Hello all!
Another week, another devlog! Today, we will be talking about the bounty board and the little critters that are associated with it - the vulights.
The Bounty Board
The bounty board is a building in town which will be unlocked through you travels. Once unlocked, you fill find bounties associated with unlocked characters posted on the board. This means, that there is a chance that, during a normal run, a vulight cultist will spawn and attempt to hunt you down.
Those are all the current different cultists, but we've many more planned.
Cultists
These cultists follow the teachings of a being known as Indariil, it which carries the wind in keili, more succinctly - the Wind Carrier.
They function as mini-bosses which spawn randomly throughout the level, but only for characters that are atop the board. If you should fall while a cultist is currently spawned, the bounty will be removed and a new one will be added the next time you are in town. If you should succeed in killing the cultist, however, you will be marked as a higher priority - your bounty level increasing as well as the number of cultists that will spawn next time.
Cultists and their ilk drop a particular currency - the vulight pearls.
The vulight are an enigmatic group. They're lineage diverges from normal vulpine somewhere near the end of the leonen era, when the leonen capital of Granforn was razed to the ground, as they say, by Indariil.
Their anatomy is similar to current vulpines, but stunted. They stand about a head shorted than your average current vulpine, but they are much stockier, with a pair wicked horns growing from their head. They mature quickly, but die just as fast - it is rare, indeed, to see a vulight over the age of ten.
Their hearts produce these pearls. The mana that sustains their life seems to be too much for their smaller frames and condenses into these pearls. It's a messy affair to retrieve one, but they fetch quite a price on the open market. Not to mention their use as reagents.
Watchers
Along with those fought as cultists or wanderers in dungeons, there is another source of pearls - the watchers in Riilavkava. They sit hidden and waiting in town, always watching. Once found out however, they will quickly flee and leave behind pearls, from where, no one knows.
Vulight pearls are the currency that is used to interact with the Shroomery, which is also unlocked with the bounty board. More on the shroomery later, as I've said before.
I got a little bit lore-y there for a minute. Lore is one of my favorite parts of, well, most forms of media and I'm quite the proponent of both the 'untrustworthy narrator' and 'distant mountains' styles of lore and narration.
But, yes. That is this week's devlog! Next week, finally, I will be talking about the Shroomery. Keep your pants on, it sure is exciting stuff.
Until next time,
Thank you all for reading,
Lucas