I continued my work in the bestiary and have finished marking the habitats of all land mammals in the World. I just have to take care of birds, aquatic animals and insects and I can consider going back through and making labels to indicate rarity. Won’t that be fun?

One thing I’ve done to make cataloging the animals easier is that I don’t distinguish between individual species within a genus and occasionally within a family. Instead, the idea is that the particular animal has a different “skin” based on the area. For instance, the system wouldn’t distinguish between a spotted hyena found in Shabba (an area that’s equivalent to the Sahel on Earth) and a striped hyena found in Babu Dhaba (the equivalent of Persia). However, I have to check the ranges of all the different species so I can better replicate the equivalent ecosystem on Earth in the World. I’m definitely thankful for articles that include full maps of habitats.

Another thing I’ve done, that I wanted to mention yesterday but was in a bit of a hurry to get the post out before I had to deal with other things, is that certain types of Demihumans that come in Chromatic series is that all lower-level variants continue to appear in environments with their higher-level cousins. This can mean that encounters will involve low-level mobs with more dangerous high-level monsters mixed in. Did I mention that there are certain penalties for fighting critters that are much weaker than you? Yes, well, that’s a factor as well to add to the frustration. The World isn’t especially nice to the Players.

Anyway, if I can finish my work on the bestiary and the Rookies’ stats over the weekend, I should be in a decent position to dive into the story proper for next week. Stay tuned..

Again, no story progress, but I managed to finish accounting for all the Deminhumans, Magical Beasts and such, so now I just have the ordinary critters to get sorted. Also, there are now woolly rhinoceros in Jotunheim and Nidavellir, so you’re welcome. I’m sure I’ll get to story content eventually, but as I said in my last post, a delay until next week is pretty well guaranteed at this point. So it goes. I’ll just have to do what I can in the meantime. Stay tuned.

I’ve been really busy lately as you know and have had a lot of other deadlines pressing on me. I did fiddle around a bit in the WttW peripheral materials at least. I need to at least get the initial stats for the Rookies, and me being me, I feel compelled to chart the whole theoretical journey to Level 80. I didn’t get too far, though, due to the typical reason of me conking out again in the evening. Perhaps I can get things to settle down a bit, but I imagine the story update is going to get pushed to next week. Maybe I can turn things around, but I doubt it. Stay tuned.

I put the finishing touches on Chapter 5 of CoP and, as you should already know, I got it out on time. Didn’t get to any other story-related work. Although it’s generally my policy not to bring work-work home with me, I have a deadline I need to meet. Yes, I was graciously offered an extension, but I wanted to get it sorted. On the one hand, I almost pity my students being pitted against a former teacher of college-level composition, but hopefully my efforts make their writing stronger. I will say, though, seeing these young things write about social issues really highlights the naivete of the young on the one hand and what a horrible, bitter old cynic I am. Fortunately for them, I’m not the sort of teacher who believes his purpose is to indoctrinate his students, so I let them think what they’re going to think (as long as they’ve got their facts straight, as this is a research paper, after all) and just make sure that whether I agree with their propositions or not, it’s going to be well-written, dagnabbit.

Anyway, we’ll see what I get done tomorrow. Stay tuned.

This day was every bit as brutal as I had anticipated, so it was little surprise that once I finally got home, I was out like a light regardless of my intentions. However, in the window I had before I dragged my carcass to bed for some proper sleep, I did make a little more progress on Chapter 5 of CoP, so what I’ll do is put on the finishing touches in the morning, then post the chapter in the evening.

Man, Fridays are so brutal. Weeks where I have to work on Saturday are really going to be a taste of Hell. Such is the life of the Japanese working man. (Actually, my burden is only a fraction of that of the average Japanese worker, but I wouldn’t last a month going full salaryman.) Anyway, while I work to manage my work-life balance, I’ll also be working to continue a regular update schedule. Stay tuned.

I wasn’t afforded a lot of time to work on writing, but I did make some more progress on Chapter 5 of CoP. I feel like I’m pretty close to the end, so even in light of my Friday gauntlet, I should be able to finish on time.

