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Chapter 54: The Gate Is Barred (Patreon)

Published:
2016-06-05 22:43:13
Imported:
2022-02

Content

https://www.fictionpress.com/s/2961893/54/Mother-of-Learning

A new chapter for my readers! Hope you enjoy.


In other news, I have not added any new worldbuilding posts to my wordpress. :/ It's not that I didn't try writing anything, but I have been a little too ambitious and tried to make a write up explaining the magic system and stuff and ended up making a total mess of it. So I think I should drop that and try out something simpler.


I will try to make a few worldbuilding posts over the next week. If any of you have some topic you'd like to know more about, go ahead and post it in the comments.

Comments

Mikhail Gorodetskiy

Is silly time travels a reference to something? Description (3 years past, war preventions, romance) looks similar to Muv-Luv Alternative (Edit), but AFAIK there is no love spell and I don't actually play it, but no mention of "power of love" anywhere.

nobody103
>>18269044

Not really a reference to anything specific, no. And I never played Muv-Luv, so it can't be related to that.

Anonymous

How curious! This ending is not cliffhanger in that so much has been resolved, but it is a cliffhanger as well because . . . now what? I can't wait for the next chapter, yet uncharacteristically have an intense sensation of patience . . .

Anonymous

Hey got a question about the latest chapter. Given they can ask the guardian-thing questions, would it be possible for it to answer as to the rate of degradation of the time loop? IE how much time it has left before it collapses? Because basic diagnostics like that seem like it would be common sense for it to have available - and Zorian is smart enough to ask a question like that.

nobody103
>>1924428

Rest assured that the Guardian is going to be asked all sorts of things in future chapters.

Anonymous

I would love to read more about Shifter's history and culture.

Anonymous

So I was wondering, assuming the loop is connected to the real world at a single point in time, what happens when they get out. Is it their physical body present in the loop? Is it only their souls being housed inside shells made by the loop? I am wondering because if they exit the loop would they end up outside the gate? Would they wake up in their bodies at the beginning of the month? I thought you could not destroy a soul, so what happens to the souls of all the people that die inside the loop. We know a soul cannot be destroyed. Do end up in the afterlife? How does something completely separated from every plane in existence send souls to the afterlife. Finally if say someone used the spell that merged two souls on zorian's copy soul and real soul, would it work smoothly, and would he retain the memories of the loop zorian?

nobody103
>>1924672

Those are very good questions, but Zorian currently doesn't know how to answer any of them... and it would be rather spoiler-ish of me to answer them here.

Anonymous

Also, Domagoj, how is it that you write English so well? It's nearly indistinguishable from a native speaker's writing. I hear you're Croatian, but I'm guessing English is a primary language for you?

nobody103
>>1924742

No, not really. My primary language is definitely Croatian. I just write in English to get a wider audience. And I still mess up a lot of things that would be obvious to an English speaker, as my readers periodically point out to me. I was taught English when I was very young, though, so that probably has to do with how good it is. Kids soak up that kind of knowledge fast. Later on, when I tried to learn how to speak German, my success had been... a lot less impressive.

Anonymous

Wow, jaw dropping chapter. But first, magic. I like the world building you have going on here, but it still feels like a D&D type world. When I first started reading, I thought it was a setting based on a Customized Eberron Campaign you had run or something, because of the Dragon imprisoned in the center of the Earth, and mana coming from that, and how the spells and names made you think of that, as well as the (currently) distant gods. From what you have said that seems not to be the case, but it still feels like a world you would go to have adventures in. On to this chapter. Something that stood out to me was exactly how Zach ended up the Branded one. He did not go through the Sovereign gate to activate it, because in that case, 1: He would be there in front of the Sovereign gate when the loop resets and 2: The researchers there would have noticed something like that. So there are a three options, 1: The gate activates automatically due to the Dimensional Alignment (when someone trying to summon a Primordial is likely), and he was automatically branded due to some genealogical magic, (the gate was his families) 2: The researchers activated something messing around with it during a Dimensional Alignment, and still branded due to his lineage 3: Just because the Gods are not talking and being obvious does not mean they are not paying attention anyway, and they created it, and activated it To Save The World, choosing Zach to brand. Or can you tell me if there is something I am missing? So with them in the control room, can they access the HELP function, or the USER MANUAL? Because this is a good opportunity to learn all of what the Mark can do, and maybe upgrade Zorian's Mark to full functionality. About Red Robe, was he someone Zach had trusted and brought in, who then mind wiped Zach to try doing what Spear of Resolve wanted to do. I know a lot of people think Zorian's older brother is a candidate, with a reputation for being a prodigy. And isn't he on the continent with the 5 Relics of the Emperor? If Zach tried to track them down, and met him there, and confided in him... And it seems like we have an answer to why the King let Zach House be robbed blind, because HE PERSONALLY was a beneficiary of the theft... The way he keeps sending people to make sure no one tries to steal the Gate he stole, he must have REALLY wanted it...

