Here’s the situation. Saeli, Raphel, Mora, and Kaladan are on a world that is, due to a series of unfortunate events involving three jealous goddesses, one naive god, and a very angry angelic…well, doomed. Said goddesses created an extremely infectious disease that eventually rendered every single female on the planet unable to bear children. The last generation has reached their mid-50s or so, and they’ve essentially lost hope.

Enter Saeli and Mora, two young women of childbearing age who, due to their not being born on Dheu, are immune to this disease. You can see how this might interest certain parties. The two women get kidnapped, and are currently trapped in a cave surrounded by twenty or so men who are so desperate to not be the last generation that they’re willing to rape female strangers and force them to live out their lives on Dheu bearing children.

Saeli and Mora are both trained in the art of using their qi to do all sorts of extraordinary things, like fire and ice and wind and teleportation spells. None of the men who have captured them have any such power. (Although half of them are what they call “spirit walkers”. They can essentially thrust their spirits out of their bodies and travel about the “spirit realm”, where they receive guidance from the angelics who live there. This is, of course, of no practical use whatsoever against someone who can lob a fireball at them).

The first obvious question: how did a couple of magically inclined characters get captured by a bunch of non-magically inclined characters in the first place? Especially Mora, who, being second-in-command of Raphel Kailar’s infamous cabal, should be neigh unto impossible to capture WITH qi. The answer? The two were taken by surprise and drugged. Saeli didn’t react in time because she’s never really been in a real fight before, even though she was expecting the attack and knew what the assailants were after. Mora didn’t react in time because Saeli hadn’t yet gotten the chance to warn her what was coming.

The drug, nepthas, is one that specifically neutralizes one’s capacity to draw qi. The idea of qi-altering drugs is not new to the overall story, having been introduced in the first book. It would make sense that what the spirit walkers of Dheu and the majahel of Verre draw from the same source of energy, and that the spirit walkers of Dheu would have discovered a means to keep novices from jaunting about in the spirit realm unsupervised. In high doses, nepthas renders the victim unconscious, and can actually stop the heart if too much is given. It allows a group of non-magic wielders to knock Saeli and Mora out for several hours and spirit them away.

So now they are in a cave…the drug has worn off and both girls are awake…Raphel and some others are on their way but haven’t arrived yet…and the men, not quite desperate enough to assault female strangers while they are unconscious (although they considered it), have been waiting for this moment.

Now I have to create an impasse. I’ve given Saeli and Mora back their qi for this scene, because I can’t have the men actually assault them until the cavalry arrives. Yet I cannot have the two girls whooping up on the men and escaping just yet, either…but given their powers, it’s very difficult to imagine a scenario in which this realistically would not happen. You can’t just not have them consider using their powers because, well, it’s their primary weapon. It’d be like a trained swordsman stepping into a battle and forgetting he has a sword. Ain’t gonna happen, you know? And if they were to use their power, there’s really nothing the spirit walkers can do to stop them. So I’ve got to do something that will even the odds, at least until Raphel and Co. show up.

Even the odds #1: Reintroduce nepthas.

I had one of the spirit walkers throw a handful of nepthas leaves on the campfire. I’ve already established that nepthas is an inhaled drug (the first time they took cloths soaked in a wet mixture of the drug and slapped them over the girls’ faces)…so given that they are in a small space, it shouldn’t take too long for the tainted smoke to take effect and render Saeli and Mora helpless again.

Problems: It will still take time, several minutes at the very least. Saeli and Mora could easily escape in that amount of time. Rather than evening the odds, nepthas merely functions as a ticking clock.

Even the odds #2: Establish what can and cannot be done with qi in a small space.

The cave, while small, is nevertheless big enough to contain about twenty men and a small fire around the entrance area, and Saeli and Mora further back. (I’m going to have to assume the men stashed their horses elsewhere; perhaps in a nearby cave, with someone to guard them.) The roof is high enough for everyone to stand comfortably, although it may be *just* that high. If I wanted to be specific, I could have Mora’s head brush the roof. It is deep enough for Saeli to create what amounts to an electrified web between the two parties, where the men would actually have to approach to be zapped by it. So I’m imagining a space that is something like a crack in a wall: deeper and taller than it is wide. Let’s say at its narrowest (which is where Saeli and Mora would be)…wide enough for two or three people to stand with arms outstretched and fingers touching. Wider at the entrance.

