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It’s kind of funny how written language and in particular printed books, along with more trade “settled” language and slowed down the changes; and given that, one might have thought the Internet and new devices would have done the same; however it’s done the opposite.
It’s accelerated the change. Not just because of texting, but as more and more cultures come in and intermix with each other you get spill over and growth. Plus, etext is not as “set in stone” as paper text.
Chronicles of Astlan will be side stories that interweave with DoA.
As more people come in, and I want to do more back story or related story with them I will put them in Chronicles.
So it may not be so much as a “series” as a “set” of novels that add or expand on the story. I.e. trying to keep the number of PoV’s and that person’s history under control. Not completely sure what/how they will go after the first. The second might be a continuation, or a completely different story because the protagonist of Into The Wild moves into the main storyline for the long haul.
It’s really about sorting out the story and making it easier to follow. I’m trying to cut back on the PoV switching; or at least not make it worse.
So the first one Into The Wilds takes place over in [url=http://www.astlan.net/Home/Cartography/NewEtonia.aspx]New Etonia[/url] and just south of there in “[url=http://www.astlan.net/Home/Cartography/WildsofEton.aspx]The Wilds of Eton[/url]” as they are called.
It starts a bit before book 1 and will intersect either in late book 3 or book 4 (and honestly it depends on when I get it done relative to book 3)
It will give some more background information on the Holy Etonian Empire which is New Etonia + the conquered lands of Natoor and Najaar.
The Wilds are not technically part of the Empire; as they are just too nasty to be worth the effort. However, the Holy Etonian Emperor Rafaestus Torson III is married (4th and longest living wife) to a daughter of what passes for a “ruling” house or clan in The Wilds, House Narthan. Thus his youngest son, Kristof is also in the patrimonial line of House Narthan.
Kristof is 7th in line for the Holy Etonian throne, and fourth in line to the House of Narthan throne; when the current heir dies at the beginning of ITW, making Kristof third in line. Given that the second in line to the throne is a baby (and House Narthan has a horrible record of keeping heirs alive) there is a good possibility that Kristof might get the throne, or end up being regent; so his maternal grandfather Hugart Lord Narthan wants him to come to the Wilds and learn the family “business” or realm or whatever the heck it is.
And it is complex because of course, it’s the wilds and they don’t really control the wilds so much as they have a bunch of fortified city states with a network that runs through the swamp allowing them to export goods produced in the swamp. Many of which have great arcane or alchemical value
Technically, to the outside world, Lord Narthan is the lord of a series of city states, the largest one, Narthan Hold, being almost modern (by Imperial Standards).
So what will we see: Humans, Orcs, Goblins, I’iskatha (nasty nasty), swamp dragons, pterosaurs and “The Rangers of Torean” which are sort of like The Rod but for Torean. Torean is a god of exploration and discovery.
The Rangers (and Torean) are also showing up in Book 3.
As I may, or may not have said (I really don’t remember what is in what book or on this site at this point) it was the Rangers that scoped out Natoor and Najaar and paved the way for the Rod to conquer the lands and remove the Nyjyr Ennead. (Bess, Phaestus, Sekhmet, etc)
What do people think about this new version:
[quote]
[color=blue]Turns Out: The “Demon Weed” actually IS a gateway!A gateway to hell! Literally. Not a metaphor. Now, technically, the place was called “The Abyss” but it was, unequivocally, a street preacher’s vision of hell.
And Tom Perkinje, transfer student to Harding High was now trapped in the Abyss after inhaling a grand total of two times. Oh, yeah, he was also a twelve-foot tall demon with hooves, bat-wings, horns, tail, full deal!
Now, as if that wasn’t bad enough, he was also enslaved, against his will, to a group of myopic wizards that had not only mistaken him for a demon on the Astral Plane; but who had bound him to his current demonic form and left him stranded in the Abyss to await their bidding.
He really wished he had not let his new friend Reggie talk him into trying the stupid drug.
_______________________________________________
Jenn was a journeyman Thaumaturge at Lenamare’s Academy of Wizardry. School was a living hell. Oh, she was learning a lot, thanks to Master Trisfelt, but the Head Master and Head Mistress were insufferable egomaniacs. Head Mistress Jehenna seemed bent on making Jenn miserable with her unrealistic demands and eviscerating criticism.
If this was not bad enough, the Head Master, Lenamare, had gone and gotten in a squabble with another wizard, Exador, and now Exador was marching his army on the school.
And to top it off, during what was supposed to be a routine classroom demonstration on demon summoning, Lenamare and the class had stumbled upon what they had thought was a minor demon and tried to bind it.
Unfortunately, it was definitely NOT a minor demon. It was a Greater Demon, something so powerful and Evil that they were almost never conjured onto the Planes of Man. Naturally being Lenamare, The Head Master had insisted on trying to bind it to his will so he could use it to destroy Exador and his army.
So the question was: Would Exador’s army ravage and kill her, or would the school’s newest defense consume her immortal soul? [/color]
[/quote]I swear I fixed that!
Nargh. Nargh. Nargh.
Am merging changes this afternoon, will make sure it gets fixed.
[quote=LCSpartan051;5927]Is one required to have an outer plane in order to become a signatory of the Concord of Conciliation? If so, then the Nyjyr Ennead aren’t violating the Balance since they don’t have an outer plane.
I would think that the Mirror determines if one is a demon by sensing the binding to the Abyss, so Bess would not show up, but Tom and rupert would.[/quote]
No, just be a pantheon, god or other independent immortal. There are a number of deities who do not have outer planes.
