Chapter 7 remains done. Chapters 8, 9, 10, and 11 are undergoing serious edits. One of the reasons that our intrepid hero becomes over powered is that he is the first on Earth to claim a sector. With no instruction manual, no one knows this is even a “thing”. He does it the way dogs and wolves claim territory: By pissing on it. It’s as much a surprise to him as everyone else.
For this to work, he must travel the perimeter of the sector. After several rounds of (overly simplified, traitorous) math, I decided that the System carved up the Earth (and one presumes other planets) into 2600 base-12 sectors. It’s a sort-of round number (two and one half chiliads). That’s 4,320 in base-10. At the equator, these are about 3 degrees on a side. In South Dakota (mid 40s latitude), they’re noticeably “off” latitude wise, but readers and characters don’t know any of this, yet.
Earth’s surface is 196,935,000 square miles. That makes a sector 45,586 (.8056) square miles. That’s a square with 213 (.511) miles on a side, which makes a perimeter of 854 (.043) miles. I’m throwing in a bit of slack so that our intrepid wolves don’t need to completely circumscribe that (and latitude!). Getting most of it is good enough. But let’s use that number.
Considerations:
- Wolves run faster than humans (most four-legged creatures do).
- Humans are persistence predators who can run insanely long times because we sweat. Wolves don’t.
- Our intrepid heroes can switch back and forth.
- System fuckery. Everything is “better” than it was. Wolves still don’t sweat, though. Luke gets wolf heat-exhaustion.
I watched a neat YouTube Short in which a guy raced his greyhound on an ATV. 60 mph easy (speedometer in the video). Granted, the dog was sprinting for a short distance, but still, 60 mph?!?
854 miles / 60 mph = a mere 14.23 hours. We need stops for hunting, eating, and sleeping – and pissing; that’s the hook. It also pisses me off (pun intended) how many books ignore critical bodily functions so I’m putting them in (I much enjoyed writing the scene in which Luke gets shit on his tail). They also don’t know they’re doing this. It happens by accident. Even so, they circumnavigate this space much faster than I can level them up. Frankly, it required more spreadsheet edits than text changes.
I’ve finally nailed down the geography and it requires rewriting a lot and pushing a lot of leveling into later chapters. A giant chunk of text got yanked out (and saved as ChapterX) because of that. Chapter 15 is sketched out. Chapter 16 is plotted. Then it gets murky, again. I’m figuring Chapter 13 is half-way. Once that’s “done”, the first half will go to alpha readers. I want to know if I’m delusional for even trying this.
To the two of you who have been liking these posts: If you want to be an alpha reader, let me know (either comment here or send me an email to tigersizer at the-evil-empire.com. Oh, sorry; vender lock: gmail.com. (Take that, robot scrapers!) So far, I’m recruiting friends, which is not the best way to get objective feedback.
Digression: Did you know that South Dakota has a State Experimental Farm and Antelope Reserve? Neither did I. Yay, Google Maps. But what better place to find Leporidae Lepus Antilocapra (aka Jackalope)? They’re Fierce Creatures (if you haven’t seen that, it’s great, although very silly).
This post seems like a semi-duplicate, but somehow it all came crashing down today.
The “featured image” is another not-cover (too anime). I really like it, though. Update: LOL! I just noticed the “dick bulge” is coming out of the wolf’s head. Definitely not a candidate.
BTW: I’ve decided that Sleipnir (the robot lawnmower) is awesome. My Saturday yardwork was just weed whacking the high grass along the garden beds.
Marked Up 