Work In Progress #3: Troll War #3 (July 8-12)

This is part three of my series on my work in progress novel, Troll War, which centers around a kingdom of trolls going to war with a kingdom of dwarves, all because a pair of corrupt nobles from a third kingdom were bored and curious to see which race would come out on top.

You can read a short description of Troll War to learn more or you can read short summaries of each day's writing, on Mastodon. This series can be read via this link, though it will be in reverse chronological order, from newest to oldest.

Writing this week revolved around completion of Part One, 'Setting the Stage', and the start of Part Two, 'The Players'.

Chapter 10: Discovery

I renamed this chapter and the old title, 'Exile' was used for chapter 10.

As Illa and Kadrek spend the day out on the town for the first time since their stay in the hospital, King Windmaker marches his personal guards and a full regiment of soldiers back into the city of Wind Hammer, with the recently captured trolls as prisoners of war. The intent is to house them in a prison inside the city.

The King and his personal guard break off and march their war-riders back into the palace, leaving one of the great doors to the palace open, symbolizing the fact the King is in, but the kingdom is still at war.

Meanwhile, the captured trolls are marched through the city, right past Illa and Kadrek. They see Illa and call out to her, begging her to save them, but their guards mistake their cries for prayers to a troll god. Kadrek, on the other hand, takes note of where they were all looking, right at Illa.

She comes clean and even fights past the instinct to keep the ancient secret of the trolls, telling him she's a troll woman. She apologizes for lying to him, having kept it going so long only because she feared for her life. He forgives her on the spot. Next, he asks her to promise she'll never lie to him again and in exchange, he promises to always stand beside her.

Chapter 11: Exile

Illa agrees to Kadrek's reasonable demand and gives him her word.

Kadrek does what he feels is right, taking her straight to the King, that she might offer information of value in exchange for her life.

The throne room is cleared of even the King's personal guard and Illa starts by prostrating herself before the King, saying she's a female troll, once more struggling with instinct just to speak. The King doesn't believe her, so he orders her to look him in the eye as she speaks.

He doesn't believe her, because everyone on their world knows the troll race was literally last in line when looks were handed out.

Getting angry, Illa introduces herself properly and a hint of her old pride rises to the surface, that she might speak with the tone of royalty. She explains her lineage and relationship to the current Queen of the trolls, her sister, Nepita.

Next, she tells the secret tale of Segawa, the Goddess of Beauty, who's always depicted veiled, because she's said to be so beautiful that any who looked upon her would instantly die, even other gods. Unknown to mortals, Segawa was married to the blind troll god, Benni. Unable to see his wife, he was safe to spend extended periods in her company, unaffected by her power.

Coming upon the scene of the newly-made trolls and seeing their ugliness, a result of the other gods selfishly giving all of their beauty to their own mortal creations, on top of noting the terrible curse the gods had placed on the trolls because their mere appearance offended them (trolls burn as easily as dry wood), she took pity on the first female troll, gifting the ugly creature with her own, divine beauty. In turn, she took the troll's ugliness for her own.

Angry with the other gods, Segawa threw off her veil and showed them her face for the first time, using it to shame them for their selfish actions. Ashamed at what they'd done, they kept the secret to themselves. Bothered by her own appearance, Segawa put her veil back on and told only the high priests of her church, though the trolls also knew everything.

King Windmaker asks for proof and Illa cuts her own finger off, allowing the King to watch her grow a replacement.

Convinced, the King asks where her loyalties lie and she says her loyalty is to Kadrek, promising to tell all, if the King will spare her life and allow her to stay by Kadrek's side.

The King is silent for a long time, deep in thought, so Illa begins totll more, but the King silences her, because he realizes her secrets will do the opposite of what she intends. Instead of giving the dwarves an advantage, if word got back to the trolls that they knew the deepest secrets of troll-kind, the war will become a holy war.

He wants the information, but not at the price of upsetting the trolls so badly that they'll never stop fighting until one kingdom or the other is destroyed. After all, the standing policy of the trolls was to kill anyone that learned the facts about their women, which had been the case so long it was actually instinct.

The rest of the court is brought back in and the three of them portray a bit of theater. The King pretends to believe nothing Illa has said and also pretends he's infuriated to have caught her in a lie. The guards try to seize her, but Kadrek stands in their way, shouting that he'll spit in his father's eye and fight the royal guard, armed with only a pocket knife.

