Hi everyone! I’m JJ Laurier, but most people around here call me Jess, so feel free to do the same. I usually use they/them pronouns, but she/her is also fine.
I’m an interactive fiction writer/indie game developer, and thus far I’ve published one game, Fields of Asphodel, which might be what brought you here. At the moment, I’m working on its sequel, Blood of the Living, and may or may not be sneakily developing another project in my spare time.
This blog is mostly a place for the occasional update, asks, some art or reblogs, and all of that. I happily take questions, but please read the FAQ and Ask Policies linked above before sending anything in.
I’m also on Patreon, if you’re interested in more frequent updates, bonus goodies, and various levels of early access to my projects.
I track the tags ‘asphodelgame,’ and 'chrysanthemumgames' but if you want me to see something it’s probably safer just to @ me.
Welcome to the blog; stay as long as you like!
Project descriptions under the cut.
Steam || Play Store || App Store
Forced into an arranged marriage with the God of the Dead, only you can decide what to make of your new life. Befriend misfit deities, repel giant attacks, find the culprit behind the river goddess’s mysterious illness, and use your powers to nudge Fate in your favor! Decide what kind of deity you want to be—whether you’ll answer prayers, how you’ll develop your powers, and what role you’ll take in governance.
Fields of Asphodel is a ‘cozy’ game—not an action-packed adventure or dramatic soap opera, it focuses on daily life and developing relationships. In fact, FoA lacks mechanical stats at all, relying instead on a system of traits and roleplaying. The romances are very light and slow burn, particularly in this first installment, and there’s a heavy emphasis on consent and self-determination, as well as platonic relationships.
Demo || Forum Thread
Blood of the Living continues the story of Fields of Asphodel, consisting of six distinct routes, one for each possible RO/PO, as well as subplots focused on the Player Character and their family. As the PC grows closer to their friends and potential romantic interests in the Underworld, they will quickly find themselves tangled in those characters' stories, even as they shape their own development as a deity, and how their relationship with their blood family moves into the future.
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Hi! As BOTL reaches closer to its end, will it have a similar editing and redraft as FOA did? I want to catch up on the chapters but am aware of it I think going on an embargo when submitted for publication, so I want to make sure I have time to read it through!
Thank you for your hard work :) While I’m not fully up to date, I have loved all the chapters so far 🤍
Hi anon!
BotL will certainly be going through an editing process before submission, and the first draft of the game will still be playable during that time as before. That said, I am certainly not planning for those edits to take six whole months this time, so given the pace things are currently going at, I would expect to be submitting the game to the publisher (and thus taking the public demo down) sometime between September and December of this year.
So if you want to play the whole thing before it's submitted, you'll probably want to check back sometime around the end of August to be completely sure it's still there. I expect Chapter Ten and the epilogue will be done around then, but the editing won't, even if it only takes me a few weeks this time.
After September starts, though, I can't guarantee anything. I just can't see that far into the future, and don't know what kind of feedback I'm going to get, or how extensive my edits will be this time.
I've been humming along with new progress in June, and can say that Chapter Ten is about half-finished. I'm not sure if I'll have it done-done by the end of July, or just mostly-done, but it should be one of the two, barring any kind of unforeseen disaster.
That's... really basically it this time. I just sort of boringly make progress, which is ideal as far as I'm concerned, because it means things get done eventually—and that's the dream, really.
I hope you all have a great month, and naturally I'll be back at the end of July (or perhaps a smidge before, depending), when I will likely have something much more certain to say about the public release date for the chapter.
The colors are so rich and vibrant in these, and I love the resemblance between your PC and Iasion. I'm genuinely delighted you've enjoyed the games. :)
In Greek myth, deities can collect theonyms, & in your Greek myth at least, they change names when divorced from their primary domain. The PC possibly choosing an epithet in Pylos, gives the idea this might be a possibility in game, but a lot more options become relevant with the additional possibility of a new domain as well. So, I was wondering if changing the PC’s name &/or collecting another theonym might be options in the last bit of BoL? I thought it a fun idea to ponder, regardless!
This is certainly something that could happen in the PC's future, as their new powers develop and they decide what use to put those to, but it's unfortunately, outside the scope of BotL, which isn't really covering too much time after the Laüs episode.
As with all kinds of things like this, though, you're absolutely free to imagine what you like, and it is something that would likely happen for those PCs inclined to continue actively engaging with the mortal realm especially. :)
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I found this IF awhile back and I totally forgot to send an ask T_T
But I wanted to know if there is any NSFW in the IF? Like are their explicit sex scenes or just suggestive??
Thank you!
There's nothing explicit in either book, anon. At most, you're looking at some lead-up to fade-to-black in BotL; I have very vaguely described a couple of characters taking off their clothes, and the act of kissing / some non-explicit touching, and that's as much as there's going to be for any of them.
