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 was doing a lot of work in the peripheral materials about the Earth Union’s powered armor technology and thought I’d share some of that with you. As most of you know, powered exoskeletons have been in development for a while and we may well see field deployment in the next ten or twenty years. There are of course a number of issues to consider, but we’re not going to go too far in depth with that.

By the start of the Earth Union, the original LightSuit S saw limited deployment among heavy weapons operators, combat engineers, construction engineers and materiel transporters. For those of you who have seen Edge of Tomorrow, imagine the Jacket technology scaled down a bit and with a little more armor. Things like mobility and battery life were the primary concerns which kept them from being general issue for combat arms. Subsequent versions improved on the design with modest gains, but the version of the LightSuit without the exoskeletal frame became the standard even though that was not the original plan.

The name LightSuit came from the fact that it was a much lighter and less bulky design than competitors, but there were always plans for larger scale units, but this did not gain much traction (or funding) until the government saw a spike in research funding in the 80s. This research would prove fortuitous because a number of the projects that went into development would prove invaluable in the arms race that kicked off with the start of the Sheol War.

The MediSuit was designed to be self-contained and deployable in all environments. The Mark 15 Heavy Duty EVA Suit developed in the wake of the Lunar Revolt represented the basic template, only the MediSuit was designed specifically for combat roles. One of the first assignments of a young Donovan Graves (future Commandant of the Marine Corps and Hero of the Union) was to serve as a test operator for the MediSuit prototype. The successes of the Mark 0 prototype let to the development of the Mark 1 production model, which began service in April of 100, less than a year after the official declaration of war by the Sheol Empire. The first MEU to fully integrate Mobile Armor saw action the following year with then-Colonel Graves as its commander.

As with the LightSuit before it, the MediSuit’s design went back and forth between the competing goals of strength and mobility. Low-gravity environments made weight less of a concern, but the heavier the armor, the less the mobility in more closed environments. The Mark 3 unit fielded in 108 was the lightest version ever made, but that light armor when added to its glitchy sensors left it widely reviled. The Mark 5 that followed was perhaps an overcompensation, but there were a number of Marines who favored its thick shell and improved load-bearing capacity. The Mark 6 is what you’ll recognize from the story. The 41st MEU on the Ticonderoga was the first unit to use them. Though they had significantly lighter armor than the Mark 5, this was offset by the built-in shield projectors, though their use had to be limited or else the power cells would be used up much more quickly.

The HeavySuit doesn’t show up in the main storyline until late in Tico4. The reason for this is that the things are too big to be practical in most applications. They are more than twice the size of a MediSuit, so they can’t fit in ships or inside buildings. They did, however, prove useful as force multipliers on orbital defense platforms. The ground operations in Mars provided another opportunity for HeavySuits to shine, but for the most part, they’re seen as a waste of money, mostly useful for propaganda and PSYOPS purposes.

We’ll stop here because I don’t want to get too much into the postwar years until I start in on the War of the Colonies Cycle. Hopefully you’ve found this illuminating. Maybe I’ll get into superlight doctrine next time. Stay tuned.

If you’re not a writer and don’t have any interest in writing, this post probably won’t seem particularly interesting. I haven’t discussed it with other writers, so I don’t know if I’m peculiar or not when it comes to my interest/concern regarding wordcount. For the uninitiated, wordcount may seem completely irrelevant, but for those pursuing publication (at least via the traditional route), it makes a difference.

I got my first impression of the necessary wordcount for different classes of stories from the SFWA’s Nebula guidelines (http://www.sfwa.org/nebula-awards/rules/), which pegs a novel at 40K or more. However, when I actually started making my first attempts to submit my work, I found that publishers were generally looking more in the range for 75-100K. Why the difference? It’s mostly a matter of bang for your buck. If the novel is too short, it’s not as cost-effective to print, I believe. Now, the standards are different depending on genre and subclass. For instance, that 75-100K is the ballpark for an adult novel. If you write a children’s book or a YA novel, the desired wordcount would be lower.

