When I finished Cronos’ section, I felt compelled to spend a little extra time discussing his character development, both on the page and behind the scenes. I feel like doing the same for Gamaliel. If I recall correctly, a prototypical version of Gamaliel existed from the earliest version of the story, but it wasn’t until TTWC came into its current form that he took up the role of antagonist to Solon and Xanthe, a role I expanded on significantly when the story was brought into production.

There was a time when portraying a corrupt cleric in fiction was edgy, but now the opposite is more of a surprise. There are basically two ways of characterizing the antagonistic cleric: the cynic and the zealot. The cynic has little if any real faith and merely uses religion as a tool to serve temporal ends. The zealot is a true believer whose fanaticism precludes whatever charity exists in the tenets of his religion. I was vacillating between these two options when I finally asked myself ¿Porqué no los dos? *cue trumpet rendition of “La Bamba”*

You see, Gamaliel is not simply a pious fraud leveraging the blind faith of the masses to gain worldly power. He sincerely believes that he’s working God’s will but is also coldly calculating when it comes to manipulating people and situations to achieve his goals. Related to this, I’d considered making him a coward who always shrank from any real danger, but instead his mad zeal very nearly compels him to be on the front line against all the horrors of the Darklands. (He’s not quite that far out there, but this is still the guy who was eager to set his men against Dragons.) The average reader may not be drawn in, but he certainly gets the job done in universe.

In Cronos’ case, I felt he was a character who didn’t live up to his reputation but then turned it into a plot point. For Gamaliel, I had very different directions I was wanting to take him and wound up with a fusion that’s better than the sum of its parts (in my opinion, at least). Now that I’m on the topic, though, I may go back and do similar reviews of the previous leads and continue to do so for the leads to come. These aren’t meant to be especially deep; just some musings on where these characters came from and the course of their development. Perhaps you’ll find it interesting. Stay tuned.

Yesterday’s post is just coming up now because I was having server issues. On to more recent progress, I pretty well have Xenomachos’ Chapter 5 finished, which means that for all intents and purposes, TTWC1 is complete. Yay. I poked around a little bit with TTWC2, but the real progress is coming from here on out. I think I might attempt a straight-ahead run first in a bid to complete the Monarch Lich’s section before I allow myself to hop around. We’ll see. Stay tuned.

I made more headway in Xenomachos’ Chapter 5 of TTWC1, but I still have a ways to go before it’s done. Since I squeezed in a little work on Tico4 last week, maybe I’ll work a little more on TTWC1 this week. Who knows? Stay tuned.

I made a little more progress on Xenomachos’ Chapter 5 of TTWC1 and wrote a bit on the epilogue of Tico4. Yes, you heard me right. The epilogue. There have been some recent events that inspired part of the wind-down and I wanted to get it written down before I forgot. Something I haven’t mentioned yet is that I’ve been doing work in the Tellus Arc peripheral materials all week, primarily updating some of my older genealogies to include information like dates of marriage. It’s been a long time since I last touched the family trees of the Eight Stars and I may be going back in to do some name changes to better reflect ethnic continuity among the characters. Originally I just named characters based on the meaning of the name but since I’ve further developed the analogues to Earth cultures, I should be a little more consistent. Anyway, that should do it for now. Stay tuned.

I made a little more progress on Xenomachos’ Chapter 5 of TTWC1, deciding to write the end and then work to bridge the gap. I should have this chapter finished by the weekend at the latest. I’ll be doing some traveling, so that might afford a little extra time to dedicate to writing. Stay tuned.

I’ve made some progress on Xenomachos’ Chapter 5 in TTWC1 and pretty well finished his epilogue. I have a bit of a bad habit of ducking battle sequences in this book, but I’m not going to do that in Chapter 5, which means it’s going to take longer to get done. When it is, though, I can work on the finishing touches before directing my attention to TTWC2. Stay tuned.

I did some work on Xenomachos’ Chapter 5 and epilogue of TTWC1. I’m almost there. A solid day’s work and I’ll be done. (Or an hour or so a day over the course of this long weekend.) It’d really be something to cap off another book so soon to when I finished the last one. Stay tuned.

I pretty well finished Xenomachos’ Chapter 4 and did a little work on his Chapter 5 in TTWC1. Perhaps I can finish the book over the weekend. That’d be nice.

I made a little more progress in Xenomachos’ Chapter 4 of TTWC1 and did some work in the peripheral materials. Nothing much, but progress is progress.

I did a little writing on Xenomachos’ Chapter 4 of TTWC1. The character is developing in an unexpected new direction and I’m rather liking it. Stay tuned for more.