You are an advisor in a declining empire, beset by unrest, barbarians, and forces beyond your comprehension. Can you save the empire from doom?
Explore a fictional world inspired by the late Roman Empire.
Be male or female, cisgender or transgender, straight, gay, bisexual or asexual.
Serve the imperial family dutifully, or secure your own rise to power.
Choose from up to five careers, from a veteran of the legion to a shadowy spymaster.
Learn the secrets of sorcery or untangle the ancient mysteries behind the Empire.
Navigate the viper’s nest of imperial politics to find allies or paramours, including the empress herself, a charismatic senator, a ruthless crime boss, a barbarian general, or a foreign prince.
SETTING SYNOPSIS
Through over five centuries of conquest, the Iudian Empire has come to rule the Inner Sea, becoming the most powerful realm in the known world.
From the western hills of Ezperia, the northern forests of Hevernica, the sophisticated cities of Attika, the eastern deserts of Midyan, and the southern rivers of Seyet, all fell before what the world calls the Iudian Sorceresses, the women who wield fire itself against their enemies. For it is indeed women who rule in Iudia, as ordained by the mother goddess Gaia herself.
Yet, the Empire is not without troubles, and her glory days seem past her. Crippling civil wars, endemic corruption and ceaseless invasion have all contributed to the woes of the once great Empire.
Threats old and new rear their heads in times such as these. A resurgent Pharia, the Empire’s old eastern rival, threatens to seize the eastern provinces. Civil unrest has escalated in the capital of the capital, the flames fanned by an increasingly bold criminal underground.
The greatest danger may come from the north, however. Beyond the cold barbarian lands comes a enemy you have only heard rumor of, the Witch King of the Ongi. It is said the warrior rides at the head of a massive host, wielding great magic that has united all the tribes of the far steppe together out of fear of his power. He has called a holy war against the Empire, claiming it as a nation of demons to be cleansed from the earth.
Will you hold the Empire steady in her time of crisis, claw your way to power, or seek to solve ancient mysteries? The fate of Iudia is in your hands.
MAJOR CHARACTERS
Empress Julia Vitallia Hevernica (48F)
A harsh woman who forced the Empire back together with blood and steel, Julia has reigned as Empress for a decade. She is a strong military leader and a pious woman, who frequently prays to the Goddess for guidance. She is cruel towards her enemies, but possesses a certain pragmatic streak, and has invested much of her authority in you so that you might govern the Empire while she wages war.
Consul Consentia Plinia Dorica (54F)
The leader of the now-sidelined Senate, the ancient legislature of grandiose aristocrats which once governed the Empire alone, Consentia is bent on advocating for what she sees as the fundamental rights of the public and restoring the power of the old Republic. She is a passionate orator and the wealthiest woman in the Empire, barring the Empress herself, and has struck a deal with the crime lord Ceto in order to gain the support of the masses for her reforms.
Tribune Ceto Vera (38F)
Coming up from the poorest slums of the capital, Ceto is the Empire’s most notorious crime lord, ruling the streets by both spreading out her ill-gotten gains to the people and making brutal examples out of those who refuse to acknowledge her authority. Lately, she has entered politics and become a staunch advocate for the rights of the common people, forming an uneasy alliance with the Consul to push back against the ever encroaching imperial autocracy.
Legate Antonius Lethungius/Amalrik Wulfhid (40M)
Born to an imperial mother who named him Antonius and a barbarian father who named him Amalrik, the Legate is a man caught between two bitterly opposed worlds. A skilled and charismatic general, he has won the steadfast loyalty of the Empire's barbarian auxiliaries with his victories on the field of battle, yet his true loyalties remain unknown. Is he a dutiful man of the Empire, or a proud, unbowed barbarian?
Prince Darius of Pharia (33M)
Darius, third son of the great King of Kings, serves in the imperial capital as the ambassador and hostage from the eastern realm of Pharia, the Empire’s oldest and most powerful rival. Over the past decade and half, however, Darius has become more than a mere captive, having established great wealth and influence in the capital with his charm and wit, and is now a major power player in his own right.
CONTENT WARNING
These themes and depictions are present in the current demo, or are planned to be present in the final product.
Depictions of warfare, gore (including eye, head, and burn trauma), violence (including violence against children), references to torture and dismemberment, sexual suggestions, references, and themes, drug and alcohol use (including by children), drug and alcohol abuse, physical and emotional abuse, references to sexual abuse and coercion, sexism, suicide, slavery, homophobia, and transphobia.
