alexanderwales posts
Posts: 495
Files: 107
Thresholder, ch 80, Standstill
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkApologies for the late chapter, my son has croup, which I guess I always thought was one of those old timey diseases, but is not. He was home all day and I love him, but he was driving me nuts. I was also reading this Worth the Candle fanfic, which was poor time management on my part but definitely worth it.~~~~Perry brought the mech into the bay of the Crypt, having limped it over. It would need repair, and they were the ones to do it, though he had to imagine that it wasn’t going to be remotely relevant in this f...
Thresholder, ch 79, Wanderer on the Ice Planet
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkApologies for the late chapter, still catching up from having been sick earlier in the week.~~~~The dish was imprecise, and the Natrix didn’t have the tools necessary to make it more precise. His mech had been outfitted with a smaller version of the dish, which was even worse. From past experience, the signal preceded the portal opening and stopped once it was there. If Perry wasn’t able to find the spot before the other thresholder came through, he was going to be shit out of luck, dependent on the other thresho...
Thresholder, ch 78, Time Marches
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkApologies for the schedule slip, hoping to not have the Thursday chapter slip as well. I'm sick, and yesterday had what was either an 'icepick headache' or a 'hammer headache', sudden onset, high intensity, which is pretty alarming given that I need to use my brain for things. No recurrence today though, just a scratchy throat, some sinus stuff, and a cough.~~~~Much LaterPerry was feeling restless. Either the enemy was taking a very long time to show up, or was in the world already and up to no go...
NaNo 2023: Failed First Chapters
Hello there!I have long been a fan of National Novel Writing Month, and credit it with having increased my output, especially in the early years. In 2010, I wrote 50,000 words of absolute garbage and have done it most years since then in one form or another, sometimes just adding 50,000 words onto an existing work. 2014/2015/2016 were all spent on adding to (and then finishing) The Dark Wizard of Donkerk, which can be read on my website in its still-unedited form, where it will stay until I can find the time or the publisher for it. 2022 was, o...
Thresholder, ch 77, Interlude: Marjut
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Marjut had done what she did in every world: she went to ground.The world was an ecumenopolis, a city that had spread to cover the entire planet, and she hated it with a burning passion. The buildings were mostly timber framed, but the wood they were made of was created through magic, trees that sprung up overnight and were cut down having hardly seen the light of a single day. Every large building of any civic importance was marble, made using a separate magic, drafted in inks before being called into the world....
Thresholder, ch 76, The Clash, pt 2
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~“Fire!” shouted Perry. “Hit the sensors!”Marchand responded by immediately shooting the mech’s single long gun directly at the distant elder, which scored a direct hit, threading a needle between metal plates and shattering a lens that could barely be seen on the video.As soon as the gun had fired, Perry was on the move, lunging to the left and picking up speed. The only thing on his side was that the elder mech had not originally been programmed for war, and its firing solutions would be worse than his...
Thresholder, World 4 Voting, Results!
The voting is concluded!Some fun stats pulled from the spreadsheet: 273 voters! 711 votes cast! Most people cast only a single vote for their preferred option The most number of votes cast was eight (out of ten), which with approval voting means that people were essentially voting for "anything but those" Weighting the vote by patron tier didn't actually end up changing the outcome, though it did earn me moneyHere's a graph of how many options people selected:With some more time and a better grip on data analysis, I think it wou...
Thresholder, ch 75, The Clash, pt 1
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkApologies for the cliffhanger, this was one of those chapters that wanted to be REALLY long, and I have made a commitment not to let that keep happening.~~~~Perry stood on top of the Natrix, dressed in his power armor. The Natrix had many open decks, most of them made for people to be social and have a good view, with plants draping from pots. Some of the plants were quite large, while others were supplemental food of the small, delicate variety that could be eaten without intensive processing. He was above those tho...
Thresholder, ch 74, Around the World in Sixty Seconds
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~The respite on the Natrix was brief, since Perry had a satellite to launch.The satellite, Horizon 1, was incredibly crude, bashed together from spare parts and with no onboard thrusters. It was powered by some larger solar panels, which would allow it to transmit and receive, and it had a tiny computer onboard, as well as a single camera. It was small, no more than a hundred pounds, which was as much as the sword could move before becoming sluggish — a limit that was apparently magical rather than rooted in phy...
Thresholder Volume 4 Voting Update
The poll is still ongoing, and will end in about a week, probably on Friday. Since the votes are weighted by tier, you can't see the "true" results, but here they are:I find this useful for a few reasons, but the biggest one is that I was able to immediately stop worrying about a few of these and start putting more work into the frontrunners on the planning end. Additionally, it helps me understand what people want for the next project. This might mean more polls in the future. I love data.
