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I'll be reading all of this overnight, should've already done so, but eh

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MELCHOIR

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Melchoir sighed, slowly letting himself slip a little further into the water.

A few scattered candles dimly lit the room, the air nearly steaming with sultry heat. In the middle of the room sat a huge bath that easily swallowed the governor’s body. He was propped up against the back of the tub, left arm leaning up and away against the rim. The powered gauntlet fizzled and popped angrily. Back when they were installed, he had forgotten to ask if his bionics were waterproof. He could think of no more certain way to keep it dry than to leave the disruptor field on. And so he relaxed, soaking in the water, fully armed.

And practically glowing. Not half an hour ago, he had been in the company of... Emma? Eva? Someone. She was the widow of some great such-and-such, trying to reclaim this and that, or perhaps looking to upgrade her station by snagging a planetary governor as a husband. Whatever, they all wanted something. What he wanted was her doe-like eyes, pools of deep brown in milky white, and her tumbling raven-black hair. That certain air of refinement that came with experience, the dignity born of status.

In the privacy of his chambers, though, that grace and poise went straight out the window.



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thenoobbomb wrote:I'll be reading all of this overnight, should've already done so, but eh

Did you manage to get through it all in a single night?

 Ailaros wrote:

thenoobbomb wrote:I'll be reading all of this overnight, should've already done so, but eh

Did you manage to get through it all in a single night?

Only page one
I'll be reading page two of the thread this night. Great stuff so far!

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JAINES

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Tiny flakes of linoleum shaved off the surface, little plastic curls spiraling out from the head of the roller chisel. Ever so carefully, bit by bit, the tiny steel blade edged forward, carving out to the end of the line. The harsh light of the desk lamp beamed on the emerging piece of art.

Jaines leaned back and blew on the linoleum. The fine white dust scattered onto the desk and on her clothing. She looked down at the carving and frowned.

This was awful. Again.

She inspected her work, trying to see if there was any way she could salvage it. She had taken not one but two art classes at university, neither of which were proving any use whatsoever now. She was trying to make it look like a Fauleighra tank running over a baby. Her last attempt looked, at best, like a tractor running over a possum. Her first attempt was better left unmentioned.



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And time for another weekly update. I've now been working for four weeks.

I was able to pick back up the pace a bit and when I went to bed last night (after nearly finishing the upcoming chapter) I was left at 96,301 words, which is a little shy of 25k this week, but at least I wasn't two whole chapters behind. I also blew by half a million characters this week, and over 200 pages in my current document format.

Interestingly enough, at the moment I'm just a touch over 1000 words shy of my previous novel's total length, which I'll easily pass today. Given that that one took five weeks, and here I am at four, I can now confidently say that I'm 20% faster than I was five years ago, and that's neat. What's also neat is that last time I was kind of stretching it trying to make it to 100,000 words, while this time I'm going to run over that milestone like a dump truck full of gravel.

Which is good because, as you can probably tell, I'm nowhere near being done yet. In fact, I'm sort of finding the opposite problem - putting off the nagging feeling that I still haven't really gotten anywhere yet. This is probably because of the one thing that I'm likely to consider a structural flaw of this work. The six main characters are all sort of representatives of their group, and those groups all start off separate from each other and don't really interact at all. It's more six individual plotlines than a single cohesive narrative.

And it's not until now, nearly halfway through that this is starting to change. Characters are making decisions that are seriously, and more importantly, inadvertently, affecting others as a single plot that everyone is working on is beginning to form. I mean, I guess I knew that this would be somewhat of a problem, starting people far apart and then slowly bringing them all together in Bellemonde (which, if you hadn't noticed, is the current location of all the main characters), but I guess I thought that would all start happening sooner. That there would be an introduction, and then they would spend the rest of their time scheming. I guess I can only hope that the characters, imagery, writing style, and sub-plots are enough to make up for the fact that not a whole lot is going on at the beginning.

On the plus side, though, I've finally gotten to the point where they're all coming together. Also on the plus side, I'm finally getting some secondary characters in, and they're bridging some of that gap between the main ones. Especially the near-main-character Rochefield, of course, but Lucas, Gilbert, and Melchoir all have lesser names in their orbits, and a few of them have already interacted with others outside their little spheres.

Anyways, I'm going to keep writing. If I keep up my steadily-increasing average chapter length, I'll be able to hit the 100k mark with the one after I'm about to publish soon. If I can do it, I'll pass that milestone at 29 days which means even with a short, 30-day month I've been working against, I'll be able to honestly say that I can write over a hundred thousand words in less than a month.

Wish me luck!

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Also, I just noted that my previous work is 305 pages in the same format that my current one is at 221, and I have at least a few blank pages in my current one to separate chapters. There's pretty much one explanation for this: dialogue.

