Mortish
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Night VI - Aligned Zealot Route - Part I
🕑 Added 2025-04-29 01:06:49 +0000 UTCThe first half of the Aligned Zealot route is available on The Nightborn Edition now. What is the Aligned Zealot route? If you ended Night V as a Zealot with an offer from Valdricht to become his lover, you're on it! Whether you said yes or no, you can go read the continuation of your storyline now. It's currently only available in the browser, the downloadable version will be updated with the Unaligned Zealot update this week.
The Unaligned Zealot route will take a couple more days to finalize. It's very different than the Aligned one, so if you play both you can look forward to an alternate storyline once that's up. I'm still on track to update the first half of the NSFW Heretic route this weekend, but the standard route will like take a few more days.
Aligned Zealot Part I - April 28th +28,000 words
Unaligned Zealot Part I - April 30th/May 1st +26,000 words
Serax Alternate POV Episode* - May 2nd
Heretic NSFW Route Part I - May 4th +16,000 words (approx)
Heretic Standard Route Part I - Week of May 4th +37,000 words (approx)
The standard Heretic Route will be fairly similar to the Aligned Zealot route, whereas the Unaligned Zealot Route and the Heretic NSFW route will be fairly unique.
Progress & Thoughts
The most challenging aspect for this night has without a doubt been the different game modes, specifically the division between Unbound, MFM, and the MF routes. As I mentioned in a previous post I completely axed the Serax MF branch for this night, and even then it was still a huge tangle of choices. I ended up cutting the Part 1 earlier than I would have liked because I reached this wall where just in the Aligned Zealot Route the story took nine different branches, depending on previous choices and your game mode.
The way I've structured the story right now is unsustainable. I've talked (read: ranted) a bit about how I feel like I'm in this constant struggle between wanting to offer more choices but then feeling frustrated when I'm not able to update as quickly as I'd like to. It's weird because you guys are really chill, I think it's the nature of the IF community and readers being accustomed to waiting months at a time for updates. But one thing I'm figuring out about myself as an author is I'm totally not like that. I really want to move forward with the story and not stay stuck in one episode for weeks at a time. I have a lot of things I'm excited to write and I loathed getting mired in what is essentially just setup for the real romance, pregnancy, gods & monsters, and parenting arcs I want to be writing.
Before I start sounding too whiny, I have a ton of ideas for things to do to move the story along more quickly. Also, one of the things I've noticed about writing the NSFW Heretic route is that once the MC sleeps with the guys and accepts her new reality, the story becomes so much faster. I actually regret not starting with the NSFW Heretic route because it's taken me like 4 days to write, whereas the Zealot route has taken 4 weeks. For that reason, I'm optimistic that once the standard route MCs go through the same arc, things will go much faster.
For this night I deliberately started with writing the Zealot route because I knew it would be the hardest. Eat the frog, right? It was probably a good choice, because I got to have fun with her will-she-or-won't-she internal struggle. But it definitely gets less fun the more I write different variations of her. Even as I say that, the Unaligned routes were actually more enjoyable to write, probably because they had some steamy content and it added a unique twist to her internal dialogue. I'll talk more about that when I upload the Unaligned route.
Right now, I'll be checking in for a few hours to ensure no one has any problems with the demo. I didn't playtest as much as I usually do. Even though it might seem pretty linear, there are a bunch of hidden variables that unlock different passages, so I might have missed something. The password is the same, although I will be updating it when I publish the unaligned update.
I have a huge backlog of messages/asks on Tumblr. Bear with me for a couple more days and I promise I'll get through them and respond to everyone, but for the time being if you have a question or tech problem please message me here on Patreon and I'll get back to you ASAP.
