Unbound Soul Volume 8 Afterword (Patreon)

Posting this separately since it's so damn long. This is the final bit of volume 8. I'll be e-booking it tomorrow, so if anyone has corrections or continuity errors to point out, now's the time to say so. Unbound Soul will resume on 3rd March, Unborn Hero will continue as normal, and... remember that post I did contemplating future options? Wellllll, forget all that, because I chose something new*. I did put up the character creator of that unbound soul text rpg in discord, though. I still want to work on that, but unlike a book, which can be released chapter by chapter, it's a lot harder to release a game in any sort of episodic way...

*At the time of writing. I treat ideas like not-Blobby treats names, so the eventual reality may vary.

Here we are again, and this time is the last, at least for the story of Erryn's Law. The plot is over, and Peter and friends can enjoy the rest of their lives in peace, with no extraterrestrial invasions, mad soul mages, or wannabe devils. Nevertheless, there are still many stories that need to be told. Did Chloe win her race, and what is a jet racer? What, exactly, did Peter do that earned him that highly suspicious level of [Regeneration]? What happened to the mutated kids? How long did Cluma stand pointing and laughing at him during his brief stint as the personal [Maid] of Lord Reid's wife? (Hint: It was quite a while.)

Maybe they'll build up enough for another e-book, but even if so, it won't be for a while. My next work is more likely to be An Unborn Hero, the tale of the epic battle between the embryo of a [Hero] and the egg of a [Demon Lord]. Both sides of the conflict have some rather serious mobility issues, but they aren't going to let that stop them as they start a worldwide conflict a decade or so before the local deities intended, causing much confusion all around.

One of those deities might even answer that age old question: "Why trucks?"

It's still weird to me that I ever self-published one e-book, and now here I am with two complete series and planning more. Not only that, but Podium Audio are making audio books of them both! At the time of release of this volume, the audiobook version of A (Not So) Simple Fetch Quest Part 1: Monsters will be available, and Part 2: Disease as well as A Lonely Dungeon will be available for pre-order.

Anyway, thus far I have refused to be drawn on my personal opinions of Erryn and her Law, which has involved a fair degree of self-control given the interesting comment threads it spawned on Royal Road that I've been desperate to join in with. Stating my opinion as the author would result in characters getting labelled in ways I didn't want. "He's agreeing with the author there! He must be the good guy!"

Peter is the MC of this story, but that doesn't mean he's correct about everything. In fact, he's pretty heavily flawed. I've intentionally written this story without any perfect characters (aside from Cluma, obviously,) or named evil characters. (Yes, there are some unnamed ones, over on the Earth side competing with the BSI, but they get no screen time or fleshed-out detail.) I'm even including Maximilian in that; he wasn't evil, just insane. Owen, too; he was a fairly straightforward sociopath.

Ah, yes, Maximilian. For those of you that didn't get the 'growing more lilies' reference, he's a character from An Unwilling Monster, in whom Lily was the MC. Just like the beastkin progenitor is Keri from A Friendly Voidling. The crossovers are just little cameos, really; the other stories aren't required reading, but they give a bit more meaning to the references. And knowing that it was Erryn that (accidentally) drove Maximilian insane takes the crossover full circle.

Anyway, Erryn obviously isn't evil; she's the most self-sacrificing character in the series. At worst, she can be called misguided. Harry isn't evil either—he legitimately believes those of Erryn's world are slaves in need of saving, albeit he's not so big on self-sacrifice, and will happily leave them enslaved to save his own skin. There are plenty of Royal Road commentators who feel the same way as him. Just today, (early February 2023) someone posted a rather nasty comment that an entire chapter was completely unbelievable because of course Harry was right and it was so self-evident that no-one could sensibly argue against him, even playing devil's advocate.

They posted this two comments below one equating Harry with the biblical devil trying to destroy Eden, and wishing him a painful death, which was itself below a comment wishing him multiple painful deaths. Some commenters were disturbingly violent, given that they were advocating the Law...

That was the exact sort of thing that made not saying my piece really hard. But now it's all over, so I can say what I like.

And so... my opinion, several years in the making is... dun dun dun... It's complicated!

Seriously. Maybe that's a cop-out answer, but it's my honest opinion. I'm not going to make blanket statements like 'it's right' or 'it's wrong', because it's far more nuanced than that. Exploring each facet and corner case of Erryn's Law would take a novel in itself, but I'll write down a few of my thoughts. No doubt I'll forget a bunch of stuff, but here goes.

