Plotlines
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In the first book Jenn & co where part of the major plotline, But in the second book it feels slightly shoehorned in, There’s a lot of content of them but with very little development with the minor exception of the burgeoning teen romance of Jenn & Gastrope, You could either cut down on Jenn & co or liven up their journey with something like aerial cloud combat.
More fully exploring the friendship of Rupert & Fer Rog would be nice, It’s mentioned that Rupert teaches Fer Rog shape changing through the help of a link, But you kind of gloss over that a bit and it sounds like it could be more interesting than most of the other secondary plotlines.
Higher ups and demons:
It’s not completely clear what the Highest Up (Tiernon) thinks. Remember we are seeing him and the Etonians from a different angle than the Nyjyr Ennead. The Nyjyr Ennead we see, and Lilith/Sentir Fallon do see things as a matter of politics rather than good vs evil. Lilith’s basic argument (I think I have her say this) is that the majority of gods see good vs evil as politics. What we start to learn from the dagger and antimus is that they may not be 100% correct on this point of view.
Remember, Tiernon is a god of justice (and war) there needs to be a cause. There are not (listed yet) any dark/evil gods in the Etonian pantheon, so the evil must be outside, infidels (the Nyjyr Ennead), demons, undead, and others.
J&G
Going to be spicing things up quite a bit here. Worked it out today/tonight, but was too tired to do it justice, hitting it in the morning.
Tom:
Adding some more Tom earlier…the reaction stuff is still rather Tom barren, but after DOF+0, he/they get more sections.
Nyjyr Ennead:
His accursed mistress & co are going to get a big shock. As you know they moved to a new city, so he got the night off. When he goes back and they are unpacking and he finds a statue of his new drinking buddy ‘Phaestus…they are likely to shit bricks. (recall Phaestus=p’Tah)
V & T
Yeah, I feel this is vastly underserved, but what I wanted to do with the possession was sort of creeping me (Tom) out. Meaning what you have access to possessing someone (think the exorcist) is seriously unethical and creepy. Fine for a villain character, but for the hero? So I need to get the angle of this situation right. It’s going to come up with more shamans and warlocks.
E, B, R & The Book
That was my initial thought, but as of yesterday/today, I think I am going to majorly shake this one up, seriously accelerate this and the Lenamare + Randolf plotline and might give Crispin a chance to show off some djinn power.
The Rogues
Yeah. I really know. But I just love these crazy characters and there is so much humor involved with these guys and their upcoming storyline. They are a walking D&D campaign satire, what with 20th to 30th+ level characters (by which I mean ADD v.1 whacked characters before they put the breaks on things)
Rupert and Fer-Rog
That was my thought. I am shooting on giving Rupert and Fer-Rog a coming of age storyline in book 3 and 4. This is their beginning. He’s about to stop being a foil and being a force in his own right (for better or worse–calamity wise not good vs evil)
If not clear, the plan is for them to shape change into orcs and get one of the Shamans to summon them to the Planes of Orc where they can accidentally incite chaos, fear, confusion, maybe a war or two, you know the stuff teenage demons are notorious for.
Oorstemoth & Rod
I am upping the Rod quota a bit with one of the slightly new characters. So more Iskerus & Barabus upfront. Also more involvement with Hilda, repercussions from the beggar.
G&G
It was probably too soon to list them as a plotline. For now consider them a subplot of the Rod.
SF, Lilith, Aodh
So maybe I need to demonstrate more of her reasoning. She is pretty sure the reincarnation bit can’t be true, given what she knows of the dagger they made. Same thing that Tom thinks. However, somehow Tom got the Wand under all the seals and turned the mountain back on. That too should have been impossible.
Mount Doom is the closest thing any demon has ever had to a god pool. If it is operational, it will eventually be a threat to her. Orcus was a serious threat to her and Sammael, he was also a threat to Aodh/Ne’t and Sentir Fallon/Tiernon (although Sentir Fallon appears to have taking his own initiative)
If you are going to cut down on Tom’s story in book 2, Then you really need to include at least one good and violent fight for Tom, That could be used to impress the D’Orcs and cement their loyalty to him.