UPDATE LOG
04/14/2024: Chapter I (50k Words | 18k Playthrough)
05/07/2024: Chapter II (105k Words | 39k Playthrough)
06/05/2024: Chapter III (156k Words | 59k Playthrough)
07/14/2024: Chapter IV (216k Words | 73k Playthrough)
12/28/2024: Chapter V (322k Words | 93k Playthrough)
02/10/2025: Act I Content Update (340k Words | 98k Playthrough)
06/01/2025: Chapter VI (489k Words | 125k Playthrough)
06/19/2025: Interlude Update (509k Words | 133k Playthrough)
01/10/2026: Chapter VII (721k Words | 160k Playthrough)
01/27/2026: Mid-Chapter Content Update (736k Words | 163k Playthrough)
Hi all, apologies for the delayed monthly update! I had a lot more going on this month than I had anticipated, and unfortunately I wasn't able to get nearly as much done on Chapter VIII as I had hoped. Still, I'm hopeful that I'll find more time this summer to keep chipping away at the chapter and deliver more substantive updates for you all. Hope your month went well!
Hey i know you are busy, a d are working hard for a update but do you have a estimate for when the next big update is for the game,
and i wanna say thank you for this game i am a huge roman empire fan and i love the world, the touch of magic and the reverse gender is very interesting.
Thank you for the interest! May has unexpectedly been more stressful for me than I thought it'd be, but I've recently had good news in terms of the job hunt, so I'm hopeful that I'll have the space dedicate more of my time to writing Chapter VIII beyond chipping away at it where I can.
If you mean the season, the current chapter takes place fimrly in the second half of winter. However, most of the events of Act II are taking place in Iudia proper or near the coast of the Inner Sea, so the winter is considerably more mild.
My favorite part about this if is how much you can get the MC suffer (even if most of his suffering/guilt on my part is headcannon-ing but still) specifically with Augusta, "surely surely Julia would...somehow still lay with Titus right? When im not around, maybe she doesn't love me as much yeah surely" and then Augusta was born with the most red reddest hair in the entire empire "😃FUCK"
AND THEN a decade later the Empire is in flames, Julia is dead, Titus is also dead, there is the whole thing with Victoria going on and yeah sure Augusta is empress now but he has even more work and if someone connects the dots just a liiiiitle bit more...
Some of it can be externalized rather than just headcannon, if you take certain paths such as loving a dead Julia (particularly if the Prefect also killed her) or if Augusta was burned in the Battle of Kyro.
Hi all, I hope you've had a great April! I've been able to work on Shattered Eagle more than I had expected at the end of March, but still it's been somewhat difficult to make significant progress given my schedule. Nevertheless, I have a much more open month of May, and I hope to have more substantive progress reports on Chapter VIII then!
will Titus become a future romance option? I'm falling for the Dowager Emperor, and I LOVE the idea of a dutiful MC secretly longing for Titus whilst serving Julia :)
There is an opportunity to build a connection with Titus (so long as the MC doesn't romance Julia and asks him to stay in Kyro), but he won't be a proper RO, no.
Ooo! Now I sorta want to know how Augusta would be like in the suspicious puppet route
I did write up variants to that effect in Chapter VI, but essentially she plays off the Prefect's expectations, and has a unique interaction with Prima, the spy, at the end of Chapter VI where she asks for information about the Prefect.
What impact will teaching Augusta in warfare have? Will it alter her perspective / approach to situations, and increase her popularity with the legions or the foedarati?
It changes her approach to a few different situations, such as the Battle of Kyro in Chapter VI, deciding the eastern legions' orders, the decision of how to approach Otha in Chapter VII, and the planning for the expedition, as well as unlocking skill checks for her and coronation choices in the same chapter.
I just notices that Augusta has long hair just like my prefect. Is there or would there be a parent-daughter(non-biological or biological) bonding moment where they braid eachothers hair🥺
Thanks for the question! It sounds adorable, but I don't think that would fit anywhere in the story.
However, Augusta's hair style is variable based on the path she takes. A Puppet Augusta keeps her childhood hair style of a long braid. A Tyrant Augusta crops her hair at the ear much in the style that Julia did. A Paragon Augusta keeps her hair long but takes it out of her old braid.
The way you write the gender positions is really refreshing and exactly how i think the interactive games that want to give the player freedom but also base on the world building, like yes there is a difference on it but you won't exactly be restricted for it, because you can still kick ass anyway or outsmart the others. I usually play genders on random when i start a playthrough but loathe when the game puts a noose to it "oh since the game is gender locked female you won't be able to do combat or have much of a opinion on things that happen" Or "gender locked male you just a scraggy man who don't know much of anything and are good only on bar fights". A breath of fresh air, gender roles fit the worldbuild but don't define the mc position on stone i love it!