I'm not sure whether that's a good or a bad thing for you, or whether it counts as NSFW or not (I wouldn't read those parts in public, but that's just me), but there it is nonetheless. :)
I was wondering why Iason nvr had other children when he was a king? What did he do during the MCs childhood?
He never had other children because he never met anyone else he wanted to marry and have them with. The man was still ardently in love with Demeter, and even if that feeling started to fade, he still couldn't imagine being with anyone else.
Yes, he was a king and kings care about heirs, but he had plenty of younger relatives who could have taken over, so there wasn't an excessive amount of pressure to do otherwise. A nephew or younger cousin is a perfectly fine successor, especially if the king himself endorses this.
As for what he did, well... he ran a kingdom? As well and generously as he could. He also built a temple to Demeter in his city and was known to make offerings and prayers there frequently, (partly because he loved her and partly in hopes that she could hear him). He also sometimes dispatched people to other locations with rumored ties to her to discover what they could. He had an inkling, of course, as to why she suddenly went no-contact, but there wasn't a lot he could do from his position.
And, as a king of a relatively small region, he of course had obligations to others, which is how he ended up in a war in the first place. That's not the only time he had to go to battle, and his relatively peaceful reign was thus occasionally broken by the need to sail on someone else's behalf.
I was wondering what would give the trans/nb ROs gender envy (if anything) and what gives them gender euphoria? Or maybe they've been trans/nb for so long they don't get those "big feels" anymore? Maybe just, what's something gender related about another trans/nb person that they would notice and appreciate, and what gives them gender contentment in that case? 🤔 Have any of the cis ROs given their gender any thought before? Do any feel they are maybe a slightly different flavor of their gender?
This is, of course, different for all of them, and I'm not going to be able to describe everything, of course, but a little bit for each of them is doable!
So Alekto I think is definitely inclined to gender euphoria, though she doesn't tend to feel a lot of gender envy these days because in that respect she's exactly who and how she wants to be. She admires all kinds of femininity, but she's quite pleased with her own particular expression of it for herself. She feels particularly good when doing things like choosing her clothes for the day and combing her hair or bathing, ways of interacting with her body that are gentle and caring, but also 100% when she's having a good spar and really pressing the limits of what that body can do. She can likewise get a hit of happiness from seeing herself in either very feminine, colorful clothing or well-polished armor.
Pyri still does experience gender envy, particularly towards Charon and a little bit Hermes as well. It's not a huge or particularly heavy feeling, but it does hit them every once in a while. They're very firmly nonbinary, but conscious that they still 'read' as more feminine than they'd like. For them, the ideal situation would be one where no one has any kind of guess about their gender or thinks about it at all—while that's not really a look, per se, they think they'd get closest by being as androgynous as possible, and they'd rather lean towards masculine if they had to lean at all. But they also don't particularly want to permanently alter their body, so it's still something they're kind of in the process of figuring out.
Euphoria for them can sometimes happen if they really think they look good that day, for example, but they tend to aim more towards a sort of contentment that allows them to not think too hard about how they're reading to other people or what they're expressing, so it's more a factor of who they're with and where they are than how they look as such.
Charon is quite stably content with things, having really no sense of gender envy towards anyone. They admire people who are able to preserve a sense of who they are over a wide range of 'expressions,' such as Alekto and her comfort with both armor and very fine clothing, but they don't feel themself to be particularly lacking in this area, either. He's just generally quite settled with that aspect of his life, and he's been respected for who he is for a very long time now, which helps.
As for the cis characters, I think Hekate's made a point of considering her gender on numerous occasions, as she's firmly of the opinion that it's one of those things that might change as she does, over long centuries of evolving as a person. So far she's not really noticed anything that gives her cause to second-guess that she's a woman, and she tends to prefer expressions of gender that are more feminine, so she's comfortably but not thoughtlessly settled in her identity, while open to the thought that it might change in the future.
Hermes went through a phase in his life where he didn't think he was 'masculine enough' to fit certain standards that were foisted upon him. This was serious enough that he started to genuinely wonder if maybe he wasn't a bit nonbinary or fluid or something of that nature, but after experimenting for a bit and talking things through with people he could trust, he decided that he's probably just a guy who doesn't feel the need to be 'as masculine' as convention would dictate. He's still trying to decide whether he wants to occasionally make more femme choices in, for example, accessories, but it's not something that's usually front of mind for him at the moment, either.
Hades's personality and preferences in his early life were influenced almost entirely by his mother, and he knows that the softness he still retains even all these centuries later might be characterized by some (such as his brothers) as 'womanly.' This has never particularly bothered him, but nor has it ever really shaken his perception of his own gender. His relationship with it is complicated, but not because of uncertainty about it—rather, his life has very much been shaped by the expectations he bore as Kronos's eldest son, and what that meant for his relationships with his brothers, father, and mother. He outright rejects some of the gendered expectations that go with those things, but allows himself to bear others, in accordance with his principles as an individual.
