patrickcharlton-oshea-author

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

#Destiny Is Calling You About Your Car's Extended Warranty

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

Waging War, An Age of Steam and Sorcery Novel.

Chapter Thirteen

After a full day's march from the nearest town, the exhausted Travellers sat, stood or wandered about in a loose semi-circle. The focus of this was an enormous pair of iron blast doors set into the sheer rock wall in front of them. The dusty road ran right up to the base of the doors that were bordered by an equally massive frame of dark rock that contrasted the lighter brown of the cliff face.  Pham rapped a podge bar, a metal shaft with a ring spanner on one end and a tapered point on the other, against the doors and declared “Mel-lon!”

“You’re a melon!”

“Ya mum’s a melon!”

“Instructions unclear, got my… mrmphe ner imlon.”

The last one was muffled by Warren wrapping his arm around the head of the guy to his left and clamping his hand around the speaker’s mouth. “Let the geek work his magic,” he whispered in their ear. “Unless you have a better way to open a twelve foot iron door?” Not to mention that his… tool is almost as big as he is. How strong IS that geek?

“You lot are a bunch of uncultured swines,” Pham sighed. “Fine, we’ll do this the hard way.” He turned to his left, where an almost invisible metal box was set into the rock beside the doorway. Using a mallet and impact screwdriver he removed the fasteners securing the lid and pried it open. Inside was a very neatly laid out circuit board with a series of lights arrayed along the right edge. Along the left were a set of seven coloured jumper cables that clearly needed to be plugged into the appropriate holes on the right. He tried the simplest solution first, plugging them straight across. This had no effect at all. He tried inverting the sequence, top into bottom and so on, and one light lit up and a ticking began.

After five seconds the ticking stopped and a hatch at the top right of the massive door frame opened with a noise like a tortured donkey to reveal what could only be described as an autoturret. It was a level of technology they’d never seen in the game before and to a man they stood agape, staring at the mechanical mystery. Its corroded snout tracked back and forth in a shaking, jerking motion as it sought a target. Concentric rings along the length of the snub barrel flickered to life and with a whine that would annoy a mosquito, it began spitting some sort of pellets at the gathered Travellers. With shouts and cries of pain, they all scattered but the turret’s refire rate was abysmal and its tracking was almost non-existent so nobody was hurt.

Not badly anyway.

“Oops,” Pham said.

“Oops my sainted aunt,”  Dennis shouted, tucked against the wall where he was out of the line of fire. “You’d better get that thing turned off or I’m going to smack you one, Warren’s protection or no.” He was obviously nursing a bruised bicep and a grudge.

Pham pulled the plugs once more and the hatch screeched shut. Nobody was brave or foolhardy enough to set foot in front of the door, however. “It’s some sort of puzzle,” Pham pondered out loud. “There’s got to be some sort of clue.”

“Maybe it’s written in the lid, like a box of chocolates,” one of the cowering fighters suggested.

“MaYbE iTs WrItTeN iN tHe LiD.” Pham mocked. “Sure, like it could be that easy.” He picked up the lid from the dirt where it lay and rubbed away the accumulated muck of ages from the grimy surface. “ROYGBIV 1634527. You have GOT to be kidding me.”

With the cords plugged into the correct sequence, and no small amount of pouting on Phams part, the doors ground slowly apart as their rusted bearings complained loudly to reveal a great stone hall sloped gently down into the earth. Every few meters the smooth walls were interrupted by square section supports that ran up the wall, across the roof and down the other side. On all three exposed faces of the uprights at roughly head height for a human was a dark bezel set octagonal gem the size of a dinner plate. As the Travellers watched, the gems closest to them slowly began to glow, the luminence beginning as a spark in the centre of the jewel and increasing until the whole thing was almost too bright to look at. Soon the entrance was nearly as bright as it was outside. As the gems closest to them reached full luminescence those on the next set of supports started to glow. Once they had reached full brightness, the first set dimmed and those on the next supports came to life. The sequence was repeated down the hall, though once lit the gems never fully extinguished again. Even at their lowest the gems provided enough light to see the floor.

“Well,” Warren said, stepping into the doorway. “That’s about the most welcome we’re going to get. Loot and levels, guys.”

Brandishing weapons and shields and shouting war cries, Warren’s fledgling mercenary troupe thundered down into the deeps. For about a hundred meters before they pulled up at another metal door. This one was much less corroded and had no external control box this time. Not knowing what else to do, they milled about in front of the door, occasionally hitting it with their weapons and swearing. Pham came sauntering down the hall in their wake.

On their left the stone wall only came up to their waist and the rest of the way to the roof was a transparent material much like glass. This too received the attention from the mercenaries weapons with nary a scratch to mar its surface. When they grew bored of the sound of metal bouncing off glass they started trying to prise the gems from the supports while Pham moved forward to apply his expertise. Warren watched as Pham conducted various tests with a range of esoteric tools. The tuning fork in particular raised his eyebrows involuntarily.

He left the elf to tinker and watched his crew extracting the maximum amount of loot that their levels would allow. The gems they managed to free without damaging disappeared into bags and satchels for later appraisal and sale. Small whoops were uttered randomly as one Traveller or another experienced a skill increment. “How about you lot leave us enough to see by?” He cautioned. “No use wasting the torches we had to pay for when there’s lights provided.”

“Sure, boss, but what do we do while we wait for the geek to get the door open?” Dave asked, using his chin to point to where Pham had spread out an array of tools around himself and was staring at the glass deep in thought.

“The geek has figured it out,” Pham responded sharply. “Did no one else see that big red button over there?” He pointed through the glass to where a very obvious button sat on the control panel like the angriest mushroom ever conceived.

“Yeah, we saw it,” Dave stage whispered, “but in case you hadn’t noticed, there’s an unbreakable window between it and us.”

“Oh, I noticed,” Pham snarked back. “I’ll be you didn’t notice that though.” He pointed at a round plate set into the roof, central to the door and in line with the button. It was difficult to see as it was flush with the surface and made of the same material, but was held in place with eight hex screws that protruded slightly. “Boost me up there and we’ll see about getting this door open.”

Dave muttered something under his breath, but when Warren shot him A Look he subsided and hoisted Pham onto his shoulders to let the elf reach the plate. Eight screws tinkled onto the floor followed by a clang of the plate and a vent shaft was revealed.

“Observe,” Pham took a brass ball the size of his fist from his inventory and rolled it overarm into the vent. It rolled noisily down the metal chute and dropped out of a hole directly above the button, depressing it and setting off an almost deafening klaxon. Two rotating beacons at the top left and right of the door emerged and began lighting the space with an orange strobe effect. Every remaining gem along the hall slowly came to full brilliance as the crew hurriedly stashed tools and spoils and readied weapons. A deep booming thunk echoed deep into the mountain and the inner doors began to grind open.

In the void beyond, countless lights twinkled and shone.

“My god. It’s full of stars,” someone breathed.

One pair, then another, then a third blinked.

“Those aren’t stars! Nope!” Pham accelerated back up the slope. “Nope! Nope! Nope! Nope! Nope!”

Conversely, the rest of the crew flowed down the ramp into the darkness with varying attempts at battle cries. The ululation reminiscent of an Amazonian Warrior Princess mixed with an extended “Leeeeeerrrrrroooooyyyyy!”

                Warren felt his pulse quicken in response. He hefted his katana, now a veteran of multiple skirmishes and battles, and added his voice to the choir. The doors, now fully open, allowed the light of the ramp to supplement the rising glow suffusing the chamber beyond and reveal the twisted bodies of the creatures packed in like sardines. Their sallow skin and matted hair dripped with a greasy gel-like substance that vanished into the grated floor. That same floor quickly wicked away their blood as the mercenary crew charged amongst the pack in an effect best described as “the blender”. It helped that the monsters were at best waist high and roughly as strong as your average five year old. That didn’t mean they were entirely defenceless. Warren yipped as small, needle-like teeth punctured his shin and he punted the owner the length of the room to splat against the far wall.

