Circe Fixes

CIRCE FIXES

>Something catches your eye while you explore the blasted landscape of the Volcanic Crag.
Uncapitalize Volcanic Crag, as it's not an actual in universe name. There are many more uses of this throughout the content, best is to search and replace them yourself without me listing them all.

>You’re met with a familiar sight while wandering the Volcanic Crag. A small cave, discretely positioned on the side of a large, cracked hill, its exposed side covered in glowing lines of jagged, superheated rock.
"You're met with a familiar sight while wandering across the volcanic crag; it's the small cave discretely positioned on the side of a large, cracked hill. Its exposed side covered in glowing lines of jagged, superheated rock."

>You decide to cast magefire on the ground to clear the overwhelming darkness, but you suddenly notice you can’t tap into your powers. There is definitely some type of hex or ward in place.
"magefire" isn't a particular ability. This accounts for white and blackfire, but it should be simply references to as fire magic instead of something that can be misconstrued as a spell name. Account for Terrestrial Fire and the various firebreaths as well. I believe the only one that would have to actually produce flames as it's not magic is dragonfire, but that can be written so you huff some fire out but nothing seems to actually get illuminated by it, still signifying definite magic at play.

>This is work of magic, of that you have no doubt.
THE work of magic.

>You grit your teeth, tense your muscles, and head inside, touching the rocky walls for guidance in the darkness.
Making mention of keeping one hand on your weapon and using the free one to touch the rocky walls makes the player out to be less of a bumbling fool.

>After a mere three seconds inside, it becomes too dark to see at all.
Why such a very specific timeframe? "mere seconds" works much better than specifying a timeframe when it's unnecessary.

>You turn around, and notice the entrance has vanished.
This might be personal preference for building tension, but adding a standalone italicized "Shit." after this beats home the point the player potentially fucked up. If you decide to do this, which I suggest you do, give the player a choice whether to enter the cave or not at the start. It gives the player their own sense of agency and choice back that events often tend to ignore.
I suggest everything from the start up until "superheated rock." gets to be before a choice is presented to the player.

>It doesn’t take long for you to lose track of your surroundings, the craggy walls apparently fleeing your fingers, the small cave feeling much more spacious, and the hot wind blowing inside the cave standing still, and cooling.
Hot wind in a now sealed off cave? Something seemingly unnatural like that feels out of place being mentioned in the middle of a sentence like this and not mentioned before. Is this important?

>You lose your balance and nearly fall to the floor, your stomach churning over a bizarre sensation you have felt only once before; when you first entered the portal to enter Mareth.
Comparing teleportation magic with naturally occurring portals that transcend dimensions might not be the best idea.

>A soft, but firm female voice reaches you.“Sorry about that. Teleportation is harsh on someone that isn’t expecting it”
Space before the quote, period after "it"

>- You hear, your eyes slowly adapting to the sudden flood of light. You position yourself for a fight, using her voice to guide your direction.
The first part is redundant. "yWith your eyes slowly adapting to the sudden flood of light, you position yourself for a fight, using her voice to guide your direction."

>You’re still a bit suspicious, but the words sound honest enough.
"her" instead of "the" adds moe focus on Circe, who the event is actively on about.

>You lower your guard, your eyes finally adjusting to their new environment.
You lower your guard to a voice that said two sentences after being teleported and still blinded by it all, that doesn't sound like a good idea.

>You’re in a well adorned, tall pentagonal chamber, a stone arch on each end that all connect on the center of the room.
Add "with" before "a stone arch"

>You notice alchemical tables covered in bizarre ingredients, tall bookshelves, and messy piles of books in random spots.
I suggest you switch this sentence with the one that comes after it, as it goes into more detail about the arches which was from the previous sentence.
"The likely enchanted chamber also houses alchemical tables covered in bizarre ingredients, tall bookshelves filled with tomes of all shapes and sizes, and messy piles of books stacked in seemingly random spots."

>Ashen skinned, with fiery red hair and piercing green eyes.
"She has pale, lightly ashen skin," Or anything else that fixes the sentence structure and puts "pale" in there.

>She’s wearing a meticulously crafted and revealing dress, mostly red, with golden adornments throughout its edges.
"She's wearing a meticulously crafted and revealing dress, it's quality and craftsmanship indisputable even at first glance. It's a stunning shade of crimson-red, with golden ornaments interwoven along the rims."
https://digitalsynopsis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/color-thesaurus-correct-names-shades.jpg

>You do like exploring the Volcanic Crag, don’t you? I’ve notice you snooping around several times.”
"You do like exploring around here, don't you?" no need to be specific with a non-name that's at best a in universe description of the area. Also, "noticed"

>“What’s your objective here? Most Marethians are wise enough to avoid this place.”
Replace "place" with "area" as place is somewhere specific, when the volcanic crag denotes a LOT of land.

If either the Golem, Tower Map, or Lethice's Stronghold hasn't been found yet it may leave awkward looking gaps in between the buttons. It would be more aesthetically pleasing if they automatically shifted to the next open slot instead of leaving blank spaces of obviously missed content that could leave a sour taste in people their mouths or simply looking like hack work.

