Pffhoo boy, Blue Bishop calling in… I’ll spare you of my usual theatrics here to get straight to talking about this update and something of a history lesson regarding it’s exceedingly long development time.
So, as you might remember -- assuming you’re still with us by this point -- my last major update was Dragonpalooza 2. I had finished the Feral Sea Dragons and the Wyverns and was half-finished the Yamato Dragons (The updates to the player loss for the pair has been done and in the game for some time now).
Then… Poof! Asides from the odd commission -- The Phantom Pony and some Bonus Hour tasks, for example -- I had pretty much fallen off the face of the earth. It’s a deeply personal matter, but suffice it to say I was inundated with a lot of personal tumult that prevented me from really being productive. I was barely able to squeeze by the absolutely necessary commissions, let alone my core projects.
This, combined with Wahn’s own physical troubles, explains the slight lull in content as of late, Though Stripes has been truckin’ on, as always.
I managed to deal with my issues, moved to a new apartment, and got right back to work! ...And then got terribly ill, twice. Ick. Nonetheless, I was on a roll, to the point where I was finally on schedule for once! ...And then the compiler overload started to happen. Just my luck...
By some point early on I wanted to make some substantial Doran additions to cover the terrible wait for all this, but by the time I moved even that felt insufficient, so I decided to add the project I had planned following this one, since it happens to be dragon-related, as well.
And now, here we are! Finally, after countless long, sleepless night, I can return to you with all the work I have been piling up over the many, many months.
First off, because this update is so large, I have produced a short version of all the updates made. Scroll further down if you want to see the full breakdown, though:
- The Yamato Dragon Pair as received their Player victory. It’s in line with the Wyvern for content, and has the body-modifying effects of player loss.
- The Ash Dragons have been replaced with the Ebonflame Dragons. All of their content has been completely re-written and new mechanics have been added to some of them to better flesh them out. Otherwise, they’re generally the same...
- Doran can now have his body modified. Two are simple fetch quests, while one is a little more roundabout! You can also regard him as being female, regardless of his/her actual gender.
- Pregnancy has undergone some back-end changes. There shouldn’t be any major differences, but I’m pointing bringing it up to ask if you report any bugs I missed during testing.
Alright, now let’s sink our teeth into the main course!
Yamato Dragon/ess:
While player loss was updated for this pair a long time ago, it was never officially announced, so I’ll detail them here along with the new changes, in case you missed anything.
- Player Loss:
All scenes received a thorough polish pass. If the Wyvern had the issue of being underwritten, the Yamato pair had the opposite of being absolutely impenetrably dense and over-flourished. While they’re still very meaty, I pared back a bit on my original magniloquence and focused more on what really matters here.
The Yamato Dragoness, when riding the player’s cock, will now attempt to increase its size after sex. This is meant to make her more mechanically consistent with her male counterpart.
All attempts to modify the player’s body now receive a consent check if the player has the “Microwaved” feat. This also applies to Twisted Capacity, past the first time. “Modest Organs” still negate the effect entirely, excluding TwistCap.
Both now have a Vore-Based Bound State. It requires More Vore for both genders, but they completely ignore player scale.
- Player Victory:
Both now have a robust selection of sex scenes for player victory, on par -- option wise -- with the Wyvern and Feral Sea Dragons.
They’re relatively straightforward, though players will find they can engage in a certain tomfoolery with them, if they’re so inclined.
The effects of modifying the body are also available here as with player loss. In the case of Twisted Capacity, it’s faster to obtain in this manner.
- Endings:
The succumb endings for the pair have received a substantive update. This was, perhaps, the earliest version of what would become the succumb ending’s gender designation for the likes of the Feral Sea Dragons, but the idea has since been iterated upon (and I feel I could write them better, anyways).
Additionally, the ending changes for players which defeat the pair enough times. Similar to the Feral Sea Dragon, having their strain will telegraph your progress.
Fairly straightforward, you can see why it simply wasn’t going to cut it for me to return with only this.
Ash Dragonbrood:
The Ash dragons has always been a bit of a dangling plot thread that felt needing to be expanded upon. However -- long before I entered the scene -- there was some tumult regarding the original creator and management. Suffice it to say, nobody wanted to touch this lot, beyond the odd tweak here and there.
I’m not trying to create any drama, I’m just being upfront with you. Let’s leave the past in the past, but the Ash dragons are very much an established part of the game and we can’t simply remove them. In the end, the only solution was to take the ideas these monsters presented and use them to move forward with new monsters that could take their place.
For that reason, all original content for the Ash Dragons have been REPLACED with the Ebonflame Dragons. Their appearances and behaviours should be relatively similar, but they’ve been completely rewritten. During this time, a couple of them have received some mechanical additions, to make them more threatening.
Shall we begin?
- Ash Whelp → Ebonflame Whelp:
Players will still find this monster as largely non-threatening as usual, but are now much better endowed, and losing to them will have long-term consequences. They’re also no longer infectious.
Originally, the three infected into a “Single” strain, but the system was wonky and inconsistent. As a rule, infection strains change the player to exact or near-exact specifications, or they don’t at all.
Because of how peculiar the creature happens to be, I decided upon the latter -- though I’m rather fond of making those sort of rules with the expressed intent of breaking them later on, but that’s a topic for another time.
The Ash Nest event has been temporarily disabled. In a future update, it’ll be replaced by a one-off Bound State.
- Ash Dragator → Ebonflame Dragator:
Still a terrible threat, as always. You may sometimes run into ones that are behaving oddly, and somewhat like the Whelp, losing to one of these ones comes with additional baggage.
