CIEA archive vol. 6 - mission start (Patreon)

it's been roughly a month since the last one. whoops. lol. this chapter sits at around 44 pages and began production on 26/06/2019.it's the true start of childa innocha's exciting adventure ARC 1: austral overture.

the chapter starts...with adala!that would be childa's older twin sister. (she's older than childa by a few minutes, according to her.) we saw her last time back in chapter 1. what kinda role is will she serve in the future? maybe she won't serve one at all.here we see the little trinket childa holds at the end of 5.5 is a gift from adala. adala has her own copy too. childa's belt is also a gift from adala! what a thoughtful sister.we also see that childa's father gave her selennebel. (its real name being model-1.)if childa was kicked out for being heartless, yet given such a dangerous thing...what is this guy thinking? lol

the real attraction is seeing how childa operates within a team.we got to see how childa bounces off of enemies...now how about allies? specifically, we get to see more of the people that brought her to the base in the first place.Nack Bowpin (codename B-3), is the leader of the group. that's the tall guy with the standing hair and goggles. he uses bombs and stuff and is typically the second-in-command at the base. i say typically because cheri usually upends that and he becomes the third wheel. above all, he appreciates when the people he's commanding follows orders to the best of their abilities.Seth Hanstall (codename sigh-4) is the other guy wearing a beanie. he's a natural born psychokinetic...and also has a short fuse. he's the kinda kid that doesn't tolerate things that he deems uncool or annoying, but is good friends with nack anyways.Eleanor Frighter (codename t-hat-5, nickname Ellia) is the girl playing dress-up as a stage magician. it's note entirely for show; she wields magic to a certain extent and even knows a few sleight of hand tracks as well. what said tricks are is yet to be seen. also yes, she's daniel's (the dude with the baseball cap) younger sister. she's kinda got a no-nonsense vibe to her. or maybe she's just mostly listless.all of these characters would probably not get along well with childa. possibly. so wouldn't it be fun to put them together anyway? lol

though this chapter is based on the team's mission outing...it also awkwardly segues into the power system of this world! it's an awful simple weapon triangle-eqsue structure. "...psychic > spirit > magic > psychic..."there's also a few details and "in-betweeners" that don't fit neatly into each category...and some people have one or two abilities! there's not much to say about it right now since it's not really a focus in the story right now nor have we met a lot of power users.of note, the power users we HAVE met so far at this point are:- psychic:seth hanstall [beginner psychokinetic], lieutenant eltee [weak unnatural magnokinesis]- magic:ellia frighter [hobbyist magician]- spirit:cheri appricotta [you don't think she won against childa through strength alone right? that said she IS still fairly strong, i guess...]those are our reps for each category.i guess another note of interest is that spirit energy manipulation and magic manipulation can be learned by anyone. aptitude affects the rate and efficiency of each person's power output and mastery, but yeah.as for psychic, it's something you have to be born with. there's not a lot of them in this large, open world!

and finally we have another voice to pin to all the destruction...piloting a giant robot! he's not shown now, but this is also technically the debut of "roberto "robbo" ottomen bobit-oros towniel". (or just dr. towniel.)i'll...open that can of worms when i get there. (not that there's much worm in that can.)as for the giant robot...i have no idea why i decided to incorporate robots. i like em and mechs, yeah...but i can't draw them. at all. the design philosophy and such continues to evade me.the giant mech's official name is "hyper-hedgengine mk1".the name for the mechanical soldiers are...uh, they don't have a name. call 'em whatever you like. maybe shitlings.

and now, production notes.

suddenly, the page milestone jumped from 33 to 44! what's up with that? im not sure what was happening as i feel im packing in just about the same amount of content in this one, like any other chapter. maybe im embellishing too much.you'll see the numbers continue to steadily climb up, killing any semblance of pacing i was maintaining thus far. only recently have i been able to start dialing it back for the sake of getting stuff done and keeping the story moving (im only one person after all), but even then i feel like it'll continue to get longer and longer.

around this time, i feel like i started to come to grips with how i'd like to write CIEA. i wouldn't say it's necessarily better, or if it's gotten good, but it's i'm OK with it now. there'll be a few hiccups here and there, but now im not actively embarrassed about showing old chapters! thanks for putting up with it.

there's a 3 month gap between 173 and 174. (those are the pages where childa jumps off the railing to the robot pit, and the hard cut to nack and ellia.)i don't remember what caused it or the reason why, but because of that this chapter took a long ass time to complete. (from 26/06/2019 to 04/04/2020)that's roughly 9 months. it beats chapter 5 by one whole month. i have no words for that other than "that's awful".

chapter's 6 & 6.1 were all originally one chapter. i cut it in half for the sake of my sanity and not burning out.i mean...i think i cut it in half.

so... yeah. that about does it. there was a lot more to say this time around because there was a lot more to talk about. i hope you didn't mind the wall of text, though you can mind it if you want. i'm not sure how to set the text formatting back after putting down bullet points but whatever.

now im curious about how long the other chapters must've taken me.we'll find out next time with chapter 6.1 - hyper-hedgengine. (mission start part 2).

see ya 'til then.