Unfortunately some minor events have cropped up that will require me to delay the next story, should hopefully not be for too long. Consider this a week long hiatus, before returning to the normal schedule! I apologize, but it's the way of things, life likes to surprise us sometimes! I'll try and keep you informed if anything else changes or longer delays should be expected.

This is the poll for Chapter 16, Old Enemies!

There's a poll up for Chapter 15 on my patreon (https://www.patreon.com/scribblingserpent), choosing some consequences for the team that will make combat a little bit more complicated. In Chapter 16, they pick a fight they think they can win anyways, but things may not go as planned...

Also, a patreon-only early access story should be going up sometime within the next few days on my patreon, titled Hellhound's Descent, a story about an anthro wolfgirl discovering an item that corrupts her into a hellhound, featuring mostly H/F pairings, and heat/arousal/corruption themes. It will also be posted here one month after, as I do want everyone to eventually be able to read it! Anyway, poll below -

Survey closed! Any of the characters who didn't have an option picked I'll choose semi-randomly, and there was one tie, so I might do something interesting with that!

Several of these options might decide where these characters go long term - so, choose wisely!

This is the poll for Chapter 14, coming out next Thursday!

Some other small things - I've begun posting polls on my Patreon, exclusively for Patrons! Every other story will have an exclusive poll, that only Patrons can vote in. The one for Chapter 13 is up now, and will be kept up until tomorrow, and I might let it stay up until I actually begin writing. There will also soon be a poll for a Patreon early access story, which will go public one month after I post it on Patreon, although I'll note that the lowest tier has voting power on that story, but only the tier above it has early access. I may eventually shuffle things around as I have more to offer the different tiers, but everything is still very much a work in progress!

My next goals are to start putting a little more work into each story description, with a plug for Patreon/other places you can find me. I may also eventually try and figure out how to use Twitter, when I get over my ungrounded aversion to social media! Let me know if there's anything else you'd like to see from me, I am very much open to suggestions. I am, from previous experience, decent at writing but bad at marketing. To all aspiring writers out there, if you have to pick one to be good at...marketing is harder. But, anyone can learn! Drawing, writing, marketing, with time and an open mind it's possible to become kinda sorta decent at anything.

Poll! - Poll is now closed! There was a tie between Chester/Ciera fighting and Chester/Vivian fighting, and I was going to just decide randomly, but...I might have a more interesting idea. Stay tuned for Chapter 14!

I went through all the work of finishing up a Patreon page, so that I could use their poll system...only to learn that anything NSFW is required to be behind Patron-Only access. I suspect that my poll options will frequently be NSFW, so the plan for now is that I'll post a non-patron survey here, and one there, and use the power of numbers to combine the two appropriately, with weighted votes from Patrons (Patron votes count three times).

Numbers are a strange and dangerous magic, but sometimes we must take great risks for the betterment of us all.

Anyways, here's another poll, using SurveyMonkey again (I know nothing of surveys, I am open to other suggestions if there's better options out there), for the Thursday release of next week (Chapter 12)! After our team reunites, they are offered a bargain by a pair of Draconic tricksters...and their choices could have quite an impact, permanently. In this case, permanent means truly impossible to undo, only to alter or adjust, even after the Tournament has ended. Even if you win!

Poll Closed! The five permanent changes are as follows (although feel free to wait to see until after the story is published, if you'd like) - Karla's breast obsession and anthro cat transformation, Ciera's lactation and transformation into a cowgirl, and Vivian's blowjob/minotaur dick obsession.

Consider this a slight teaser of what the major milestone reset choices might look like! This poll has the potential to be one of the ones that impacts the story the most going forward, in my opinion, so choose wisely!