Dialogue takes up a lot more space per word than anything else does, and my last work was practically all dialogue with a few action scenes thrown it. It sort of read like a movie, not a book. Fast paced, and one main character with a couple of supports, it was more or less a dime novel.

With this work, I've been trying to take it more seriously as a work of literature. Many characters with different personalities and points of view, and at a much slower pace, trying to scoop up a lot more detail. There are large blocks of "experience" text where I'm bothering to actually describe the setting, and to try and put the reader into it. There's even at least one entire chapter (the Melchoir in the church one) where there isn't a single line of dialogue, and absolutely nothing happens. That's definitely not something I could have pulled off a few years ago.

In a way, my last work was sort of the "can I do it?" one. This is the one where I'm building my skills and trying things out, and trying to go from "making at all" to "making it good". Who knows, maybe I'll submit my next piece to the Hugo judges so they can have something to laugh at while they plot who gets their award.

Phoo, somebody's been busy!

I'll be catching up today with the last page.

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GILBERT

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“I don’t know, a few thousand, I’d say, but probably not much more than that,” Gilbert replied, less than helpfully.

“That’s it?” Ethan Roscenne asked, incredulous. “Come on, the number has to be higher than that.”

“I don’t know,” Gilbert replied, pushing up his heavy glasses. “I mean, they’re everywhere, but it seems like they’re, I don’t know, too everywhere. Like they’re constantly having to make a show of their presence.”

“Occupation,” Superior Menet corrected.

“Occupation, yes. I don’t have exact numbers, but it really doesn’t seem that high to me.”

“You’re just not seeing it right, then,” Menet moved to correct again.

“What does their number matter?” Gilbert replied with irritation. “They’ve got my city under marshal law. Who cares if it’s with one soldier or a million?”



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CLAIRE

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Claire sat quietly in the badly worn plush chair. On the armrest lay a small plate garnished with a few stray crumbs. She held the half-eaten lemon bar in her lap.

The room around her was the image of faded opulence. Serapi rugs all but threadbare on top of carpet in hardly better shape, dusty crown molding reached up to cracked plaster. It likely didn’t look much better before the war either. Second-rate in the first place.

Still, the room had a certain sense of specialness now. Once the lobby of an overly ambitious two-star hotel far from civilization, now an important government building in the capital. The people, and why they were here, gave this space meaning. It was august by association.

And it wasn’t just the others people here, it was her as well. Thanks to her father, she now held a position of real status. She was back in the proverbial club. She was a superior, now, so she needed to act like one, and that meant getting connected with her new peers. The other superiors always held an event the day before the Council met, something which she had barely learned in time to make it on the morning train to Bellemonde.

She had expected more of a mixer, but to her surprise it was a formal meeting, and they had real issues under debate. They were also very angry. She had been stuck in Cupercourt for a long time and had somewhat enjoyed her relative insulation from the rest of world, which had apparently fallen apart while she wasn’t looking.



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Alright, so, a one month update!

I don't have ALL that much more to add over the last weekly update, other than that, at 29 days, I clocked in at 100702 words. So yes, I can write over 100k words in less than a month. Woot.

As for the story, I like that the characters are finally getting together, and things are developing well. Like, the idea that Jaines could be going after Lucas makes me flinch. They're not the ones who are supposed to get together, but, well, Jaines is Jaines, so if she characteristically overplays her hand, then the stolid Lucas could make it through, but, then, Jaines has a way with words and getting people to do what she wants. Meanwhile, the interaction between Gilbert and Claire is painful. Watching two people with serious problems happen to wind up perfectly dovetailing into each other's horrible spiral of enablement... the worst relationship in the history of relationships. Also, my first reaction to the idea that GILBERT would "take things personally" immediately made me think...



Anyways, as you can tell, we're leading up to the next big event, which will start like two chapters from now. Part 1 was the introduction until Gilbert brought Jaines to Bellemonde, followed by a 1.5 up to the granary massacre. Part 2 is sort of the betrayal of Rochefield, leading up to the next chapters. There will be two more parts after this (as alluded to in the introduction), where things will even further escalate in being reactions to the things before them. After this next main event is over, I'm halfway through my prewriting, which means I should be about half way through my story. Given my current word count, and that I have planned at least 5 more chapters until the end of it, that means that I'm looking at (if I am where my pre-writing tells me) a total word count of something like 240,000 words by the time this is over.

Which, in case you missed it, is like twice as long as I thought the book would be when I started. On the plus side, though, given my faster than expected writing speed, it will only take me like 50% longer to write, timewise, than I'd planned. It does, though, push me over the threshold for moving, which will now undoubtedly be a slowing factor. I guess that my plan now is to get it complete before August, at the absolute latest (at which point, I'll have to start getting more engrossed in my even bigger move).

