Snowbound Blood: Volume One

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Of Orders and Ordeals
Release Date	March 22, 2019
Previous	Prologue: Duel
Next	Volume Two: Of Business and Busywork

Snowbound Blood: Volume One, entited "Of Orders and Ordeals", is the first installment of Snowbound Blood: A Vast Error Story.

Unlike future volumes, there is only a singular linear route to play through. The focal characters of this volume are Sestro Enthal and Hamifi Hekrix.

Plot

Intro

The story begins as Secily introduces herself as she makes her way to her superior's office of Repiton Corporation, after being pulled out from a caseload for a Priority Aleph, which she described as a "once-in-a-binary-eclipse of a problem".

Sestro Enthal

Main article: Sestro Enthal

As she has arrives at her superior's office, his assistant presses a button on her desk as the door to the superior's office open. Secily goes inside as she sees the superior holding a phone to his ear as he nods at whoever is speaking to him, gesturing her to sit down as Secily recalls the superior's face.

The superior is revealed as Sestro Enthal: the heir to The Executive, his ancestor, and the next in line for the control all of the Repiton Corporation. She notices the sour look on Sestro's face as she recognizes the voice that was speaking to him, none other than Calder Kerian. Calder rants about the late shipments as Secily tunes out of the conversation. He painfully looks at Secily as he mouths out questions about Calder's lifting drinks issues and makes a cutting gesture across his throat while pointing at his phone.

Sestro then tells Calder that the Corporate will try take care of it as Secily pulls out a pistol and shoots a window from the office's outer wall while he tells Calder that they will call him back and turns off the security alarm and his phone. He praises her actions as he tries to question her relationship with Mshiri and quickly glares at him. He quickly mouths an apology as he goes over on her assignment, asking as to whether or not she knows about the Bizkantine Empire.

He goes on about the security breach in the site of Bizkantine Ruins from the Northern Wastes, the stolen convoy and three corpses that were aced down in the snow. Sestro instructs her to do the following assignments:

• Find out the culprit from the corporate who's behind the dissemination of crucial information to the assailants
• Uncovering the identity of thieves
• Bring back the stolen cargo, which happens to contain the philter of The Vivifier's blood

As he tells this, he mentions about the ruins being occupied by the followers of The Vivifier and the philter of her blood that was stolen from from the Corporate as he tells her that she's counting on her in solving the problem. An hour later, she receives a briefcase full of files, including a Trollodex cards of potential allies and suspects as she exits the building, heading towards her motorcycle as she heads off to the location of the crime scene.

Crime Scene

Some hours later, she arrived at the Northern Waste where three guards had been waiting for her arrival. One of the guards, a bronzeblood, goes to her as they exchanged greetings and Secily starts questioning about the crime scene. The guard doesn't tell Secily much, aside from the fact that no one has gone to investigate the scene and was only notified because of the vehicle's automated system. The guard also tells her that the third corpse had been taken away by the subcontractor that had assigned the assignment to them.

As the guard walks off to her colleagues, Secily decides to check her surroundings by sweeping the ground for footprints and establishes that the only tracks she had find are hers and the three guards footprints from earlier. Walking back to the crime scene, she then checks the cockpit of the vehicle as she finds the three corpses in their seats and the untouched comparments. Seeing the red light blinking in and out of the main info screen, she sees that the emergency overlay has been activated as a response to the driver's extended absence.

She then taps a menu icon on the screen as the warning light fades out. Taking one last glance at the scene she eyed a book and picks it up, entitled as "THIS BOOK IS JUST DYING TO BE DEVOURED" by Notrel Evantt as his corpse remains in his seat. Getting out of the vehicle, Secily takes a closer look on the tires and carves it to get a better view, finding a small oblong object and pulls down the metal rim and the object explodes, leaving a burned small box in it and clearly knows that it was a sabotage.

Secily then checks the cargo and finds it mostly untouched, ducking back out of the hold as the door shuts immediately. She makes her way to the corpses, checking the rustblood first. The rustblood is revealed to be Nocent Bystan and was designated in Logistical Security as she remembers seeing him sweeps ago, in The Refectory, texting somebody as she gets a soda. She then checks on the other corpse, revealed to be Notrel Evantt, a goldblood that was designated in Logistical Security too as she gathers herself and goes back to the three guards earlier, telling them to clean up the scene. Heading to her motorcycle, she take a last glance at the scene and drives back to the Stronghold 21.

A Call from ?????? ??????

As she drives her way from the crime scene and heading back home, she analyses the information she collected during the investigation, citing that the execution was just too perfect for her to figure out and maybe it was an inside job the culprit had committed.

An alert suddenly rings out in her visor and finds it odd for two reasons: (1) The caller's information is withheld and (2) she hasn't had personal call for ages and decides to answer the call.

The caller speaks up as he tells him that he has been spying on her for a while, especially in her recent investigation. Secily questions as how he got her contact and what he knows about the investigation she's been currently working on. 

The caller tells her that the only thing that was stolen was the Vivifier's blood whilst mocking and taunting her and gives her the location for her next investigation: Eidolic Acres as he gives her only two days to do it and ends the call.

Hamifi Hekrix

Main article: Hamifi Hekrix

After the strange conversation with the unknown caller, Secily heads back to the Stronghold 21 as she got a message from one of her superiors: a room number and time of the meeting, as she takes the elevator.

Upon arrival, she sees the other superior at the end of a hallway and beckons her to enter, as the other superior went to of one of the rooms. Entering the barely lit room, she sees a tall, shadowy figure stepping towards a shaft of life, revealing to be Hamifi Hekrix. Secily recalls her as the matesprit of Sestro and the second-in-command of the Repiton Corporation as she tells her about her latest findings in the crime scene with Hamifi taking down notes.

Hamifi then begins to question as who the Corporate are actually dealing with, with Secily suggesting that someone has a connection to the Corporate itself or a bad bookkeeping, noting that the heist was too clean and impressive for her to pick up a huge potential information that can lead to the suspect.

Hamifi raises her hand, cutting Secily's hypothesizing as she tells her that everything that the culprit did was a mess and a mockery to the Corporate itself. They were both silent for a while until Hamifi speaks again, this time she tells her not to trust anyone.

Secily assures her that the investigation goes smoothly as well as carefully examine and exploit any lead and useful uncertainty before throwing it away. Hamifi clicks the end of her pen, signalling that the meeting is over as she glides over to the door and vanishes in the hallway, leaving Secily alone. She quickly leaves the room and takes the elevator, recalling the behavior pattern of her superiors whilst doing motions with her hands as a means to calm herself down that she learned from her friend.

Taking the stairs to the roof, she walks over at the edge of the building as she gazes at the Stronghold 21 with colorful advertisements flickering on the LED Screens, neon lights lightening up the streets as she hears the bass of faraway music of the stronghold's nightlife. Thinking about the dead corpses, the bondmates that they left to deal with their own withdrawals, the strange voice taunting her during the investigation, the true motive of the thieves in murdering the trolls and stealing The Vivifier's blood, she hatches a plan to capture the culprits, once and for all, as the route for Sestro and Hamifi ends.

Transcript

This article has an associated transcript page. Click here for the transcript.

Gallery

• 

  Sestro's character sprites

• 

  Hamifi's character sprites

• 

  Endcard

Trivia

• The two Trollodex achievements that can be obtained by completing the volume's story are:
  • "Interrogate Sestro. / Got an assignment from Sestro."
  • "Interrogate Hamifi. / Received a warning from Hamifi."