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Icanrememberpito68decimalplaces
I moved your last message to the Beta 2 General Impressions Topic in the Heavenly Host/Been There Read That forum to keep the discussion confidential.
Beta Demon FAQ is open to the public and I want to avoid any spoilders.
OK,
Major reality shift for end of book. [url=http://www.astlan.net/TheBooks/TheHeavenlyHostBeta.aspx]Beta 3.[/url]
New scene: 106.65–>Needed mainly for Book 3. Also spells out clearly who this Sam guy is, if not obvious.
Otherwise, the difference between Beta 2 and Beta 3 starts with 109.1 to the end of the book.
It should shift the ending tone significantly.
As for Beta 3.1, I think I will release some updates to earlier chapters to better spell out Exador’s relationships to the Storm Liches/Storm Lords.
Probably on Sunday evening.
If you haven’t read to the end of the previous versions don’t. This is the new starting point going forward for the ending.
T-A-G
So, with the reality shift. There probably needs to be some polishing of the post 109.1.
Please make sure there are no remnants of previous realities and if you think it seems too chopped/doesn’t flow. Let me known where and any suggestions you might have.
The people who actually know this particular detail, about Talarius and Ruiden are basically going to be:
Talarius, Ruiden, probably Barabus and several of the other knights and knight rampant. Not sure how much the upstairs would know.
The Avatars know about the dagger because Sentir used it to kill Orcus and Sentir “discovered it” in fact, Sentir, Aodh and Lillith created Excrathadorus Mortis and as I’ve mentioned (somewhere) they used antimus to do it. It is in fact, the antimus in it (and a few other things) that is doing a lot of corruption in both Etterdam and Astlan.
In particular, Talarius dishonerable behavior (that he notes during the oath taking) was while under the dark influence of antimus.
We will discover much more of Ruiden’s origin and history in book 3.
Church corruption basically seeps in over the years slowly so you don’t notice it. Most of the problems are noticed upstairs because they are removed from every day activity. People are always at the best preying, and you don’t usually have a reason to distrust your worshippers and basically over hundreds/thousands of years everyone, including upstairs gets more used to the “little corruptions” so they become common place.
Only when the behavior is shoved in someone’s face, as what happened to Hilda does it become truly obvious. I still don’t think the extent is clear to anyone upstairs other then perhaps Sentir (who is working hand in hand with Evil) and now Hilda.
Remember, she has just been reporting. Think of this as a field support guy reporting stuff to a management team at a meeting. They really aren’t grasping the full picture and are frankly preoccupied by what they consider (wrongly) to be bigger fish.
Have B on the ground, should result in an eye opener.
Ah…of course.
Got so wrapped up in beta discussions here I forget that it looks dead to those who don’t have betademon vision.
So I posted update to Goodreads/Amazon but not here. DOH!
Beta 2 comments/suggests are slowing down to a crawl at the moment. So unless I hear of more big change requests/suggestions I am going to send it to the editor at the end of the week. [i][b]SPEAK UP NOW AND SOON BETA DEMONS!!![/b][/i]
She needs 4+ weeks; not sure exactly how many as it varies on how busy she is.
Give me a 1 to 1.5 weeks after I get it back to accept or reject edits. Clean it up and get it formatted for kindle and deadtree and get it through the approval process (rather slow for Dead Tree—they have to ship me a galley copy that I approve) and it live.
So it’s going to be early September at this point.
T-A-G
Could have spammed. It would have come from the Council Forum I believe. Don’t quite remember how I did the email, but I know you were on the list.
You are now in. I am hoping to get this to the editor soon but would definitely like to get your suggestions/impressions.
Be sure to get the beta 2 version.
It is in the sticky top post of the Latest Version forum in The Heavenly Host forum.
Well, you are running rather late so…read fast.
When I look at your tag on the left hand side, it says you are in Heavenly Host Beta Demons so you are actually good to go. It was just the randomly long length of time. Going to work on that for the Book 3 beta…
Under Beta Demons Only you will see the Heavenly Host Forum and under that is latest versions, there you will find the link for Beta 2.
However, don’t read past 109.0 (stop before 109.1) because that will change with Beta 3 which is coming late tomorrow afternoon or Sunday evening.
That is also my feeling. There is not the same sense of escalation and conflict advancing to conflict.
