Hi there,

If you're reading this now, this is either the result of you finishing up on reading the first post I made, or your inbox got spammed to the high heavens and you want to know who's responsible. As I explained there, I was cutting off all further development on BLANK's expansion, but would be willing to fill in the details from what I had made during the time between Patch 1.3. and now.

So let's cut out the middle man and get down to the meat of things.

For those of you who weren't informed, The Spirits Within was an expansion pack idea made for BLANK, which intended to release around 4-6 hours of brand new gameplay for the players, including a brand new area (The Isle of Sanctaros), new enemies, new bosses, new items and even new Ring Spirits.

The story of The Spirits Within followed a brutal Civil War within Sanctaros between three rival Cultist Clans. The Cult of the Void, the cultists you faced in the base game, The Sanguine Pact, a brand new cult that worshipped a mysterious new plague called Rubessence, and the Farseers, a nomadic cult that worshipped the Spirits.

Sanctaros was to be the home of the Spirits, and the native homeland of Lumenax the Lightbringer, one of Transech's Guardian Deities.

Overseen by Lumenax's child, The Spirit Mother, and her loyal Watchers, Ahnima, Foliat, Djinnfrit and Serhost, these Arch-Spirits kept watch over the Spirits and their involvement in Transech's ecosystem, giving Spirits (and Ring Spirits in general) a much more fleshed out story in the game's narrative.

Unfortunately, Sanctaros was in the middle of a plague known as Rubessence, which can be best described as Corruption, but Red. A key thing to note is that Rubessence was able to corrupt Spiritual beings, unlike Corruption, which could only afflict regular beings. If Corruption was Sonuvox's curse, then Rubessence was Lumenax's.

Veta would find herself thrown in the middle of this conflict between cultists by the mysterious character known as The Omen (for reasons unknown) and become what was known as the "Heir of Kaios", an individual feared by the natives of Sanctaros. Thankfully for the players, they would not be alone in this strange, new world. A new companion in the form of Verona, the Seeress, would accompany the player through their travels. My intention here was to give the players a constant companion that they could mingle with at any moment during the game, though the implementation of this proved to be a bit of a challenge initially.

The two main threats that the player would have to fight in the initial campaign would be the leaders of both the Cult of the Void in Sanctaros and the Sanguine Pact: Vikul and Abyssalom.

Eager to end the war between the cultists, Veta and Verona had to work together to receive the blessings from all the Watcher Spirits in Sanctaros and ultimately climb to the top of the Tower of Spirits, the true gateway between the Physical Plane and the Astral Plane. But because I like to upset players with tragedy, things would not go as planned and soon you would find yourselves having fight all sorts of nasties in your adventures. Verona included:

The Spirits Within was going to contain a total of 6 Main Narrative Bosses, 3-4 Optional Bosses and 9 Gauntlet (Raid Bosses), as well as several new mini-bosses and enemies to fight. A lot of these designs were not finished, however, and still only exist in scrapbook notes.

My overall intention for The Spirits Within was to create a new experience for players where Veta, the protagonist, would not be the central driving force of the story unlike the main game. Unfortunately, the more I would develop this story arc, the more out of place the narrative became. What was a simple "Save the world from an Ancient Evil" story was evolving into a "Save the Princess' homeland from an Ancient Evil", which ultimately was not what I was looking for. Though I will admit, the ideas I had for the expansion's endgame content was pretty damn badass, and I'll get to that in the next part.

So yeah, that's just a short summation of the plans I had for the Spirits Within. In the next post, I'll be highlighting the over-arching narrative ideas I had for the game's other future content, including the final, final, final antagonist that the player would have to fight at the end. So if you're interested in that, feel free to read the next part!

Kind regards,

Sangos