Dec 06 2013

WIP Update – 03 & 04 Dec 13

I wasn’t able to post this yesterday because I was encountering what appeared to be some server-side issues. Anyway, all the excuses I made in the update post apply doubly to any new work (or lack thereof). I actually considered not mentioning this at all, but since it’s not like I haven’t made any progress at all since returning from the wilds, I might as well mention it.

I’ve made some progress on Ionathas’ Chapter 3.

Reader: “Ionathas’ Chapter 3? Aren’t you supposed to be working on Daphne’s Chapter 4?”

Well, yes. I was just flipping through the pages and happened to land there and some ideas started bubbling up and I worked on it some. No major progress, mind you, but I’ve pretty well battened down how I want the chapter to play out.

I wish I could say the same for Daphne’s Chapter 4. I need to have it ready in less than two weeks and I haven’t even gotten into the main event yet. (Although, honestly, the ‘main event’ may play out fairly quickly, not entirely unlike the lighthouse scene from this week’s chapter.)

My recent work adjusting the timeline to accommodate the recent shift and firming up the plans for the next two books may have had a slightly deleterious effect in that I find myself itching to do some work on TTWC2 and 3. There are a few characters and scenarios that have undergone significant changes from the old draft and I’d really like to implement them. With school and my tutoring work wrapping up for the semester, perhaps I can apply some of the newfound time to spreading the love a bit. Stay tuned.

Dec 02 2013

WIP Update – 29 & 30 Nov 13

I couldn’t post an update here yesterday because I was out in the wilds. Also, I’ve been laid low by the plague, so there’s not a whole lot I’ve accomplished. I continued to fiddle around with the time adjustments and took the opportunity to fill in some of the blanks in TTWC2 and 3 and also write up the metatag summaries so they’ll be at the ready when future chapters are published. I have no idea how much I’ll accomplish in the near future until I get better. Stay tuned.

Nov 29 2013

WIP Update – 28 Nov 13

I made a little more progress on Daphne’s Chapter 4, but the main thing I did yesterday was resolve a problem with the Tellus Arc timeline that had been bugging me for a while now. You see, there’s a character who is born after the events of the Trident War Chronicles, but to fit in where I need him, I had to send him back in time. However, I don’t want to deal with all the attendant mess of time travel, so I decided to take the events of the Trident War and push them back ten years. This meant that not only the timeline and encyclopedia needed to be adjusted, but also the character database and dozens of other supplemental files. Some characters were pushed back to accommodate the shift and others were kept in place and became ten years younger. Obviously this doesn’t mean much for particularly long-lived species, but now Solon doesn’t reach quite as ripe of an old age (but 72 is still pretty impressive for the equivalent of the 5th Century AD), for instance.

You might be asking, “Why go to all this trouble for one event?” Well, the Tellus Arc timeline is synchronized to Earth’s history. The consequences would be much more far-reaching if I shifted the alignment with Earth, so all the work I did was the least I could do to resolve the splinter in my mind that is timey-wimey rubbish.

So, yeah, this is where my thoroughly detailed peripheral materials can work against me. Still, it’s better to have them than not.

Nov 28 2013

WIP Update – 27 Nov 13

Made more progress on Daphne’s Chapter 4. This one’s going to take a while to finish. Fortunately I have a good while before it’s scheduled to go up. I should be able to get it done before then. Stay tuned.

Nov 27 2013

WIP Update – 26 Nov 13

I made some good progress on Daphne’s Chapter 4. This looks like it’ll be a fairly long one. Nothing to it but to do it, right?

Nov 25 2013

WIP Update – 24 Nov 13

A little more minor progress on Daphne’s Chapter 4 of TTWC1.

The bigger accomplishment for the day was giving shot-by-shot instructions to Kazuya for the animation project. What we’ll be able to show by the end of the year will pretty much amount to an animatic, but still it’s not a bad piece of work for one overburdened salaryman doing most of the heavy lifting.

Nov 24 2013

WIP Update – 23 Nov 13

I made a little progress on Daphne’s Chapter 4 of TTWC1. The main thing is that I figured how to get it started, which was really what was holding me back. I was having trouble deciding how to bridge this gap that was left after excising a certain chapter for the purpose of standardizing the length of each character’s section. I’ll probably turn that excised chapter into a short, but that’s a project for another day.

Nov 23 2013

WIP Update – 22 Nov 13

I did a little writing on Daphne’s Chapter 5 and epilogue. Ironically, I haven’t written anything on her Chapter 4 yet. I should probably focus on that, seeing as how its turn is coming up in three weeks.