I began to write some dialogue between Saeli and Mora, in which they each brought up and discarded various forms they could use to escape. It helped me sort of figure out in my own mind what can and cannot be done with qi, and how environment shapes that. There are basically two “methods” in which qi is used, once you’ve drawn up the appropriate elemental energy: 1) Use the energy to manipulate its physical counterpart; ie, using Air to make a breeze, using Earth to create an earthquake, etc. Easier. Faster. Or 2) Manipulate the energy itself. This is how majahel sight works, and how you create shields, like Saeli’s lightning net. Also, most anjahel skills rely on this method. Any qi form that does anything more complicated than moving matter around probably uses a combination of the two methods.

The physical element does not have to be present, but the energy does. Luckily, most latent energy sitting around contains the four basic elements, so finding sources of energy is not usually difficult. One might have a little trouble using Water in a desert, or Fire in a lake, but it would not be impossible. However, elemental energy =/= physical matter. One may be able to draw Water energy from a dry place, but unless there is an actual source of water on hand (even moisture leeched from the air), one will not be able to spontaneously create physical water. One may be able to draw Air energy, but one cannot create a breeze if there is no physical air to move. The single exception is Fire, which is why fire forms are popular among both Mantles and Cowls.

So, back to Saeli and Mora’s non-predicament. My goal was to run through every possible form and see if there was a logical reason why said form could not be employed (because that’s what any intelligent majahel would do, and I have to assume the reader will, too). Make sure there was no way someone could say, “Well, they can do ___ and ___, right? Why don’t they just  ____?” with me going *facepalm*.

I began with “put out the fire”. Saeli suggests blowing it out. Mora explains that the act of pushing all that air OUT of the cave will draw an equal amount of air back IN, along with all that tainted nepthas smoke. They’d drug themselves in the act. They discuss putting it out with water (Saeli has heard dripping water in the cave somewhere), but again, what happens when you dump water on a fire? Clouds of smoke. Putting out the fire will do no good if they render themselves helpless in the process.

Then they move on to “neutralize the men”. Blast them all out with air or water? They’d just come back in, and also, see above. If they used fire, they’d probably incinerate themselves in the process. Saeli is actually the one to suggest killing them all, but only in the context of “Gee, I’m surprised you didn’t suggest that right away, Mora”. Neither of them, especially Saeli (who knows more of the story), particularly wants to seriously hurt or kill the men…partially because they empathize with their problems, and partially because killing “cowens”, ie, non-magical people, is the moral equivalent of shooting an unarmed person with a gun.

But they could paralyze them (Snake Creeps Down). They could also freeze them (Cross the Courtyard + Water Flows Downhill). And those are forms that the reader has already seen, via Raphel’s battle with the High Priestess. They could bind them up with cords of air (also something we’ve seen Raphel do). Plus we know that Saeli knows how to put people to sleep and influence the mood of a crowd, per her anjahel abilities.

After about a page of writing, and a lot more thinking, I was forced to conclude that, while Saeli and Mora’s environment limits their options some, it was not enough to realistically keep them from escaping. So…now what? How do I contain two magic users who have a very, very good reason to want to escape, now? (The nepthas on the fire effectively eliminates the weak but semi-plausible “oh, let’s just wait for Raphel, we don’t want to hurt these guys and they can’t do anything to us in the meantime” solution).

Then I remembered a chapter from the first draft, one I’d planned to eliminate, where Saeli and Mora are being guarded by a dark angelic that the spirit walkers had summoned. Random tidbit about Dheuan spirit walkers (that only I know): they have the ability to summon angelics, just like Verre anjahel. They can enter the spirit realm at will, after all. However, since their whole society is built around conversing with, learning from, and building relationships with angelics, summoning is very much a forbidden practice. It’d be like treating your teacher with respect, but ordering his children or servants around like animals; it just isn’t done.

That doesn’t, of course, mean that no one does it. As it happens, Othau and a few others have learned how in secret. So it would make sense that, faced with a couple of magic users that they need to subdue (but not hurt), they’d summon up an angelic as backup. I decided upon a marilith, since it’s 1) the only other dark angelic besides vrock that have been mentioned by name so far in the trilogy and 2) they are bigger, scarier, and much more intelligent than vrock. Inadvertently, this beings a whole new dimension of problems, because marilith are difficult to control. Mora senses, correctly, that the spirit walkers don’t really know what they are doing (or they would have chosen a more suitable angelic!), and thus, their control over the marilith they summon is tenuous.

Even the odds #3: Introduce a marilith.

