DEMO

——— Currently finished—Prologue, Chapters One through Four. ~175k words, average playthrough ~48k. ——— His flesh, our sustenance. His blood, our drink. His bones, our foundation, His body, our haven.

Five hundred years ago, the Earth was dying. Water polluted, dirt infertile, forests and meadows crumbling to the wars of steel and fire. And so the Order called His Grace, the Lord of Communion, down from where He rested before and He allowed humanity to rest inside his body.

Or at least, that's the story the Order tells.

You grew up under the masked faces of their Exalted, under the stories of Earth past. Rusted metal and cracked plastic; His bone and His flesh. Conflicting worlds, conflicting times, and soon, it might all come to a head.

Thanks to all in my inbox who are informing me about the Dashingdon shutdown (and special shout-out to @reinekes-fox for being the first to break the news to me!) I’ll miss the site, but I had the lucky foresight to upload Parasitical to COGdemos a bit ago. I’ll probably update the homepage of the Dashingdon demo to reflect this and link to the new demo, just to inform any people who happen upon it.

End-of-Month update: December 2024

Slow month this month, mostly due to unfortunate factors like finals, travel, and the like - all I can say is hopefully I'm able to get back into it January. Hope everyone had a great New Year's and that 2025 is a good year for all of us!

Snippet under the cut, as always.

That is actually my secret ultimate plan - make horrific little worlds beyond human comprehension. That being said, your nightmare sounds both terrifying and very interesting, and I'm if not glad I caused it, then a little flattered that it had that much affect?? Thank you for the kind words!

End-of-Month Update: November

This has been one of those months that I'm like, 'okay so what if I'm The Worst Writer In The World' which is a really dumb mindset but also pretty crippling for my productivity. I'll sit down and attempt to write, but then the thought hits me that nobody's going to care, and I feel so ridiculous putting this stuff out into the world. I did manage to push past it over these last few days, and Chapter 5 is up to 14k - which could be anything from 1/2 to 1/8 of the chapter. I have it all outlined out, but wordcounts, I'm worse at estimating. A lot of fun stuff is planned, so I'm excited to be getting that down on the page. Thank you all for reading!

To the anon who sent in some errors/typo stuff for all the chapters - yes, I did receive all of them, and thank you so much! Keeping them in my inbox for easy access, but I really appreciate how thorough you were - really, such detailed reports for all the chapters is so helpful! Thank you as well for your kind words about the game.

For you, and also anyone else reading, I wanna emphasize that it's never rude to give me feedback, whether that be on the bugs and mistakes in the text or the about the plot itself, I always want that kind of stuff. Like you helped me realize I have an accidental little habit of using T's pronoun variables where Jasper's should be 😅

Ohhh I’m excited because I have plenty of plans for Icarusmancers out there…

There are already a few little bits of jealousy flavor text in the demo, because I love that type of stuff, but here's some elaboration.

August gets pretty jealous and also pretty insecure. He leans more towards the sad, mopey sort than the possessive type. The type to oscillate between drawing back into his shell and also barely holding back the urge to cling to the player at all moments.

Jasper doesn't really get jealous. Deeper in the relationship it definitely happens, trending towards possessive, but it takes a bit. At the moment, if they see the player flirting with someone else, it's just 'haha that's funny, what a flirt.' They can't really judge, given their normal habits.

El probably gets jealous the least out of all of the ROs. She actually enjoys the thrill of the competition a little bit. If it really escalates then she might get a bit annoyed, but her way of coping is to begin to try and make the player jealous in turn.

T acts placid and secure and fine, but they get the most jealous. Part of it is the need to prove superiority, part is plain jealousy. If there's a notable romantic rival, they're going to make the player choose right then and there, and/or they'll do something that's... probably not good for the other person's health. Whether physical or mental.

Icarus gets jealous under a deep, deep layer of denial and 'that must be a malfunctioning circuit' type logic. They're already quite prone to jealousy - case in point, feelings about their predecessor - so that carries over to romance. Will wax poetic to the player about this strange, uncomfortable feeling and then vehemently deny it's jealousy if suggested.

Turned out longer than I expected, but I guess I have a lot to say about this topic lol. Thank you for the ask!

Awww thank you so much!! I'm so glad the plot twist hit as intended lol, your reaction is exactly the type of reaction I always hope happens. Thank you for your other typo report as well, it's very much appreciated <3