20160118 - The First Majus in Space pt4 - 5307 words - Mandamon

[Mandamon]

Previously, Origon attends a gathering called by the Methiemum species to reveal a new technology.  It turns out to be a space-faring capsule, but the majus pilot is assassinated before they can take off.  Origon happens to be the right kind of rare majus to take his place, and decides to do so.  He loses much of his potential flying the capsule, and barely manages to crash on the surface of Ksupara.
On Ksupara, Origon and the crew discover a growing anomaly, which he calls a Drain.  Origon is weakened from piloting the capsule and the Symphony cannot touch the Drain.  He barely manages to open a portal to allow the crew and him to escape.

Like last time, Let me know:
What bores you
What confuses you
What you don't believe
What is cool

UPDATE: from the comments two submissions ago, I've adjusted the magic system from using a person's "light" to their "song," using the notes that make up their own existence to create the change.  Let me know if it works for you.

Sorry folks, slightly over the 5000 word limit.  It's all due to the new edits I put in!
Thanks!

[king007]

Pg2: “Rilan followed him out the door. He suspected it was to make sure he didn't fall over.”

 

‘He stopped for a brief moment and examined them. And something about them seemed oddly familiar about them. "The assassin," Rilan said, still walking.  He could catch up to her easily with his long legs, so he stood for an extra moment, watching the guards, who looked steadily straight forward.  He had almost forgotten about the assassin. Something was bothering him about them, and he caught up to his old friend in three large strides. "Whose guards are they to be?"  He caught up to his old friend and they made their way across the immense entry foyer of the Mayoral Hall to the room…’

--Too many unnecessary details.

 

Pg3: “Eventually, the location would get around to maji of other species, but the Methiemum might as well have…”

 

“She was obviously the one in charge.”

--I fail to see how that’s obvious.

 

Pg8: “Aditit nodded in agreement.”

 

Pg14: “was just trying to kill me just a few moments ago."

 

Comments:

The writing seems mostly (70%) fluid to me except for some excessive details and awkward phrasing here and there.

 

I’m sorry but I honestly don’t know how to comment on the story. I couldn’t find myself immersed enough to spot weak points in the plot or otherwise; maybe because I haven’t read it from the beginning.

[smgorden]

The flow of the writing seems to be going well, overall, in this submission. We get to see the relationships at play, social tension, and some problem solving. In terms of perceived motion of the plot, it felt a little slow to me, compared to the word count. But otherwise, the problems and suspicions are working well for keeping interest.

 

Epithets and curses: How many sacred body parts does Shiv have? It might not be important to the plot, but I'm hoping you know the answer and why kneecaps and toenails are important to these people. At the moment, it sounds a little loose to me. Not quite serious. Compare to the phrase "ancestor-cursed", which is consistent and suggests the specific behavior of ancestor-reverence/worship in the culture. That's got a lot more information in it, as a phrase, than the various Shiv references (without context).

 

Inifinitives: "we are to be...", "I am to be...", I'm wondering about this choice and what you intend with it. It's consistent in this submission, so no overt problem, but I am wondering what the inspiration is. Is this a pattern you've found in an existing language (that you want to emulate), or did you make it up to draw a distinction between certain groups of people in your story? If it's the former, I'd be interested to learn about the reference point. If the latter, there might be other ways to accomplish the same end.

[Mandamon]

Thanks king and smgorden.

 

On epithets/curses I imagine Shiv's whole body is sacred, being a god, so the point of Rilan's cursing was to be as creative as possible in naming different parts.

 

Infinitives: Origon (and by extension the Kirian species) has a specific way their words come across, mainly to give them a bit of an alien feel. 

 

Any thoughts about the conclusion of this story? Did it work for you?  Was there a sense of closure?  Any promises kept/not kept?  Does it make you want to read other things in this universe?

[Shrike76]

P4 - "non-magus terms" - This sounded wrong. I'd have preferred layman's terms

P4 - Science nitpick: How close is this moon? The astronomers spotting the capsule on the moon with their telescopes is no easy feat. I don't think there's a telescope on Earth that can snap a pic of the Apollo landing sites on our own moon, and our tech here is pretty damnation good. If this is a magic-enhanced telescope, it should be stated.

 

I'm not sure how exactly Origon deduced that this particular guard was the assassin. Something about the eyes I don't recall, but reading on I think that the other race were much thinner? I'd have had to read the whole story in one shot to remember that, but from 3-4 weeks ago I didn't have a chance. A reminder would have helped a lot with a story of this length, and I'm still not sure it works. If the race can be fatter or thinner, even at the bottom end of the scale he should have looked like his own race I think? More or better details regarding what sets this race and the other apart would maybe help make this work, but as it is it was confusing.

