I had originally planned on posting this last week and I could use the excuse that finishing End of War took a bit out of me and I thought I deserved a break.  That wouldn’t be true though.  Instead, I’m in the midst of wrapping up a new job and not just starting a new one but also moving.  The various time commitments and stressors did a dampener on my writing time and so I fell back onto one of the items in my backlog to keep the creative writing coming and skipped the check-in.  We’re back on top of things now though.

I will owe up to being a day late getting the final part of End of War out.  The reason I will give is that endings are hard and it took me a while to fully settle into what I wanted for Airka at the end of this story.  When I first started working on End of War a year, I wrote the first four parts and had set out to tell the story with two intentions in mind.  The first was that I wanted to use the story to help expand upon the differences between the Provinces of the Four Heroes and the Silver Kingdom of Aus Argentum.  As the major sources of power in the final Cycle of Illithiust better understanding them felt necessary for telling the story of that Cycle.

More importantly is I wanted to better understand Airka.  An aspect of storytelling which I continue to be fascinated by is how a well crafted character can take the reins of the story and largely tell it themselves, or even lead the story into places it would otherwise have not gone.  I feel this tends to result in more organic and compelling stories.  As we will all hopefully get to see one day when I finish my current novel, Airka is a very important character for that story and I wanted her ready to help write it.  I think that was largely successful as I was able to help define aspects of her character, in particular her hatred of the Silver Kingdom, loyalty to home, and preference to avoid being a focal point (and the clashes these traits make amongst one another).  These I had set out to understand but I also achieved some unforeseen details, such as the scaring of her arm due to the use of the Shard of Lehn in Brokel’s spear which gives her a parallel to Quartes and will help tie her to the role she is to play in the future.

Just as Airka’s development was something I got more than I had even hoped for, there is truth for the opposite.  I mentioned in a recent check-in that one of the difficulties of writing is that the story never feels fully complete.  Looking back at End of War, there are several things which I wish I had played out differently.  Part of this was due to the fact that I started the story, writing parts 1-4, in 2024 but then finished it with parts 5-7 in the last few weeks.  I’m sure that I had lost some of the threads I was interested back then.  One of those looking back is the reduction in the role of Airka’s corporals, not just Wignot but Kara, Anders, and Malcolm.  They largely disappear in the parts I wrote this year until the end and I think that hampers the impact of the story’s climax.

Another thing that I realized didn’t work out as well is the makeup of the Provincial army.  The Provinces are meant to be more open that the Silver Kingdom.  In a setting with Aenesi, Oneidi, Bovini, and Humai/Humans, it’s disappointing to realize I made the Provincials all Humans.  I think it undermines some of the hopeless nobility of their cause, especially when it would’ve been easy to make Glout a Bovini and such.

There are certainly other aspects.  I think Airka’s use of the Spear of Brokel and her family’s history with the weapon isn’t done as well as I would’ve liked.  Perhaps digging into more of the history or having her fellow soldiers have a more detailed and drawn own reaction would’ve helped that moment to have a proper impact.  However, all those together brings us to the question of what does one do when a story is done but the author isn’t quite happy with it.  Certainly some changes could be implemented.  If End of War were to be revised down the line for publication on some other site or in some collection, it wouldn’t be hard to make a few changes, expand a few scenes, and release it as a “Special Edition”.  However, at the same time there are many things in End of War I am very proud of and to change it may rob it of some of its character.  Instead, there are plenty of stories left to tell and the key thing is to keep in mind the lessons I learned here.

Back to the Fey and Bard this week with a drop story.  Where we’ll go from there we’ll see.  I’m beginning to look at all the drop stories with Quartes and Keto and realize that it would be possible to at least organize them chronologically.  I’ll be doing that on the Illithiust page and I can see it creating some interesting opportunities to realize some key point stories to write in the future.  Beyond, I hope you all have a good week.

Go forth and do good things,

Sean