On the other side, though, I'm starting to see the insane draw that other high-volume serialists have. The fact that George RR Martin has written 1.5 million words so far for Ice and Fire now makes perfect sense to me. In a way, I'm approaching 1/10th of the way there, and I could easily see stretching things out. I'm just sort of scratching the surface for the possible interactions between these characters, and especially if I added new ones, it could take a very long time to tell the story of just them reacting to each other's reactions. Even if I started killing characters off like Martin.

But as easy as that temptation is, I feel it best to avoid. I'm not writing this to be a 6-part series, or even a trilogy. I guess I'm just going to have to stick closely to the script, and keep steering things proverbially ashore to prevent them from floating out to sea. Keep the fact that it's supposed to end in mind.

Anyways, I thank the people who have been following, and I hope you enjoy it. Hopefully by this time next month, I'll be getting pretty close to being done!

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LUCAS

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The bars on his cell rattled. It would have woken him up if he weren’t already awake.

Two men were standing in the hallway, dimly backlit. They were wearing servicemen uniforms, by the shapes of their collars.

“Hey,” one of them whispered. “You ready?”

The mattress crinkled slightly as Lucas stood, followed a moment later by his cellmate.

“Yeah,” he called out from the darkness.

One of them came forward with a set of keys, unlocking the cell with a soft click. The door slid open. The prisoners quietly escaped from their cell.

The long hallway was nearly pitch black, lit only by a row of windows near the ceiling, letting in the faint reflection of streetlights off the low-hanging clouds above. He turned to see the other cells being opened. More dark shapes sneaking out. The hallway shimmered with impending freedom.

“Lucas,” came the whisper behind him. He turned and saw Paul and two others. “Come on,” his friend whispered, gesturing towards him. The eight of them made it quickly to the exit. The leader swiped a keycard and the heavily bolted door swung open, leading them out into another hallway.



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JAINES

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Jaines sat near the very back of the room, in its poorest-lit corner. The padding she wore to make herself look fatter chafed uncontrollably, and the fake birthmark on her face itched and burned. A splinter in her mind. She held her hands together to keep from scratching away her disguise.

She looked out from the darkness, over the gallery at the U-shaped table.

The Council sat in solemn silence.

All her little pawns were here, she noted smugly, ready to move at her command. They couldn’t yet see how she was going to use them. How little they would direct the course of events anymore. She would have pitied them, if she had any sympathy for the weak and foolish.



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CLAIRE

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Claire sighed. He just wasn’t getting it.

“That’s nice,” she began pensively, “but sometimes you don’t want to be nice. We do what we do for good reasons, remember. You have to make certain that new scribes read the municipal code, sections 1–8, 13 subsections a–f, g, n–p, and 14–26 subsections a, and b. We both know that, and so do they, but a good scribe needs to do more than know the regulations; they need to know why we have them in the first place.”

“I see,” the new arch-scribe replied, jotting something down onto his clipboard.

“I mean, what is the point of spending all these years memorizing all three thousand two hundred fifty-six pages if you can’t practically apply them?” Claire continued, slightly exasperated. “And sometimes that means you have to get a little tough with them. It takes eight years to get licensed as a scribe because someone might get hurt if we fail to make sure that everything goes according to protocol.”

“Okay,” the arch-scribe said, scribbling down some more notes.

“Now, you give it a try,” Claire instructed.

“Right,” the arch-scribe cleared his throat. “Your performance was nearly adequate, Jenkenes, and by my calculations, you would achieve a composite score of a 7.5, based on your knowledge of municipal code and its applicability to the circumstances. We both know, however, that you must score at least a 9.75 within a tolerance range of 0.25 in order to pass this examination. Moreover, your client’s lack of compliance pursuant to Section 6 subsection c-1, is, unfortunately, a deal-breaker.”

“Okay, good, now follow through,” Claire encouraged. The arch-scribe flipped back through his notes. “Take your time.”

“Therefore,” he finally continued, “you are instructed to bring your client into observance of the relevant ordinance.”

“Yes, sir,” Jenkenes replied.

The scribe-in-training turned towards the balding man, who was giving him a sour look.

“I am to inform you that I really must insist. You are instructed to comply with Section 6 subsection c-1, and immediately.”

“I told you no,” the man replied. “I don’t have time for this.”



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Well, it's been five weeks now. There isn't a whole lot to report, really. As you've probably noticed, my writing has been pretty slow for a big pile of reasons. I only managed to get to 111,338 for a measly just over 15,000 words.

The crazy pace I've been at has been setting a bit of burnout in, and I'm finding myself working a bit more slowly in part because of wanting to get these important chapters more exactly how I want them, but also because I'm about to make the transition from part 2 into part 3. The last time I ran into this transition from 1 to 2, it took a fair bit more time to churn through the necessary pre-writing than I thought. It will be the same for this too, I'm sure. I've got another 3 or maybe 4 chapters to resolve this event, and then it's going to be time to hit the clip board again.

