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.

I didn’t get any story writing done, but I was working on a breakdown of the daily progress of Rio and Ellis down the Warrior’s Road. As you might imagine, with Ellis setting the pace, things aren’t going to go quite as briskly as Rio would want. My first run through was allowing for one off-day a week, but this came up almost 400km short of the mark, so I turned those off-days into half-days, which Ellis certainly isn’t going to like. I now have a good 100km surplus, but I still have to account for the assorted bumps along the road. Because I already have a little lead time on RttW, I may spend a little more time sorting things out a bit more. Stay tuned.

You know that I like to let chapters sit a while before I go back over them prior to posting, but I also want to reduce delays to the schedule, so this time I pushed through to the end of Chapter 2 of CoP and went right on to review, prep and post it. I would then go on to write a bit on Chapter 3 to give me a little head-start on next cycle and did some reworking of the outline. I’d like to have all the chapters named and it’s already looking like I need to expand things by a chapter or two. I’m also having to decide if I want things weighted so much toward the final battle or if it’d be better to do something closer to a monster-of-the-week approach to build steam. These are things I intend to work on a bit more before switching over. Stay tuned.

I managed to get through the first section of Chapter 2 of CoP, but I didn’t even get to the second. There were a few things chewing up my time, but I really didn’t have much excuse for not finishing. I’m going to try to finish it tomorrow and go for a same-day release or just shift the release schedule by a day, as I’d really like to get things done relatively on-schedule. Stay tuned.

I made a little progress on Chapter 2 of CoP. Again, not as much as I would’ve liked and, again, for the same reasons. I only have a bit to go in the first segment and the second shouldn’t be too long. Stay tuned.