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Chap 54/55 discussion thread (contains spoilers)
🕑 Added 2023-08-17 16:32:22 +0000 UTCThis a thread for chapter 54/55 direction discussion and the author's intended direction.
First in 54...the company fleeing the city. That was always intended to be the result of the siege. A desperate run from the enemy. It was to show that Castile was 'expendable' by the Empire. The reason for the flight which I do not know if it works was 1) the city was going to fall and the regular army was going to surrender, 2) legionnaires and legion mages are usually executed by the Bartiardians. I do not know if this worked and I added in knowledge of the regular army surrendering to make it more plausible of the hasty exit from the city....Does it work?
Second in 54...the escape route. the aqueduct was too obvious and seemed like it would be watched. A section was collapsed so it was not an ideal route. They ran into the scouts/observers and the flare was sent....because it made sense the aqueduct route would be watched. Does that work for you all? It sparked the urgency of the escape which is what I was going for.
First in 55...taking the injured legionnaire with them. it feels like a plot hole as it would slow them down carrying the body after they were discovered and knew there was going to be pursuit. if Castile leaves him behind does it hurt her reputation with the company? the man was not even part of her company.
Second in 55...the big sticking point for most. what should the MC do? his decision to try and negotiate with the general's sister was met with skepticism. After Castile says there is no hope and they plan to make a stand at the reservoir, he has a few choices:
1) go with the company and defend the from oncoming Bartiradians
2) hide somewhere....he thought about this option....hollowing out a rock and crawling inside
3) attempt to negotiate with the elf rider
4) deposit the elf girl for the general to find and maybe he will stop pursing them
ALTERNATE ENDING FOR CHAPTER 55....
Instead of staying behind, Eryk follows the company to the top of the crater lake up the narrow stone stairs. A long 100-foot climb of smooth wet stone. He gets the bright idea to coat the steps in butter (yes that butter). He descends alone to the bottom and is attacked by Alhar. He uses the elf in the same way...appear behind Alhar and hit him with a fireball. He races back up and explains that he was attacked by two people...the fireball mage must have been invisible as his legion mates saw her appear. Maybe Blaze gets an arrow into her as well. I dont know if it works either but it is an idea.
Going back to why he captured the elf rider...he was not capable of killing a young woman at the time. The only way I change that part of the story is if he lets her go instead or captures her as a POW.
SPOILERS (Dont Read if you dont want to know): HOW IT GETS RESOLVED IN CHAPTER 56.....
There is a desperate fight in the dawn light by the reservoir....a drake outrider mage appears (yes that mage) in the skies to chase off the griffins and is a signal the Duke's army is close. The general withdraws to defend the city since he has his sister and does not need to risk his men for revenge. It was important for the general to get his sister back else he probably would not stop trying to get them.
Comments
lenkite
"Then the mage appeared and was casting a fireball spell, I think... I surprised her with a vial of lamp oil." Please. He could have just said the Mage slipped on the butter. I mean he did butter it up.
tibbish
shift + enter lets you space things out like this Helps with readability
Nicholas Ramage
I love your stories! I am quite addicted to them. "A Soldiers Life" brought me here. This is my first comment and english is not my mother tongue (German). I have some problems with the escape route: A balcony overlooking the going into the city. It was a good thirty-foot drop to reach the aqueduct. 36 (!) people abseiling (9,144 m) and one is wounded on a stretcher, oh my! Why over the balcony? Why not go straight to the Aaqueduct gate. Exhausting complex diversionary maneuver! btw: Legionnaire Artorius, the man with the damaged leg. Some surprised we were taking the man with us even though he would slow us down. Eryk doesn't even think about the fact that it would be easy for him to transport the wounded in stasis (Lack of Aether? No, because he can obviously move the dead archer to his storage room.) Okay, then he would be compromised, but no thought? The way over the aqueduct is known and obvious to both warring parties. “We followed the Bartiradian mage here. He killed all the guards and escaped along the aqueduct.” [So, on the other side of the aqueduct there once were special forces]. It is therefore also to be expected that the enemy will guard this possible escape route. The Bartiradians can move freely on the aqueduct from the reservoir to the gap/drop. There were large planks here to bridge the twenty-foot gap (... and maybe all along to the Aaqueduct gate). The best place for such an observation post would be on the top of the aqueduct and the best place for a camp for an observer force would then be at the beginning of the aqueduct, i.e. at the reservoir. Depending on how large such an observer squad would be (and how fast reinforcement can come), serious problems would arise for the fleeing legionnaires. First, it would be very easy for Bartiradian archers to fire on the legionnaires while they were rappelling to the ground. Secondly, the path to the reservoir would be cut off for the legionnaires. The stairway to the reservoir could become a death trap if the enemy awaits them at the top. Adrian grimaced, holding his arm, as he asked, "Do you think they have men already ahead of us?" The enemy could move much faster on the aequeduct than the legionnaires on the ground with the wounded. And: .„Why did Alhar call me a void mage? I definitely did not look like a mage.“ Also: Castile was in full legionnaire garb. “She does not want to be targeted by the enemy, so she is in disguise.”
Valderan
I just recently listened to Bill Hayder's advice on writing which is that your audience is usually pretty good at picking out what is wrong with your story but is almost never right about how to fix it. Writing is a personal process that you sort of need to figure out yourself or you risk a tale that winds up incohesive as various comittees dilute your voice. With that said! I think a story that is engaging has a lot of elements done right to make up the "punch per word." Where I think this pair of chapters fall down is agency and surprise. It felt like the aquaduct was telegraphed and prepped as an escape route so hard that the fact it worked at all was anticlimactic and made your antagonists strategically incompetent. They comitted in the city due to speed concerns so that might have left the encirclement to be thinner than they wanted but it clearly didn't require Stonewall Jackson to predict which way the Legionnaires would run. Perhaps if Castile was canny and placed her fastest runners at the gates with orders to flee like hell once the army started surrendering then it would preserve the illusion that the Legionnaires were comitted to the defense and not fully kitted out for the escape? I like the butter plan. It's creative and bizarre and surprising and gives a little num num to those readers that have a post it note on their computers of Eryk's current inventory. I was sort of expecting Eryk to drop the fire mage elf girl in front of a group of soldiers after them and then grab her again immediately. It would bottom out his aether but I gather that dumping material doesn't require much and I'm unsure of the mechanics of grabbing living creatures. It currently feels to me that he can grab whatever he wants at any level of his current aether and it just zeros him out rather than requiring X amount of aether. I'm likely wrong but that is my take. If he did this, then the race would really be on since the opposing army would see her, then see her disappear again and realize that its a pocket skill, not an oblivate skill. That would change the dynamic from revenge to hostage negotiation but Eryk's now completely out of gas which is always fun. That could still happen and would be kind of funny if Eryk wound up grabbing her again after she joins in the revenge hunt. Then in ten chapters when she can't get over her shame and seeks to put an end to that period of her life by hunting Eryk down with her brother's blessing he grabs her again but just has her in his inventory for f'ing ages along with all the other random crap he's got until an awkward moment when someone forces him to dump everything and he's like "ohhhh righhhttt.... the elf girl." To escape the stand off I'm currently expecting Eryk to grab as many soldiers as possible (or just Castile) in his pocket dimension and then do some crazy leap off the resevoir to crunch on the rocks below. Then fix his shattered ankles and take advantage of his dope endurance to make an inhuman break for it. Anyways, not the strongest chapters you've presented since it felt like you might have been rushing through the stuff you didn't care about to get to the really cool part you had planned. Still enjoyable, still cohesive, maybe just not doing as many things at once as your previous recent chapters.
Inner peace
I dig it bruh!