 

For your questions:

I would definitely read more things in this universe, I think you've built something interesting here.

 

The conclusion wasn't satisfying at all for me for a few reasons:

1) My first problem is that things wrapped up in commentary rather than action. Origon (a little too easily and without a lot of obvious deduction) solves the assassin bit and then the rest is basically the mayor, Origon, and Rilan standing around and explaining why everything went down the way it did. I was disappointed.

2) The mayor's plan fell apart completely for me. The plausibility of the plan seems so insanely elaborate that I can't conceive of how this method would have been better than just doing it the right way in the first place.

 - If I read this right: The mayor purpose-built a crappy shuttle, designed to fail in just the right ways, so that after assassinating the majus who was supposed to fly it, and knowing that Origon would be in attendance to replace him, that it would sap Origon's strength just enough so that he could barely return, at which point he'd be murdered, and ALL OF THIS in order to gain the sympathy of other species just so that they could price gouge them?

 

O_o

 

 - What if the capsule had crashed on the moon and killed everyone? What if they had sapped too much of Origon's strength (because I don't believe that they could have calculated exactly how much he'd have left) so that he couldn't return?  What if the assassin (He was starving himself, weak people make mistakes) had missed his shot on Tejus? What if the assassin had been caught? What if Origon had chosen not to fly the capsule, or if he'd slept in or been sick or just simply been delayed? It seems to me like the plan could have failed in a thousand different ways and they'd have had nothing at all to show for it at all. They set all this up for sympathy, but any single failure in the plan would have left them without a portal to the moon at all. Would they really have risked it?

- And I don't think that any of this even explains that Drain in the jar? I have no idea what that was there in the capsule for. That, to me, is the biggest unanswered question/promise.

 

Overall:

- I think the worlds, the races, the characters, the tech, and the magic system (which I especially like) are all very interesting in this story, but simply need to be fleshed out appropriately so that the world is clear to the reader. You're packing a lot of worldbuilding into a short story, and normally I'd say hold back on as much as possible, giving only what the reader absolutely needs, but if your plot hinges on those worldbuilding elements then they need to be solid.

- The writing is generally clean, but a trimming pass would help. Cut out some of the excess words and phrases to tighten it up (Maybe go for the 15% that Writing Excuses often touts)

- The plot needs work, mostly because I don't think the conclusion is believable at all, but that's not unfixable. Finding something that works better than this current ending and then writing directly towards that conclusion would fix most of the issues I have. I've read some of your other work submitted here and I think you can do better than this particular ending.

[Mandamon]

Awesome comments, Shrike. I was a little worried about the ending myself. I have a couple ideas to tie in the urn with the assassin, which will hopefully make it more satisfying. This was originally the first few chapters of a novel, but it can stand on its own, so I made that my challenge. The drain ties in with the novel, so my goal was to make this short story as an eventual appetizer.

I placed the moon as slightly closer than phobos and deimos on Mars, but you're right on the telescope. I'll rework that.

[Shrike76]

Awesome comments, Shrike. I was a little worried about the ending myself. I have a couple ideas to tie in the urn with the assassin, which will hopefully make it more satisfying. This was originally the first few chapters of a novel, but it can stand on its own, so I made that my challenge. The drain ties in with the novel, so my goal was to make this short story as an eventual appetizer.

I placed the moon as slightly closer than phobos and deimos on Mars, but you're right on the telescope. I'll rework that.

 

For the moon, that makes more sense. I think Phobos is the closest moon to its planet in our solar system. I'd suggest the easiest way to clarify that is to give us an early scene where someone mentions they've used telescopes to look at minute details on the surface, that way we we know that it's feasible for them to see details of the capsule itself later, otherwise people might react as I did, thinking that what you're describing is impossible.

 

It's always tough to take the beginning of a novel and turn it into a short story, but I think you have a good first step here. You have a decent foundation that you can carve a compelling story out of with a bit of work. If you ever feel the need to bounce rewrite ideas off someone, let me know. I'm happy to help.

[Mandamon]

Thanks! I may take you up on that.

I'll also have at least one other short story in this universe to submit to the reading group, maybe in a couple months. Less magic, but more about the different species.