Before we go further, I’d like you to take a quick look at this list of wordcounts for some well-known door-stoppers (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/1869). With that in mind, would you believe that my early draft of KoG1 was only around 16K? It’s true. I actually had to bundle the entire trilogy together to get to 89K when I was doing submissions in ’03. The rejection was truly a blessing as I’ve since greatly reworked the books and they’re much better for it. Particularly starting out, I had a very sparse style of writing and it’s still rather true today. It’s not that I’m opposed to descriptive narrative, but I do generally veer toward conservation of detail. Whether this is a good or a bad thing, I’ll leave that to the reader’s judgment.

For some comparison, let’s take a look at the wordcounts of the novels I’ve completed thus far, rounded to the nearest thousand.

Knight of Gladius, Volume I – 62K
Knight of Gladius, Volume II – 74K
Knight of Gladius, Volume III – 154K
The Three Warriors – 49K
The Trident War Chronicles, Volume I – 87K
Ticonderoga, Volume I – 100K
Ticonderoga, Volume II – 104K
Ticonderoga, Volume III – 71K

Going the conventional route, getting KoG1 published as it is would be a challenge and T3W would almost be a guaranteed no-go unless I built enough rep to get a pass on it. Personally, I’m a strong believer that a story should be no longer or no shorter than it needs to be and because the current model doesn’t have to account for publishers’ requirements, it’s fine. If I would say anything on the subject to aspiring writers, I’d say not to worry about wordcount too much. Get the story where it needs to be and if you have to wrestle with your editor later, you can deal with it then.

Anyway, that should do it for now. If you found this interesting, great. If not, well, I don’t think you have to worry about a sequel.

I’ve just posted the teasers for my Arthurian Cycle and it’s been a while since my last commentary post, so now’s as good a time as any to address the question: Why Arthur? Arthurian legend has been tackled countless times, so what exactly do I think I can bring to the table? Well, it’s not so much a matter of me doing anything particularly newer and better than it is the fact that my work has always been tied to the various myths and legends of the world. Raiding the public domain for ideas isn’t a bad thing, mind you. That’s what it’s there for, a big communal pot of ideas you can freely draw from.

Specifically, the backstory of The Brothers Pendragon was tied to Arthurian legend from the beginning and I steadily began to expand on those ties to the wider Tellus Arc. It eventually reached the point where I wanted to detail this backstory in full. This led me on a grand journey, blending the English, Welsh and French traditions of the Arthurian legend with real-world history and the overarching plot of the Tellus Arc. I’ve only just begun, but there’s a lot to tell and I’m eager to tell it.

Will my own twist on Arthurian legend appeal to everyone? Of course not, but for the people who already like my work and are invested in the lore of my stories, I think it should do well. When I actually start serializing these stories is anyone’s guess, but it’s something to look forward to.

Lord Xenomachos stands out as one of the more recent additions to the story. He was invented solely for the purpose of balancing the chessboard with another rook, but I think I was able to do some interesting things with him.

Had Xenomachos simply been a loyal legate, he wouldn’t have been that much different from Lord Aristides and if his primary thing was his former exploits, he’d be much like Duke Cronos, minus the burden of contending with the Promethean Alliance. When I was thinking of his hook, I came up with a great idea to set him apart from the others. Because one of the primary conflicts within Zephyr was between Solon and the Church, why not have a character trapped in the middle? I didn’t want Xenomachos to be a calculating schemer like the Archbishop but rather a simple pious man who takes his devotion to God and King quite seriously. In fact, his simple steadfastness is the main reason the Archbishop couldn’t exploit him to the fullest.

I can’t help but feel sorry for the guy. He’s not dumb by any means, just simple and rather innocent. He hasn’t got a head for intrigue at all. Such an earnest and forthright character is really appealing to me in a story filled with so much political machination.