This is very lightly nsfw, but I was going through the early posts of your blog and found that Hades likes biting. I was wondering how he managed that with those incisor teeth of his. Does he round them off/dull them? Does he bite very, very, lightly? I have a hard time imagining him being okay with giving the PC puncture wounds, even if they were into it, lol. Unless...he maybe has some, yet to be discovered by the PC, vampiric tendencies? 👀
Obviously he has no interest in leaving anyone with wounds, no. :)
Mild nsfw below the cut also.
I usually leave this stuff up to people's personal headcanons, but here's a 'default' option I guess, for if you don't have one:
The preference to not, y'know, actually harm someone is usually accommodated with some combination of just being light with it (and/or, e.g., scraping instead of just digging in), and also blunting them by various means, yes.
If PC were definitely and enthusiastically into the idea, he wouldn't mind drawing a very small amount of blood, but it's not something he's particularly fascinated by personally, and he certainly wouldn't drink it.
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As a completionist who loves angst, can you pls share how to get the domains of madness, corruption, nightmares and chaos 🥹
Hey anon,
Most of these don't actually have any angst attached! Spoilers below the cut.
'Madness' (I don't love this as a name for the concept, but what happens doesn't really fit 'revelry' and it is a myth-accurate domain of Dionysus) is the explicitly Dionysian option, for everyone who's been asking for that over the life of the games (the wine part is already implied if you chose to help Ikarios grow wine grapes in the first place). It becomes an option if you've taken at least two of the 'Dionysian' options across the games. Currently, you can simulate this by choosing to look into the Underworld and its properties when the character builder asks what you did in the library.
That is also currently (after a fix), the way to simulate the conditions needed for the 'chaos' option, which can alternatively be gained simply by living in the Underworld full-time (or almost full time—three weeks a year on Olympus or less, basically). Chaos is the 'primordial' domain of the Underworld itself, and you need a stronger connection to it than just living there part time to tap into it in a situation like that.
For nightmares, you need to have learned a little bit of dream magic from Hypnos, which means you went to see her and didn't arrive as quickly as possible, since doing so means you wake him up prematurely and he's a bit grumpy about it and disinclined to offer extra perks. (This can be simulated by the character builder as well, by choosing to have gone at the second available opportunity rather than the first. I think it explicitly mentions learning dream magic.).
Corruption is specific to the Hekate route, and in particular, to her magic still being cursed after the final encounter with Crataeis, Kyra, and Echidna (and of course connected to yours, still). You have to tap into her power, and then choose to go further, reaching beyond what she's offering you to where she's containing that corruption in her magic. Naturally, she's going to want to discuss that afterwards.
All of these options are also only available if you go after the attackers. Madness, nightmares, and chaos can be gained either way, but if you want corruption (like vengeance), you need to go first thing, so no one is there to theoretically stop you from killing people.
I think I or in some cases commenters have explained basically how to get every domain at this point either just now or here, so for everyone else, please check that out before you ask me how to get a specific domain.
In the Chapter 8 manticore fight with Pyri, my MC avoided all the spikes (using their combined magic to burn them to ash), but the narrative assumes they were wounded.
And when they went to visit Iasion afterward, Demeter was there of course, but my MC offered for her to stay, which I found surprising, because they were still barely being polite to her when forced to interact before. Do you have to refuse even the possibility of interacting with her to keep your MC angry at her and/or distant with her? Because they did see what was happening when she returned with Lady Maia, and they did allow her to help with the public garden project instead of telling her to stay away. I wasn't sure about it, so I thought I'd let you know. Thanks so much for your story!
Hey anon,
I think you sent me like a bunch of bug reports/questions similar to this in a couple of chunks a while ago, so thanks for those. I think I've made adjustments to correct everything that needs correcting, and I implemented some of your suggestions as well.
It turns out I was keying Demeter's response/the subsequent one from PC when you happen upon her and Iasion off whether you'd completely excluded her from all interaction thus far, which does seem like it's not quite enough nuance, so I added some other conditions that will trigger the choice about how to respond to her. I think it's much more balanced now for those in a bit more of a grey area, so cheers.
I'm almost embarrassed to ask this, but I feel like inquiring minds want to know. When Hades takes MC back to the flower field and has them straddle his lap... Is he... ehem.. aroused? Was this supposed to be a fade to black kinda thing or was it just a lot of kissing? Or up to player interpretation?
That's all up to your interpretation, anon. I left it vague on purpose, so people could give the context (and their ideas of what happened afterwards), the amount of 'heat' they prefer.