[Mandamon]

Just did some research on moons and you're completely right, Shrike.  The only way we can see the Apollo landing sites is by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has to dip to hundreds of miles (not thousands) from the surface.  Even taking into account that Phobos (which I'm using as a baseline) is only 5,826 mi (9,380 km) from Mars' surface compared to 238,900 mi (384,500 km) from the Earth to the Moon, there's no way a ground telescope could see something that small.

 

The more you know...

[AuthorityHellas16]

Hi Mandamon. I liked the story as usual, but I did find this the weakest of your four excellent submissions. Still enjoyable to read, but I found the others to pull me in and forge an engrossing story slightly better than this one. 

 

- I think you have a great opportunity to indirectly give more information about the magic system with Origon's post-exhaustion state. Whenever someone comes to hospital from "overwork"-like symptoms, I find that their problems are usually focussed in the area that they overworked. For example, the person with heart failure who comes in after trying to run will have chest pain and shortness of breath, because that's what they overworked. I think if you wanted, you could give a biological basis for the Symphony by giving Origon more symptoms than "weakness." If it's a mental-based skill, give him a splitting headache; if it's based on second sight, maybe make his eyesight blurry; if it's based on hearing the music, you could make him slightly deaf. It's a small point, but it can shed some light on the magic system, as well as making Origon's ordeal (and the consequences thereof) far more visceral

 

- Another thing I thought would make the story leap off the page more is the emotions of the characters. Following the old "show don't tell" rule, if you show reactions linked to emotions, the characters feel much more visceral. In movie terms, you can think of it as Haydn Christiansen vs. Daniel Day-Lewis/Kevin Spacey (I'll let you figure out which is which ). Something like this is a good tool to help you out: https://worddreams.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/how-to-show-not-tell-an-emotion-a-to-d/

 

- As Shrike mentioned, I thought the twist was a little convoluted. I really like the idea of the Mayor being behind the whole failure (it had a real Agatha Christie vibe to it when I read it). I agree with Shrike and think that his motivations are far too convoluted and there was much too much room for error. I won't presume to tell you how to fix it, but if you want to make the Mayor particularly diabolical, you could try and make his plan effectively become a Xanatos gambit. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit)

The other problem I had is that the Mayor is incredibly unsatisfying as a villain. He sweats and he's an obvious coward. It would make it much more satisfying if he hints that he could beat any charge Origon throws at him (foreshadowing potential corruption, if that's where you're taking the story) or defiantly shouting that he did do it (like every Poirot villain ever!). I think having him sweat and run away reduces my belief that he would have the mental cojones to try and ruin his people's investment. 

 

Overall, I really like the story. I love the characters in the same way I love the different species in Mass Effect. I love the settings and the exploration/space opera vibe I got during the shuttle launch. I particularly love the magic system, as it is one of the more original magic systems I've encountered. I look forward to reading more after you're done with this "appetizer" as you called it, as my appetite is well and truly whetted. I do think that the whole thing could do with some polishing (what draft doesn't?) but I can't wait to read the finished product again! 

[Mandamon]

Great comments AH16!

 

- I think you have a great opportunity to indirectly give more information about the magic system with Origon's post-exhaustion state. Whenever someone comes to hospital from "overwork"-like symptoms, I find that their problems are usually focussed in the area that they overworked. For example, the person with heart failure who comes in after trying to run will have chest pain and shortness of breath, because that's what they overworked. I think if you wanted, you could give a biological basis for the Symphony by giving Origon more symptoms than "weakness." If it's a mental-based skill, give him a splitting headache; if it's based on second sight, maybe make his eyesight blurry; if it's based on hearing the music, you could make him slightly deaf. It's a small point, but it can shed some light on the magic system, as well as making Origon's ordeal (and the consequences thereof) far more visceral

I really like the ideas here.  Exhaustion could affect the person's natural rhythm (their music), or affect what their specific House is good at (communication, power, healing, etc).  I'll play with this.

 

 

- As Shrike mentioned, I thought the twist was a little convoluted. I really like the idea of the Mayor being behind the whole failure (it had a real Agatha Christie vibe to it when I read it). I agree with Shrike and think that his motivations are far too convoluted and there was much too much room for error. I won't presume to tell you how to fix it, but if you want to make the Mayor particularly diabolical, you could try and make his plan effectively become a Xanatos gambit. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit)

The other problem I had is that the Mayor is incredibly unsatisfying as a villain. He sweats and he's an obvious coward. It would make it much more satisfying if he hints that he could beat any charge Origon throws at him (foreshadowing potential corruption, if that's where you're taking the story) or defiantly shouting that he did do it (like every Poirot villain ever!). I think having him sweat and run away reduces my belief that he would have the mental cojones to try and ruin his people's investment. 

