alexanderwales posts
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Thresholder, ch 55, Stories, pt. 3
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~The next world I visited was not far off from the world Perry comes from, what he would call modern, a place of concrete and electricity. Unlike Perry’s world, it was still a place of power and magic, beyond just nuclear weapons and firearms. And from what he’s described, his world is beset by gaudy messages from shopkeepers, but this one had beauty at every turn.I marveled at the murals that seemed to cover every surface, the paintings as tall as trees, and the elaborate clothes that people wore. Even the la...
Thresholder, ch 54, Stories, pt. 2
Normal TextEdit/Comment TextSorry for the late chapter. The update schedule should probably be Monday/Thursday, but then there's less room for the occasional bonus Friday chapter ... except I guess it could be on Saturday. The big problem is chapter length: this one is 7K, last one was 6K, which is really longer than I think they should be.See the end for a slightly spoilery author's note.~~~~Perry spent at least part of the night burning through the armor’s power, looking through what precious little video he had of Xiyan, particular...
Thresholder, ch 53, Stories
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~No one seemed to have noticed Perry’s nighttime trip down to the dungeon. The big risk was that they were just pretending they’d seen nothing, which was even more of a concern given that Perry now knew the grandmaster already had him dead to rights.Maya had been talking. She would have told the grandmaster everything, or almost everything. Perry felt better about not lying, because not only had the grandmaster been circling everything Perry had said, he had, in the background, been double-checking Perry’s a...
Thresholder, ch 52, Grasshopper
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Perry watched the video closely, for the fourth or fifth time. The shadow woman snuck into the armory, opening the door only a fraction. If all the cameras had been functional at the time, there would have been a better view of that fraction, but there was only this thin sliver. Because of the door’s angle, it was impossible to compare that sliver with what had been there before, but Perry had Marchand make a map of the Crystal Lake Temple and project it, and it very much appeared as though the sliver didn’t ...
Thresholder, ch 51, Worm Food
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkThresholder, now twice a week, at least for a bit!~~~~Perry surveyed Cicada Temple from a distance, using the cameras to zoom in as far as he could. He was up on a nearby hill, the better to look out over the temple grounds, which were expansive. March had made a map of the place, its exits and the areas where people congregated, and Perry had annotated that map, marking what he thought everything was. Going to Worm Gate wasn’t what he wanted to be doing, but if he did it, he wanted it to be with a plan to get out ...
Thresholder, ch 50, Turnaround
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Maya was gone, vanished, as though she’d left Moth Lantern Hall and then never so much as thought about returning to Crystal Lake Temple. Her room was searched, but there was nothing there. She had a thresholder’s mindset about things, it seemed, never wanting to put down roots, never wanting to acquire anything that she couldn’t take with her. There was suspiciously little of her, no fingernails or hair, nothing that could be used with tracking techniques. All of Moon Gate had been alerted and was to engag...
This Used to be About Dungeons, Epilogue 4: Bib [Final]
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkThis is the final epilogue, so this story is now considered "complete". There might be more, as I feel like it, but it would be in a different direction and with a different cast, and I'm mostly just leaving myself open to the possibility here. It would also be pretty far in the future, as I'm gearing up for other projects (the return of Glimwarden being the big one).(Apologies for the late chapter, my wife got COVID, and yesterday I was trying to get everything done so that we could coast through a w...
The Exclusionary Principle: PDF
The wonderful bacontime has made a very professional PDF version of The Exclusionary Principle, with a clickable map of exclusions, table of contents, and everything all in one place. There's also been some additional material written to fill have the pages look properly packed. These are: a note from Grak on the MNEZ, excerpts on Manifest (ICEZ), and several "Did you know?" additions about exclusion tourism, diplomacy with enpersoned exclusions, imperial policy of forge frenzy, and a digression on 'physics'.
Thresholder, ch 49, Shattered Promise
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Perry was going to kill her. He was going to pin her to the ground and beat her face into a pudding of blood and brains, he was going to break her arms and eat her fingers one by one, he was going to pull her ribs apart and gorge on her organs. That was how he was feeling, anyway. The rage was flowing through him and the moons were full. He was going to strain every muscle in the act of murdering her, use every inch of power in his body.The rational part of his mind was trying to work through the logistics of how...
Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle is now complete
The Worth the Candle exclusion zones splatbook is now complete. You can read it on AO3 here. Additionally, there's a post mortem for the project on my website here. The whole thing clocks in at 87K words, along with a bunch of AI art, some good, some not so good.There will be a proper PDF version coming in the near future, but in the meantime, you can get a very scuffed epub, mobi, etc. by clicking the "Download" link in the upper righthand corner of AO3.Thanks for reading!