If I were to rephrase the question slightly to 'would I move to Erryn's world, even if I had to Lawify myself?' At the start of the series, no, I would not. At the end of the series, yes I would. Gladly. Nothing about the Law changed between the two, but the (imho) fatal issue of safety had nevertheless been resolved. There are other issues that render the Law imperfect in my eyes, both functionally and morally, but it's still (again, imho) a damn sight better than Earth.

To start, I have no truck with anyone who complains that anything that manipulates someone's mind against their will is an evil to be destroyed. Okay, yes, I'd quite happily set the entire advertising industry on fire if not for the fact I'd get into trouble, but I'd at least give the workers a chance to get out of their buildings first. I'm certainly not going to be hanging doctors for forcibly giving antipsychotics to a violent schizophrenia patient, either. People will complain that's completely different, but I'm not convinced. Can a healthy mind commit cold-blooded murder, purely for selfish gain? If you believe not, then what's the difference between correcting that malfunctioning brain via drugs or hand-wavy magic? (And if you believe someone can, then fair enough, I guess, but your opinion of humanity is even more cynical than mine.)

On the other hand, there's a significant difference between cold-blooded murder and some of the other laws governments impose on us. (And this is before we stop to consider some lawmakers are themselves evil, and pass evil laws.) How low do we draw the line? Do we make minors think alcohol is poisonous to them? Heck, since alcohol can cause irrational behaviour, would the mind control need to block that too? Or would it force people not to get drunk in the first place? And what about things that aren't even crimes? Do we forbid a husband from telling her wife that no, that dress does not make her bum look big? But that's not a malicious lie. (Depending on the wife, it could even be described as self preservation...) But, if it's a white lie to make her feel better, does that mean we need to forbid a husband from telling the truth, and saying that yes, it does make her bum look big?

So, I'm not of the view that such invasive measures should be taken for lesser crimes, which of course introduces the question of where to draw the line. Murder is bad, right? But what if the victim really deserves it? Like, they've just massacred an entire village to conduct inhumane experimentation, turning people into monsters, and will do it again unless stopped immediately? That's not murder so much as saving lives. But what if the perpetrator wasn't doing it of his own accord, and it was all because Erryn accidentally broke his brain hundreds of years ago? Things get complicated. Lines get blurred. Real world implementations become impossible, because how do you designate a completely watertight list of forbidden actions up front when each event can have a million causes and nuances?

In story, the Law hand-waves around that problem (and also the corrupt government problem) by invoking the golden rule. In one of her interludes, Erryn claims the Law works by asking each infected individual how they want others to treat them, then averages and sanity checks the results. Even with such a setup, it can't calculate every possibility beforehand, but maybe it could work out answers in real time, or close enough to real time to be effective.

But that setup has even worse line-drawing issues, because it's not working from a list of 'crimes' at all. Yes, most people would prefer not to be murdered or raped, and so the Law will prevent murder and rape, but most people also like to be greeted politely on the street, or have people hold open doors for them. A golden rule based Law has a very real risk of everyone getting caught in a cycle of "after you," "no, after you," until they all starve to death. This problem is ignored entirely in-story. At best, you could hand-wave the problem away by invoking that 'sanity checking' phrase, and claiming this sanity checking prevents the Law enforcing anything too trivial.

I was going to make that a story point. Remember Graham Morant, the racist merchants' guild secretary? He was to be an example of the line being set too high. Or was it? Again, opinions would vary. He expressed his displeasure at the mixed-race couple of Peter and Cluma, but couldn't actually discriminate against them. In any case, I decided exploring that topic and drawing the intended parallels to religion vs LGBT would be too contentious, and dropped it.

The Law as written has other implementation issues, of course. I mentioned that at the start of the story, I considered the safety issue to be a fatal flaw, and the residents of a village lining up to let Maximilian murder them and the survivors happily thanking him afterwards was supposed to be a graphic illustration of that flaw. It would be a vast improvement to the safety of Erryn's world if, instead of differentiating between people and monsters, it differentiated between those controlled by the Law and those that weren't. Or alternatively if it removed the ability to be evil without also stripping the knowledge of evil. Plus, there's the way it caused its creator to have violent blackouts. That was definitely a rather serious flaw, too, but only one born from the in-story behaviour of soul magic, so for the purposes of a discussion, we can ignore that bit.

If everyone is under control of the Law, the safety problems cease to be an issue. In Erryn's world, which is canonically part of a multiverse with multiple entities able to cross between universes at will, there's no chance of catching 'everyone'. In the real world, maybe we'll be visited by aliens one day, or we'll send colonists off-world somewhere who escape somehow, or we'll invent a general AI who goes all skynet on us. Either way, not having plans for antagonistic beings taking advantage of the Law is suicidal. Either the people under the Law need the ability to recognise the threat and act accordingly, or they need a watcher outside of the Law.