Also, like their smaller kin, they’re not infectious.
The shifting event no longer has Dragator Guards, since it didn’t make sense for them to be there. They have since been replaced with Gargoyles. Subsequently, the difficulty rating for that event has been raised to 12.
- Ash Drakenoid → Ebonflame Draken:
The name for this one was changed more to make it easier to identify -- at a glance -- from its gator kin. When one might be a suitable challenge and the other could bite your ass off in the blink of an eye, easily distinguishing them is something of a necessity.
Perhaps the most ‘normal’ of the lot, she’s the only one who’s still infectious, but as a result she doesn’t come with any additional... ‘complications’… Should the player lose to her.
The Ebonflame’s more... invasive mechanics are just that, such that Infertile or normal male characters may be in for a nasty surprise. If this isn’t to your liking, the cheat “neuter ebonflame” will disable/re-enable the effect. Otherwise, watch out!
Finally, the Ash Dragon Heart has been replaced with the Ebonflame Scale. Disregarding the needed name change, the whole ‘Carrying the heart of your fallen enemy’ idea was both disproportionately macabre with the rest of the game and inconsistent, canon-wise, with the general understanding that one really can’t ‘kill’ most enemies through conventional means.
I bring this up mostly because certain food recipes from Francois called for the item, and has since been adjusted to accept this instead.
Doran:
Since his inception, I’ve been getting pretty much non-stop, positive feedback for the peculiar dragon, which is great because he’s an absolute blast for me to write. By this point, he’s easily the largest NPC in the entire game, and with this update he’s about to get… Just a little bit bigger!
- NEW! Body Modification:
Doran can now have certain physical attributes altered, allowing for access to new scenes while altering pre-existing ones.
In order to facilitate this change, ALL of Doran’s core scenes have received an extensive polish pass. Even if you don’t interact with this new mechanic, Doran’s existing content should at least read a little easier for you.
- Body Modify: Breasts
You can opt for Doran to have breasts. Is it realistic? NOPE. Can they lactate? If that’s what you want, certainly! Doing so will replace his scavenge ability with a new option...
Currently, only Distilled Milk is necessary for this change. In a future build, any milk will suffice.
- Body Modify: Balls
Why, we can’t be forgetting the most important part! I imagine, though, that those heavy things will mean he makes a terrible mess of the whole place…
Like above, this will eventually work for all Cum drops, but for now Earthen Seed will suffice. Also, if you have below modification, you’ll still get the ability to make this change -- it’ll just alter cum production!
- Body Modify: Internal
Hey, some like it smooth, and this change is for those kinds of people!
This modification is a little weird however -- dragontits notwithstanding -- as it’s purely cosmetic and only adds some minor scene variations. Also, the only way to obtain this attribute is to defeat Doran when first encountering him while also having internal genitalia. How peculiar...
A future build will allow you the opportunity to reverse any of these changes, if you’d like to scale back a bit of the excess or try out different configurations. The internal genitalia modification will also, most certainly, get a proper quest associated with it.
- NEW! Gender Regard (Doran):
For too long, Doran has had to humour clearly male partners wanting to be treated as female (and visa versa) and he’s had enough! Players can now let the dragon join in on the fun and have his regarded gender changed, so if ‘Mistress’ ever wanted a ‘Dragoness’ instead, ‘She’ll’ be happy to oblige.
- NEW! Extra Commissioned Scene:
Someone commissioned an additional core scene for the naughty dragon in his Dominant state. It exists as a variant on one of his power bottom scenes, available to male/herm players of any size. Enjoy!
- Pre-exising scene changes:
The ‘Doran Submissive, player giving oral’ scene has received a substantial overhaul. You may have noticed that the scene is a bit different from the others, since I was using it as a bit of an experimentation with scene structure.
Ultimately, the end result wasn’t satisfactory, and the scene is inconsistent in design with all of its peers. The scene remains mostly familiar with the original, but certain things have been removed and added (As a result of the body modification).
Other than that, the ‘player receiving oral’ did get a bit of tweaking, but nothing that major.
And with that, I can say -- with relative confidence -- that this should be the last of any major core mechanics that are planned for the dragon. From here on in, the focus will be on mainly on expanding existing systems, such as roleplay, vore, discuss, and the new body modification system.
Pregnancy:
In order to facilitate the mechanics for the Ebonflame Dragons, the Pregnancy system has been overhauled to more cleanly handle pregnancy-based interferences. This is mostly a “Backendy” sort of alteration and won’t be that noticeable a change (other than the game remembering which hole you were impregnated in, if you’re a weirdo female/herm who picked up Mpreg).
All Pregnancy routines and definition were moved to their dedicated extension under the ‘Core Mechanics’ author. This is a fairly technical matter, and a dedicated forum post will eventually be made detailing future changes to the placement of various extensions.
I mainly bring this up because, though I have tested it out a fair bit, there’s always a chance I mucked something up, so don’t be afraid to report any bugs you might encounter either here or in the forums.
Concluding:
Certain items like the Ash Nest replacement and a broader criteria for Doran’s current body modification quests should be coming in following patch. They were ultimately trimmed so I could send this out a little bit sooner.
...And that should be everything! It’s been a long road, friends. Not only do I hope you enjoy these additions, but they also excite you for the future of this depraved piece of interactive fiction. Let us march forward, hand-in-hand, ever onward to that majestic land, where the smut is ever the plentiful and your family is naught but resentful…!
...At least, assuming we can wrangle this major compile error.
--All puns intended.