Half of 2.31 and a notice (Patreon)

Here's the notification I put on the current RR chapter, which I will also ping as an  announcement on Discord:

"Holiday Hiatus Notice:

I had hoped to finish Book 2 before taking a prolonged break, but I've reached a point where I have to acknowledge I've failed to meet that goal.  It frustrates me because the book is in its third act and not far from wrapping up, but I have hit a burnout point from which it's consistently extremely hard to get any writing done.  Plus, the insomnia isn't any better.  I suspect the stress of missing my deadlines is adding to that, which only further frays my mental state and makes it harder to meet deadlines, and so on in a classic vicious cycle.

As such, I am taking the rest of this year off.  OVDT will be on break for the last two weeks of December and return on the first normal update time in January.  I'm gonna try to catch up on sleep and resent my head over the holidays.  Also, next year I think I'm gonna try moving to a schedule like TWI does, taking one week off per month to rest up in advance and hopefully avoid this continuing to happen in the future.

So, sorry for interrupting the flow mid-story, but this is what I gotta do.  I hope everybody has a great holiday and I'll see you all again next year!"

I was really trying to have a last chapter up for Patrons before calling it, but I got halfway through the current one and I have hit a hard wall and have to stop.  So I'm posting the first half of the chapter so as not to leave you with nothing with no notice.  If I get rested up and have a surge of inspiration I'll finish it up in the next week, but worst case it'll be done by January.

Merry Thingmus, everybody, and may it be a blessed one.  I appreciate you all.

My intended blitzkrieg didn’t go the way I’d planned, but in a different way than how things usually didn’t go the way I planned.

I was regrettably accustomed to my efforts falling flat or blowing up in my face, but having something more or less work out but just take forever was…  Well, actually, that was pretty much how my early campaign in Cat Alley had gone down, but this felt more visceral somehow.  My intention had been to sweep through the bandit camps ringing Gwyllthean’s western border in a rush; based on the distances involved and how long I knew it took to walk from North Watch to the city, I’d figured it would take two days, tops.

Well, in the end, it went smoothly enough, but that left me in control of the final bandit encampment far to the southwest a week after we set out from Caer Yviredh.

Sneak up on a bandit camp, ambush and neutralize them with our unconventional weaponry and stealth tactics, then showtime. Identify and purge the undesirables, then reassign the remainder: I rarely kept more than one or two along with the small groups I left to take over their territory, brought one or two with me, and sent any remaining back to North Watch.  Clan Olumnach had stripped their numbers so much that none of the remaining gangs had more than six members, some as few as three.  Then we took and divvied up what was useful from their supplies, provided them with any necessities from our own, and abandoned the campsites, leaving the new Seiji-aligned gangs to begin a patrol of their territory.  With the guidance of whichever bandit my core group had absorbed, we would then locate the next camp.  Rinse and repeat.

With the gwynnek riders making a constant circuit—at a steady enough pace not to over-tire the beasts or riders, but still constant—we stayed in contact (albeit on a delay) with the previously overtaken gangs, the field command post I’d sent Goose to establish in Auron’s old campsite near the waystation, and North Watch itself.  Rather than a loose and barely-controlled collection of criminals as Clan Olumnach had arranged them, I made these groups part of a single organization, keeping in touch and moving as one.

Turns out, setting up and maintaining something like that is neither easy nor fast.

If only the delays were my worst problem.

I could not renege on the promise of vengeance to my core followers; I had made it too central to what bound them to me, and I was too reliant on their support to risk it.  While I preferred to think that none of my girls would lay a false accusation against some random man out of spite, Aster had quietly warned me that in the aftermath of the battle of Cat Alley we had several burgeoning misandrists in the ranks.  I couldn’t entirely blame them, especially because all of this was my own fault.  I had maliciously unleashed feminism on this country in much the same way the Yviredhs had been sponsoring bandits: barely understanding what that was or how it worked and with no plan at all to control it, and now people were getting hurt.

