I did a little expansion of Chapter 16 of RttW as I prepped it for posting and was doing some brainstorming on the backstory. You see, Parvin’s comment in the chapter about Parties linking up is quite relevant to both the past and the future of the story. For the first three Trials, only one Party gets credit for defeating a Trial Master. You can cooperate in an informal capacity, but only the Party that lands the killing blow will get credit for the victory. (And it’s no big spoiler to say that this is exactly what Pawel has in mind to increase the Rookies’ survivability. It’s an underutilized strategy for a variety of reasons we may get into in a future post.) From the Fourth Trial on, Parties can formally link up to defeat Trial Masters (with limits set for each Trial). This concept gets developed into the Adventuring Companies, and while you only need a minimum of two Parties to form a Company, you don’t typically see Companies formed until at least four Parties are assembled (which is permitted after the Sixth Trial). While some Parties work well together and build long-lasting alliances, due to deaths, injuries and personal disputes, not just alliances between Parties but often the Parties themselves are constantly shifting. Having a starting Party stay together throughout its members’ career, as was the case with the core cadre of the White Lions, is exceedingly rare. I may tell the story of the early years of Ramachandra’s Party, but for now we sort of work backwards, with WttW2 covering the story from the time Pawel, Zofiya and Jun join the White Lions to their departure from the World and WttW3 covering the years from when Pawel and Zofiya were first summoned to the point they and Jun were scouted by the White Lions. However, with 1, 3 and 0 covering the story of Parties starting out, I’m a bit disinclined to tread that same ground a fourth time. WttW1 (RttW) is a special case, WttW3 tells the story of a more conventional starting Party, and WttW0 is the very first Party to be summoned, so I would have to think about an angle to make the story of Ramachandra’s Party stand out.

Maybe I can be doing some of that thinking over the next 26, 27 hours or so of transit I have to look forward to. Maybe I can get started on the chapter of TKoH as well while I’m at it. Stay tuned.

I got Chapter 16 of RttW more or less finished in time for the deadline. There may be some additional tweaking before it goes up, but it shouldn’t be anything too major. Getting some lead time on the next chapter before the weekend is out would be nice, but I suppose I oughtn’t get too greedy. We’ll see what comes. Stay tuned.

How’s 2026 treating you so far? Well, I didn’t get settled to do some writing until quite late, so I did make it too long before conking out. I came in under quota, but it was still respectable progress, and when combined with the previous overage, I’m on track overall, but it’s going to take some work to complete Chapter 16 of RttW in time for the deadline. I’ll see what I can do. Stay tuned.

While other folks were busy ringing in the new year, I was working on Chapter 16 of RttW. I actually had to stop myself because the wee hours and the likely time I’d be woken up in the morning weren’t a great match. I made good progress, enough to cover Monday’s lack of writing, but I may fall short of getting the chapter done in time for the deadline. We’ll see what I can get done. Stay tuned.

The past few days was a wild whirlwind of travel out of state and back again, so I didn’t get any writing done. (Though you would think I’d get some of it done being in the car some 18 hours.) Anyway, once I got back, I actually set aside some time to meet quota on Chapter 16 of RttW. I still need to make up for Monday. Maybe something I can do while ringing in the new year. Stay tuned.

While most folks had long since wound down their Christmas day, my niece was up late working on a project, so I decided to do something productive myself and powered my way through Chapter 10 of CoP so I would have it ready for the update. Normally I don’t get story updates out during the Christmas break, but there have been a lot of missed deadlines this year, so I reckon I owe it to my readers to not slack off any more than I have. If I play my cards right, I might get some lead time built up over the weekend before I switch back over to RttW. Stay tuned.

I did some more work in the Tellus Arc peripheral materials and wrote a little on Chapter 10 of CoP. It’s not going to be that long of a chapter, but with all the travel and festivities this week, I may not get all that much written. I’ll try to get the update out, but obviously I have more pressing priorities. Stay tuned.

I did more work in the Tellus Arc peripheral materials while I was reading through Þidrekssaga, and as I was taking in the background for Thidrek, I was developing the early history of the region that longtime readers will know as Byrn. You see, since it’s Thidrek of Bern, I decided that the revolution that overthrew the Kingdom of Ban would take on a restorationist character, branding themselves with the ancient name of the land (with some linguistic drift over the centuries). It actually was a fun coincidence that my ersatz Russia located next to my ersatz northern Italy formerly occupied by an Ostrogothic kingdom would map to a story of Ostrogoths occupying northern Italy that also involves scrapping in Russia. Life’s funny like that sometimes. Anyway, I hope to continue my work over the weekend before I switch back to CoP. Stay tuned.

I was doing more work to square things away in the TKoH outline. I’ve committed to bringing in elements of the Nibelungenlied up to the point of Sigurd’s death. From there, I’m thinking of doing a sequel tentatively titled The Curse of the Niflungs to chronicle the downfall of the Gjukings after Sigurd’s death. There may or may not be another one or two in the offing. I realize that despite being under the umbrella of the Brynhildr Cycle, these well be more tangentially related to Brynhild herself, but it all forms a part of a wider whole. I’ll continue to work on squaring things away and we’ll see where it gets me. Stay tuned.

I wrapped up Chapter 1 of TKoH and worked on fleshing out the outline in light of the new direction I’m taking the story. With the new arc I’m planning, I’m going to have to dig into Þidrekssaga. I’ve found 1988’s The Saga of Thidrek of Bern and it looks like it’s got a lot of good material for my consideration, but it’s going to take a while to go through it. I plan on multitasking with fleshing out the timeline and encyclopedia entries as well. I also need to be calculating travel times and such and decide how much of Sigurd’s story I want to put in the novel. If we interpret “The King of Hoards” as whoever inherits Andvari’s hoard, not just Fafnir, then I should at least go through the Nibelungenlied up to Sigurd’s death. I could do a sequel with the fall of Gunnar and Atli and maybe even another with Aslaug and Ragnar. We’ll see. Stay tuned.