Harris Powell-Smith

Writing Honor Bound Characters: Fiore

Note: this post contains spoilers about a major character from Honor Bound, my upcoming dark academia text game from Choice of Games. If you don't know anything about Honor Bound, read more here. For a general introduction to Fiore Roldan, check out their introduction post.

Leading up to the late 2024 release, I'm posting about Honor Bound's characters and some of the thoughts and processes that went into writing them.

Fiore Character Rundown

Fiore and Work

Like many of the characters in Honor Bound, Fiore has a complicated relationship with work. They hustled hard through their twenties, at their own expense. They're not allowed to talk about a lot of their achievements, but they were rewarded for them: is that enough? They're trying to maintain a healthy pace by being their own boss and contracting, but that means they don't have time to feel settled into a workplace and make connections. And they're not sure where they want to go next.

Writing Fiore

As the parent of the Honor Bound PC's charge, and the PC's client?—boss?—it's complicated—Fiore was always going to be a major character in the game. I'll freely admit that I was looking forward to the freedom of writing about adults in various ways, and one of those ways was also that I wanted to write a single-parent romance.

As someone who greatly enjoyed Dream Daddy back in the day, I couldn't resist.

Fiore pushes the hat back from her face with a harried smile, and you get a proper look at her. She is close to your age, maybe in her thirties; there are small frown-lines between her brows.

She also looks exhausted already, and it's only the morning. "We're so sorry about the delay," she says breathlessly.

"Mama's sorry about the delay," Catarina mutters.

Fiore looks pained: torn between defending her timekeeping abilities and keeping the peace. After a moment's deliberation, she opts for the latter. "So lovely to meet you properly," she says with a bright tone.

Because Honor Bound is so much about work-life balance and the tension between personal relationships and professional duty, this felt like the perfect place to explore a developing friendship or romance with Fiore, who has their own issues with such things.

Fiore is in a stuck spot in their life. They'd prefer Catarina to be close by, but also do not want to cling onto her, and are conscious that Catarina needs to spread her wings.

Fiore also has a lot of feelings and past memories bubbling away under the surface that they've been trying not to look at. The death of their ex-spouse, Jaime, is complicated to process because they'd divorced and were on bad terms at the time. For many reasons they have complicated feelings about their wealth and title, but they have no one to talk to about it—and who wants to hear about it being hard to adjust to living in a mansion anyway?

Fiore looks as though they'd like to stand up again and do something, but instead they lean back on their couch, crossing one ankle over their knee. They brush down the skirt of their dusty pink linen dress.

"I think what it is," they say, "is that I'm in a bit of a bubble even here, and then when I go out to work. Which is fine! It's fine. But tonight was such a different thing, and then your commanders asking about my plans and what I was going to do, it just—I guess I needed some time."

Fiore falls silent for a few minutes, contemplating the rising steam from the teapot. Then they pour.

Enter the PC. By default, Fiore is pretty star-struck by them! It's a relief that they don't need to worry about Catarina's safety, and even though the PC is injured, they're more physically adept than Fiore and most of the people they know. For Fiore, if the PC gives them the opportunity to share their feelings, it's such a weight off their mind that it's no wonder that Fiore can come to trust them deeply—or even fall in love.

One balance to strike was dropping hints about what's going on with Fiore, when Fiore very much does not want to talk about them. Why do they want a bodyguard for their daughter? What's happened that made them so preoccupied? Why do they struggle to imagine their career future, and why can they not lie back and relax, enjoying what they've achieved at such a young age?

Another challenge with writing Fiore was that they have less screentime than some of the other major characters, so keeping the player aware of them was always something I had in mind. There was also a balance to be had around their romantic storyline. Their romance is slow to start, but their feelings are not. Fiore's jumped into serious relationships fast—maybe too fast—before, and they don't want to do that again. They also want to be thoughtful about how Catarina feels about their partners.

So it was a case of tantalising the player with the burgeoning romance: giving them interactions and deepening non-romantic intimacy to enjoy while keeping the storyline true to Fiore's personality and desires too.

Fiore places one hand on your waist, one on your shoulder; his body is close against yours. But perhaps it's just part of the dance. Perhaps Fiore would do this regardless.

As the music slows, he leans up to speak to you, voice low. "I don't do this a lot," he says. "I've got about three left feet."

Something else about Fiore is that they're trans. I put a lot of thought into how to write this: in earlier games in the Crème de la Crème series, gender isn't mentioned at all, and gender-selectable characters are reflected with pronoun changes and a few appearance and outfit changes in some cases. In Honor Bound, it's different, and characters talk about gender and transition in a way they don't in my other games. Fiore realised they were trans and started transitioning as a teenager; their closest and longest-lasting romantic relationship was with a nonbinary trans person.

Writing trans characters more specifically also led me to think more deeply about what living in a non-heteronormative, trans-friendly society as a trans person might look like. It meant a lot to me to write trans characters over 30, and trans parents in particular. I look forward to having more explicitly trans characters in my games down the line.

You’ll like Fiore if you like: someone quietly smart, who’s eager to be liked, who (over)thinks before acting, who’s considerate, for whom still waters run deep, who cares fiercely and is a devoted parent but who sometimes finds it hard to connect.

You’ll like romancing Fiore if you like: a slow burn, mutual support in the face of old regrets and new problems, forming a new family, being looked after, reconciliation, facing up to mistakes, intense long-unshared emotions, and someone who will take charge in a caring way if you’re into that.

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