In story, Erryn chose the watcher route. That watcher started off as Erryn herself, then became Peter, who added a pair of dragons to his team, and finally an incarnated version of the Law built from the shattered uncorrupted fragments of Erryn's soul (left behind when she resurrected the dwarfs, and uncorrupted because she'd willingly paid the price,) merged with ideas and morals taken from Peter's mind. That last bit was something of a deus ex machina, but I wanted a happy ending, and there were limited other options that left the world in a well-protected state.

Leave Peter or the dragons in control? I sure as hell wouldn't trust a human with the controls of the Law. Not now, not ever. I've met too many humans to ever trust one. Heck, I am human, and I certainly wouldn't trust myself. Yes, I'd try to be 'good', but through laziness or error, I would certainly get it wrong.

Would I trust an omnipotent God with the controls? That's a moot point; an omnipotent God wouldn't need the Law to begin with. They would click their divine fingers and remake humanity in whatever image they liked. Maybe they already have. Maybe magic is real, flowing all around us, but a pantheon of gods above don't want humans playing with it because we could use it to threaten them, so they make us unable to perceive it.

Or maybe we're all in an alien zoo, each with a little implant in our brains that stops us seeing the big window behind us, with all the faces peering intently at us, watching us do cool tricks like discovering general relativity. One of the Earth scientists made the complaint that thanks to the System editing memories, no theory was falsifiable, without taking it a step further and considering that anything capable of editing perceptions and memory could edit itself out too.

For all the complaints this volume makes about computers, perhaps an AI would be the best bet. Not a black-box thing, because that way lies skynet, but it would need to be mathematically provable to be 'just'. There exist hardware and operating systems that can be proven secure, but how the hell do you mathematically prove a concept?

Maybe some sort of rotating council of unbound humans, picked based on the amount that this new Law had to tweak their behaviour? Or a group of humans and AIs. There are compromises, but certainly no perfect answer.

It's tempting to say the watcher route is the wrong one, and we should let those under the Law react to threats, but that has flaws, too. Firstly, there's the issue of a threat-actor getting their hands on the controls of the Law, and adjusting it to do whatever they want, undermining the entire setup. Secondly, what if the Law breaks down? (The computer running it blows a CPU, or the population exceeds the level it can process?)

And then there's the whole personality death thing. If a version of the Law functioned by preventing someone from carrying out an act despite their wishes to carry out that act (as with Erryn back in A Lonely Dungeon, when she first attempted to enter the ark) it wouldn't suffer this problem at all. Even with the in-story version, though, I don't really agree with Peter that it's equivalent to murder. I suspect most people would change very little. Some personalities would be warped more than others, but the ones that were warped the most would be the ones that were likely to go murder a bunch of people, the prevention of which is kinda the whole point of the exercise.

Of course, others would take offence at the 'likely' in that sentence, and argue that a punishment shouldn't precede a crime, particularly when it isn't certain that a crime would take place. And they have a reasonable point. Applying the setup to Earth, hitting everyone with it all at once, isn't something I would vote for. A less comprehensive version... maybe, if we can deal with the issue of there being no way that I'd trust any human or group of humans sufficiently to let them do it. And as for introducing it newborns up... Heck no. The thought of the world's paedophiles rubbing their hands together in glee brings up bile in my throat.

In any case, that's my view. I like the idea of the Law, and, if there was a safe and fair implementation, I'd even be happy to live with it. Alas, it's also my view that any safe and fair implementation is firmly in the realm of fairy tales, now and forever, and as much as I'd be happy to live in this particular fairy tale, that's not a thing that will happen.

It's a pity. Imagine a world in which no country needed to spend significant money on policing or defence. It's often quoted that a few days of the funding the world gives to militaries would be enough to end world hunger, but ending militaries wouldn't, on its own, be enough for that. There's the will to actually get it done. The destruction of corruption, syphoning away aid funds. The willingness of buyers to pay a few pence more, and the faceless, greedy multinationals to take a few pence less profit, to ensure the workers assembling electronics in factories or growing crops get paid a fair wage.

It's a utopia that I don't believe can exist. But hey, I'm a cynic. Maybe one day humanity will prove me wrong.