                “Goal!” Warren funky-walked a few steps like he’d kicked a field goal at the grand finals. The celebration only lasted a moment though, as by the time he’d stopped there were no more creatures to kill. The remains of the creatures turned to goo as he watched, and oozed through the grate. “What the heel?” The specific configuration of the room around him finally dawned. They were standing on a raised grated walkway not quite the width of the room. Handrails prevented anyone from falling off the edge into the gently green pool of goop below. Short pipes ran across the roof before angling sharply downward to end in weird iris-style valves. The room was lit by more of the octagonal gems as well as the glow from the pool, leaving no shadows at all. Here and there crumbling piles of metal leaked brown goop into the pool as though someone had poured acid on a heap of scrap iron and left it to dissolve.

            Despite the multiple minor injuries the crew had taken, it had been an entirely underwhelming fight. The creatures hadn’t offered much resistance, nor had they shown any of the tactical skills of any of the mobs they’d faced before. Even kobolds knew how to form a basic defencive line. Worse yet, the bodies had turned to gunk and disspaeared through the floor leaving nothing to loot. Warren ignored the mutterings from his troops and shouted back up the slope. “Oi! Git yer feartie ass back doon here!”

            Pham inched back down the slope, removing a fizzing fuse from another brass ball as he came. “Are they gone?”

            “Of course they’re gone, ye daftie. Was that a grenade you chucked into the vent before?” Warren indicated the brass ball still sitting on the control panel on the other side of the glass.

            “Duh,” Pham tossed the fuse down through the grate whre it extinguished with a hiss. “What about it?”

            “What if it had gone off and ruined the panel?” Warren huffed. “How were we supposed to get in then?”

            “You know this is a game, right? You wait for it to reset. Besides, I didn’t put a fuse in it. It’s not going to go bang without one.” He pulled a second sphere from a pocket and smacked it against the first, grinning as everyone else in the room flinched. He then began to juggle the brass balls, badly and dropping them every few seconds.

            “Orright,” Dave shouted. “You made your point. Put ‘em away. How do we get through THIS door?”

            Pham tucked the explosives away and examined the doors at the far end of the room. Then he checked the doors at the front of the room.Then he leaned over the rail and lowered a length of the fuse strand into the pool below. When this had no effect, he brought the strand up and used it to transfer a droplet of the goo onto a glass slide and snapped a monocle down over his eye to examine it. “Hmm,” he snapped the monocle back and held the slide up to the light. “I’d say you probably pull that lever over there.” He pointed at a large lever by the door at the front of the room.

            “Imma kill ‘im,” Dennis growled. “Can I kill ‘im boss?”

            “You can’t kill me, you’d never get the door open,” Pham sassed back. “Thinking isn’t your stong suit.”

            “He’s outta line, but he’s right,” Warren shook his head and waving a placating hand at Dennis. “He’s gotten us past two and a half doors so far, and there’s probably quite a few more down the way.”

            Dennis grumbled but put his sword away. “Fine, but I can't promise when all of this is over I'm not going to kill ‘im.”

            “See, this is exactly why you never have any friends in meatspace,” Dave clapped him on the back. “Let it go.”

            Warren watched the exchange for a moment, then grabbed another of his guys and pointed at the lever. “Craig, go pull that for us, will you?”

            “My name is Soul Cleaver!” Craig replied boisterously, brandishing the pair of meat cleavers he used as weapons.

            “I don’t care what you put on your character sheet, Craig, I’m not calling you that. Go pull the lever.”

            “Yeah!” Pham shouted, snapping his goggles over his eyes. “Throw the lever Kronk!”

            Criag looked sad for a moment, but bounced back with an enthusiasm that implied he was somewhat younger than the middle aged man’s body he was currently wearing and rushed over do as he was asked.

            The klaxon started once more as the front door closed, somewhat quicker than it had opened. The moment the doors boomed shut, the irises on the valves overhead cycled open and brand new, gleaming bright metal humanoids were ejected. Their limbs unfolded as they fell, unblemished steel, shining copper and golden brass parts snapping into place.  By the time they hit the grated floor they already scanning for targets and begun powering up arm mounted weapons both ranged and melee. Fortunately there were also only eight, one for each pipe.

            “Wrong lever!” Pham shouted, pressed up against the closed doors.

            The metal monsters stood there looking menacing but the Travellers didn’t give them a chance to turn the dangerous look into actual danger. With nearly twenty Travellers milling about on the walkway when the mechanical men landed, they were attacked from every direction at once and turned into fresh piles of scrap for the goo to start melting into the pool below. Overhead, a light on each iris blinked in increasing frequency, heralding another wave of combatants. Pham dove at the nearest pile and jammed his hands into its ruined chest. In the next instant the klaxon died again and the inner doors opened to reveal a t-junction.

            “Ok, make that three doors,” Warren smiled. “Which way next?”

            “If it follows the logic I’m expecting, when you turn left you’ll find a doorway to a hall that leads to the control room we could see through the glass,” Pham guessed. “Turning right should take you past another door that leads to a garrison and down the hall to the rest of the complex.”

            “Suuuuure, smarty-pants,” said a Traveller who looked like a cross between Chewbacca and Schwarzenegger. His name, or even his species, had  temporarily slipped Warren’s  mind, but in his head he’d dubbed him Schwarzenbacca. “What makes you say that?”

            Pham just smiled in the most infuriating way possible. Clearly irritating meatheads was both hobby and a calling to him. And since Warren needed his help, he could do it safely. Ish. “I’m going to go get my grenade. Is there anything else?”

            A vein began to pulse in Schwarzenbacca’s temple and, not for the first time, Warren marvelled at the effort the devs had put into making the game seem real. And, honestly, he didn’t blame him for getting irritated. The knife-eared git was managing to be both smug and cowardly at the same time. “Look, you do that. We’re going this way and, assuming you’re right about the barracks we’ll meet you in there or back in the hall if we’re done before you get back. Come on guys.”

            To no-ones’ surprise but everyones’ mild irritation the very next door down the right hand hall, an imposing metal monstrosity with a thick glass porthole at eye height, was indeed a garrison. It swung wide on surprisingly silent hinges and Warren led the way into the room quietly, having no skill at all in sneaking but doing his best anyway. The light gems began to brighten the moment he entered, revealing two rows of bunk beds that wouldn’t look out of place in an ancient war movie. The beds themselves were made from a dark metal, all square edges and corners. There was a drawer under each mattress that could be pulled out, one at knee height for the bottom bunk and one at head height for the top. Everything was coated in a thick layer of dust, or possibly mould. The fluffy mass absorbed their footfalls and deadend any noise they made. A gentle breeze stirred dust into the air, causing someone behind Warren to sneeze.

            “Uh, boss, I don’t think we’re alone here.”

            Sure enough, towards the back of the room were slumped figures leaning against the beds or lying flat on the floor. Staring into the gloom,Warren was able to make out humanoid shapes bending at the middle, very slowly sitting up and trying to move. Their attempts were hampered by the thick coating of dust and the fact that several were missing limbs entirely. One emitted a shower of sparks and fell still again, but that short burst was enough to ignite the dust cloaking its body and the flames washed across the floor like a wave.

            “Back! Back! Out the door!” Warren urged his crew. The fire was spreading quickly and would soon engulf the whole room. Everyone was hustling for the exit – all pretense at stealth abandoned. Warren stood by the door waving his crew through and making sure they all got out safely when a scream made his head snap around. Craig was lying on the floor, rolling about trying to put out the flames spreading up his legs. His efforts were hampered by a glowing hot hand gripping his ankle. The skin was sizzling where the fingers were wrapped around the tortured joint but Craig was in too much pain to think straight and free himself. Warren dashed forward in an attempt to pull him free when the torso the arm was attached to exploded. The shockwave knocked the wind out of Warren’s chest and hurled him backwards through the door. The same blast slammed the door shut as Warren fetched up against the wall opposite, dazed and singed but mostly unharmed.

            Dave struggled to open the door against the pressure shouting that he would rescue Craig, but Warren stopped him. “He’s gone for respawn. Unless you want to join him, keep it closed.”

            In the sombre dim light of the hallway they listened to the explosions rock the room on the other side of the door. The glow through the porthole eventually faded, taking their enthusiasm with it. “How about we call it for the night?” Warren suggested. “Craig has to get back here from town and I’m really not feeling it.”

            The remaining members agreed and after setting a time to play again they all logged off.

            “Right, so what did you find?” Pham sauntered down the hall, tossing a grenade from one hand to the other. “Guys? Hello?” He opened the door to the garrison and his eyes lit up. “Oooh, shinies!”