In addition, as mentioned above, I now have a Patreon page! I'm not expecting much at the moment, but I intend to keep up with it as if I had thousands of supporters, regardless of how much support I receive. As I've said before, I'm just happy people are reading! In many ways, the Patreon page is a commitment to continue producing content, as much as a reward for people who want to support me. I'll link to it with every poll, starting with this one! The main extra content right now is pdf/epub downloads of all the stories so far, plus a little extra comment on each one about my thoughts on the story! Link - https://www.patreon.com/scribblingserpent

Hello! I haven’t posted anything other than stories and my first journal yet, you can consider this me easing into things a bit. Before anything else, I’d like to thank anyone who’s watched me, favorited me, or commented on anything of mine. Now that it’s been about a month of consistency from me, I’ll probably start engaging a bit more (that’s the intention, at least).

To start with...I had planned from the beginning for there to be a bit of a cyoa element to The Tournament of Change, and I’ve treated it as such in the way I’ve written the stories, even though I haven’t looked for or gotten input. Now, I plan to try and start with that. The goal is to have one story per week have some kind of poll to decide something relevant to what happens in that story, for now. Once I’ve kept that up a few weeks, and have ironed out any kinks in the process, I’ll move to both stories having a poll, with one poll being Patreon exclusive. I don’t have high expectations for that to take off, exactly, but the point is to do things as if I did. Once that’s set up, one poll will be for Patrons only, one will be for anyone, but Patron votes will have 3x impact (probably just a separate poll and I’ll do math). I expect things to change a bit as I figure out what the heck I’m doing, but you can’t figure out what the heck you’re doing without trying to do it, so that’s what I’m trying to do.

The poll should go out every Friday, from here on out, I’m two days late on this one. I’ll call the results Sunday night (Monday night, for this one), with more exact times being decided after this first poll. In the event of zero votes, which is entirely possible, I’ll choose an option at random, or whichever path I think is most interesting.

The plan is that the choices will continuously impact the story, and then at predetermined points there will be a bit of a ‘reset,’ where certain ongoing issues might be fixed so that things don’t pile up too far. Those ‘resets’ will probably also have some kind of poll attached, with a similar weighting for Patrons. For The Tournament of Change, it will probably be 20-30 stories, then reset, repeating for about three cycles before things finish up and I move on to the next set of stories (which I already have some simple planning done for).

Beyond that, I’m considering a few things. I already have some ideas for ‘alternate’ stories, perhaps a short sequence of stories based around what could have been, if a fight/event had gone differently. Maybe play with some ‘bad end’ style stories. If I manage to get even a fairly small following on Patreon (once I get it set up, here in a week or two), that will probably be the first thing I do, probably doing an extra story on alternating weeks with a Patron vote to see what alternate story people would like to see. Maybe even just some one-off stories playing with ideas I’ve had.

The one thing I’d really appreciate is hearing any thoughts and opinions anyone has on all of this! I’m very new to writing here, and to how things are generally done. I’ve considered looking at what it would mean for me to take commissions, seeing how much work that might be. I’d be especially happy to hear any criticism, as criticism is the foundation of improvement. Hearing what I’m doing well, and what I’m doing poorly, what everyone might want to see more or less of, all of that would be extremely helpful! I’ll be paying attention to any comments, and as I said I intend to engage a bit more now that I’ve gotten my...I suppose tail underneath me. Thank you to anyone who read this, and to everyone reading my stories!

This Poll is for Chapter 10 (coming out Thursday), not Chapter 9 being posted this Tuesday.

Poll closed! It has been decided that Vivian will have an interesting new problem after dealing with an unfortunate encounter with a minotaur...

Expect all future polls to be posted on Friday, and last until Sunday! Things were a bit rushed this time, but that's to be expected for the trial run. Still, I appreciate anyone who took the time to respond, and any suggestions anyone might offer!

Hello! I’m ScribblingSerpent and consider this a brief introduction to me and the first series of stories I intend to write here. I’m a longtime writer and occasional editor looking to share some of the stories I’ve had ideas about for a while and judge how much interest there is in my work! I’m a little new to these particular platforms, but I’m always happy to learn and grow as I figure things out! Now, for some information on what I’m writing at the moment...

