#unsanctioned

[unsanctioned-if]

Demo is up!

On a dark winter’s night, a child signs a contract with a man dead to the world.

Promised an upbringing filled with forbidden knowledge, the two enter a strange and isolated existence together.

After nineteen years, the sanctuary and prison you have come to know as your home is discovered, and the land finally learns that the villain they believed to have perished a century prior has merely been in hiding…and that he isn’t alone.

Separated and forced to flee, you’re once again released into the world without your master’s hand to guide you. Only now, he is no longer the only one adept at the unsanctioned arcane arts.

“Unsanctioned” is a 17+ interactive novel created in Twine where you play as the apprentice of an ostracized sorcerer. It’s set in a dark fantasy world where magic is simultaneously a symbol of status and strictly supervised.

Demo

Progress Status

Total Wordcount: Around 180k (as of January 2024)

Words Edited/Coded in Twine: Around 180k (as of January 2024)

Written Chapters: Prologue + Chapter 1 + Start of Chapter 2.

Edited Chapters: Prologue (3 backgrounds), chapter 1, beginning of Chapter 2

Finished Demo (with fixes, added content, profile page etc.) Estimated Release Date: TBA

Currently 10 chapters in total are planned.

Features

✢ Three backgrounds to choose from which will shape your MC and their relationship with the world, impact their pool of knowledge, their countenance, and how others might react to them.

✢ Three races to choose from: elf, human or the shunned cryn.

✢ A complicated parental relationship at the heart of the narrative.

✢ A cast of potential – and not entirely lawful – companions who you can forge various relationships with.

✢ Around five full-fledged romances, along with casual flings you may try to pursue along the way.

✢ Choices that shape your MC’s personality as well as the world around them to a lesser or bigger degree and narrative branching based on certain choices.

✢ A game of truth and deceit with you as one of the main players. You've been taught to keep your identity and abilities a secret from others, but is secrecy what you truly want?

✢ A magic system of both legal and illegal spells at your disposal. Use wisely, or you might attract unwanted attention...

Characters

✢ Elven, He/Him

If the stories are to be trusted, he is the last surviving member of the group of sorcerers unceremoniously named the “Pentagon order”. He is your master and your caretaker, your mentor and your jailor.

Knowledgeable and lonesome, he often seems to be pondering the world which he has now become a reclused observer of.

Whether you consider him family or a brute who took you away from the life you were meant to live, it can’t be argued that the nineteen years the two of you have spent together has shaped you into the person you are today.

How your presence has affected him, you cannot confidently say. His mind remains as closed off to you now as it did on that snowy winter’s night so long ago.

Perhaps leaving his side is what will finally allow you to learn the truth about him.

✢ ?, He/Him

As a being born from the very essence of sorcery, Muir’s existence threads a thin line between mortality and something wholly other. All mages rely on the energy of their Magiramús to cast their spells; you rely on this hoary eyed young man to do the same. Aside from his direct and stubborn disposition, he possesses both a palpable kindness and a sense of unmotivated ruthlessness.

You don’t know what he is, yet you know him better than anyone. You left your home together; now you must learn to navigate the world together.

Something that’s much easier said than done when your very existence marks you as outlaws.

✢ Elven, They/Them

One need only look at Wren to know that they’re one of the Institute’s agents. If the robes didn’t give it away, their demeanour certainly would.

Arrogance lies deeply embedded in their eyes, and they seem convinced that anyone who looks their way does so with envy.

When you encounter them in the troubled village of Kelmerth during their Practice of Passing, you get to witness firsthand what a student of the most distinguished academy on the continent can do, and what being a product of its teachings really means.

✢ Human, She/Her

 Hailing from the southern land of Ciralor, one of the few human-ruled countries on the continent, Azora is less attuned to the laws of the arcane than a native of Aíos would be.

Instead, she tends to rely on the inventions her homeland is both renowned and feared for. She is eloquent, straight-forward and impulsive to a fault – but it is all, according to her, to reclaim her rightful place as Ciralor’s leader.

A task that proves difficult when every day is a battle to stay in control of her own body.

✢ Vampiric, She/Her

Astra's gaze always appears to wander, searching for something in the crowds she often surrounds herself with, occasionally locking on to someone who just so happens to catch her interest.

Although her muscular stature points to a life of strife, the poise she displays is more befitting of a high born than that of a common thug.

As a vampire, she has little choice but to shun the light of day and seek the comfort that lies in the shadows. Representing the part of her people that refuse to conform to the rules set in place by the less potent, she operates outside of the law, following instead the self-made rules of her Coven.

✢ Cryn, He/Him

The order of The Aelesh is enveloped in mystery. Worshipping the world of the unknown, they have chosen to cast aside the Faith in favour of the Truth – and in their eyes, the truth lies beyond that which mortals can comprehend and perceive with their senses.

With the simple mask he insists on wearing, your only clue as to Kirin’s true character lies in his voice and body language. Each sparse movement has a purpose, every phrase a veiled meaning.

He’s vowed to express his beliefs by following in the footsteps of the infamous Pentagons and to serve them in any way he can.

In his opinion, this is currently best done by aiding you.

