MotY post #8: Winter, the secret Hokuten temple news

Hey guys,

First off, I'd like to apologise for missing out on a couple of scheduled updates -- it's been an incredibly busy week for everyone in Puny Human, sadly more in terms of our personal lives than anything else. urinal-cake and flux have been hard at work on Blade Symphony in their spare time, and I've simply been overwhelmed by work, hence the skips.

That said, today’s post is all about Winter, the second of our three release maps. Winter is still work in progress, so bear in mind that not everything you see is finalised - and we're eager to hear any constructive criticism you might have! I've also included a little bit more setting info after all the screenshots, if you're interested.

Winter takes place in the Hokuten’s secret training temple somewhere in the Southern Territories. The temple’s location is an incredibly-closely-guarded secret, doubly so since finding out about the Hokuten’s existence alone is enough to get you killed. The Hokuten use it primarily as a retreat from the world at large, a place where they can practise being one with their weapon.

Winter consists of three arenas:

The Shrine

A Hokuten shrine to the glory of battle. Used as a sparring area, this arena is small and rectangular, good for quick duels.

The Waterfall

A frozen lakelet fed by a waterfall. A medium-sized, hexagonal arena, with lots of room to manoeuvre around your enemy.

The Orchard

A large courtyard on the fringes of which grow cherry trees - much like the Waterfall, it offers manoeuvring space without the drawback of having to close huge distances.

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The flag of the Greater Wing. It reads “Power Unites.”

Having already mentioned the history of the Blade Symphony world last week, I’m now going to talk a little about its geography. The world of Blade Symphony, to the extent that the Black Rose and Greater Wing have mapped it, is divided into five different Territories - Northern, Southern, Western, Eastern and Central.

The Eastern and Western Territories are mostly flat, and are the domains of robber barons and industrialists who divide them into private fiefs. The Southern Territories are a land of harsh summers and even harsher winters. Mountainous and mostly tundra for the other part, they have always been the Hokuten’s to rule, ever since the Three Clans signed the Black Rose Treaty. The Northern Territories are, as previously mentioned, firmly in the hands of the Black Rose. They were the breadbasket of the Three Clans, being temperate and fertile. Reclaiming them is one of the Dictator’s immediate goals, but this is complicated by the Black Rose’s huge following in the Northern Territories. However, while the Black Rose still holds the North unopposed, the Greater Wing has had to introduce increasingly unpopular measures such as rationing.

While the Hokuten rule the Southern Territories almost directly (if from the shadows), the Central Territories are even further removed from their grasp. It is in the Central Territories that the Dictator has the most power -- they are firmly within the Greater Wing’s control thanks to his fanatically loyal Imperial Vanguard, who are both police force and military. At the heart of the Central Territories is Annex, a huge, overpopulated metropolis unlike any other city in the world, whose inhabitants believe to be the very centre of the world and whose technology level approaches that of 20th century Earth. It is from Annex that the Greater Wing claims dominion over all the Known World.