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I don’t know it’s so much that they don’t remember him, it’s that they aren’t sure about him.
The higher up people are not sure if he is working for Tom, say as a warlock or if he was a patsy, which is what most lower downs think.
In other words, no one believes the demon he summoned was really type iv, some are thinking that Tom tricked Lenamare into summoning him, used him as a gateway like Tom used verigas.
And/or, no one is brave enough to try to force Lenamare to summon Tom again. What do you do if a demon that can do what Tom did shows up and is mad at you?
There are several other reasons also, for example if Tom reappears in Astlan, it would be an invitation for Tiernon’s most senior avatars to come down and take him and everyone around him out. Of course, they don’t realized that Beragamos is already there by the end of the book.
But don’t worry, I moved a character forward who was only exceedingly low profile in book 1, to an active role in trying to get Talarius back. that character will be pushing every possible opportunity in beta 2.
I will up that information detail.
There is a lot of politics involved in this. That’s part of the lesson, just because you “can” on paper do something, reality/politics can mean something else.
Lenamare is quite powerful, the Council of which he is a member and is staying with is an incredibly powerful force. Then you have Exador and these archdemons, you have Oorstemoth, you have the church in astlan, the avatars above, rumors of the Nyjyr Ennead, and now Orcus has apparently returned.
Gods and Kings are used to very complicated chess games, you don’t want to risk making an ill advised move until you understand all the pieces on the board. This is why all rulers are advised to have a dwavern Hand of the King with a scarred face and a bald eunuch to advise them.
Until you know how the lines of allegiance are drawn take a precipitous move could be like sticking your hand in a trap.
Hi,
To make sure everyone knows, I am working on Beta 2 which will incorporate changes and things discussed here.
In particular, some cutting, some adding, some reworking. The goals are to both liven things up, and make things that weren’t clear, clearer. E.g. make certain character and plotlines more obvious as to why certain things are there (or eliminate them)
I expect it sometime next week (last full week in June)
As a reminder the beta will be going through at least mid July, and later if necessary. Meaning there could very well be a beta 3.
As I’ve said, very few novels are done on a single pass. Most require at least 3 passes and lots of tweaks.
Into the Abyss had 666 passes…or so it seemed to me. Often done years apart to add perspective…something we don’t have time for with Book 2
T-A-G
Hi,
That’s actually what it does. You then just have to wait a bit for it to sync, typically a few hours.
I have forced it to update sooner. You should be good now.
T-A-G
I like that. It is basically the plotline I have for him, showing it more would probably make it more believable.
However, as we will at sometime get to, things are not so simple as Antefalken says. Antimus in particular, which is in part responsible for the corruption of the Church, puts a bit of a wrench in things.
As a side note, antimus plays a big role in necromancy, liches and such are big on it. We may or may not get to that (in future books) with the character Asfrid, who is one of the nefarious adventurers, or actually a colleague of theirs. Asfrid wasn’t in Oorstemoth getting the book for Lenamare, but one of the bandits who did steal the book, that Tibs, Marcus and ‘N’ are going to collect, the Mobius Magi has gone to Natoor (or Najaar) to dig up Asfrid for more fire power against Oorstemoth. At the moment, Asfrid is resting/recharging deep inside a pyramid. She is not completely stable, in large part because her base/former morality conflicts with the antimus of her immortal nature.
But that plotline is so crazy, it may have to be split out as another series altogether…
Great thoughts, and that’s basically what I’ve decided to do to some extent…
It’s all of a question of what fits. So I’m writing along and we’ll see how long it gets and if too long we cut it in two.
I am cranking on Beta 2 now.
I actually only officially started beta 2 today, I had been going to do that parallel edit thing, but from reports, the raw isn’t that bad, plot and pacing are bigger issues, so I held off and waited to start getting enough actionable feedback.
So now my full edit has become Beta 2.
And I have to say…the pacing I felt was there when I wrote the first several chapters last year (while doing a full time job with an 1.5 hour daily communte and another part time from home job) right after book 1 went live…it ain’t there.
I got to the Damien and Gandros conversation about getting people out of the city at end of day one and it was like hitting a giant sleep hole!
Things really slow down after the initial reactions. It really didn’t seem that way at all when writing them, but reading it…I have to agree on the pacing issues.
I also realizing commenting on stuff that there is a lot here that is in my head that when on PDF doesn’t come through. Too much context to some of this stuff is missing in terms of the big picture and why a scene might be important. (there are some that aren’t)
So working on it!
Yeah, I know.
I really like the guys and the story, and one reason I wanted to include them (other than letting people know what happened to Asmeth and Evert—people have asked) is because I could use Tibs, a bard, to help people understand Antefalken better. They have never met, but there is overlap, and Tibs is aware of the legendary bard Antefalken, so that’s one way to give people more of his background.
However, it may just be too much.
Here is a reworking of the Anselm argument.
Still working on the relative interaction level.
[quote]“Anselm, he was, or I suppose is, an Archdemon popular about 1700 years ago. He was probably the only religious demon ever. He was also a masterful logistician who provided to his followers a logical proof that basically required the belief in the existence of a ‘one true god’ of which, nothing greater than could be conceived of.” Antefalken said.
