In my flurry of review writing, I was neglecting the writing that should be my primary focus. Though a little under quota, I did some writing on Simona’s epilogue of TTWC3 so I’d have something to report. As the reviews are just a side thing, saying I wrote 21 of them yesterday shouldn’t count as the sort of progress I report here. That puts me about a fifth of the way into the list I’ve drawn up. I’ll certainly have that buffer I was looking for. I suppose I might as well follow this obsession to its conclusion. I’ll just try to make time for my main writing while I’m at it. Stay tuned.

To speak on a meta level, one of the key reasons space fighters feature so prominently in the Ticonderoga series is due to the strong influence of the Wing Commander series on the story. Also, the stakes don’t feel quite as high for remote drone operators as for pilots physically in the cockpit. Also, the deep impression in the popular consciousness of the heroic dogfighting of the two world wars have been perpetuated through major works of science fiction and will continue to be a staple even as technology seems to be bringing the classic concept of dogfighting more and more into obsolescence. However, rather than simply handwave all this, I do try to make some in-universe justification for it all, which I will explain below.

Before the start of the Sheol War, superlight spacecraft (under 50m in length and 300t in weight) were mostly limited to unmanned drones and the occasional custom curiosity. A large part of the reason for this was because the Schauer Fusion Propulsion System, which was the cornerstone of all space travel, could not safely be downscaled any further. At that time, space operations mostly fell under the Navy’s jurisdiction and the prevailing notion was that in any combat situation, the typical patrol escort was the smallest type spacecraft that would be needed. However, even before the Sheolites were identified as such, their small maneuverable craft were proving quite effective. While some in the Navy advocated warships with denser weapons arrays to deliver an impenetrable wall of interlocking fire, the risk of collateral damage was seen as too great, though the fifth generation warships developed during the war were much more heavily armed than their predecessors. Both the Air Force and Naval Aviation saw an opportunity to seize a larger role in the coming conflict and argued in favor of fighting fire with fire with superlight spacecraft.

The superlights would not have been possible without the development of the of the SFPS Mk.VId, a downscaled version of the SFPS previously thought impossible. Though much improved over previous attempts to downscale the SFPS design, the VId was nevertheless unstable and the containment could easily be broke with relatively little damage. Safety systems were put in place to shut down the reactor upon taking damage, but this did not always work and when it did, the superlight was left dead in the water and easy prey for the enemy.

While G-diffuser systems were installed to make the cockpit survivable for a human pilot, the theoretical limits of human reaction time were strained even at the reduced engagement velocity of 100kps. Given these and other concerns, there were many voices who argued against manned superlights, instead advocating either fully independent combat AIs or at least remote operators. The use of independent AI was always politically untenable in the Earth Union. For whatever flaws a human being may have, there is at least clearer accountability in the event something goes wrong. (A discussion on the complex debate on the role of AI in Earth Union society is best saved for another time.) While remote operators at least kept a human in the loop, there were concerns that the connection could be severed or even hijacked by the enemy. (Later review would confirm that the detractors overestimated the Sheolites’ electronic warfare capabilities.) In the end, the advocates of manned superlights won out.

Now that the plan to go forward with manned superlights was going forward, both the crafts themselves and the warships to carry them were being developed alongside the training of the pilots who would fly them. For instance, both Leia Han and Stalinslav Zhukov (who you would better know as Pride of the Seven Deadly Sins) were among the first midshipmen to be trained as pilots for spaceborne carrier operations. In addition, pilots from the terrestrial aviation communities and the pilots of light spacecraft adapted their skills to operate the new superlights. Casualty rates in training were high and even higher in combat, but those who survived helped refine the warfighting doctrine for superlights. Combined with technological advancement, the second generation of pilots (represented by people like Matt and Lydia) were able to gain an advantage over the Sheolites and by the third generation that emerged by the war’s end, clear superiority on the Union side was established.

Following the postwar drawdown of forces, the expense of manned superlights became harder to justify in the changing political climate and worsening economic situation. By the time of the War of the Colonies, the Union had almost completely shifted to remote operators and only when rebel forces succeeded in realizing the concerns of the opponents of remote operators did manned superlights make a resurgence, but by that point it was a race against time to relearn what had already been well-established forty years earlier.

And that should do it for now. There are a number of technological brawls in Union military history and perhaps I’ll get into another in the near future. For my next commentary post, I may talk a little on the embarrassing origins of the Ticonderoga series and some of the early weirdness that was cut before the story saw the light of day. Stay tuned.

I spent the greater part of the day crunching number and pretty well resolved the Notian theater of the Trident War. That’s 32 engagements over a period of seven years and thousands of fatalities just counting combatants.

I also did a lot of jumping around, writing stretches of dialog and such for a number of chapters in TTWC3: Rowland’s Chapter 3,  Simona’s Chapter 5, Carpos’ Chapters 4 and 5, Scipio’s Chapter 5, and Mab’s Chapter 4 and epilogue. Now that the logistics of the Sixth Battle of Iakobin have been sorted out, perhaps I can make my way through Rowland’s Chapter 3 and move on down the line. Stay tuned.