Just because nobody has really talked about it yet, the new domains are so friggin cool! I'm a bit sad we don't get to play around more with them, but considering the branching I can see why you put it more towards the end.
I know you probably aren't planning it, but with a bit of a break, if you ever feel like getting back to this version of the Underworld I would LOVE a book 3!
Ikarios is working with Grandpa Scapha, Mom Demi and Dad are getting on Zeus' last nerve with their lovey dovey courtship, Odysseus pissed of Poseidon AND Athena maybe, we get to take sides in Aphrodite's affairs with Ares (the younger), there's a cool temple with Nikos finally all grown up and pretty, Apollo being miffed that his oracle boy is our worshipper primarily and not his. Orpheus and his wife are accidentally causing weird cults to spring up since they kinda regularly come back from the dead and now people get all creative again with the whole immortality pursuit (maybe Kronos is at it again, too).
Pyri is punching Theseus goodbye after his mandated labour term is up, there is room for all kinds of stuff with all these heroes on the Isles getting too bored to stay peaceful, MC helps Makaria develop her domain/magic and stuff with her parents gets explained more (a parental rights trial coming up?), .......I dunno, I'm just really reluctant to say goodbye to these characters and all those possible relationships and their variants. The more books there are, the more choices and variations, the more insane the branching and coding, I know, but it does not stop me from wanting to continue seeing my Persephone (or whichever other people picked) develop even further.
I mean there's still ch10 and an epilogue, but yeah. I'm getting wistful. Also, I went back and forth in my saves, but finally I settled on decay over chaos for the new domain, just bc that line about it being such a good blending point in between life and death is so perfect for the Hades romance and all our previous conversations about the topic. (Also, compost. And wine fermenting. Technically MC could grow things too much so they rot before kinda.. but this feels more deliberate and kinda cool.) Especially with the visual effects! Hades probably hates it, but my Sephie is delighted. She has a thing for goth boys anyway, she doesn't mind getting/becoming a bit freaky.
Also, I REALLY hope we can get a bit more insight into the RO perspective of things before things fully wrap up. Just a bit of a POV from their view would be such a tantalizing treat!
Yes, I replayed again with the same Hades romance instead of the Hekate one I was kinda semi planning to go for. I do not know why, it always ends up being him. I guess it's fate!? 😅
I don't think I'm going to be adding RO POVs to the game at this stage, just because I think that's something that needs to be very deliberate, and now of all the times would be a little too eleventh-hour for it to make sense.
As for a third book, well, I won't close off the possibility of returning to this setting and these characters entirely, but it's certainly not within my current plans (which to be fair are really only 1-2 projects ahead). I'd say definitely don't hold your breath, but maybe someday I'll do a DLC or something. I don't pretend to know what the future's going to be like, especially not anymore.
Congrats on being so close to the end! I know you shared the potential domains for Iason, so I was wondering if you'd share the potential domains for the player character?
Sure! The player character, if involved in the Laüs subplot this time, gets two of the following domains (not all combinations are possible):
Many of these are dependent not just on the actions you choose at the time, such as where to go and how to handle things (and in what order), but also pre-existing factors like whether your magic is still bonded with your RO/PO's, or whether you took certain other options at various points in the past.
(Madness is slightly bugged right now, in that you can get it, but it isn't reflected properly in a few conversational options later on. I'm working on this and it will hopefully be fixed by the time Chapter Ten comes out.)
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chapter nine was absolutely perfect omg, so emotional but also so so beautiful, im sad it's almost over 😭
also Hades this chapter OMG HE WAS EVERYTHING
I'm still at the point where I can't believe it's only a chapter and an epilogue to go! Fully just... alternating between trying to get my head around it and Not Thinking About It (tm). It's going to hit me like a truck when it actually registers though, for sure.
Like the others all have 'alternate' forms (e.g. horned Hades, aquatic Charon), the PC will at some point develop one as well, especially as they come into their own in terms of power and influence. Those little tidbits were just meant to be hints at possibilities, since the whole thing isn't covered in the scope of the game. :)
Wait the "life" domain doesn't have one because it's just strenghtening PC's original domain?
As of right now, only the options to curse or kill the attackers have this detail. I'm still deciding whether or not I want to (or even can) do something similar for the more abstract ones, like mercy or protection, especially because some of them don't actually involve any use of magic at the time at all (just, e.g., talking to someone).
Life's in that second pile for now, but this is on my list of things to go back and look at when I do edits. I also have to consider that if I give a physical manifestation to these other options, and then a PC takes one of those and also an option to curse the attackers, it happens twice, but differently, so it's a bit of a balancing act, because it's meant to be like... one small hint, and not something that's constantly happening to them when they use magic now, if that makes sense.
