Not A Chapter: Author’s Note And A Quick Sneak Peek

First off, like it says on the tin: This isn't Chapter 43. That should, with luck, be out in a few more hours. Out now! I’ll leave this section up for a bit though. If you want to skip ahead, do a search for ‘Onward to adventure!’, which will skip you down to the bottom.

Now, normally, I wouldn't actually post a bit on conversation with you in the body of a 'chapter', so to speak, but I really wanted to give a big heaping 'thank you' to all the people who subbed to my Patreon over the weekend, especially with my general inability to meet a specific schedule. You guys, especially, are what keeps me going beyond the fact that I love writing, and you've basically doubled my pateron income. Not that it was a lot to begiun with, but that's still several more coffees a month to keep me awake and writing! And well, as you're donating money to me, I feel that at bare minimum you absolutely deserve some kind of explanation when chapters are late.

Especially in cases like this, where there's a very good reason for it, and it's not just me making excuses that I'm busy or something, because I've been working nearly nonstop for since Sunday. Plus, my phone needs recharging, and it's what I write with, so I'm taking a brief break.

The TLDR for you all is:huge. It’s over 8000 words as of the moment I'm writing this note. That’s basically two chapter’s worth, and it's involved huge amounts of decision-making and real-world resaerch. That’s why it’s late.

It’s that large because of all the various questions about the system and the world that I’ve bumped up against, requiring various kinds of research and major decisions on how the Voice and the System would treat things, and these things needed to be established before the final reveal of Jason’s armor.

Very important things, in some cases. Questions like “We established you could theoretically wear sixteen rings and nothing else. Would they stack if they all boost the same stat?”, followed by, “If they do or don’t, what does that mean for the enchantments Jason is putting on their gear? What impact does that have on our world and how adventurers gear themselves?”

For example, if they do stack, that means that most gear will be focused around raw stats, because having a variety of different buffs and special abilities isn’t likely to matter if your opponent is a boring old fighter with 300 Might, and your best stats are sitting around 40. He’ll cut through you like you aren’t even there. It’s the standard MMO trope that makes even 10 levels difference means you're a killing machine or a walking bag of XP for someone else.

If they don’t stack, that means I then need to come up with a zillion new enchantment ideas for Jason, because he’s going to want to put something on his gear. And I need to decide on whether certain things stack while others don’t. As a counter example to MMO’s, in most tabletop games you’ll have things like basic enchantment bonuses to stats which don’t stack, but skill or luck or circumstance ones that do. Jason would definitely know how to abuse that if he could, as well as how to Synthesize things for a given effect - for example, boosting agility, might, mobility, and swordsmanship alongside granting a special power or two would have an overall compounding effect on one’s sword-fighting prowess.

Then, of course, Jason is forging armor. For certain definitions of forge, of course. This means I need to research all sorts of terminology, and decide if I even want to use it. Fantasy literature and games especially are filled with all sorts of incorrect terminology. A pet peeve of mine is a hilariously skimpy pants item from... I think it was World of Warcraft... that were refferred to as ‘greaves’, but when equipped were basically a set of hose and the bottom half of a leotard. Talk about bikini armor. I forget the specific name, but I bet someone could dig it up if they tried. It wasn't Pants of the Naaru, which were cloth and had a similar effect on Draenei, but it was something similar.

Cheesecake aside, this was wholly incorrect because ‘greaves’ historically only refers to the piece of plate armor (and nothing else) that covers the shins, front and back. Leg armor terms do not, to my awareness, have any kind of over-arching term for something that covers the butt and the legs and feet entirely. There’s chausses, which are mail and cover the feet and ankles and shin, a bit like big ‘chainmail’ socks, but those don’t even go up to the knee. Other parts of leg armor include poleyne (knee caps), solaret/sabaton (just the foot), greaves (shins, front and back), schynbald (same, but front-only), and cuisse/tasse (different pieces of upper leg/thigh). And that’s just the leg! Doesn’t even include your bum.

Of course, most of your eyes provably glazed over reading all that. Mine did just writing it, so I don’t blame you. It’s the same issue I had back when writing the descriptions of Jason’s house… excessive technicality isn’t fun to read, but at least a passing familiarity with the subject is necessary because otherwise you’re repeating the same vocabulary and phraseology over and over again, which looks and reads poorly.

