Elibian Nights

Elibian Nights is an in-progress Game Mod of Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword, developed by a team led by proficient Fire Emblem hacker Arch. Set in the twenty years between Blazing Sword and Sword of Seals, it follows events in the lives of numerous characters from both games, fills in unstated gaps in the proceedings of the Time Skip, and wraps up story threads mentioned in Blazing Sword's epilogue. The game is split into nine "tales":

• Lost Resolve: While dealing with the death of his mother, Eliwood and the knights of Pherae must fend off a bandit attack on Castle Pherae and its surrounds.
• Homecoming: Having abdicated her claim to Caelin, Lyn is travelling back to Sacae to seek to live with the Kutolah tribe, but is interrupted by an attack from the warring Djute tribe.
• A Leader's Trials: Unsatisfied with his rule, a triumvirate of Lycian marquesses are seeking to overthrow Hector's rule as the leader of Lycia.
• The Archsage's Pupil: In furthering his study on morphs, Pent is guided by Renault to the Dread Isle to observe what few morphs still live.
• Cornwell's Vengeance: Seeking revenge for the destruction of his family and home, Raven leads a band of warriors to Araphen, where the man responsible lays in wait.
• From Demon to Saint: Karel relates to his niece Fir stories from his history as the Sword Demon, and how he came to find purpose in life beyond murder.
• Ilia's Young Commander: On one of his first missions as an Ilian mercenary, Zealot is deployed to a rural patrol outpost with the young tactician Sigune, where military corruption is afoot.
• Ivory Flower of Light: Legault and Jan pursue a trio of former Black Fang members captured by a corrupt Bern noble, and from there work to restore the Fang to its former glory.
• Two as-yet undefined tales, one of which is implied to involve Nino.

Technologically-speaking, it's probably the most ambitious Fire Emblem hack there is - it implements numerous features not seen in any of the GBA Fire Emblem games (or indeed, any entry in the series at all) like an achievement system, new victory objectives and numerous new music tracks imported from other Fire Emblem games^[1], in addition to new and imported classes and weapons, minor alterations to gameplay and cosmetic makeovers.

Tropes used in Elibian Nights include:

• Ascended Extra: Most of the cast who aren't Eliwood, Hector or Lyn, but a particular example is Sykes - a throwaway name mentioned in passing in Zealot and Noah's support conversations in Sword of Seals was expanded into a prominent Swordmaster in Zealot's tale.
  • Also, Orun, the marquess of Thria, is mentioned during one chapter of FE6 but he never made an actual appearance in either game. He becomes a playable Great Knight during Hector's tale.
• The Cameo: The big example is that Siglud, Eltshan and Cuan can be found scattered across the chapters, separated and claiming to have no idea how they ended up in Elibe. Some other characters from the two Elibe games show up in a minor cameo capacity, like Noah (a young boy from a village Karel "saved", as discussed in their Sword of Seals supports).
  • Spell My Name with an "S": Earlier releases use some very non-standard Romanizations of their names and those of locations: Elton, Quinn, Yggdrasil, Chalfie and Trachia. This is odd since one of Arch's earlier projects was a Game Mod remake of Genealogy of the Holy War, wherein more common Romanizations were used.
• Character Development: One of the chapters shows how Karel turned from the bloodthirsty "Sword Demon" to the wise "Sword Saint".
• Chivalrous Pervert: Sain, as usual.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Erik, in a rare positive example - as soon as Dawson and Yorick launch their rebellion, he turns on them and sides with Hector despite their differences.
• Civil War: Marquesses Dawson, Yorick and Erik attempt to pull one on Hector's role as leader of the Lycian League.
• Continuity Porn: Pent's tale contains artifacts of nearly every game in the series, including Eirika's bracelet, the Baldo Scroll, and the Leo orb.
• Cosmetic Award: It implements an achievements system, which doesn't exist in any of the normal games.
• Creator Breakdown: A disagreement with one of the artists whose ideas were core to parts of the project led it to be discarded and rebuilt from the ground up, taking the opportunity to iron out problems in the then-current build's approach.
• Determinator: Zealot - even after taking a severe leg wound which means he will never fight again, he resolves to teach himself to fight on horseback and be back on the battlefield by the next year.
• Doomed by Canon: Consider where this is set and who most of these characters are. The most prominent example, Canas, is outright acknowledged - Pent's tale has him as a playable character, while Zealot's is set after his death by continuity errors and has his mother Niime playable, who acknowledges Canas's death and that her current actions are because of him.
• Expy: The concept as a whole is an expy of BS Fire Emblem: Akaneia War Chronicles; the concept originated as a direct remake of those games, but that was rendered unnecessary by the announcement that New Mystery of the Emblem would contain remakes of them.
• Fanon: The game makes full use of Canon Fodder to fill in gaps of things barely hinted at in the two Elibe games, including the entire Ilian mercenary system, the relationship between Hector and his half-brother Orun (and the appearance of the latter), how Karel calmed down, and who was really responsible for the downfall of House Cornwell.
• Fan Sequel
  • Game Mod
  • Mission Pack Sequel
• Friend or Foe: Prasad mistakes Lyn, Sain and Kent for a Djute warrior accompanied by two foreign mercenaries, coming to launch a surprise attack on the Kutolah. This prompts Rath to lead a band of warriors to deal with them.
• Framing Device: A pair of travellers were kidnapped to tell stories to a young prince/princess; they settle on telling him/her several stories about Elibe.
• Game Breaking Bug: Occasionally some pretty debilitating ones crop up. There have been three "final" releases of the former "version" of the hack. The first of the three, intended to be the final one, didn't allow you to progress to Zealot's tale; whenever you tried to select it, it'd just restart the entire game. That error was eventually patched and made Zealot's tale playable... but now when it was completed, it instead kicked you to Chapter 10 of Lyn's tale of the original game, except now glitchy and unplayable. That too was eventually rectified, allowing Legault's tale to be playable... but when it was completed without recruiting a certain character, the game suffered a severe error and practically tore itself apart. Whoops.
• Genius Programming
• Heel Face Turn: Erik and Sykes.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Karel's fight against Kaherdin. It's still possible to win - and you get an achievement for doing so - but the odds are very much against you.
• If I Can't Have You: Sigune attempts to aid Zealot after he is wounded by Tybalt... until he says Juno's name, enraging her and prompting her to just attack him too.
• Interface Screw: As a joke, a minor bug-fixing update replaced the names of all the focal characters with "Vergil", poking fun at several ongoing Fan Translation dramas on Serenes Forest.
• No One Could Survive That / Never Found the Body: Ephidel survived his apparent death at the hands of the unleashed dragons.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: Sixty characters were intended to be playable as of before the project was reset, comprising a mix of Blazing Sword characters, Sword of Seals characters and original newcomers.
• Oblivious to Love: Zealot doesn't seem to realise that Sigune wants him.
• One-Man Army: Karel.
• Punny Title: Guess.

1. ↑ note that, while difficult, it's definitely not unheard of in the FE hacking community