This Used to be About Dungeons, Epilogue 3: Pinion
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Pinion was happy to be back home, though he’d been gone for long enough that everything felt a bit off-kilter. Lambria felt like a behemoth astride a mountain, and he found himself caught off guard by it, which was a faintly ridiculous feeling. Greater Plenarch was hilly, but the hills didn’t reach such heights.Argya Ham sat him down in her office for a friendly meeting, but she was clearly skeptical of how much he’d actually done during the whole adventure. “You were gone a long time,” she said. “I h...
Thresholder, ch 48, Moths pt 2
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Lingfeng accepted Maya readily enough, even though she said too much almost right away.“I was waiting in the bushes,” she said. “I wanted to make sure this was a safe place for us.”“You were told of this place,” said Lingfeng with a smile. “Did they not speak highly of us?”“They didn’t speak of you at all,” said Maya.“Well, we are mostly harmless,” said Lingfeng, beaming at her. He hesitated just for a moment. “I would speak carefully around my sister though.”“Your sister?” asked...
This Used to be About Dungeons, Epilogue 2: Marsh and Hannah
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Travel entads were weird. Inter had become a series of disconnected places to Marsh, separated not by distances but by whatever item he needed to get from one to the other. Dondrian was a tube he needed to crawl through, only barely wide enough for him and claustrophobic during the middle bit. Plenarch was a crystal he needed to grip while he closed his eyes. His den was a hoop with a ladder he climbed down. And getting to Hannah used a bracer that needed to align with the one she wore.Hannah was in a different p...
Thresholder, ch 47, Moths, pt. 1
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~Perry was carrying as much of Marchand as he’d been allowed to, which had taken some conversations with both Luo Yanhua and the quartermaster. The drone had been extracted from the back of the armor and likened to a bird that could whisper what it had seen, while the left vambrace was compared to a vessel that could power the bird. It was a bad comparison to make, given that Perry was attempting to persuade her that March was nothing like a person, but without the vambrace, he was worried he’d run out of batt...
This Used to be About Dungeons, Epilogue 1: Grig
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkAnother late chapter, sorry, personal stuff got in the way. Thresholder will be Thursday instead of Wednesday.~~~~Vertex had followed the Settlers to Plenarch, though there had been less overlap between their parties that Grig might have liked. He had been thrust into a position of leadership following Lola’s dramatic exit, and did his best to keep them together when Kell left. When Tilde joined, it had almost felt as though it was a death rattle, like they were teetering on the edge of a total collapse, but she ha...
Thresholder, ch 46, Time Enough
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~“Alright,” said Perry. “Try to hit me.”He was in Moon Stance, one of the most basic that Moon Gate taught: feet wide apart and body low to the ground. The first sphere, Li Xiaoling, was in the same stance, with no small amount of anger in his eyes. Perry wasn’t well-liked among the first spheres, for a variety of reasons. He was a foreigner, and they knew that he had jumped up to the second sphere with hardly any training at all. He was also still weak, by second sphere standards, even with three weeks ...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 184, End of the Road [End]
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkThis will be the final "proper" chapter of Dungeons. There will be a few epilogue chapters that I'm looking forward to writing, but I'm happy enough to look around and declare that the "extra innings" are over. (If you have epilogue requests, I'm taking them.)Unrelatedly, my father fell and broke his hip yesterday, and is in the hospital. When they're good to release him, he'll be living with my family for a bit. I'm really hopeful that this won't impact the schedule at all...
Thresholder, ch 45, The Fall of the Grouse Kingdom
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~“I was born in the Year of Sighing Trees,” said Xiyan. “My family owned a tea house, which had been in the family for nineteen generations. I was the youngest of nine children, raised into the business of brewing and serving tea. The business was good, but there was never enough to go around. My parents tried to find good futures for their children. I was sent to live with a wealthy family at the age of ten, accompanied by my elder sister for the first few months. I wept every night, out of loneliness, but ...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 183, Influence
Normal TextEdit/Comment TextThis chapter is a day late, sorry. The schedule will be shifted one day over, so Thresholder will be Friday rather than Thursday. I've gotten in the bad habit of writing longer chapters, then also writing Thresholder and TUTBAD at the same time so that when Monday rolls around I don't have a completed chapter of it, or it's still in need of editing, or whatever else.~~~~Priya Voyt was standing at the door with a mild expression on her face. She was dressed in a wrap the color of turmeric with flowing whit...
Thresholder, ch 44, Buried Pride (Bonus Chapter)
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkBonus chapter! You are now six chapters ahead of RoyalRoad.~~~~The next day, Luo Yanhua was impressed with his progress, and whatever Perry’s reservations about her, he still felt good about that.“Did you spend the entire time we were apart in meditation?” she asked.“I slept,” said Perry. “I had dinner, and breakfast. I bathed. But I was doing meditation most of the time I wasn’t sleeping, yes.”“You were meditating … while you ate?” asked Luo Yanhua.“Sorry if that was impermissible,” said Pe...