Spellsystem

You will be able to access a “book of spells” (codex) from the game's menu whenever you wish. The spells that your MC has learned, or learned about, will be displayed there along with some information regarding what each spell does.

There are key points during the story where using magic might attract attention or be more risky than other times. Know that there are no bad endings in this game, but that choices do have consequences, and that includes your use of magic.

There are spells which are considered “lawful” and spells which are labelled as “forbidden”. You will have access to both, though due to the nature of the MC's upbringing, they will have a wide range of forbidden spells at their disposal.

Even when using a “lawful” spell, this is still considered a crime unless you have a permit to do so.

There are moments in the game where you will be able to go to the spell menu and select the spell you want to cast (if any). Not all spells will always be available at all times simply because of branching reasons, but I’m striving to make it as free-choice as possible and add flavour-text in most cases at the very least.

Credits

Cover art: cyanide-chicken

Character portraits: holyantenna (upper portraits) and mooreux (lower portraits)

Logo art/text design: kathaeris

[holyantenna]

Kirin | @unsanctioned-if

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Chicken à la King

During the Chicken Revolution, the king managed to keep his head while the others—well, just ran around.

Artist: Mark Zug TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Citroën TPV prototype, Très Petite Voiture (Very Small Car), 1997. An unsanctioned in-house proposal for small car that was a retro-futurist take on the design of the original 2CV. As is often the case with such design studies the car had two doors on one side and one on the other to indicate how different versions of the car could be configured. The C3 won out over this proposal

[incorrect-mtg]

Flavor Text Highlights - Unstable + Unsanctioned

<- Previous Set | Next Set ->

Cool - Chittering Doom

One fateful night, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, they rose.

Funny - "Rumors of My Death . . ."

By the fourth funeral, the mooks had gotten pretty good at them.

Worldbuilding - Amateur Auteur

And thus at Maze’s End the runners end their strife. Our saving grace, that hooded kid, is now Guildpact for life. —RAVNICA! The Musical

So Griselbrand was bound, his rage brought to a halt. ‘Til Lili Vess came 'round asking, “Hey, what’s in the vault?” —INNISTRAD! The Musical

Elspeth, blessed by Heliod, stepped up where the hydra trod. Soon afterward, a lesson learned: attack the Champion, get burned! —THEROS! The Musical

The two Eldrazi titans fell and set the ground a-rumbling! “How come no one ever listens?” old Ugin flew off grumbling. —ZENDIKAR! The Musical

Emotional (Horror) - Five-Finger Discount

“Dognapping is such an ugly word. I would characterize this as a unilateral redistribution of pets.”

<- Previous Set | Next Set ->

[illicit-creatives]

Tagged in Bratislava

[impermanent-art]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Impermanent Art (@impermanent_art)

‘A Love Reaction’

Work by Piccle P in Beverly Grove.

[graffiti-library]

- (UN) Sanctioned, The Art On New York Streets - 2016 -

first edition - hardcover - 20.3-24.6cm -

[gemthegerm]

Some custom cards based off Un-Planes during the Phyrexian Invasion of the Multiverse

[magicmalcolm]

Rock, Paper, Scissors.

[satan-is-a-furry]

my ass is bleeding again

[unsanctioned-if]

"Unsanctioned" demo will be up again soon

Having spent the past two days experimenting with speech to text and seeing how it feels to write, I have discovered that the former is very difficult to do for me when it comes to fictional writing which tbh I suspected would be the case, and the latter is also extremely difficult for me to manage with the injury even when it comes to coding and editing. It can be done, but...very slowly. In my last post I said that I would wait a week, but unfortunately I don't think it will make much of a difference.

With that in mind, I have decided to put the demo out (still) in its incomplete state. I will get back to working on it as soon as I am able to. Hopefully it should still be a smoother experience now compared to when it was released last month.

In the meantime, I will focus more on brainstorming, world building and working on stuff that doesn’t require as much direct writing and coding.

I also want to address the feedback I've gotten and the errors people have reported. I have tried to get to all of them, but some I have not been able to locate. I think it could in part be because of the different race + background variables to consider and how these sometimes mix and give different text. I have probably missed some entirely because of my own inattentiveness as well, and for that I’m sorry.

If you play the demo and notice errors or oddities, it would be very helpful and appreciated if you would send a message to my inbox and attach a screenshot so that I can see exactly where this happens since it is so much easier to find the errors exactly that way. Thank you so, so much to everyone who has been helping me with that <3

I will also get to answering more asks. I will try doing it using speech to text and then fixing it to make it sound somewhat coherent like I am doing right now. Sorry it's taking me so long to get to them.

I hope that I can get back to working on this story soon - if you read it and have any thoughts on it I would love to hear them!

[holyantenna]

Azora | @unsanctioned-if

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Knight of the Hokey Pokey

That's what it's all about.

Artist: Kev Walker TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[uhhh-ghouls007]

You’ll always be “master” to me

[oifaaa]

It was bound to happen I am now thinking of a my hero dc au and wondering in a world full of people with powers would Clark still be an alien from another planet and if so would he have to hide most of his powers so it looks like he only has one quirk?