Author’s Commentary on Lost Secrets

After the absolute paperweight that was Arc 5, Arc 6 feels positively short - but when I go back and compare it to what came before, it’s similar in length to Arcs 3 and 4, or to Arcs 1 and 2 combined. It’s simply that Arc 5 was an Arc and a half or more in length.

I think I’m happy with Arc 6, overall. Goodness knows I’m ready to be done with closing invasion portals! I hope that didn’t feel too rushed, but I didn’t want to take the time to show every one of the portals Serenity closed. Perhaps I should have shown more of the development of the online community that helped track down the last few, but it didn’t really feel like there was that much plot there.

At least, not for Serenity. If this were Janice’s story, the coordination would have taken center stage. But it’s not Janice’s story.

I thought about having Serenity lose to Helios. It would have changed things a bit, with Serenity having to come up with another way to get help with the curse, but despite some wiggling around, the final outcome would have been similar. I settled on this outcome because it made the most sense: for both Helios and Serenity, the problem with most invasion portals isn’t closing them, it’s finding them.

Helios actually ended up closing many of the more difficult ones, because the fact that they overran where they could hide meant they were obvious from the sky. Of course, that also slowed him down, as he had to wade through enemies to reach the portal. He found relatively few of the smaller ones.

Serenity had a large advantage there: he was literally hired by people who knew where they were but couldn’t close them easily themselves, at least not without collateral damage that Serenity could avoid. That actually bumped Serenity’s numbers up a lot; without the fact that he could close them without causing damage, he might well have lost. By the Voice’s calculation, he got reduced credit on all of the portals where he was called in after the invaders were killed - but that still left him ahead of Helios.

As for the outcome at the end … well, Apollyon is a problem for the future. At least Serenity now knows who his real enemy is!

Taking a step back, I think I’m far happier with the overall structure of this Arc than I was with Arc 5. I progressed everything that was in the plan, and it led (relatively) smoothly from one thing to another. Plot led to plot; the weakest point was probably making the bet with Helios, but even that pretty much worked.

Following up on who attacked Rube didn’t get finished, because it was shoved onto the back burner pretty hard when Rissa got cursed again. On the other hand, this is exactly up Russ’s alley, not Serenity’s - and I’m not planning to write a side story about Russ. So we’ll see what happens while Serenity’s away doing what he needs to do elsewhere.

Which takes us to Arc 7. It’s far less constrained than Arc 6 was; the time pressure is gone (well, Serenity does need to be back in a few years so that he can figure out what killed Earth in the first timeline, but other than that it’s gone). The curse on Rissa’s family hasn’t been fixed, but it’s changed. There’s the chance to get outside help (which is definitely something Serenity’s looking for, but he doesn’t yet know where to look). The primary starting point is the Tutorial Trouble quest, but while Serenity cares about it to some extent, it’s at least partly just a reason to get moving and he knows it.

The lack of constraints should let me pull on a few threads I’ve set up and see where they lead; I’m looking forward to a new (and probably still bumpy) ride!

The working title for Arc 7 is A New Frontier.

See you there!

~Lillene