Mount and Stone.

Patience will be rewarded. But it's still a while off...

Anyway, before I give a new, more realistic deadline, I'm going to open the veil on why it turned out the way it did. There will be no spoilers (in the classical sense), but, figuratively speaking, on some points, I still have to throw light, otherwise it will be very difficult for me to tell you how the development of this update is going. For those who do not want to know anything at all, even hints, on the events of 1.8 - go straight to the last header with the new deadline.

And now to the point. It started with...

Unexpected expansions.

Expansions that were not in the plan but had to be done for objective reasons. For example, Yuturna. In the planning stages, when the update still seemed "normal" sized to me, I missed something that became well, very obvious when work actually boiled over on this episode. Namely - Yuturna and Selene are the only members of the troupe together at this point in the story. Sargon isn't handing out orders, Murella isn't blushing cutely somewhere nearby, Cadonis isn't rolling up his balls, Tabius isn't throwing back greasy jokes, and Iolanta... well she's Iolanta! She's always up with something.

My point is that no one is a distraction from the main character pool. And it's the perfect moment to reveal Yuturna best. And with the very tight timeline of events at the end of the chapter, as well as the future events in Chapter 3, it's just the perfect moment to get to know him better. A moment like there won't be for a long time to come.

So, Yuturna will get a lot of attention in this update. Right down to some of the little details. Well... have you ever wondered why he's so muscular? Good genetics alone can't explain it...

But far more interestingly, it's in the next episode that you'll have the opportunity to find out why he does what he does. Or, in other words, doesn't do what many players expect him to do... And ask me to add it, not realizing how badly I'd have to break this character's motivation to make it possible at this point in the story.

Well. The answer as to why this is so will only be on one of the branches in one of the possible dialogs with him. The hint will be quite "big", but still a hint and not direct speech (there are valid plot reasons for this). To catch this hint of his, you might want to remember and match the hints (and accidentally dropped phrases!) of many other characters throughout the whole game. Yes, I've already left a lot of "breadcrumbs" out. Globally, it has to do with things still being behind the scenes, though I've seen comments where people have already guessed some things. And some quite accurately.

A little hint. An overactive Selene, obsessed with her desires, can fly past this hint at full speed in that dialog and simply miss it. But moderate, not obsessed only with her passions and curious Selene, most likely to stumble on it. And by her reaction, you will understand a lot too.

Meanwhile, the lewd scenes have gone nuts.

No, no, I originally intended it to be the biggest update in this context. Like, 4 scenes. Haha... Not anymore. Not 4 and not even close. Nothing like this was there before. Oh, okay, I'll try to clarify without spoilers.

Only one of those planned scenes remained the actual scene. The rest became sequences of scenes... Well, I can roughly put it this way:

1. Going Wild. Became a sequence. I named it conventionally, like all the others, but it captures the essence correctly. It is, you could say, the cornerstone variation of lewd scenes in the next episode.

2. Spontaneous and Intimate. This sequence is a direct alternative to Going Wild. Yes, they are mutually exclusive.

3. Continuation. Um... of events that may be your Selene started back in the last episode. Well, you didn't think it would be over in one (I mean, two!) time, did you? It's not a sequence, though; it's just three scenes. Yes, for the next update, it's "just." Mind you, there hasn't been an update to the game with more than three sex scenes.

4. Proposal. No, no, not that kind of proposal! The other one. It's basically still 1 scene as it was in the original plan. There is no need for more... Although, perhaps in this case it is more appropriate to say 1.5 instead of 1, but enough about that.

If the last two are more or less clear (3 and 1 scene, respectively), what are these "sequences" in the first two cases?

Let's take Spontaneous and Intimate as an example. This sequence will start if your Selene rejects Going Wild. The first step is a possible fork of a nutty and more sensual variation. Yes, they are completely different. That said, on the more sensual one, if your Selene is still a virgin, it will automatically be replaced with... an alternative. Well, how alternative... It's 70% completely unique, 20% shares passages with the base variant (not for a virgin) but completely different lines, and only 10% identical to the base variant.

Yep, I made a full scene for 0.1% of the players. After all, not only does the virgin = true variable only have Heiress and Vagrant at the start of the game, but how many players have gotten their Selene innocent to that stage? Well, now that I've written about it, maybe the percentage of those who will open this scene will become a whole 0.5% xD

And these three scenes are just the first stage of this sequence. Next, if the sequence is not terminated prematurely by you, there will be one more scene. And then two more (but you can only choose one of them).

So, there are a total of 6 scenes in this sequence. Not hypothetically, they are already written. It's impossible to open them all at once, even within this sequence, where the first scene is 1 of 3, the second stage has 1 more connecting one, and the last stage has 1 of 2 more.

Yep, that was a general description of just one of two such sequences. Feel the scale? Now imagine me writing all of these. In doing so, I try to give each one a unique criterion, a different vibe, so to speak. So that none of them, anywhere, repeats any of the others from this episode or past episodes. Yeah... You feel me, I'm sure.

Why? Is it so important?

Yep. It's necessary. And important. Sexual content may not be the main focus of Inner Empire, but the protagonist's sexuality and sexual activity (or absence thereof) will have a very significant impact on many plot events, somewhere indirectly and somewhere quite directly.

