Normandy

demo (155K words)

genre: medieval fantasy

content warnings: may include explicit sexual content, graphic violence, gore and mutilation, cannibalism, animal cruelty, torture, violence against children

A work in progress medieval fantasy interactive novel that follows the steps of a Hero's Journey. Take control of a hunter, cutter, smith or alchemist born in Woodcutter's Village, a small hamlet in the Kingdom of Alyrid that houses no more than 200 people.

The village is all you've ever known, but now it faces an unforeseen danger by a long forgotten enemy. Your home's only hope for survival lingers on you delivering a message pleading the Southland Duke for military support, leading you to explore regions you've only heard of in tales and songs.

But the journey is never simple. What was a simple task of delivering a message is impeded every step of the way. Struggle your way through the dangers lurking in the kingdom. Develop and awaken your still fledgeling potential for magic. Prepare for what may well be a suicidal last stand.

How much will the journey change you?

features

Play as male, female or nonbinary; straight, gay or bisexual; monogamous or polyamorous.

Choose the profession you were born into from a hunter, woodcutter, smith or alchemist. Your surname is dictated by your profession.

Fight against familiar enemies: orcs, goblins and the undead.

Awaken and learn magic to wield against your enemies, but be careful—the Arcane is dangerous when used in excess.

romance options

Alyssa Woodcutter (f) — "There's no changing our lot, so I serve the militia. If I could, I'd be a knight."

Over six feet tall with black hair, Alyssa has a Woodcutter's dark blue eyes. She exchanges the most work days to serve in the village militia and spends even her off-hours in the training yard.

Agrien Hunter (f) — "If you fail, it's your fault. If you don't like that, maybe do better next time."

A cocky huntress with a competitive streak that inherited her father's rare ginger hair and green eyes. An assertive woman that doesn't believe in sugarcoating the truth, leading to harsh words and controversial opinions.

Elanor Woodcutter (m) — "Stop being so damn reckless. I'm the one that has to patch you up later."

Though keeping his surname of birth, Elanor was chosen by the village healer to be her apprentice. While still tall as most of his family, he never developing the strength that the work builds, leading to a lanky physique. The unkempt black hair and a grumpy mood that masks his sensitive nature gives him a boyish demeanor.

William Carpenter (m) — "Excuse me, she was perfectly willing. Just not very single."

A carpenter by trade but a musician by passion, William could never truly work on what he wanted the most as the village values only practical skills. Inspired by heroic tales, he longs to leave the village and live somewhere he can truly do what his heart desires. His trade of carpentry and the arts give him an athletic physique, a dancer's grace and a poet's tongue—and the infamy of using it on everyone, whether married or not.

links

Don't get me wrong she is still my favorite RO (big fan of ginger rep, especially fiery redheads). I just like to have a little spice with my sweetness y'know?

Depends a lot on what you'd consider to be mean! She's civil, not gratuitously mean, but there were people rubbed the wrong way with her initial stance with Amara, as an example (even though it was brief).

Now that I have some time to breathe again, let's get on what's missing, what had to be changed, etc.

Discounting the last update where I made some changes to the mechanics, I basically deleted about half of William's date. I was stuck in it, and I couldn't progress any further for as long as I was dissatisfied with the path that it was taking.

Back to the drawing board, I managed to actually map out the important pillars of the date. I've done something similar for the polyamory dates as well, both as Agrien/Alyssa as well as Agrien/William.

After the writing started, William's date is nearly finished. I'm standing at the resolution and trying to map it out going forward. These events are not linear, so I'm just considering how much (if any) they should affect what's happening now vs affect what happens on the latter half of Chapter 4.

Agrien/Alyssa date has some content. It has the beginning, but now it's actually planned on how to go forward and it's a matter of how to write rather than figuring out what to write. The old idea was mostly tossed aside because I didn't like it.

Agrien/William has nothing actually written for now, but at least there is a plan in place for it, so it should be smoother to write it now.

—

The implemented fighting and stat check system is great and is more often used than stat checks I've seen on other IFs. One question though, how can our Arcana be increased? I've done a character who's an alchemist and does camping as a hobby, with graceful, subtle, and strategic being my main stats. My character is only introduced to having the capability of magic after meeting Amara, yet there are several unavailable Arcana check choices I've seen throughout the story. I'm wondering if that's purposeful or if there's really a way for my character to know about magic early on?

Anyways, I really enjoyed the story and can't wait for the next update. Thank you for putting in the work to write and code this IF for people like to me to enjoy it. Have a good day! 💜💜

Thank you so much! I'm glad you like the poly romance, I'm writing it with a lot of care to try to make it feel real.

About Arcana, through the story there are some moments that you gain a hidden 'magic track' stat added to it. Meeting Amara is one such moment, and there's a few others that are missable. When you reach a total of 3 magic track points, it awakens magic, along with the Arcana stat and spells.

Picking the forge option here increases Lockpick and Alchemy. Not sure if the bug is across families, or just for Hunters.

Yeah, that one's intentional one as it involves in the alchemical creation of weak acids and other substances to aid in making the miniature metal shaping.

The four professions are divided by one bigger and one smaller increase, with the bigger one being the deciding factor in lockout:

Camping, even cooking meals by a fire in the forest|Unavailable to Hunter} — +20 survival, +15 athletics

Pruning the trees and bushes, to make them look neat|Unavailable to Woodcutter} — +20 athletics, +15 survival

Toying with basic alchemy, to make pretty lights or stinky bombs|Unavailable to Potions} — +20 alchemy, +15 lockpick

Making miniature toys out of copper in the forge|Unavailable to Smith} — +20 lockpick, +15 alchemy

Askbox should be accepting media now!

Also, other than origins (like the Carpenters becoming their own family over a long time), there's not much else to them in terms of fantastical origins like that.

