Abandoned Tales Archive: A Trio of Gaidens

During the height of Elibian Nights' development, quite a few tale ideas were formed. I thought it might be fun to release some of our unused chapter concepts, since there is a handful of them to share. In the final product, there are three main tales with "gaidens," side-stories that follow up on the previous tale's events. Plans were drafted for gaidens to the other tales as well (sans the two-part tales and the finale, of course), but ultimately those plans never saw fruition.

Matthew's Tale

The first is a follow-up to Hector's Tale, which puts Matthew in a starring role. Matthew, alongside Astor (a thief from FE6), were to infiltrate Tuscana Castle. It was a spy mission. The map, leading to Yorrick's personal office (reaching it was the objective), would be ripely populated with guards to evade. Think of FE9's Ch10, except with much harder enemy reinforcements. I'd also pondered introducing an original love interest for Hector, a kickass female spy perhaps (who just happens to be a Sage, as a nod to Lilina). There were also some ideas for an Orun inclusion, but I'd never really quite hammered out the details. The core of the plot was: Ostia needs to know how far the rebel conspiracy went, the deceased Marquess Yorrick's personal documents would contain all of that information. Matthew and Astor seemed like the men for the job.

Guy's Tale

Essentially you started as Guy, facing off against his master in a duel to the death. Guy vs. Karel, as a follow-up to Karel's Tale. As the fight went on player control would switch sides sporadically, the scenery would also change as the fighters moved to different terrain. Since control switched randomly, the victor of the fight could be either of the fighters. Theoretically a player could sabotage one side's chances to produce a certain outcome (it'd be mighty lame if they did). The idea is that both combatants benefit from the player's control, since both outcomes produce a victory for the player. We wanted to produce a dynamic fight, a fittingly epic showdown between FE7's two Swordmasters.

Sykes' Tale

Lastly, a follow-up to Zealot's Tale. The focus of the tale would shift to Sykes, who diligently trains with Zealot throughout the year. One day, mercenaries-turned-bandits descend on the village and kidnap civilians to ransom. With Zealot unable to fight, Sykes takes charge and deals with the situation. Since we pulled Sykes from an FE6 namedrop, we also planned to include Grant (the other generic mercenary from Noah's supports with Zealot), as either a playable Ballistician or Arbalest (a crossbow-wielding class from BwdYeti's Immortal Sword). Alongside Sykes we'd likely have had the pegasus trio (Florina, Fiora, Farina), so as to include the triangle attack in the game. The tale would've focused on the struggles of Ilian life; the desperation that turns loyal soldiers into thieves, the suffering that ordinary people cope with. That's something we don't really get a good look at in the Elibian canon, and exploring it would've been a nice writing project.