As I was working on this episode, I realized that this is essentially a turning point in this context for this entire chapter and with possible consequences afterward. And I did my best to make sure this moment was well integrated into the narrative. Your Selene can either "break bad" in this sense or moderate her passions, still getting her part of lewd thingies. She even can come to this point as a virgin and leave it already very, drastically, experienced. Or, on the contrary, keep her purity, which will give it more value. After all, what is not tested does not have much value. And all of these choices are worked through. Smoothly and realistically, as much as I was able to do so.

This episode, and in this context, will have long-term consequences as well...

4 for lewdness.

I think everyone is familiar with the mechanics of corruption in adult games. You know, when you have to reach some numerical threshold to open a particular scene. This mechanic is usually used to artificially prolongize gameplay, where players first open with some petting and, hours and hours later, end with penetrative sex. Now, there's no such thing in the Inner Empire. And there won't be. Penetrative sex has been around since the first chapter. Without any petting.

The game keeps track of a sort of sexual counter of new men Selene has been with. That is, every time your Selene becomes intimate with a new man, the game adds +1 to this hidden counter. But only the first time. So if, for example, your Selene got into a relationship with Cadonis, then despite all the sex scenes with him, you only got +1 for the very first time. There's nothing particularly depraved about dating someone while having regular sex with that person. So, it's still just a +1. But if your Selene also slept with Meralion, that's a +2. And if she also slept with Chat... Well, you get the point, +3. Don't forget the events of the first chapter. You could get up to +2 there too.

In total, the most lecherous version of Selene, who, in fact, leads a promiscuous sex life, will have +5 at the moment. And those Selene who haven't slept with anyone will have that score at 0, whether they're virgins or not because of their chosen Origin. And yes, Iolanta doesn't count, bisexuality is played up by other parameters.

Well, after this update, this parameter can get up to +4 at once. Which is roughly an average median number between 0 and 9 (up to +5 max from previous events and up to +4 from the upcoming update).

Why all these numbers?

The point is that in neither the first nor the second (current) chapter, Selene's ability to, shall we say, engage in lewd behavior was limited. It was not limited by me, because it is in these first two chapters that it is defined by you, the players. As early as the next chapter, that will change.

No, I will not block the very possibility of future scenes because of this hidden parameter, well, except for the most lewd ones. But Selene's dialogs will change a lot depending on it. It's one thing to be an innocent girl or woman with little experience and quite another to be a woman who has already slept with half a dozen different men in less than a couple of months of her life. That's saying a lot.

So, if you want your Selene to be able to show reactions such as aggressive female sexuality, like "shut up and go to my room!", or very blatant flirting and stuff like that - then such lines in the next chapter will require this hidden counter to be about 4 or more. And as the game progresses, the required value will grow, according to the approximate formula:

• Hidden sex counter (sex with every new man first time)/2

A less experienced Selene will likely get more moderate dialog options in the same places where there will be a potential sex scene. Which, won't necessarily cancel out the very possibility of such a scene, but rather change the approaches to them. On the other hand, the most lewd options, yes, could be blocked. I can hardly rationalize, conventionally, a virgin suddenly and joyfully going to an orgy or something.

Thus, you don't need to sleep with everyone to have 100% ability to, um... sleep with everyone! Just half of them, hee hee. And by the way, in the next update, some lines already change depending on this hidden counter. For the first time in the game. However, it's more of a roleplaying aspect there, for now, but still.

Lots of sex, okay, but what else?

I'm going to be super brief here. I wouldn't be me if all I planned to entertain and surprise you within the next episode was a round of sex scenes. But that's where I'm going to stop. You've already realized that there's something I'm not willing to reveal to you in any way, not even in hints.

Approximate numbers.

600+ pages of draft. Still in the works. I haven't reached the 600 mark yet, but I have no doubts about it. It's more a question of how much over 600 it will end up being. With a full English translation, the text will "sediment" a bit (English is more compact than my native language), but still. That's at least x2 content compared to any of the past updates.

and...

~300 pages of it - is every possible variation of sex scenes. This means that there will be more sexual content alone in the next episode than were these very updates before it entirely. That said, it's impossible to open all these scenes at once. They are structured in such a way that you will miss something anyway. After all, roleplay involves choices, and choices involve consequences, and consequences give you one thing but take away something else. Otherwise, it would not be a choice but an illusion of it.

Estimated deadlines.

January 2025. The very end of the month. Assuming I work on the verge of burnout every day with no breaks at all. So you better count on February. It's more realistic.

The post below (if you haven't read it) will give a rough understanding of why the work is taking so long. If this was a standard-sized update like I originally wanted - you would have played it by now, probably for about a month. But this update is unprecedented in many aspects. Including the wait time for its release. Sorry about that. I'm working as fast as I can, but this episode is not one that can be cut into smaller slices and served to you. This dish needs to be served whole. And gosh, it turns out to be really big.

Sometimes I feel like I'm pushing a stone up a mountain, and... no, it doesn't roll down like in that Greek myth, it's pushing higher, making significant progress. But this mountain itself... it's as if it just grows higher and higher. Nevertheless, sooner or later, this mountain will end. And hopefully, from its summit, there will be a beautiful view that was worth it.