I did a little writing on Rowland’s Chapter 3 of TTWC3, but most of my time was spent in the peripheral materials. I cited a number of troops under Rowland’s command and I’m having to go back and work the numbers to see that it’s actually accurate. You see, I originally just had statistics on relative troop strengths by year, but I’ve been working on a complete battle record for more accurate calculations. I may or may not have said this before, but I don’t believe in throwing out numbers at random. If I cite some figure, there’s going to be some documentation to back it up.

Also, because I was working in the peripheral materials, I was browsing my archives of older versions of my files (I try to preserve copies of earlier versions after a major change, such as my first and second compression of the Tellus Arc timeline) and I found myself writing a bit on The Knight’s Twilight. Having spent so much time on the Trident War, I’m starting to miss our friends in Gladius. I can afford the occasional detour, but now that I’m putting Tellus Arc stories on weekly serialization, I need to stay on target. I’ve got a few months of lead time, but that could get used up rather quickly if I don’t stay on top of it. Stay tuned.

I pretty well wrapped up Scipio’s Chapter 1, then got through Carpos’ prologue and Chapter 1 and did a little work on Rowland’s Chapter 3 of TTWC3. I went ahead and deleted the remaining chapters from the original version, so I’ve got a fair bit of ground I need to recover, but I think I’ll try going straight down the line for a bit. If I can at least finish the first couple sections, it’ll give me a bit of an anchor for my continued work. I started to think that I may not be good with villains given the trouble production of TTWC2, but I find Carpos incredibly easy to write. Perhap’s its a matter of anthopocentrism, but even though none of TTWC2’s cast are fully human, they’re rather heavily anthropomorphized. I dunno. These are questions I can ponder as serialization progresses. In the meantime, stay tuned.

I wrapped up Urgill’s Chapter 1, Garm and Scipio’s prologues and made a little progress on Scipio’s Chapter 1 in TTWC3. At the rate I’m going, it looks like I have nothing to worry about on the wordcount front with TTWC3. I expect the final tally will be in the 80-100K range. Yes, I know I’ve said that I’m not going to fuss over the wordcount of TTWC2, but it still bothers me that it’s turning out so short.

Part of me considers reworking the series into a chronological telling, but that would destroy the core design conceit and would require a lot more work than simply rearranging chapters. After all, can you imagine wading through nearly an entire book’s worth of introductory prologues for each of the leads, many of then taking place years before the main events of the story? The thought of doing special editions of my work feels uncomfortably George Lucasy, so we’re going to set that idea aside at present. I might try a recut as a thought exercise, but I doubt I’ll release it to the public.

In other news, I’ve been toying with the idea of doing reviews and posting them on the site. They wouldn’t be anything fancy or anything particularly in-depth, just brief run-downs of movies and such. They’d be text reviews as I’ve got a face for radio and a voice for the papers and lack a colorful enough personality to be a video reviewer (a field already filled with many more talented individuals than myself). I haven’t made a decision yet, but it might make for a nice little diversion of a weekly feature. Stay tuned.

We wrap up our coverage of the lead characters of TTWC1 with a look back on Corona the White Dragon.

I like writing nonhuman characters because it affords me the opportunity to think outside the box. I don’t take it too far because there needs to be some measure of relatability for the audience. Corona is not so recent an addition as Xenomachos, but she wasn’t in the early drafts of the story either. I honestly think her relationship with Ionathas blossomed as I wrote her.

There is no small irony in playing with the knight and lady dynamic when the lady in question happens to also be a Dragon. Elves and Dragons both have quite a bit of aloofness to them as a general rule, but Dragons also carry a great power and menace even when they masquerade as humans. Part of developing Coronas character was taking this strong, intimidating presence and softening it. It’s not like she becomes jelly or anything, but there’s a nice juxtaposition of these moments of vulnerability that I really like.

If you thought that her pursuing her revenge on Xorgoth was a poor decision on her part, I think you’ll find her bleeding and alone in a cave agreeing with you. Unfortunately, she never really thought out her rebellion and paid for it. The White Dragons were too beaten down after centuries of subjugation and too few in number to make a difference even if she could rally the entire race to her cause. It would’ve been better for her if she stuck with Ionathas (better for Ionathas too), but it’s just one more thread in the grand tapestry of tragedy that is the Trident War.

Well, I guess that’ll do it for now. I may consider doing a few of these for significant members of the supporting cast or perhaps cover characters from previous works (though a few of them have future appearances, so I may refrain and I may simply opt to do multi-parters). I’d like to get back to doing weekly commentary posts, so I’ll weigh my options. Stay tuned.

I wrapped up Urgill’s prologue and did some work on her Chapter 1 in TTWC3. She’s certainly shaping up to be quite a different character than how I originally wrote her. I may go into it deeper when her turn at a character spotlight rolls around, but before she was just a monster hopelessly infatuated with Rowland. Now there’s a lot more going on. My work on Orguz in TTWC2 deserves a good share of the credit. He too got fleshed out much better in this version and a lot of that development extended to Urgill. I’m thinking about spending an extra week continuing my work here on TTWC3 before switching over to Tico4. We’ll see how things go. I’m so close to wrapping things up there that I should really just go ahead and make the final push. Stay tuned.