Actually, that’s one of the best explanations I’ve heard of for the mirror. It’s measuring the strength of the connection to the Abyss or something along that line. Assuming bigger demons have bigger links, like priests, saints, archons do to godpools. However, demons don’t derive mana from the Abyss, or do they? It’s not a god pool but maybe it’s a source/anchor for demons and the more powerful the demon, the more powerful the link.
But…in that case Bess’ incarnated form might show up. Of course, this brings up, what are those forms on the Uropia? Are they incarnated or generated bodies? A generated body would possibly not show up, since it would have no Abyssal link, an incarnated body on Uropia would also not show up, but a body incarnated in the Abyss might.
Tom has a traditional demon generated body, so Orcus or not, he would show up as a demon at that point.
Although Talarius would have known that Ruiden was sentient since Ruiden moves on his own like a partner with Talarius, they would have practiced together and worked out strategies.
I just don’t think Talarius knew he was this sentient. I think he suspected Ruiden of having the intelligence of a horse or hound or something like that.
I think I am going to hold off until near the end of the week for next Alpha because I want to get more into the update. More stuff to chew on basically.
Well, perhaps that’s an ulterior motive for Hessy. We’ll see how big his luggage is. I suspect the sampler case is pretty good sized.
Sure, Lilith and Smody have their directives for Hessy, but a little side business never hurt anyone.
There are Denubian “companies” and they have Abyssal Dealerships/Outlets, however, they are very anti-union. Just saying. The Denubians are not a united front. There are multiple retailers for Denubian Choco-Coffee(TM). However, it’s all the same licensed product, but it does pay to do comparison shopping, some retailers have better prices.
They have other products too, this is just their most popular.
Hmm, thinking more, perhaps Boggy can purchase the distribution rights for Mount Doom? He is, as you know, very entrepreneurial. If Hessy shows up, I wouldn’t be surprised if Boggy and Tizzy try to get the distribution rights. It’s currently a very under-served market.
I’ve disabled automatic synchronizer, pretty sure that’s the issue be we are also maxing out RAM at the moment for some reason, cpu rather high as well.
Took me a while to understand what you were showing.
Yes, I have on occasion noticed this in the last month or so. A refresh of the page seems to fix it.
Not at all sure what it is. The DB is local to the machine.
I would think there would be more of an error message for db connection.
If you can note the UTC time when this happens, I can try and check various log files.
I am wondering it is more of db performance problem and too short of a timeout on the website’s side.
One thing that is new/recently repaired is the full text indexing of the db. I wish I’d paid more attention to exactly when it started, but it seems like only in the last few months.
[quote=Korwin;5770][quote=The Author Guy;5587]I also note that he says good allies of the orcs, not necessarily the D’Orcs…
Orcus doesn’t represent all orcs, and orcs are often mercenaries, or act as them.
[/quote]
He got an Doomaloge, which he then stole. So it seems he was an ally of Orcus.
Not shure about, why Sauron is an Necromancer, btw.I would chalk it up to after the fact cursing at an traitor.[/quote]
They (D’Orcs) didn’t know he was a necromancer, that he was Sauron.
The Necromancer was the guise of Sauron in the Hobbit. He was a shapeshifter, a fallen maia, he tricked a lot of people and wore various guises throughout time, which is how he got the rings made in the first place, they didn’t think they were making them for Sauron.
So to be fair, he really wasn’t a “necromancer” at all in the sense we are talking about it here, although he practiced necromancy and used Unlife. He was actually very powerful being pretending to be something below his actual status.
Take a look at it now.
Should be good.
Because, originally, the covers were different size I stupidly fixed them to same width, trying to avoid height differences when using width %.
Went back and made new version all of exact same height/width (including non-proportional scaling) then replaced images and used width % 33% on columns and width 95% on images.
It should scale “OK” to the point the text becomes a problem.
I need to the entire site to be much more responsive, but that means lots of porting/graphics/etc work that I’m trying to avoid to focus on getting books out faster.
All I’ve done so far is changed color scheme and logo at top. Replaced home page panel, added an amazon bookstore at bottom with Tizzy’s reading list or recommended books/comics. Which he will update periodically as it strikes him.
Not done anything more on content.
I have been adding names and some places to the dictionary, that way if I misspell a name it will be in red.
I have also put the more complicated ones in autotext so I don’t have to type them all.
I am not happy with any of the diff options I am playing with. If there was a good free tool that people could compare PDF or epubs with that was easy for non-tech people to use that would be good, but not seeing it, and not sure how much time its worth.
What I might just do is publish a PDF version with revisions/markup showing. I’ve actually had to turn this off to get “clean” alpha PDF’s.
Once that is published. I accept all the changes, which starts the clock anew (print the clean version to pdf/epub) and then start tracking again for the next release.
No, she knows about Exador the archdemon.
What he’s saying is that
1) Exador was a demon, we assume Ramses is a demon, Bess maybe a demon but we don’t have proof that she’s also a goddess slumming as a demon. That would be very weird for these guys, a god pretending to be an arch-demon????
2) He’s saying, perhaps wishfully that they don’t know that the former Arch-Vicar General of the Rod was the same arch-demon Exador, they just happen to have the same name. Again, comes down to the fact that they can’t conceive that an arch-demon could fool the church and the avatars and rise to the level of arch-vicar general, that’s like saying the highest ranking Cardinal in the Catholic Church is a demon lord. Of course, today many people suspect aht, but…that’s protestant cynicism
