June Goody (A Deep Dark Secret) (Patreon)

Hello, everybody.

For this month's goody, I'm going to reveal to you something that I vowed I would never breathe a word of to any living soul. This is something I've buried down deep, out of cringe, embarrassment, and loathing of my younger self.

Many years ago--over a decade ago--when I was just a foolish teenager, I thought about making Shepherds of Haven into a manga. 

It (titled Haven + Hael) was meant to be a collaboration between myself and an artist friend I met at Harvard, and we spent hours writing scripts and drawing mock-ups. The "project" fell apart naturally when we grew busy (it may have been studying for the SATs), and those files have lain dormant on our hard drives for many, many years. 

I've gotten permission from my old friend (who wishes to remain anonymous of sheer embarrassment) to share these prototypes with you here and now. Even the thought makes my palms sweat, so please appreciate this goody for what it is lol: a wide window into my cringey weeb past!

Read from left to right... if you dare...

I have a fever now... this was too painful... the over-exposition... the pacing... I can't...

This (the idea that a vampire was kidnapping people and even the fact that it would turn out to be a priest/augur) was actually the first mission of ShoH (the game) for a long time. I still have the original drafts! MC was going to accompany Blade and Trouble through underground tunnels in the city and eventually emerge into a church. They'd rescue one of the victims--a young noblewoman named Cordelia Trask--but her father Korem Trask, would be an absolute dick to them, before and after the rescue, so there would be some choices to be made regarding how to handle the case.

I eventually scrapped the whole chapter because it bored me, but there you have it! The dark roots of the Shepherds...