Mandamon

Counting down! Five more chapters and an epilogue left! I actually took words out this week, so each sub is about 4500 words. Thanks to everyone for letting me hog the forum, and especially Sarah B for putting off until next week. SUB 31 Chapter 20, was a lot of fun for me to write, but also pulls in a lot from two other shorter stories (Five Hive Plateau and Journey to the Top of the Nether). Let me know if it works if you have or have not read the other material. Previously: S/E/I arrive in the other facet with their news of the Elg. The Eff and court are there, E has problems with trust, and E/I learn about their folks. The Eff faints shortly thereafter. E battles the voices inside her as they travel to the Ari, and attacks S. In the Ari enclave, I struggles with his image, we learn of the Ari, and E and I use each other's houses for the first time. M arrives with the society to the Imp and is attacked by Elg. People die and M finds himself with more and more responsibility as they attempt to figure out what's going on. They learn the Eff is also killed, and M makes clever use of a portal to save his life. Ri and co arrive on HD's homeworld, gather themselves, then engage the Elg in the Imp. They barely escape, and find out where other refugees have gone. S/E/I learn more about the Ari and find there's only one hammock in the bedroom. They all attempt to pass through the wall, but are stopped by the Elg. S devises a new plan and they try again, with disastrous results. M leads his posse on a hunt, without success, and meets up with R and her posse. Many connections are made. E lives as an Elg for a few days and learns how they work. She also wins over the voices inside. I, meanwhile, dons the diadem and learns the history of the Eff. E/I appear in front of the rest of the cast and fill them in on everything. O gets some long overdue recognition and the whole crew starts planning to fight back. Back with S, he learns about the HoT and what comes next. Then it's off to Re to see how he's working with/against the Ari.

Counting down! Five more chapters and an epilogue left! I actually took words out this week, so each sub is about 4500 words. Thanks to everyone for letting me hog the forum, and especially Sarah B for putting off until next week. SUB 30 Chapter 19. So, this chapter is kind of weird. I feel like the first two parts could technically be cut, though they set up some ideas for the eventual second arc of the cycle, in books 4 and 5. I really want to have the third section in, but if you all feel the first two sections are extraneous, I could attach it to the end of chapter 16. Previously: S/E/I arrive in the other facet with their news of the Elg. The Eff and court are there, E has problems with trust, and E/I learn about their folks. The Eff faints shortly thereafter. E battles the voices inside her as they travel to the Ari, and attacks S. In the Ari enclave, I struggles with his image, we learn of the Ari, and E and I use each other's houses for the first time. M arrives with the society to the Imp and is attacked by Elg. People die and M finds himself with more and more responsibility as they attempt to figure out what's going on. They learn the Eff is also killed, and M makes clever use of a portal to save his life. Ri and co arrive on HD's homeworld, gather themselves, then engage the Elg in the Imp. They barely escape, and find out where other refugees have gone. S/E/I learn more about the Ari and find there's only one hammock in the bedroom. They all attempt to pass through the wall, but are stopped by the Elg. S devises a new plan and they try again, with disastrous results. M leads his posse on a hunt, without success, and meets up with R and her posse. Many connections are made. E lives as an Elg for a few days and learns how they work. She also wins over the voices inside. I, meanwhile, dons the diadem and learns the history of the Eff. E/I appear in front of the rest of the cast and fill them in on everything. O gets some long overdue recognition and the whole crew starts planning to fight back. Back with S, he learns about the HoT and what comes next. Then it's off to Re to see how he's working with/against the Ari.

Hahaha! I mean I guess it would...

I'm sure I can handwave something...

Quite right!

Thanks @Snakenaps! Ooo. That's disturbing. And probably accurate. Thanks for the catch! I'll actually be adding a character in this section from the Kickstarter, so I can have them keep an eye on Re. *waggles eyebrows* Yeah, I was pretty proud of that one. Check. I am finding a surprising amount of inspiration in the last few years. Glad it's tense!

Thanks @Snakenaps! Lol. I think this is a correct assessment. Huh. I actually didn't notice that. So yes, but... That's more or less correct. I'd have trouble if I was reading Words of Radiance too! Just gotta find the controls... Certainly possible! I love this train of thought. I expect the graffiti just spells everything out, but no one can read it ;-) You'll find out! Yeah, the changes I'm planning to make will answer this one a little better.

