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Good points.
Yeah, that is a problem. Now part of the problem “could be” not knowing who was left to summon, but if some went back they could have found out.
Another could be that perhaps they didn’t have the mana to summon a D’Orc, doubtful though….
Need to think about this.
Easy answer is that no D’Orcs died, but then, how do they know what happened to Orcus? The Citadel could have told them I suppose.
OK, definitely a good point!
Gotta do something about this.
I agree.
He will be coming back as a sword golem for the end of the book, but he should be doing something in the mean time. We know he can talk to Talarius.
Yes, I think this could be interesting/fun.
Great idea!
First rule of Tartarus: You do not talk about Tartarus
Second rule of Tartarus: You do not talk about the Tartarvardenennead
Third rule of Tartarus: You really do not want to admit to being a client of Tartarus (because friends of whoever you locked up will be pissed)Obviously, Zeus and friends blew rule 3…so woops, what are you going to do? And quite frankly, Zeus’ ego is such that he really doesn’t care…
But more importantly to Tiernon and the Five Siblings: They cannot admit to having locked up their parents who are also gods, one of whom is an Olympian. The Olympians would be really pissed to know that one of them was locked up there without Zeus’ approval. Officially, their “Holy Parents” are just MIA, wondering the multiverse or something.
Tiernon cannot punish Sentir Fallon for going overboard because to do so would reveal that 1) Orcus was the warden of Tartarus 2) Tartarus is now “unguarded” and 3) How they knew about it and who did they have locked up there.
So Tiernon’s hands were tied. Since no one knew he had anyone locked up there, they can’t “officially” get mad at him for allowing his minion to kill Orcus. For all they can prove, he (Tiernon) did not realize what his minion had done.
We can also assume the Net would not know that Orcus was running Tartarus, they are mortal enemies. Lilith clearly did not, nor would Sentir Fallon.
I think I should have more dialog with Tiernon and Torean to cover this.
Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.
I have to read this stuff and sleep on it, reread what I wrote, think some more.
So a lot of the oomph/cutting/expanding will take a bit because I have to synthesize all the commentary and bring it together as something that works.
That was what really took a while in the last Beta session.
Yeah, the general consensus is that a lot of these short scenes need to be condensed, eliminated or ooomphed up.
This was expected, alpha and first beta is very much a first pass, I needed to get reader feedback as to what to enhance/what to cut.
Coming back to several posts back…my big problem is that it’s a huge tale with lots of interesting characters that I want to explore.
However, when I take time to do that, some people feel like they are being robbed of “Tom Time” so my problem is in deciding what/who to cut or expand to enhance the story.
This is why I am spinning of the Chronicles of Astlan (where Tizzy disappears to), Seas of Fate (Asmeth, N, Marcus, etc).
I have even toyed with spinning even more arcs off into parallel books, but not sure how well it would go over if you one “has” to read three series to get the entire story. And as well as going over, how well could I pull such a weirdness off?
CoA and SoA should be stand alone, if people want….
Excellent points both of you. Love them and will work with them.
This is exactly the sort of stuff I need.
Your points are all valid, particularly the Voyager one, which I really didn’t think through. The other points come because of the time flow. There hasn’t been enough time for those things to come to fruition.
The Lords of Chaos will pop up at the end of the book to have a “chat” with Lilith, but nothing happens with them until later.
Darflow will be back in the battle at the Citadel.
Super huge spoiler below for last 20% of book.
[SPOILER]The Storm Lords and Exador have a big surprise for the Avatars of the Five Siblings, they manage to “resurrect” the magic of the Dark Apostle, last used upon Orcus’ death and the Avatars are going to need to be rescued by the Dark Lord Tommus. Avatars, Demons, D’Orcs and mortals united to fight Unlife.[/SPOILER]Exactly my plan!
He will be thinking about this a lot in the as yet unseen last 20%.
I like to end these things with a new big bag of tricks for Tom, he’s going to be pulling out some eye-popping fun along this line.
