And now for my thoughts on book 5 and what was happening at the time.

I had the idea of all three storylines from the game merging since the very beginning. If anything, book one through four had been intended to paint each major character and relate to them. Most of the game’s battles were briefly alluded to, mostly because it would have taken forever to detail them all. Careful readers who played the game could also realize that their favorite Champion was directly or indirectly linked to many other heroes: getting indirect support from Desjar, thwarting an attack overseen by Marxon, getting noticed by Doctor Brackman, etc.

Overall, only a few tweaks were needed to make everything fit. The first minor change was that instead of making the Tip of the Spear a “unique” role, I actually had it set so that he was one of many who were spearheading the Cybran assault. Only by doing so could I explain Redfog’s presence of the front line. I have to admit that I had a perverse pleasure at making it appear as though the Tip of the Spear (the player) would lead the attack on Earth only to have him sidetracked by Redfog.

The biggest challenge that I had, however, was writing Arnold’s conversion. I consider myself a man of many virtues (and twisted cliffhangers) that probably follows the principles encouraged by many beliefs, but I am more logical/pragmatic than spiritual. As such, I had a very hard time figuring out how a man like Arnold could possibly convert to The Way without resorting to a “I wave my hand and you are changed” kind of magic trick.

I therefore designed The Way not as a belief that required blind faith, but rather as an evolved method of introspection, honesty and compassion which could be accepted by most decent human beings and provide enlightenment. I also elaborated on Arnold’s view, changing it not to a plain conversion, but instead as a quest to try to stop the massacre of millions either by the Illuminate or by Black Sun. It had taken me a long while to make it work, but I was pleasantly surprised by the result.

I reworked the final mission with one clear image in mind; envision a setting that was not unlike what we faced during the game, but then take out all the (relatively) dumb AIs and replace them by players that were as good as the strongest ranked players. Let’s face it, most of us would have never won the game alone if that had happened, especially when the Avatar takes control of Black Sun during the Illuminate campaign (that base was huge and well-defended, but the AI was defensive). I also wanted to emphasize on the fact that Marxon and Redfog were some of the most dangerous Commanders in the galaxy.

I loved writing how Arnold was trying to get closer to Marxon to kill him, only to realize in the end that he had been outplayed from the very beginning.

For those that are curious, the ‘vision’ that Arnold had concerning how his sacrifice could perhaps unite all the factions against Marxon was the result of his battle experience combined with his brief teachings in The Way. That part was directly linked to book one in which Rhianne, still a child, said: ““However, since no human has ever mastered The Way like the Seraphim have then it stands to reason that none truly understand it. If we do not truly understand it then who is to say that there are not aspects to it that we have failed to recognize and that others might have mastered?”

At the time, I think the cliffhanger at the end of chapter 12 when Marxon suddenly came back out of nowhere, crippled all three armies and cried “fools!” was the most nerve wrenching cliffhanger to date. Having Riley order Weisman and the rest of the squad to abandon Desjar was a close second.

And why did I not kill Redfog along with Marxon? Well, for one he was too much fun to have around (and popular), but I also loved the idea of leaving him behind enemy lines. The fact that a desktop image was waiting and so perfectly fitting with a few alterations was an added bonus.

A few sources of inspirations include:

- Redfog’s last line “they don’t stand a chance” was inspired by a similar line in Star Wars Republic Commando (the game).
- When Rhianne cried “run!”, I had the same scene from Minority Report playing in my mind.
- Bagby’s line “No… TV… and… no… beer… make… Bagby… go… crazy!” was inspired by the Simpsons (a Halloween special).

Err… that’s about it. Most of the rest came from the game anyway

And now onward to book 6!

Cool.

I remember when I played the UEF campaign for the first time (since i liked the UEF the best, that was the first campaign i did and therefore that was the storyline that had the most "impact." I really enjoyed that campaign and really got into it); I was alittle shocked when Arnold "dies" in the third mission. When he comes back as an Aeon Commander in the fifth mission; needless to say, I was very shocked and honestly felt betrayed (yes, its just a campaign, but I was into it).

I felt that your book did an excellent job of filling in the gaps as well as describing those missions and it is nice knowing how you mixed everything in so well.

I must say, that having Arnold believably switch sides is perhaps the greatest gift you could have given to the supcom (vanilla) campaign.

I thank you for that and many other things your Fanfic brought to the fore.

(When playing the Aeon missions I thought the Arnold switch was done very cheesy.)

Just a quick tech question to people here: Would it be possible to get the .pdf files onto my droid? I've viewed pdfs on there before, but would have to download them fresh each time I wanted to view them. Any way to get them on there permanently?

I believe when you download them it saves it on the phone permenantly. I just don't know exactly where. If you go to your downloads section through the browser's menu, you should be able to see a list of everything you've downloaded and access them (for now) that way. It's been a while since I've had a working droid (screen shattered months ago and haven't had the $$ to get it fixed) so I can't remember if there's a file explorer built into the phone.

Sure you can. I have all of my dance notes (several hundred pages) in PDF format stocked on my Android phone at all times. I generate the PDF files on my computer and then transfer them to my phone through the micro USB wire and use Adobe's free viewer.

Allright, thanks dots. Will have to find the cord, though.

Book 6 should be online this weekend

<3 now im really depressed that i have been missing this thread for 3 months
but i get to read the PDFs on my kindle now love your work dots!

How do you get the PDF's to the kindle?

i believe you can hook up your kindle in the same fasion using a USB cord and load pdfs into it.

Sweet, ill have to fiddle around with it.

