8658 on awake...but...
We've hit 5600 on the Judge!
Not a bad jump if I do say so myself. Like a 500 jump in one day? And it's already been out for a while. Nice. I don't know how it happened, but who knows, maybe we're getting popular!
Anyway for today, like I said, I'd put up a bit more information on the Judge. I added a few characters to the character page and some character art. I just wish I had better art skills...or someone with art skills made their own designs, I wouldn't mind posting those up too. But most of all, today I decided to talk about what I had to cut and the changes I had to make to the Judge.
For those of you who've read the Judge, you probably know that it's a big book. It averages about 122,000 words. But at one time it was over 150,000! The only reason I cut out some parts was because it was not really necessary to the plot and I needed to keep it condensed for printing. (Plus, publishers don't like big books, so I thought I'd get a better chance of publishing it if I kept word count down. Too bad...it didn't help anything at all.)
So the first thing you'll probably notice is that I cut out the prologue. You can find the prologue on the sample chapters on the Coranite Chronicles page on the right. The prologue was the tale of the Judges, intended to set the mood for the story. It is canon, part of the main story as well. But it takes place thousands of years in the past. The first Judges were not assassins who hunted criminals. In those turbulent times, all the nations were at war. They were powerful warriors who fought to protect their small nation. This elite twelve could slay entire armies in order to keep their king safe.
The next thing I cut out was the first meeting between Darek, Azura, and Sorren. In their first meeting, Sorren and his companions, Windzer and Hortmel, actually found Darek and Azura in the abandoned city. Darek was still attacked by Thedes. However, when Thedes discovered Windzer approaching, they quickly retreated. This first meeting was not as simple as falling into a river. It was much crazier!
A giant storm passed overhead, causing a giant flood with waters that rose over thirty feet high! The group tried to hide in a house...until they realized just how bad the storm was, as it flooded straight through the windows, filling up the house. They were washed by the flood and ended up in a small empty village where Rathos took care of them until they needed to dive into a waterfall in order to reach the hidden cave where the Mansion was.
The other big thing I cut out was a small adventure that Darek and the others had when they in the desert. While they were in the desert, they stopped by a small oasis to freshen up and look for animals to ride upon. They waited in the sand, hiding themselves from view. But when Darek gets up to give Thedes a piece of his mind, he finds himself surrounded by large, upright lizard creatures. The lizards carry him away, taking him into some secret lair of an insane immortal who lives there. They throw Darek into a pit that he can't escape from. Sorren and the others go to help him. But Azura falls down there too. While Sorren goes to look for a piece of rope or any other solution, he comes upon a water reservoir and cracks it open, sending a surge of water across the lair, sweeping Darek and Azura out of the pit. Sorren also steals the map of the immortal so that they can traverse the desert by going from oasis to oasis.
I feel like I probably cut some other stuff out, but that's all I can remember for now.
Guardian progress: 15%
