Honor Bound

Honor Bound is a 595,000-word interactive novel set in the Republic of Teran, where your choices shape the story. You play a military officer reassigned as a bodyguard after an injury and a scandal. Your charge, the teenage child of a famous scientist, attends an exclusive boarding school in the wilderness near your hometown, where the children of the rich and powerful prepare to become artists and scientists. The text-based game has no graphics or sound effects.

Duty at the school

Teran’s military has seen no major engagement in decades but still holds considerable influence. No longer fit for field duty, you hope this assignment will let you recover and restore your career. Instead, danger gathers around the school: bandits roam the wilderness, natural disasters threaten its fragile environment, and your colleagues may be pursuing secret projects. Your commanding officer is withholding information, and one of the bandits is a childhood friend. Returning to your birthplace and adjusting to your changed life also complicate your personal relationships.

You can build a warm community with your colleagues or rely on aloof competence. Pursue ambition and earn strong reports, lose your standing until only bandits will tolerate you, or risk your career to do what you believe is right. You can also shape your charge’s school life by encouraging her to make friends or sabotage rivals, letting her slack off or pushing her to achieve, and getting involved in boarding-school drama. Uncover and thwart schemes, or join them for your own gain.

Your character and relationships

You choose your character’s gender, whether they are cis or trans, their sexuality and romantic orientation, and whether they are monogamous or polyamorous. You can also choose to be asexual, aromantic, both or neither. Your officer can be in their 20s as a junior officer, in their 30s at mid-rank or in their 40s as a senior officer.

You can befriend or romance a severe military officer, a bold and easygoing outdoors expert, a determined and overworked priest, an earnest but scatterbrained fellow bodyguard, your childhood friend who has become a disgraced bandit, or your charge’s anxious, serious widowed parent. You can pet the dog, the cat or both.

Connections to Crème de la Crème

Honor Bound returns to the world of Crème de la Crème. You can meet main characters from Crème de la Crème, Royal Affairs and Noblesse Oblige, and learn what their lives are like now.