Not every gang required blood to be spilled.  Two of the smaller ones were all-female already; those took one look at my assembled forces and then the only struggle was managing to explain what they were signing up for before they actually did.  Of the rest, a couple had no members identified by any of my followers as problems.  But there was still vengeance to dispense.  I learned that Freebie Guy and the Strangler weren’t isolated cases; several more idiots sealed their own doom because when accused of the beating, rape, and/or murder of prostitutes they seemed nonplussed that this was even worth talking about.  In a sick way, the bone-deep rottenness of this country was helping to save my own conscience.  Even when the abusers didn’t blithely out themselves, they had often made enough of a pattern that multiple voices were raised against them, usually even among their own comrades.  Not always, though.

Four more times that week I cut down men based on nothing but the tenuous evidence of an accusation.

Because that was what I needed to do to stay in control.

It was getting harder and harder to sleep.  I let myself hope that would be easier back in my bed in North Watch, but the hard dirt and khora roots we camped on were not actually the problem.

A week after setting out from Caer Yviredh, I stood at the end of a trail of corpses, exhausted and fully reliant on pure showmanship to keep up a good face for the troops.  We’d had an unbroken string of easy victories and totally secured the ground needed for the next stage.  Conquest was complete.  It would’ve been nice if I could have felt good about it.

Aster and Nazralind joined me a short distance from the last camp, as requested; there was a nice little spot the bandits had been using as a lookout point from which we could watch our people sorting and packing everything without being directly in earshot.

“Ladies,” I said pensively, “I believe I have fucked up.”

“What makes you think so, Lord Seiji?” Aster said, her innocently solicitous tone giving away the game.

Thanks to my own cultural biases it had taken me a long time to catch on (and in the end I’d needed Biribo to point it out), but once I did the pattern was inescapable: Fflyr sarcasm looked a lot like Japanese politeness.  If a lowborn was being vague and refusing to come out and openly voice something critical, they were making fun of me.  I guess that made sense in a culture where talking back to your superiors could get you killed, especially if they were being moronic, which they often were.

I gave her a flat look, getting a bland smile in reply.

“Nazralind,” I said, breaking eye contact with Aster after a moment, “do you know of any democratic societies near Fflyr Dlemathlys?”

“Democratic societies?”  Her eyebrows shot upward.  “What, you mean like beast tribes?”

“Um…  Why was that your first thought?”

She shrugged.  “Well, because a nation-sized democracy is fairy tale nonsense.  I believe smaller tribal cultures sometimes organize themselves that way.  The beastfolk, for example.  I’ve read that orc tribes are like that, too, but the nearest orcs are way over on the other side of the Lancor Empire.”

“What is a democracy?” Aster demanded.

“Government by popular vote,” I explained.  “People elect their leaders and usually set policy by public agreement.”

Now it was her turn to raise her eyebrows.  “That sounds like a pretty good idea to me.”

“It sounds that way, yes,” said Nazralind, “but in practice that stops working if you have more than a hundred or so people to govern.  Actual leadership is impossible since it takes so long to get anything done, and democracies aren’t so much prone to corruption as inherently riddled with it.”

“Well, that does sound pretty nasty,” Aster murmured.  “I’d hate to live in a corrupt country with bad leadership.”

Was she being spicier than usual today, or had I just failed to notice how much of her commentary was full of underhanded jabs?  To judge by her expression, Naz had caught that last one, too.

“Governing is a skill,” she tried to explain.  “That’s why none of us know anything about it; skills take training and practice, and innate talent helps.  You don’t want every peasant helping to set national policy for the same reason you wouldn’t ask a baker to shoe your horse.”

Aster gave her a very kind smile and I hastily interjected before she could say whatever she was about to.

“I asked because I was hoping there were native Ephemeral examples of societies transitioning into democracies, but I guess not.”

“Transitioning?”  Naz wrinkled her nose.  “Governments transition all the time, usually through coup, conquest, or usurpation.  As for democracies…  There are a few small republics scattered about, mostly governed by coalitions of noble houses or merchant syndicates.  What brought this on, Lord Seiji?”

