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Retaliation from a God?
“But I’m an enslaved demon. My accused master ordered me to drain your holy Grace/mana to fuel his feindish spells. If you want to retaliate against someone, he is ultimatly responsible.”
Rereading apostles it occured to me. About a quarter of the way in, there is a long lecture to Tom about why Gods can’t enter the Abyss without spdisturbing some treaty or balance thingy. and yet there Phestus, Usiris, and Bess, clearly in the Abyss.
Another question… I presume that with your cross referencing different books Sir Samwell might be the alias of a certain Samwise Gamgee?
Not very much drama in this release. Had I written it, I might have done:
The forces of the citadel of light see the hoards of unlife marching towards them. They perform some sorties to do guerilla tactics and maybe lessen the force.
The Avatars show up in the castle. Politics ensue.
The avatars help with the sorties against the FoD, who are coming closer and closer? With the help of the Saints and Avatars, the FoD are killed but their numbers seem uncountable, and they get even closer to the castle.
In desperation, the Citadel sends a message to Orcus. Help us. It is too far away. though, and the FoD will be at the Citadel in hours.
Though thousands of vile unlife have been killed by the saints and men of the citadel the FoD reach the moat and surrounds the citadel. The general in charge of the FoD makes a completely unnecessary and cliched speech regarding death and vengeance. Evil overlord kind of stuff. When he is done, the Saints and Avatars are cut off from their Gods, and the true battle begins.
Tens of thousands of zombies and skeletons simply walk to their deaths in the moats, polluting it. Balls of necrotic energy are hurled at the walls and gate. A completely superfluous Saint tries to rally the FoG and is killed, the Avatars who are there feel his death and can do nothing to save him.
A part of the wall is taking a lot of damage and soon might fail. Divisions of Skeletons are diverted to that area and driven into the moat. A bridge of bones starts to form. Liches and Vampires gather on one side of the moat, the FoG gather on the other side of the wall, waiting for a breach hoping to drive the evil back, but knowing it is futile. The Bergermeister takes an arrow in the shoulder.
Suddenly the Runic gate that is already there — because if it hadn’t been why aren’t the liches and necromancers building runic gates into the citadel instead of trying to breach the walls — opens. D’Orcs pour out. Tom steps through. Minor FoG vs FoDemons confrontation, where Saints try to attack the Demons, but stop when they realize that the normal FoG of the citadel are cheering.
Quick discussion between Tom and the Bergermister. Far quicker and frantic than the leisurely discussion you had. Outside Necrotic energy pounds the walls. Tom basically says to the Burgermeister “get your ass to my mountain and relay your mana through there. You are wounded and take the other wounded.”
Tom and Co, wait by the wall, as the liches pour in, the combined FoG attach back, driving them backward over the moat. Talarion from all the revelations is angry, and in his depression seems to have a death wish. He attacks where the FoE are thickest, and Orcus fights by his side, which drives his anger and confusion further.
See, as I read it, everone was worried that doom would not get there in time. Then suddenly a gate appears and out comes orcus. It is possible I read it wrong and there was a gate to doom in a court yard all along and that i just missed it. It is possible that the gate was offline because doom was offline, and that reconnecting doom turned things back on, and that nobody simply noticed a great big glowing reactivated gate.
As for the moat, you have people worried that things fallining into it might effect the purity. Well my concern is, what happens if you simply march undead cannon fodder in with no other purpose than to die and pollute the water. If you aren’t sure about a lich, what about 50,000 skeletons?
It really isn’t blood and guts I’m after, it is the emotions. The feeling like the home team is on the verge of losing, and then out of nowhere help comes from an unexpected quarter. Heroism and sacrifice.
I mean take Hilda. For the last Hundred years she has had all the mana she could want, has a direct link to her god, snd suddenly that is taken away from her? And there is no panic? She has no interest in wading out and smashing a few zombie heads? None of the other Avatars do either! A few priests say “Why have you abandoned me”. And that’s about it. When at that point litterally everyone psychologically should be wetting themselves. Hell even the berger meister has had a direct connection to tiernon for millenia and yet he acts unflappable.
