BTS 3: Changes made in the Prison in the Mountains Arc (Patreon)

Let’s just jump right in. In the short Prison in the Mountains arc, Leon enters an old demon summoning facility built by the Storm King’s subordinates way back in the day. Those subordinates had managed to summon five demons, two of which they successfully forged contracts with, while the other three were left to rot when the Storm King’s children called the facility’s garrison into their army. After thousands of years, two of these three remaining demons managed to escape, leaving Xaphan as the sole ‘resident’ of the prison. And there he stayed until Leon came along to free him.

When I first planned out this arc, it wasn’t going to be so heavily rooted in the history of Leon’s family; rather, it was going to be a short and simple transition arc. It would have had the same set-up, where Leon is in the Northern Vales and needed to get south, so he chose a path that he’s familiar with but no one else knows about.

But, in my original envisioning, the prison didn’t exist. Instead, it would have been a complex maze of icy fissures and cracks in the mountains. As Leon travels through the path he knew, he would’ve found it blocked by an avalanche and would’ve had to find a way around the blockage. As he does so, he hears a voice.

So, not too different than what was written, in the end. However, the voice he hears isn’t from Xaphan, but rather from some no-name shadow demon who had been frozen in magical ice that it couldn’t break out of, surrounded by the equally frozen but far more dead mages that had trapped it. It would have attempted to convince Leon to free it in exchange for power, but it’s offer would only be a naked attempt to possess Leon and escape the ice it’s trapped in, which Leon would have seen through. Following Leon’s refusal to help it, it would’ve called forth a number of ice wisps, basically tiny ice spirits, to try and kill Leon, but Leon would fight his way out of the pass and finally make it south. The demon would have been left there until it finally died, long forgotten.

So, yeah, in the original plans for this story, Xaphan didn’t exist; the character he replaced was only a forgettable villain for several chapters. And, to be honest, I think that comes through a little in the subsequent arc in Teira, where I had Xaphan basically just go and quietly meditate for a while until I could figure out what exactly I wanted to do with him.

In fact, there were a few people who commented about how strange it was that Xaphan suddenly became so quiet and kind of useless after being freed from the prison; it was because I was throwing him into the story almost at the last second. I made this change so that Leon wouldn’t have to always be alone, even when he was out on his own. It just makes the story easier to write if there’s another character around to talk to, even if they’re unable to actually interact with anything besides the main character.

Ultimately, I’m happy with the changes I made to the arc. It gave me some space to reveal a little about Leon’s family history while also hinting at things to come. Plus, I got a character I like out of it, a fire demon that enjoys teasing Leon a little when he’s bored.

Huh, that was kind of short. Oh well, it was only a five-chapter arc, not too awfully much to say about how things changed. Anyway, I hope you all have seen the post I made about the changes being made to my Patreon campaign, as it completely changes the way I’ll be handling these BTS posts going forward.

Basically, they’re going to be a little more random, but all Patrons will have access to them, not just the $3 tier and up. I’m doing this because, to be frank, I don’t think many people actually care about these posts. And that’s fine, I just think it’s kind of fun to talk a little about some of the changes made to the story as it’s written and how I come up with certain elements I use—which is I why I’m not just cancelling the BTS thing entirely.

Anyway, I’ve still got a post about names to write—and that probably won’t be longer than this post, if I’m being honest—as well as a map of the entire Bull Kingdom to draw, so there’s still going to be some BTS content in the future. You all seem to like maps, though, so there’s probably going to be more of those.

Thanks for reading =)

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