Much of my time has been taken up with things of that nature: writing a paragraph or two, maybe a partial scene, and then going “aww crap, how should this work?”, researching it, and then finding a way to work the answer into the chapter because it’s important to establish why Jason did something.

Another thing that jumped out at me partway through was that Jason could finish his whole armor. My original plan had been that he’d do things in stages. That is, he’d get the basic suit forged, and leave most of the hardpoints open, and enchant bits and pieces as he went and as he learned new stuff.

But then I went back through his learned runes listing, and the books he’d gotten from Jerrik (which I forgot to put down in his inventory listing), and saw that I’d established a pretty solid trend on how long it takes him to engrave things. And I realized… he easily had the time to do dozens of enchantments. And that apparently, with skills and Jerrik and Nissette involved, he could outfit not only himself, but Lumi and Kera as well, along with bits and pieces for Ravs/Aldin too, depending on how complete he was with each person.

That meant prioritizing Lumi, because she’s the tank. Kera was relatively low-priority, but also Jason didn’t have to do most of the work himself there (see the sneak peak below). Doing some math, if he started with Lumi, there was also a period where he had a chance to work on rings, and then… well, you get the idea by now.

And so… it’s taken me far longer to get through this single day of Jason’s than expected, because of tons of research and decision making for numerois element and choices on Jason’s part. And I didn’t even montage the armor creation part…I actually time skipped from about 10:30am to 8:00pm after I set the scene and Jason got down to the nitty-gritty, instead opting for a kind of end-point ‘lets show off the final activations and looks of each character’, because true montaging doesn’t work very well at all in pure text.

Finally... to keep those of you who are impatient tided over for a bit, and to prove I AM working hard here... here's a sneak peak at ~1000 words of the final scene, where Kera receives her new robes. It comes at the end of the chapter, and I’m currently writing the immediate portions afterwards, and trying to decide on specific enchantments. If anyone has ideas they want to toss out in that respect, especially if related to things Jason has done in the past, feel free to comment. I’ll be checking back occasionally during coffee breaks

In fact... I'll throw in Jason's full Runic Knowledge set here, too, which I don't think I've ever fully shown. You've seen him get most of them, but several were rolled into mass-learning sessions where you didn't see specifcs, and some of them are new as of the upcoming chapter, too.

Jason's Learned Runes: Spoiler

Just as a note, this isn't a 100% complete list. But it's close. If you want to provide a suggestion that might have come from Jason's tome that happens to be about enhancing living things, beast/plants in particular, feel free to suggest it. You'll be seeing the actual title finally in the chapter propter.

Runes generally get linked into phrases, just like Alchemy, as they're really two aspectsof the same system. Some of the below have very specific meanings, like 'Capacity' which really is more like 'Capacitor' than a reference to container area. But I don't have time to do a full edit of that mess, so here's just the names of them all. Tweaks to exact spelling for any given rune per se are allowed... like 'Abosorb' vs 'Absorption'. Again.. exceptions, but don't have the time to get into it.

Absorption Agility Aspect Barrier Berserk Bolster Capacity Continuous Controller Defense Density Dexterity Drink Endurance Enhance / Enhanced Extend False Life Ferocity Fire (element) Food Fortitude Fox Growth Ice (Element) Impact Induce Intellect Knockback Life (element) Light (element) Lightning (element) Magnify / Magnification Mana Might Mist (element) Motive Perception Preserve Projection Purify (different from Cleanse) Purity (noun, different from verb) Reshape Resilience Resist Serpent Shadow (element) Skill Boost Spatial Stamina Storage Strengthen Temperature Vitality Water (element) Weapon Sneak Peak: Chapter 43

Jason brought a large supply of arcane powder and several mana potions with him, while Lumi and Kera bundled up and carried the armor. They probably could have fit everything into his Haversack, but currently it was still filled with all their camping supplies, and Jason wasn’t totally clear on the bag’s maximum capacity. So they decided to play it safe.

Lumi lit their way with a bobbing mage-light, and soon they were pushing their way in through the front door of Fanciful Finery. Tersk, Nissette, and Jerrik were all present, seated or standing around the front counter.

“Looks like we’re all here,” Nissette said lightly. “Everyone ready to get started?”

“Definitely,” Jason said with a grin.

“Wonderful,” Nissete said. “First things first… Kera, I have something for you.”

