18 KiB
[RT] A Hero's War Ch83
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Author: u/elevul Cyoria Observer*
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Score: 25
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Created: 2016-06-22T14:42:48
Post:
Comments:
u/jseah [+9] (2 days later)
Hi there, I'm the author of this story. Quite surprised to see it here! And honoured. Never thought this matched the writing style I expected of this sub (given that I've read HPMoR and SD, and Three Worlds Collide).
I must admit that I certainly did not write this story with the same level of planning that had to go into stories like Mother of Learning (much less SD or equivalent). While I do have a clear idea of the magic system; the culture, characters and even plot aren't charted out to the level of detail in those stellar examples. Sorry about that. bows Also, a large part of the story 'runs' like a simulation. I look at what previously happened, then crank time forwards a little and write down what I think would happen. I know this doesn't bode well for a coherent storyline and I have had to delay introduction of a number of important plot points, but we'll get there. (this practice also generated a few plot lines, eg. Morey's slave rebellion never appeared in my notes until Wind of Hope when I realized what his reaction would be when he got to Illastein)
Yes, I do admit that the first arc is easily the weakest arc. If I was re-writing, I would merge the first and second, ditching the tremor attack. Some of the interactions might change, Banage might eye Cato more as a chess piece than someone useful, but ultimately almost nothing changes.
(tremors need to exist for a different reason, there's a magic system clue hidden in it, so I can't scratch the monster entirely; although I am questioning the necessity of that section of the magic system)If you wanted to skip it, I suggest reading chapters 1, 2, 4, then the Cato's Notes 1 and continue from there. 4 is especially important.
Reading previous threads, regarding the character voice in letters: I understand that Cato and Morey sound the same. It is a known weakness of mine, that characters don't really have a distinct voice beyond rough archetypes, and that section could do with some re-writing. Well, many sections need re-writing.
u/None [+2] (2 days later)
Also, a large part of the story 'runs' like a simulation
That's how I write my stories, though I suck at human interaction and dreaming up good politics.
u/twibib [+2] (2 days later)
Thank you so much for writing this, for me it's right up there with UNSONG and MoL for my favourite story on this subreddit. The attention to detail with the real world science is very impressive and the whole story fills me with the warm fuzzy feeling of "science bitch!"
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+2] fear of last pages (3 days later)
Thank you for the story. From the amount of details given in the story, I’d wager simulating the universe must be a very enjoyable mind game, if one is capable of playing it.
If I was re-writing, I would merge the first and second, ditching the tremor attack (tremors need to exist for a different reason, there's a magic system clue hidden in it, so I can't scratch the monster entirely; although I am questioning the necessity of that section of the magic system).
I’d suggest at least leaving Cato to stumble upon a dead tremor in the first chapters for discovering their strange internal structure. It gives the readers a nice riddle to be thinking over while advancing in the story (e.g.).
Here are two additional suggestions in case you’ll eventually decide to re-write or re-use this story:
I feel like the medieval society managed to adapt way too quickly to technological changes — even if no precise dates are given, it feels like all the changes managed to happen in span of only several years (the last chapter indicates only a year has passed between Landar’s two fights (ch 28–82) with her father, for instance). I don’t think older generations would be able to embrace the knowledge as well as they did, even with Cato’s explanations. He’d have to train a new generation of children to use the flexibility of their minds, or something like that. And even if the know-how and expertise were there, building so many things in span of a year just doesn’t look feasible, even with magic.
same with moral changes in society: things like prejudices, perceptions of human rights, etc would be much more of a problem and technological advancement by itself wouldn’t fix them. I really liked Nik Gorkaviy’s approach in his young-adult trilogy (Russian-only, unfortunately): in it, the protagonists had to carefully consider how each new introduced technology would affect the current balance in society, motivate people to educate themselves through various means (just putting the knowledge out there wouldn’t be enough), micro-manage in some cases with the help of a friendly AI, etc.
The story could become a better young-adult recommendation if the scientific concepts touched in it had some non-obtrusive explanations about them. Not sure what would be the best way of achieving this, however. Footnotes, perhaps?
Also, two questions, if you don’t mind:
- how are you planning to control eventual terrorist attacks and use of WMDs by individuals? I guess you could build a magical internet, link it to the forthcoming power grid and make the grid defend city structures and enhabitants against sudden hostile attacks (similar to how PvP systems work in some MMORPGs). But even then defending against high-power attacks seems to likely to cause a problem.