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

Waging War, An Age of Steam And Sorcery Novel. Chapter 12

“So, what you’re saying is that last time you were in this region was about a week after launch?” Peter asked as they drifted along the road in no particular hurry. Everyone was in or on a mount but they weren’t pushing for a land speed record by any stretch of the imagination.

“Thereabouts, yeah,” Pham replied, looking out at the peaks of the mountains as they approached the foothills. He shuddered before continuing. “Woz has been back, as you can see, but I never wanted to return. Some bad memories buried in them hills.”

“Does that mean we’re close to your starter town?” Dani asked as her horse whickered and shied away from a rock spat out from under Pham’s tyres. “I’d like to see where this bromance began.”

“Whit's fur ye'll no go past ye,” Warren responded, “but we’re not headed in that direction today.” He pointed up towards a speck on a low hill off the main road to the north. “That’s our destination up there.”

With Peter’s persistent lack of transportation situation temporarily solved in the form of a cart being pulled by Pham’s mount, they’d made great time. Peter had initially griped about the cost of the cart, the rickety construction, his misgivings about riding in another vehicle he had no control over, the lack of brakes, the colour of the sky and anything else he could think of because he was in a griping mood that day, but even with the rigid suspension transmitting every bump up through his spine to make his head rattle it was honestly better than being stuck at home in his grandmother’s house. 

It was Peter’s worst nightmare. All of his aunts and cousins were visiting from the mainland and all his cousins were girls, ranging in age from two years younger than him to eight years older. The few uncles he had, as most of his aunts were either divorced or had wives, had remained at home. Probably luxuriating in the short holiday, being able to eat and drink what they liked and wander the house sans pants, Peter thought. I wish I could.

 Due to the crush of bodies in the tiny house that morning he’d been forced to eat breakfast alone in his room, as all the seats in both the dining room and lounge had been taken, then berated for a solid thirty minutes for dripping milk from his cereal on the hallway floor by multiple women, passed from one to the next as they all had to get their ten cents in. It didn’t matter that it was a tile floor and took the work of seconds to wipe it up. It had been an utter relief that today was a Saturday and he was able to escape the house the moment he could slip away unnoticed and make his way up the hill to his favourite login spot. Still, a portion of the black cloud had followed him. One without any visible silver lining, he still had to return before dark.

An itch on his arm prompted him to check his character sheet, where he found that he’d both learned and earned several increments in the skill Teamster. As virtually every action he took in The Age of Steam and Sorcery seemed to be correlated with a skill, Peter was starting to find that his list was getting so long as to be almost unmanageable. In the end he just sorted it from highest value to lowest and elected to ignore anything that didn’t make the first page. Much like a Google search, he thought. “So, what’s the plan?” he continued out loud. “I was party leader before because I was the only one who had the Geas, but now that we all do, shouldn't one of you guys take over?”

“Depends. What’s your level now?” Pham called over his shoulder.

“Uh, three?” Peter nearly tumbled forward out of the cart as Pham slammed on the brakes. The other two brought their mounts to a more respectable halt.

Pham whirled around in his seat. “How the frak are you still only level three after all that we’ve been through?”

“Take it easy,” Peter complained as he righted himself. “It’s not my fault we’ve staggered from crisis to crisis. We’ve played with our new gear exactly once. The only downtime we’ve had recently has been when we went shopping and even then we were essentially running non-combat quests. Like this armourer we’re off to see. It’s great that we’re getting new equipment - but did it have to be from a shady operator who lives all by himself on a random hill in the ass end of nowhere?”

“Herself,” Warren corrected. “And yes. We are going to need some very specific resistances built into our armours and she’s the only one I know of that can do it.” He spurred his mount into motion again.

“What’s with tall, dark and surly today?” Dani asked Pham, bringing her horse in close to his contraption. “In fact, did everyone take grumpy pills this morning? I expect that sort of thing from Warren, but even Pete’s cracking the sads. Did something happen?”

Pham tapped a gauge on the cluster in front of him as he thought about how to answer. “Pete’s a whiner, I thought we all knew that. Well, when he’s not some terrifying abomination with eyes that are windows into the void between dimensions that is. Netflix probably cancelled his favourite show after one season or something. But what happened to Woz, and me, that happened a long time ago. Woz’s tale to tell, but. Not mine. We weren’t on the best of terms the first time we visited The Archology. Decisions were made. Prices were paid. And not all by him.”

“I’ve said I’m sorry a thousand times Pham,” Warren rumbled without looking back. “I don’t know how to make it better.”

“And I’ve said I don’t blame you. It was the only way.” Pham reached into a pouch at his waist and extracted two small spheres. He popped one in his mouth and expertly bounced the second off of Warren’s helmet with a dull clang. It landed in the dirt and Peter recognised it as a sweet of some sort. “We agreed at the time and nothing changed since then.”

“So, you going to tells us about it?” Peter asked. All the mystery was exasperating him. “Before we walk into the Underdark and face Drow armies with Aussie accents?”

“There’s no Drow, it’s an Ancient dungeon. Look, I can’t do this, not right now,” Warren kept looking dead ahead. “It’ll make more sense when we’re inside the Archology.”

They rode the rest of the way up the mountain trail in silence. The only sound was the creaking of the wheels, the clopping of hoofs and the hissing of the winds whipping through the tall grasses that bordered the road. They’d left the treeline behind long ago and the cold of the breeze that had sprung up was finding every crack in Peter’s armour. His already dark mood soured further. I could have stayed home and had the same experience, the little voice in the back of his head muttered. At least I’d be warm.

Eventually they reached the end of the path where it terminated in a slate hut with a hitching rail outside and a great chimney in the centre of the roof belching black smoke into the sky. It looked like a civilised volcano.

Warren dismounted and secured his mount, motioning for the others to do the same. The second they had, the front door of the hut slammed open, allowing a scorching gale to pass over them. Peter blinked rapidly to re-moisten his instantly dried eyeballs. They waited for something else to happen, but when nothing did they entered the gloomy building. Inside the door the air was even dryer and smokier than what had rushed out, the interior one large open space with a massive glowing forge in the centre that lit everything with a hellish glow. The walls were lined with many and varied devices and pieces of armour. The most normal ones were brass inset leather vests, helms and bracers. Attached to the brass bits were tools like screwdrivers and spanners, some on chains so they couldn’t be dropped, some on actuated arms that looked to be able to move on their own. Again, these were the most normal pieces. The more esoteric items had functions he could only guess at.

A ratcheting, clicking noise came from below a wrap-around workbench on the far side of the forge. The part of the device visible above the worktop looked to be a comfortable leather armchair inside a cauldron. A sleek steam engine sat behind the back of the chair with the smoke stack protruding a foot above where the occupants head would be. Peter was reminded of Thomas The Tank Engine’s evil twin they’d fought beneath Averton, but much smaller. And lacking the murderous intent.

The source of the clicking ratchet extracted themselves from underneath the workbench. A four-armed vision straight from Geiger’s nightmares greeted them. Its black, chitinous skin of its limbs reflected the glow of the forge, and a wasp-like bulbous head protruded from a patchy cloak stained, burned and torn in so many places it barely covered the monstrous form. “Hello there!” it greeted them in an incongruously cheerful voice. 

“General K’Gnobeh,” Warren bowed.

“Pshaw,” K’Gnobeh dismissed, waving the arm with the socket spanner in it. “I left the military a long time ago. It’s just K’Gnobeh now, or Armourmaster if you want to be extra formal. What brings you to my neck of the woods?” Were it not for the slightly extended sibilants and pronounced glottal stops, it could be the voice of someone in a London alley trying to sell you a “Rolex” that would stop working before the end of the street.

“Armourmaster, I met you in the first Faction Wars, ‘just’ is not a word I’d use to describe you,” Pham spoke up from the doorway. “It was said you died in the artillery barrage on the keep.”

“We met, did we?” One insectoid hand reached up to tap at his chin while another returned the spanner and socket to their assigned positions on a nearby toolboard. “Wait! The pale elf! Yes, I recall your face. You were the most inquisitive Traveller I’d ever met. Still are, in fact. Did you ever get that mechanical man working?”

“I did, Armourmaster. And thank you for all your help,” Pham extracted his mech from his inventory and placed it on the ground. He polished a non-existent smudge from the domed top proudly. “I couldn’t have done it by myself.”