I am just not quite sure what to do about that; again I see this as a Book 2 syndrome, resetting the stage so to speak for much more to come.
We needed to have some recovery and rebuilding time.
In pretty much every way the argument comes back to the “book 2 is 10 days, book 1 was 30 days” so only 1/3 the time has passed. So only 1/3 as much can physically happen (roughly)
The alternative is to go to a longer time period and ignore a lot of the detail of the events to keep the length in check. But in that case we are glossing over the introduction of some significant characters such as Hilda, The D’Orcs, the Orcs that are going to be critical for later. You don’t get a second chance for an introduction.
Well, Lilith scenes provide two important things which are related:
1) the counterpoint to the D’Orcs. I.e anatagonist for he D’Orcs and the Demon Army
2) She, Sentir Fallon and Aodh are responsible for teaming up to kill Orcs; and it was Lilith and Sentir Fallon who planted the Wand of Orcus in the volcano (there are reasons why there that may be exposed in 3)So I think we lose a lot with her gone.
As for the Rod. Yes, some of the G&G stuff could go; but they are needed for Ruiden and to set up for the invasion of the Abyss in Book 3. Actually that was originally a much bigger part of book 2 that got pushed to book 3.
Great info! Thanks.
Yeah, I’ve been heavily conflicted on the final battle scene. I know that it calls for a battle/fight. But the demons from Doom’s Redoubt are a rather pathetic lot after being trapped in the fort for 4000 years periodically picking fights that I get conflicted; or rather I feel that Tom would be conflicted. This of course is the danger to seeing both sides of a conflict. Maybe your enemy isn’t as evil as you think. And that’s in part what I want to show with this style of writing. There are some truly evil people; but in many cases it is misunderstanding/poor communication.
With equal number of D’Orcs plus D’Wargs in open combat, with Tom’s magic and the defenses of Doom, it almost has to be a massacre. I suppose one could argue is that the D’Orcs shouldn’t have been hit that hard by any of the demon attacks, even though they would be at some size disadvantage in the tunnels–however they would have had home field advantage.
So anyway; a massacre is something that would sicken Tom. It is not his style–yet. In dealing with the the after affects of an aftermath, it would be a huge downer for Tom; and possibly for the book. It would not be a “blech…” let down, which is the problem now, but rather a depressing bummer sort of thing; which is good break point in high drama, not so good a way to break in a comedy.
Tom is very much a softy, get along sort of guy, he is only 16/17 by the time of the Doom’s Redoubt getting there. He is not, yet, a vicious backstabbing demon/dark lord type.
So the current plan would be to let them in, and then treachery starts from within; teaching Tom a lesson about being too merciful. Plus Lilith has bigger resources than these peons up her sleeve; and hijacking her army will force her to send the big guns after him.
I can add more of Lilith’s response to whet things for next book; but it’s still not the battle that was built up for.
To do a battle that is not a massacre, I would really need to restructure the dynamic of the opposing forces (e.g. double/triple the number of demons) Or something.
Hmmm. I need to think on this. Figure out how to balance a true victory vs a massacre and still have a celebration.
Will polish the other battle scenes some more.
Thanks
Warning: the next part talks about how ancient book 1 actually is and why some of those scenes are as intense as they are:
[SPOILER]
All the battles in book 1 had a lot more polish in that I took a very long time to write the book. I think many people liked the climactic battle at the end the best. And that was a scene that had been building in my head for 20+ years and so didn’t take much written polish. The problem was that I got stuck when the wards went up. I could not come up with a way to move the story along; how to get them out of the corner I had backed them into and get to the battle between Tom and Talarius.And I edited/read/polished what there was now and then and when I finally said enough is enough, this is going to get out of the queue…and really started thinking on it, I came up with “Tell Lenamare about the demons; have him deal with them.” And that was it. Out the door and onto a fight that I’d been seeing in my head for 20 years.
So, my point being, book 1 had a serious time advantage going for it. I started it in late 1985/early 86. That got me to blowing up Lenamare’s school. The next segment from the mushroom cloud up until the wards was written 1992 to 1994. Then not much until blam!
[/SPOILER]
That was the reason she could say it.
I actually did try to be careful to make sure there was a plausible reason for him to know and tell Hilda; so I had actually gone back to add some additional details.
I will look into this.
But why is it inconsistent? I am missing where there is an actual contradiction vs requiring the user to assume something was told to Trisfelt.