Tom grinned. “I think I’ve heard of such a being.”
“Indubitably, the omniscient, omnipotent single creator god.” Antefalken agreed. “Not a preferred concept on the Outer Planes. “ Antefalken raised his arms in an amused shrug, “Go figure?”
Antefalken sighed and then continued. “In essence, Anselm argued that as a mental exercise, if one could comprehend or conceive of a being of such infinite magnitude that it was the best and ‘mostest’ of everything, that it had every virtue, power and grace conceivable, such that no being could possibly be greater, then the existence of such a being in the physical world must be true, and one could not possibly deny such an existence.”
Tom shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Antefalken smiled. “His construct was to have one conceive of a being so vast, so omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent that one could not possibly imagine anything greater than that construct existing. This is because if you came up with some other property that a being could possess that would make it greater than your concept being, on any front, then the concept being would automatically possess it, in order to become the greatest thing you could conceive of” Tom shook his head again still not following.
“Here is the clincher, existence, actual physical existence of something is and must be a higher state of being, it must be greater than the simple concept of such a thing.” Antefalken looked him in the eye, “The existence of something is greater than the concept of the same thing. It is more real.” Antefalken said.
“Yes. I agree,” Tom said.
“So if your imaginary being was actually real, tangible, then it would be greater than your imaginary being. Yes?”
“Yes.” Tom said starting to see where this was going.
“Thus if you took your imaginary being, of which nothing greater than which could be conceived, and it actually were physically real, that real being would be greater than the imaginary being that wasn’t real. Thus in order to complete your imaginary construct, your imaginary being must be real. Because true reality is greater than a mental construct. Thus you must believe that your mental construct is real in order to be the greatest thing you can conceive of. Thus if you can believe in such a being, then you must believe it exists in order to be logically consistent with yourself.” Antefalken smiled brightly at Tom as the demon tried to digest this mental bender.
“So,” Antefalken summed up, “Anselm held that if a sentient being could go through this exercise of conceiving of such a being, they had to believe in its existence. Therefore, one would also have to believe that there were no greater gods than this single god. That all other gods were simply false gods.”
Antefalken laughed. “As you can imagine, he wasn’t too popular among the priests of any religion.”
[/quote]Yeah that was my thought as I was rewriting. Before it was a neat quick point, that probably wasn’t clear to most people.
But by really explaining it, it takes longer and you start to lose the context of why. It’s just not easy to actually explain it to people quickly.
It might be better as a quick reference for those that know.
St. Anselm ended up in the Abyss as a demon. He quickly gained a following and with his mind, became quite powerful. After being hounded for a long time, he rather disappeared…which explains the was/is thing.
Turns out a lot of famous people ended up there.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere that Ramses the Damned (and all the Ramses line that were Anilords) was the same Ramses that lost his army in the Red Sea pursuing Moses and his people.
If you look in the history, there are others.
Archdemon Sokrats who subverted youth.
Archdemon Iscariot who subverted the Council of Magi using pieces of silver.
And there is an Anilord Ponchas who’s name is also a bit odd. He’s got descendants with the same names as well.
Hah you think like me!
I am sure everyone is thinking that. We shall have to see!
I do point out that Shamans technically do function as priests in many tribal societies, so it is not beyond the realm of possibility.
OOOTA or OOA would definitely be a secondary priority to books 2 and 3 and probably 4. I think more of something to work on when I need some “away” from DOA to let it percolate, but yet not get too far away.
Well the key point was that Lilith came in and mucked up Mount Doom which was his “home made” god pool and mana factory.
We don’t yet know what she did, but she shutdown his mana supply from Mount Doom. We also don’t know how he had his links arranged.
Gods store their mana in god pools, which are vaguely described giant mana pools, presumably all the Illumination Streams go up and into and out of those pools, like a bank account, and the god (or gods with a pantheon pool) has unlimited (or very high) check writing privilages.
In the case of a god, he/she probably has links to both the god pool, a pantheon pool and his/her avatars. If you screw up any one of those, they can tap the others. The shallowest would be avatars because it’s their own reserves and those downstream of them.
We don’t know how Orcus was setup. We don’t know if he technically had avatars to draw on, or relied on pure shamans. We also don’t know he was taking it from shamans. We do know that he was taking it from Mount Doom. Mount Doom got shut down and he was in the middle of battle and had been hit by antimus. He probably didn’t have time before the antimus consumed all of his animus.
As Tom said, a very gruesome sort of way to go.
I think it’s a good point.
A bigger point, not really addressed is the fact that he’s wanted for arrest by the Oorstemothians.
Hilda is undercover, she’s not ready for a bust. Plus by the time she knows as much as the Rod does, she knows more and knows that Lenamare had no control over the demon. She was truth reading everyone she spoke to. She believes Lenamare was just a pawn to get the demon in to Astlan. She also wants to get more info from him. These wards are a concern of hers. They would be a big problem for archons, and with adjustment, Lenamare might be able to completely block avatars. He had tuned primarily to keep demons out when she was there.
I do think putting the squeeze on Lenamare from both Rod and Oorstemoth is a good idea for beta 2.