It is kind of interesting, though, knowing I'm roughly half-way through. For example, most characters have had about 8 chapters. If I take out the last set of chapters where everyone more or less says goodbye to the story, and take out another one for the next big action scene at the end of part 3, that means that my characters only have about 6 chapters left apiece at the moment. That is, they only get a few things to do before the next big event, and a few more things before its over.

It's almost to the point where I can start thinking a bit less about how the characters fit into the plot and more thinking about what I want these characters to do and have happen to them before it's too late. If I can chart out that 6 x 6 grid, then I can just lay the plot over it, and I'll have the entire rest of the story mapped out.

Anyways, I'm going to try and make it over the hump these next few days, and just maybe, hopefully, I'll be able to get my pace back up. The best way to ensure that this gets finished at all is to power through and get it done quickly.

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MELCHOIR


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“We just. Don’t. Know,” Marshal Ergon replied, hotly. “I can’t tell you anything unless it’s been reported to me first.”

“We have to wait for Marshal Lopex,” Damien Vogel growled, face flush and scowling.

“If he’s even going to make it,” Gannon snapped.

“Silence,” Melchoir stated over the noise. His flat, heavy tone quietly dominating the conversation. “Marshal Lopex will be here any moment now.”

Melchoir sat in his customary chair. They were meeting in the Council chamber, the room having been cleared out a few hours before. The long U-shaped table was nearly two-thirds filled with white uniforms concealing a mix of nervousness, anger, and even outright fear.

His jaw was clenched shut, his mind racing. A thousand facts, ideas, and bits of rumor stormed through his brain as he unconsciously tried to file everything away. To try and break free from himself, and look at things more abstractly. He just needed to focus.



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DAMIEN

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The band played “On, Istpheria!” the lively tune giving an almost festive air to the occasion. The proud melody paired well with the scene below.

Rank on rank, the Foleran soldiers marched. A long, gleaming white snake stretching up the street, bobbing slightly as the soldiers moved forwards in step. Platoon banners were held aloft, threadbare panes of color snapping brightly in the morning breeze.

They were dressed for war, fully armed, their brown flak armor creating a checkered effect against the white uniforms. It was not a group of soldiers but a blazing static of brown and white, constantly shifting, tricking the eye to see more than there actually were, blurring one soldier into the next. A solid, yet variable mass. Dazzle camouflage at its finest.

The soldiers were clean, properly equipped, and in good spirits for the first time since they had made planetfall over a year ago. The carefully crafted news was that this had been planned all along. They had lured the rebel army into a proper fight, not more skulking around in the forest, waiting for the war to just be won somehow. This time they would charge the hill and finish off the rebels, all of them, once and finally for all.

But the locals saw right through the ruse.



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I've just taken a couple of days to catch up with the last half a dozen chapters, and those last two were really good. Things are definitely building to a head, and the character interaction is certainly becoming clearer and stronger.

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JAINES

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The orchestra swelled, strings pulsing up from the bass, woodwinds leaping away, arpeggiating higher as they fled the growing wave of sound. The horn section drew in from beneath, pouring out a warm and savory richness. The opening phrase of the chamber music floated up in pitch as it rose in strength, and then drew perfectly on its tension chords, pausing. Jaines held her breath.

And then slowly, ever so delicately, the tones resolved. Bobbing gently on the notes. Ever so softly, fading to near silence. A tranquil rest. The conductor held his baton in the air, waiting. The introduction ebbing bittersweetly into the recesses of the theater.

It was replaced by a pure, ethereal substance. A voice, if it could even be called that. Not projected by a singer, but somehow filling the room of its own accord. It shimmered, converting all the mundane in the room into the afterglow of its presence, as if transforming matter itself into sound. Clear as liquid glass, it rose, louder and louder, from a whisper to a growing crescendo.

And then, imperceptibly, the orchestra came in behind it. Almost timid, as if unworthy of being printed on the same score as this gossamer note. The instruments followed, burbling up behind until they both reached a plateau.

And then it was gone. The voice suddenly disappeared, leaving the whole world reeling, unable to comprehend its absence. Left with the vulgar shock of what it was before. Straining to understand, until suddenly there it was again.

The rolled alto voice smoothed itself into the first verse, joined by the alto II and the instruments. Reality exhaled, confident that the gap was the nightmare and that beauty was the proper state of things. Jaines let her breath out along with it.

Ah... just right. Just how it was supposed to go.



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GILBERT

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Blood spattered against the wall, a bright red stipple pattern on dirty concrete. Tiny red streaks where globbing droplets began to run towards the floor. Reaching down to pool together on the tile.

The eyes, their frantic, wild stare, punching straight through him. Not even seeing he was there. Gilbert was just a meaningless side note to the event, his part in this was over now. The boy stared at him in shock. Not understanding what had happened. Not even aware that he was dying.