- same with the environment: even if you can “firewall” whole cities against damage using power grids fed by citizens and mana crystallisations, how are you going to preserve the environment when any amount of power from 2 to 100 thousand magical units was shown to both cause significant amounts of damage to the environment and also be accessible to individuals by the end of the magical revolution? The planet could get really messed up not even a century after the story’s current events.
u/jseah [+1] (3 days later)
Hi, thank you for your comments!
I may have not managed to convey it accurately, but the only inventions that are widespread is the farming tools (this with government decree). Factory work and machines are limited to a rare few cases that are specially built (eg. Razzi's paper mill, Kalny's "not-palm oil" and canning operations, one Ironworker steel foundry), with a few off-screen copycats. The industrial revolution is in its infancy, barely even started. For the most part, most of the stuff are at 'working prototype' stage, where Cato and partners work to create a few working things to show it can be done, then Cato moves on to another project.
Your point on quick embracing of technology is valid, it's only been two years since Cato appeared. In fact this arc was supposed to be about that (interchangeable parts don't work well with a guild with rank-based mastery). I... got distracted by the visit to Iris Clan.
No idea what to do about better explanation of scientific concepts.
u/Nthrown [+1] (3 days later)
Your link is broken, I think you tried to use spoiler tagging but did it wrong.
First, I will say that I really enjoy this story and it's definitely in the top 3 stories I'm following right now. However, I think the pacing and writing have gotten a bit worse in the past few chapters. There's a bit less detail being put in to events and concepts, and some of the writing is a bit confusing, especially the scenes involving relationships and some of the recent letters.
I am worried that your world's expansion and change might be as difficult for you to keep up with as it is for its citizens, maybe even more so. It's really interesting seeing all these new developments and plot lines, but it would be sad to lose the quality and level of detail of the previous arcs.
Anyway, thanks for writing this great story, and I hope you continue! I'm always looking forward to the next chapter
u/jseah [+1] (3 days later)
Thank you very much for reading! I am glad you are enjoying the story.
The alt text of the link is the spoiler apparently. I copied a formatting guide. How do I spoiler stuff anyway?
I do think that my per chapter pacing needs to slow down. Not writing speed, but... uh... plot speed? Essentially, too many things are happening to capture all of them in ~4k words per chapter. The number of possible side stories are quite insane:
Kupo and Tulore make and test antibiotics (also about medicine and the political intrigue behind the Order of Pastora)
Ka and Clan Two, and the cooperation with Fort Yang repelling Night Cryer attacks
Danine, her little gang, the two lovebird hunters and discrimination against demihumans
There's another one with Amarante and Vorril (+ the conflict against zombies) but that's small
To a large extent I am sacrificing all the sidelines to push forwards with the main two, only catching up later at the end of each arc.
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+1] fear of last pages (4 days later)
Your spoiler misused a
/sinstead of a#s(should’ve copied it from this sub’s sidebar), though it still works as a hover-tooltip text.How do I spoiler stuff anyway?
Two main ways of doing that on reddit, one of which you’ve already used (HTML link mouseover text, could be unreadable for mobile users). The other format depends on the subreddit’s custom CSS — for instance /r/rational/’s syntax is
[spoiler text](#s "spoiler content")(so it works as both a CSS style spoiler and as a fallback HTML spoiler) and /r/HPfanfiction/’s is[spoiler content](/spoiler)— and in my opinion is worse because it doesn’t work for those readers that have the custom subreddit style disabled.Compare:
- should work as HTML mouseover
- should work as both CSS style (on this sub) and as a HTML mouseover if the custom-CSS is disabled
- should work only if the custom-CSS is enabled on this sub
- should not work here, and should work on /r/HPfanfiction/ only if custom-CSS is enabled on their sub.
Your discussion with /u/Nthrown also reminded me of another problem: some characters — especially some fukas and questing knights — were rather intestinguishable from each other because there wasn’t much character development for them (they were too bland), because they were being showcased too rarely, or both.
u/Nthrown [+2] (4 days later)
You replied to me, not u/jseah
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+1] fear of last pages (4 days later)
I replied to him, you just got a redbox because you were mentioned in my comment.
u/Nthrown [+2] (5 days later)
Oh cool, didn't know that was a thing
u/Nthrown [+1] (4 days later)
Maybe write the sidelines as separate chapters later? Reference them in the main story, but don't put them in directly. That way they aren't totally lost or compromised?