“On Earth, most nations are democratic,” I said.  Both of them looked surprised, and Nazralind also skeptical.  “At least in theory.  And most of the stable ones transitioned from authoritarian to democratic rule slowly.  Many of the successful states in the modern era still have figurehead monarchies but are actually governed democratically, including Japan.  There have also been a lot of violent revolutions overthrowing tyrants to establish democratic governments, and those…usually fail, especially if they succeed.”

“Well, of course they do,” Nazralind said, shrugging again.  Aster gave her another even look.

“Because,”I continued, “as you pointed out, governance is a skill.  It reliably leads to disaster if the people trying to govern don’t know how to do anything but slaughter their enemies.”

Both of them shifted to look down at the camp and our people working there, expressions clearing.

“Ah,” Aster said softly.

“Yeah, so, I fucked up,” I said, following their gaze.  “Every step seemed like the only step I could take at the time, but right now I’m looking at the start of a pattern I recognize from lots of history, and it ends in fire and blood and nothing remotely constructive.  I have to fix this before it gets any further out of hand, and I’ve got absolutely no fucking clue how to do that.”

“You could…ask the Yviredhs?” Nazralind suggested with a hesitance which didn’t suggest that she believed deeply in her own suggestion.  “They do govern a fief.”

“Are they really an example worth emulating?” Aster asked pointedly.  “They’re nice enough people, but…come on.”

“Recognizing the problem is a start, boss,” Biribo chimed in.  “You need to find somebody to teach you how to rule.  There are options; now you know to look for them as opportunities come up.  But is that the most important thing to be thinking about right this second?”

“Once again, the flying sass lizard speaks truth,” I sighed.  “All right, ladies, this is where we part ways.  Don’t make that face at me, Aster, you’re coming with me!  But it’ll be just the two of us heading into the Gutters.  I want to try to keep this quiet until we get the lay of the land.  Nazralind, I’m putting you in charge of my forces here.”

“Hai!” she acknowledged.

It’d been a week and I still wasn’t used to that.  After my awkward revelation about the goddesses, hearing it from people who were clearly not Japanese was still making me a little twitchy, but I had decided not to discourage the practice.  If nothing else, it was succinct.

“Retrace our steps and rendezvous at Caer Yviredh.  I want you to join and take charge of the group there, with whatever force you judge won’t attract undue attention.  Send the rest of our people to join Goose at the central camp up north; I’ll return to collect everybody when I’ve sussed out the situation in Gwyllthean and finalized a plan.”

“Hai!”  Yeah, it was gonna take me a while longer to get used to that.

“Your secondary objective is to keep an eye on and maintain relations with Clan Yviredh.  I feel like they’ll be less inclined to ponder turning on us if we have an armed presence near them, but at the same time I don’t want to antagonize them directly.  You’re the person for that job, Naz; nobody else would be as good at managing highborn.  You seemed to be getting along well with the younger Yviredhs, so keep that up.”

“Lady Avelit, yes,” she said with a doubtful frown.  “I’m not sure Lord Ediver would be as amenable to my influence.”

“Nazralind,” I said patiently, “you are an unrealistically beautiful woman, and he’s a teenage boy.  It will not be hard.  Just try not to give the poor kid an aneurysm or piss off his mother too much.”

“I’m not sure I agree,” Aster said sweetly.  “It will definitely be hard.  Don’t ask the boy to stand up in a hurry.”

Biribo cackled so hard he lost some buoyancy and Nazralind blushed, for once having no comeback.  For the most part she and the other ladies were fitting in well with the group, but I had noticed that most of them were having trouble getting comfortable with the off-color humor which was inevitably popular in an organization of mostly former sex workers.

“Thanks for that, Aster,” I said, shooting her my best Aster Look.  “All right, let’s not waste any more time screwing around; gods only know what Olumnach’s been doing to the Gutters for the last two weeks.  I want to make a quick address to the team and then we need to head out.  After that, it’s in your hands, Nazralind.”

“Hai!”

Fucking hell, I was creating monsters left and right.