Thresholder, ch 73, Peace in Our Time
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~They walked back through the snow, worried about a volley of missiles to their back. Perry had Marchand drive backward, so the gun and most of the sensors were in the direction of Heimalis City Seven. If a plane appeared over the horizon, he was going to have to shoot it down.“I should have stayed,” said Perry when they were five miles away.“Could you have held them off?” asked Ruben.“Even if I were in the armor, I’d be one slip up away from being killed,” said Perry. “A whole colony against me, t...
Thresholder, ch 72, Inner Turmoil, pt 2
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkHey, late chapter!~~~~Perry walked down the hallway, sword drawn, adrenaline pumping. He had March in his ear, but he’d have felt a lot better if his armor was on. The armor, unfortunately, was in the mech bay, and that was almost certainly flooded with the same gas that had put Ruben down. He wasn’t sure how much time he would have if he tried to go back there.It was pretty concerning that they had knockout gas on hand. That didn’t say anything good about them or the society that they had built here. The strip...
Thresholder, ch 71, Inner Turmoil, pt 1
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkYes, I know about Project Orion.~~~~As seen from Perry’s mech, the city was virtually invisible, and would have been impossible to spot from a plane or drone if not for the heat that was escaping it. It was at least partially underground, but everything that stuck out on the surface had been encased in ice, with only a few small holes to vent gas. A trickle of smoke or vapor was all that could be seen from that, and it wasn’t consistent. It would have been very easy to mistake it for something else. Some roads we...
Thresholder Volume 4 Voting
Most of this is copy+pasted from the last post, but still relevant here. Last paragraph is new.This is a poll for volume 4 of Thresholder. Each volume of Thresholder has a different setting, and volume 4 is going to be no different. This is a list of options to vote on. Volume 1 was 28 chapters, Volume 2 was 37 chapters, and I'm hoping that Volume 3 is somewhere between those. With eight chapters done so far, that means that Volume 3 won't conclude for at least another two months, maybe more, but I would like as much lead time as possib...
Thresholder, ch 70, The Great White Wastes
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Perry had never really experienced ‘true’ snow. He’d experience snowfalls, but Tacoma had wet and mild winters, and the snow never stuck around for long before being washed down the storm drains. He’d never gone on vacation to a snowy place, having skipped out on a ski trip to Colorado with some friends in high school because of a girl. Almost every other trip he’d taken, whether to Europe or around America, had been to other places without true snow.The night side was filled with snow, vast blankets of...
Thresholder, vol 4 options (non-voting)
This is a list of options for volume 4 of Thresholder. Each volume of Thresholder has a different setting, and volume 4 is going to be no different. This is a non-voting list of options, with the vote coming in a week or so. Volume 1 was 28 chapters, Volume 2 was 37 chapters, and I'm hoping that Volume 3 is somewhere between those. With eight chapters done so far, that means that Volume 3 won't conclude for at least another two months, maybe more, but I would like as much lead time as possible for Volume 4 so that 1) I can do work ahead...
Thresholder, ch 69, Complementary Positions
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkNice.~~~~Perry ended up staying in the penthouse, though he spent little time there. With the sword revealed, he was free to fly out of the balcony, and needed a good spot for that. He also needed a secure place to house Marchand, and the locks on the penthouse doors were quite good, better than could be found anywhere else on the Natrix, which overall had quite poor physical security once past the guns and inside the metal skin. He spent little time in his room though, instead preferring to move about the ship, inte...
Thresholder, ch 68, Advantages
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~“Alright,” said Perry. “Let’s say we want to help these people, but we don’t want to give them the atom bomb. They have piss-poor microchips except for the legacy systems, and realistically, most of the things we can tell them about would take a very long time to implement, if they even could be implemented. We want to demonstrate value, and I think immediate value is going to be the key.”He was still in the penthouse, at least for the time being, though a room was apparently being cleared for him. Ma...
Thresholder, ch 67, Crawl
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkChapter!Belated author's note: Volume 3 was the last that I had planned when I was starting this, but there's a good chance that I'll go for four, since I'm having fun and enjoying the changes of scenery. The very tentative plan is to have the setting of the fourth volume be decided by Patreon voting from among five to ten options I feel would be fun to write. To allow for proper planning, I would need to run that poll halfway through volume 3. So, TBD on that, just letting you know.~~~~Before they co...
Thresholder, ch 66, What's Past is Prologue
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~The evacuation from the space station was supposedly orderly. There had been plans in place, along with training and drills, and there were enough escape ships and mechs to bring everyone who hadn’t died in the initial strike or its after-effects down to the surface.They were left with no way to communicate across the stars, but a radio signal was going out the slow way, and would be heard by anyone in the stellar system. That the stellar system was empty was a problem, but someone might come looking, and would...