I know this book is mainly about dealing with the fallout of the events in book 1 and introducing new characters for the next book, But with this books title i was expecting/hoping for at least one good old fashioned FOG vs FOE fight in some form.
On Hilda…she is/has been a low level functionary in a huge organization. She is only now breaking free/standing out. She needs time to find her own voice.
Yeah the kill thing that somehow got stuck in my head really held me back near the end. Still not sure how I am going to rework that but there are better possibilities now that I am going back closer to the book 1 view of demon death in the Abyss. Not all the way back, but back enough to be consistent with what was said there.
The big thing as I’ve said before, pre-beta, my original vision for book ii was about twice this size…meaning the Inferno got to the Abyss, the Nimbus was in battle or close to it.
I am moving right now with trimming rather than cutting (although I have cut one section completely) and trying to break up the cloud snooze fest.
In particular there are a couple very short chapters, section-wise, that are almost exclusively cloud story. Working on breaking them up with more stuff, and make them more obviously relevant.
The Councilors, well, they are a mixed bag of self serving interests, the most “ambitious” ones are in this so deep that they are half the problem that’s in front of the Council.
Trevin is off doing her thing and is not concerned with Freehold right now.
Lenamare, Jehenna, Zilquar and Randolf have their plans, and they pretty much don’t care about the rest of the Council
Randolf’s main goal is to kill Exador and he’s working on recruiting Lenamare
Councilor Exador is the triggering problem.
Damien knows the god stealing demon and is just waiting to find out what’s going on.So that leaves Alexandros Mien, Gandros , Sier Barvon, Tureledor and Davron who are “not actively part of the problem)
Of those, we can be pretty sure Alexandros and Gandros have something up their sleeves, we don’t know enough about the other three and I really don’t feel like dragging them in yet…too many characters as is for the moment.
Cool!
They come back more into the central plotline in Book 3, just time apart Tom needed to be in the Abyss…however need to spice/speed that stuff up, working on that.
Major
1) nothing really to say. It was good
2) I am sorry to say that i felt like this plotline was way to long with to litttle to add to the story. Some parts just did not add anything. As for the budding romance it was ok, maybe even a little more of it would be nice.
3) interesting plotline. Really liked where this was going. Only had 2 small isssues. Tom was too absent in the beginning and there needs to be more interaction between Tom and his D’Orcs, more getting to know eachother with either more conversation and/or action. Also the gathering for the feast could be a little shorter.
If the main arc of Book 2 is to have Tom go from fake to real you’re going to need to extend the ending from beta 1 a lot more. Even with Tom defeating Lilith’s forces he doesn’t feel powerful, rather he just got lucky. For me to feel that Tom’s power is now real he’d need to confront his enemies, lay down the gauntlet, and tell them to [s]piss off[/s] please leave.
Edit: Basically, Tom needs to present and assert himself to the outside forces rather than just those within Mount Doom.
Also, why did Tizzy & Arg-nargoloth not meet and have their discussion until the end of Beta 1? I would have thought they’d get together when Tom first arrived and talked. Start the Tizzy conspiracy sooner and have reader on the lookout for his manipulations and start playing with Tom vs. Tizzy moments.
Thanks!
Current action plan for Beta 2 at moment is:
More relevant G&J storyline by bringing more of what the tension of the Grove is into. Also showing connections between Exador & Grove
Will also be upping the Exador plot across the board and bringing in a bit more Rod interaction to him & his colleagues.
It is not clear yet what Orcus’s true power was since he was something of an outsider. Officially he was a demon prince and part of the Triumverate, Mephistofeles took his place in the Triumverate.
At the moment, Tom is effectively a place holder he is going to have to really ramp up his skills and mana/etc to actually play directly on that field. I.e. “he’s faking it” at the moment. Going from fake to real (presumably) is the main arc.