I feel it’s a bit of a shame I could only devote a single chapter to his love of Queen Xanthe. When I was thinking about when Xanthe psychically shared her entire heart and soul with the whole of the Zephyrian forces, it didn’t take much of a leap to realize that if you opened yourself up so fully to a person as pure-hearted as Xenomachos, he couldn’t help but love you. This is an important step for his character because while he showed all due deference to her station as Queen, he held a rather strong prejudice against the Elves. This prejudice was, of course, common throughout Zephyr, encouraged by sources sacred and secular alike, but the fact remains that he was predisposed against her just for what she was and then transcended that. Now, I’m not naive enough to say that all prejudice can be overcome through mutual understanding (and, strictly speaking, not all prejudice is a bad thing, but that’s a long and convoluted discussion for another venue), but a lot of harmful and baseless prejudice has a hard time standing if both sides open up in good faith. Xenomachos is an example that shows that Solon’s dream wasn’t entirely a vain one, just outmaneuvered and outgunned.

It was a bit of a mercy on my part to give him a heroic last stand in the Darklands because it’d be far too cruel to put him in the middle of Gamaliel’s coup against Daphne. I believe he would’ve stood with Daphne, but the conflict within him would’ve destroyed him. I know I tend to give my characters rather miserable and tragic ends, but sometimes I show a little kindness.

Because it’ll be a while before Corona’s section ends, I may consider spotlighting a character outside TTWC1. Stay tuned.

A world teeming with life was made between the Two Curtains and the time had come to awaken the common spirits that still slumbered in the Cloud of Souls. There is some dispute regarding the creation of the sapient races of the Planet. Certain scholars believe there was a council of the greater spirits that oversaw their creation and others believe that each race was the product of their particular god or gods. Regardless, there is little disputing the order in which these races were born.

The firstborn of the Firstborn were the Fair Folk. Whether they were a single race from the beginning or always divided among their many sub-races is uncertain. They were to be the representatives of the greater spirits on the Planet, to rule over it in their stead. It was they who channeled the aether into its currents after the fashion of the wind and sea, but they grew proud and spurned their given duty. Led by their king, the Fair Folk retreated beyond the First Curtain to a land of their own creation, but by leaving the protection of the First Curtain, they resided amidst Chaos and so their kind is not trusted by the Elves. It would explain their reputation for caprice. Not all the Fair Folk abandoned the world, though. Some were made to remain, the ones we know as nymphs, elementals and the like.

After the Fair Folk came the Dragons. The Dragons themselves claim descent from the Dragon Mother Tiamat and the Elves follow their account. Tiamat’s first children claimed the greatest share of her power and wisdom. These were the progenitors of the White, Black and Grey Dragons. After them were born the lesser Dragons whose birthright was much more meager in comparison. They were to be ruled by their elder brethren. Although they have the capacity for great wisdom, the Dragons were also prone to greed and violence. Without the Fair Folk to challenge them, they ruled land, sea and sky as peerless terrors.

There are those who consider the subject of the third sapient race to be taboo. Indeed, many would rather pretend they did not exist at all, though their indelible mark on the history of both the Elves and the world at large make this impossible. It has been postulated that one of the greater spirits was an outcast from the rest and turned all his bitterness and spite on Creation and so created the antithesis of life: the Lich, the Lord of Shadow. Dead and yet alive, a swirling of vortex of darkness barely contained by a mortal frame, the Lords of Shadow exist only to upend the natural order. The world’s saving grace is that their power is too great for their physical bodies to sustain and bearing a new generation serves to divide their essence and weaken them. Even so, the Dark Race would prove to be the greatest menace the world would ever know.

The last of the Firstborn are the Elves. The Divine Mother, El-Naia, is said to be the daughter of Sister Moon by some or at very least a companion of hers. She tired of the company of the greater spirits among the stars and descended to the world below. The Fair Folk were too proud, the Dragons too rapacious and the Lord of Shadow an abomination, leaving her with no suitable companions. And so she created her own. She took the light of the sun, moon and stars and combined them with the powers of earth, wind, water and fire to create the vessels for newly awakened common spirits. These were the first Elves. Long-lived but mortal, attuned to the spirits yet attached to the earth, they were to be upholders of balance, to maintain the natural order. For over a thousand years, she raised them, taught them, and when it was time for her to leave, she left a memorial behind. Five seeds took root across the world. These would grow into the great tree palaces of the Elves known as the Five Ancients. El-Naia’s work was finished, but the history of the world was just beginning.