Thresholder, ch 43, Ghost in the Shell
Normal TextEdit/Comment Text~~~~Maya was still outside, waiting for him. She was in conversation with a short woman with jet-black hair, conservatively dressed in cotton clothes of many layers, a sash across her waist for a belt, and a downcast expression. There was something slightly different about her, as compared to most of the other people of the second sphere, something in her slightly chubby cheeks or her haircut, which was shorter. Her head was slightly bowed, and she didn’t meet Perry’s eyes.“This is Lu Xiyan,” said Maya. “Sh...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 182, Outside Interests
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~The bloodwinds usually came in the autumn, sharp and pungent. The name was literal, but there was relatively little blood in them, just a brief, fine mist on the most intense of days. People would bring in things from outside, lock their animals in the barns, and wait it out. When the bloodwind was over, they would wipe down their windows, scrub the worst of it from their walkways, and get on with their lives. A good bloodwind followed by heavy rain was a boon to the plants, who would suck the nutrients up throug...
Thresholder, ch 42, Crossing Over to the Other Side
Normal TextEdit/Comment TextThe battle to drag the posting schedule back to a standard 10AM Central is real, and I remain a perpetual half-day behind. Also, this chapter might get shuffled around later, with the first third of it being moved to be the end of the previous chapter, something that I only thought of once I had finished writing.~~~~Luo Yanhua dealt with the corpse of her one-time partner while Maya and Perry trekked to the first of the flowers that Marchand had identified. Perry was back in the armor, pretty much naked underneath it...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 181, Two Worlds
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~There was something enchanting about the new woman. It wasn’t any quality of her in particular, but the fact that she was a new woman, one with her own history, her own magical powers, and plenty of mundane stories to tell that were fascinatingly alien. It was a more extreme version of talking to someone from another country, or like talking to the feili or dwodo. Isra hadn’t left her side for nearly six hours, and she was soaking up every word the strange woman spoke. They were sitting around the dining room...
Thresholder, ch 41, The Peak
Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~It took another two days to get to Dragon’s Breath Peak, which involved a lot of arguing while they walked, more meat from the peasants, and further training and diagnostics for both Perry and Maya. The arguing was usually intense, at least on Maya’s side, but Perry preferred talking about the mechanics of powers, which was always a more sedate affair.“You’re sure there is no connection among these powers?” Luo Yanhua asked Maya.“They were acquired on different worlds,” said Maya. “You think that ...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 180, Cease Fire
Normal TextEdit/Comment TextSorry for the late chapter, it was memorial day, so a day that's normally writing was taken up with picnics and yardwork with my wife and son. I'm unsure on if Thresholder will need to be pushed a day, but I might prefer that just to have things spaced out a little more.~~~~Mizuki had her legs folded, hands placed on top of them, and was trying her best to seem prim, studious, and reasonable. Beside her, the bursar was in his frock, which didn’t help him look any less toad-like. He was wearing a hat, even i...
Thresholder, ch 40, Distant Calamity
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkHey, sorry for the one day delay, I'm weaning off caffeine and it's shocking how much my productivity and general well-being was being propped up by too much coffee. Over the hump now though.~~~~Perry looked down at the caved-in skull of some unfortunate soul. The blast from the mountain had sent a huge amount of rock into the air, and while the biggest pieces had largely been taken care of, the smaller pieces had still caused all kinds of destruction, punching straight through windows and roofs.“What kind ...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 179, The Other Creature of Myth
Normal LinkEdit/Comment LinkSorry for the late chapter, I'm weaning myself off caffeine and it is not going well.~~~~The woman looked at them expectantly. Her most striking feature was her hair, which was blonde at the top, transitioning to different shades of blue as it went down, hanks of navy and robin’s egg. She was odd-looking, eyes a bit too far apart, nose fairly flat, but she could have passed for human, and perhaps was human. She wore a many-colored dress that came down only to mid-thigh, the bottom frilly and white, showing off ...
Thresholder, ch 39, Road Trip
Normal TextEdit/Comment Text~~~~Perry wore the armor. This was both unfortunate and necessary, because there was no way to easily carry it and he certainly wasn’t going to leave it behind. He had his sword as well, though he’d left behind the other sword, the one he’d taken from the second sphere man he’d killed. So far as he knew, it was a magical sword but not actually that special, supernaturally sharp in the same way that the second sphere disciples were supernaturally swift, and he was certain that it could beat out almost any swor...
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 178, Creature of Myth
TUTBAD is back! I'd like to say that I'm back refreshed and recharged, but I'm not sure that the brief hiatus actually helped me that much.Normal LinkEdit/Comment Link~~~~The dungeon at Cairhaven was in the center of the small town, so close to the exact middle of the hex that a structure had to be built on top of it in order to make room for the warp point. It was an unusual configuration, something that Alfric had never seen before, and he found that he had an affection for it.Dungeon entrances were always in a random place within...
