(NOTE: These devlogs usually lag behind our official updates. The latest up-to-date information about the game can be found on our team's Patreon page!)

Hello adventurers! Hope you're all doing great! :)

It's time for another mechanics/development blog, so that's going to be the focus of today's entry... Or to be more precise, narrative mechanics in the form of in-game Crises! It's a fairly lengthy post, so watch out for the walls-of-text! :D

But first, a quick update - we've had an incredibly productive month so far, crowned by a team meeting this past weekend! Everyone on the team was eager to show their personal work, and check out everyone else's; we're all pushing ahead, and making excellent progress on the next build! Art usually tends to lag a bit behind schedule due to the sheer quantity needed for each release, but our two artists are steadily ploughing through their workload!

Overall, things are going great, and we'll be showcasing much of our work in future devlogs as we make updates to the game! Now, as for today's post... What are Crises? And how do they work in ToLLA?

Crises are impactful events that propagate throughout the game world, and send out ripples from their point of origin... Each crisis is deeply rooted in the lore of the game's creatures, factions, history, events, or any combination thereof! Every crisis is unique and specific in its own way (see the list below!), but all of them represent far-reaching calamities or problematic events of one sort or another, and will be solvable by Captain Hale...

You'll be introduced to these as soon as you enter the Fort proper, and mostly in the form of rumors and gossip - just to give you a taste of what you can expect going forward as you sink your teeth into the game's content! Note that the Fort itself is a highly guarded area, meaning that you're safe within its palisaded walls... but once you leave, all bets are off! :P

Crises have to be problems, because they present obstacles for the Player to overcome! They're also vehicles for us, as developers, to immerse you into the game world. If you've played the old Fallout games, then the Raider Attacks and the Jet Epidemic are both a good example of major crisis events. Or the Bhaalspawn Saga from the Baldur's Gate series. Or the Hollowborn Crisis from the first Pillars of Eternity. Or to give you a more contemporary example from World of Warcraft, Deathwing's Cataclysm and the recent Sylvanas' Rift...

In ToLLA, crises come in two flavors: global, and local. The effects of both of these manifest across multiple in-game areas, and will be left to Captain Hale to resolve! Each crisis is a multi-quest endeavor which the Player has to progress through in order to reach the end of the chain, and put the matter to rest. Below is a list containing spoiler-free information about some of the game's largest and most important crises...

GLOBAL CRISES

Global crises are far-reaching calamities that are directly tied to the progression of the main story. They're plot-critical developments which drive the story forward by introducing conflict on a wide ranging, continental scale. Such is the reach of these events that they'll be remarked upon by NPCs living hundreds of miles apart! These are your typical main quests in an RPG, and ToLLA is no different - the game's critical path is tied to the crises outlined below, in no particular order...

• Invading Greenskins:  a massive greenskin migration seems to be currently underway, but the circumstances driving it are mysterious at best, and will soon spiral out of control (as new information becomes available to Captain Hale and Sollaran high command)
• Lust Epidemic/Affliction: manifesting in the form of rampant orgies, loss of morality and self-control, violent lovers' quarrels, carnal cults, abandonment of responsibility, and so on... anyone continually giving in to their lusts finds it more difficult to resist with time, resulting in people degenerating into little more than sex-crazed, rutting beasts!
• Vatrellian Economic War: the Vatrellians, a powerful maritime industrial republic from across the Somber Sea, are actively trying to sabotage Sollaran markets by dumping their own cheap yet high-quality goods produced in their overseas manufactoriums... Hale has to find out who precisely is doing this, how, why, where, and then put a stop to it!
• Caravan/Supply-Shipment Disappearances: someone or something's behind the recent abduction of caravans and supply shipments all over Sollara, leaving not a trace behind... the best scouts in the land are constantly being left perplexed by lack of evidence! (so it's up to Hale and company to find out who's doing this, and why!)
• The Crystal (Viridian) Crisis: viridian is going bad, the crystals themselves fading and dimming; viridian is of paramount importance to the Sollaran Commonwealth (it's used in civilian magic, weapons, scrying, surgical tools, navigation, medicine, etc.), and resolving the crisis becomes an issue of national priority!
• Eerie Pleasure Cult: a mysterious and cultish pleasure sect has spread like wildfire through Sollara's society, and tales of unholy rituals surround them... their incredibly charming and seductive members proselytize everywhere, working like traveling acolytes and expanding the influence of their shadowy organization!
• Cursed Seas: all along the coast, ships of the Commonwealth are being singled out and destroyed in localized micro-storms which appear and disappear within minutes... this is a major problem because the Sollaran Commonwealth is a maritime nation with a long coast and many ports, and thus relies on naval shipping for a large portion of its trade!

LOCAL CRISES

Local crises -- while still major events with a far reach! -- aren't as structurally important to the main plot. Think of them as large and expansive side-quests that stretch over multiple zones of the game, impacting mostly local peoples. And while regular secondary quests are usually tied to their area of origin, local crises will for the most part begin in one map, then require Captain Hale to travel to multiple others in order to solve them!