I fully agree with this.  I was sort of going with a Xanatos Gambit, but interrupted by the appearance of the Drain.  Unfortunately, it didn't come out as strong as it could have been.  I'm brainstorming how to rework it now, and trying to tie in the assassin a little more.

 

If you do want to read the re-write, let me know and I can email it to you.

 

And if anyone does want more, I'm planning on self-publishing a novella in this same universe, dealing with Rilan and Origon about 20 cycles before this point.  I'm hoping to put it out in March.  Waiting on the cover art and formatting right now.

[Robinski]

Details below, but I did enjoy passing some time with Ori and Rilan again – even though I knew the story. This said, I had forgotten many of the details past about half way or so, and therefore it was still enjoyable.

 

The reveal and the conclusion are satisfying, the plan reasonably dastardly. I like that it was not the world at stake, as that is too common (maybe not in short fiction certainly), but that the stakes were more economic and political.

 

All-in-all, a very good job!

 

-----------------------------------------------------

 

“gave an ineffectual tug at the dress” – is it? I felt like there was another word – self-conscious, because, why is the tug ineffectual – what effect does she expect the tug to achieve?

 

“it had been nearly lunch the day before. When had he last eaten?” – there’s a bit of Billy Boyd in everyone

 

“and stuffed it over his head” – stuffed, not ‘hauled’ or ‘pulled’? Stuffed is a pushing motion, which sounded odd to me.

 

“caught up to his old friend in three large strides” – suggestion: long strides

 

“The Mayor's own special guard” – This feels repetitious because the special guards met him at the transport ground, as does this “One of these was the one waiting at the portal for you”.

 

“and the gather maji” – other maji?

 

“and he clutched at her before he fell” – this sounds like he fell.

 

“could result in a portal opening on the other side of the universe” – sidebar: this seems to offer an interesting premise for another story. I wonder if there might not be a foolhardy adventurous sort of majus who would go through a random portal just for the hell of it. I presume that they would always be able to get back? The difficultly, I suppose, being that they might travel to the centre of a mountain / volcano / iceberg / cold vacuum of space?

 

“but Shiv desert me if you can do more without collapsing” – I stumbled over this phrase first time, although I see what you're going for.

 

“He was transferring the way to make the change, not actually making it” – so, is the transfer not the same change, or maybe that’s not a change, but it seems like the same thing he did to the other majus.

 

“his old friend's back stiffen” – I’ve never thought of Rilan as old – early 30’s maybe? That’s not old from where I'm sitting!! But I guess you mean ‘friend of long standing’, but I thought it came across to me like she was 50/60.

 

“Kashidur City city owes you a large debt”

 

“The Mayor finally managed” – I don’t see a reason for capitalising ‘mayor’ here.

 

I got the impression that Rilan froze the guard’s arm, but I wasn’t sure how she knocked him out.

 

“The echoes of the guard's last sentence still echoed very”

 

“I believe we are to be due a meeting with Mayor Nandara” – seems to me that, before, they were going to the Council, whereas this phrasing suggests that they’ve got a formal appointment with the mayor, but they’ve just come from him. It felt disjointed to me.

 

“I didn't...  You couldn't have…" The Mayor spluttered” – For me, he caves in too easily for a seasoned politician and coercer of those around him, which is the impression I have of him.

 

The mayor seems awful dense for someone who reached such an exalted position in the way that he just crumbles under some very light interrogation. I can see the criticisms of others in relation to the ending to the story, but I've just been to see "The Big Short" (really excellent film, by the way, go see it - entertaining, but scary), the outcome being that I am absolutely prepared to accept the lengths to which certain people will go when motivated by sheer, unadulterated greed.

[Mandamon]

Thanks Robinski, great comments as usual.  I'll try to address the parts where you got confused.  Glad you liked the second half.  It was changed more than the first, so that might be why you remember it less.

 

On going through a random portal, this is sort of my reasoning for the species finding the Nether in the first place.  Some crazy maji goes through a portal and ends up in the Nether with a bunch of aliens.  Of course, they most likely end up in empty space somewhere...after all, there is a lot of that in the universe.

 

Yes, the mayor is too dense and cowardly.  I was going on his being innately greedy, but that will only go so far.  I think with all the comments here, I can make it much more satisfying.