Thoughts on writing and The Fifth Session of EoT · 6:50am Jul 9th, 2018
So it appears I can comfortably manage to write about 10k words a week, plus a few thousand more if I’m on a roll. Which is roughly 1400 words a day. That’s unacceptable. “Wait, what the hell?” I hear you cry out. “That’s like an entire story, every day! How is that unacceptable!?” Well, you person who probably didn’t say that. There’s a bit of backstory to that number, or more importantly, to the number 1,667. Waaaaay back in 2006, my sister introduced me to a little thing called NaNoWriMo. “National Novel Writing Month” is a challenge (which you may have heard about, it’s gotten big) to write a 50,000-word novel in one month. (specifically November) In order to complete the challenge, you have to write an average of 1,667 words every day. That’s no small feat, only about a third of the people who try succeed. Of the (few) accomplishments I take pride in, my greatest is that every year I have attempted the challenge, I have met that goal.
Unfortunately, getting started in that kind of environment means that no matter how much progress I make I am going to be forever comparing it to that magic number. If I’m not averaging at least 1,667 words, then I am clearly failing. This despite the fact that I have no such deadline in my writing these days. I haven’t done the NaNoWriMo challenge in a number of years at this point. Damn you, Pavlov!
By far the most interesting part of this experiment in writing The Elements of Tyranny is the process. It’s really quite strange, I’m not making up most of the events taking place. I’m just sort of… reporting what the players are doing. But at the same time, I’m the DM, I know what the story is supposed to be. So I make the story, but then nothing happens the way it’s supposed to, and then I write it again? What? 
I am, however, coming up with most of the dialog. In my experience, most D&D players aren’t much for actually role-playing. Lots of roll players though. It depends on the group. I am trying to stick to the personalities my players are displaying. Ormr’s player doesn’t talk much and uses lots of simple language when running the Yak. So that's how it comes out. Meanwhile, Tiny’s player is always cracking jokes… mostly terrible ones… and about Yaks… I’m not entirely sure why he didn’t just play one. Red’s overtly religious nature is, I admit, something of a fabrication based on a single moment in the first session. As Eclipse and Tiny were investigating the basin of Sap Red was “respecting the dead” or something (I forget the exact words the player was using, but that's what it amounted to)
On the topic of the Fifth Session, they didn’t manage to get any combat going, it was all just them getting the rest of the Naga look and then back to Celestia. You might note that the Naga didn’t revive until they were already there, despite the long walk back. That’s because I am nothing if not a largely rule-abiding DM, the Naga’s resurrection ability states it revives after 1d6 days. Lo, and behold! I rolled a 6. In fact, I revived it a bit early, mostly because it was getting late and the scene where Celestia sends it to Tartarus could easily have just been the next day, I figured having it wake up in the middle of the audience was more fun. Then again, it's not like it would have been even remotely threatening in the restraints they had. Between the rope and the cage and Eclipse’s counterspell, any revived Naga would have been a 1 line encounter to write.
“Halfway down the road the Naga revived, but was unable to do jack before the Empowered outright murdered it again.”
Well, it’s quite clear from my lack of ability to do things quickly (hello 12k words!) that it would have stretched out to a few paragraphs with maybe some taunting thrown in for good measure. But there was no way it was getting out of that. Also, the Naga is not one of the Elements of Tyranny, he’s a mini-boss. Given how terrified I was of him getting loose and wrecking everything with those Nightmares under his control and how long it took to hunt him down and kill him the first time? I am trying to run a campaign about bigger things than one stinking Naga.
Although I almost didn’t get to tell that story. The FREAKING YAK strikes again. He went to loot the Naga’s resting room and didn’t write down his loot until I was half-way done telling him about what he picked up, and he outright FORGOT about the most important thing he picked up until later. It’s a damn good thing Eclipse remembered to ask everything he picked up, or I wouldn’t have had the chance to remind the Yak player about the scroll and the Cult symbol. Crikes, that was the reason I kept hinting at them to go back and actually LOOT the place instead of just grabbing the silver and leaving. Without that story bit, they wouldn’t know about the Dreadcaster, or the conspiracy, or anything that would lead them to ask Celestia about the Elements of Tyranny!
On those, I’m not gonna spoil. You get to guess who they are, or more accurately, guess what I’m calling them. Well, there is one I’ve already mentioned by name.
Hate.
There are 5 more. They (obviously) correspond to the 6 elements of harmony and function as opposites. Albeit not in quite the same way as the Mean 6 do. If you read Celestia’s telling of those dark times towards the end of session 5, you’ll find most (all) of your hints as to what I’m using. I would ask you to black out your guesses, but I don’t think it matters. Judging from my other blogs, about ten people actually read these, and I’m pretty sure none of them are my players. They don’t even read the stories I write. 
