Afterword - Book 1 - Chapter 54 (Patreon)

Chapter 54: The Garden Roams

(Original Chapter Title: Ranger II)

Not going to lie, the idea of a greedy bird flying over the Nostrum Sea with multiple links of sausages flapping around still makes me giggle. It's the small things that spark the most joy.

The round has officially begun! Who called it that they'd be starting by visiting a cosmetics shop? Green does things quite a bit differently than any other Ranger team we've seen to date. I also want to stress that the point of cosmetics isn't to make Rangers "attractive," it's to make a presentation even though they fight, toil, and travel. If the Rangers can handle all of that and still look and smell nice, then it makes them feel a bit removed from the world's struggles. Which means those that rely on the Rangers' presence can feel just a bit safer since their protectors seem a bit more than human.

And immediately afterwards, Ranthia has to eat her assumptions! She's still kind of incredibly vulnerable, her emotional wounds are still raw—but Tertia gently lets Ranthia let it out and works with her to get her cosmetics spot on, judgment free. Hardly the stuck up bitch Ranthia was expecting, huh? Ranthia's our narrator, but she does have a bit of an issue with running with her assumptions. I always enjoy opportunities to show the audience that Ranthia isn't infallible—her PoV may not prove to be the truth of the world. I can only hope that it makes readers more aware of the moments where the prose doesn't call out the flaws in Ranthia's narration.

...And then that lesson gets a bit undermined because Hylla, as expected, causes problems. Oathbound [Healers] aren't all the rage, yet, but they're growing common enough that there's people that know how to take advantage of them—especially the naive young ones like Hylla. And thus a thug uses some urchins to lure her into an alley to rob her. Only to get Ranthia'd. Yet Hylla immediately causes more problems! ...So yeah, sometimes Ranthia is right. But, honestly, every world could use more people like Hylla that just want to add some good to the world.

Wyvernflies are one of the few outright original monsters I've created for Pallos to date. I wanted some sort of big bug monster that wasn't just a formorian that improbably survived so many years within Remus. This was written WELL before I started talking to Selkie, so I made my own. I decided to go with a big dragonfly, but dragons are a no-no word in Remus. So... wyvernfly! I don't think giving them Storm was INTENDED as a Fenrir reference at the time, but it definitely works as one. I'm pretty sure I just wanted to show off that the element CAN be useful at low levels—so long as you aren't trying to conjure a full fledged storm.

Ranthia's [Submind] General Skill is one of the few things I'm actually completely happy with how I balanced from this era of writing. Elaine got [Parallel Thoughts] based off of significantly greater knowledge and just Skills building off their forebears. [Submind] is plainly worse (ironically, [Parallel Thoughts] would have probably been Ranthia's first choice too, had she had the same opportunity), but it seemingly meets Ranthia's current needs. And, like she said, if it doesn't she can always try for something else—that's one of the things I really love about Selkie's System, endless flexibility and opportunities to grow and change.

But now it's time for Ranthia's journey to continue. Her next stop is... er, where she started? The life of a Ranger can be complicated.