It wasn’t until he collapsed onto the floor that he began to spasm. His heart pumping away his life through ruptured arteries with each convulsive, pulsing squirt ¬– jets of liquid running like water squeezed from a bottle. Spurt by spurt gushing onto the floor.

He was writhing on the ground, clutching at this throat, though the shot had taken him high in the chest. Wait, it wasn’t the wound; it was the blood itself. His hands were at his throat because he was choking, the terror on his face not from the impact of the bullet. No, it was the visceral, uncontrollable panic of drowning.

The boy’s shoes squeaked as he thrashed on the floor. The eyes, fixed up at the ceiling, still not comprehending that this was his last moment of his life.

Gilbert looked down at his hands. They were numb, shaking slightly. His palms tingled. In these hands was the pistol. He was the one who had pulled the trigger. Gilbert was the one who had gunned him down.



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Paradigm wrote:I've just taken a couple of days to catch up with the last half a dozen chapters, and those last two were really good. Things are definitely building to a head, and the character interaction is certainly becoming clearer and stronger.

Thanks!

So, six weeks. As you've noticed, things went pretty badly this time. The final total this time was 123421 (I should have written 35 more words...), which meant only just north of 12k. Not even half my desired pace.

There are lots of reasons. I was sick for a part of this, and the insidious encroachment of moving made me lose two days of writing. I'll be all settled in on the 15th, but I'm going to lose another two days of writing at least before its done, which sucks.

The only positive reason, though, is pre-writing, which I also lost a lot of time to. Though not writing, it's at least productive. I can now look at my clip board and see every chapter I am going to write all the way to the end, including the order, who's the narrator, and at least one plot point. And that's assuming I don't sneak a few more in there along the way. In any case, the pre-writing is now pretty much done. At least, for the story as a whole. Each chapter is also a short story of its own, but thinking things through at that level has always been a by-chapter affair, so it shouldn't slow me down any.

And at least the story is progressing. As I mentioned, part 1 was the love story / insurrection story that was there to keep you interested while the pieces moved and the main story trundled along, and part 2 was the betrayal of Rochefield. Now, in part 3, the main story is finally progressing at full speed. All the troubles that have plagued those in the capital finally coming to a head through the lens of the battle for Cupercourt.

I'm also trying a little harder to advance the characters a little bit. They've been pretty static up until now, in part because I didn't want there to be too much interference with the carefully-laid threads that brought us to this point (well, and I like static characters, generally). Now that the plot has achieved a point of undeterrable momentum, I can play around with things a bit more.

Of course, I won't deny, I felt a little scheezy after last chapter, but, well, Gilbert is the arch-enabler. Of course he would find religion sooner or later. It's not just me being spiteful, or me wanting to balance out the satire of high-religion earlier with some of low-religion later (though it is that as well), but it's going to be plot-relevant. You'll see.

Plus, this is secretly the world of 40k we're talking about, so whenever there's a religion not devoted towards praising the Emperor...

Anyways, the one thing I can say with pride is that I'm already doing a good job with my chiasma. It's actually a bit easier than I thought. I just look at my big sheet of pre-writing to get the skeleton, and then I just look at its mirror chapter for some inspiration for the meat.

For example, if you take chapter 37 as the mid-point of the story, and then look at the layers like an onion (the first before the middle chapter and the first after, the second and the second, etc.), you can already see what I'm on about:

-1/+1: Melchoir attends a meeting where he loses Gilbert as an ally / Melchoir attends a meeting after which he loses Rochefield as an ally.

-2b/+2: Lucas goes to the train station to take a train to Cupercourt to be with Claire, but is stopped / Damien goes to the train station to take his army to Cupercourt, hopefully to be with Claire, and nothing will stop him.

-2a/+3: As the result of a completed mission, two rebels get put in a small, dark space. Some of the rebels decide to join with Jaines / Jaines decides to put two rebels in a small, dark space for the purpose of completing a mission.

-3/+4: Gilbert comes up with a plan regarding a friend turning enemy, deciding to take it personally if it fails / Gilbert failed, and it got personal. Gilbert has a change of plans regarding an enemy turning friend.

It's not perfect of course, but I won't let that hang me up. It's neat anyway, right? Mind = blown? Hopefully I'll be able to continue this somewhat as the story progresses. I already know of a few points that I'd planned long ago to have a mirror chapter, and so this is easier because I'd done the pre-writing correctly, but it's cool that it's working out on a more detailed level as well.

Anyways, there's nothing for it but to continue on. The blueprints have been laid out, so it's just a matter of adding brick by brick until its done.

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DAMIEN

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“Nike Group to Macros Command. Repeat, Nike Group to Macros Command.”

“Macros Command reading you, Nike Group.”

“Macros Command, be advised, rebel forces are regrouping. It looks like they’re preparing to counterattack, sir.”