The Tournament of Change is going to be a set of stories following a team of four as they attempt to win a devious and deviant tournament. The main focus is on tf and mind control content, with a probable leaning towards mf/ff pairings (it’s what I write best, I may try to expand as I get a bit more experience). The team will, at first, not have any fully anthro characters, but that’s not going to last long :P
The plan is to have two stories a week, released Tuesday and Thursday, that should generally fall around five thousand words (with larger stories for more important story milestones). The story will follow this team all the way through the tournament, and then I have plans for a few other sets of stories that will take place after (possibly with different sets of characters). Either way, even if I move on to different settings and such after, the plan is still to release a story on Tuesdays and Thursdays for as long as I am able.
There will be, eventually, points in the story where I will let you decide what happens next. The intention is to have Patrons cast votes, with that being one of the primary rewards for being a Patron (deciding what happens next in the story). At least at first, this will probably not happen, as I set things up on various platforms, figure out what I’m doing, and try desperately not to disappoint myself, my ancestors, and random bystanders.
The early stories are going to be ever so slightly lighter on adult/nsfw content as I adjust readers to the setting and flow of the stories, but eventually I can get a little more handwavy with some details and focus a bit more on the adult content. Finally, I am always open to criticism and suggestions, and especially help when from anyone more experienced being a content creator on any of the platforms I’m posting on (sofurry, furaffinity, and a patreon I’ll turn on eventually, at the moment). There’s bound to be some rough patches as I start out, so please bear with me, but I hope to show you that I’m worth your time and attention!

There is also going to be an introduction to the setting and main set of characters below, but that is entirely OPTIONAL! I know some people might like to have that information in an easily packaged, digestible form, and others might prefer just to pick it up through context clues in the story. To that end, you do not have to read the information below to get into the stories! But, it is here for you if you want that introduction to get a feel for what we’re working with here.

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Character and Setting introductions -

Introduction:
The world is a fairly high fantasy setting, magic and such are pretty prevalent. I’ll be referring to anthro characters as “beast men” within the setting (even though it sounds a bit odd to me, if I just used “anthro” it would strain suspension of disbelief a bit in my opinion). Expect me to use cat woman, wolf man, cow man or minotaur, things like that to refer to anthros, and “half-breed” cat woman, wolf or wolf-man, etc. and phrasing like it to refer to the more “monster-girl” like characters. The main societal story beats relevant to the story are this – there is a powerful cadre of mages that run a tournament annually, lasting three months. The tournament is allegedly funded by nobles and people in positions of power in exchange for the ability to observe or judge the tournament. The tournament takes place in an unknown location, with a varying number of contenders in groups of up to four people. Winning the tournament requires finding the “Champion’s Key” and using it to win the tournament, or letting the three months elapse and then the Judges pick a winner. How you win with the key is deliberately left vague. You can only lose the tournament by conceding, and if any member of a team concedes, the entire team forfeits.
Fights within the tournament are governed by powerful magic that prevents physical injury (instead causing wounds to inflict weakness and tiredness), but acknowledges a victor when one side can no longer fight. When someone wins a fight, they are allowed to inflict one change upon the loser or losers, with the limits being only what the Judges allow. Accordingly, being favored by the Judges is a large advantage, as they are more likely to not allow something that would take you out of the tournament in one way or another. There are artifacts and other objects within the grounds of the tournament that can undo or alter the consequences of duels, and in general there are many things new contenders do not know about the tournament.
Finally, the tournament itself has no specific name (Usually just referred to as “the Tournament”), and is definitely not sanctioned by any official group. All the judges and mages involved in working the Tournament are anonymous, and not even the reward for winning is fully clear (although previous winners have alluded to it being quite worthwhile). Joining the Tournament is, itself, not incredibly difficult, but usually only those down on their luck even attempt to do so. While the winners may say the rewards were worth it, the contenders that fail to achieve victory rarely leave the Tournament in anywhere close to the same shape they entered.

Characters:
The main party consists of four people, gathered together by the unofficial leader of the group, Karla. Karla and Ciera are long-time friends of one another, Vivian is a friend of a friend to them, but was recommended for the Tournament, and Chester is a thief and mercenary for hire that has a few debts to pay off and decided this was as good a way as any to repay them.