And this finally does it. Because now Saeli and Mora cannot afford to do anything that is going to hurt or even distract the summoner, for fear of loosing the dark angelic from his control. Now they even have to worry about what will happen when Raphel does show up…because if he charges in with qi blazing, he could cause as much damage as either of the girls. Also, having a dark angelic around will give our other angelic friend Isharyel something to do besides stand there and be all wise and stuff.

So that was the process I went through, more or less, to make this scene work. I guess the lesson here is, when you have to put magical characters in a perilous situation, there are two things you can do. Introduce limits to their magic, and make the environment play to those limits. If that fails, introduce a second magical force to oppose them.

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Anyway, that’s why we’ve taken a break from our regular schedule of bloggish activities. I’ve actually been, you know, productive.

And the apartment is clean! It’s great! I can actually concentrate on clearing up some areas that always get ignored because I’m too busy trying to catch up with a backload of dishes and laundry.

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And, perhaps a couple of maps. It’s funny, I actually didn’t draw these until the first draft of the story was almost done, when I finally needed to know exactly where things were.
 

 
Here’s the world as a whole. You can see Aschera and Chisge in the upper center area. The village where Raphel was born is almost due west of Aschera, on the other side of the Midplains. The red area is the cursed Midplains, top-left pointing stripes represent Mantle territory, top-right pointing stripes are Cowl territory, and crosshatching is disputed territory. (You may notice that there is quite a bit of disputed territory, and that the Cowls have much less undisputed territory than the Mantles. The Mantles are winning the war when the story opens). Iadnah and Lanschport are both southern Cowl cities. Iadnah is nominally under Mantle control, while Lanschport is purely Cowl. Lanschport has a rather unsavory reputation even among Cowls, which is probably why the Mantles don’t want it (people on Verre have odd superstitions about the ocean); both Geris and Teja hail from that city. The battle of Iadnah plays an important role in all three of my major Cowls’ pasts: Mora lost her husband, infant daughter, and father; Kaladan lost his faith in the Mantle cause and turned Cowl; and I haven’t yet decided how Raphel was involved (but I have decided that he needs to be).
 

 
Here is Aschamon. A great deal of the action in the first and third books takes place on Aschamon’s campus, so I needed to know exactly where each building was in relation to the others.

It sits on a hill in the western quadrant of Aschera (Aschera I have not mapped yet. Not sure if I need to). The Temple and the main sorarc tower are the hub of the school, both physically and spiritually. The small triangular buildings are the dormitories: one for the youngest (gray) students, three for the various ages of Mantle students, and one for the cleric students. Saeli lives in a Mantle dormitory, even though she is not a Mantle; she and Cara got special permission to be roommates, and since Cara is a Mantle, the school allowed it.

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Raphel is my favorite character, hands down. Do I love him? Oh yes. Too much. I occasionally I have to make sure I’m not lavishing too much attention on the guy. He has such a strong personality that if I let him have too much leeway, he would take the story and run. Nix that, he wouldn’t run…Raphel would dangle the storyline in front of my face, smile at me with that sexy, challenging glint in his blue eyes, and dare me to try and take it from him. Who could resist? (Apparently, not me ). I like to think that somewhere in that dark heart of his, he harbors a soft spot for Saeli, but honestly, I’m not sure. Beefing up the world around him, Aschera, the raider culture, etc. has actually helped keep him in line. Raphel might want everyone to think he’s got everything under control, but I have a whole world of problems I can use to take him down a notch, if I have to. I’ve already given him a rival cabal to worry about (that was a godawful chapter to write, btw).

Mora is actually keeping her distance from me in this rewrite. I do love her, though, because she’s always cool, and unflappable, and quietly sardonic, if the occasion arises. She’s such a tragic character, in that Raphel had already stolen her soul before Saeli ever met her. She’s a strong woman though, with a lot of history you only get glimpses of. She represents what Saeli could have become, if Raphel had really had the chance to break her. (I think that Saeli has more inner strength than Mora, and that Raphel would have never been able to completely conquer her, but it would have been a near thing.)

I’m having a lot of fun with Kaladan this time around. He’s a complicated man, and next to Saeli, he probably has the biggest character arc of anyone. You have to love a character who can throw out one-liners like this one:

Geris licked his lips. “You can’t blame me for being careful. This is enemy territory,” he said.
“Aye, we’ve only remained undiscovered in the largest Mantle city in the region for two whole moons,” Kaladan remarked. “Clearly Raphel’s subterfuge skills leave much to be desired.”

But his history is what really makes him fun to work with. In a way, as a Mantle turned Cowl turned Gray, he has the most perspective of any of them.