In the beginning, all was Void and at the center of the Void was Chaos. Permeating the Void was the aether and the great Cloud of Souls. While the greater souls were awake and active, the common and lesser souls were dormant. The greater souls could exist as purely aethereal beings, but the common and lesser souls needed physical bodies in order to awaken, but physical bodies can only be sustained in a physical environment and thus we have the creation story related by Cassandra in “The Two Curtains”. The First Curtain was cast over the vortex of Chaos and became known as “earth”. The Second Curtain divided the First Curtain from the Void and became known as “sky”. A greater soul was assigned to each of the Two Curtains and so we have the Earth Mother and the Sky Father.

It is said the the stars are the grand host of greater souls shining beyond the veil of the Second Curtain. Closer at hand were the two children of the Sky Father: Brother Sun and Sister Moon. One day the two of them quarreled and the Sky Father punished them by casting them out beyond the Second Curtain. Brother Sun then began to walk about the Second Curtain, looking for a way back in, with Sister Moon following behind, and so began the cycle of night and day.

Brother Sun would not listen to his sister’s pleas to reconcile, nor would he slow his pace or even look over his shoulder to see her face as she followed after him. His stubborn pride grieved the Sky Father greatly and his tears poured out upon the First Curtain, making the seas. The surface was soon awash with his tears, so the Earth Mother began to push and pinch the First Curtain, giving rise to dry land with its mountains, its hills and its valleys. As the Sky Father continued to move about the Second Curtain, the clouds massing were a sign of his gloomy temper and the rain his tears.

The waters of the Sky Father’s tears had an unexpected consequence. Before the Earth Mother reshaped the land and everything was covered by the seas, some of the lesser spirits descended from the Cloud of Souls and took shape as the first sea plants. More followed, given flesh as the teeming fish and other creatures of the sea. However, there were many lesser spirits that remained dormant. Once the Earth Mother created dry land, though, grasses and trees sprang up and soon every beast, bird and creeping thing followed. The space between the Two Curtains was soon filled with life and the time had come to wake the common spirits from their slumber.

Next time we’ll talk about the rise of the sapient races of the Planet. Stay tuned.

I’ve devoted some time to the tenets of Photianism and I think it’s fair to give the religion of the Elves a little time of the spotlight. Note that “religion” is singular. Though there are five communities and four sub-races, there is essentially one religion uniting them all. There are multiple “denominations” if you will, but few Elves dispute the overall belief system.

The Elven religion has a certain animistic and panentheistic character to it. We have to begin with their concept of the soul. There are three degrees of souls: greater, common and lesser. The greater souls are essentially gods, the common souls belonging to sapient races and the lesser souls belonging to non-sapient lifeforms. Souls are believed to be uncreated, having existed from the beginning of time, but it was the greater souls that were active first, responsible for the creation of the universe and the waking and incarnation of the common and lesser souls. Another important element is the aether, an unfocused form of spiritual energy similar if not the same in substance to the souls but lacking any will or individuality. The aether is omnipresent and acts as a medium for the souls to operate (which is all much in line with most systems of magic on the Planet). Some Elven philosophers have posited that there is a singular Greatest Spirit from which all other souls and the aether emanated and will one day all be drawn back into it.

There are numerous deities venerated by the Elves to varying degrees, but chief among them is El-Naia, the Divine Mother. El-Naia is not the greatest of the gods, but she is regarded as the creatrix of the Elven race and so is adored above all. I will discuss her, the other gods and various myths and legends relating to them in future posts. It will be easier to go into more of the details of worship then. For now, it is sufficient to describe the Elven religion as a sort of nature worship with a personal creatrix held in highest adoration.

Unsurprisingly for a religion centered on goddess worship, the highest ranking clergy tend to be female, but there are some branches where males tend to dominate, such as the cult of the sun common among Light Elves. The clerical hierarchy isn’t terribly complicated or particularly rigid in structure. The priestly caste is largely ranked according to seniority, though certain extraordinary spiritual gifts may result in a quicker rise to higher prestige.