The King gives Kadrek the choice to stay in the kingdom or be banished with Illa. Kadrek decides to go with her, so the King offers to marry them first, because it's the only way he might witness the event. They agree, so he has his dead wife's ring resized for Illa and does the same with the old wedding band from his own finger, for Kadrek. He marries them on the spot, then gives Kadrek a pouch of gold and two hours to purchase supplies for the road, suggesting they travel north, to Oswil, because they'll be welcome there.

When they're gone, the King orders the room cleared again, so he can be alone with his grief.

Chapter 12: Upping the Ante

Queen Nepita receives a message from King Windmaker, delivered by a captured troll he released to carry it.

The message is simple: for every dwarf that dies by a troll's hand, one-hundred trolls will burn to death.

Nepita is amused by his bravado and vows to show her counterpart what happens to brave men in her kingdom.

She walks to the work room of the biomancers, where abominations are being surgically assembled from parts obtained from troll men. The current subject is a bloated, three armed troll, who's in the process of having a fourth arm grafted onto his body, a difficult process that requires four surgeons working in unison. He's not bloated with fat, but with transplanted muscle.

Nepita demands a status report and they tell her fifty-seven abominations are ready.

This was done in editing an earlier chapter, but I went back and added a scene were Kina and Aketa reported to Nepita. For Aketa's failures, she was assigned to become an abomination.

The biomancers inform Nepita that Aketa has requested to have her body implanted inside the captured war-rider, that she might become an abomination of steel, rather than flesh. Nepita agrees and they inform her that Yera (The attendant of Nepita's Grandmother) has offered to enchant the war-rider to be self-heating, so it will never need fuel, claiming she's unlocked the secrets of dwarf runes.

Nepita is surprised, because Yera hasn't spoken in more than a decade, but she sees the utility of such work and agrees.

A new scene begins with King Windmaker standing on the wall of an abandoned castle far to the south of his kingdom, where a prosperous human farming kingdom once was. The land was abandoned, due to a volcanic eruption, which has steadily continued from time to time for more than a hundred years.

Opposite him, on the other side of the castle's gate, the lieutenant of a squad of fresh soldiers stands. Both of them hold enchanted lassos woven from mythril wire.

Down in the castle courtyard, most of the squad waits, mounted on fire-dogs. Fire-dogs are four-legged, steam powered machines that serve Fortune Fields much like firetrucks in modern times. Each has a big water tank on its back, while the soldiers sit on the neck, controlling the movements of the dogs with stirrup-like controls, while the ears of the dogs are handles to control the direction their heads point. There's an elbow-activated button on the water tank, behind the driver, which activated the water pump, allowing the dog to spray water from its mouth.

Another soldier on fire-dog comes into view over the horizon, screaming and cursing, because an angry fire elemental is hot on his heels! It's shaped like a stag, with blue flames for head and body and orange flame for legs and antlers.

The fleeing soldier passes through the ruined castle walls and out the back, while the King and Lietenant whirl their lassos, each getting a good hold of an antler! The elemental is held in place, while the fire-dogs spray it, shrinking it until it's only six inches tall!

The fleeing soldier comes around to face its backside and all of the fire-dogs are used to effectively pen the beast in with walls of splattering water.

The dwarf that lured the creature hops down and pulls an enchanted, mythril jar from his coat, complete with a screw-top lid. The lassos are released and the stag frees itself, while the dwarf sets the jar on it's side, saying, “Me brought ye some coal to eat!”

The elemental, desperate for any fuel it might use to regain its former size, enters the jar and the lid is screwed on, capturing it.

The King accepts the jar and looks through the air holes in the top, pleased the crazy plan worked.

The elemental will be handed off to dwarves with good animal skills, for taming, and will eventually be used as the power source for a new type of war-rider, a fire-breathing demon-rider.

One weapon isn't enough, however, so there's many more elementals to capture...

Part Two: The Players

Chapter 12 marks the end of Part One, which was all about setting the war in motion.

Part Two is about setting the rest of the story's plot in motion, starting with introducing some new characters (adventurers) and giving the human/elf kingdom of Oswil a reason to involve itself in the war.

The idea is to introduce a group of adventurers and then send them to both sides of the war, to make peace. This will consist of an alien anthropologist that has his own reasons to make peace (odd-ball with unusual abilities), a gunfighter/retired army sergeant (leader), Illa (glass-cannon/witch), Kadrek (fighter and negotiator) and an Oswil Army corporal.

There will also be a squad of soldiers, but their purpose in the story will be to die and demonstrate when the crap has hit the fan.

Three years pass between parts, giving the simmering war time to reach a full boil...

