Eagle of the Forest Path

Try the Real Names section on http://www.fantasynamegenerators.com for inspiration.

Elantris, actually.

Wow! That's like, half as tall as Mount Everest. (Discounting that Everest is on a plateau, so it's not actually 30,000 feet from foot to top) That depends on what you want. Granite or basalt are sturdiest, so you can dig out more without compromising the structure and house a larger population. But if you use weaker rocks like sandstone or even limestone, you can add more risk of cave-ins, which is something you might like in the story. I suggest that you first figure out what you need from the stone for the story, then find a geologist or engineer to work out what materials work best for that. The alternative is that you decide on the material(s) first, then find the geologist or engineer to work out what that means for the story. Okay, then! But what happens if the magic fails?

No idea about the excavation thing. But concerning the towers, how tall do you want them (it), and how steeply angled are the outside walls? 304 mi squared, is that a square 304 miles on a side or 304 square miles? Since you talk about excavating, I assume they're natural features, so what kind of rocks they consist of is going to be an important factor. A granite spire is going to be different from a sandstone spire. More than that, at the sizes you're talking about it's probable that any one spire is going to contain areas of different types of rock. Do you have a plan for ventilation and lighting?

Big events brought to a satisfying conclusion. Although, I don't understand why the mayor tells the E that she agrees to the contract. It was signed under duress, after all, and the E is making it pretty obvious that he'd like to just rip it up. W kind of reminds me of the French guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark, I'm sort of sorry there's no face-melting (but that wouldn't be appropriate for your target audience, anyway). Far from promises made at the beginning I feel you made a promise here at the end: I look forward to reading 20.000 fathoms under the Nether .

Yeah, I hear Alaska's terrible for surfing.

No problem, simple google search (la brea tar pits magic book). Huh, I actually hadn't read the full synopsis yet. That is bothersome. Here's some actual feedback from me (mostly questions though): Magic - spell levels -> are the levels solely dependent on the type of bone, or more on the amount of energy? i.e. if eating one chicken bone allows you to cast one lvl1 spell, would eating two chicken bones allow a lvl2 spell or just two lvl1s? - unicorn horn -> would that include narwhal tusks, which vikings sold as unicorn horns (proving that the proverbial Nigerian prince isn't just a modern problem)? - extraction -> is the burning etc. required, or is it more of a practical issue? could they just munch on chicken bones in a pinch (beware of splinters)? -> -> just read @Jorville 's comment on this and I disagree with his premise: the extraction could be considered as a type of distillation, getting rid of the useless parts of the bone while keeping the active component. Setting - I joined RX after you'd finished with W&S, so what's the tech level here? Since it's based on the UK, is it Tudor, regency, Victorian? Scene 1 -> I'm assuming from this that magic is illegal without some sort of permit. Or is it the dumpster diving that's the problem here? Scene 3 -> If you want to avoid a LL fanfic, maybe avoid the ageing spinster spymaster? Scene 4 -> Why did D pick J? Because he's the only mage in the crew? (edit: aaah, just got to scene 8...) Scene 5 -> Did G, as the planner, have a reason for choosing this particular house? The storm feels sort of deus ex machina to me, could be fun to have the crew engineer a disaster they can clean up afterward. Or imply that D had government mages cause the storm? (edit: again, scene 8) Scene 7 -> Are they covering up something with the staged fight? Scene 8 -> Hold up, didn't you say G has no hidden agenda? I know you also said unreliable narrator, but isn't that going a bit far to even do that in the outline? Scene 9 and 10 -> textbook example of the scene-sequel format. Scene 11 -> I don't see why this can't just be part of 10. Overall this looks promising. I did notice that basically all the interactions are J and C, with a little G and D thrown in. P and K don't show up in the outline at all, so what's their role in the story, besides filling out the crew roster?

I think I remember that as a book of the week on WX, if we're thinking of the same thing it's California Bones by Greg Van Eekhout (pronounced ache-how-t)

Well, yes they could have been terraformed, I've actually been assuming that they're similar to environments on good old Earth from the start. But that doesn't change the fact that you've got a limited surface area, and therefore limited resources. Small(-ish) islands (the type you find in the sea) can't support a population of large animals, such as elephants for example. Interestingly, you can have dwarf versions of such species on those islands. I'm thinking of Flores Island in Indonesia, where there used to be not only mini-elephants, but also Homo floresiensis, which apparently got nickamed "hobbit".

I'd say mainly birds, and glider-type critters like flying squirrels. (and bugs, lots and lots of bugs) No large animals in any case, as food supplies are going to be limited (except for those that can get back and forth to the surface).

Oh, drat. I wanted to do something like that too. How about if you make up a room-temperature superconductor (let's call it Islandwavium)? That doesn't qualify as "relatively natural" anymore, but whatever. I mean, we're talking fantasy here, right? Islandwavium should be strongly diamagnetic, so it ought to be repelled by the planet's magnetic field, if I understand correctly.

It's been rather quiet in the lounge for a while, so ... Funny thing happened recently. I've been reading A short history of nearly everything (described as "a rough guide to science") and it contains a formula for Hubble's law (about the relationship between the distance of galaxies and the velocity at which they are moving away from us each other). It was printed here as H0 = v/d I read it as "ho equals vee dee" (and then rolled around laughing for a while). PS: It's also where I got my new member title, as the book points out that ambergris - a fixative used in perfumes - is actually the parts of giant squid that sperm whales can't digest. So to quote the relevant footnote: "The next time you spray on Chanel Number 5 (assuming you do so), you may wish to reflect that you are dousing yourself in distillate of unseen sea monster."