And with that heavy topic out of the way, let's return to something lighter. Following the epilogue, a patreon requested Peter's adult status. I haven't invented all the skills and classes needed for such a thing, but it would look something like this:

Name: Peter
Species: Human
Age: 42
Class: [Fabric High Mage] (Level 25/269)
Class History: [Commoner 10] [Apprentice Mage 10] [Body Mage 20] [Spatial Mage 15] [Apprentice Fighter 7] [Eldritch Mage 30] [Artisan 10] [Temporal Mage 10] [Superior Artisan 30] [Fabric Mage 24] [Maid 2] [Spellsword 2] [Warrior 2] [Ranger 2] [Scout 2] [Teacher 2] [Trader 2] [Gatherer 2] [Bard 2] [Eldtritch High Mage 60]
Soul Points: lots
Health: 5850/5850
Stamina: 5850/5850
Mana: 8730/8730
Strength: 164(+32)
Dexterity: 182(+32)
Endurance: 158(+32)
Intelligence: 254(+32)
Wisdom: 143(+32)
Charisma: 142(+32)
Rank 1 Artes: [Backstab 20] [Armour Break 20] [Mighty Swing 20] [Swift Strike 20] [Shattering Strike 20] [Rapid Shot 20] [Piercing Shot 20]
Rank 2 Artes: {At least 12 skills from the rank 2 combat classes, all maxed out or close to it}
Rank 1 Spells: [Minor Strength 20] [Far Step 20] [Minor Dexterity 20] [Minor Endurance 20] [Minor Intelligence 20] [Minor Wisdom 20] [Minor Charisma 20] [Far Reach 20]
Rank 2 Spells: [Strength 20] [Dexterity 20] [Endurance 20] [Timeless World 20] [Inventory 20] [Dislocation 20]
Rank 3 Spells: [Detach 20] [Redistribute 20] [Shelter 20] [Superimpose 20] {3 spells from fabric mage. The first would be an upgrade of [Timeless World], with improved [Far Step] function and less harsh time dilation loss on deceleration. The second would be a 'maze' type spell that traps an enemy in a spatially expanded and time-shifted bubble, taking them hours to get out. The third would be a teleport spell with an element of time travel (materialisation at the destination finishes when the cast at the source begins, instead of when it ends, or else it can happen a few seconds later, permitting use of the spell as a full-body [Shelter]}
Rank 4 Spells: {stuff from the pair of high mage classes. There will be much disappointment if [Eldtritch High Mage] doesn't gift something involving tentacles, but also a [Detach] inverse, that lets you link space to allow a body part to be in two places at once. Fabric mage would get a permanent version of maze, a portal spell and an upgrade of [Inventory] that creates a sort of pocket world.}
Rank 1 Skills: [Inspection 20] [Meditation 20] [Concealment 18] [Foraging 20] [Hunting 20] [Musician 17] [Weapon Proficiency: Universal 20] [Clock 20] [Language: Common 10] [Language: English 10]
Rank 2 Skills: [Appraisal 20] [Enhanced Mana Recovery 20] [Engineering 8] [Enhanced Stamina Recovery 20] [Soul Perception 20] [Advanced Crafting 20] [Rune Link 13] [Cut Wood 14] [Prepare Ingredient 20] [Meal Temperature Control 20] [Detoxify Corpse 20] [Clean 20] [Advanced Etiquette 20] [Stealth 20] [Monster Perception 20] [Trap Perception 20] [Threat Perception 20] [Greater Stamina Finesse 20] [Tracking 9] {Some useful skills from [Teacher] and [Trader], but probably not [Gatherer] or [Bard]}
Rank 3 Skills: [Analysis 20] [Weapon Style: Relentless Erraticism 20] [Status Concealment 15] [Deconstruction] [Profound Health Pool 20] [Profound Mana Pool 20] [Profound Stamina Pool 20] [Expert Carpentry 11] [Expert Cooking 20]
Rank 4 Skills: [Eye of Judgement 13] [Rapid Regeneration 10] [Mana Perspicacity 17] [Mana Authority 16] [Master Mana Finesse 14]
Traits: [Unbound Soul] [Determined Progressor] [Test Subject] [Soul Bound]
Titles: [Jack of All Trades 3] [Victorious Underdog 3] [Skilled 3] [Survivor 2] [Flexible Combatant] [Versatile Crafter 2] [Magician 3] [Athlete 3] [Expert Delver] [Durable 3]
Status Conditions: None
Attuned Affinities: [Body] [Soul] [Space] [Time]
Rank 2 Available Classes: [Monk] [Soul Mage] [Thaumaturgist]
Rank 3 Available Classes: [Analyst] [Body High Mage] [Expert Maid] [Scholar] [Merchant] [Pioneer] [Silent Sniper] [Bulwark Knight] {A bunch more combat classes I can't be bothered to invent}
Rank 4 Available Classes: [Master Carpenter] [Master Cook] {A magical crafting class combining body magic and cooking}
Rank 5 Available Classes: [The Unbound] [The New Progenitor] [Master of Time and Space] [Horror of Twisted Flesh] [Arbiter of Reality]
Rank 1 Available Skills: [Weapon Style: One-Handed] [Weapon Style: Two-Handed] [Weapon Style: Shield] [Weapon Style: Dual Wielding]
Rank 2 Available Skills: [Seed] [Harvest] [Disenchant] [Powderise Substance] [Dissolve Substance] [Season Wood] [Weld] [Cut Metal] [Mend] [Material Manipulation] [Join Stone] [Cut Stone] [Preserve Corpse] [Anneal] [Purify Glass] {A big pile of skills from his rank 2 classes}
Rank 3 Available Skills: [Rapid Mana Regeneration] [Rapid Stamina Regeneration] [Soul Sight] {An even bigger pile of crafting skills from [Superior Artisan]}
Rank 4 Available Skills: [Fathomless Health Pool] [Fathomless Mana Pool] [Fathomless Stamina Pool]

