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Currently finishedâPrologue, Chapters One through Five. ~278k words, average playthrough ~71k.
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His flesh, our sustenance. His blood, our drink. His bones, our foundation, His body, our haven.
Five hundred years ago, the Earth was dying. Water polluted, dirt infertile, forests and meadows crumbling to the wars of steel and fire. And so the Order called His Grace, the Lord of Communion, down from where He rested before and He allowed humanity to rest inside his body.
Or at least, that's the story the Order tells.
You grew up under the masked faces of their Exalted, under the stories of Earth past. Rusted metal and cracked plastic; His bone and His flesh. Conflicting worlds, conflicting times, and soon, it might all come to a head.
Play as a recruit of the Order, an Exalted.
Be male, female, trans, or nonbinary.
Customize your appearance, talents, and worldview.
Romance(or befriend, or antagonize) five separate characters.
Shape yourselfâare you pragmatic or empathetic? Do you speak out or remain silent? Do you trust the Order, and do they trust you?
Align yourself with different factions, all pursuing differentâsometimes incongruousâgoals.
Experience a world of greater things than you can imagine, but where your choices still matter.
Tallis/Talyn/Talia | The Dissident
Gender selectable. Green eyes and long, auburn hair, charismatic and cunning all at once, able to switch façades on a dime. Your childhood friendâOr, at least, companion. They aren't the biggest fan of the Order. Perhaps that will have greater implications than simple complaints as the situation grows more dire.
August | The Exalt
Blonde, sharp, and severe, he's the one who brought you into the fold. As close to a mentor, a lifeline, as you have in the tall spires of the Order. Dedicated to His Graceâa zealot, some might call him. The Order doesn't name His Grace as a God, but August certainly seems to think that He is.
El | The Mechanic
Long, thick black hair, skin tanned and freckled. She's a mechanic of the Order, though you might not know that on first glance. Talented, there's no doubt about it, despite her occasional airheadedness. Sometimes, you can't help but feel that she's hiding something.
Jasper | The Outlander
Gender selectable. Muscled either way, with dark skin and deep brown eyes. Loud and arrogantâand they have what it takes to back that personality up. As the first new arrival to the Commune in⌠all of history, you have to wonder if they're an omen or a savior. Either way, they'll shatter everything that you thought you knew.
Icarus | The Overseer
The Head of the Order. Everything else about them is shrouded in mystery.
Copious mentions of blood/flesh, body horror
DISCLAIMER: I'm a student and a slow writer in general, so updates might not be very frequent. Nevertheless, I'll try to see this story through.
3/7/23: First posted with Prologue and 1/2 of Chapter One, ~22k words.
3/11/23: Second half of Chapter One was posted. Story now at ~30.5k words.
4/27/23: Chapter two posted, bringing story to ~47k words.
9/30/23: Chapter three posted, bringing story up to ~81k words.
10/3/24: Chapter four posted, bringing story up to ~175k words.
7/2/2025: Chapter Five posted, bringing story up to ~278k words
Up next: Chapter six.
For more information, see: Forums page.
Apologies for how late this is! Starting a new job + summer classes + various other responsibilities means that the beginning of this month in particular has been packed. I will forever be infinitely admiring of people who can juggle school, work, & writing as I can hardly handle one or two or those at a time lol. In any case, my few weeks of freedom in May were put to good use, and I'm still trying to squeeze in as much work as I can. As always, thanks for reading!
So I'm wondering what T's deal is, do they actually even have feelings for an MC that was flirty? I know I read they had thought about entertaining it. I keep thinking we're going to return and this dumb dumb will have started a riot or something
Yes, they do! I can't seem to find where I've spoken on this topic before, but hopefully it matches up well enough when I say that T at least somewhat returned the feelings. If the reader have stayed, and maintained their relationship, something likely would have blossomed there. Albeit T would have found some way to complicate it, but there was something.
At the current time, so far removed from childhood, feelings are hard to quantify, particularly for them. But at the very least, they remember MC fondly - and it wouldn't be too hard to bring things back to the surface...
Hello everyone! The public update for Party of Four is now up on cogdemos!
Check out the update here!
This update has the first half of Sentari Day Two (of three). It's roughly 40k words, and brings the game to about 46k words per playthrough. In this update you'll:
Start the morning with Miriyam
Reunite with or meet Vana
Meet your class Master
Train your specialization or skip it entirely
There's quite a lot of variation packed into this section, so please don't mind that the word count doesn't seem to align with the number of events haha. Part two will be some more shopping and interactions with Sweets and Maymie, so I'm looking forward to writing it! đŤĄ
Update is out!
Hello, hello, as I said earlier this week, the update is here! The demo is up to 43k words (22k new words!). That's bigger than the size of the initial release!
Lots of new scenes and talks to be had.
