Playing Catch Up

And then Golden Scale was the monsters.

Posted a new story last night, In the Crystal Crypts. There was an entire unspoken story lying underneath this one, especially towards the first half and again at the end, but I'll get to that later in the post.

So it seems that my lessening workload really turned in to two weeks of calm before I had to get right back into it. Most of it is work load, though I admit that if I spent just an hour most nights, I would have finally finished my rewrites and edits by now. I'll try harder this month. 'orz

Right now my priorities are to make a teaser chapter for Glass House and remove the rest as I work on an extensive rewrite--the tone really misses its mark in places (along with a handful of other problems), but I've been doing some research into horror writing and will hopefully be prepared for it. The full thing likely won't be in the works for a month or two though.

After the teaser, I kind of want to go ahead and spit out the rest of Whiteout. It was never meant to be a big, deep story, but its better ending has been a long time coming.

And finally, To Lead Them Home. It'll be getting some sort of sprucing up, though I keep waffling on how significant of one it needs. Nonetheless, I want to have it finished by the end of the month.

---

Alright, so Crystal Crypts. Spoilers ahoy.

I think it's telling how rushed I was with this in that I only had two research notes by the end. Also telling is how this "pure" adventure story turns pretty dark if you think about it too hard.

This story was pretty clearly taken from the Theseus myth. I'm... not entirely sure how much more I should dip into that, since if anyone learns about Greek myth, usually Theseus is one of the first three heroes to come up. It sometimes struck me as odd how distant Minos appeared in that story; even though he warred with Athens, enslaved Daedalus, and put the Minotaur in the labyrinth, his place in the myth just sort of ends past "this happened at Minos' place." (Of course, that's ignoring the separate myths where he becomes the butt of the joke, but still.)

And speaking of vague dark figures lurking in the background, let's get to Sombra. I understand why so many people felt that he just didn't feel threatening (why do I feel like I'm beating a dead horse just mentioning that?), though I'm a little surprised I didn't see more people taking advantage of that in their stories and art. We saw so little of him, so it's exceptionally easy to project all sorts of villainy on him--and technically, keeping him off screen is the exact same thing as keeping him in character. Incidentally, sarcasm is what keeps me from doing reviews.

But onward. That labyrinth under the castle had seen some terrible things, though the relevant "things" begin with tribute number five--that's two before Scale. It strikes me as something not too unbelievable that Sombra wouldn't waste much food on a tribute once they've boarded the ship to the Empire, or at least wouldn't spend the time ensuring there was enough. So you take your latest victim, put them in a boat over choppy seas for a day or two, then march them across the northern plains at a time when the northern snow seems to be encroaching.

(The snow is something I imagined tied in with the crystal ponies; the howling winter weather we saw I assumed was either tied in with the spell that banished Sombra and caused the Empire to disappear, or the crystal ponies had the ability to sort of terraform and live wherever they wished as long as they kept their spirits up. With Sombra's rule, the hope vanished and the snow moved back in.)

Anyway, you have one exhausted, starving minotaur, and one labyrinth with a liberal sprinkling of a particular hallucinogenic mushroom. Even the cautious would eventually take the risk when starving, but tribute five wasn't particularly cautious. He also wasn't lucky enough to realize his condition until after he had snapped the neck of a guard pony thrown to the maze, believing her to be a horrible, bloodthirsty bat-creature as big as himself. Now, he realizes he has an awful choice to make--either continue to eat the mushrooms and live in a never ending nightmare, or sustain himself from the pony he's killed and live in a sober, but still very real, different sort of nightmare. He decided to leave her body in a dead end and to occupy his time, he mapped out the maze by grinding the glowing mushrooms into the floor in the center room. Over time, he perfected it. But eventually that wasn't enough. Locating the point in the maze exactly opposite the doors, he began to chip away at the wall. At first he used bits of rock that were scattered through the crypts, but as they eventually were ground down or crumbled, he took to using his own horns. He carved a panel out of the rock to hide the hole he had made, and the waste materials he took to "bury" the pony's body. Late in the year, when his body was recovered from the maze, no one could explain why his horns had been ground down, nor where the gravel and dust had come from.

The sixth tribute stumbled across the tunnel with two pony compatriots. Recognizing it as a way out, they started digging upwards. The ponies, both with connections to the servants in the castle, arranged to be smuggled out, promising the minotaur that they would find some way to get her out from the other side, even if they had to dig from the other side. The pair made it to comparative freedom in the city, though one was recognized on the street less than a day later, recaptured, and executed. When the second heard she was suspected for their escape, she fled. The minotaur vainly waited in the tunnel, though eventually she had to return to the maze for food; her pony friends were able to smuggle food in from the outside, and without them, she was starving. In her desperation, she started consuming the Nightcap, and a feverish fervor took her to keep digging. When she found herself in a high room in the castle, she covered the hole with a stack of paintings and furniture, left the room, and mauled a small troop of guards. When servants were made to clean up the mess, they assumed the tunnel was one of Sombra's secret passages, and so they left the largest painting to cover it out of fear of being executed for having discovered it.

Phew! So that's the back story as it stands now, and since I'm exhausted, I think I'll leave it at that for now.[/page_break]