Mortish <3
Comments
Mortish
Ahhh, I loved the gray one! It was so cute and I know what you mean, sometimes I writing the MC (all versions of her) and I'm thinking to myself 'oh my gosh, if these guys hurt her I am going to ruin them' and the guys are the other characters I'm writing so I probably need to go to therapy or something. Serax's emotional arc through this first week is done SO dirty by the second person POV. It was hands down one of the best parts of the novel draft. You have the MC, so wrapped up in her Weaver/baby/new body/newfound sexual desire drama that she's oblivious to everything else going on. Then there's Valdricht who realizes she's likely his mate and is slowly being driven insane by how much he wants her. Finally there's Serax who's profoundly devoted to and in love with Valdricht, who suddenly has to contend with the fact that there's this beautiful woman who Valdricht is obsessed with, and he's also inexplicably attracted to her, yet also insanely jealous of her, yet also kind of jealous of Valdricht at the same time. And they got about two weeks of that craziness until she's suddenly pregnant and then that's a whole new thing to deal with. Very fun stuff.
Mortish
This is helpful feedback! My favorite outfit was the gray one, everyone's reaction was so fun. Serax was honest about the dress because he was already on thin ice with Valdricht after what transpired the night before and he isn't inclined to screw with him too much. Moreover, it's in his best interest that Valdricht likes the MC because despite what he claims, he is 100% plotting to keep Valdricht around. That's not really a spoiler because it'll be evident in his alternate POV scenes. I really appreciate that last part. I feel like I'm updating very slowly even though I write a lot each day. I guess I want to convey to everyone that I am as eager as you to have the next update. Even though I've drafted the story and I know everything that'll happen, writing the characters and being surprised by them is so fun. I have certain scenes I want to write so badly it's like waiting for Christmas. Thanks for your patience <3
Scorpiuscircus
So the highlight of my playthrough here were that I honest to god cackled when MC got all smug because 💅oh she learned how to play coy and figured out that Val liked it.💅 (can't wait for her to pitch her '10 reasons to get married' power point presentation, you go, girl!) ...and then I, a former goth, proceeded to accidentally (and confidently) dress my newly confident MC in a funerary garb. Now we're rolling with it, my dear aligned Zealot has been assigned goth by fates themselves. All in all, I don't know how to explain it, but I feel very parentally protective over aligned Zealot, which might be a problem, considering I'm sending her out to bed men... Also I went back to read Serax' pov and 1) damn, I have some Thoughts and Feelings, and 2) now every route I am amazed that he has as much self-restraint as he does, because were I in his shoes, I would've been waaaay less pleasant.
Pac
I’m surprised some people felt upset with Serax this update. (By the way—thankyou for the gift of more things to read, Mortish. I appreciate all your hard work.) Knowing now how jilted he feels by the sudden appearance of MC, I take all his actions with more understanding now even if he’s prickly. I admittedly was kind of sad though at his reaction to MC appreciating herself (both vers. After serious talk and without serious talk). I know his intent is to be mean or at least disinterested but it kinda feels like really wanting a stray cat to like you. I don’t mind getting scratched and hissed at because I know the end goal is the cat accepting me eventually but it doesn’t make the scratches not hurt. Tbh this update made me like him more. Thank god I don’t have to choose between either of them. Bless you Mortish for the package deal. I unintentionally dressed in the colour Serax prefers in my first run and was surprised at how he told me unprovoked that that wasn’t -Val’s- preference. I kept it regardless. On another play through I was curious to see if he was actually lying and dressed in pink that time to see Val’s reaction. Val does, indeed, like pink on MC. (Cuuute.) I’m curious for his reasoning on telling us? Like, is he telling MC so he can make -Val- happier? Or another reason..? In regards to the other parts of the chapter, I really enjoyed the dress up. Makes me wanna draw more art of my MC tbh. You were wonderfully descriptive and I could imagine each outfit style. And I’m sorry that all the choices are making it harder to roll out things. I agree with Ayesleigh on just cutting content if that helps you. You can always come back. You are right that as a IF reader, I fully expect months in between updates. You’re quite literally the fastest updater out of all the many, many IFs I follow, that being said, I would be chilling even if you weren’t. lol whatever you give us, I’ll eat and patiently wait for more.
Vincentvanohno
Loved the update. Made me wanna fist fight Serax even though I still love him.
