A Tale of Heroes

It's a cape story, about a group of superpowered beings who must defend Giga City against villains, crooked politicians, natural disasters, and the most dangerous enemy of all...

Their past.

If this has caught your attention, please check out the demo here: https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/a-tale-of-heroes-wip/93292

If there's anything else you would like to know (or feedback you'd like to share), please send me an ask or message! I love talking! :D

Still writing, been averaging out at about 1,000 words every day. I think I know exactly where this update’s gonna end - I’m gonna take y’all all the way to the dinner with Ignis’s parents, and all the awkwardness therein! :D

Here's where I'm ending things for tonight:

I’m working on the next update, trying to get something out for you all. This one’s definitely going to be longer than the last one, I think. I’m planning to include the first ‘big’ Aki romance scene, it’s one I’ve had in mind since I more or less started actually picturing the ROs in my head.

In the meantime, here’s a couple of screens from some of the scenes, just to show you a little bit of the work:

First off, I do want to say that I absolutely loved the demo and played it several times, thinking about the implications of the Other Me and trying to consider how I felt about them within the framework of the team that clearly needs therapy and love.

Secondly, silly little thing (which is my ASK): would it be possible to make Forlorn a RO because I unleashed chaos, which was my own fault. I, in my hubris, decided that my superhero name was going to Valkyrie, only to be punched in the face in the hotel scene when I found out this man has a tattoo of one.

Only to realize that he is not in the current line-up.

I was not going into planning to be a Forlorn girl (Seeker was here!), we punched him in the face, and he is within his rights to take that personally. Man is giving me Adam from Wayhaven Chronicles vibes and I did not know I needed that in the superhero stories that I stumbled upon.

Oh wow, that's hilarious. It's like it was meant to be! :D

Not a silly little thing at all, by the way, though I will need to ask for a tiiiiny bit of patience! Forlorn is slotted to be a RO, but only from Book 2 onwards, after the MC and the team have had a bit more of a chance to get to know more about him.

I do promise his romance in Book 2 won't be... quite as slow-burn as A's - though it's absolutely gonna be jampacked with angst.

Is there a special prison meant to hold them?

That's actually something of a debacle I'm having, ngl. Humans don't really have a way to 'nullify' powers - they manage an equivalent of this by simply keeping powered people stuffed with tranquilizers and the like.

Of course, having your defendant be high as a kite during a trial is hardly conducive to fair justice - how can they defend themselves if they barely even know where they are?

It's not something you're born to be, no. It's more a matter of conviction, principles, and a frankly superhuman level of stubbornness. The title isn't destined to be passed down a set line of successors or anything.

Some would argue he doesn't uphold the ideals at all. After all, how can a drunkard anti-authoritarian with a penchant for snarking at every figure of authority around him and pissing off a bunch of states manage to live up to the tales of the old Seekers, who freed slaves and were vital in defeating the Axis of Evil?

Others would argue that's literally all those motherfuckers have ever been good for.

But something that's important, and which gets highlighted in Chapter 5, is that a lot of Kratis' actions aren't necessarily his own, but reconstructions of how he thinks Victoria would have acted if she was present. Now, that doesn't mean he gets it right, of course, but no one knows Victoria better than Kratis.

Oh, 100%. There's no doubt in my mind, she'd be as dedicated to a revival as he is.

... If anything, she'd probably be worse about it. I've spent a lot of time talking about how the BK is obsessed with his Queen, but the same also applies in reverse. The BK was her biggest cheerleader, and the one source of infallible support. Suddenly having that connection 'severed' would do a lot of harm to her psyche, and there's a lot of... baggage, as well. I've mentioned this before, but the BK greatly coddled her, to perhaps an unhealthy degree. Having that dynamic flipped on its head, as the BQ now has to be the one taking care of him as he slowly wastes away (which from her pov would mean her being a failure, because he took care of her but she can't do the same for him) would cause her a lot of emotional damage.

There'd be stark differences outside of that, as well. While the BK is an isolationist that doesn't really care about the outside world, the BQ was a 'proud' Roman who is significantly more headstrong. It's not unlikely that if she was the one to live, the Byzantine Empire (greatly changed, naturally - maybe with Crete as its new heartland?) might have survived to the modern day.

