Afterword - Book 4 - Chapter 23 (Patreon)

Chapter 23: Must Come Down I

(Original Chapter Title: Dreaded Consistency, Must Come Down (pieces from two chapters))

I honestly have no idea when I decided the dwarven [Battlemaster] had Teddy Roosevelt energy, but I did and so she says 'Bully!'

Editing the OG draft can be frustrating sometimes. I can hit a 12k word monstrosity of a chapter and find it followed by a 1.1k speedbump, even as I get into content that I thought was after my "I figured out what I was doing" era began (actual admission on behalf of all authors ever: we NEVER figure out what we're doing). By and large, my edits for release have either polished or expanded content, but reshuffling and restructuring is probably the next most common thing.

Thankfully, there's been relatively few places where I had to remove content (though there's plenty of sections where I wholly deleted and rewrote what was originally written).

Anyhow, we're in a series of chapters that I had to restructure. This chapter is made from a piece of the last and doesn't cover all of the story from the original Must Come Down. These chapters were too irregular, and honestly—if I might be permitted to shamelessly attack past me—the events were kind of oddly grouped within them. So three cheers for editing, even if I'm really looking forward to getting back to actual writing once I finish this book.

Anyhow, to actually talk about the chapter itself: I wanted to touch on Ranthia's initial interaction with Sentinel Aurora here. In the prior chapter, Ranthia made the judgment call that Aurora's [Starship] was the real deal, but while she was confident enough to commit to the rescue, we also see a bit of paranoia. Ranthia uses the banter they briefly share to convince herself that her not-quite-a-friend is still herself, because someone's sense of humor is one of the hardest things to fake. It's not exactly a formal parasitic screening process, but it's enough to give Ranthia confidence in a judgment call she already made.

One thing I try to keep in mind while writing is how the System would affect and change things. One-woman (or man) dynamos of death and destruction are, in some ways, the least of how war is altered; yet we can all name Fantasy authors and stories that treat that as the limit. I do, at least, strive to do better. A cheap, yet effective tactic that came to mind is using a Sound classer to sow confusion and discord by having them mimic whoever is shouting orders. ...The shimagu don't do it well, but the soldiers inside Remera are already a bit confused because of the conflicting orders of the base commander and Sentinel Grace—so it does more harm than it should have.

At least until a certain dwarf has her moment in the proverbial spotlight. An unstoppable juggernaut in motion outranks a commander being relayed by some putz that isn't even standing in her path.

Moving on, one kind of frustrating part of writing Blind Chaos is my decision to stick (mostly) to Ranthia's point of view. There are times I step out of it with interludes (and, in book 1, with PoV-swaps that I was convinced to keep; even if I haven't used that ever since), but by and large, I try not to give the audience too much information that Ranthia herself doesn't possess (...or vice-versa; gods and goddesses, I hate when books/shows/etc. try to surprise the audience by keeping the audience out of the plans set by the characters they otherwise watch). I'll do it occasionally to provide major context for future events (or, in the case of Captain Bantu, for fun), but I refuse to do it every time major world events happen. Especially when Ranthia will learn the extent of the information, at least as it affects her, in the future.

All that to say, thanks to Aurora's arrival, Ranthia finally gets to learn what the heck has been going on with the Legions and the shimagu's frequently absent twins. And yes, I had fun writing the scene where Aurora pulled Legion Brass Authority over the base commander.

The battle itself was a bit of a non-event because the shimagu were still awaiting their replacement [Leader] that could handle large-scale tactics. Group [Leaders] were still alive, of course, but they lacked the drive and experience to seize greater command. The shimagu have layers of authority they're permitted to wield, and Ranthia succeeded in killing the well-concealed top of the local heap. Also, to be less mean: it's kind of hard to keep an army cohesive when their place of safety and power burns—along with a great number of their peers.

But the threat is ended and time begins to trickle by as things return to 'normal'. However briefly.