It is currently 7:50 PM CST 8-30-15.
Editing will be reviewed at midnight, and I will decide if it needs further review at that point or if to post. If it is not posted then it will be posted by 7 PM tomorrow evening CST.
There’s no need to make comments — feel free to edit the text directly — unless you have a question,in which comments are the best way to go.
I don’t know who put in the line about Tela Vasir and her adventures on Korlus but I am totally using that in this chapter. 😀
Thanks to everyone who contributed — looks like I missed some edits and will have to go back and redo some things, but this may work well.
I will post again when the next chapter is up for perusal, and try to wait until I’m completely done this time. I will also leave it up for two days before taking it down and making final changes from there.
A link to the draft (when it’s in progress) is now on the left-side menu bar.
As a bonus….since everyone like the Odd Couple…
Kai Leng stared at the redolent form of his partner, Theo Pellam, currently passed out drunk in the worst bar on Therum. The bar itself was a typical hole in the wall — flimsy walls of plascrete held together with straps of scrap metal, a scavenged holovid in one corner and a long bar of any number of materials pressed into service to deal purported drinks from.
The air was thick with cigar smoke and the sticky-sweet fragrance of red sand, the tang of cheap cleaners and a faintly disgusting whiff of something like fish that Kai was trying very hard not to identify.
Damn the Illusive Man for not providing him with some kind of nose filters.
The condition of the bar — at least six miners in various states of severe injury, two more thrown through the armaglass windows, and several tired, pleased looking women of dubious vocation let Kai know what had happened. As usual, Theo had gotten carried away. At least there was little blood — although on reflection, several dark splotches here and there would fit that bill as well, although they looked too old to be of recent vintage.
The Illusive Man had tasking for them, and Kai had been forced to hunt down Theo in order to get the ship’s engines going. Wasting half his morning in every filthy dive on Therum wasn’t how he wanted to spend his day, not to mention being propositioned by any number of sex workers that he would have not touched even in a full environmental suit.
With a sigh, he entered, keeping one hand on his sword. One of the prostitutes, a statuesque blond with a level of chest augmentation that must have required cybernetic spinal implants to support, gave him a salacious smile. “Oh, here for your friend?”
Leng sighed. He’d need hand sanitizer after this, he was sure. With a moue of distaste, he grabbed Theo by the feet, dragging the half-clothed form, still reeking of cheap booze, along the filthy metal decking. “You could say that. I presume no law enforcement showed up for this fracas?”
A second whore next to the first laughed, her voice gritty — no doubt from Therum’s filthy air. “Police? Here? Sweets, ain’t no cops on Therum, just the mine security types, and unless someone is stealing ore they couldn’t care less if you knifed someone in the street.”
What an appealing idea, he thought to himself, as he continued to drag Theo. “Tempting, but too sloppy. If he has any outstanding bills, his TTL is 659S-G, Feel free to bill him for whatever you like.”
Dragging the fool down the steps and making sure his head smashed on each one, he was pleased to have Theo finally wake up and jerk himself free. “I dunno nothin’ about no damned cats…”
Kai arched an eyebrow, before noticing a nearby chemical suppression station. With a hard shove, he deposited Theo into the shallow metal depression and triggered the shower system used by mine workers to rinse off caustic materials in case of an accident.
The water was, of course, icy cold, and Kai’s grin as Theo howled and spluttered to full consciousness was vicious.
Feeling kind of crappy today (ankle pain, some minor nerve pain) and my mother feels a bit down, but I was able to get some work done on TWCD.
No idea yet when I’ll do the next chapter — but it isn’t dead and neither am I.
So far, I have been told the following:
So, yay. I have to go in Tuesday for something called a Myelogram with CT Scan. Whatever that is.
At this point I have no idea how long this will take. I could get off lucky, only need endoscopic ‘adjustment’ , be done by the end of next week or the week after and back to normal. Or I could need to have the more heavy duty surgical corrections/replacements/fusions done. Ugh.
If it looks like I’ll be incapacitated for a long period of time (like months) then I’ll probably release the outline drafts of the rest of the works I have and my notes to anyone who thinks they can keep the series going. Otherwise, just pretend this is another random hiatus I’m on.
If pain allows tomorrow (it seems to be a bit better today) I might write something.
I’m pretty much reduced to trying to write when my back is not forcing me to lay down at this point. I’ll have to go in and see a doctor Monday (assuming I can get in, maybe Tuesday), as this is now at a point where I’m having to stop and lay down every other hour to get the pain to decrease.
I’ve been working on two chapters at the same time, one for Liara/Telanya and one for Shepard. Based on the feedback, I think I’ll intermix the two approaches — one Sheppy chapter, then a cutaway chapter to someone else. That should satisfy everyone.
A reader is planning on starting up a ME themed role-playing session incorporating some of the stuff from my background. I think that’s a pretty neat idea, and I’ve been giving some thought to maybe trying to run a campaign online like that. There’s enough online tools (voice chat and cams, online tabletops and dice-sets and the like) that it could be done remotely, although I don’t know how many people would be interested in such a thing.
My goals for this year are as follows:
Time for more Vicodin.
Back is … quite a bit worse. Pain is localized sometimes to the very lower back, or sometimes travels down my right leg. When I lay down it stops, calms down when I walk to some degree. Hurts when I sit or just out of the blue. Heat and cold, TENS and massage , nothing really helps.
On 500 mg of naproxen and 300 of vicodin, which isn’t doing much but taking the edge off.
Working on the Liara piece, but I’m still having to deal with on-call stuff from work, so I doubt I’ll get it done this weekend — but I could be wrong. After Liara, should I do a back to Shepard piece, or a roundtable of some other characters (Anderson, von Grath, Delacor, etc)?
Ideas welcome. Home back pain remedies and sympathetic hugs from fangirls also welcome :p
Back is acting up pretty bad, and I’m on-call at work this week, both of which have derailed my update speed.
Working on the Garrus intro first. The prologue will have quite a few chapters as I set up the stage, before getting back to Shepard.
I’m going to make everyone hate Aria almost as much as they hate the Systems Alliance. But not ham-handedly. You should, in a way, feel sorry for Aria, once the whole story comes out.
I’ve been thinking it’s time to seriously overhaul and expand this thing. Break out each of the five ‘schools’ into more detailed explanations, create more information how biotic powers can be blended, how biotic explosions work, and more biotic and anti-biotic technology.
I’m interested in what YOU want to see in the Encyclopedia. After all if you bother to follow this place you are part of the team that helps OSABC grow.
Or should I focus on finishing ATTWN?
SECOND BIG QUESTION: Â I’ve put a poll up on my profile at FF.net (which is not showing, but eventually will) about possible names for the ME2 piece.
The choices are :
That Which Cannot Die
Revengance
Lost Innocence
The Sexual Adventures of Shepard With Naked Thane (only Progman should select this one)
Let me know which one you like.
Oh, Shepard honey, I’mma kill you so hard.
The absolute best part of writing this fic has to be drawing together all the lines and plots so that it is conceivable that no one could see what is happening without an omniscient view, without it becoming some kind of uber-conspiracy.
The second best part is the slow realization that if Shepard died bad in canon, there is no telling what kinds of atrocity will be inflicted on her in the Premiseverse.
It’s coming, dear readers. And it’s going to be bad. My goal in the next segment of chapters is to reduce even Progman to crying.
I haven’t ever done this on the blog before, but sometimes you have to:
RED78910’s “Mass Effect: The Unsung War” is getting none of the attention it deserves, which causes me to haz a sad.
Sads are more likely make me haz a writing stoppage. REVIEW. HIS. WORK. :D
That is all.