I need to do a number of things surrounding Mount Doom, Tom, the D’Orcs and True Death…that will probably mean more Tom development time, or more Tom interaction/plotting/planning and behind the scenes development with him.
Just not there yet in the writing.
Really want to explore Vaselle along that line as as well…not sure if I can get it in here though.
Beta 2 will have a new major demonic force get involved.
So basically, you’ve the middle of the book to the end of the book for Arg-nargoloth to determine that Tizzy kept his promise. And then you’ve got the beginning of the book to the middle of the book for the heavenly host to determine that Tom is Orcus.
Hm, now that I write this I think I understand why the story felt somewhat disconnected. It’s like Heavenly Host is two books following each other and the events in part 1 are not prominent in part 2. Hopefully when I read Beta 2 it will feel more interwoven.
I think that’s basically correct…
different people coming to similar conclusions at different points in time.
Again, the problem is that it’s one really long book and while Book 1 had a great place to “pause” the story that happened to correspond to a maximum dead tree length….book 2 does not as in there a whole bunch of plotlines swirling around at the same time and not everyone connecting the dots equally.
On the Tom plotline, you basically have the first third of the book as the post-climax/recovery from Book 1, combined with the start of the Reggie story and the Vaselle story.
Ramses, Exador and Bess have been kicked out of town, they’ve gotta figure out how to get back to the book and not expose themselves to imminent notice by the expected arrival of Avatars. So they are trying to lay low until things blow over/cover their asses/try to figure out how to get back to getting the book. They had a major setback with the discovery of the small demons and the wards. That blew their plans out of the water and they are trying to recover.
Bess and the Nyjyr Ennead, well her part with Exador/Ramses is above, but we also get to start seeing their storyline and their desire to get back into power, which involves getting their hands on the book (screw Ramses and Exador–recall she was playing the two off of each other in book 1)
So that storyline, along with Reggies are coming together and getting started in book 2.The Grove storyline starts about 25% of the way in and starts to ramp up, but won’t really kick into gear until sometime in book 3. This is also the storyline of the Alvar/Elves.
The D’Orc storyline starts with the trip to the cave and has a high point after the ceremony, but it’s also the real start of the djinn storyline,
well technically that started earlier with Randolf. It will start kicking into gear with book 3.The Rod/Oorstemoth group was given a huge blow and are regrouping, we don’t see much but the begining of their new plotline at the end of the book.
Hilda’s storyline starts at the beginning of the book and is basically “co storyline” with Tom, giving us a perspective from the Forces of Good (or Tiernon in this case) Her story keeps building and doesn’t end in book 2. Hilda is the Heavenly Host to all intents and purposes. There was going to be an angelic host, but that got sidetracked because of Hilda’s more efficient work, where she basically parties with everyone, gets them drunk and extracts information from them like a prying bartender. (Not intentionally on her part though) She’s like the Hostess that invites you to her house to pick your brains.
And we see revealed the storyline behind Orcus’ death, and the potential new enemy, a real threat to multiple sides as presented by Aodh, Lilith and Sentir Fallon. These three are instrumental in that they caused the events that led to Orcus’ death in the first place and as they become aware that things are unwinding, they will step up their storyline/activity.
So my problem is, finding a good chopping point for all of the bigger storylines.
Thus, to at least explain the above explanation, beta 2 is working on trying to make a) things more exciting and b) make it clearer how these things interact.
My fear is that in doing (a) it may be counter productive to (b) so I am trying to balance stuff.
I just completed the book, been busy with work and whatnot. But I like the references to other notable works like the inferno. I basically enjoy almost all of the subplots, well I think Jenn and Gas could use some touch up…what I mean to say is…teenage romance is so dam complicated.
The only real problem I had with the book was the demon general in the end talking about honour, I mean living in the abyss is suppose to warp your sense of self isn’t it?
I am still back on the cloud fixing things there at the moment which demon was this again?
