Afterword - Book 5 - Chapter 22 (Patreon)

Chapter 22: Facing a Legend

In which CrimCat once again overestimated people's ability to recall things.

This is actually a really weird issue as an author, and I'm finally starting to get a new perspective on some complaints I've always had as a reader. As authors, we (you can read that either as royal or as me speaking for all authors, I'm fine with it either way) get to know what conversation topics or events end up proving to be important later on, but it's hard to remember that readers don't have that level of insight normally. They're forced to make their own judgments, and the webserial nature of the story doesn't help recall.

For some reason, Blind Chaos isn't the foremost important part of most people's lives.

Anyhow, tl;dr, after 21 I got a lot (by my standards) of comments wondering, alarmedly, who 'he' could be, which I somehow never expected.

Fun behind the scenes fact: this entire bit of the narrative was nothing more than an accidental side-effect.

See, when I name-dropped Ranger in book 4, I had no real plans for Ranthia to meet him. It was a throwaway gag about elven arrogance—they claim one of their own people founded a class archetype that must have predated him coming into existence. But when I came up with the scene where the barkeep discovered Ranthia had no memory Skill, she discovered something else too. Ranthia took the hit, assuming it wasn't a serious blow. And she was right. Except, it wasn't intended as a harmless blow either.

Ranthia not having any way to recognize the difference was a problem. A very, very severe one. It's the kind of thing that most immortals would have to learn early on, but by the time most Reman children are brawling with adults, they're already tough enough that it'd take at least some measure of intent for the average adult to seriously harm them. Which means that Ranthia has a unique (and deadly) blind spot in her new society.

I'm still not sure at what point Ranthia will learn the barkeep's history, but I do hope to get to it in-prose, so I won't hash it out here. But her history did give her an opportunity to pick up a few favors that she'd be hesitant to call in for anything even slightly selfish. So I decided to have her introduce Ranthia to Ranger.

Another fun behind the scenes fact: I started writing this chapter intending to write a very different Ranger. He was going to be this cool big brother type, suave and confident, yet genuinely charming. Instead, I somehow ended up with a neurotic bi disaster. I'm legitimately not sure how that happened, but oh my Xaoc, this guy has so much Lucifer (Hazbin Hotel Lucifer, I should clarify) energy.

I kind of love it though? It probably makes more logical sense than what I'd originally planned.

And just in case it wasn't obvious enough: Ranthia isn't the first human he's met. That was how he knows so many details about them—he was there back when they were part of the world!