State of the Union | No Use in Lecturing Them

The State of the Union is....STRONG!!

Alright, that out of the way what the hell is actually happening? Lets have a run through the list of what's been done and what's to do.

Prae Set and Future Commissions

Hoo boy, that took a lot longer than I thought it would. Really shot most of this year to hell to be honest.

So with that said, here's the way Commissions are going to work for the foreseeable:

We're still going ahead with the Thrallopedia, and the order of the thrall models has not changed, which is:

• Domine
• Noble
• Dancer
• Pet
• Maid
• Amazon
• Pony

With the Domine Set coming up next.

However! I won't be mass-commissioning the sets like last time. Instead, I'll be parsing them out one character slot at a time, with first-bid opportunity going in the following rotation:

• Slot A: $10 Patron 1st bid
• Slot B: $5+ Patron 1st Bid
• Slot C: $2+ Patron 1st Big
• Slot D: $1+ Patron 1st Bid
• Slot E: Public 1st Bid
• Slot F: [Repeat of Slot A]
• etc.

So basically, Patrons of various levels will nearly always get first dibs on any slots that open up. If a day goes by after a slot opens up and no-one's grabbed it, then it goes public for everyone to do so.

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For the Domine Thrallopedia Slots, a commissioner can expect:

• Price: £60
• [Public]  A Thrallopedia entry of their thrall
• [Public]  Profile Information of Thrall (Acquisition, Instruction, Evaluation, Auction, plus final grade and an excerpt of the Instructor's Log)
• For Stage 1 and 2 Thrallopedia Entries - HD Character Art consisting of -

3 Colour variants of the base thrallsuit (and variant Dom/Sub collars) -- These are what you choose from for the Thrallopedia entry.

1 Coloured piece of their 'finished' Dom and sub looks.

• For the other Stages - HD Character Art consisting of -

2 Coloured pieces of Alternate Dom/sub looks -- choosing 1 of each of these for the Thrallopedia.

• Thrall Question: A 3-Panel comic where you posit a question to the thrall in a post-auction setting. You choose the question!
• A timelapse of the process, along with commentary.
• A link to the eventual Thrallopedia Set

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The [Public] tag for the first two items means that, unlike previously, it's getting to the point in TW development where the Thrallopedia will be included in an expanding capacity within future game updates, so it doesn't make sense to hold back the Thrallopedia entires and Profile Info, so those items of the commission will be posted up on DA as-and-when they are done (though they will be still included in the set.)

All the other items done for the slot will be exclusive to the person who commissioned them and the Set.

In addition to all Variants, Thrall Question comics and the like, the Set will also uniquely include:

• A Short Story and Short Story CG
• 'A Thrall's Life' - A 12 panel comic series showing snapshots of a thrall's life in Thrallworks
• A downloadable mini-Thrallopedia containing a browseable format to experience the thrallopedia entries.
• Additional CG Menu screens and some sketch concepting.

Commission Dates and Pre-Orders

Each slot will be available 1 week from when the Thrallopedia Entry is posted publicly on my Deviant Art/Wherever-- I'll have some pre-set post to go at like 9am GMT to announce when it is open.

For the time being I won't be doing pre-orders on commissions, just to be fair to people.

Again, barring the commission slots that start public, any slot not taken in time *does* go public 24 hours later.

Not *all* commission slots will be Thrallopedia slots; much like in previous sets, some will be for menu CG's, and yet others might be for Dossiers and other things. We'll see.

For the time being though, the list for the next 3 slots will be, predictably:

• Domine - Stage 1  ($10 First Bid)

Just acquired, fresh from orientation, wearing a relatively standard thrallsuit.

• Domine - Stage 2  ($5+ First Bid)

Thrall has come to grips somewhat with its status, seeming more confident. Still a standard thrallsuit though.

• Domine - Stage 3  ($2+ First Bid)

Given various physical upgrades and items relevant to its model. Secure in their thralldom, but adjusting to their new equipment.

As to when the first of these slots will open? That will depend on how the rest of the month goes. At the latest, we can expect the 1st slot to be around early December.

As for when Sets will be available for sale after all the character components are done- that remains variable for now- we'll see how the current method pans out.

So yeah, that's commissions fairly well covered for the time being. So what's this about the rest of the month?

Cleaning Up

There's a lot of obligations and things of that nature that have stacked up over the years, and while I'm working on Thrallworks, I would like to use as much of my other work-time as possible to get such things completed.

The first was the Praet Set. Next is a CYOA thing I have been doing on the Penlight Discord that I let lay fallow for several months while occupied with said Set ('Penlight' being another Hypno VN that I quite approve of). It's obstensibly optional, but it's also good hypno content I'd like to share with you. (The above image set isn't a part of that CYOA, the above is actually *another* thing I said I'd do that I only just now found time to do. Yeezus.)

After this Penlight thing? I've the Harvest Game to finish. I glanced over it recently and I thank my past self for keeping notes in the code-files, though there's a couple of design issues that I have difficulty in thinking how to overcome to make it a truly popular (or even 'useable') game for over a certain amount of players. We'll see. Prolly a few weeks left to go with it; I wouldn't be surprised if it rode out the rest of the year.

In the middle of all of this, there's a bunch of Hunger Games sketches and Drone Exchange images yet to do, which I might slide between the Penlight and Harvest Game work, or else do on weekends.

After all of that, there's the Pony Game, though as that's also a part of the larger TW developmenting and all this current work is helping design/shape the Pony Game, I'm pretty happy to get that going after all the above is taken care of.

"And that 'Movement' setting?"

We're working on it. Check back in a bit.

Fair Enough. Thrallworks?

Currently it's mostly writing, but I'm pretty confident I can finish a first draft line all the way through at least 1 orientation by the end of the year- Between 2-4 hours of every workday is spent just on the script, so progress is fine on content.

I can't get all the art ready in that time though, so a true demo/rebuild isn't on the cards just yet, but if people are interested in following the text in general, then in the next update I'll be releasing a full 'hospital' section to roll though, and then a full 'Wheels' section the update after that. It's not going to be to final game standards, but it would give you a good indication of the spread/scope I think.

Most of the thinking behind doing the other stuff for the rest of the year is to free up time/energy to focusing down purely on CG and character asset work for TW, rather than needing to hop between scripting and arting. I suppose thinking about it, you'd at least want the art done so the writing can be more impactfully 'added' to the game as currently coded and more shareable with you lot, but there's still a few characters who need concepting out so...baby steps!

And Lastly How Are You?

Can't complain. Things are progressing. Wondering on how to run an e-zine.

Anyway, that's all for the current state of things! I'll try and make these more frequent, but regardless, have fun y'all and thanks for supporting me and being here! Means a lot.