Yes, I am thinking about that.
In many ways it would make my life much more simpler as I could merge in changes and stuff.
What I mean by old school paranoia? I started this book a long long time ago, and was planning to traditionally publish it. I was always scanning new books to make sure that no other author had stole my plot and story and got there first.
Of course, now that I’m on the third book, it would be pretty stupid for some other author to try to do something with the third book…
It’s just my old school paranoia that prevents me from doing it. epubs and pdfs give a nice, yet false, sense of security to paranoid people. These aren’t particularly protected and I can copy stuff out of them in ugly format and into word, or a reverse pdf program could do it. So it is a totally false sense of security.
I am leaning for subsequent releases to do this.
Agreed, you cannot believe how much time I “waste” on formatting for the kindle.
I worry about the kindle formatting after I get it back from the editor.
At that point I have to have one format for the Paperback and another one for the kindle and then what looks good on a new kindle is crap on an old kindle and my head spins and I have to submit bug reports to the kindle team because they can’t import some table/line formats properly.
It takes a solid two weeks to get the books through the publishing process at Amazon. First book I did on B&N, Smashwords and Playstore…that took forever.
Table of Contents:
It’s detail right now is mainly for the benefit of Beta Demons so they can quickly find sections that are being discussed.
I am ambivalent as to whether to include the details. Certainly in the paperback version I won’t. Kindle??? If people think it is useful? We can do a vote.
I need to consolidate/chop/or oomph a lot of the smaller scenes.
Tiernon did not give Sentir Fallon permission; however, he does not yet suspect, or at least have proof that Sentir Fallon is guilty.
[SPOILER]
The key comes from the discussion with Tiernon and Torean. Nét the elven god of war was provoking Orcus in Etterdam by attacking orcs/breaking the treaty. It was this provocation that led to Orcus raising a huge army in Etterdam to squash Nét and the elves.Please note that Orcus is the Enforcer of Oaths in ancient mythology. He is the Punisher of Oathbreakers. (see Edith Hamilton or your local wikipedia page). [Also note that Tom gets hot and bothered by cheaters/people that don’t keep their word/oath]
Orcus believed (rightly) that Nét and the alvar had broken their oaths that they had sworn at the end of Ragnarok. He was pissed and was determined to teach them a lesson they would not soon forget.
Thus leading to the events contained in the Balladae Orcusae that Antefalken talks about in book 2.
Orcus was not actually the instigator of the events in Balladae Orcusae; he was defending and striking back, but the alvar won (thanks to Sentir Fallon, Lillith and Aodh)
Note Aodh is the right hand of Nét.
There are actually multiple things going on
1) Sentir Fallon has been working with the Storm Lords for some time. He got the blade to kill Orcus from them.
a) Excrathadorus Mortis was corrupting people around it. It (and perhaps others) is/was the source of the problems that Tiernon and Torean are having with local churches not following the rules. They have been investigating this for some time; but have not been able to get proof that it was Sentir Fallon.
b) Exador is also working with the Storm Lords
c) It was this corrupting influence, plus “Exador” as the Arch-Vicar General that led the forces of the 5 Siblings to invade Natoor/Najaar/etc.
Please Note: Exador was Arch-Vicar general right around the time that Tiernon and Torean’s forces started slaughtering the followers of the Nyjyr Ennead.
2) Sentir Fallon/Lillith/Aodh for their own machinations are playing Nét and the other elven gods against the 5 Siblings.
3) In the interest of not burning Etterdam to the ground, Tiernon sent Sentir Fallon to intercede, presumably by persuading Orcus to cease and desist or expel him from the plane. We don’t know details yet, only that Sentir did far more than what was expected. It was not clear that Sentir could even get Orcus gone, no one expected him to slay him permanently. (Except, of course for Nét who knew what Aodh was up to with Lilith and Sentir Fallon)Anyway, that’s a start on what’s going on there.[/SPOILER]