Also theres a error for hunter mc when we decide to lay a trap for the bear, the stats check fails even when i have high strategic.

It's not really impossible, just not something I really conceived at the time [having a Woodcutter grandparent when being from another family]. It's just there to stay thematic to the family's height. When I first outlined the Woodcutter family, I think it was about 2 years before I published the IF demo, I wrote them as being descendants from the 7th Imperial Legion from the north and with giant's blood. After many revisions that particular bit got cut as "irrelevant trivia" but the thematic part stayed.

I checked the code for the trap and tried playing through as well, but I couldn't reproduce the bug. If you turn on the stat warnings at the beginning, the subroutine of the stat check should tell you whether your stat failed. If you could verify at that point when it fails (when it gives you the message), how much your strategic stat is at that moment, and what is the current page you're at when it fails (meaning, what normal text is being displayed), that'd help pin it down to know what is failing and where.

The specific section of the trap springing (not the placement) looks like this:

*if surname = "Hunter"

    You know that, despite what most people believe, bears are [i]not[/i] slow, and this one is very happy to prove you right. On all fours, the creature is rapidly running towards your direction, and you have no doubt how badly it would maul you if you don't get out of its way.

    *if hasTrap

        Fortunately, you've set up a trap exactly for this situation.

        *temp strategic 100 - {direct}

        *gosub_scene utils stat_test {strategic} 50 "strategic"

        *if strategic >= 50

Be wary of potential spoilers lurking on the tiny update.

—

No need for a full changelog on this one, just adding some customization option references throughout chapters. Added Amara's reputation boosts at the relevant moments, and a few more reputation changes for the other 4 companions as well.

CHANGELOG 18/APR/2026

Be wary of potential spoilers lurking on the changelog.

Coding/Mechanics

Replaced several subroutine redirects with goto_scene to avoid unpredictable behavior.

Replaced some file names to improve my sanity.

Replaced death redirects with a subroutine message.

Fixed armor mitigation logic so it no longer reduces magic drain damage.

New variables for incremental codex logic, steadily revealing lore pieces.

Created a reputation bar for Amara.

Fixed a few bugs related to stat checks throughout Chapters 1, 2 and 3.

Mindscape image no longer incorrectly inverts colors on dark mode.

Narrative

Rephrased several fight descriptions whose description will change a bit depending on your brutal/finesse even if that's not the main check.

Character customization added at the Nameless Bay section. It'll include some minor references to your family depending on choice. If this is contradicted anywhere else in the descriptions, please do bug report, since it's a late introduction. More references to the customization choices will be rolled steadily where I feel it's relevant or adds to the scene.

—

I'll start posting updates again as I have them, thinking about making them monthly reports on top of posts that are relevant (like changelogs as usual).

As of tomorrow, I will start redesigning some of the systems to make my life easier on how they expand, as well as rewriting William's romance (about half of it) because I'm very unhappy with how it looks right now.

System updates will be pushed sometime this week, likely during the weekend, whereas Chapter 4 work will continue with the same point that it was before (halfway point, update pushed when meeting the duke).

Thank you! Choice tree can get a little overwhelming, it's true. Sometimes I had to draw them explicitly so I'd visualize whether I was missing something, but splitting sections into different files has made my life a lot easier to keep up with it.

In regards to progress, there's a little background first: I got accepted into university (again) but my scholarship was denied, so trying to pay for tuition's been my foremost priority at the moment. I still write, but it's little enough that I can't, in good conscience, call it 'progress'.

Magic can still be achieved missing the opportunity in Chapter 1. The current triggers for a magic step are, 1 optional in Chapter 1

2 optional, 1 unmissable in Chapter 3

—

For Chapter 4, there's going to be 1 optional, 1 unmissable as well (already written in). For Chapter 5, there's going to be 1 unmissable.

You need 3 triggers to awaken magic—by Chapter 5, you're inevitably going to awaken magic even if you miss every other check.

Now that I've finished a rewrite of the main chapter branch, some things about Chapter 4 as it is now. Some of these things have already been said, some haven't.

There's currently a total of 35,000 words without code. The dungeons scene I've been working on should be almost done, but need to wrap up the various different ways it can branch to (I finished as far as the actual branching, in different parts, without wrapping up the branches themselves into a conclusion)

The mono romance lines are all finished, needing to finish the two poly ones, and most of the first half scenes are also finished. There's a chance to buy some armor, get another optional magic bump (or a new sigil, if you've already awakened magic), meet a foreigner and learn more about them, as well as to into a deeper dive regarding Atheryn's main religion. There's also a conclusion in regards to the amulet Agrien finds in the goblin den at Chapter 3.

If you were trained in magic in Chapter 1, there's also a new opportunity to learn yet another sigil. This is specifically for those that acquired the spellbook, not for those who awakened magic by other means. — Magic coding has been changed. I believe I've said this before, but a detailed explanation goes: it used to be reliant on Arcana for your spells, now it's variable based in regards to sigils. Although it's not gonna change anything as far as Chapter 3 goes, it changes things for when you start learning more sigils, which Chapter 4 has a few opportunities to learn and they're not a linear progression (which made the old system based on Arcana not sustainable).

The change, in practice: Magic is based on three sigils: Source (Arcane), Structure and Release. Let's say you already know 3 Release sigils. By learning a new Structure sigil, you're likely learning 3 new spells rather than 1—one for each Release sigil that you know. — Why it's taking so long: it's true that this is taking longer than Chapter 3, related to its size (currently 35k words). This is because of a scholarship opportunity I've gotten and the bureaucracy on that is insane. Believe I've mentioned this one before, as it's been a thing I've been chasing for a lil' while, and now it's nearing the finish line, so there's less work done on a daily basis on the IF.