Thresholder, ch 65, Testament
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkLate chapter, sorry, but I technically consider anything before midnight my time to be sliding it in before my self-imposed deadline.~~~~“Alright,” said Perry with a sigh once Liv was gone. “Check for bugs?”“Bugs, sir?” asked Marchand.“Listening devices,” said Perry.“Oh no, sir, I’m afraid I wouldn’t want to give you false confidence,” said Marchand. “While I am gifted with superlative abilities in signal processing, they are only best in class given my relatively limited processing power an...
Thresholder, ch 64, Moving Up
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkI am back from London! Fighting off jet lag! Enjoy the chapter!P.S. I will be doing an AMA on /r/ProgressionFantasy tomorrow at 9am EST!~~~~Perry liked her.It helped that she was, objectively, smokin’ hot, or maybe just subjectively smokin’ hot. She had a lot of enthusiasm for a lot of things, whether that was her planet, its people, or the mechs, and a lot of curiosity about Perry and the worlds he’d seen. She had opinions, which Perry had always found attractive.The other big thing was probably a result of th...
Thresholder, ch 63, Beneath the Metal Skin
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkHey, I'm still in London! I'll be back home next week, so the chapter release time should return to "normal". Time zones confuse and enrage me.Did you know This Used to be About Dungeons vol 1 is out on Amazon now? The audiobook is too! I think I forgot to make a Patreon post about it, but my hotel wifi is terrible, and using the internet is a pain, which is thankfully kind of good for writing.~~~~The mech didn’t close the distance to the millipede city right away. There was a door at the back of th...
Thresholder, ch 62, Stations Please, vol 3 start + volume art
Normal TextEdit/Comment TextHey! Back from break, though I'm still in London rather than at home, which is why this is being posted at such a weird hour. Volume art should be at the end of this post, since it's a very mild spoiler, one I don't mind but which you potentially might. I'll be a little slow on responding to comments/corrections, because as mentioned, I'm abroad.~~~~Perry had been preparing for the new world for months. He had planned and strategized and theorycrafted, making little flowcharts for how things were ...
Thresholder, ch 61, Interlude: Maya
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkAlright, a reminder that there will be no chapters next week, but that regular posting will start again the week after that, beginning Volume 3, World 5.~~~~Maya felt like death, but the portals had saved her before. She hadn’t talked about that with Perry all that much, but it seemed to be one of the constants in the whole thing. It made sense, given what Michaelous had said about The Spell. People — thresholders — were pulled to a time and place that needed them, maybe plus or minus a few weeks, or months. Sh...
Thresholder, ch 60, World 4 Epilogue
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkThursday's chapter will be an interlude, then there won't be another chapter until the 11th.~~~~Luo Yanhua wrote a treatise on the werewolves, then another on Marchand, and a third on the gunpowder weapons that Perry had introduced to the Great Arc. From all these, she gained power, though the last of those subjects was kept in a secret language, and shared only with those she thought she could trust. The first application of firearms on the Great Arc, at least to her knowledge, had been a very mixed bag, res...
Thresholder, ch 59, Sunrise, pt 2 (bonus chapter)
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Perry ran at the grandmaster and whipped his sword sideways, the power armor groaning in protest. When the grandmaster deflected the sword to the side with his gnarled staff, Perry recalled it, and it slotted into his hand just in time for him to strike down at the grandmaster with full force. The old man stepped under it, but couldn’t manage more than a weak follow up to drive Perry back.Whatever was happening internally to the frayed and blown out matrix, Perry was having strangely little problems with it. He...
Thresholder, ch 58, Sunrise, pt 1
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkAlright, this chapter ends on a cliffhanger, mostly because it would be ~10K words without being split into two. It's up to you whether you read it in one part or two, but I've always thought the sweet spot for a single sitting is about 5K words, and pt 1 is 6K.The plan is to push pt 2 out tomorrow, on Saturday, which will put EBs another chapter ahead.On Monday and Thursday there will be normal chapters, albeit maybe on the shorter side, then from September 4th to 17th I'll be in England on a working vac...
Thresholder, ch 57, The Celestial Kingdom
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~The former king and his people moved slowly, which was aggravating.Perry might have described Wu Xianlong as playing too much to the crowd, but none of the men and women they were traveling with seemed to enjoy him very much. He wore all black, with a fancy black wide-brimmed hat that called to mind a wizard of some kind, except that it looked like the pointed top had been truncated. Sometimes they would talk amongst themselves as the king held forth, and Perry would listen in, using the enhanced hearing afforded...
Thresholder, ch 56, Allies
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkMoving forward, chapters will be Monday/Thursday, with any extra chapters being Saturday. I've had other commitments that have left me temporarily overworked, and am trying to stave off some stress and anxiety.~~~~March had been a busy boy, which was cause for concern. He had taken liberties. One of those liberties had been to direct the nanite spiders at Crystal Lake Temple up to the tip of the highest temple, where they were to burrow in and wait for a signal. He had done this without telling Maya or Perry, sim...
