Update and Name Poll

Hi everybody, it feels like it's been a while since I last gave you an official update, even though it's only been, like... three weeks? 😂 I hope you're all doing very well and enjoying the start of your summer! (I never know when spring, summer, or fall actually starts in other places... In Arizona, it feels like spring comes around Valentine's Day (or even earlier) and persists with very lovely weather until the end of May, which is when it starts to get a bit hotter here and school lets out; but I think that's earlier than a lot of places because we have to avoid the heat? And then the summer heat kicks in around June and lasts all the way until mid-October... 🫠 And we haven't even gotten to monsoon season yet!)

Anyway, I had an extremely busy month last month, so thank you all for your continued patience and understanding! As I mentioned in my last update post, I had to leave the country for a few weeks due to a family emergency. [Warning: the rest of this paragraph references a death in the family, though it will be kept brief. You can skip this paragraph if you want!] Tragically, I'm sorry to share that the family member we traveled to see passed away unexpectedly as a result of that emergency, the same day that we landed to see him. My family and I are all okay now and dealing with the loss the best way we can (and trying to support our other family members in the process), and ultimately, coming together as a family after a few years of not being able to see each other due to COVID was cathartic and healing, even though it was also a very emotional and fraught time for all of us, especially with having to suddenly plan a funeral. I'm back home now, and I only share all of that to preface that I'm hoping this month is where I can get things back to our regular schedule. However, I'm leaving things tentatively flexible in case anything else arises or my family needs me to step in to help with various things in the coming weeks. I hope that all makes sense! And again, I can't emphasize how much I appreciated everyone's kindness and support while I was going through such a tumultuous time. Things could have been twice as stressful and upsetting, but having your understanding and patience made a world of difference and allowed me to focus on being there for my family without having to worry about anything else. Thank you all very much for everything; I can't tell you how much of a comfort it was to me! ❤️

Anyway, to give you an update on where Shepherds stands:

• I am very excited to continue writing Chapter 7, especially now that the room-sharing scenes are all done! I think all four of the boys got a sweet moment in the spotlight, but that was some of the heaviest branching I've had to do in a while! 😩 I'm looking forward to writing the end of one route of this investigation, at least! From there, I'll probably take a break from Chapter 7 for a bit and move on to Chapter 8!
• As such, in the last few days, I've been turning my thoughts to the coming chapters, since I sense that Chapter 8 is going to creep up on us faster than we realize. Obviously the Ascension Festival will now be moved to Chapter 8 rather than staying in Chapter 7: back in August, I mentioned that I was having trouble figuring out where to stick it because moving it there would mean there would be three big holidays all in a row in the coming chapters, which made the pacing feel a little off. (Think about the last time we had a big holiday event in the game--Wintersun, back before setting off for Heth Macoll--and then think about having three of those events, one after the other. Feels kind of weird, right? Or is it just me??) Anyway, my brilliant solution for that dilemma was... to come up with another main story chapter/mission 😭😭😭
• Although it will be more work for me, I firmly feel that this new chapter will make the game and story cohesion way better (for reasons I can't fully explain at the moment) and will make the endgame portion of the game that much more satisfying, climactic, and explosive. It will give us time to explore certain characters who we haven't gotten a lot of time with and will clarify a lot of the things going on in the story. I am extremely excited about the addition of this new chapter/mission, even if I still have to figure out team compositions and certain details and whatnot. Importantly, the new chapter will introduce a new antagonist, which we'll discuss more at the end of this post!
• So right now, it's looking like Chapter 8 will be a "combo" chapter of sorts, combining two smaller but interconnected missions set in Haven into one chapter. In the first half of the chapter will be a mission with Riel, Shery, Chandry, Mimir, and Caine (we've alluded to this mission in other posts before). In the second half, it will be a mission with Tallys, Lavinet, and Halek (this is the mission with Guard-kun, and also an aforementioned opportunity to help Tallys and Lavinet actually become friends). I'll leave the details of Chapter 9 more of a secret for now, including who will be embarking on said mission, but I am very excited about it!!!
• Commissions are bustling and thriving this month! We've got Caine's character reference sheet, Chase's theme song, and character cards for Lavinet, Riel, and Mimir currently in the works! Tallys's character card will be revealed here on Patreon later this month, and it's as gorgeous as usual!
• I will hopefully be able to return to the short story this month, though I may have hit a bit of writer's block with Some Kind of Virus... I might try and push through to continue it this month, or I might write out a short Croelle POV story! I'm torn on this because I'm excited to write from his perspective (I haven't attempted it since I was, like... 16?) and I have a lot of ideas, but also conflicted because his story would contain massive, game-breaking spoilers, especially for the new Chapter 9! So I guess I'll just see what happens and where the creative wind blows this month...

All that being said, I need your help to name the new antagonist that will be making her official debut in Chapter 9! She's Enik's new Court Mage, a beautiful, ambitious, cunning, and extremely powerful Enchanter in the service of the Autarch. (She's basically an evil version of Lavinet if Lavinet had remained a villain in my original draft of the game.) But I haven't figured out her name yet! I'm very fond of using the surname "de Vespe" in my head and have been privately calling her Cordelia de Vespe, which is an extremely blatant reference to a game I enjoyed earlier this year, Greedfall--so I'm going to run with it for now, but I might change it later down the road if I find it too obvious!

But let's just use it as a placeholder for now! What do you think the name of this new villainess should be?