“You’re welcome, but it is the last you’ll get. That was the deal I struck with your kingdom, few know I lived past that day and none bar the king can know how. Now, come in, pull up a pew and we’ll have a cuppa and speak of happier times.” K’Gnobeh stepped around the workbench and they saw that his bottom half was made from a dark, polished metal that, while it resembled the chitin of his torso, didn’t have the lustre of the live skin. Looking closer, Peter realised that K’Gnobeh’s lower left arm was made of a similar metal as well, the segments cennected by ball joints with a greater range of movement than the natural elbows. K’Gnobeh used those extra degrees of freedom to snag mugs from the shadowed pegboard as he passed and laid them around a small wooden table. “What brings four such Travellers to my door? Not my pretty face, is it?”

The four arranged themselves around the table and watched as the armourmaster poured the tea. Peter still had zero clue as to what species he was, and didn’t want to offend by guessing. He took a tentative sip, expecting tea made in a forge to taste metallic, but found it an excellent Assam blend that didn’t even need milk. Warren dumped four lumps of sugar in and then topped the cup up to the brim with moo juice.  Pham added a tot from a hip flask before offering it around, which everyone declined. Dani just cradled her cup and breathed the steam.

“K’Gnobeh, we’re going to need protection that you alone are qualified to provide,” Warren began, “we’re headed into the Archology. Again.”

K’Gnobeh’s face was already difficult to read, but now it took on an even more inscrutable expression. “Are you pulling my leg? It’ll come off, you know.” When it became obvious that Warren was serious he continued. “You know what’s in there, right? I don’t think, even after all these years, that anyone has ever defeated The Wight in The Black. Travellers have mostly given up even trying.”

“That’s why we’ve come to you.” Warren put his cup down firmly, looking off into the distance as though the walls of the forge had turned entirely transparent. “We know what’s down there, well, Pham and I do. You’re the only one I know of who can make us these.” He pulled a set of blueprints from a pouch on his belt. The scrolls they were written on looked old, cracked and faded.

Pham drew in a sharp breath. “You kept those?”

“What are they?” Dani asked.

Warren flattened the designs out across the table, aligned so that K’Gnobeh could read them. “The Archology was intended as the last holdout of the Ancients in their war against… something. We never found that out. But their defences were on par with stuff in the real world. Physical damage we can soak up with normal armour. Elemental damage can be negated by potions and such. The Ancients had access to something like nano-tech and radiation. After the Wight killed us, I was… obsessed, I’ll admit it, with getting back at it. For what it did to me, and to her. Pham drew up designs for protective clothing, to be worn under armour, but we could never find anyone with the skill or materials to actually make them. Eventually we came to terms with the fact it was beyond us. Max level players with full raid parties have gone in and never come out.”

“And you think this is a good place to grind for levels?” Peter asked incredulously. 

“Nothing says you have to go all the way to the bottom,” Pham pointed out, one finger raised in the traditional ‘point of order’ position. “In the upper levels there are some really good grind points, with places to rest and even vending machines with health potions, and if we hadn’t challenged Warren's cousin in a race to beat the dungeon that’s where we’d stay.”

“That’s why we need the protective gear,” Peter nodded, understanding dawning. “In order to beat that ass, we’re going to have to be the first to clear the dungeon.”

“It’s why he picked it, the skunner.” Warren crossed his arms as his face darkened. “Death in that place comes nasty. Even though there’s a chapel on the first layer to respawn, I don’t know anyone who’s ever come back and tried again. He thinks I’m not man enough to see it through.”

“Well, death doesnt’ bother me,” Peter shrugged. “Armourmaster, sir, can you make these for us, please?”

The armourmaster took the blueprints to his workbench and began sifting through drawers and cabinets around the room. “I reckon I can. It’ll take a day or two, but I’ve got all I need here. One issue, I can’t cover your wings when they’re out. Can you fold them in tighter? And do you want your mechanical arm covered?”

Peter wriggled and twisted in his seat, pulling his wings in closer. He tucked the tips in alongside his legs and folded the rest as close to his back as he could. “Can you make the back loose enough to cover them like this?”

“Surely can, and the arm?”

“Covered, please. The less customisation the better, I think.”

K’Genobeh returned to the table with a measuring tape. “I’m already going to have to allow for this one,” he flicked the tip at Warren, “a looser back and a clipped off arm are nothing.”

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

Can confirm. It is in fact both.

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

I have nothing to add, other than signal boosting these amazing writers.

Community event! Let’s recommend some writeblrs! Reblog this post and rec your favorite writeblrs. But here’s what makes it fun… Tell people why you recommend them! Do they have a specific character that you adore? Is their prose top notch? Is it their killer personality? Share, share, share!

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

I see you and raise you a counterpoint: animals that know EXACTLY what they're doing.

Prime example. My rabbit Twitch. Lovely bunny, most friendly of a prey species but she hated things changing. I know, buns are OCD but, damn. Now I'd had to clean up a mess she made and after hadn't quite put her room back the way she wanted. She hopped up to our coffee table where I, being the geek I am, had a keyboard for the loungeroom PC. Being the broke-ass geek I am though, it was a corded keyboard.

I tell y'all. She looked me dead in the eyes, reared up on her hind legs to reach the cord and bit it in half.

She knew.

it’s insane to me that people get so mad at animals for doing animal stuff. people will post 4 paragraph Facebook rants about a killdeer nesting in their gravel and include pics of the bird taking care of their nest with 0 idea that they’re like, occupying an Important Driveway. they’re just being little dudes and you’re seething

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

How to hide plot twists from both your readers and your characters in a way that is not frustrating or annoying.

So I was watching a book review for a book that I liked but both loved and hated some of the plot twists. Of course this got me thinking about plot twists and why they work for both readers and the characters that are falling for these plot twists.

Readers

The key is to control the information that your readers have. Your readers aren't going to consider an option unless (1) that twist is really common for your genre and that reader has read that genre a lot and will therefore be expecting it or (2) you have very obviously given them the specific information nessesary to unintentionally figure out the twist before the characters.

Why does this information stand out, you may be wondering. It is because there is nothing else going on to distract away from a piece of information that can seem meaningless with the right context.

Most of the time, if you're not writing a very specific plot line with a very specific genre, your reader isn't going to immediately know where the plot is going so they may not be looking out for the information relevant to a later plot twist, so as long as you justify an informational choice that explains a later plot twist in a way that covers a variety of basis, they're probably not going to pick up on the one piece you left out, aka what is going to make this twist fun.

This piece of information should be something small and unassuming. It can be magical, but if you're writing fantasy that magic has to be hidden really really well. I find that a plot twist works the best when the piece of information that is missing is something you wouldn't really think about, like the reason a prince was able to infiltrate a prison and hide his identity was because he had his cousin standing in for him and we don't know that this cousin existed and knew the limits of that world's magic (this is actually a plot twist that fooled me btw despite how obvious at sounds now).

A good plot twist that fools the reader relies on twisting the information that the reader has and therefore twisting how they think the story will go.

Midway sidenote: not every plot twist needs to exist to fool both the reader and the character, sometimes it is really fun to watch a character fail because of something inherent to that character.

Characters

Remember how I said sometimes it's really fun to watch a character fail. That only works sometimes.

It is more annoying to figure out a plot twist that is really obvious and then have the character miss it because the author said so.

So how does a writer pull this off?

Be intentional. Have an idea in mind of when you want the reader to figure it out and ask your beta readers when they figured out your plot twists to control that as much as you can.

Your character does not know which genre they're in, so you have to both get inside the character's head and take the reader along with you so they understand why this character is making these poor choices and missing the most obvious villain in the room.

Why would a character miss a plot twist?

They are distracted or delusional. Characters have goals and they may ignore their better judgments to achieve these goals based on their personality. Put more emphasis on your character's motives to hide information that may make plot twists more obvious. Also, your characters may use information about their world to explain their motives and this information may also be vital to understanding a later plot twist

The average person does not go around thinking everybody around them is out to get them especially if those people seem incapable of that through the pov character's ego or the other character's demeanor. If your character has known somebody for a really long time or knows a piece of information that is vital to the worldview they're probably not going to immediately discard it. Fun fact: in the real world, when people have their views disputed, even with very good evidence, it can make them more likely to hold on to that old belief.

Expectation of harm. Different characters have different experiences with shape how bad they think things can get. For example, if a character has never experienced something, they may not know what can lead to that thing. (FYI older characters are more likely to know more things so be careful with this one.)

