I know this much for sure, the apostles are defintely going to be similar to the Manakettes (if I spelled that right), so their items instead of dragonstones would be behilits/sacrifical items, and the scope of the story itself is large, but what the MC achieves is much smaller in scale, this way you get to see the results of your actions affecting the overall whole, for example, what I got so far is one big bad, Cadmus, who is an apostle that for the most part largely doesn't care much for the affairs of man, he's an ancient king who gave up his bloodline to obtain his power, he is not encounter directly in the story, and much of his early game cutscene involement has a "noface" variant mostly because you do not see him, the face in that revealed mug is still underworks, but the skin tone is what I wanted to achieve, the reason why he relentlessly pursues you and your group is that he himself has been searching for centuries for a worthy advesary to fight, he misses his mortality and desires a strong foe. He is also one of the few apostles who don't partake in the consumption of human flesh, he is a mage knight so expect high def and res with fairly decent str and mag stats, he isn't an easy fight, and is by and large, an optional boss fight, as what I have planned for him is two chapters where he shows up and can pose a significant threat to your party. His apostle form, I have a basic sketch, and its a dragon/minotaur mix. I do have plans on having him as a recruitable character, but only if you beat him with the MC both times he shows up and in his Gaiden chapter fight, you will receive a mock version of him (So basically an underpowered version of him, but still pretty strong in a sense), at least that's what I have planned for him, not sure if I can pull it off though. And the real big bad is in ala berserk fashion, one of your trusted companions, which in the prelude chapters, sacrifices you and your compatriots to a horde of monsters (in a big old elcipse throwback), the objective is to escape with the MC alive, in that chapter there is forced death, which I don;t want to force upn the player, but its a part of the reference to Berserk I want to keep in there