Cara is great because on the surface she seems like a typical young woman, flighty, scatterbrained, and doesn’t care for much other than socializing. But on the inside, she has an unwavering spirit and deep affection and loyalty to those she cares about. She’s the type of person who would never take charge unless they were forced into it, and then they would do an amazing job. Her early optimism and carefree nature is something I regret taking away from her at the end…but everyone in this story has to lose something.

Brendan…eh, who wouldn’t love Brendan? He’s the classic boy-next-door, who is willing to suffer in silence while the girl he loves dates someone else, just so she can be happy. Until he finds out the other guy is hurting her, of course…he won’t stand for that. Unfortunately, he’s a character that only really becomes important by dying.

Geris is like Peter Pettigrew from HP: one of those cowering, whiny villains who are so pathetic that it’s incredible how much trouble they manage to stir up. I like him for that, and because he gets what’s coming to him in the end. The High Priestess, aka Linserae. Avalgo. Othau. Isharyel. Hakarin.  Adna. The Keeper of the Oath. Jalil…those are all my minors that really get screen time, and I love them all, for various reasons. And there are my gods: Yuril, Scisaxar, Naeth.

I considered every single character in Shades, and interestingly enough, the only one that I’m not sure I love is…Saeli. And I was like “uh-oh…I love everyone except my PROTAGONIST? That can’t be good.” It’s not that I don’t like her, it’s just that I don’t seem to have any real perspective on the matter. She is so much of ME, in this story, that I can’t distance myself from her. Saying I love Raphel or anyone else is like saying I love my husband…I’m analyzing my own feelings for another person. Trying to decide if I love Saeli is like me trying to be someone else trying to decide if they like me. She is…transparent, to me.  I have been trying to give her more backbone this time around, and a few definite quirks that are NOT like me. But for the most part, how she reacts to things is pretty much how I would react, were I in her shoes. However, I’m pretty sure she’s not a Mary Sue…she screws up too much. She doesn’t always make the best decisions (clinging to Raphel for so long being the chief of these…but interestingly, I’m pretty sure I would make the same mistake).

The rewriting is going more slowly than I would like. I worry, sometimes, that I just don’t write quickly enough to survive in this industry. Even when I have a block of five hours to work with, I still don’t get a whole chapter done. I don’t know if I could really write a book per year, even if I had huge blocks of time to work in. I guess either it’s something you learn, or you find a publisher willing to let you take two and three years to produce a work. I’m beefing up some of the sexual tension in this story, even though I still don’t think I could market this as a genre romance. But the story is about Saeli and Raphel’s relationship, so I’m trying to keep the focus there, where I can.

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It’s amazingly difficult to handle a three year old child without a voice. I could whisper this morning, but Eli thought that was some kind of game, and refused to listen to me. *facepalm* My voice has come back gradually throughout the day, but my throat is still very sore.

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I think my dislike of laundry stems from the fact that, unlike other household chores, you can’t just get it over with. You put the clothes in the washer, and then you have to go do something else while they wash. This can either be productive, like cleaning the kitchen or writing, or unproductive, like browsing the internet. I hate writing while the laundry is going, because I’m either going to forget and leave wet clothes in the washer for hours, or I’m going to be interrupted when the clothes get done and lose my train of thought. Then you have to move them to the dryer, and wait some more. Then you have to hang them up. (As the hubby will confirm, I tend to skip this step…by the time the clothes finish drying, I’m too tired/bored/irritated to do it).

Most of laundry time consists of doing other things while the clothes are washing/drying. That should be great, except that it’s not. I can’t leave the house, or do anything that’s going to make me forget about the laundry. It’s irritating, because I cannot allow myself to become absorbed in another project. I don’t want to start anything because I know I’m going to get interrupted. If I have to do a household chore, I prefer to just take a block of time and get it done. Laundry, until they invent instantaneous washers and dryers, is not a chore you can do that with.

My writing, as I mentioned in the last post, goes sluggishly. I’ve hit bumps before, but this one makes me particularly nervous because I’m writing what ought to be the most exciting part of the story. If I’m not feeling the excitement, how the heck are my readers going to feel it? I know part of this is just my desire to be done, which is sucking the enjoyment out of the process. The main problem is that I know how the story ends. In order to get there, certain things must happen in a particular order. I have this all plotted out…I know where everyone needs to be, what they need to do, and what needs to happen. However, I’m a natural seat-of-the-pants kind of writer, so writing to a script is difficult for me. I like to have a general idea of where things are going, and then let the characters get there however they will. I especially like it when they surprise me. However, in writing this climax, the stakes have changed a little.

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