From the Depths: Gold now available



The enemy of your enemy can still kill you.



More importantly, are they working alone?




Angela Brown said...

Seems things are chugging along for the game and your writing. Keep up the fantastic work :-)

Matthew MacNish said...

Congrats, my man!

Surface Rlf said...

Hi Adam,
A fairly nice one. Reads fluently and easily which i really appreciate.

I have a few questions or observations though...



The wights were represented at first as "not monsters - just strange or alien" type of creatures. Even capable of communicating and thinking. But then they turned out to be just simple monsters anyway.

So why the false pretenses earlier?

Having a girl as your protagonist and decision maker is very nice. And a nicely made character too. Smart kid, although lacking proper education of course.

Why is there a scene where she just runs over from one place to another - but she trips and falls for no real reason at all?

Is there some hard coded writing rule that females must trip over and fall when they are running in the story?

Not to mentioned killed at the end and turned into a monster, a wight, while failing to protect her people or secure a better future for them, which kind of works against establishing Luthiya as a fairly bright, quick on her feet character. And that has a really lousy effect on the reader.

Works very well to establish what a harsh world the Ninth world beyond is. If that was the intent.

Dont you think that someone could take that the wrong way, say someone called Anita for example... and come to all sorts of conclusions about inherent misogyny and stuff like that?
I personally wouldnt be surprised at all, considering the current climate about that stuff.

Also, our Changing hero seemed to have tried to affect the golden tide with her actions ... and whether she had any effect remained undisclosed, true - but,
considering it was all clearly done with alterior motives, for specific gains...

Would such acts ever affect that particular Tide? Because they are actually not done in a way that would affect the Gold Tide. She only pretended to want to help the tribe and then unleashed wights on them which nullified all that "help" - and she didnt particularly help the wights either...
Or it would actually increase another Tide, more connected to such manipulative actions in return?

Or is the moral of the story that tides are mysterious and dangerous and difficult to play with?

Surface Reflection said...

I certainly understand why you dont want to reply to the criticism above. It touches very much on your self proclaimed off limits content.

But that was not really my intent.

Although i hope some correlations about how easy is to make such a mistake completely unintentionally and due to some bad habits are clear.

Unknown said...

@Surface Reflection

I read over the story and I have a completely different view on the ending.

Not sure how you reach the conclusion that Luthiya turned into a wight at the end. From what I read, she transcended into a completely new being, with Urlimnion as her heart, and flying into an unknown future/plane/world if you may. What wight feast on is her and Ama(the Changing god)'s former bodies. Urlimnion chose her instead Ama, proving that the protagonist's sacrifice is greater than an insincere contribution using manipulations.

As for the gold tide you have to read relevant information on it to get a better understanding on how it works.

You may argue that she did not secure a better future for her people, however she did save them from the certain doom brought by Ama. I think the former would be too much of a unrealistic happy ending given the harsh setting.

The tripping thing is just your typical action/drama cliches to hinder the protagonists. Making it happen on female or male would not change how boring it was. At one point I did get tired of all the wight jumping at Luthiya, Luthiya dodged, repeat. I mean it's one way to hint at how the gold tide works but without further explanation it seem almost like a filler content.

Stephen E. Baker said...


My take on the ending is similar to @Unknown, that she didn't become a wight but instead transcended. I think something similar happened before except Ama was in Khapah's place and that's how she ended up with the tattoo on her forehead (when Luthiya touched Khapah's cheek in the transcendent state he ended up with black lines on his cheek.) The tattoo is connected to the urlimnion and may draw Khapah on a similar path.