I agree that anyone that’s been there any length of time would be warped on that point.
Although a D’Orc would have a concept of D’Orc honor which would be pretty close to Orc honor.
And I know the busy with work feeling…that’s why book 2 took so long. But the whatnot is worse. I have no explanation for where so much of my time disappears to; clearly it is going to whatnot. I lost the last 4 days of writing on beta 2 due to whatnot…damn thing is so frustrating!
o:)
Well the story line take unexpected twist it would have been better with fewer character but well developed plot. I’m also gonna give a basic thumbs up and thumbs down based on my personal liking with a brief snippet.
1) Hilda & the Host
Thumbs up
2) Gastrope’, Jenn, The Grove, The Nimbus
I think their story should be told more in detail in the third book not in the second book
Thumbs down
3) Tom, the Abyss, Mount Doom & Tizzy
Tom make progress and grow it needs to be explored more instead of focussing more on the party prep which was not needed .Also if my understanding is correct orcus was equal to Empress and the other Gods(like god of elves & Tiernon) and Tom was able to wield orcus weapon and make it his own and he is the only demon/god who can take both the manas Upstream and the downstream manas so his powers should have also increased and to classify him he should be more powerful than lilith and Aodh.
Also the character of Tizzy should be give more time instead of gastrope and jen: Like his past. he is mentioned as trickster by one of the D Orc shaman. Is Tizzy loki in disguise and why i have feeling Tizzy is not a low level demon
Thumbs up
Vaselle & Tom
Liked but the character involvement needs to be explored, but get party supplies. Could have explored the affect of the link more.Thumbs Down
Exador, Bess, Ramses & The Book
Exador, Bess and ramses their character need more input are they just secondary players or main player because in the second book they have taken backstage. Bess and Ramses character needs to be developed more and the book is it Tizzy book which he lost
Thumbs downOorstemoth & The Rod->Inferno
Thumbs up
Abyss: you should introduce the other Arch demons & Demon princes
Thumbs down[quote=The Author Guy;2369]So looking at what to best work on I thought I’d explicitly bring up the various plotlines
Major Plotlines
1) Hilda & the Host[/quote]Liked it very much. Especially that apparently one Avatar lied to his God (About the Wand of Orcus)
[quote=The Author Guy;2369]2) Gastrope’, Jenn, The Grove, The Nimbus[/quote]So so, at the moment it gets interesting the book ends…
[quote=The Author Guy;2369]3) Tom, the Abyss, Mount Doom[/quote]Liked it, even if it all was very easy for Tom. But that’s (apparently) because Tizzy preplanned it all.[quote=The Author Guy;2369]Secondary Plotlines
1) Nyjyr Ennead (Gods on Uropia)[/quote] Liked them, even if many questions are still open.
[quote=The Author Guy;2369]2) Vaselle & Tom[/quote]Got the impression, much trouble for nothing. Basically Tom agonized about it, but Vaselle is basically the same as the Orc-Shamans…?
[quote=The Author Guy;2369]3 a) Exador, Bess, Ramses & The Book[/quote]While Exador looked incompetent, I think its his payment for his hubris and liked it. Would have liked to see what the 3 are thinking the book is about.
[quote=The Author Guy;2369]3 b) Randolf & Crispin (+Lenamare) vs Exador[/quote]Liked it!
[quote=The Author Guy;2369]4) The Rogues & Captain Asmeth[/quote]Cut them out. (Sorry)
[quote=The Author Guy;2369]5) “The Adventures of Rupert & Fer Rog”[/quote]I’m ambivalent about this. Where nice reading, but did’nt really contribute to the story so far. But since you planned more for then, keep it.
[quote=The Author Guy;2369]6) Oorstemoth & The Rod->Inferno[/quote]I enjoyed the description of their society and look forward when they get into the Abbys with the Inferno and realize how big the thing is. Did not enjoy reading the speeches. Well to be honest, I did’nt read the speeches, but only skimmed them.