And strategically the undead turn off the connection to the higher relms and then give them hours and hours to find a solution instead of striking when and where the loss would cause the most damage?
As for the battle itself, you have the perspective of the liches & raymond the damn! plus exciter. You have the bergermeister and tiernon talking about the battle, you have talarion chatting with his sword. But it is all indirect. Again, no triumph and defeat. No shield members puling of a martyrdom in front of an archon and the feeling of loss by that archon about an inability to go against Fallon’s dictates, or conversly sainting that martyr despite fallon.
I think the point about Talarion is that the moment he is already fairly demoralized, anything more and I suspect that you might want to leave a catatonic Paladin quietly in the corner talking to himself.
Honestly, right now it reads like you just want to keep screwing him over with the Nature of Demons. Give him a little room, let him pull himself together a bit, and then strike. Think of fishing. If you hook a marlin you don’t just keep reeling it in, you try to wear it out, by sometimes letting the line out, sometimes reeling the line in. You are interested in the long game, you want to tire the fish out.
I’ll be honest, I’ve read your 3 books like 9 or 10 times, and I had no clue that Tom was related to Tiernon. The reveal was almost whoa… jump the shark much. I mean I could see if Tizzy said Tom I’m your father, that I halfway expected. But this. Way too much way too soon.
Volund periodically goes to check in on the monitoring D’Orcs in the Tataurus control room, yet Tom needs the wand of orcus to actually get in
I think in part the problem is that we really don’t have any idea of where we are going. What is the point of this?
Are we just here to watch Tom grow? Watch him secure Mt. Doom? Become a power in the Multi-verse.
There is a growing conflict with the different parties, the heavens, the mages, the various nations, the Abyss, Tartar Sauce (my spelling check changed Tartarus to tartar sauce I thought it was funny so I left it.) But we really don’t know where it is headed, what is the point. It is obviously not between good and evil, rather politically ambivalent and politically ambivalent with an propagandist of FOG vs FOE.
Or is it about getting access to “The Book”
I think that you might take the view that you are setting up your pieces on a chess board and that they are moving in position and getting ready to strike in the next book.
Quick question.
The gods throw things into Taurtaurus, and they get processed At Mt Doom. Should there not be a backlog of allthe Titans that could not get processed while Mt. Doom wasn’t powered. I know the prison itself had a different power source, but were Dorks continuously filling this prison during their dark age? Or were titans just being thrown down and ignored.
If they were being imprisoned by the D’ Orcs then would not this duty have been enough to keep them from being depressed, or could they not have used some of the excess prison power for their own needs?
If the D’Orcs were not processing prisoners, would there not have been a whole bunch of titans, cast into the pit after Orcus, waiting at the door for tom to open it and let them out.
Just wondering since they needed a key to get in.
What was the problem with Hilda. She was the best part of book 2. She was book 2’s Tom. The reason I kept reading. I’m happy with the way things turned out. All too often in self published books you get some uber main character who is over powered, who just breezes through the plot with deus ex machina saves and shallow secondary characters. Terry Mancour and E. william brown are two fine examples of this. They are the Fantasy for the adolescent male who never grew up crowd. Making it not entirely about Tom lessens this. So while some of the other sections are boring as fuck, they are still worthwhile.
It would also be nice to cut some of the referrences to the grudge match between Tom & telarius. Especially later in the book. For instance when they are in oorstmath and the two G named rampant guy’s meet up with the Rampant chick do we really need to discuss the demonic battle yet again, or would it be better to discuss the upcoming trip into the abyss.
I mean in some respects it seems the Abyss journey is a grand unveiling saved for the when we first see the inferno. But really we all sort of knew that was the direction things were headed in.