Nepene

Topics that would be fun to know about, each worthy of a single post- what is alchemy used for, and how do people typically use it? What are elementals, and how do they interact with humans? What are the main political factions in Eldemar? What are the detailed policies, goals, and resources of each group? What resources do dungeon delvers look for, and what are those resources used for? Are divine artifacts always superior to present day magical items? What's the emphatic community like? What are the main branches of magic? How do each of them work in detail? What primordials are there? What gods were there, and what theories are there about why they left? Any of those questions might be worthy of a post. And yeah, doing the whole magic system does sound like a lot. It'd be nice to have more detailed post. One post detailing all the types of magic, one detailing how mana and spells work, one detailing how illusions work, one detailing how necromancy worked, stuff like that.

Anonymous
>>1925243

A genetic marker is possible, but without the Weeping, this would have resulted in a handful of people with the mark, possibly MANY more because that's several four-hundred-year cycles of baby-making since the last use of the Gate. It also depends on how the inheritance of soul properties is handled---shifter clans probably know a lot about Psynetics. Anyhow, even in the current setup, there are probably a few dozen people with a distant psynetic link to the House of Noveda . . .

Anonymous

Oh wow that chapter was a ride. The gate is barred indeed...

Anonymous

An epic finale to 2nd arc! Without Red Robe in the picture Zorian et al. can now enlist the help of the whole world (well, at least the parts that they manage to persuade :) and don't have to be afraid of high-profile events occurring. I also suspect that Daimen digging up ancient artifacts and "The Key" consisting of 5 Ikosian imperial treasures may not be a coincidence... maybe the key is an override?

Anonymous

A very nice chapter! I liked it a lot more than the last one, which I found to be very anti-climactic. You showed a lot more instead of just telling. Thanks for the chapter.

Anonymous

Awesome chapter ! I must say it is obvious in retrospect (as so many thing are) but oh so surprising and satisfying to discover for the first time. There were lots of clues but I still didn't completely make the connections.

Anonymous

Domagoj, as far as world-building goes, there's been a recent debate on the nature of souls, undead, and the simulacrum spell on this chapter's Reddit thread. I would love to read how these concepts work in your world. Here is the link: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4mptnp/mother_of_learning_chapter_54_the_gate_is_barred/d40ok33?context=3" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4mptnp/mother_of_learning_chapter_54_the_gate_is_barred/d40ok33?context=3</a>

nobody103
>>1939352

Yeah, I saw it. I am putting everything like that in a single documents with a list of potential topics, along the other things that have been specifically suggested to me (such as Nepene's post further down).

Anonymous

Great chapter! Really liked the ending to the arch. Didn't see that coming. I hope Zach doesn't go crazy from overuse of the mind blank spell. Maybe he has it on all the time out of fear caused by his past traumatic experiences with mind magic. If it isn't to much to ask I was wondering about how much money does Zorian have easy access to? Would it's equivalent in USD be in the high thousands, or millions even?

nobody103
>>1947844

This is kind of hard for me to answer, as I'm not an American and am rather fuzzy on the buying power of the dollar when it comes to everyday things. But tentatively, I'd say he has access to high thousands rather than millions.

Mack

More than anything I'd like to see a breakdown/summary of the various magical disciplines and how they work, or at least what Zorian knows of them. Not only has he gone to school for them, but after this much time spent in the time loop he's got advanced skills in several. It adds on to your comments I read... on reddit? About differences/similarities in golems versus undead. That's the sort of detail regarding the magic system that might not make it into the story but that is both (1) something Zorian knows and (2) really interesting. But then I'm always interested in how different 'fields' of magic work in stories.

nobody103
>>2039303

I definitely intend to post a detailed breakdown on how magic work - both in general and specific disciplines. Unfortunately, this is not an easy undertaking, even with all my notes, and I kind of underestimated the difficulty of it. Probably for the best to concentrate of something easier and work my way up to it. And I agree with you - I'm also always very interested in how magic and its various disciplines works in stories.