#anyway shade (or anyone honestly: i'm chill) feel free to hop in my dms if you have other questions

[redwinterroses]

Hey Red? Hey Red? So I read Gold and I guess you could say I'm a TINY BIT INTERESTED AND INVESTED

It's so well written that I don't think I'm really left with any questions (just wanting to wait to see the story unfold) but there is one thing I'm interested to know as a non-Empires-watcher. How much of the mechanics of the fic is canon to the series? I have no idea how heavily modded they are or anything like that, so out of Gem's magic, the different elytra types, the modified mobs, the storm, etc...how much of that is the brainchild of your coauthor and you? I'm finding all of those things VERY funky and cool as well as the injury/healing mechanics (does natural regen work at all?) and I'm really curious about the thought process!

Heh. Um.

Okay. so. XD

Empires is mostly vanilla. They've got some mods -- like they've got items similar to what the hermits have been doing with hats and stuff, only the Empires peeps have mainly used it to fancify their weapons, tools, armor, and elytra. So the different elytra types is technically canon, yeah. (Scott's are white wings with gold edging, so I Have Declared that Scott Smajor is now a winged cc along with Grian and Philza and no one can take this from me, lol)

(Basically Scott has wings that grow from his actual body, everyone else wears handwavium magic elytra. fWhip is a tinkerer in-universe, so we made his mechanical. Gem's a wizard so hers are more magic-y... but none of them are ever described in detail. Like I said: handwavium.)

I don't think we had any modded mobs? Just that Xornoth can summon them in, which is a thing (Xornoth is played in the server by a player with creative mode, so he can tp and summon mobs and bestow effects and all sorts of nonsense. Ya know. Demon powers.) The only semi-weird ones we've featured have been the skeleton horsemen, which are rare, but vanilla. Oh, and Gem's magic is pure RP translating into our fic-world where she really does have magic.

As for the storm -- we've Made It Atmospheric, but the server does have weather turned off (they're all builders and didn't want to deal with snow lololol) BUT they have a mod installed that allows them to summon thunderstorms (I think it's called Thunder Shrine? haven't ever looked into it.) When Xornoth turns up, several times he has announced his presence by summoning a storm. Pixlriffs, the Copper King, also sometimes summons storms, which will come into play later, but we wanted there to be a difference, so Xornoth's storms get the coloring and horrible-terrible-no-goodness of his red/nether-themed corruption, while Pix's will be "normal" storms.

As for the injury/healing stuff -- we're going more traditional real-world with most of that. Natural regen isn't really a thing, but healing potions are. Respawn also works, but (slight spoilers:) Xornoth has Messed With the way respawn works (it'll be explained in-universe, but we wanted to give a bit more weight to mortal wounds) and as the fic goes on, permadeath becomes more and more of a threat.

I think that answers your questions? Hopefully? the tl;dr version is that Empires is mostly Vanilla but our fic Makes It Fancy, lol.

Also: YAY I am so glad you're interested and invested in it!! That means a lot, especially since you are not an Empires-viewer. <3 I hope you continue to enjoy!