If you've come, this far and enjoyed this story, my deepest apologies. It will go no further.

I thought it was worth exploring, for my own benefit and that of readers, why this was the case and what I'm going to do differently, next time.

My principle stumbling block was Butcher himself. He was supposed to be an amoral character in pursuit of morality. He was supposed to be a classic "just following orders" soldier who would eventually come face to face with the consequences of his decisions. But I found his amorality exhausting and confusing. In retrospect, whilst his narrative arc made him a good choice of a protagonist, I should have provided the story with more perspectives. I tried to do this, bringing in Ron's and Emmy's perspectives later, but it was too much, too late.

But I can't blame Butcher. The plot I dropped him into just ended up being too full of holes for my increasingly frantic attempts to patch them to continue being satisfying. There were features of the world building that I added early in the story that I only realized later were going to severly hamper plans I had later on. And unpicking those features was going to be more of a labour than I had the time or inclination to invest.

However, there are some good things to take away from this.

I sketched out the whole story from start to the point at which I stopped in advance, and that ended up being the story I wrote. The problem was that I hadn't actually sketched the story all the way to the end. From this point onwards I had vague ideas but no clear vision and, the closer I got to the end of my sketch, the more it became apparent to me that I had no clue where the story should go from there. So, on the plus side, I wrote exactly the story I sketched out from the start. But on the negative, it turned out that this wasn't a whole story.

Second, I learned a hell of a lot from writing this and my writing, overally, improved dramatically as a result of this attempt.

Third, I wrote stuff! I put it out there! This is an achievement in itself that I need to recognize and embrace.

I could, theoretically, go back and try again but, as I think I made clear from the start, this wasn't a story I passionately cared about. I have those stories tucked away elsewhere. I don't want to expose those stories to my ham-fisted experimentation because I care about them too much to let them fail. The whole point of this exercise was to see if I could write a story from start to finish and, no, I didn't achieve that. Maybe, once I've done better at mastering the craft of writing fiction like this, I will return to the story and try again.

However, before I go, I wanted to let those of you who did get here know the vague outline of what I thought was going to happen if I'd been able to add everything up. Bear in mind that some of this doesn't align well with what you've already read because of the aforementioned holes in the plot.

This story was basically going to go on to be a race between Butcher, Ron and Emmy (with help from BRS) and CTS to get to the orc colony, with Butcher et al wanting to somehow (!) rescue them into some form of protected community (yeah, I wanted to create an orc ghetto... believe me, I see the problems with that), whilst CTS just wanted to kill or capture them and put them back into their secret army.

Butcher &co would've been broadly successful but, along the way, would've discovered a few things.

First, CTS's design of nanoids is what creates the orcs and the other "fantasy" races. Ron was responsible for parts of that process. But it's also discovered that the CTS nanoids can be used to create "programmable" people. For a brief time after infection with the nanoids, the infectees can be effectively remotely controlled. It was what happened to Butcher and what happened to Cally. After a while the remote control effect wears off and the body-altering effects kick in, creating orcs, gobs and elves. It didn't happen to Butcher because he was given the BRS nanoids, which stopped the process (or possible only slowed it down).

In the course of rescuing the orcs, though, they discover that both versions of nanoids are infectious - they are starting to affect people never treated by either CTS or BRS.

This discovery would have ended the first story.

The second arc, Mage Second, would begin in a world panicking at the discovery of the spreading nanoids, with some people getting the BRS infection and becoming "heroes" (in the classical sense - i.e. not necessarily good people) and other getting the CTS infection and turning into an orc or something else. Draconian new laws, new commercial enterprises and old social tensions would all collide.

In this story, Butcher et al were going to become secondary characters - figures of rumour who are hunted by a government trying to exploit the situation to their own advantage, while they try to find an independent solution. Butcher's arc would take him away from his soldier-y roots to become a Mage - someone who can consciously manipulate their nanoids to perform all sorts of astonishing feats (including limited super-speed - the "mage second" of the title), but at tremendous cost to their physical self and at the risk of basically becoming a mindless nanoid colony.

A new threat would emerge when it was found out that dead bodies with a nanoid infection can be given a semblance of life by a sufficiently powerful Mage (i.e. a necromancer can create zombies). This would be Gordon, who would be opposed by the protagonist of this arc: his own daughter, who tracks down Butcher to learn how to control her Mage powers.

The third arc, Human Third, was going to be set some years after the end of Mage Second, in which the world's population had settled into a rough equilibrium, with one third being heroes, one third having turned into some other species, and one third being unaltered humans (for whatever reason, they are immune to nanoids which simply get flushed out of their system without ever affecting them) (the "human third" of the title). The protagonist here was going to be one such human - a politician/diplomat who is a key leader in an effort to hammer out an international agreement to establish new rights and laws to govern the strange new status quo. He faces all kinds of threats of violence, espionage and corruption. The overall theme of this story was to emphasize that even unaltered humans weren't "powerless". Butcher, Ron, Cally and other characters would make cameo appearances in various roles.

Now, I'm going to go away and sketch out a new story. And I'm going to do some stuff differently, this time.

First, I'm going to sketch out the whole story from start to finish and I won't get over-excited and start writing it before I've got to the end.

Second, I'm going to then write the whole thing out before I post any of it on Royal Road.

Third, I'm going to write it in chapters of no more than 2000 words.

Again, it's not going to be a story I really care about. It's probably going to be some kind of isekai or re:fic, because that's what's popular on RR, but it's also going to be a twist on one or both of those genres, because that's what I find fun.

Thank you for reading this. Thank you for your views and votes and comments along the way. Sorry it ended like this. Maybe, one day, I'll get to come back to Butcher and his friends to do them the justice they deserve.