Karla is a catgirl, generally referred to as a “half breed” or “half beast” by the average people of this world. She’s about 5’8”, fairly slender and not particularly busty (in the B to C cup range). She does have fairly wide hips, and her ass is a fair bit larger than would be average for someone her size. She generally wears studded leather armor, and it’s more functional than form fitting. She’s practiced with a variety of weaponry, but sticks with the tried and true longsword most of the time. Her hair is a dark auburn, with slightly lighter shades of auburn on her tail and ears. Her eyes are also catlike, although this is not always the case with half breeds like herself.
She is the one who gathered the party, and took care of entering the Tournament. She has made a living as a mercenary most of her life, and is looking to get out of that life permanently. Ciera is a long time friend of hers she met on a job, and it was Ciera that convinced her that this was a good idea. She’s a skilled fighter with a decent head for tactics, but has very little experience outside of combat.

Ciera is a human mage, who’s avoided specializing for most of her career. She’s studied at several academies, learning useful skills here and there, and the closest she has to a specialization is a talent for healing and protective magics. She does know a fair number of offensive spells, but rarely uses them.
Ciera is a little taller than Karla, at 5’10”, and definitely has a wider figure. She normally wears robes and travel clothing that don’t accentuate her curves, but she is quite voluptuous. Most notably, she is the bustiest member of the group, sitting somewhere between an F or G cup, though she tries not to wear clothing that makes it obvious. She has blond hair and blue eyes, pale skin, and generally has a fairly bubbly demeanor, although she does get nervous quite easily.
She’s friends with Karla, and suggested hiring Vivian after a recommendation from a friend. She’s often underestimated by opponents, who assume that her naive disposition and focus on support magics mean that she’s an opponent that can be ignored, but she is deceptively cunning and has a tendency to overplay her bubbly disposition to catch opponents off guard.

Vivian is just a little shorter than Karla, at 5’6”, and is a bard specializing in enchantments and mental magic. She’s also almost as busty as Ciera, at just around an E cup, but definitely accentuates and shows off as much as possible. She wears a mix of form-fitting and loose clothing, often sticking to purple and blue shades, set up to deliberately draw the eyes of any onlookers. She has dark hair, brown eyes, and her skin is a medium tan shade. She has a very relaxed demeanor, often deliberately appearing to be uninterested, but switches from being relaxed to focused and serious quickly and frequently as necessary.
She joined the group after Karla and Ciera approached her saying they had gained entry into the Tournament, and she has her own reasons for choosing to join. Karla is still slightly suspicious, but Ciera trusts her implicitly as an ally. She isn’t quite as skilled as the rest in combat situations, but makes up for it by being knowledgeable about mind-affecting magic and having the skills to undo or twist enchantments.

Chester was the last to be accepted into the group, and also the least friendly of the bunch. Chester is a shifter, capable of switching between shapes and forms a few times a day, and is specifically skilled at taking on the forms of small animals and birds for the purposes of scouting. He’s lived his life as a rogue and mercenary, much like Karla, and says little about his past. The shape he normally takes is deliberately average in as many ways as possible, with dark hair and eyes, lightly tanned skin, and few features of note. He stands at 5’11”, but adjusts this as necessary. He’s not particularly skilled at copying other humanoid individuals, and can only make slight adjustments to his features, although there are shifters who specialize in that.
Chester joined after being scouted by Karla. She spoke to a mutual employer looking for a recommendation for someone skilled at scouting and stealth, and Chester was the name that employer gave. He almost didn’t join, as he has a particular distaste for “beast races,” but decided to join on the promise of vast rewards if they won. He is paranoid, quick to anger, but can also be fairly logical and restrained when given time to consider his actions. He is skilled with daggers, both in close quarters and thrown, and also has two crossbows he is proficient with. He is not quite as skilled as Karla in a one-on-one fight, but makes up for it in cunning and deviousness.