• Mercantile Trade Dispute: the various foreign merchants in Sollara are hiking up prices on all their goods in an attempt to capitalize on the many other crises currently tearing through the country... and are threatening to break their supply chains if their demands aren't met!
• Apostate Religion: violent heretics and apostates who rabidly argue against the Ten Divines and Old Gods both, blaming the entrenched faiths for allowing the tide of troubles to befall the country... they fervently claim their nihilistic organization is the only way forward out of the ongoing mess, and must be legitimized at once - by force, if need be!
• Bandit Warlord: a charismatic rogue is uniting the otherwise turncoat bandit groups into a formidable force... no one knows who this leader is, or what their plans are - only that they're managing to unify the otherwise quarreling brigand camps into a cohesive whole! (it's up to Hale to ferret out this bandit leader, and put a stop to their efforts!)
• The Pale Wasting (Zombie Plague): this horrid, incurable disease transforms people into marble-skinned, feral zombies... its transmission methods are unknown, and are seemingly random, but clues of it being more than just a naturally-occurring phenomenon are mounting as the dead pile up in towns and cities all over the country!
• Rampaging Slaughterhost: a roaming, maniacal throng of blood-crazed psychopaths out for mayhem and murder are rampaging throughout the countryside and indiscriminately killing anything in their way... they're led by wanted criminals and zealous madmen who recruit by razing entire villages to the ground and absorbing any survivors!
• Sollaran Separatists: hardline provincialists who argue that each Sollaran Province would be better off on its own, rather than bogged down beneath the centralized rule of an inept and distant bureaucracy which has brought ruin... the danger they represent is vast, as secession could prove to be the final nail in the Commonwealth's coffin!
• Giants' Alliance: the various giant races that Sollaran Legions have defeated in the past and exiled into fringe territories (swamps, volcanos, glaciers, etc.) are now rearing their heads again... representatives of each race have come together to hold negotiations in a frost-giant citadel, in an attempt to build an alliance... Hale has to sabotage these talks, or risk the country coming under unified giantkin attack from multiple sides!
• Dwarven (Civil) War: a dwarven war has erupted and paralyzed their mountain enclaves in Sollara; it's being fought by surface dwarves defending against a major incursion by their subterranean grey-dwarven cousins attacking from below!
• Elven Infertility: more so than usual, the elves are having trouble with reproduction... many of their sages are worried this recent phenomenon is magical in nature, and might be the work of a powerful faction out to destroy them... ancient lore and vast treasure are being offered to anyone who can aid the elves in this difficult time!
• Banes Reemergence: banes are incredibly powerful and ancient monster-girls (lamias, sphinxes, manticores, etc.) who eat man-flesh, are centuries old, and usually slumber for decades... but they've been getting bold lately, and attacking openly, picking at isolated villages to sate their appetites for food and sex!
• Cithraxi Insanity: also known as 'Raveners', the insectile cithraxi are usually not nearly as aggressive as they've been acting recently... something strange is happening to them, as entire broods are going mad and cannibalizing their own Queens!
• Corruption/Rot in the Weald: the forest creatures of the Weald were always hostile and violent towards outsiders, but never towards other forest-dwellers like fey or dryads or treants... recently this has changed, and no one knows why!
• Elemental Terrors: violent elemental confluences are manifesting and terrorizing the countryside in elemental storms... even the most learned of scholars can't puzzle together who or what is behind the elementals' appearances, only that they destroy their targets in storms of fury before moving on!
• Swinepox & Nature's Withering: the toxic Pig-Plague that was released by evil shifters against good ones, and is currently spreading out and killing nature (druids the continent over are panicking, and will attempt to enlist the services of Captain Hale!)
• Mycelid-Fungii War: the two subterranean races are waging a genocidal war against each other for ownership of breeding grounds (spore warrens), and their fighting is destabilizing the topsoil which many surface communities depend on to grow food!
• Drow Slave Raids: the malevolent and opportunistic drow are exploiting the chaos on the surface to launch raids from their underground cities against poorly-defended towns and villages... they hit hard and fast, hauling away hundreds of people into the lightless depths, to be used as slaves, sacrifices, and sexual playthings for the depraved dark elves!

Whew, what a list! That's about all the crises we can show right now without getting into major spoilers! There are a couple more specific ones that'll be in the game, but they're part of major story reveals, so we'll keep them under wraps for now! The recruitable partymembers will also play a major part in these events, as most of them are intimately tied to one of the in-game crises... but that's a post for another time! ;)

As always, we hope you had fun reading! If you did, join us again next time for more! Take care, adventurers, and stay safe out there...

~ Crimson Delight Games

P.S.

If you'd like to help support our work on the game, consider purchasing our Lewds Library & Bonus Art Pack during checkout. This is an additional purchase you can pick up when getting the game, and holds much of the concept art for ToLLA, with holiday wallpapers in their full resolution, a bunch of pre-production sketches, and over 150 gorgeous hand-painted 2D lewds!

We're also selling an NPC portraits pack that you can pick up for your own game-making needs if you're a developer!