(For the uninitiated, a slightly more detailed explanation about what The Galarian Chronicles is can be found over here in a mostly updated FAQ.)

Sometimes I unintentionally humor myself well after the fact. I had thought that I could juggle PSX Mania along with putting work into The Galarian Chronicles. That’s not even mentioning adding in Dreamcast Mania to the fold. While the first few months of the Mania projects proved fruitful and in a constant state of being busy, it was way too much to divvy up my time between multiple massive projects. Once summer arrived – well, actually just as the obnoxiously warm weather arrived, my streaming productivity came to a screeching halt. As I mentioned earlier, I just can’t keep up a streaming schedule when it feels like I am living inside a volcano for most of the summer.

But when one door barely stays cracked open, another is kicked wide open. Without the long hours of streaming, the hours afterwards doing write ups of what I completed, the video editing and all the other activities that go into both mania projects (though I still have a ton of videos to get “YouTube ready”), I have a lot more “free” time, and the desire I’ve had to get more work done on The Galarian Chronicles over the last few months can finally be sated.

One of the first things I’ve done is import my partially completed final chapter onto the main story file(s) so it’s all in one place. When I had written what I did of the final chapter a couple of years ago, I was in a very emotionally trying time that day, and something told me to take that vulnerable energy and turn it into something positive. It’s about 60% completed, right before things take a somewhat jarring turn. Naturally I do not want to elaborate on any of that, as it’s a pivotal portion of, I guess for better or worse, the franchise as a whole. Remember, my original plans involved a trilogy that spun off into something else.

In terms of what I tackle next however, I’m a little undecided. What I wrote for the final chapter came out well so far, with some editing that needs to be done still. I think I may just wait until the next time I am under such emotional duress to work on the rest of the ending. I feel like I can apply myself in a powerful manner if I follow that path, especially given what I already have done for that last chapter under such conditions.

If I had to guesstimate at how far into the actual story that I have typed out, it’s roughly halfway through the first act. I want to at least get the first act down on “paper” by the time fall begins. It’s a conservative estimate, but after 15+ years with this in my head and the efforts in trying to write it all out, I know that, for me at least, this has been and will continue to be a long term project. I’ve tried forcing this out, and it just doesn’t work. I have to be in the right place at the right time in the right frame of mind, and once all those stars are aligned, work on this gets done.

I picked up Solasta: Crown of the Magister the other day on sale via Steam. Solasta is a CRPG, something I’ve purchased a plethora of, but always have a difficult time settling down with one for more than two hours. Before you start your campaign, you can use some dev created characters to bring with you on your adventure, or create your own. I was amazed with how the character creation suite was set up, mostly with the physical creation. With the only real complaint being that one character had too purple of a skin tone when I was trying to go more a more blue hued pigmentation, it’s a magnificent snapshot of how I envisioned this heroes in my head.

(names subject to change – click to enlarge)

Class wise I didn’t have the option for druid, so Aeriann is a cleric here, and Galarian should be a fighter/warrior but I wanted to try something different for the game. Only changes I’d make to these to bring them closer in line to how they appear in my head is making Aeriann’s hair a much lighter red, and Morid’s slightly lighter red. Also, Solasta doesn’t have dark elves or wood elves so I had to make due with what was present.

I’m still very much undecided with how to share more information about The Galarian Chronicles as a whole. Other than two names I haven’t mentioned before (that may be changed/altered before this first story is complete), as well as the tentative name of the first book (The Musings of Redward Caves), and the adjustment to the FAQ I had, I don’t know what else I could go over that’s not going to give away more than I want to give away for now.

Actually, I know a few things, but I think I’ll save that for the next update!

When will that next update be? Likely before fall comes. Depending on how much ground I cover, maybe in the next several weeks. Once the weather gets cooler, I’ll be in a better position to be streaming again and more consistently, however I’m kind of in a phase/mood/mindset currently where I’m very much not rushing back to streaming, or at least as much as I was doing at the start, due to a number of issues that have come about before I had to stop streaming. We’ll see where that goes when we get closer to the fall. Right now my primary focus and care is getting The Galarian Chronicles worked on in a more serious manner, and the stars have finally lined up for that. It feels amazing to even do something as elementary as an update on this project, because it feels like I’m back in the saddle (and I am). Now it’s time to make the best of this opportunity.