I’ve been wanting to get into the habit of writing down thoughts on the chapters of The Fell Gard Codices as I publish them, and as I’m beginning to figure out the time commitments involved with the story and how to make it all work, I figure it’s time to get started with that. Herewith, then, a few comments about yesterday’s chapter, “The Limits of Vision.”

— The caladrius is a creature from medieval bestiaries. It has the characteristics I’ve given it here, though I’ve made it rather more … somnolent … than the bestiarists noted.

— I’ve got a fairly complete, if still rather general, sense of the world outside the dungeon, its history and geography and culture. You can see some of that in the way William goes through a quick list of gods. On the one hand, I have to know the world’s background so I can understand the characters’ background, and what sort of a society they came out of, and how they define themselves within (and against) that society. On the other hand, it’s not always material that’s immediately relevant to the story. But as the tale progresses, bits and bobs naturally get mentioned in dialogue. So, ideally, as we go on the world will become more and more defined, both within the text and within my head.

— I will say that one of the main differences between the characters’ world and ours is that they have no direct equivalent to role-playing games. They’ve never played characters going on a dungeon crawl. Nobody has. So when they find themselves in that situation … it’s quite the learning curve. Which leads to the complete breakdown of events in the “Fruits of the Garden” chapter. As Gryselde says, they’re going to have to learn new ways of being for as long as they’re in Fell Gard. Will they be able to do that before fatalities start to happen? Well, we’ll see what the dice say.

— We also get a few more connections between the story world and our world, complete with a priest of Urizen. I might as well specify now (though it should become clear soon anyway) that the mention of Ossian isn’t actually to our world’s Ossian. More details on who this Ossian is should be coming up in, oh, about a dozen chapters, I’d say.

So that hits some of the things on my mind about this chapter. Obviously, if you have any questions or comments of your own, let me know. I’m experimenting with a log-in set-up, since I want comments but have had a bit of an issue with spam. Please, give it a whirl, and let me know your thoughts on the story!