Nissette unfurled a long, blue and black robe similar in cut and style to the one that Kera normally wore. The silver trim, however, now shined with a distinct shade of pale blue, and distinctly runic patterns ran along the hem.

She held up a spool of silver-blue thread. “Young Jason here asked me to do some goldwork with this arcanite of his, even going so far as to bring me very specific diagrams of what he wanted. Runes, by the look of them, so I tried to be as exact as possible. Since I know you like the silver, I mixed some of that in along with other metal. I do think it came out quite nicely.”

Jason inspected the runes critically. They looked perfectly fine to him, but there was only one way to make sure, and that was to activate them.

He withdrew four vials of arcane powder, and gestured for Nissette to place the dress on a nearby table. “Uhh…. sorry if this like, catches fire or something. I don’t actually know for sure if you doing the embroidery and me activating the runes will even work, or if the arcanite thread will impart the enchanting threshold bonus or not. I’m really hoping it does. I guess uh… Lumi, stand by in case we need a dousing?”

Nissette frowned in concern, but didn’t stop Jason from performing the final activation. With a swirl of light, the arcanite absorbed the powder and began siphoning off Jason’s mana.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when instead of catching fire or melting down, a portion of the hem twisted and reshaped, and runes took on a distinctly drake-like embroidery pattern.

Jason blinked and looked at the new design in consternation. “Does… does it tap into your mindstate or something? There’s no way what I had you put on there was in any way reflective of Ceri. I didn’t even include the bit of lightning resistance her originals have.”

Nissette clapped her hands together and laughed. “Oh wonderful! I’m so glad it worked. It would have been a shame if it had been damaged.”

“To answer your question,” Nissette said, turning to Jason, “More than likely. That is how most shape changing works. Resize and Personalize certainly work that way, and I gather from speaking to Kera here that her changeling powers work the same. The Voice often intercedes in such cases.”

“Ah, well that explains a lot,” Jason said. Then he turned to Kera, gesturing to the robes as Nissette passed them over to her.

“These are a little different than your current set,” he explained. “Which, incidentally, I could add a bit more to now of you’d like. Especially if Nissette is willing to do some more embroidery work for us. Anyway, these new ones still have your Sculpt Self compatibility, but I’ve dropped the resistance boosts.”

“Huh? Why?” Kera asked.

Jason dug one of the defensive rings out of his pocket and handed it to her. “This is better.”

She examined it briefly before putting it on.

“I’ll be improving the rings as we go along, but they’ll be your source for resistances. These new clothes will instead give a fairly sharp boost to all of your physical stats, will provide more rapid recovery, make you more resistant to things like disease and poison, and a few other things, which may very well be important for you.”

“Isn’t that just Fortitude?” Lumi asked.

Jason shook his head. “Not exactly. I mean, it is, but they’re different runes. Vitality and Resilience do… vaguely different things from our normal secondary stats, and they aren’t stats themselves. The sequences do boost Endurance, Fortitude, and Resolve, but to a lesser degree and they have more nebulous effects as well, like you’ll heal on you own slightly faster, are less likely to get sick, you’ll respond to healing magic more efficiently, generally feel all around better, et cetera.”

“Oh,” said Lumi. “So it would be like… maybe a ‘Ferocity’ rune which boosted Might and Agility, but at the same time made you a little more aggressive and prone to injury. Vague, unquantifiable stuff?”

“Basically,” Jason replied. “In fact there was something just like that in my book, but the drawbacks were.. unpleasant. These two didn’t have anything like though, which was great.”

“I don’t suppose they’d stack, would they?” Lumi asked.

Jason shook his head. “Unfortunately not.” Then he tilted his head, and tilted a hand from side to side. “Well… that’s not totally true. Different runes stack, so like you can have Strengthen effects for Endurance, Vitality, and Resilience all providing benefits to Endurance, but you couldn’t put Might runes on every piece of gear and become Superman.”

“That… doesn’t make any sense.” Lumi said.

Jason shrugged. “No, but that’s how it is.”

Tersk spoke up. “Like I said before, lad, limits to encourage creativity.”

Jerrik nodded in agreement. Apparently he shared Tersk’s sentiment on that matter.

Kera hugged the dress to herself, looking to Nissette. “Can we…?”

“By all means, let’s go get you squared away,” the older woman replied.

Onward to adventure!