Making The Story Better
Updating "Everybody Must Die"
They say don’t fix what ain’t broke.
But if you’re building a world with gods and vengeance and you realize it’s giving “mid”…
You absolutely go back and fix it.
Like a grown-up.
With deadlines.
And therapy.
So yeah, I updated “Everybody Must Die.”
It wasn’t broken, but it damn sure wasn’t doing what I needed.
The original setup had Takhar, god of justice and vengeance, paying off a soul debt to some elder god named Apedemak.
Cool concept.
Big cosmic stakes.
But it felt like it came off the assembly line at the Discount Mythology Outlet.
No real soul.
Then I hit the lore books hard and found something real.
Turns out Takhar has an actual canonical rival named Tiurakh; god of wealth and greed.
These two demigods exist in a Serer moral ecosystem, locked in a sacred beef:
Justice vs. Accumulation
Both are worshipped at the base of massive trees, and both are dangerous in their own right. That kind of tension is story fuel.
It gave me the why my early chapters were missing.
So I reworked the first chapter.
I trimmed the cosmic fat.
Threw out the elder god debt plotline.
Re-centered the conflict around the eternal fight between justice and greed.
I renamed the chapter from “Ethereal Storms” to “Truth Among Storms”
You can read it right here:
👉 Truth Among Storms
Here’s the thing: this is only possible because Everybody Must Die is still a living thing.
An evolving draft.
Not locked, not printed, not passed around to the masses yet.
That freedom is rare.
It’s why I treat this like software development.
Agile story loops.
Character patch notes.
Plot refactors.
And like software, updates only work if the code is clean.
Which is what I’m doing now, getting everything sharp and aligned before we hit the big stage.
Speaking of which…make sure you subscribe now
Everybody Must Die, Chapter 13 dropped:
🔥 Prosper or Perish
And the comic adaptation is coming in GODS: Untold Africa Vol. 2.
Put your money where your heart should be.
We’ve raised $3354 out of $5100 with 135 backers.
We’ve got 16 days left.
Let’s push this over the edge — not just for the story, but for the whole damn culture.
Back the campaign here and let’s go divine-mode:
👉 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paganinistories/gods-untold-africa
No guilt. Just gods.
No pressure. Just prophecy.
Let’s build.