The Twist

For a twist to work, it must make sense with both real world and in world knowledge as well as common sense, so keep this in mind as you plan.

Conclusion

This isn't comprehensive because good plot twists require a lot of information to make them work and that's makes them very specific. While I would love to explain why different plot twists work, part of them working is them fooling you and hindsight bias is kind of a thing.

Keep writing. If a plot twist just isn't working either scrap it or let it sit until you have the information to build reasons why it should work.

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

Waging War, An Age of Steam and Sorcery novel. Chapter Eleven

Warren scratched absently at a healing scab on his arm. In order to avoid talking to his father or the doctors, he'd been living in The Age nearly 24/7 for over a week now and if he was being entirely honest with himself, the realism probably would never stop being amazing to him. Cuts and abrasions faded to bruises before healing completely. There were only two ways to get instant healing, magic – be it spell or potion – or respawn and neither were attractive options. Magic was rare, the only clerics were NPCs and they never left their churches, and though potions were possible they merely accelerated the healing process. Feeling a stab wound knit itself together in fast forward didn’t make it hurt any less. Respawns were right out. Warren had only experienced one of those, and it had been mercifully quick.

And it wasn’t just wounds. The food tasted and smelled real. The air that flowed over his skin felt appropriately cool or warm and carried the scents of flowers in the fields, wood and brass in the buildings and blood in the aftermath of battle. If he wasn’t watching where he was going, he could actually stub his toe. He felt the heat of flames, the roughness of the leather binding on the handle of his katana, the sweat running down his back. Sure, there were little things that took him out of the moment, like when the mark on his arm itched to let him know one of his attributes had levelled up, but he relished the itch sensation even if he cared little for the numbers-go-up of an RPG. 

For the moment, though, what he was feeling was a mite stymied. He had established himself as the leader of the team of fighters he’d joined on the first day not by killing the most enemies, but by making sure nobody had to be sent for a respawn. Sure, there had been some minor wounds taken, his arm was evidence of that, but his leadership had ensured that weaker members were covered, stronger members directed to the place they were most effective and loot was distributed equitably. In his eyes, it wasn’t much different from leading a football team. Make sure the quick guys get their chance to run, tackle the big guys with your own and make sure the guy communicating the calls doesn’t get wrecked by the opposing team. The loot thing was new, but settling interpersonal disputes was a team captain skill as well so it wasn’t all that different. As his father once said, “You can’t make everyone happy, so make sure they’re all equally unhappy.” It was advice that served him well after battles when the chests appeared.

 Right now the band of misfits were sitting in the inn where they first met quaffing ales and trying to choose the next quest from the board. Quaffing, he’d learned, is much like skolling, but more of the drink goes on your body and the floor than down your throat. While the term was new to him, the act reminded him of when his father and his uncles “took things to the back room” at family events and all tried to drink each other under the table. The next day you could get a buzz just by walking past the open window.

Underage User. Alcohol Effects not enabled. Warren swiped away the annoying text box. I wish they’d get rid of those damn things, he thought. I don’t need to be reminded every time I buy a drink. The churchy types had insisted on the inclusion in the very first patch, amongst other things. 

Most of his compatriots were waving away their own intrusive notifications, with a few exceptions. Warren wasn’t sure if it was because they didn’t need to or were just trying to seem more mature and pretending they didn’t get the popups. Whichever was the case he decided to play it cool and disguise the next one as waving away a fly or something. “To loot and levels!” he toasted. It was a victory cry they’d come up with on the third day when everyone had levelled up at the same time after a big fight. The sensation had been intense enough that several members had needed to log off for a bit.

“Loot and levels!” The crew raised their mugs, spilling more ale on the table and their clothes. “Huzzah!”

When everyone had finished making a mess, Warren beckoned over their skald. Dennis was a woad painted man in a leather kilt and not much else, who dropped a pile of scrolls on the table. The guy wasn’t a true battle bard as such, but he sure had a knack for finding the right words to rally a flagging ally or draw the ire of a monster in the heat of battle, which was good enough for now. He also had a knack for finding the jobs that would be most interesting to what was shaping up to be a fine mercenary band. 

Warren scooped up the scrolls and opened them one by one. “Right you lot, where next? We’ve got the usual kobolds in the fort to the north?”

“Boo, boring!”

“Bandits in the forest to the east?”

“Get to the good one!���

This went on for as long as Warren could get away with, hyping up the excitement until they were frothing for the big reveal.

“And, this.” Warren popped open his inventory and withdrew a scroll with a golden shimmer coming from beneath the surface of the parchment. “Dave found it on the body of the chieftain we took down last night. It didn’t come from the quest board. You each owe Dave a drink for this, for RNGesus has truly smiled upon us.”

Multiple full mugs were slammed down on the table in front of a beaming Dave, which he began to quaff as hard as he could. One of the benefits of getting, and then giving up, a rare drop was a round of drinks after a day’s adventuring bought by everyone who benefitted. Until a stabilised second hand market for loot developed it was the best way to compensate people that Warren had been able to institute. NPCs shopkeepers always bought low and sold high, even for what the gaming veterans called “vendor trash”.

“Good man, Dave,” Warren nodded in his direction before continuing. “Thanks to him we have a shot at what looks to be The Age’s first raid content. In fact, in order to activate this quest, it needs to have at least ten thumbprints at the bottom.” Everyone marvelled as Warren further unfurled the scroll and held it up to the light. Tiny sparkles fell from the bottom and wafted in the air and the ten boxes where they would be placing their thumbs to accept the quest had scarlet pulsing outlines. He didn’t actually know if what he had claimed was true, but it sounded impressive so he ran with it.

“A ten man minimum?” shouted one of the guys at the back. “Tell him he’s dreaming!”

“Loot and levels, my friends!” Warren reiterated. “That is what awaits us in The Archology. This scroll asks us to find and plunder the depths of an Ancient ruin. I know we’ve all heard rumours of the Ancients, Those Who Went Before, The Old Ones. They go by many names. You might have heard those who have trained the Appraise skill joking about the hints at their society in the flavour text on weapons and armour. There have been unreadable runes on cave walls and ruined frescoes that allude to a high tech civilisation that mysteriously vanished centuries ago. Well,” he waved the scroll around so that it scattered glowing motes over the table, “now we have a chance to obtain some of their technology for ourselves. Unbreakable blades, impenetrable armour. Not to mention the gold and jewels left behind. Who’s with me?”

An extended round of quaffing began and lasted until late in the night. As the party raged, the members of the crew came up, individually and in groups, and affixed their print to the scroll. Every time the boxes were filled a new line appeared underneath to allow more. One or two of the guys had questions about where the quest would be taking them and how they were getting there, but most just had that glint, the golden gleam, in their eyes. The mention of treasure had made the decision for them. To his relief, Warren didn't even need the brush offs he had prepared in case someone became insistent.

At the end of the night Warren stumbled into the barracks of the watch house where he’d rented a bed and footlocker for when he logged out and collapsed onto the coarse horse blanket and pillow that felt like it were stuffed with rocks. As unpleasant as they were, he still savoured every sensation. Despite the inebriation mechanic being disabled for him, the room whirled anyway. “Loot and levels,” he whispered to himself as he fell asleep.

As per the terms and conditions agreed to in order to play, he was logged out the moment he lost consciousness. He hadn’t noticed that little tidbit nestled amongst the legalese, he had done what every user had done since the beginning of contract law: scroll to the bottom and hit “I accept”. It had been rather jarring, that first night, as he hadn’t yet earned enough to rent a room at the inn and had instead just laid himself down on a pile of hay in the stable. Falling asleep in the warm and fragrant virtual world was a harsh juxtaposition to the cold, starchy hell he woke up in. Not to mention the moment of panic when he found himself unable to move again. He’d tried to scream but choked instead, the monitoring machines doing the job of summoning the nurses at a dead run for him. A few pokes at the drip beside his head and he had been relegated to warm oblivion once more. 

Now that he knew what to expect, returning to the real world wasn’t such a traumatic event. That didn’t mean that it was entirely peaceful either, as he could hear his father in the hall fast approaching, his strident voice berating some hapless hospital flunkey. Warren had exactly zero desire to join the poor sap so he kept his eyes closed and logged in as fast as he could. As every child did since the dawn of time, he prayed that his parental units couldn’t tell the difference between fake sleeping and real sleeping and let him be. It wasn’t like the game wouldn’t eject him if there was sufficient external stimulus. There were times when the doctors needed to talk to him and they weren’t going to log in and come find him. Sticking him with a pin had been a bit over the top though.