Idk :p
u/bumbiedumb [+1] The Polity (2 days later)
I love your story alot! Keep it up! Though i have some question in mind. Do Cato have plans to issue a new currency for Minmay bank?
I love to hear more about this as in the past banks helps safeguard money for merchants travelling from one place to another without the risk of transporting large amount of coins (e.g. Minmay -> Corbin) to do transaction. Coins such as Rime and Telins takes time and resources to be minted. Banks plays a huge role in financing new technology that Cato is churning out and as the cost grows, Credit is needed to finance large projects. Banks could be used as a diplomatic edge for foreign relations (e.g. World Bank/IMF/AIIB). Providing loans and aids may ease talks and bring advantage to Minmay. I'm Excited to see how Minmay becomes a gamechanger in terms of Inath's progress, politics & technology!
u/jseah [+1] (2 days later)
At this point, Cato hasn't thought about currency. The Bank takes deposits and gives loans, that's all.
Currently personal loans and deposits aren't supported, the Bank functions only for large scale businesses and guilds. Although in a run up to an industrial revolution, there are no shortages to businesses wanting a loan so that's not a problem yet.
u/Galap [+1] (a month later)
When I first saw the description of the Tremor's internal anatomy and method of attack I quickly guessed the following, which has had more low-key support in other matters revealed gradually over the course of the story. I'll spoiler it on the chance that I've stumbled upon the right answer.
[It appears that] (#s "the tremors exist as organisms whose bodies extend into four spatial dimensions. Moving through the extra dimension would allow them to appear in the ground and not leave continuous trails in the fashion that they do, as well as hatch from their eggs without breaking them. It also explains the lack of entrances and exits in their bodies in the slice of them we see, as well as their apparently haphazard internal construction; when killed, in their death throes they may rotate randomly and we end up seeing a slice that's at an oblique angle, in which case the connectivity would not make any sense compared to the orientation they typically present themselves with. In addition, the Elkas can lower their mass apparently, which suggests that they are rotating their mass to a position not affected by gravity. The magic itself seems to be inherently four-dimensional as well, with the descriptions of folding it inside itself to conceal its signature. I suspect this is another kind of rotation. I don't quite see how it all fits together yet but it looks like that's a big part of what's going on.")
All in all I'm really enjoying this one. It reads to me as great worldbuilding and logically thought-through fantasy written from the general perspective of classic science fiction.
I like how it takes a very even-handed perspective on things, showing that while technological progression and industrialization are ultimately positive things, some of the consequences of it are not so good, and the heroes have brought with them some of the nastier aspects of Earth's history as well as the good things. And the main characters sometimes make decisions that I don't really agree with, but that's really interesting too, since you've created situations where the calls really aren't obvious. And it takes into account the sense that very few things are completely one-sided, which is something I don't see in a lot of stories.
u/jseah [+1] (a month later)
Thank you very much for your praise! I have to admit however that the magic system received far more development than the worldbuilding.
In fact, the magic system predates the plotline of the story by nearly two years RL. (I have used the same magic system in my other fantasy writings, the only published one being Twin Faces of the Sky which is incomplete)
I welcome your speculation on the mechanics of tremors but will neither confirm nor deny the correctness of it. To have someone speculating on the mechanics of my magic system is awesome! So awesome that I won't give away the answer so you can do it some more! =P
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+3] fear of last pages (16 hours later)
I’ve tried starting this story once but the first arc was rather underwhelming: the giant worm thing had a striking resemblance with the 1990 Tremors beasts, the non-humans were portrayed as rather dumb (e.g. they’ve never figured out that it would be targetting them by movement), etc.
Does the story get better later on, and if it does — from which chapter would you recommend reading it?
u/elevul [+2] Cyoria Observer (18 hours later)
Honestly, as always I recommend reading all the chapters. Even if the beginning is not as engaging, it builds the foundations for the later parts, so IMHO it's a good idea to read them regardless.
u/Linear_Cycle [+2] (a month later)
This is a story I really enjoy reading! I have a nitpick: Noether's theorem states that conservation of energy is related to the time translation symmetry, not the time reversal symmetry as is suggested in the text. So if energy is not conserved, Cato should be on the lookout for something working on one day that doesn't work the same way the next day, even though everything about the experimental setup is the same. (Of course, possibly Cato is just remembering Noether's theorem incorrectly.)
u/2BR02B [+1] Marxist-Lurianism (23 hours later)
Just got up to date on this story, and I'm glad I did.