There are a number of major and minor festivals following patterns you might expect for a religion of nature worship: new moons, full moons, solstices, equinoxes, etc. Other than that, there’s nothing so formal as weekly services, daily prayers at set times or anything like that, though some branches of the sun cult can be a little more regimented.

I could go into greater depth, but this post is only meant to serve as an overview. I’ll go into further details in subsequent posts. Stay tuned.

In one of my more standard quest-type stories, Ionathas would likely be the main character. Indeed, there are a lot of his exploits that don’t get chronicled in the story proper that would probably be part of the central plot otherwise. Whether the current setup is a good thing or not, I’ll leave that to the reader.

Besides being the typical hero, Ionathas is important as a representative of Notians sympathetic with the Zephyrians. It’d obviously be a different story if he wasn’t brought up from nothing by the Duke’s patronage, but it was important for him to have a foot in both worlds, as it were. He makes a good counterpoint to Prince Carpos, who betrayed Zephyr to join the Promethean Alliance for his own selfish ends. Also, making him a free knight gives him greater flexibility that a regular member of the legions would have, which is one of the keys to his success when he takes up the Duke’s mantle.

While Prince Carpos is more of an antitype, Sir Caligo is more of a direct analogue. They’re both lowborn men raised to prominence by their military exploits with an elite cadre of close followers who are ultimately betrayed by the very people they fought for. Too bad (or not) for Ionathas not getting the chance to turn into a vampire to exact his revenge. Honestly, I don’t think Ionathas would’ve done what Caligo did even given the opportunity. Therein lies the key difference between the two men. As wrathful as Ionathas was toward the Church for turning on the Crown, he didn’t surrender himself to that wrath, but as a result he was killed for it.

Regarding Ionathas’ relationship with Corona, I think I’ll save that discussion for Corona’s entry. And I believe that’ll do it for now. Ionathas is a fairly straightforward character, so there really aren’t many twists and turns to his characterization. Next up is Lord Xenomachos (once his section is complete). Stay tuned.

In the earliest stage of conception of what would become The Trident Chronicles, I didn’t have much to Daphne’s character besides a princess who could communicate with angels and fairies. I believe it had some relation to the Princess character class in Ogre Battle (which at the time I hadn’t played but only read Nintendo Power articles about). She may have been called Daphne at that point. If so, that’s about the only aspect of her original character profile that survived.

When the story was revived in its current incarnation, Daphne began to take shape as we know her now, the sheltered Half Elf daughter of Solon and Xanthe thrust into the role of regent in her parents’ absence due to her brother’s treachery. Her character arc is all about going from the bird in the gilded cage to a proper leader of her people. I like to think that her development really comes through when you compare her encounter with Carpos in her prologue with the one in Chapter 3, then on to her negotiations with Rowland in Chapter 5.

Of course, we can’t talk about Daphne without bringing up Uriel. Pairing the princess and the rogue is a classic trope, but I think we all know that I’m not one to shy away from playing with well-worn tropes. I should probably have a spotlight for Uriel himself, but perhaps I should save that one for a later date. Anyway, focusing on the relationship with Uriel from Daphne’s perspective, there are a lot of elements at work. The element of gratitude for saving her life comes first, then there’s a bit of a girlish crush that forms that later blossoms into a deeper form of companionship. Part of it is to replace her brother and another part is romantic bond. (I’m going to note that Carpos’ incestuous ways are almost entirely one-sided, so there’s not really much cross-pollination going on here with Daphne.) Uriel’s presence goes a long way to building her into the stronger person she becomes, but it’s also no small part of what leads to her downfall. He becomes a blindspot for her. It’s not that she’s unaware of how his presence is compromising to her, but she doesn’t go far enough to keep her distance because she can’t. She needs him too much and it’s used as ammunition against her.

I like playing with the dilemma of balancing the desires of your heart with the duties of your station and I certainly wouldn’t mind exploring that more with Daphne. There may be a short or two in the future for it. Anyway, next up is Ionathas. Stay tuned.