“I wish I’d waited for breakfast,” he complained to himself as he stepped out into the sunlit main street. His stomach growled and he wondered if it was a sound replicated in the real world. “Not that hospital breakfast is anything to look forward to. Good thing I know where to get a decent bacon and eggs around here.”

Ten minutes later he was sitting at a table under the awning of the inn, relishing the afterglow of a delicious breakfast as the morning shift wandered past. Putting off anything more strenuous than ordering another coffee, Warren pulled out the scroll to re-read it while he watched the NPCs as they interacted like real people on their way from home to work as he waited for the crew to log in. It had taken only a few days for this world to seem more real to him than the one he’d been born into, which made it all the more frustrating when it didn’t operate the way it was supposed to. The normal fairy lights showing where to go next that came with every quest scroll he had accepted before had completely failed to manifest, which was unusual in and of itself, and the scroll text offered him no clues as to actually start the quest chain. Most quest scrolls were expressly detailed on what they required of the Traveller, and those that weren’t, well, they weren’t his sort of thing anyway. This one simply had a single line of text saying “Seek The Archology and prevent the rising of the White King” and an ornate family crest below it. No maps, no clues, nothing.

“No, no! Not that way! Ugh!”

Warren’s pondering was interrupted by a small bipedal trashcan stumbling into the edge of his table. His mug wobbled and nearly fell into his lap before he slammed his palm on top of it to stabilise the errant drink and avoid a painful scalding. That stupid geek is at it again, he grumbled to himself as he watched the mechanised moron topple over, thrashing and spurting steam and hot water all over the ground. Wait a sec, a geek! Puzzles are their thing!

As the player with the elven avatar rushed over to pick up their broken toy, Warren sized them up. Clearly this was some basement dwelling dweeb, and his unblemished skin was a stark contrast to Warren’s own scabbed and scarred form, so Warren guessed that he probably never left whatever workshop he had here in town. Assorted tools hung from belts and straps around their body, some of them Warren had seen in pictures or in shops in town, but more had a certain home-made vibe to them. He wore no armour at all, just denim overalls covered in pockets and oil stains. Notepads and pens protruded from several of the pockets and wires and gears spilled from others. On his head, black dreadlocks were held from falling into his face by a set of goggles that sported multiple lenses of differing colours and magnifications. He had clearly come quite a way from the first day – but very much in a very particular direction. In all, it pointed to the kind of person who enjoyed crosswords a little too much. Just the kind of mind that Warren was looking for, in fact.

“Hey, pal. Careful with that, you almost burned me,” Warren chided gently. You don't want to scare these creative types, especially if you need something from them. Start by making them think they owe you something though. That’s the ticket. Warren could hear his father’s advice whispering in his ear. 

The elf’s head jerked around, as though only just realising he wasn’t alone. “Oh, you. Sorrow.”

Not “sorry”, Warren noted. Not an apology, but sounds like one to someone not paying attention. DEFINITELY a smart one here. “Isnae a problem, dinnae fash yersael. Have a seat, and one for your bot too.” Warren stood and pulled out two chairs at his table.

Warily, the elf set his creation on one seat, first ensuring it was no longer leaking, then took one himself. “Fine, Scotty McScottface, what do you want?”

As there didn’t seem to be any malice in the casual slur, Warren maintained a poker face with everything he had. “Who says I want anything?” Warren flagged down a waitress and ordered another mug of coffee. “Maybe I remember you from launch day and just felt like we didn’t get off on the best foot. We’re all part of the same starter town and when the faction wars kick off I hope we’ll be on the same side.”

“You figured out the faction wars are coming?” The elf’s already narrow eyes closed even further. If they’d been in the real world Warren would have thought he was of Asian descent, with a clear epicanthic fold. “And you’re keeping your allegiance to this town? I had you pegged as a ‘loot and levels’ type, uninterested in the wider picture.”

Warren felt an icicle run down his spine at the mention of his crew’s impromptu motto. Has this guy been eavesdropping? Would it even count as eavesdropping with how loud we are? “Well, how’s this for a piece of the wider picture? Bam!” Warren slapped the scroll on the table top, scattering glittering motes everywhere.

“Is that… a legendary drop quest scroll?” The elf breathed reverentially as his demeanour changed in an instant. “They’re a one in ten million chance.” He reached towards the shimmering item in awe. “How did you find one?”

“By being awesome,” Warren boasted, gently pulling it out of reach. “Now, if you want, I can let you join in when we clear out the dungeon it mentions. At the moment, the run is planned for tomorrow morning.” If we can figure out where to go, he left unsaid. “It’s an Ancient Archology, could be right up your alley. I’ll bet you know who they were. There’s probably going to be plenty of puzzles, traps, books and machines for you to play with, all high tech stuff - none of this mediaeval scrap. What do you say?”

“I say, it sounds like you’re going to need me.” The elf leaned forward and poked his long, thin finger at something in the middle of the scroll. “See here?”

Warren spun the sheet around to see better and tried to figure out what was being pointed at. “Where?”

“Exactly, you don’t even see that there’s a problem.” The elf crossed his arms and leaned back. “Tell me, where do you think you are going tomorrow morning? Where is this archology?”

Warren grumbled to himself. The knife-eared bastard had spotted the issue instantly. “Ach, you got me. I dinnae ken,” he huffed. “How can ye tell?”

“Because you wouldn’t have just shown me the map AND the key if you knew what you were looking at.”

“Oh.” Warren stared at the scroll, seeing neither a map nor a key. He decided to try bluffing. “Well, you know there’s going to be monsters in there too. I’m pretty confident you couldn’t even get to the end by yourself, let alone beat a raid boss. I think you’d need us too.”

“Do I look like I’d walk into an Ancient ruin by myself? I’m literally building a minion army.”

The ambulatory trashcan took this as its cue to fall completely apart in a most spectacular and noisy fashion, showering the ground with screws, cogs and springs. Both Warren and the elf stared at the pile of parts until the final bolt finished rolling. 

“I don’t think R2-Dumbass is going to help much there,” Warren noted.

The elf heaved a deep sigh and leaned forward, putting his crossed arms on the table and burying his head in them. “Fine. I need working blueprints, ones I’ll probably never find out here in the wild. These improvised designs I came up with just aren’t working.” His muffled voice heavy with resignation. “May I please join your raid?”

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

The Clockwork Chronicles // Scifi Fantasy Fairytale Retelling

The fourth and final book in my first full-length series comes out next week! 😱

A tale of circus acts, second chances, and marionettes. Welcome to Daiwynn where magic is dangerous, but hope is more dangerous still.

Chirp doesn’t remember who they are, or where they come from. But they do know two things. One, they’re one of the Ringmaster’s marionettes. Built from cogs and gears, and trussed up on strings to do his bidding. And two, they would do anything to cut their strings and be human again.

So, when the Ringmaster offers Chirp a deal, the prince of Daiwynn’s life for their freedom, the choice seems straight forward. After all, what has the royal family ever done for them?

Brend has everything a person could ever want, fine food, lavish clothes, and riches more than he could ever dream. But the prince of Daiwynn has always been denied the only thing he ever asked for, the ability to leave behind the castle walls and see his kingdom for himself.

Now, he won’t hesitate to take any opportunity presented to him to undermine his mother and see the world around him with his own eyes. But with a war brewing, dangers lurk in the capital of Daiwynn, and maybe the ones he’s been taught to avoid.

The battle between the Uprising and MOTHER is at an end, and the threads of fate will have all involved dancing like puppets on a string.

The unique characters, witty dialogue, and fantasy-meets-steampunk world make this fresh take on classic fairy tales a must read for fans of Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles, and Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series.

READ THE SERIES

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

How To Hook Readers (Pt. 1)

What exactly is a hook? A hook is a sentence or scene at the start of your story that grabs your reader’s attention. Most authors believe that your first sentence should be a hook. Here are some techniques you can use when writing the start of your story.

1) Raise questions that your readers NEED to figure out. In my opinion, this is the strongest way to hook readers. The Hunger Games has one of my favorite examples of this. In the very first paragraph, Katniss thinks about how “this is the day of the reaping.” 

