Chronicling the Trident War
My relationship with The Trident War Chronicles has been a complicated one. Its origins lie in a PnP strategy game I attempted to design back in high school. It was loosely based on Ogre Battle (or rather, what I could gather from articles on the game in Nintendo Power, as I wouldn’t actually play a game in the series until Ogre Battle 64, which came later). However, back in those days I wasn’t as meticulous an archivist as I am now and I wound up destroying the original materials in a fit of pique. (I’m glad I was so attached to the KoG and Tico series or I might have lost their original documentation as well. The rocky road of my canon formation will be the subject of a future entry.) Even with the materials having been destroyed, the premise of the scenario and most of the characters remained in my head and I later resurrected the concept, though without the strategy game mechanics. (I have, however, drawn up a prototype game design document for a turn-based strategy game based on the TTWC series, though I don’t plan on developing it further at this time.) I believe its relation to The Brothers Pendragon developed later on in the process, as I seem to recall adjusting some dates in the timeline to fit everything together more snugly.
A lot has changed in the course of revisions (though TTWC is only in Version 3, as compared to KoG being in Version 7), but almost as soon as I revived the series, I developed the core conceit of telling the story through short segments devoted to major characters from each of the three factions. In Version 2, I was going to have everything together in a single massive tome, but by Version 3 I realized each faction had more than enough material for their own book. This decision forced me to make further changes to standardize things. You see, originally I had as many characters as I found interesting with as many chapters as I deemed necessary to tell that character’s story. When I made the decision to break TTWC up into three books, I realized how unbalanced everything was.
From the beginning, I had this chess conceit, but I wasn’t as thorough as I should’ve been back in V2. I had too many characters on the Alliance side and too few for the Zephyrians. This had to change (and led to some interesting story developments as I rebalanced the cast). Then there was the matter of the number of chapters devoted to each character. The Dominion fared the worst with comparatively few chapters devoted to their characters. To be honest, they didn’t really interest me that much (except for Sir Caligo). I then reminded myself, “You’re the author. If these characters aren’t interesting, make them interesting.” And so I’ve been working toward that end and the Dominion’s charas are making significant progress toward being compelling enough to carry their own book.
Another part of the standardization process was to give every character an equal share. As I mentioned before, a lot of the Dominion charas had very few chapters for their segments while some others had quite a lot. I decided to average it out with five chapters in the main storyline, plus a prologue to establish their background and an epilogue for their final fate (or a closing note if they’re lucky enough to survive). This streamlining also prompted me to cut back on redundancy. There were a number of events I told from two or three different perspectives. Besides letting you glimpse into that particular character’s head, it didn’t add much if the two charas in question were on the stage together most of the time. Now you really have to take in all the characters’ accounts to absorb the whole story.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m particularly fond of TBP (and the fact that the first thing I put out was the TBP prequel short “The Stranger” should tell you something) and this kinda makes me feel some resentment toward TTWC because I feel it has to be told before I can get to TBP. (Of course, if I’d just buckle down and commit to, say, 1000 or even 500 words a day, I’d be where I need to be sooner than I’d think.) It might actually be a good thing, though, because it seems like I’m pushing myself to make TTWC worth my while and if I’m working that hard to make it worth my while, I’m sure it’ll be worth your while too.
Well, I think that’ll do for now. Just thought I’d share some perspective on this somewhat maddening series of mine. I really get into this sort of commentary, so I need to make it more of a habit. On a good week it can complement story progress and on a bad week it can offset the lack thereof. Stay tuned.