“Copy, Nike Group. Stand by for further instructions.”

“Standing by.”

The vox-comm was silent for a moment.

“Macros Command to Vogel Central, do you copy?”

Damien sat in his command tent alone but for a pair of orderlies – he needed to be alone in times like this. Others preferred to lead from the front, but the grand marshal always found the idea much too distracting. Better to drown out everything else and keep focused on the vox set. To only take information up the chain of command, as it was intended. His job was to be the brain of the entire operation, not to be out there barking orders and waving a combat knife around. That’s what he had idiots for, most of whom were better known as sergeants.

He glanced down at his chronometer. Right on schedule.



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Week 7. Nothing much to say except moving ate a week. Two days of U-hauling, more trips with the car, a bunch of unpacking. Plus all the stress of it. No point in writing bad chapters.

In the end, though, I got only 3183 words written, bringing me up to 126603, the goal for three weeks ago only now being broken. I guess I can take solace from the fact that my original goal was to get to 125,000 before I moved, which more or less happened. This super slow pace, though, makes me very nervous about getting this work done before my second move in August. I have a little over 100,000 words left to write before it's done, and only about 9 weeks to get it done in. That may not seem like much (perhaps as many as 12.5k words per week) but given my pace of late...

Oh, and on an unrelated note, I did spend a tiny bit of time between the cracks entering a 500-word writing competition. You can see my entry here. If you like it, why not stop by and give me a vote.

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GILBERT

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Gilbert took in a deep breath and stood up.

“Hi everyone. My name is Gilbert Allard.”

“Welcome, Gilbert,” Brother Owen said in a soft, supportive tone. A few polite hellos murmured through the room.

“I...” he stammered.

He had been a civil servant all his life, and had given innumerable speeches over the course of his career. But somehow, in this small, intimate space, he felt more vulnerable than he’d ever felt in front of others.

“I...” he tried again.

“Take your time,” Brother Owen consoled. “There is no right or wrong thing to say here. Just speak from your heart. We’re here to heal, not to judge.”



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Up to date again, and Chaos is happening! This could get messy... Poor Gilbert is all I can say. The Good Guy (if there is one) has gone to the Dark Side, it seems. Meanwhile, the Bad Guy (Damien) has got exactly what he wanted. The bit with the train I almost saw coming, but it was still something of a shock, and I like the idea of conveying the battle through the vox. Purely out of interest, what was the reason for that choice? A lot of war literature I've read narrates battles in a rather abstract and detached manner, was this just an extension of that or some other reason?


Also, I read the short story, very good stuff. The twist at the end was quite brilliant, and for just 500 words, quite an achievement to have pulled off.

Paradigm wrote:Also, I read the short story, very good stuff. The twist at the end was quite brilliant, and for just 500 words, quite an achievement to have pulled off.

Thanks, I'm glad you like it.

Paradigm wrote:Up to date again, and Chaos is happening!

Yes, truly chaos is beginning to grow once more. It was always my intention to have it leach in here somehow, but it's pace accelerated out of the need to have something for Gilbert to do (originally it was going to get to about this level at the end, rather than mid-story).

In any case, chaos wasn't going to start loud and proud. I think it's a mistake that most 40k authors make when it comes to the ruinous powers, actually. A good story doesn't begin over the top, and develop into... over the topper? Once you already have a planet rife with cults and demons are popping up everywhere, then where do you go from there? It's sort of like telling the story of world war 2 starting with D-Day or the battle of Kursk. It's the climactic finish, which is interesting, but it only happens at the very end of the story.

But the climactic end only has meaning in the context of everything else that's happened up until that point. It's starting the story of world war two with the beer hall putch. It's not that I have a character named Gilbert who is a chaos cultist, I have a character named Gilbert who is a normal person who very slowly slides in that direction due to a series of entangling events.

It's a subject that I've found interesting for some time now, and once again I'll use the Nazi example. Nobody joined the Nazi party because they wanted to be evil, strut around in jackboots and wear skulls on their uniforms. They joined because they wanted to do good, whatever that meant to them, and be around like-minded people. They join because it's fun, or for community, or to make everything better. I mean, even the German Lutheran church fully supported the Hitler government because, unlike the Weimar before it, it was finally a force strong enough to enact God's will on Earth. To fuse the blessings of church and the blessings of state into a single, powerful force that would be a model of Christian kinship for the world.

Evil is a necessary by-product of good, and you can't have the former without the latter. It's that mirroring effect that's interesting, and the transition through it's phases that I'd rather write about, rather than just more bolter porn with space marines shooting demons. The silly over the top obvious black and white when reality is never so easy.

Plus, it helps keep down on copyright violations...

Paradigm wrote:I like the idea of conveying the battle through the vox. Purely out of interest, what was the reason for that choice? A lot of war literature I've read narrates battles in a rather abstract and detached manner, was this just an extension of that or some other reason?