Words to strike fear into the heart of anyone who's ever watched Blackadder.

This is just begging for a Beer Hall Putsch joke... I only wish I could think of one.

It's the Protag(verb) slider, how proactive the character is. A piece of advice from the podcast that stuck with me is to audition the character for a certain purpose. If you start from the plot, you have something the characters need to achieve. So take that goal and think of the absolute worst person you could possibly task with achieving it. An example of this would be Rincewind from the Discworld series (who's also an example of a character with a competence slider at 0, by the way).

I sort of like the sound of "The lights at the top of the Nether" For more inspiration: Jules Verne bibliography (Just on the off-chance you haven't checked there yet).

If you can specialize in two branches, and on top of that have (limited) skill in non-specialized branches, I'd get rid of the Specialist/Generalist distinction entirely. Beyond that, I like that Digital is one of the branches, but I'd need to know more of what the magic is supposed to do to give more feedback. "A combination of Allomancy and AonDor" really doesn't tell me all that much. In general, for any Sandersonian type magic system I'm creating, I ask myself a series of questions: Is the system intuitive to use? (or do you need to spend a decade meditating on some mountaintop before you have the mental control to make it work?) Where does the power come from? (How is the magic "fuelled," because Sandersonian magic isn't supposed to break conservation of energy. You don't actually need an answer for this one, but it can add flavor to the system.) What are the limits and/or downsides to the system? How do you become a user? (In your case you've already said you have to be born with it, but is it genetic, blessing by a Great Old One, pre-natal vitamin overdose, ..., or just totally random?) Does it show that someone is a magic user? (Can they pass unnoticed in a crowd, or have they got horns or wings or glow in the dark?) I've got more of these questions, but these should be enough to help you along a bit.

And if all else fails for making choices: flip a coin. As mentioned on the webcast (several times, I think), Philip K. Dick wrote The Man in the High Castle by deciding stuff with the I Ching, so randomness isn't an automatic fail.

Or half a Sanderson novel.

You could make it a theme that luck can only do so much. The heart attack thing for example; if the hitman has clogged arteries from a fatty diet, the luck thing can make it happen at the best possible time for your compounder, but if the hitman is a thirty-something or younger who watches what he eats and doesn't smoke etc. no amount of luck is going to make him have a heart attack (IMO, anyway). I think you're on the right track with making him face a shard, but it doesn't need to be anything so dramatic. Another compounder could do the trick, steel or gold, maybe. Or a worldhopper of some sort. And those medallion things from BoM open up a whole host of possibilities. For having him lose his metalminds, make the metalminds a liability, a confrontation with a coinshot for example: he's standing at the edge of a cliff with a coinshot pushing his bracers, but - oh fortune! - the bracers luckily come undone, pushed away into the canyon, leaving your compounder free to punch out the coinshot's clock. A final idea is that you could have the hero tracked because of his chromium minds' effects. Kind of like Ta'veren in WoT, which is essentially what feruchemic chromium does, as I understand it. EDIT: Sorry, one more, no, two more things. You could build in a quirk in the fortune that makes it something of a drag sometimes. Like, it can't distinguish between good luck right now, and good luck in the long run. It could be lucky right now to roll double sixes for a big pot, but later on it's going to have some guys named Butch and Tiny try to pummel you into oblivion. And the chromium mind defaults to good luck right now, regardless of later consequences. And: Have you considered turning it around? Making the chromium compounder the villain instead of the hero?

Wouldn't you know, usually? Your publisher didn't get you drunk to get you to sign something, did he? (Congrats on the potential book deal, anyway)

Could also be a typo (brassiere).

Yes. I'm working (and have been working for some time, on and off) on a magic system that includes an emotion manipulation component. (I've always felt a bit "iffy" about emotional allomancy by the way, since it seems like you can do whatever with it. For example, IIRC in HoA Vin riots someone's sense of calmness, how is that any different from soothing someone's agitation? Compared to the rest of allomancy, it's really loose and undefined, which bothers me.) Anyway, back to my system. I was browsing the net and came across the Hindu philosophic notion of Gunas. Emotions are messy and complicated so there's always going to be a lot of wiggle-room, but after encountering this idea I based (this part of) my system around the thought of emotions being (predominantly) attached to one of three "principles": Sattva(good, constructive, harmonious), Tamas (dark, destructive, chaotic), and Rajas (passionate, active, confused). But more than just this system, it's got me trying in general to think about things less "dually" in a yes-or-no way, and more tripartite, which can be something of a challenge. I'm still doing research into the concept of Gunas, trying to make sure the system is internally consistent, which might qualify for the dreaded syndrome. But I consider it more "getting ready" than "getting ready to get ready".

I too am a crazy outliner. As for how I do my outlining: I use the Snowflake method. I think it's a pretty good way to steadily build up an outline without getting overwhelmed by trying to do everything at once. I only use what's described on the website I linked, though, I don't use the book or the software they're trying to sell (I'm not that crazy about outlining).

Apart from the prophecy that's basically Hunchback of the Notre Dame (at least, the Disney version). Which doesn't mean it's not still a good idea, of course.