This mysterious event is unknown to the audience and intrigues them to read on. In short, you want your readers constantly wondering what will happen next. If you keep up this pattern of questions (and eventual answers), you’ll always be feeding your readers a steady flow of curiosity and then satisfaction once you answer the questions. 

2) Create mystery surrounding your characters. Don’t reveal everything about them right away. Instead, reveal their secrets, fears, lies, faults, and insecurities slowly. If a character walks with a limp, don’t give away the reason behind it right away. If a king is known to be the most feared in all the realm, drop hints and tease the reason— but reveal the full reason why later on.

3) Have the inciting incident occur as soon as possible. The inciting incident is the event that launches your character into the story— something that changes their lives forever. Katniss volunteers as tribute at the beginning of chapter two, and we feel compelled to read further because her whole life has been uprooted, and we want to know how she will deal with her situation.

4) Create a first line that either confuses, startles, or amazes your reader. 

5) Don’t over describe— know what to leave out. While your hook can be unfolding action or a surprise, your hook can also be a mystery. Don’t info-dump or over-explain at the start of your novel. Deliberately leave pieces of information hidden so that your reader’s are hungry to find out the answers.

6) Treat your title as a hook. Some authors will say you need to hook your reader in the first sentence, but really you can start as early as your title. What about your title (or book cover) will cause a passerby to pick it up? Use an intriguing combination of words, or leave them questioning what kind of world is inside the cover.

Instagram: coffeebeanwriting  

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

Waging War. An Age of Steam and Sorcery Novel. Chapter 10

“So what you’re saying is that we’re headed back into the same dungeon where you two became best friends?” Peter asked, flipping through a rack of leather armours on hangars.

 “Well, I wouldn’t say BESTIES”, Pham said. He was sitting on the counter swinging his legs and watching everyone else shop. “I mean, we got off to a rocky start. Woz came into my starter town all “hurr durr, chop chop” with this sabre or something. I was set up at the local smithy grinding my skillz, cos I wasn’t 31337 back then. It was, like day one? Two?”

 “Day one,” Warren’s voice sounded echoey and tinny, as he was trying on a new helm. “And it was a katana. I’ve still got it somewhere. Besides, you weren’t IN the smithy, you had tools spread halfway across the road. I nearly broke my neck tripping over one. Pfha, do they even wash these out before they put them on the shelf? This one still smells of sweat and dragon ass.”

 “Should I ask how you know what dragon ass smells like?” Dani’s voice floated over the racks and shelves in the store.

 “No.” Warren and Pham said in unison. 

“It was an Ant-Man versus Thanos plan, wasn’t it?” Peter grinned.

“Shut up, don’t want to talk about it.” Warren lobbed the helmet at Peter. “Worry more about what we’re getting into. You’re going to need armour with more elemental resistances, the traps in that place are nasty and not even Pham can disable them all.”

“Speaking of armour, I remember you lost your entire wardrobe that day we first met. Walking into town buck nekkid, wang swinging in the breeze all pixelated like a cheap hentai. The “one point oh my god” version was the Wild West.” Dani chuckled, a hint of pink in his dead white cheeks. “It took the pearl clutchers less than twelve hours to “someone think of the children” a patch out.”

Warren sighed and stomped out the door. “It wasn’t all my clothes, it was just the seat of my pants. There was no wang,” he called over his shoulder. “Come on, this is low tier vendor trash. I know a place, but it’ll cost me a favour.”

Peter and the other two followed Warren deeper into the gloom as the road led away from the water and under the overhang of the upper level. Here the gas lamps never went out and condensation dripped from the roof to form rivulets in the gutter. The buildings were grimier, soot from the fireplaces adhered to everything damp, which was everything. Light shone through smoky windows streaked where the drips had carved tiny tracks in the grime. Even the people looked grittier. There was no way to tell NPC from Traveller, all were equally worn down and coated in black.

Hard up against the back wall was a building even blacker than the rest. Iron walled and imposing, with red rust patches like a rash over the frontage. No windows on the front, just three stairs up to an iron door inset with a sliding hatch at eye height. There wasn’t even a handle on the outside. If you weren’t let in, you weren’t getting in.

Warren ascended the stairs and rapped his knuckles on the door in a rhythm that Peter found familiar but couldn’t put his finger on. Da ta-da da da.

The hatch slid open and a pair of beady eyes examined Warren. “How much?”

“Two bits.”

The hatch slammed shut and they were left standing in the street, listening to the sigh of gently escaping steam from a nearby valve. The nearby lamp flickered and went out, and a horrible rotten egg smell wafted over them before it reignited with a whumph. Peter was just opening his mouth to suggest this trip had been in vain when the door clanked as the locks inside were released and it opened with a screech.

The owner of the beady eyes stood in the gap and beckoned them in. “Yer mates better be on their best behaviour MacGregor. You’re on thin ice with the boss as it is.”

“He’ll get what I promised on time,” Warren rumbled, reminiscent of when Peter had first met him. “I still have several days and for now I have bigger issues.”

The beady-eyed bloke huffed noncommittally and led them deeper into the building. The iron theme continued inside, with metal bound glass light fittings illuminating the halls with riveted iron walls, though these were at least painted to prevent rusting. It was an even institutional grey that reminded Peter of pictures of warships from the late 1900s that he had seen in History class. It was not a colour choice that inspired hope, joy or faith in humanity. In fact, after the fourth or fifth bland hallway separated by a bulkhead style door he was beginning to feel like they’d stepped into the domain of a happiness sucking demon. 

The waiting room they were eventually deposited in did nothing to relieve that feeling. The seats were bare metal benches the same colour as the walls and attached by a hinge at the base and a chain at the edge. There were no windows at all and the only entrances and exits were the same metal doors with a wheel in the centre. Without the lights and paint, Peter could have mistaken this room for the labyrinth under Averton.

“Wait ‘ere”, Mr Beady-eye grunted and left by the same door they’d entered. The locks clanked when the door closed.

“Woz, what have you gotten us into?” Pham asked, flopping down onto one of the benches and lacing his fingers behind his head. “Peter might not care about respawns, but you know my stance on them.”

Dani had her ear against the door they’d come through and was trying to see if she could insert some sort of probe in the gap between the door and the jamb. “Yeah, mate. This is kinda unpickable. I’m guessing there’s two ways out of this, Peter’s and that door over there.”

“I’m standing right here, you know?” Peter felt a bit put upon. “I don’t ALWAYS die. Besides, I’m sure Woz has a plan. You DO have a plan, don’t you?”

“Wheest yersel. I dun need a plan. This is just a weekly quest. I just… hannae done it in a while and my rep has dropped with tha faction ye ken?” He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “They’re going to make us wait for a mite, just to flex that they have all the power. Which, in this town the kinda do.”

“Izzat all?” Pham responded. “What kind of faction are we talking though? Cos there’s a big difference between a reputation drop from the Mechanists Guild and a reputation drop with the mob. One means you lose access to the good materials and one gets you concrete shoes.”

“Uh,” Warren looked uncomfortable. “What’s your shoe size again?”

All eyes snapped to him.

“Kidding. Mostly,” he held up his hands in surrender. “I’m still liked, but if I don’t get them the stuff they’ve asked for by Friday I drop back to neutral and have to start again. It’s just posturing, we’ll be fine. We’ve been busy and I haven’t had time to turn in my dailies, weeklies or monthlies cos, you know, taking on a Geas was a big deal.”

“I knew it!” Part of the wall detached itself and became a formless humanoid shape, as though a puddle had delusions of grandeur. “I knew you’d have something to do with the Geas. You can’t help yourself, can you Mister MacGregor?” As the humanoid spoke it rapidly assumed the form of a green skinned, scaly creature in an admiral’s uniform and hat. “Always chasing the bigger fish.”

“Goober, you wee scunner. I KNEW you’d be listening. I’m just surprised you hadn’t shown one of your faces already,” Warren loomed over the diminutive naval officer. “This is a new low, though, even for you.” He picked up the creature by the neck and slammed it into the wall. “The real Captain would have you keelhauled for stealing his image like this.”

“Hey, he’s just a lil’ guy,” Dani protested. “Is that really necessary?”

“Yes, it is,” Warren growled over his shoulder. “Goober, show the nice people your real body.”