Aww. Thanks!

@Sarah B - are you sure? I would definitely appreciate it, and I promise I'll stop hogging the forum in a few weeks. If you want to send me the submission separately next week I'll be happy to critique it for you. At least then you can get one pair of eyes on it.

Good idea. I can put this into the other chapter too. I don't really say it, but that's because the non-Neth maji are more used to using it as a weapon! Interesting. I didn't even think of that. I guess I was thinking that if they were going to reveal themselves, they'd go for a form that killed the Elg directly, rather than trying to blend in. Definitely! Thanks @shatteredsmooth!

Thanks @shatteredsmooth! Cool. I really like how this developed. This was one of those things I thought I had forgotten to do, and @Robinski made some comment a while ago about making sure to follow through on the promise that S would take advantage of his anxiety. I went to put it in this chapter and found I'd already done it! Nice. Glad this worked. Yep, this is what I was feeling was wrong about this chapter, but could quite put my finger on it. I'm hoping having the physical "this" goes to "that" will make the realization work better.

I agree. A chapter is a chapter. I did the dead-drop scene too, and have an entire book waiting to be written off of it. So yes, please submit. I can drop back to one chapter for this coming week.

Thanks @Robinski! I just combined all the relevant information from this epigraph, the first part of the letter you read, and the third part into a single epigraph. This one will be replaces with something more interesting, likely some old text about how the Sath kept the Ari. Lol - roasted sweaters. hmm...yes, the intent was that both of them played J, at alternating times. I can take this out, and may anyway, as I'm going to be revamping their characters a bit. It seems like people are confused by them, but I'm not sure why, as they played a largish part with E in book 2. hmm...he's also been mentioned in all three books and has had several speaking parts. I can work on this some more. I intended prey animals in the sense of an animal that serves a purpose in being hunted, like a rabbit or mouse, rather than a sentient species. This was mentioned in the memories with the Eff as well. Seems like the first part needs some work, fortunately, I have some ideas! Lol. Now I think I may need to play this up some more.

Also in for the 25th. (Currently) Chapter 19 is 5370 words and Chapter 20 is 4520 so right at 10k again. If I end up getting in 2 chapters a week, I should finish up on the week of June 15th!

They help with making changes to the HoT, so not just decorative.

Thanks @Sarah B! Thanks for catching these. They slip out a lot while writing! With the changes I'm thinking of, they'd all have the ring (key) but not know they are keys because they never knew the "lock" existed. The "lock" would be a different object.

Thanks @Sarah B! I hope to clear up R's earlier chapter so this one makes more sense. Glad you're enjoying it though!

Nice. There will be an appendix with descriptions of all the species as well. In this book, I'm including the species of this facet, along with pronouns for all the species. Aha...I can do something with this. I think I dropped the thread with the "inverse of a sun" doohickey S almost gets in this chapter. What if he actually grabs it and it turns out to be the "lock?" That would mean it had been hidden from the other prophets, so they couldn't have used the key even if they figured it out.

Thanks @kais! Translated to: "you have so much stuff in here I can't keep track anymore!" ;-) Great! I had a lot of fun writing this one, too. Ha! Glad I got this reaction. Good catch. Will adjust. I'll take another look at this part. the Ari finally broke because they found something scarier than themselves! I'll see if I can make it clearer. They were play acting on the worship to drag the Sath into the fight. I think this is something I need to make clearer in the first Re chapter.

Thanks @Robinski and @kais! Fall, right now, is about 136k, where Seeds is 150k. Facets is only 118k! Hmm...as in they're mostly used for specific relief and aren't as free to do R&D on their own. I'll see if I can clear this up. Heh...I can take this out if I need to. Each of the species in this facet only uses neopronouns, with the exception of the male/female genders of the Nos. How confusing is this? yeah, this is fair. I'll see if I can adjust this so it doesn't sound like S is fully responsible. Also something I need to clarify. Meaning that the first facet has the organization and structure to learn from multiple sources, vs. the house of T specifically is very limited in who has access to the knowledge. Oops. Meant remembering each other. Will correct. Hmm...I need to shore this section up. The house of T changes in the same progression, but the time between iterations changes. But yeah, seems weird to wait around. Lol. Now I have to keep it in! Per your hidden contents, @Robinski, very close! Cool. I was hoping that worked. Yep. This was the part I was worried about with this chapter. I feel like I spoiled the ending somewhere in the middle with the deductions, and also that of course the ancient artifact is going to be special in some way. Would it be more of a reveal to say that the ring can change the iteration of the HoT on command? or that it will reveal aspects not seen before? Or maybe something more along the lines of @Robinski's hidden content? That one doesn't exactly come into play, but it's strongly hinted at.

