Amneiger NaNo (Herald of Light) (Finished! =D)

[Shadaras]

I am far too stubborn sometimes, and that was so a challenge. ^_^ ..write fast, lover boy, or I'll catch you sooner than you think.

[Amneiger]

Nov 9, 2009 17:42:56 GMT -5 Shadaras said:

I am far too stubborn sometimes, and that was so a challenge. ^_^ ..write fast, lover boy, or I'll catch you sooner than you think.

xD First I want to know how you'd managed to get from 37k in the morning to 40k in the afternoon despite being at school.

Second, the fact that you had managed to do it despite Monday being your busiest day got me to panic, so I did a 10k day and reached 52,402 words. ^_^ Hopefully that should give me a bit of time before your inevitable revenge.

[Shadaras]

About two hours or free time after lunch. xD ...and I noticed and I'm so going to catch you. Soon. I mean it.

[Amneiger]

xD

Also: Rambles! I have two optional chapters that I might add to the novel if it doesn't hit 100k.

First idea - Titled "Noah Gordon." No real reason not to put this in if there's time, except that people might ask what happens to Noah for the rest of the novel.

Second idea - still untitled. It has body horror in it. Probably a bit much of body horror. On the other hand, I get to use one of the Illuminated. Which should be interesting. =D And it might make the ending a bit clearer, too.


And Shade? I'm going to regret this, but I still remember this line and this is a perfect opportunity to say it, so ...come and get me. :3

[Kathleen]

.. I'm staring at your wordcount and trying to explain to myself how I could be hallucinating.

At any rate, go you! <3 Someone's got to give Shade a run for her money. =D Having characters disappear for the rest of the novel after one chapter is something I learnt about last year.

[Shadaras]

xD ...did I say that, or did I write it into a story? I can't remember. Either way. I will get you. I don't know how or when I'll catch you again, but I will and it shall be glorious.

Kath -- I need the challenge. I'm so grateful for it. It makes me work harder and makes my story weirder.

[Amneiger]

Shade - You said that when you were teasing me about my crush on you by making me run after you on the bloids. xD Then you tried to go off with Ithil.

Also, to respond to what you posted in your journal - your Tuesday and Thursday hours are better then mine xD

And I'm grateful for you giving me a challenge too. ^^ *hug* I'd never have gotten this far this fast if it weren't for you.


Kathleen - xDDD Shade got me to go this fast because she managed to get that 3k she wasn't supposed to get yesterday. I realized that Shade was going to be a much more dangerous race partner then I'd thought, and it put the fear of Shade into me. xD And thanks for the congratulations.

I went back and checked my previous chapters, and it seems that I have characters disappearing anyway xD But I'm going to try to get the main outline chapters done before adding optional chapters.

Also, you should cheer for me, because both the fact that this is the first year that I'm on the NaNo board and in the first week Shade was beating me makes me the underdog. And everybody's supposed to cheer for the underdog. ^_^


Other updates! First of all, the word widget seems to have broken D: This is sad. Anyway, I did another 10k day and my current wordcount is 62,645 words. ^_^

Oh, and an excerpt. I actually wrote this yesterday, but was too busy running from Shade's current wordcount to post it xD Victoria speaks in all caps, which I'm hoping won't be too bothersome.

SPOILER: Click to show

On the third day, I’d spent maybe an hour or so admiring my handiwork when I heard Victoria speaking from the cockpit.

DR. BRYANT, WE ARE APPROACHING OLYMPUS MONS. PLEASE COME TO THE COCKPIT; I NEED A GENIUS TO HELP MAKE THE FINAL APPROACH.

Olympus Mons is the tallest and most famous mountain on Mars, and in all of the Solar System. It is three times the height of Mount Everest, and most pictures didn’t do it justice.

When I was in the cockpit, I looked at the readings on the various displays. We were in geosynchronous orbit around Mars and to the southwest of Olympus Mons. Victoria had turned to face the mountain, so I could see it from the cockpit. The instructions had said to first go to a position approximately one hundred and fifty miles above the surface of Mars and Olympus Mons only went up to around fifteen miles, so the mountain didn’t seem particularly large from up here.

THE BINOCULARS SHOULD STILL BE IN THE GLOVE BOX. PLEASE REMOVE THEM.

I’d uploaded the instructions for how to reach Mars to Victoria’s navigation computers earlier, which was why she was giving me instructions now; she was reading off of the material I’d uploaded to her. I opened the glove box and took out the binoculars. They were just mundane binoculars, but I wasn’t sure I wanted too much to be able to see Mars in too much detail for the approach.

I AM CURRENTLY TILTING TO ALLOW YOU TO SEE OUT OF THE COCKPIT WINDOWS; ADJUSTING GRAVITY GENERATORS TO COMPENSATE.

I could see the view of space slide away and the surface of Mars come up to replace the area it had left behind, until there was only a sliver of space left. Far below, I could see the red sand of Mars, piled up into dunes and gullies. That’s all I saw, dust and desert.