[quote=The Author Guy;2369] 6.1) Gadius and Gaius ??[/quote]I somehow got the impression that both are Unicorns who can turn into humans and one is the mount of the other?
[quote=The Author Guy;2369]7) Sentir Fallon, Lilith and Aodh[/quote]Looking forward to more. Especially if/when Sentirs God gets more information about what happened 4 thousand years ago.
[quote=The Author Guy;2369]8) The Elvish freak out will evolve from the Grove plotline,[/quote]
Looking forward to it happening.[quote=Rosver;2374]Major Plotlines
One thing (and is related to the Lenamare issue I post sometime ago), since Hilda is investigating, she has to answer the ‘Who’ question. Strangely she didn’t try to get the demon’s name when she can easily get it from Trisfelt, or at least try to.[/quote]Now that you wrote that… it’s a good question. Would be nice to get an answer *hinthint*…[quote=Rosver;2374]1)
This is one that has given me a lot of head scratching as it doesn’t make much sense. It didn’t even have a plot as most of the things that happen is just about them talking about something confusing. I actually forgot what they are doing in the book after I finished reading it.[/quote]I had no problem with this. They want to use the Demons as an distraction and/or tool to get back into Astlan.
[quote=Rosver;2374]5)
What adventures?
To me, this various scenes of Rupert actually just highlight how irrelevant Rupert became in the story. This ‘adventures’ is nothing more than Rupert trying to amuse himself.[/quote]
Well they where training montages. But I would’nt call them adventures myself.[quote=Rosver;2374]6)
This is one plotline that is left hanging. We see the ship but since we don’t know what it do, or if it even works, we are left asking: What’s the big deal?[/quote]I think the big point will be, it’s a waste of money.
[quote=Rosver;2374]1) The Djinns. Nothing much happened and developed but them having connection and interest in Astlan, they seem to be big players.[/quote] Yes. This.
What can you wish from an Djinn? At the very least I would expect to wish for an Wizard and Animage Education, since they are apparently sharing memories the whole time…[quote=Rosver;2374]3) Hilda vs the Guild of Beggars. It seems Hilda has make some enemies and is related in a lot of detail. Just can’t see how it relates to the overall story.[/quote]Yes, would be nice to see some fall out from that one. Don’t cut this out, was very entertaining.
[quote=Rosver;2374]6) Tiernon and his avatars, and the Rod and the Church of Tiernon. Very minor but it seem the avatar of Tiernon seems unhappy with the Rod and the Church. The avatars have become distrustful with their followers that they send Hilda instead of relying on them. This is a rather large crack on the organization.[/quote]Don’t forget either on of the Avatars lied to Tiernon about what happened to the Wand of Orcus or Tiernon lies (need to know) about it to another Avatar of his.
[quote=The Author Guy;2377]
The Nyjyr Ennead are the Egyptian gods plotting to steal the book as part of their plan to eventually remove the Etonians (Tiernon and friends) from Astlan.[/quote]And that book is Tizzy’s? Do you want to confirm that? 😉[quote=The Author Guy;2377]Dante’s Inferno is a dark counterpoint to the Nimbus. It’s a ship designed to drill into the Abyss, or any other plane and server justice. They are planning to go into the Abyss, rescue Talarius and arrest (or kill) Tom. They are going to the Abyss in Book III. They will encounter demons of various parties and battle shall ensue.[/quote] Do they actually have an plan once they get into the Abyss or are they totally underestimating the size of the Abyss?
[quote=The Author Guy;2377]Sentir Fallon, Aodh, Lilith teamed up and forged the dagger that Tom reversed. The soul stealing dagger that killed Orcus. Formed by antimus, it has been corrupting the Church and Talarius who was carrying it.[/quote]So Lilith pulled an fast one on Sentir Fallon or is it an unintendend bonus? And had the Artifact influence on Tiernon himself? Timeline wise when where the Egyptian God driven off? After the dead of Orcus?
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