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.

I did some work on Medusa’s prologue of TTWC2. I may be switching gears soon. We’ll see. Stay tuned.

I made a little progress on Orguz’s Chapters 4 and 5 of TTWC2. If I really worked at it, I could probably finish his section by the time the weekend is out. I don’t know if I’ll pull this off or not, but it gives me something to shoot for. Part of me feels tempted to reformulate The Trident War Chronicles into a more linear narrative, but I would necessarily have to lose most of the individual prologues and that would sacrifice a lot of background material. Also, the cast would probably become unwieldy if all three factions got full representation. For better or for worse, I think the current formula has to stand or else I’d need to do some major top-to-bottom rewrites and that’s not a terribly appealing idea. More to come. Stay tuned.

I’ve been rather busy the past couple days. I did a little work on Orguz’s Chapter 4, went through the entirety of Dox’s section (most of the work was minor tweaks, but there were a couple chapters that needed filling out), I tweaked Ophis Python’s prologue and mostly finished his Chapter 1 and epilogue, and I mostly finished Xorgoth’s Chapter 1, all of this being in TTWC2.

That’s some good headway, but at the rate I’m going, I’ll be lucky to make 50K words. Even though I’m not actively seeking publication at the moment, I try to think in terms of publications standards, so I really try to shoot for at least 70K with my novels. One of the joys of self-directed online serialization is that I don’t absolutely have to worry about this kind of beancounting, but it still sticks in my mind. Ideally, each book is as long as it needs to be and that’s that. Looking at how publication works in Japan, it seems you can get away with that more. For instance, I’m reading the Full Metal Panic! light novels and I’ve currently on the fifth book, which is rather thin compared to the others. It just happens to be the length of the story Gatoh intended to tell. However, you may need to have a certain degree of stroke to get away with that. I don’t claim to be an expert on the American publishing industry, so I definitely can’t make any significant claims when it comes to its Japanese counterpart. That being said, I have a feeling I’d have an easier time getting a publication run over there than I would here. Perhaps I’ll take that Japanese novel-writing course after all…

Here’s something you haven’t seen in a while. I’ll dispense with any excuses, apologies or empty promises. Instead, I’ll just say that I did a little work on Orguz’s epilogue of TTWC2. I swear, just clearing out the number of spam comments before they get out of hand is almost incentive enough to be meeting my daily quota. Hopefully there’ll be more to come. 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.

I went ahead and mostly wrapped up Orguz’s Chapter 2 of TTWC2 and then went on to more or less finish Chapter 15 of Tico4. Not a bad bit of work if I say so myself. You’ll understand what I mean when we get to the chapter in question, but I found it quite the pain to adequately portray synchronous audio and visuals, particularly when the latter is changing in the middle of the former. I may wind up doing some rewriting to streamline it further, but that’s a task for another day. Stay tuned.

I got close to finishing Orguz’s Chapter 2 of TTWC2, but I starting nodding off before I could get it done. So it goes. I may still go on to do the finishing touches before switching to Tico4, though. We’ll see. Stay tuned.

Those of you following my Twitter feed (and I know I haven’t done much posting there of late besides notifications of site updates) are aware that I downloaded the trial version of Smash for the 3DS yesterday. (Very barebones, by the way, but I guess it’s good that they’re whetting the appetite instead of sating it.) Well, that was a grand three-hour ordeal at McDonald’s, so during that time I did a fair bit of writing on TTWC2 is a bit of a switch-up for the week. I pretty well finished Orguz’s prologue, did some revisions on Chapter 1 and made some headway on Chapter 2. Also did a little more work on his family tree and updated some entries in the encyclopedia to reflect the developing changes to the scenario. We’ll see if I can’t wrap up Chapter 2 before I switch back over to Tico4. Stay tuned.