in a close future. She gets closer to Padmiri as a result of her emotional shock and begins to work towards adopting a tutoring role towards her, which Eyfrein deems natural as Padmiri is her sister's successor as the Leirien Candidate.
- Lainomia will interrogate Ate about her progress in her training. Upon realizing that Ate is starting to develop relationships with the other Candidates, she will reprimand Ate. This may trigger a later conversation with Taototh, where he explains that the Aiishen follow a strict social hierarchy where specific people receive certain duties and roles in their society, chosen at birth by analyzing a newborn's soul through an orb of stars. This recontextualizes Ate's introduction at the start of the game: when she said that "the stars chose her", she meant that she was chosen to be trained as priestess at her very birth, and therefore was forced to follow a particularly strict routine during her whole life. Plenty of people in Aiishen society are also wary about forming emotional connections with people from other tribes. This marks the narrative beginning of Ate's character arc, although it was already moving in the background.

--- Dreams ---
After each adventure, there would be a dream with unknown, often unnamed characters. At the start, they might have been presumed to be filler sex scenes, like the one that took place after the Gleaming Caverns (does anyone even remember it?). I wanted to see how long it would have taken for anyone to ask if they were related, and later on, for anyone to discover how. Only the first dream is written (since it was already implemented in the game), but the summary of each dream is redacted. I'll publish those summaries at a later date.

--- Third adventure ---
The Leirien tribe adventure was for quite some time quite the pain, because I had planned it to be split into two parts and it would have become far too lengthy. Because I no longer have to code and write it, I feel like I've freed myself from a weight at my shoulders, so I can unashamedly explain the plan without needing to cut it down in size. From my notes, the tribe itself:

"The Leirien tribe is explained to be a tree-based city. Buildings are built by manipulating the growth of trees, and forcing them to create empty spaces in their interiors. They usually have a yearly event where they organize their efforts to manipulate trees into changing their projected course of growth, but since they've suffered considerable damage from the storms, this year's efforts will be dedicated to clearing the rubble and performing repairs."

<The plant people live in a tree city> trope, yadda yadda, giant tree at the center, this will come back at the end of the story. Anyhow, the Candidates don't actually get to see it when they arrive, because they have to lend their support in an ongoing skirmish with the Lizardlins. After several risky gambits, Atelechinol (the Lizardlin sub-commander) gets cornered, but the rest of the Lizardlins attack from behind, but they get repealed, but Atelechinol grabs the player, but she's still surrounded, BUT but but the section of the ground over which she's standing crumbles. This would be the start of the first section of the third adventure:

--- The Old Temple ---

The player character and Atelechinol end up together in the depths of a subterranean complex, barely illuminated by ancient aetherial crystal lamps. Atelechinol initially attempts to attack the player, but the attack of a few monsters force them to work together. Once the monsters are defeated, Atelechinol offers the player a truce so that they may make it out of there. The player may attack again, agree to a truce, or agree to the truce and ask to cooperate for a while. This is followed by a narrative segment focused on exploration, with the goal of reaching the surface again.

Depending on the player choices:
- Cooperating with Atelechinol will give you a companion during the monster fights, which will be several, and allow you to discuss with her.
- Agreeing to a truce without cooperation will eventually result in both characters choosing their own way.
- Attacking Atelechinol and winning will let you capture her and interrogate her for a bit, but she will eventually run away.
- Attacking Atelechinol and losing will result in the player character being captured, but freeing herself during a monster skirmish. The player will receive new options to end up in either of the first two routes.

So, in truth, only two routes: either you escape alone, or you escape with Atelechinol. While communication is difficult with a sworn enemy, getting out of that place will take quite some time, and maintaining silence for that much time is even harder. So, if forced to cooperate with Atelechinol, she will argue that they aren't invading the Confined Valley, but reclaiming what was always theirs; that the surface tribes and the monsters both, led by a tyrant, casted her people to a meager existence underground, and so they will achieve justice by forcing the tribes out of the Confined Valley. Not a great outlook, but it's better to understand where she's coming from than not to. There are hints that she's still hiding something else.

After many hours of spelunking, you reach a section illuminated by daylight. If Atelechinol is still with you, she will make one last attempt to kidnap you, but will instead abort it upon noticing that there are people wandering here, and they aren't Lizardlins. Whether she's already not here or she has just escaped, you find the wanderers: the rest of the Candidates, trying to find you, but also observing for the first time the Old Temple. This scene is where the latest illustration that served as the cover for the game came from.