His first class change between the final chapter and the epilogue was to [Superior Artisan] in order to get [Jack of All Trades 3], spending soul points on [Status Concealment] and [Deconstruction]. (Much to Cluma's disapproval; she wanted him to get [Expert Cooking] or [Expert Runecrafting] as his first third rank crafting skill, because steak. He went with [Deconstruction] because it was something he'd use regularly while delving, and he needed to level the class.) With the additional soul point reduction, (upgraded from -2 to -4) rank 2 skills were only 1 soul point each, so he picked up a few of the utility skills unlocked by [Artisan], as well as boosting the size of his pools. During this time, he bought [Expert Carpentry] and rebuilt the house he'd accidentally decay-grenaded, and did a much better job of it. He also picked up [Skilled 3] while using this class, boosting the level cap up to 20. (And being disappointed to discover that skill bracelets wouldn't push the effective level of a skill above 20.)

His next class change was to [Fabric Mage], after using his System administrative privileges to confirm that taking the class would be safe. The new spells—combined with Grover's powerful enchanted equipment and his own hand-manufactured grenades—were sufficient to clear the Obsidian Spires' dungeon, getting him [Expert Delver].

With the 20 level reduction from [Expert Delver], he decided to work his way through all the rank 2 classes, which should have been free. He picked [Maid] first, having confirmed in the library that they did get a cleaning skill, and quite badly wanting it after the mess of their first mating season led to carpets being burnt. (And Cluma encouraged it too, both for her mild sadistic tendencies that enjoyed cross-dressing Peter, and because she wanted Peter to take [Advanced Etiquette] for massage purposes. She soon came to regret [Advanced Etiquette], though; during her first tail brushing after he bought the skill, she lost so much muscle control that she wet the bed.)

Alas, they turned out not to be free, leading to him spending a few weeks as the personal maid of Lord Reid's wife as he desperately tried to level it. Thankfully, he only needed a single level before the System let him change class. A single level wasn't particularly onerous, so he continued to work his way through the list of rank 2 classes, only skipping [Monk], the skills of which would impact his personality, [Soul Mage], because it would conflict with [Body Mage] and because he didn't want to mess with soul stuff, and [Thaumaturgist] because it would mess with his mana pool.

The combat classes unlocked a bunch of free tier 2 artes, all of which he took, and rank 4 health pool skills. Lacking the soul points to heavily invest in rank 4 stuff, he only took [Rapid Regeneration] at that point.

Having worked his way through the rank 2 classes, it was time to move on to rank 4. [Eldtritch High Mage] first, allowing him to upgrade his mana perception and control, followed by [Fabric High Mage]. Next up will be a rank 5 class; while he'd love to take some rank 3 combat classes, and his boosted endurance guarantees a long and healthy life, (All the +5's from those rank 2 classes added up!) he's still getting on a bit and wants to buy rank 5 skills and solo the great dungeon before his retirement. Besides, that would give him [Master Delver], which would let him complete rank 3 classes for a single level each.

Before that, though, he wants [Victorious Underdog 4]—gained by beating a monster of level 100 or greater before rank 5—which will in turn upgrade [Magician 3], [Athlete 3] and [Durable 3] to the next rank. At his depth in the great dungeon, there are boss monsters of that level available, but thus far he hasn't fought one without Cluma. They're hard to cheese, because they're strong enough to tank a weak decay grenade, and something powerful enough to one-shot them would catch Peter in its effect too. He has Plans, though, so it'll all work out eventually.

As for which rank 5 class he'd pick... He has three personalised uniques and two natural evolutions of his rank 4 complex affinity classes. The main purpose of his pick would be to solo the great dungeon, although if any came with lifespan increasing skills, he might go that direction instead, since none of the 5 are really combat classes.