Saturday, December 24, 2022

Chapter 55: The Mana Crystal

Previously: Chapter 54 - The Solution?  | Next Chapter 56:  Saying Farewell
 Start Over!  Chapter #1, Habbo and Goldhook.
The Author, Jesse Pohlman's Website!





































































Thank you for spending a little time with me in this fantasy world.  Another year and another Christmas, and may it be a merry (if cold!) one, from my family to yours!  Of course, I primarily celebrate the Solstice (and, alas, it was too cold to go outside and meditate), but somehow or another the 25th has become my unofficially-official release date for the winter edition.

Getting this chapter done was easy enough.  Uneventful enough.  I only had to reshoot just about every panel for various reasons.  Some were blurry, some weren't lined up well, some the minifigs were out of position.  That sort of stuff.

I'm thinking maybe I'll need to do one more chapter on the basement floor before I can reasonably explain the characters leaving where they're at.  Call it a wrap-up.  The upside is that, since the chapter won't necessarily involve complicated poses in the act of combat, I'll probably be able to set up and shoot relatively easily.  Maybe I'll try to put out six chapters next year?  We'll see.

I've got to admit I'm kind of torn between two possible storylines for the next arc.  I had originally intended to do kind of a "training/tournament" arc, and I still very much want to do that, but I feel like maybe I want to take a page from Hunter X Hunter and Berserk's books and do a...Wait for it...Boat arc!  After all!  Chronicles Of Alleron is a story about pirates, and is set in a post-apocalyptic-flood world that's still very much underwater.

And I have the perfect antagonist for a sea voyage story.  My biggest concern is that Darius' presence (for now, anyway) reduces any sense of danger the protagonists face.  I ran into this problem with this entire arc, honestly.  Darius is just way too powerful.  Not that he'd necessarily win every fight singlehandedly, but with all the characters present it's just a major stretch to imagine any threat that they could beat that would be a threat that also wouldn't wipe the floor with everyone except Darius.  Wow that's a stretch of a sentence.

Of course, there's always some combination of the two ideas to consider.  Hmmmmm...

Thank you so much for reading!  See you soon!  February, maybe...?  Maybe!


Previously: Chapter 54 - The Solution?  | Next Chapter 56:  Saying Farewell