Overall, pretty good, and as usual, I agree with @Robinski on most points. I also thought the beginning was a little rushed, and I would have liked more description of the masquerade she wasn't going to, so it would resonate a bit more. Also some confusion on which side grandpa is on. Is he the archangel's father, somehow? The fight is good, but a little choppy. The monsters are described as extremely hard to kill, but the four seem to do fine. I do like Robinski's suggestion to add a little more story to the fight. Interested to see how this affects the main plot and whether Mi's friends are toast. Notes while reading: pg 1: I didn't get that Me was at home until her mother started speaking. pg 1: "the Archangel" --Is Me's father literally this archangel? I don't think we knew this yet. Also, why does that factor in to her mother guessing his name? Do all Michael's share some connection to the archangel or something? pg 1: "Ok, maybe three.” --yeah, I've been feeling more chemistry between Me and A than with T. pg 1: Did we know mom was waking a costume? Also is this a cosplay costume or an actual vigilante costume? pg 2: Why does she need knives for Mi? pg 2: "Something had probably just reminded him of one of his secrets" --not sure how this connects to things. Does Mi have trouble remembering his own secrets? pg 2: "masquerade" --aha. I must have forgot about this. pg 3: “A few hikers disappeared this week.” --so does he think this is his friends, or is he using this as an example? I think you've got all the pieces in here, but all the plot points aren't quite connecting, like there need to be a few more sentences in between. pg 4: "beyond disappointed about missing the masquerade" --We're told this happens, but there aren't any emotional attachments to it in place. Is Me looking forward to something in particular? Did they coordinate costumes? What is she missing? pg 4: "I want to talk about school, and my high school principal is walking two feet in front of me" --J is not very subtle, is he? pg 5: "True, but some good came out of just planning to go.” --to the party? On the rescue mission? pg 5: "He almost never talked about his son’s death" --wait, so is his son the archangel? How does one have an archangel for a son anyway? if not, then he'd be Me's mother's father, in which case why is he talking about his son instead of his daughter? pg 5: "gave a very abridged narrative of what her plans had been" --I actually want to know. I have a feeling it would add some good tension in the love triangle/square. Maybe before this chapter? pg 6: "But isn’t that the whole point of college? He thought, only half-sarcastic." --LOl pg 7: "It’s your boyfriends missing ghost hunters!!" --I sort of assumed that. pg 7: "panting like a golden retriever on a summer day" --that's a rather specific metaphor. pg 7: there's some repetition in the description of the camp. pg 8: "She smiled, picturing Mi up on the roof, all alone." --Would she smile about this, since he was sad she couldn't join him? Pg 9/10: The fight scene's good, but could be tightened up. pg 11: "First, she directed energy to his stomach and liver" --I don't know if we need to hear exactly how she healed him. We know she can do it. pg 12: Hmmm...dad's pretty much literally a Deus ex Machina...

Also putting my pre-set two cents in! Generally, I agree with @Robinski on this one. The overall idea of the chapter is good, and I like that we're finally getting somewhere with the inciting incident and how I is going to grow as a character. The main downsides I had with this one were the anachronistic terms (NDA, unsafe business practices, legalese...) and how long it took I to just sign the contract. I think there's about 4 pages of waffling over whether to sign it, where I is unlettered and generally has no concept of what any of this means (as far as I can tell). I'd think after the rat described the fairly lenient terms, she'd be jumping to sign. Heck, I think I'd sign if given this contract. A couple worldbuilding things that caught my attention: Why does M use telepathy? You call out that few use it, but don't explain why. He makes some physical sounds too, so I'm guessing he's not mute? Cow with telekinesis: Do all the 4-legged animals have this? I'd think if they didn't, they'd be reduced to living outside and depending on others if they didn't want to just eat grass (or raw animals). Rats/monkeys/and the more humanoid creatures can get by because they have opposable thumbs. How do the ungulates, etc get by? Still also hung up on the change in governments, as Robinski states above. The new regime seems to have everything pretty well settled, and is working peacefully through everyday affairs. P is from the M monarchy, and I have to say, they seem to have things going well for them. With the bureaucracy they have in place I'm not surprised they've taken over several kingdoms and now administrate them better. I'm put in mind of a renaissance kingdom swallowing up surrounding lagging monarchies like when small city-states started conglomerating into countries in Europe. Really going to try to read ahead some more this week!