There were several reasons for this, actually. The first is because this battle report has stuck with me for awhile, and it might, perhaps be becoming a bit of a meme for me.

There are several things I like about the format. The first, of course, is that it's somewhat different than the usual blood-and-guts super first person point of view that these kinds of stories are usually told as. It's also interesting because it prompts the reader to use their imagination a little more, trying to fill in the gaps of what's not being told (sort of like how lingerie pictures can be sexier than straight nudity). Which is itself important, literarily - the reader doesn't have a clear picture of what's going on, which means I can write in a character who doesn't exactly know what's going on and the reader and the character will match.

It also seemed particularly appropriate for a Damien chapter, of course. Firstly, you see Damien as being aloof and uncaring, which is much easier when he's not physically present. Melchoir may get blood on his hands, but at least you know he's earnest about it, and not just toying with others' lives to suit his whim. It's also great because one of the points of Damien is to make others feel weak and vulnerable. He invades Rochefield's home to threaten him. He invades Claire's hospital room to gloat his victory over her. He shocks his associates at Melchoir's private party to twist things towards his ends.

And that really shows here. There is literally nothing that Nike Group can do other than beg and plead for help. You, the reader, are proverbially sitting there in the tent, and there's nothing you could do to help them either. The distance has made you just as helpless in that circumstance. You can only sit by and watch as Damien destroys something yet again from the cold, impersonality of a radio set, and then walks away with a smug little smirk.

In any case, it wasn't just straight abstraction. I've read Rommel plenty enough, and the style that you're talking about comprised my entire 5th ed battle reports. There are some fun things about it, especially in playing with perspective (because you only ever hear the truth from one source at a time, and you're never actually there, so you'll just have to trust them to tell it straight, even though you know you can't).

But in this case, it was abstraction for effect. The spider sitting in the middle of his web, playing with the lives of others. The same cold, capricious Damien Vogel. This format seemed the best way to pull it off in this case.

Interesting thoughts. I agree entirely about the gradual introduction of Chaos, it makes it more about a world falling to the darkness than a world that has already fallen, so it's not as cut-and-dry as most 40k, ie. 'They're all filthy Heretics, shoot the gak out of them!'.

The stuff on Vogel is an interesting insight into the character, and I see exactly what you mean about him, quite literally, holding all the power. It's funny you mention playing with perspective and detachment and how that makes 'the truth' tangibly false; I'm in the middle of writing something based on exactly the same lines myself, the only difference being that it's WW1 rather than 40k. But I agree, blood-and-guts battle scenes, whilst they can be entertaining and thrilling to an extent, often lose the depth of character, which is why most of my writing deals with the aftermath or prelude to such events. The sheer hell and madness is better conveyed through the reader's imagination than anything a writer can do.

Paradigm wrote:I agree entirely about the gradual introduction of Chaos, it makes it more about a world falling to the darkness than a world that has already fallen, so it's not as cut-and-dry as most 40k, ie. 'They're all filthy Heretics, shoot the gak out of them!'.

Yeah.

Also, a bit more about the chaos part that I forgot to mention earlier. What you've also been seeing this whole time is a subtle exposition on the difference between Khrone and Slaanesh.

On the one hand, you have Jaines. She clearly has a streak of needing to beat people. Life is a game that she is going to win, whether by violence or by manipulation or some other means, she will wind up on top, no matter what. Her reaction to her first kill was exhilaration and she showed up to that ceremony chapters ago to slaughter an animal sacrifice more than anything else.

Also, you'll note how she doesn't handle the Slaanesh side of things well. She takes drugs, but then gets bored with them. She wants to lose herself in music, but when it's too loud she wears earplugs. She has sex, but it's noncommittally, and with people who tend to meet bloody deaths not long after. The hedonic slide works hard on her, and her reaction to experiencing something and getting bored with it isn't to double down on the experience, like a follower of Slaanesh would.

Instead, she throws herself into her professional ethic, trying harder and harder to be the best at something. The work, the competition if you will, is the reward in itself.

Meanwhile, though Gilbert hasn't done anything particularly debaucherous until now, he's basically been served up for Slaanesh on a tee. He's always been the sensitive person, caring deeply about how other people feel, because feelings and emotions and experiences are what really matter. He's already devoting himself towards happiness and pleasure, it's just that it has a straight-laced liberal protestant unoffensive normalcy draped on top. But he's also insecure and unconfident, which makes him vulnerable to someone who will come by and liberate him from that veneer, and focus more clearly on what he was already doing. To make him aware of the logical conclusions of his own personality.

Plus, if it wasn't obvious, you also have...

I watched him bleed to death, all out onto the floor. It was me, I had caused bloodshed. I did it. I claimed another human life. I snuffed out every possible experience he could ever have, and it was my fault.