Ugh… I’m only two weeks into the term and I’m already pining for August. Well, nothing to it but to power on through. Stay tuned.

Believe it or not, I didn’t even touch the WttW peripheral materials today. I just did some writing on Chapter 5 of CoP. I might’ve even finished the dang thing if I hadn’t conked out in the evening. (I guess I need to simply acknowledge that I’m getting those hours of sleep in one way or another.) Anyway, I’m well on my way to finishing on time. If only I can manage the same with all my tasks at work and a certain other extracurricular project I don’t intend to reveal here just yet. If I could finish the chapter after just one more day of work, that’d be great, so let’s see if I can get it done. Stay tuned.

In the WttW peripheral materials, I added a few more Demon types to make the Legions of Hell all the more fun to deal with. I also decided to change the category from “Devil” to “Demon” to better encompass the range of infernal beings. Either way, there are Monsters labelled simply as “Demons” and “Devils”, so there’s going to be overlap, but I figure it makes more sense to classify all of them as Demons and save the “Devil” label for the upper echelons of the hierarchy. As far as common parlance is concerned, it’s a distinction without a difference, but so it goes.

I made a little more progress on Chapter 5 of CoP, but not all that much as Tuesdays are very busy for me. Also, I spent a fair bit of the little time I had trying to better sort out the organizational structure of the Holy Catholic Church, naturally modelling it after the Roman Catholic Church. Not being Catholic myself, a lot of the information was new to me, so it was interesting digging into ecclesiastical governance. Of course, very little of it is going to be apparent in the text of the story itself, but you know how I like to make the whole iceberg.

I’ll see if I can’t get farther in the next round. Stay tuned.

As you not doubt expected, I did more work in the WttW peripheral materials. Now instead of just three varieties of vampires (Ghouls, Vampires and Vampire Lords), there are eight (the previous plus Dhampirs, Vampire Offspring, Lesser Vampires, True Vampires, and Elder Vampires). I’ve also added Elder Liches (with the idea that there will be dummy boss rooms in the 19th Trial with enemies nearly as difficult as the actual Trial Master) and Alchemic Ogres (which will be a real pain to fight, I’m sure). To clarify on the latter, some Monsters appear in progressively stronger incarnations. The three types are Chromatic (green, blue, purple, red, yellow, black, white), Metallic (bronze, iron, silver, gold, platinum, orichalcum) and Alchemic (albedo, nigredo, citrinas, rubedo). And, yes, it’s deliberate that the last four grades of Chromatic Monsters are in the opposite order of the Alchemic ones. The World is mean like that.

While I was working, I saw some calculation errors in the stats of a few entries and went back through the list to correct the errors where I found them. You see, character levelling follows a consistent pattern whether you’re a Player or an NPC. You start out with a base distribution of 20 points and then gain six points per level. Players have an advantage because they get a 10-point bonus at the start plus a 10-point bonus when they make Tier 2 (Level 21) and Tier 3 (Level 41). In other words, a Level 80 Player will have the same amount of points as a Level 85 NPC. (Players cap at Level 80, and People of the World at 40, but Monsters can reach as high as 99.) Anyway, there was about a dozen or so that needed fixing, so I took care of that.

Lastly, I did actually do a little work on Chapter 5 of CoP, but I didn’t get all that far as I was running out of steam and then what energy I did have was devoted to constructing and stocking my newly arrived bookcase. (I’m actually feeling settled enough to buy a little furniture and I got tired of my increasingly unstable stack of manga toppling over.) I hope to get more done later, naturally, but we’ll see how things go. Stay tuned.

Yes, well, so much for making progress on TWH. However, I am almost done marking all the fantastic beasts and where to find them. I added a lower grade of vampire to the list and I’m thinking I might add a few more vampire types, but that’s a task for later. I still have a fair chunk of the Demihumans to get sorted, and then there’s all the common critters.

However, I do need to be hopping on CoP with whatever time I can steal away. There’s a lot to be done at the day job, so that has to come first. Surely I can keep my priorities straight, right? Anyway, we’ll see what I can get done. Stay tuned.