Edit: So, had to do a little fiddling, but I got it to work. Awesomeness factor just went up a few notches.

the only downside of .PDFs on kindle is that a pdf keeps the same page size and doesnt adapt to the smaller paperback size of the kindle screen.

is it just me or does the font suck to read on a kindle?
i had to darken and rotate 90 to have it big and bold enough to read comfortably.

Mine shows up fine; only issue being that the kindle doesnt recognize apostrophes and replaces them all with small ? in a box. Not the end of the world. Oh, and for some reason the titles for books one and two keep showing up as the first line of your posts on the forum; three and four have been renamed the way they are supposed to be. Still working on fixing those.

*You have to convert the PDF to another filetype using a converter. Cant remember off the top of my head, but if you google it you will find it easily.

i just got Mobipocket Creator. EPIC WIN!!!!

Yup, thats the one.

There we go; the forum is finally back and I just posted book 6. Enjoy!

Win.

I cant wait to hear your thought process on this book. It was one of my favorites because everything goes to hell in a hand basket, but it was completely skipped over in FA.

And now here are some thoughts on book 6:

The first challenge that I had after the end of book 5 and merging all the storylines was Doctor Brackman himself. Being stuck in QAI’s clutches and yet being present in Forged Alliance, I had to come up with a way for him to escape. Initially I considered a rescue attempt, but I quickly backtracked as I thought “why not have him escape on his own?” So Brackman became more than just a brain in a jar and engineered his own escape. Many of the taunts that he exchanged with QAI actually came from the game taunts themselves.

There were a few imbalances when Forged Alliance was initially released. One of those which I considered a potential game breaker was that Seraphim’s rapid restoration field. If I recall correctly, back in those days, it was meant to increased regeneration a little bit and increase maximal health by 10%, but the bug was that it was actively buffing and debuffing nearby units (including itself), resulting in a 10% health regeneration rate as a bonus.

I remember discussions on the boards on whether Seraphim players should abuse the feature or not, but that is beside the point. Instead of trying to explain “why” this was happening in the story, I decided to roll with it and take it to an extreme; that the Seraphim had come in with overpowered technology. This would put humanity on the run and accomplished exactly the effect that I wanted.

Concerning the UEF, I briefly introduced a concept which I later exploited in book 7; that citizens from the core worlds had been sheltered from the worst of the war while the colonists had actively lived in it. This would in turn create a different set of mentality depending on different origins (which was why Melissa had such a hard time adapting in book 7). Colonists would have had to depend a lot more on each other to survive while Earthlings would have been a bit more individualist. The concept was inspired by a similar (if brief) speech given by Heero in the Gundam Wing animated series.

As for the Illuminate, the problem was Rhianne herself; how to explain her sudden reappearance and prolonged absence at the same time. The idea which was never truly officially explained (only hinted at) was that the act of passing back from a quantum form and back to a human body was extremely demanding and that her mind existed on both planes for a time. It is only during the events of Forged Alliance that her consciousness finally reintegrated her body.

As for the Cybrans, a large part circled around Redfog and his newfound apprentice. To those that are curious, the reason why Redfog never chose an apprentice before then was that everyone had predicted that the Infinite War would end soon, no matter who won. Entrusting the Assumpta Node to Dostya was therefore slightly sadistic, but also a means for him to ensure that the node would be properly managed into a new era, no matter what it might be (and he had fully expected never to return from Earth). The sudden appearance of the Seraphim had changed that, however.

Bits and pieces of Redfog’s past were revealed in the process, including his birth which was inspired by the opening scene in the movie “Powder” (the part where the father says “He’s not my boy…. He’s not my boy!”).

The idea of someone holding the title of Redfog was inspired by the Sith (Star Wars), of course. Back in those days, I was playing Knight of the Old Republic 2 and I must admit that I was fascinated with Kreia’s tutelage in the dark side. Her voice acting and the efforts that had been infused into her dialogue was a work of art. I especially liked that she would place nuances in terms of evil, favoring judicious use of power and control and frowning upon petty acts of evil and brutality.

The relationship between Redfog and his apprentice was therefore crafted as such; starting as a conflict at first followed by total oppression. It was then progressively changed so that Megan would slowly be shown the rewards of such a path to power and make choices of her own.

As for the Seraphim, while I wanted to make them seem unstoppable, I also wanted them to suffer a minor defeat. Thel-Uuthow’s portrait in the game had a burnt eye and served as the inspiration for the first defeat at the hands of a human.

Finally, the champions were sent away on different missions:

- Tim on forward and dangerous scouting
- The Iluminate Champion to guard the Princess’ comatose form
- The Tip of the Spear working on different means of escape, independently from his father.

A few other sources of inspiration included:

- Bagby’s “I’ll be stronger, faster, more seductive” was inspired by Yoda’s description of the dark side (there were lots of Star Wars reference in this book).
- Spider bot tea bagging was inspired by playing PC games and seeing it happen.
- I was listening to “Sons of Liberty” (Metal Gear) while typing the flight sequence where Desjar and Dostya where zipping through the canyons.

And that’s about it. Book 7 is next!

That's a very detailed description. Thanks dots

I bet we can fill a book with those details

Speaking of the details and books, I just wanted to put my vote behind someone else's comment:

+1

Oh and good news, the next book will be online this weekend

And now book 7 is online. Enjoy!

Nice, but there's one thing. The words spoken by the characters themselves, at the start of every chapter, aren't in italics. When you start reading, there's no telling in that it isn't regular text, like in the book here on the forum. I'd be nice to have that in the pdf file as well.

Also, I'm hoping to see your own comments on the book soon as well