PLEASE USE THE BINOCULARS TO LOCATE THE DUNES THAT LOOK MOST LIKE SPIRES OF METAL CONSTRUCTED BY INTELLIGENT AND ARTIFICAL MEANS.

I brought the binoculars up to my eyes and looked down through them at Mars. I could see the various dunes as something like small circles the size of the period on a page. I focused on the one that looked the thinnest, tallest, and shiniest. The nearest cluster of dunes to it was somewhat further away, near the edge of view of the binoculars.

“Okay, I think I have one. Be ready to stop and restart if it turns out that this particular dune doesn’t work.”

UNDERSTOOD. I WILL BEGIN MY DESCENT IN JUST A MOMENT. PLEASE THINK VERY HARD ABOUT HOW MUCH THE DUNES LOOK LIKE THEY WERE MADE FROM ARTIFICIAL MATERIALS AND TECHNOLOGY. BRASS IS RECOMMENDED.

I was still looking through the binoculars when Victoria finished speaking and began to go down towards the surface of Mars, so the first sensation I had of movement was seeing the cluster of dunes at the edge of my view start to slide away. From this angle they did look kind of shiny. A bit like the streetlights in a city. No, not a city, at least a modern city. It might have been the lights of houses in a middle class suburb. Or it could have been a city, except an older one from back when they were still made mostly of one-story houses. It would have been a rather large and sprawling city, though. And there were no walls, which Middle Age cities would have used to keep out intruders. Didn’t the Martians not like the Throgs tribes and want to keep them out? Oh, wait, there was the wall. What I’d taken for a ravine had been a trick of the light. It was actually a wall, one that didn’t go down into the ground but rose up above it. Then the wall was out of my view, too.

With nothing else to look at, I turned my attention back to the lone dune that had caught my attention earlier and that I had subsequently kept the binoculars focused on. That looked pretty shiny too. I could imagine no not imagine focus see the walls of the dune. It was some kind of tower; a watchtower, perhaps, that was supposed to provide an early warning against any intruders. It’d be staffed, too, with Technikar soldiers armed with Martian heat rays. That’d been one of the major contributions to Mars from War of the Worlds, Martian heat rays. Don’t get distracted, focus. Right, Martian heat rays. Possibly some air rafts as well, in case the Throgs came in airships. But if it was a watchtower, why would they have built the top of it out of shining brass? It would have been clearly visible to any raiding parties. Maybe it was a warning: “This is the city ruled by the Martians Overlords. The light of our towers represents our vigilance. Attack, and die.” So that was a reason for it to be made of brass, then. I could almost see the light reflecting off of the brass –

Wait. Light was reflecting off of something brass. Real brass, not my imagination. Was it? There was movement down there; something in the shadows the dune/tower cast. I could see a small figure walking out of the tower through where the disturbance had been; a door? The figure was walking towards some kind of raft-like vehicle; had that been there before? I saw the figure standing next to the raft, waiting for something. As I watched, a second raft came from the direction of the shining dunes/city lights; it slowed as it neared the tower and stopped in front of it. Several more figures got out of the raft and entered the tower. A moment later, another, different group of figures came out of the tower and went into the raft that had brought the first group there. They turned it around and headed back towards the city, leaving a faint dust cloud in their wake.

The changing of the guard. I hadn’t been thinking of that, I’d been thinking of metal and towers.

I took the binoculars from my eyes and turned my head to look out the cockpit window.

The Martian Empire spread out before me, a vast metropolis of metal and stone.

[Amneiger]

It is late and I am tired. =D 70,665 words. In the morning I'm going to try to deliberate write bad poetry. I'm not entirely sure how I'm supposed to match this style, but I'll try.

[Rikku]

70k. You are quite, quite mad, and I applaud you for it. xD

[Amneiger]

Nov 12, 2009 3:02:11 GMT -5 Rikku said:

70k. You are quite, quite mad, and I applaud you for it. xD

Mad? MAD? I'm not mad, I'm a genius! A genius! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

...Um. I mean. Thanks. =D

[Amneiger]

Bad poetry has been dealt with in something approaching a reasonably satisfactory manner And I think I'm going to start on one of those optional chapters anyway, because I looked at the point in the outline I'd just reached and realized that this was an excellent place to insert it

[Amneiger]

73,417 words. I think the past few days are catching up with me. Perhaps I'll try going to bed before midnight tonight =D

[Amneiger]

76,023 words. I theorize that my current lack of speed is a combination of both my tiredness and the fact that this part doesn't have as much outlining as my other chapters xD

[Amneiger]

77,938 xD Hurray for slowdowns! I don't even like much how this chapter turned out...Yeah. <_<

[Amneiger]

80,063 words xD I was hoping for a bit more today. Oh well, at least I can look at the number in my username and think about how surprised its expression is xD