You know how I said I was going to get Chapter 3 of CoP wrapped in the morning and posted in the evening? Well, it didn’t happen that way. I was working on the Tellus Arc peripheral materials all day and didn’t start on CoP until the evening. I didn’t take a nap in the afternoon like I was intending, so you can imagine how the evening went, yet somehow I managed to make enough progress that I’m just about done, so I’ll just shift the release schedule by a day and we’ll go on from there.

In case you were curious about my work in the peripheral materials, I was primarily focused on the royal family of Titan. You see, it turns out that I hadn’t made a family tree for them yet, so I corrected that oversight. Some changes cropped up along the way because some encyclopedia entries were less detailed than others, causing me to lose the connection. For instance, during the reign of King Halfdan, his first wife was unable to produce an heir for him, so he was pressured by the jarls to divorce her and was given a child bride in the thought that the younger the bride, the more fertile she would be. (No, that isn’t how it works.) However, King Halfdan opted to wait until the girl grew up a bit first, only to die within the year. This little widow was then carted off to the convent to live out her widowhood, only to leave her cloister after some years and find herself a new husband in the form of Sieghardt the Conqueror, only this time the age gap went the other way, with her being 22 years his senior. This was Asta Ingisdottir, only I never mentioned her by name in King Halfdan’s encyclopedia entry, so I ended up making an entirely different character to serve the role of his second queen (now an age allowable by canon law), who ends up murdered after the King’s funeral. I stumbled on Asta’s entry later and realized my error. Rather than delete the new storyline, I simply changed Asta’s story so that she was betrothed to the infant son of King Halfdan by this new Queen and then was sent off to the convent for her protection, lest she end up like her little fiancé. (Yes, the baby was murdered along with the mother, because succession disputes are brutal.) This managed to tie up things nicely, but there’s bound to be more instances of me coming up with new stories and having to either retcon the old ones or rework the new ones. However, I really like it when I have a good idea, only to find out that I already had that good idea years before and made provisions for it.

I intend to switch over to RttW next week. We’ll see how much time I spend working on the chapter that needs to go out and how much time I spent detailing which insects are native to each of the Trials. I’m sure it’ll be all sorts of fun. Stay tuned.

I said I was just going to do a little bit of work on the Tellus Arc peripheral materials and then focus on finishing Chapter 3 of CoP, but it was the opposite. I spent most of the day on the Tellus Arc peripheral materials and only got a sentence done in CoP before I entered my phase of variable consciousness in the evening. That doesn’t bode well for my deadline, but I think I’ll try to get the chapter finished in the morning and get it posted by evening.

Besides adding more regnal years, one thing I was doing to improve the encyclopedia was adding labels for kings and such, something I’ve done in other, more recent encyclopedia files. For example:

Rudolf V (III 3653 – 3718)

53rd King of Bergeny

However, in the course of doing this, I was thinking about additional titles and such. For instance, one of the honors bestowed on the Elemental Knights was a global peerage, the equivalent of a count, but some would go on to gain other titles as well (or they already had titles beforehand). I wanted to account for that and just House Aran alone kept me busy for a couple hours, as I was accounting for lines of succession and stories would spring up as I worked. Fun, fun, fun, but it doesn’t get me any closer to meeting my deadline. I’ll see what I can get done and then go from there. Stay tuned.

I did some writing on Chapter 3 of CoP, which was good, but rather than stick to this, I ended up going down a rabbit hole in the peripheral materials. I believe I was checking out the conversion of dates in the different calendars in the Tellus Arc the other day and ended up making some adjustments, which then spun into a whole things where I was adding regnal years for different dynasties and such, and as stories were developing from this, I had to dig into the timeline and the encyclopedia, and I’ve only managed to scratch the surface. I do need to go back to writing on CoP, but I’m definitely going to spend more time on this. Stay tuned.

Filing my taxes ended up being the main project for the day, and there were some other things that also occupied my time, so it didn’t look like I was going to get any writing done at all, but after passing out for a spell in the evening, I decided that even if it wasn’t much (and it wasn’t), I was going to move ahead in Chapter 3 of CoP. I don’t actually think this is going to be that long of a chapter, so I just need to finish the second scene and I’ll be done. Just got to stick to it. (And getting some lead time would be a nice stretch goal.) Stay tuned.

Although I didn’t make any story progress, I did do some work to further fill out the map of Korush for CoP. I just have a handful of countries left to name and I started naming some of the major bodies of water as well. It may not sound like much, but it’s still part of moving things forward as a whole. Hopefully I can make some actual story progress tomorrow. Stay tuned.

I did just the barest amount of work on Chapter 25 of TWH and a more respectable bit of progress on ColoFlip, doing a bit of exposition on the crew’s behavioral programming. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m really enjoying this opportunity to explore the ground level on the fringes of the Empire. So far in the Cross Arc, our view of the Empire has been skewed by the fact that we don’t get to see much outside of Project Reclamation and the Expeditionary Fleets. As fun as Reclamation stories are, I want to explore more of the post-Union universe. I really need to kick off The Æther War Chronicles as I’ve dived into the aftermath of the Æther War without digging into the war itself. Things to consider as I move forward in the Cross Arc.

What’s that? I said I was going to be focusing on TWH this week? I really do need to do that, don’t I? I’ll see what I can do. Stay tuned.

I had another project to eat up most of my time on Monday and it was looking like I wasn’t going to get anything accomplished yesterday either, but I was wanting to rework one of the scenes I’d written in ColoFlip the other day, so I made a point to scratch out some time to sort that out. Basically, I redesigned that cybernetic augments on the featured character.

To that end, I was doing some research on cyborg designs, doing a fair bit of browsing on Pixiv, and I was surprised at how much of the art now is AI-generated. You see, there’s a particular style I’ve been seeing a lot of lately, especially in shovelware, that looks fairly appealing yet occasionally has odd aspects to it. I really should’ve connected the dots when I was seeing basically the same style so many places. Anyway, it’s just a mildly interesting observation.

Hopefully things will settle down so I can redirect my energies into TWH for a bit. I do at least have the chapter due this week already finished, but if I’m being good, I’ll maintain my lead time. Stay tuned.

I did a little more writing on ColoFlip. Not much, mind you, but enough for me to make this post. It’s off to TWH starting tomorrow, though. Stay tuned.

Friday I didn’t do much beyond formatting the guidebook for the WttW series, which I didn’t quite feel was worth making a post about. I shifted gears a bit to do some work on Colony Flipper. There were a couple scenes I wanted to put down on the page. Something I forgot about at the time was that the crewmembers have inhibitors that, among other things, prevent them from cursing. They either have to use minced oaths or else their voice gets overridden by the censorship protocols. The joke may not be as funny as I think it is when put into practice, but we’ll see as I develop the story further. I need to be switching over to TWH, but I may still fiddle around on this some more. Stay tuned.

I did some work in the peripheral materials, both for CoP and for the WttW series. For the former, I spent an inordinate amount of time working out the rank structure of the military of the Kiennar Federal Republic, even though I don’t think it’ll end up being all that prominent. Their Army Chief of Staff is at best a second-string character, but I guess we’ll see if something develops. I am thinking about doing a gaiden about the political machinations in that particular country, so it may come in handy for later. As for the WttW stuff, I’m working to codify the Trade Skills, as it’s particularly relevant to Chapter 11 of WttW1. We’ll see what else I can get up to. Stay tuned.