The former! It was a very early program intended to see if the US could manage to increase the abilities of regular humans, and mostly for prestige/battlefield applications than any realm arms race with regular-born powered people.

Think of it kind of like a proof of concept test, just them trying to see if it's possible.

The government wouldn't even know how to approach Ignis' whole "I'm just a breathing living nuclear reactor, and my heart would put the Tsar Bomba to shame :)", and frankly, I don't think they even know that's what's going on.

Allegiances to... a different country, you mean?

That'd cause a severe diplomatic crisis, I think. While the max capabilities of the League members aren't really known (they've not been pushed to their limit yet), they are absolutely considered WMDs, and there is significant prestige to them.

It's a little variable in places like the British Commonwealth, where it is possible for a Commonwealth hero to be invited to the UK team, but if a League member just went "hey, I'm leaving to join the Chinese team, don't follow me!", then that's absolutely a real cause for concern and would heavily increase tensions in the world, it might even kick off a minor bush war somewhere.

It’s about 7,500~ words, more or less. Short, but mostly to get back into the swing of things. It continues Chapter 6, and leaves us with only two more scenes in it to go before we are officially finished with it. This update has a lot of Romanced!Aki content, so I would recommend you go down that route if you want to explore it. There’s also some special content for you Mars aficionados.

In any case, here’s what this latest update includes:

“Wait, Stratton’s 74. How come his granddaughter’s only 16?”

Several chats with the Red Planet.

The Return of the Queen (not that one).

A Promise of a Meal.

A Heart-to-Heart with a Mountain.

What the FUCK is a Founder?

As always, remember there's a thread on the CoG Forums, a Discord server you can join, and a Ko-fi, if you have the ability and the wish to support my writing.

Without any further ado, here's the link.

Hey y'all! Just passing by to give you a heads-up, I'm going to be posting an update at the end of the month to 'welcome in the new year'.

'Power dampening cuffs' is kind of a misnomer. An intentional one by the state of course, but there isn't actually a way to 'dampen' someone's powers with the current existing technology.

The cuffs are just a bit of an engineering marvel. They include an auto-injector and are loaded up with vials of tranquilizers and other drugs so powerful that they could knock a blue whale out on the spot.

They were invented in the late 60s, during the heights of the counterculture movement in the USA where political and racial tensions were at an all-time high.

<3 Me alegra mucho escuchar eso! Que bueno que hayas disfrutado la historia, es un cumplido gigantesco.

En total van a ser tres libros. Hasta ahora estos son los subtitulos:

"Return of the King", "The Lost World", y "The Founder's War" (ojo que no están en orden).

I guess more importantly, will we be able to talk to her about it and formalize our relationship dynamics?

Heyo, happy holidays! Sorry about the late response, I took a few days off from everything to be with family and stuff.

Lat is 100% making all of this up on the spot. She likes being a top, sure, but it's not something she has super set herself on for years or anything like that. She's doing all this stuff because it's turned out to be something she enjoys, it wasn't planned.

It’s 21,018 words long, bringing the grand total to 218k words including code. The next update should be around the same size at least, so… there go my original expectations of this book being only 300,000 words long. 🤧

Anyway! Here’s a short run-down of what you can expect in this chapter:

The United States’ reach exceeds its grasp.

God. Damn. Papparazi!

A dinner with a chance for escape.

Lore for you! Lore for the world! Lore for the buildings you live in!

Are we meant to be the baddies ft. Latooni Kitamura.

Seeker likes passing out there, guys… ft Latooni Kitamura.

Mama, going to kill a man…

Also, pay attention in Chapter 2, and you’ll see something neat!

Also, also, there’s a neat new choice if you go with Nova and Mars at the start of Chapter 4!

Also, also, also, if you play a trans or enby MC, there’s a little extra in chargen that I would like feedback on, if possible.

As always, remember I have a Discord you can join if you’d like to talk somewhere else: https://discord.com/invite/qbqr6RmSdV

And, if you’re willing and capable, I do have a ko-fi which helps support my writing, so if you’re ever in a position in which you can spare a few bucks: https://ko-fi.com/juancuevas0168

Now, with all that out of the way, here’s the link!

Please, have fun!