Which is pretty much the explicit rejection of Khorne in favor of Slaanesh.

Paradigm wrote:The stuff on Vogel is an interesting insight into the character, and I see exactly what you mean about him, quite literally, holding all the power. It's funny you mention playing with perspective and detachment and how that makes 'the truth' tangibly false; I'm in the middle of writing something based on exactly the same lines myself, the only difference being that it's WW1 rather than 40k. But I agree, blood-and-guts battle scenes, whilst they can be entertaining and thrilling to an extent, often lose the depth of character, which is why most of my writing deals with the aftermath or prelude to such events. The sheer hell and madness is better conveyed through the reader's imagination than anything a writer can do.

I was actually intending on playing this up a little bit more, and perhaps I will in the content editing part of the story. Have some part where there's a telephone exchange from Vogel to Nike wherein Macros lies, or embellishes something in the transit with the phrase "It was almost like Macros didn't understand that he could be listening to both sides of the conversation at once". Something to make it a little more obvious that things are based less on fact and more on the narratives the various actors are choosing to tell. In fact, I should probably do that now, while I'm thinking about it.

The benefit of usual battle scenes, right, is the experience. You give someone the chance to be there in the thrill and the terror as the craziness explodes around them. Sort of like how roller coasters give people the experience of falling without actually splatting them into goop when they hit the ground. But it suffers from all the problems that the graphic and the hardcore always suffer from. There's nothing there to get you in the mood. To pique your arousal, and to slowly draw things out and let you stew in your own juices. It's why romance novels are dozens of chapters long, but only a few of them actually involve sex.

As odd as it sounds, it's sort of pitting sensuality against experienciality. In theory, those two should be the same thing, but they're really not. Using your imagination to come up with a scene and using your imagination to use your imagination to come up with a scene are shockingly different. I suppose it's the reason why when comparing foreplay and sex, only one of them contains the word "play".

Anyways, I've got stuff to write, I'll just wave my hand and give you Hitchcock, and be done with it.

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MELCHOIR

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His pen scratched vigorously at the bottom of the page. Melchoir picked up the stapled packet and prepared to add it to the pile, but paused for a moment to examine his signature. He had easily scrawled his name more in the past months as governor than he had in the entire rest of his life put together. It was starting to show, especially in the E’s and the L’s. It pained him to think that eventually his signature might not be readable anymore, the letters devolving to mere squiggles.

Not that it would matter to the locals, of course. They used a different alphabet. Still, it was the principle of the thing. These signatures might last ten thousand years, and it wouldn’t do to bequeath unto history something that he was too lazy to make legible in the first place.

With a sigh, he plopped the document onto the stack. That was the last of them – from this set, at least. He waved for an orderly to take the pile away and looked ruefully at the box sitting on the ground next to him.



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LUCAS

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Thin gruel slowly swirled around the bowl as Lucas pushed the chunky liquid with his spoon. There was only one item on the menu tonight: ration soup. As the name implied, it seemed to be made of food packets selected at random and then made soggy. It wasn’t the worst he’d had to eat, but it was a long, long way from the best. He picked lithely at a sopping piece of corn biscuit.

Well, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

This wasn’t exactly the grand return to civilian life he had hoped for. He had expected to go from homeless vagrancy, living off the land, and desperately attempting to make contact with Claire to something that wasn’t, well... homeless vagrancy, living off the land, and desperately attempting to find Claire. He’d expected things to be different. It was supposed to be a fresh start.

But they weren’t, and it wasn’t. Lucas was no longer a rebel in principle, but he still felt like one in practice. Instead of settling down in a decent profession, he was spending his time on reconnaissance and espionage. He had broken into office buildings looking for schedules, and had been forced to intimidate civil servants. He had done everything but lead men into battle.

But no matter how far he went and how high his information source, he still had absolutely no clue where Claire was.



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JAINES

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Her flashlight scythed a beam of light through the darkness.

Jaines stepped forward through the cellar, slowly, quietly. A flashlight in one hand and a laspistol in the other. Crouching low, ready to strike. She slowly brought her flashlight around, the spot of light creeping across the floor. There wasn’t an easy way to handle this. She needed to hunt them down, one by one. Her skin crawled at the very idea of them infesting her domain. That her house could be filled with such... parasites.

Suddenly, something burst into view, then leapt away. She jerked the flashlight over, reaching forward with her handgun. A snap-CRACK! blasted through the tiny space. Jaines reeled from the flash and the noise, trying to keep the flashlight steady.

She shook her head slightly, working at her ear with the knuckles of her pistol hand.

Caught in the beam, a small pile of fur twitched violently, spasming with its remaining nervous energy, trying to run away while beached on its side. Jaines grinned a wicked smile as the verminous seizures began to dissipate.

There, that was one fewer rodent in the world. In her basement, at least. “Warren,” she announced with a smirk of self-satisfaction.



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