>That's curious. In my opinion, you just got scammed.
"My opinion?" as a question she answers herself right away works better in this context.

>I've been living here for decades-I mean, almost a decade,
I'm pretty sure a space needs to follow a hyphen when someone interrupts themselves.
The "I mean," part is also a little bit too on the nose and cliché, might want to just remove that.

>Just before you can touch her, she quickly “wakes up”.
Fancy quotes when it should be normal, shift period to the left.

>“Good luck doing whatever you want to do. Goodbye.”
"Good luck doing whatever it is you do. Goodbye." works better, as you were wanting to to touch her right there and that's not what she is referring to.

>Just before you can touch her, she quickly
Add "arm" after "her"

>You try to grab her arm and shake some sense into her,
Add "again" after "arm"

The button for finding Circe's cave says "Reenter Cave", which should be changed to simply "Enter Cave". You wouldn't describe every door with "Reenter Door" if you've used it once before either.

>Maybe Circe wants to see you again?
Make questioning allusions to illusions being dropped so you can find it again.

The finding of the cave in general could use small variants depending on how much you've interacted with Circe so far. I don't think that once you get to know her well enough you'd have to question whether she wants to see you or not.

>she’s wearing a much more ornate and detailed pair of high wooden high heels. You don’t think much of it.
Does it really need to tell the player they don't think much of it?

>“Hello again...”
If she's trailing off because she doesn't know your name, it would make sense to add a question mark at the end as an inquiry. That depends very much on her speech patterns though, which is why I comment less on dialogue unless tonal mismatches or oddities stick out.

>You initially think she’s just being mysterious, but it soon becomes clear that she actually doesn’t know your name. You break the silence by telling her your name, and she smiles genuinely at her own mistake.
The second "your name" is redundant repetition, as it is already the specified topic.

>Let me break it down to you.”She stretches her hand,
Spacing.

>“You explore the world, don’t you? I need information, of the magical sort. I need knowledge, of spells, curses, hexes and blessings.”
Appending something along the lines of "Information on anything magical in nature." will make it much less specific as if she's requesting only those things. Remove the comma after "knowledge". I'd usually say add an Oxford comma after "hexes" but since this is dialogue and it could simply be the way she speaks, it's not required.

>You begin interjecting, to ask what you’re going to get in return, but she cuts you off.
Adapting this to be a player's choice between [Agree], [Decline], [knowledge] and [Rewards?] would give the player a sense of interaction with her. The actual dialogue wouldn't need to vary too much even. [Agree] could have her offer you trinkets in return for your troubles, [Disagree] have her try and persuade you with those trinkets, [Knowledge] being the choice closest to her heart can bring up the prospect of sharing knowledge, magical theses, and all that sort of stuff, maybe have it tie in as a point for her trusting you if she gets expanded on to not be killed, and [Rewards?] just her trying to bribe you with the shiny trinkets. They'd be very similar but with different deliveries and reasons behind them, while offering the player a voice of their own in it without having to account for four actually different outcomes.

>Circe probably teleported this to you, you think.
The "you think." part should be removed there as it's very obvious, even to low INT players.

>You place an enchanted onyx ring of focus in your second pouch.
This gets suffixed right onto the last sentence. Put it down two lines so a single empty one is between this and the last.

>You groan and cough in disgust, louder than you’re comfortable with.
"louder than your throat is comfortable with."

>She looks at lot less regal than usual;
A.

>her hair is tied on a ponytail,
In.

>“homely”
Single regular quotations needed.

>You ask her what she’s doing, in a casual and curious fashion. “If you have to ask, then there’s no way I can ans-”
This just reminds me that it has always bugged me that you can't obtain perks similar to the history ones once you're in Mareth like the Alchemist perk, even though the world-class alchemist Rathazul could very well teach you.

>Before you can say “hello”, your eyes are overwhelmed by a viciously powerful Blind spell, and you can hear Circe rushing to the other side of chamber, mumbling to herself all the while.
"Before you can say hello, your eyes are overwhelmed by a viciously powerful blinding spell, and you hear Circe rushing to the other side of chamber, mumbling complaints to herself all the while."

>you accidentally inhale deeply of the noxious substance being brewed in the table,
On the table.

>After agonizing few moments, the smell of sulphur wanes, being replaced by the familiar scent of roses.
"After some agonizing moment,"

>and notice the blindness fading.
"and see your blindness fading."

>Whatever, you think. At least this is finally over.
Having this at the end of the Complain option where she apologizes you makes you sound like a whiny little shit, unlike the other two options.

>You ask Circe if she has any rewards in mind for the information you’ve brought her. She puts a finger to her chin, thinking. “Very well, let’s see.”
This is followed up with:
>There are no rewards available yet. They will unlock after more conversations.
Even if there are no rewards. If there are none, the first sentence should reflect that as well.

>Sitting on a bulky wood chair next to you is a woman,
Wooden.

>She constantly eyes a wine bottle in a nearby table; you know what she’s going to do once you leave.
On.

>The entire chamber is illuminated with magelight, small orbs bobbing serenely throughout the walls, lightly humming with energy.
Throughout the walls?