Thanks @Snakenaps and @Sarah B! Glad this seems reasonable that they're not going after him. Nice. Seems like this one is working. Exactly. This whole epigraph is a reference to events that set up the first story in Merchants and Maji! *fingers crossed* hoping to pull this off correctly! It looks like a beetle, but can't fly. However you find out more about the top of the Nether soon... Cool. These chapters came across even stronger than I was hoping, which is great! Hmmm...it does sound like that. It's technically in R's POV, but I'll see if I can make that clearer. Glad these are explained to your satisfaction! Ooh. Interesting thought. I am minded of the Sat and their role in hunting the Ar 'out of existence' in the past, a task they were only too pleased to undertake. Interested to see how everyone likes chapter 20! Thanks again!

Seven more chapters after this, and an epilogue! Running right at 10k words total this week, and thanks to all of you again for putting up with all of this. SUB 27 Chapter 18, checking in on the LC and R and how everything is going perfectly fine with no problems at all. Tear it up! Previously: S/E/I arrive in the other facet with their news of the Elg. The Eff and court are there, E has problems with trust, and E/I learn about their folks. The Eff faints shortly thereafter. E battles the voices inside her as they travel to the Ari, and attacks S. In the Ari enclave, I struggles with his image, we learn of the Ari, and E and I use each other's houses for the first time. M arrives with the society to the Imp and is attacked by Elg. People die and M finds himself with more and more responsibility as they attempt to figure out what's going on. They learn the Eff is also killed, and M makes clever use of a portal to save his life. Ri and co arrive on HD's homeworld, gather themselves, then engage the Elg in the Imp. They barely escape, and find out where other refugees have gone. S/E/I learn more about the Ari and find there's only one hammock in the bedroom. They all attempt to pass through the wall, but are stopped by the Elg. S devises a new plan and they try again, with disastrous results. M leads his posse on a hunt, without success, and meets up with R and her posse. Many connections are made. E lives as an Elg for a few days and learns how they work. She also wins over the voices inside. I, meanwhile, dons the diadem and learns the history of the Eff. E/I appear in front of the rest of the cast and fill them in on everything. O gets some long overdue recognition and the whole crew starts planning to fight back.

Seven more chapters after this, and an epilogue! Running right at 10k words total this week, and thanks to all of you again for putting up with all of this. SUB 26 Chapter 17, We find out what S is doing. Let me know what you think! Previously: S/E/I arrive in the other facet with their news of the Elg. The Eff and court are there, E has problems with trust, and E/I learn about their folks. The Eff faints shortly thereafter. E battles the voices inside her as they travel to the Ari, and attacks S. In the Ari enclave, I struggles with his image, we learn of the Ari, and E and I use each other's houses for the first time. M arrives with the society to the Imp and is attacked by Elg. People die and M finds himself with more and more responsibility as they attempt to figure out what's going on. They learn the Eff is also killed, and M makes clever use of a portal to save his life. Ri and co arrive on HD's homeworld, gather themselves, then engage the Elg in the Imp. They barely escape, and find out where other refugees have gone. S/E/I learn more about the Ari and find there's only one hammock in the bedroom. They all attempt to pass through the wall, but are stopped by the Elg. S devises a new plan and they try again, with disastrous results. M leads his posse on a hunt, without success, and meets up with R and her posse. Many connections are made. E lives as an Elg for a few days and learns how they work. She also wins over the voices inside. I, meanwhile, dons the diadem and learns the history of the Eff. E/I appear in front of the rest of the cast and fill them in on everything. O gets some long overdue recognition and the whole crew starts planning to fight back.