Chapter 13: One Last Miracle

This chapter introduces Brosla Ghinead, an alien anthropologist living on the planet, who's been studying magic for thirty years. He looks at least vaguely human, but a little on the tall side, with skin just a little too red (like a sunburn) and overly-sharp teeth, which he hides with something akin to dentures. He's a Vokosian, a technologically advanced, space-faring race with a a large empire.

He's woken in the night by a message from space that came marked with government codes at the highest level of authority. The source of the message is the captain of the last remaining ship, coming from a man that claims to have been the commander of Vokosian Empire's military.

The message details a war that happened in Brosla's absence, in which a machine intelligence became a self-replicating scourge on the galaxy. The galaxy fought back and managed to press the machines back to their own system, at which point the captain tried to make peace.

He laments the fact the galaxy needed a butcher and he chose to be a peacemaker.

The machines backed down and they eventually made trade agreements, to share scientific progress, but that was just a ploy. The machines got the Vokosians to replace all of their reactors with safer models that included safety features. No sign of trickery was found and the new design got used everywhere.

They only discovered the trick when a radiation pulse from the machines shut down every reactor in the empire, aside from more antiquated designs, resulting in more than a thousand worlds falling in a single day!

The lone captain escaped in his antique, personal ship and ran. Eventually he found records of Brosla's research on the strange planet and set a course, thinking magic might be the miracle his people desperately need.

The captain urges Brosla to get the locals organized to defend their world, because the machines will come, sooner or later. He also claims he will arrive at the planet in a little over three months time.

Brosla gathers his things and heads out, intent on speaking with the King of Oswil as soon as possible.

The intent of this character is that he'll become a part of the adventuring party

Chapter 14: Rock and a Hard Place

Jane "Sureshot" Stanton is a retired Oswil Army Sergeant and sharpshooter. She has a very old west, gunfighter look to her, since that's the theme I'm associating with Oswil.

She wears a long, leather coat, cowboy hat and cowboy boots.

She wears an enchanted katana on her back (she's the world's equivalent to half-Japanese), which is an old family heirloom.

On her hips are a pair of Scott and Walcott copies of the Cobb Single Action Army revolver. Even better, S&W employ a dwarf smith, who enhances some of their work with dwarf runes, so her pistols are enchanted.

I'm intentionally drawing parallels to Smith and Wesson, plus Colt, since named firearm manufacturers are very much a part of the old west. I don't want to use the real world names, because the world I'm writing isn't our world, at all, though it does have many similarities, especially among humans.

Sureshot is at a remote town on the frontier, near Utros, named Ruby Canyon. The town is half in and half out of the canyon mouth.

As she walks the town and talks with the mayor about the job she came to do, involving shooting a bunch of goblins, she notices an excess of dwarves around the place, counting seventeen at a glance.

She raises her concern with the mayor, who also finds it odd.

Getting a nasty suspicion, she asks when they last saw a goblin. He tells her four days.

She tells him her honest opinion: Ruby Canyon is caught between dwarf and troll armies, but she's interrupted by the sound of gunfire.

Hours pass and the battle ends with a town full of dead dwarves and a handful of dwarves burning trolls, to make sure they won't regenerate. Many of the dwarves were killed with extremely precise shots to the right eye, because the trolls had a sharpshooter with them that was showing off. This is a little foreshadowing for later chapters, in which I intend to pit Sureshot against the troll responsible, in a contest of sniper vs. sniper. The troll sniper is probably Anji, but I haven't made up my mind yet.

Sureshot demands to speak with the commanding officer of the dwarf soldiers, but he's dead and so are the rest of their leaders.

Chapter 15: Royal Decree

Sureshot sends word to the King of Oswil via telegraph crystal, a one-inch, flat, square variation of a crystal ball coated in a magical, moss-derived chemical that glows when tapped or when hit by the same frequency of light it emits. Such devices come in linked pairs that glow at both ends when tapped. They're used for long-range communication in Oswil, using Moss Code, which is their name for their equivalent to Morse Code.

The King responds with a request for her immediate presence, so she rides as fast as she can for the capitol.

Sadly, that's as far as I got, but my plan for the rest of the chapter is for Surshot to report to the King, while Brosla waits for his turn to speak. Hearing the King's decree that men will be sent to seek peace between the dwarves and trolls, Brosla will probably reveal himself as an alien, telll his tale and volunteer to go on the peace mission. The king will assign a squad of soldiers and temporarily reactivate Sureshot's rank as Sergeant (likely against her will), so she can take command.

There might be a visit to a fortune-telling witch on the way out of town, who will cryptically prod them to go visit Kadrek and Illa, because they're essential to the success of the mission, on top of being main characters.

Tags: writing, work-in-progress, rumors-of-war