Episode 231 of the Letters Page: Writers’ Room: NightMist #150

The prompt here is a minor villain gets scary.

image1920×2977 905 KB

I never tire of “Oh, didn’t see you there!” jokes.

Ooh, it’s been a while since anyone quit!

I hope someone writes in as “The REAL Average Listener”, complaining about being impersonated and offended at Adam ‘messing up’ their accent.

Yeah, okay, he definitely got scary!

Where are the Letters Page Podcast come from? :V So glad someone did this.

I have definitely discovered new things about myself, but they have nothing to do with writing letters. :B

They said it as a joke, but the best writing/creative advice I ever heard was in an interview with Mercedes Lackey where she said: “find a job that doesn’t suck.” The longer version is making sure that your “day job” is one that doesn’t suck your drive and creativity, so you can do your creative work after without burning out.

It’s asymptote. They stumbled on it searching at the end there. I’m sure someone has already written a letter or commented on the Discord. Demetri Martin uses the example how he’s never quite going to pay off his credit cards despite getting ever closer with time.

I haven’t finished listening yet, but I really enjoyed how Adam’s listener voice gradually turned into Sir Ian McKellen as portrayed in Extras.

Edit: okay NOW I’ve finished, and two big things:
(1) I love the little notes, both in this story and others from the Letters Page, that expand the world. We get this order of whoever at the start of the story, guarding this artifact. Who are they? What are they guarding exactly? What is the fallout of its destruction? We don’t know. We may never know. It’s just a hint that there’s more going on in this world than we ever get to see.
(2) I really want to know more about the fallout of this story. It’s implied at the end that this event will lead to major changes for (this group of) the Magmarians. They have a natural and important place within this world, but injecting that with a bunch of magic could be…very interesting!

Edit edit: just realised that in the search for Power Overwhelming, the Seer needed to construct additional pylons

Wasn’t the Seer in Magmaria story the one where Virgil Miller died?

Per the supporting cast episode 205 it was. Though honestly I had forgotten about it.

From the WT notes

• The Seer story in here is a thing where he’s more powerful than usual due to him taking Magmarians and draining them for power - they could make that also a more personal conflict with NightMist by adding this element. Maybe Virgil is investigating what’s going on with these husks of Magmarians or whatever and he comes to NightMist to see if she wants to help out with this one. He knows that they ended on rough terms last time, but he’s been looking into this issue with Ley Lines doing a weird thing underground and could use the assist. She can blow him off and he investigates on his own - either dying or getting roughed up, but able to get back to her place before dying. Here we go, he gets roughed up and tells her what’s going on. She heads off to handle it after telling him to stay there to recover. He follows anyway, saves her from something bad, but gets killed in the process. That’s a good story to have happen between the runs of the Dark Watch title - it looks like this arc would have been in Arcane Tales volume 2 and ran from August 2012 through January 2013 and Virgil’s Death would be in the December issue, #576. [Christopher had suggested that this was in TotB as he started to pull up the relevant area of the timeline but the issue number he gave was for AT without explicitly saying so - I checked with him that this was indeed an Arcane Tales arc.]

I did ask in today’s live editors note and the short answer is both happen.

Everyone always wants to use Magmarians as batteries…

is the long answer
bbbooottthhh hhhaaappppppeeennn?

No. The long answer has more words than that.

Who can say? Time will tell.

That’s more words, and their stock answer. In this case though we already know both stories, so it is more a matter of logistics.

I mean, they’re like walking geothermal energy right? I guess it’s a clean enough source, if morally dubious since they’re sentient creatures. Hey, at least better than using Radioactivist as a nuclear power plant, right? Right?

Funny thing. I tend to write fantasy with higher tech levels than, say, base D&D/Tolkien. Once I get past industrialization, the magic systems are able to use technology and other tools, and the “casters” are more like the power source for the tools they use (think Rifts Techno-wizards), and when computers and AI start to get involved… um… yeah… lot of antagonists using People Jars…

The longer written up answer by WT is this from the latest Editor’s note

Was there a contradiction between the recent NightMist issue regarding the Seer in Magmaria vs. a previous incident mentioned regarding Virgil Miller that led to his death? The latter was in Arcane Tales vol. 2 #576 in December 2012. The NightMist story was in November '97. The later story is a follow-up to the early one where the Seer tries to do Magmaria stuff again - it’s not the same plot, but just another “using Magmaria for power” thing 15 years later.

This isn’t as cool as some other recent-ish issues that I’ve necroed a thread for, but it is very cool nonetheless…the moment they described the big pivotal scene with the pylons and the Seer’s monologue, I started writing it in my head, probably coming up with a better version (by my standards of better) than what C&A would do if they actually wrote and drew the episode (well, what Christopher would write at least; I can’t really improve on Adam’s art). I love the idea that these two experts don’t do any “as you know” exposition, leaving the reader not knowing what they know, and then the villain shows up and does literal “as you know” because he just wants to hear himself talk (that’s not really the Seer’s vibe I don’t think, but he’s on a power trip so he might be mimicking stuff he’s seen Apostate or Baron Blade doing, just because he hasn’t ever been powerful enough to do the ultra-villain thing himself, and thus never thought to figure out his own version of what villainy is like). I wonder if you could in fact make a villain deck out of a single moment in an otherwise unremarkable villain’s career, where they rose to the level of power that is a default for some of the weaker full villains.

I’m fairly certain this was the last episode I ever listened to live prior to last year.

Despite being written well after the publication of the SCRPG rule oom, this episode provides a decent explanation for how the Magmarians there are different from their old versions. The Seer is also kinda different there, but not in a way that really matters, since he’s just a lieutenant and not a full villain.

I imagine Judge Mental saying "All must obey justice, and justice is me!’ because grammar am not he.

Man, things changed a ton in three years. Now this fandom is unilaterally anti AI, but back in this episode, someone used an AI to write some questions, and nobody bashed them for it, in fact C&A were delighted by the questions (once the AI was set to Optimal, which I would have done at the beginning personally).

I’m glad they ended up not doing words on the cover, despite how much time they wasted on workshopping it. It’s way better this way.

Yep, they brought it up in one of the lingering OblivAeon infinite unalived Nightmists discussions, somewhere around the 150 to 200 episodes mark iirc.