--- Leirien Tribe ---

During the second section of the adventure, the Candidates are back at the Leirien tribe, where Drishtya explains to them that the Old Temple was a city-temple complex where all the tribes used to live together, centuries ago. This place was built at the other side of a large hill bordering the Leirien tribe, while the temple itself was built into the hill and below. Due to the passage of time, the temple is now infested with monsters, much like the forests sometimes are.

The usual festivities in the tribe are relegated to a minor plane, since most of everyone's efforts are instead focused in reconstruction: the tribe suffered major damages during the aether storms one month ago, and everyone old enough to use any sort of magic is occupied healing the trees in which the Leirien live. There's also a small Shapeshifter delegation here, led by Nersmias, to support the Leirien tribe. Depending on the ending of the first adventure, there might be minor confrontations between him and Valtan.

Besides all of that, there's basically one major event: Dultselor's (natural) death. Your stay in the tribe is really quiet, more focused on existential conversations with the Candidates and other secondary protagonists, and Padmiri's confrontation of her own feelings, her place in the world, the loss of such an important figure in her life, death itself, and how to avoid falling into depression. There isn't much else to do, so the player character simply works on various activities, learns of Leirien culture, and leaves in due time, happy, if a bit preoccupied, to see Padmiri invigorated, assertive and even dominant. A bit of a change of pace, but- Wait, what did you say?

--- The secret Leirien route ---

Remember Eyfrein? She's another character introduced during the Council, before the third adventure. A gardener, and the sister of the High Priestess. Well, she plays an apparently secondary role during the adventure, showing zero interest for any of the Candidates, except for Padmiri. Which is natural, isn't it? Eyfrein is probably by now the most important political figure in the Leirien tribe, so she wants to make sure that their Candidate stays emotionally healthy. Nothing strange to see here. Except that Nersmias seems to be wary for some reason. And this leads to Valtan to be wary as well, out of distrust of Nersmias at first. So there are several hidden checks for the player character to be told to pay attention to what's going on, enabling her to collect various clues during their stay.

If enough clues get collected, the player character has a final conversation with Valtan on the second-to-last day before leaving, and gets woken up in the middle of the night as the Shapeshifter is leaving their quarters. Beyond the edge of the tribe, hidden underground at a large grotto, they find an unconscious Nersmias, a very large amount of entranced Leirien, and the very awake Eyfrein and Padmiri. Eyfrein groans that there are more annoyances (that's you) and gets ready to attack you and Valtan, but Padmiri detains her. Depending on various checks (will, perception, relationship with Padmiri and so on), either you fall unconscious as well, or you manage to learn that Eyfrein is (non-consentually) collecting the aether of the people in her own garden to nurture Padmiri, and to teach her the proper (more efficient, refined, educated, powerful) methods of draining and manipulating aether from other people, and the rightful philosophy she must follow at bending everyone's will without their notice to make sure she can maintain peace and harmony in the Valley, as the future High Priestess. And Padmiri isn't all that convinced, but since she's at a very vulnerable state due to Dultselor's death, she doesn't really resist. From this point, there are other possible routes/outcomes:
- Convince Padmiri that she isn't in the best state to blindly follow along, which makes her prevent Eyfrein from knocking you out. This triggers a fight where you, Valtan and Padmiri fight Eyfrein. The day after defeating her, Drishtya agrees with the other Leirien gardeners that she must lost her position and be taken captive to the Passion Temple, to be judged by the next High Priestess in the future.
- The fight takes place, but you lose. Your characters loses her memory over everything that's happened over the night, Padmiri's drives do change as it was planned, she learns new skills and drains stats from both you and Valtan. Relatively similar than if you had never learned of this whole event in the first place.
- You reassure Padmiri that Eyfrein is right. Valtan immediately turns against you, but Eyfrein and you defeat her. Eyfrein congratulates you for your good sense, and decides that, given that Padmiri is still a little bit too green (I'm not sorry for this pun), she will share a portion of her gift for Padmiri with you, so that "you may support her". Rather than forcing you to support Padmiri, this route still implements some of her drive changes, but also makes her a bit more subservient to you, you get some of these stat gains, and you also learn most of the new skills, which rather than for a Leirien or dryad, happen to be more befitting of a vampire. Not that anyone in the Confined Valley knows what that is.

So there you have it! These were the plans for the third adventure. Secret plots! Brainwashing! Exploiting your own people's trust! Abusing the psyche of your temporarily weakened pseudo-niece-figure! And whatever is going on with the old temple. Eyfrein was quite the piece of work, huh?
I'm sorry for procrastinating on writing these. I have no excuse, really, it's true that I'm not earning money from this anymore, but I still have fun redacting them. Thanks to everyone who's still reading!