Speaking of her Chapter 5, I’m mildly agonizing over how far I want it to go. While audacity can be a virtue in a writer, sometimes you can be more effective while showing restraint. It’s a bit of a dichotomy as I personally tend to be rather reserved in my own life but in my writing I often feel compelled to push the boundaries.

On a related note, I’ve been sitting on this Space Arc short for a while and I don’t know if I should publish it or not. I think I’ll run it by my beta reader and get her opinion. If she thinks it should be posted, then I’ll probably go ahead, though I intend to have a little sit-down with the audience here to talk about some things. Stay tuned.

Nov 20 2013

WIP Update – 19 Nov 13

I finished Chapter 22 of Tico3 and did some writing on Chapters 24 and 28. Why 24 and 28? Well, they’re directly connected. That’s why. Also, for some reason, I didn’t want to go back to Argyre right away.

Oct 11 2013

The Genius of the Nanoi Campaigns – A Reflection

I said I was going to post some commentary about Duke Cronos once his section of the story came to a close and now is as good a time as any to do so. If you haven’t read through his section, turn back now because below there be spoilers.

Duke Cronos was originally named Cromwell before I settled on a pseudo-Byzantine culture for Zephyr. The name was, of course, a reference to Oliver Cromwell. I wanted to evoke Cromwell’s military genius, even though the character himself is more of an inversion. It’s actually Rowland, the leader of the Promethean Alliance, who has more in common with Cromwell, politically speaking at least. Anyway, ‘military genius’ is the key setting when I was devising the character.

I needed Cronos to have demonstrated his abilities beforehand, so I devised the Nanoi Campaigns. When Solon became King, he sent out olive branches to the non-human communities of Zephyr: the Elves of Goldleaf and the Dwarves of Delate and Vione. (In-universe, the two races are known as the Xotikes and Nanoi respectively.) Were anyone other than Xanthe Queen of Goldleaf, the Elves probably would’ve just dismissed the Zephyrian envoys and that would’ve been the end of it. The Dwarves, on the other hand, were much more suspicious of Solon’s overtures. The King of the Vionan Dwarves in particular was paranoid that the Zephyrians were simply trying to find a way through their defenses to plunder their cities. Rather than simply rebuff the Zephyrian envoys, the Vione Dwarves declared war and when the Zephyrians responded, the Dwarves of Delate joined in as well.

You’ll see a little more of this in Garm’s scenario in Book 3 (Garm being a refugee of Vione resettled in Notos), but the Dwarven side of the war was horribly mismanaged. (What would you expect when the primary driver of the war is mad with greed and paranoia?) Cronos happened to catch on to this and use it to his advantage, thereby bringing the war to a quick end. (The Nanoi Campaigns didn’t even last four months, though they were rather bloody.)

Cronos’ star rises after this, as you might expect. He goes from being a common knight to a peer and is later selected to become the new Governor-General of the Protectorate and Legate of the Third Legion (the two were previously separate positions, a sort of duumvirate, but because of his famed ability, Cronos was entrusted with both posts).

I’d mentioned in an earlier post that in the earlier draft of the story, Cronos felt terribly incompetent to me. You may still get that impression, but I was kinda working two angles in the current draft. On the one hand, I wanted Cronos to actually live up to his name, but on the other, I wanted to cast some doubts. Cronos himself suffering so much self-doubt is a major part of this new development. It’ll become especially clear in Book 3 that the Promethean Alliance has a lot going for it that really doesn’t make it a fair fight, though wars are never fair. It’s worth noting that the position of governor-general is typically for eight years (though some have served longer and many have served for much less) and Cronos was winding down his term of service when the challenge from the Monarch Lich was first issued.

Waging insurgent warfare is a very different beast than fighting an insurgency and when the Duke’s attention is also divided between fighting the rebels and preparing as much manpower and materiel for the war effort in the Darklands, it’s little wonder he fared as poorly as he did. Cronos was always looking on the horizon to the Dominion and he fought the Alliance with one hand tied behind his back, though Rowland proved to be an opponent that you have to pull out all the stops to take on.

You might think that Cronos’ failure in the Darklands seals the deal. If he really was as great as he was celebrated to be, he wouldn’t have lost as badly as he did. Well, even there I have to cut him some slack. Sir Caligo, the Knight of Chaos, who went unnamed in Cronos’ scenario, happens to be an ancient vampire who was once one of the most celebrated generals in all of Euros. Again, the deck was wildly stacked against poor Cronos and so he comes off looking much worse than he would have in a more conventional campaign.

Looking back, I find Cronos as a man to be pitied. He rose to greatness in his youth and it cast a long shadow over the rest of his career. He faced odds that perhaps no man could’ve won against and ultimately died in a bid to salvage what honor he had left. It’s a shame. It really is.