In this update, you can:
⌠Define your relationship with Freya!
⌠Win a tree climbing race
⌠Have a talk with your twin
⌠Fall off a tree (or a roof)
⌠Pet a horse
⌠Negotiate with Mother
⌠Get a gift :D
What changed:
⌠Stats are here! Personality stats are added. I'll still have to add to all the choices, but it is a start
⌠Expanded the bedroom scene. You can see new things now
Play the demo here. Saves might be busted, so please start a new one. Can't wait to hear your thoughts or feedback!
@interact-if
if there's one thing I love writing it's nested relationship dependencies that only messy readers will see. okay yes flirt with everyone in front of everyone
I think of her every day â¤ď¸( the giant space cow with cancer and mysterious belly aches. may she get cyber chemo) i'm side eyeing Ic for creating a cult and misgendering her, come on the whole ''keeping living being in the flesh'' is so motherhood coded she would have made a fine mother goddess!! this AI is lowkey cyber mysoginist /j
Honestly that's probably Ic's worst crime(totally....). Something something... AI bias.... guess they're no better than chatgpt lol.
Hope everyone had a good month! It's been kicking my ass, personally, but writing when I can get the time is a good way to unwind, even if I don't get much free time to actually do that lol. I'm currently sick (just a cold, but still annoying) just in time for finals, but soon, I'll be having a lot more free time to sit back and work on Parasitical. Thank you for reading, as always!
i recently found your IF and just finshed the demo.
i really liked the story and the world. im also really excited for how it continues.
i have a few questions:
before the reveal i assumed that the favourable/critical stat would be important for e.g. an sceptical MC to blend in/infiltrate the order more to find out more (its easier to get informations, if the order sees MC as a loyal member).
now with the reveal i was wondering, how exactly this stat will influence the story?
how important will the different stats (personality/skills) be? will the only influence the flavourtext OR can you for example fail retrieving something if you dont have enough percentage in a certain skill?
i chose to romance T and i had the feeling that compared to the other RO an Characters, that T had a lot less screentime than the others. so i wanted to ask (which is spoilery, so its completely fine if you dont want/cant answer this one) when exactly we will meet T again/when T joins the group/etc.?
thank you for your answers.
Hey! Thanks for all the questions! I know this answer will be frustrating lol, but a lot of them will be covered by the âthis is spoilersâ button. Iâll try my best to answer what I can!
Youâre not too far off in your assumption! It might just play out in a different way from what you thought originally...
Skills will be subject to tests, and youâll fail/pass events accordingly (the suspicion stat counts under the skill umbrella!) Personality traits will be all flavor text and customization. There might be âtestsâ associated with them(for example, if you played a staring contest with Jasper in the most recent chapter, your stubbornness stat determined how far you got) but nothing that substantially changes the story.
T will be taking a lot more screentime starting Chapter 6! You wonât have to wait too long.
Another ask,why did august decide to romance us? đ Was it love at first sight? Hehe
I wouldn't say love at first sight, mostly because August's not the type of person to go for that. If your Exalted has had a crush for a while, he probably picked up on that, but didn't address it for various reasons. If not, then his attention was probably still occupied by other things(hence why you were not too close even as friends, beforehand). Of course, now, things are starting to change... and you can headcanon whatever you want lol.
Another month gone by... is it just me or was it so so fast? I've spent the bulk of this month still dealing with issues in my personal life, but I've managed to get some work done in my rare bits of free time. April's sure to be busy with finals and the like looming over me at the end of it, but I'm hoping to continue writing! Thanks to everyone for reading, as always.
i Never checked out the illuminae files but I honestly might just for that. My first sort of intro to the trope was the audio tour guide in mistholme museum of mystery morbidity and mortality (tmmommam) (stupidly long name ik)
also I just listened to keeping your memory alive by tub ring and oh my god I can be normal I swear but now is not that time that song and IcarusâŚ..
Oh also the thing that ic does in the final chapter where they like. Lower the volume of their voice and it gets kinda scratchy and with a little bit of mechanical fuzz does EVERYTHING for me
Always happy to see more icarusposting in my inbox. I haven't heard of tmmommam, but if it involves this trope, I'll have to check it out!
I love writing little mannerisms like that. Just how their nature bleeds into everything they do...
still thinking about IcarusâŚ.alwaysâŚforeverâŚ.. I love that theyâre kinda mean but Iâm a like im scared of you and Iâm scared of me way⌠and also how mc can run their hands along the groves of ics wings makes me INSANE like. The instinctive human-ness of it all, how ic doesnât even know itâs happening, maybe doesnât even know they have the wing groovesâŚ
Icarus is holding it together as best as they can... never mind what those methods actually are. and ugh yes I love touch and how that interacts w/ their body, so many future plans for that...
