The Plot

I already have a general idea of what direction each chapter will take, but I don’t think I want to publish the entire plot quite yet. To me that seems like it would ruin things. What I will say is that this game is not going to follow any typical Fire Emblem storyline such as “father dies 2 minutes in, so blue haired kid puts together a group of ragtag renegades and somehow they end up fighting a dragon”. All joking aside, this will be a much darker plot. Initially, my idea did conform to the more traditional storyline, but it just felt overused. How it is now set up will leave the player unsure if they are even rooting for the main character “Caedus” by the end. Oh, and in the final few chapters no characters will be safe from death - this will infuriate many people. But it’s also not like there will be a sequel, so…

General info

The land is Astrea, and there are five major factions:

• Caniel Realm
• Tharyn Empire
• Ushein Dynasty
• Koswor Domain
• Bandits of Dasmein
  
  

The game will follow the main character “Caedus”, a commander in the Caniel Realm who ends up being framed for starting a war between Caniel and Koswor, but is just a scapegoat to cover what is really going on.

-Stuff below here might ruin parts of the game and its plot-

Magic explained

Magic is a relatively new discovery on this continent and plays a large role in the events that happen in the game. Magic falls into any one of four categories - elemental, dark, light and healing.

Elemental, dark, and light magic have been around for decades, while healing was only recently discovered. From this discovery, diseases were cured and the injured restored, and despite border conflicts between nations this new innovation was readily shared amongst mages. However, it would not be long until the military of some nations saw the benefit of this magic, and began using select soldiers as bludgeons against opposing forces. After all, as long as the battle was won the soldier could be painfully reassembled limb by limb if necessary. Eventually, these soldiers were given herbs that made them feel no pain, and others that sent them into a mindless fury.

Soon enough, the border conflicts escalated until the Koswor Domain would launch a full invasion to its neighbor in the South, the Tharyn Empire. War soon encompassed the entire continent with all sides forced to use similar tactics as one by one each nation saw the benefits of these near unkillable soldiers in battle. What entailed was a bloody, and costly, war for all sides. Eventually, Koswor would be defeated only after the assassination of their King. Following the loss of their command and coordinated attacks between the remaining armies, the war ended.

This kind of magic was outlawed by all parties, and a new peace treaty was made as they rebuilt their nations. Healing was still permitted and encouraged, but not allowed to the extent seen during the war, nor were soldiers allowed to be turned into these “bludgeons” that had decimated ranks.

Necromancy

Within years after this conflict many of the “healers” were killed by their own men and neighbors, at best they were shunned. Soldiers that had gone through the ordeal of being pieced together after battle died soon after or were driven insane. Later in the game the player will need to visit a remote town for supplies. There are very few people there, none of whom speak after supposedly taking a vow of silence when all of the children of the village had been conscripted into the war effort or otherwise died. Eventually it comes to light that the entire town had been murdered by a band of these “healers”.

The “healers”, now known as necromancers, had remained undetected by controlling the lifeless bodies of a select few villagers to avoid suspicion of any visitors. The “vow of silence” created the cover for why none of the reanimated corpses spoke. It is also revealed that the necromancers had been “healing” the corpses to prevent any decay, which, hey, is pretty messed up if you ask me.

The traditional “brutes” and “savages” (walking dead enemies) that the player will face are under the control of such individuals, although this is not made clear until later on in the game. In addition to the brutes and savages, some of the more powerful and deformed infernal enemies are the result of experiments, some of which were once people that were still alive (including the necromancers themselves).

Eventually, the player finds out that the King or advisor to the King (haven’t decided yet) of the Caniel Realm had known of the necromancers existence for years, and in return for not wiping them out the necromancers have been working for the King / his advisor for some time now. This began with keeping one of their children alive when they were extremely ill (think at the level of the Governor’s daughter in TWD), until loftier ambitions led the King / his advisor wanting to test out armies of undead. This was where Caedus was framed as the town he was sent to investigate was a result of an experiment gone wrong. The entire war that had been blamed on Caedus on his contingent was really a way to begin a war while using the necromancers to send undead forces into opposing nations villages and encampments, all the while playing dumb about where the undead originated from and who was responsible.

One cool thing about this is that the player will eventually run across one “undead” unit that supposedly died in the first chapter, but was really captured by the necromancers for experimentation. This “brute” or “entombed” unit will be playable so long as you can get his mind partially restored, even if his body cannot be. So long as the player has a dark mage and a healer you can continue to heal this unit between chapters. If not, their health will permanently decrease as they take damage and you will not have the ability to “heal” him. Sort of like being able to summon phantoms with certain dark mages in the Sacred Stones game, but I also recall being unable to heal them.

Ending

In the end, the player and his team will end up fighting what used to be their own people in order to kill Caniel’s King / advisor and stop the war. Upon the final encounter it will be revealed that the necromancers have created a staff that can reanimate corpses immediately as opposed to the long rituals it used to take. This staff will be used turn after turn, reanimating any enemy units the player had killed in previous turns until the necromancer is finally dead. Lots of units will die because of the non-stop onslaught - it will not be an easy final chapter and the player should not expect to come out of this with all of their units for the traditional happy ending. After the enemy has been routed, Caedus (who by the way has been progressively turning more insane and unstable after several characters deaths in previous chapters) will attempt to use the staff and revive his fallen comrades. Knowing that they cannot be brought back to who they once were, the player will have two options - try and stop him or let him do it. If the latter is chosen you will end up fighting any units that died in that chapter as Caedus does not know how to control the staff. If the former is chosen then Caedus will try and fight you and it will only end once you kill him. From there the player will choose what is said about Caedus - did he die heroically fighting the evil King or is the truth about how he went insane told instead? There will be different endings from this.

I know there is a lot still missing in the beginning and middle parts of the plot, and I will try and fill that in when I have the time.