“It’s Gruber, and you know it,” Gruber hissed. Seeing no support from the others in the room his form melted again and reformed into a child sized being in a robe and hat. The hat had the word “wizzzard” stitched into the band, multiple z’s stretching the word to wrap entirely around it.

“Bloody wizards,” Pham spat.

Peter held up a finger. “Um, how does this help us?”

Warren shook Gruber like a dog shakes a toy. “Goober here is a Traveller like us. He makes bank by eavesdropping and selling secrets to the highest bidder. I’m betting he slipped Benny Blue-Eyes out the front a handful of silver to let him loiter in here until we’d dropped something juicy. Isn’t that right, Goober?”

“Damnit Warren, put me down. That bloody hurts.” Gruber’s real form as a gnomish spellcaster was even smaller than the kobold body he’d worn as a disguise. “How did you know it was me?”

“Captain Krunch hates spellslingers more than Pham does,” Warren harrumphed, dropping Gruber to the floor. “You’d know that if you’d done your homework instead of just bribing the doorman. Now get out of here before I send you for a respawn.”

Gruber gathered himself up to his full unimpressive height. “You haven’t heard the last of this,” he insisted in his high-pitched voice.

“Peter, do your eye thing please.”

Peter let the cold of the Paragon state flood his body. He was getting more proficient with it every day, even though it scared him in equal measure. He still didn’t know what they meant about his eyes, they always looked normal to him when he checked the mirror, but the way Gruber wet himself when he looked at Peter’s face told him he was doing something right.

“Ok, you’ve heard the last of this,” Gruber pressed himself against the cold metal as he hurriedly rapped out a code on the door.

Benny cracked the door, looking entirely unrepentant as the tiny Gruber pushed past him. “The Captain will see you now.” He pressed a something on his side of the wall and a buzzer sounded. The door on the other side of the room opened and swung wide. “Best not keep him waiting.”

On the far side of the final door a completely different room awaited them. A massive bay window stretching from wall to wall allowed a view out over the waters unimpeded by the town. How that was possible, Peter was unsure. The trip through the winding halls had left him disoriented but he felt sure they should have been able to see at least the lower tiers’ tallest buildings. A problem for another time, he thought, suppressing the memory of the walk in. There was no sign of the soul-sucking grey walls here though. The whole room was wood panelled, with shining brass fittings and artfully lit by primitive electric lamps. No gas appliances were visible at all, nor were any suggestions of magic. It was the most technologically advanced scene he had experienced in the game.

Dominating the room was an ornately carved mahogany desk. Spread across the glossy surface were maps of the world and its various regions. Exquisite cartography tools littered the desktop, finely made pens, protractors and compasses scattered seemingly willy-nilly at first but a closer inspection there was a sense of a greater organisation in the chaos. There were also, for some reason, footprints.

Behind the desk, in a red velvet lined swivelling chair that dwarfed its occupant, or maybe koballed it, was a doppelganger of the first form Gruber had taken. Small, green, scaly and in possession of a marvellous admiral’s hat, Captain Krunch lounged in the opulence of his domain. “Well, Mister MacGregor, we meet again.” Where Gruber’s voice had been reedy and hesitant, the Captain’s was deep, confident and resonant. Not at all what one would expect from a diminutive, dragon-runt like creature – no matter how impressive his headgear. “I am a busy man, Mr MacGregor. State your case and be quick about it.”

“We do indeed, Captain,” Warren knelt before the desk, waving to the others to do the same. “I come bearing gifts, in the hope of obtaining a meeting with… the armourer.”

The Captain waved a clawed hand disinterestedly. Warren stood and placed a small chest on the desk, facing the captain, and opened the lid. Peter couldn’t see what was in it, but from the way that the kobolds’ eyes widened he must have been very impressed. The reaction was only fleeting, however, and the captain schooled his features back into an impassive poker face. “This will do for now, but I trust you are aware of your obligations?”

“Captain, I assure you that you will have your tribute, as agreed, by the end of the week.” Warren’s voice was the most subdued Peter had ever heard it as he returned to where he had been kneeling.

The Captain stood on his chair and stepped up onto the desk, picking his footfalls carefully so as to not disturb . He closed the chest and picked it up gently, almost reverentially while maintaining an impressive air of impassiveness. “Then I will send word that you are on your way. I expect you still know where to go.” 

“Aye, I do.”

“Then see yourself out. And send Benjamin in as you go. I feel I need a word with my doorkeeper.”

Warren waved them all to follow him and exited the room as quickly as manners would allow. In the antechamber he leaned in close to Benjamin in passing and whispered a few words that Peter couldn’t make out. Benjamin paled, looking decidedly less smug as the Travellers left the room.

When the crew were what Peter deemed a safe distance away from the imposing iron building, he burst into laughter. “Do you think he knows? About the cereal?”

Warren harrumphed. “Aye, he knows. NPCs regard our world as a sort of mirror dimension to theirs, in case you hadn’t noticed.” He waited for acknowledgment from Peter before continuing. “So the captain regards it as a point of honour they’ve named a food after him. He says it puts him on the same standing as Lord Wellington and the Earl of Sandwich.”

“For cereals?” Peter punned. He couldn’t help it. Everyone groaned and Dani punched him in the arm. “Ow! I know, I deserve it, but ow!”

“So, what’s with this armourer dude?” Pham asked. “I’ve never heard you mention them before.”

“Well, we don’t come here often,” Warren explained. “He’s a secret shopkeep you get to meet at the end of the local guild questline. You never did the quests, you never got to meet him. Besides, he specialises in heavy armour and you wear,” he waved generally in Pham’s direction, “that.”

“It’s called fashion, sweetie. Look it up!” Pham twirled on the spot, showing off his blood, oil and soot stained overalls. “I don’t need armour if I don’t get hit.”

“But, you DO get hit,” Dani pointed out helpfully.

“Yeah, that’s where the plan falls apart.”

“Come on,” Warren urged. “It’s not far and at least two of us need better protection if we’re going back into… well. There. You,” he looked pointedly at Pham, “we’re just going to cover you in bubble wrap and hope for the best.”

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

I will get that chapter to y'all, I promise. I fixed the problem with it, and then got covid FOR THE FOURTH TIME!

I hate this. I'm careful, I mask when needed, I'm fully vaccinated. And now I feel like death warmed up. Again.

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

Loving how writeblrs are sharing and supporting each other's work so hard right now and also making my eyes happy with the fancy graphics on your snippets and tag games.

You're a lovely bunch of creative souls and don't you ever forget it 💜

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

I was bamboozled by the initial claim that Google AI would scrape my Docs and steal my writing. Now that it's been debunked I have moved on to a fresh set of anxiety.

I publicly share pre-edit chapters of my books on several sites. Royal Road, here, Wattpad etc. Will THOSE be stolen? I may never be a Charles Dickens or AC Doyle, but I'm ok with my niche following. I don't want a robot churning out books in my style and flooding the market.

This Google Drive AI scraping bullshit actually makes me want to cry. My entire life is packed into Google Drive. All of my writing over the years, all of my academic documents, everything.

I’m just so overwhelmed with all the shit I’m going to have to move. I’m lucky to have Scrivener, but online data storage has been super important as I’ve had so many shitty computers, and the only reason I haven’t lost work is because Google Drive has been my backup storage unit.

My partner has recommended gitlab to move my files to - it seems useful, and I can try and explain more about what it is and how it works when I get more familiar with it. I’m unsure if it’s a text editor, or can work that way. He was explaining something about the version history that I don’t quite understand right now but might later. I’m just super overwhelmed and frustrated that this is the dystopia we live in right now.

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

This week's update to The Age Of Steam and Sorcery has been *deliberately* postponed this time. A plot point two chapters from now needs better foreshadowing, and thus I'm having to rewrite chapter ten.

Please be patient, I should have it done by next week

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

It's a known ad technique, making an annoying ad so you'll remember it. Well, back in the town I lived in from about 5 to 20 (can't say home town, it was never home. can't say grew up in, I've never grown up) a pub tried it.

THE most annoying ad ever. Everyone remembered it. I can still hear the jingle twenty years later. But it was TOO annoying. Nobody went to that place. In the end, it had to close and was sold on.

From a decent place for a drink and counter meal to ghost town in about a month. All from one bad ad.

My contempt towards a brand is directly proportional to how often they interrupt my playlists.

[patrickcharlton-oshea-author]

WRITING A BOOK IS HARD