(This one got long lmao sorry for bad english)
Thank you! I'm glad you've enjoyed that part of the story, I've tried to make gender an important theme in Shattered Eagle and to make your choice feel impactful.
I’ve noticed that romantic relationships play a smaller role in the themes or focus of this story than other IFs, which I think really helps grow the medium as beyond (admittedly still lovely!) dating games. With that said, I’m curious how you go about writing romantic subplots. Do you think of a character first, then decide they ought to be romancable? Do you go into their design looking for a love interest? How do you think these paths change your understanding of a character, or even the bigger themes of the story? Julia has (rightly) gotten a lot of positive attention due to the quality of her writing, but do you think there are other romantic paths that similarly dramatically change the way a reader might view the character, maybe even ones that you think have gone under-explored by your readers?
Sorry that’s a lot of questions but I really wanna try engaging with you as an author where I can. You are so talented and I really love reading what you’ve written!
Thank you for your questions! I'd be happy to answer them.
With that said, I’m curious how you go about writing romantic subplots.
I don't write romance fiction, I write fiction that has romance in it. I approach it like baking a cake. All of the core narrative and mechanical elements are the cake itself, flour/egg/butter/sugar/etc. Romance is more like the icing. It's an important part of the flavor profile, but it's not central, or at least not as central as it is to romance genre fiction.
Do you think of a character first, then decide they ought to be romancable? Do you go into their design looking for a love interest?
For Shattered Eagle, I planned to make the faction leaders the only romancable characters. So I designed the characters as faction leaders first, as political creatures with their own rise to power, ulterior motives and dreams of reshaping the future. Then, I made them into romances second, after I already established their core character traits.
How do you think these paths change your understanding of a character, or even the bigger themes of the story?
One of the central themes of Shattered Eagle, and the one that inspires my writing the most is the conflict between the personal and the political. Can love survive despite the demands of duty? Can it overcome the pull of ambition? Can it even ever exist in an environment so cutthroat as this? The ideas of transactionality, manipulation, and trust are key to the reasons why I chose to write romance in Shattered Eagle.
Julia has (rightly) gotten a lot of positive attention due to the quality of her writing, but do you think there are other romantic paths that similarly dramatically change the way a reader might view the character, maybe even ones that you think have gone under-explored by your readers?
All of them are intended to make you reconsider your first impression eventually. The way I structured the romance routes (and overall alliance routes to a lesser degree) is the more time you spend with a character, you begin to peel back the mask they show to the world. By reinforcing trust (either genuinely or as a ploy), you gain a glimpse into their heart.
Julia is a prominent example. She's an amoral tyrant, a murderous warlord, a distant mother. But, to a Prefect who pulls back her layers, she shows a softer, vulnerable, codependent side to her which is buried under all of that harshness. It doesn't justify or contravene her cruel actions, but it does add nuance to her. Like all of the characters, she's intended to be human, not a caricature.
.The same goes for the other romancable characters, in their own unique ways. Darius sheds the image of a devil-may-care playboy to reveal his unquenchable thirst for knowledge and refusal to accept the world as it appears. Ceto sheds the image of a rough, sultry criminal to reveal the hurts and hopes which drive her fight for change. Consentia sheds the image of a prim and proper aristocrat to reveal her hidden past and the weight it bears down on her.
The Legate is the most mechanically complex of these, even, as who he sheds his image to reveal depends on how you influence him throughout the story. Who is he deep down, the gruff and defiant barbarian, or the dutiful and genteel officer? That's for you to decide.
And no problem, I appreciate getting an opportunity to share my thoughts about writing!
HI all, I hope you've had a great March! I've worked on Chapter VIII where I was able to this month, but my schedule has grown a bit tighter and I've been doing some job hunting that's been taking a lot of my energy and focus away. April might end up being fairly busy too, but I'm hoping to deliver more progress reports then!
Is it possible to make a high willfulness but puppet Augusta?
This used to be possible, in fact there was a separate route for this called the "Suspicious Puppet." But I was editing down some elements of the story for overall cohesion and to avoid too much bloat, and I decided to cut it.
If Augusta has more than 25 points of willfulness, she'll lose all puppet points at the end of Chapter V, and whichever is higher of Paragon or Tyrant will be set as her personality.
I've code dived a bit and I want to know why can't I got 'the woman is deadly serious. She appears to truly believe the Goddess deduced the nature of her current injury.' Dialogue even if I did do the eye surgery thing to get 'dar_truth = true'
Will Senate Rebellion Route potentially end with us dissolving the Senate or going decimatus on them, ensuring my baby girl can rule as a Girlboss Empress???
It certainly can, if you avoid trying to make peace with the Senate and People. In Chapter VII, you have an option to prevent the Senate from meeting again should you side with the foederati in the civil war.
