[Act 1 Notes]

Thanks for following the branch thus far! It's been a lot of fun to get this far, and I've had a lot of time recently so I've been churning out chapters way faster than I expected. I definitely won't keep this rate up forever—especially as life outside goes back to normal—but I have a lot of ideas for this branch and hope to keep it going for a while yet given interest.

This first act was pretty short by the standards of some stories on this site—although pretty short still constitutes a decent-sized novella!—since I wanted to introduce the first talking sidekick reasonably quickly. Future ones will probably be a bit longer, but I tend to do a lot of the pacing and writing intuitively so we'll see if I actually stick to that.

While likes and comments are always appreciated, don't forget to tell me what you're enjoying the most so that I have some idea of what to include more of! While I have a lot of plans for this branch, and I'll always first and foremost write what I want to write, it's always helpful to see what people are enjoying so that I can make tweaks.