The Final Calling: Progress Report Five

Chapter Four is now online.

I’m in the middle of writing Chapter Nine, and everything’s paid for through Chapter Eleven. (Thank you for your support!)

In case anyone was hesitant about commenting — please, feel free! I’m happy to hear from you. Be warned, though, that if you haven’t commented here before, I’ll have to approve your post; I get a lot of comment spam. It may take a few hours for me to notice and attend to it.

Once you’ve had a comment approved, though, any future comments from you will go straight through, unmoderated, though of course I can delete them later if I decide they’re somehow unacceptable. (I don’t think I’ve ever had to delete a comment.)

An unhappy note: I’ve recently discovered that overseas shipping rates have gone up, and may go up again before this novel is completed. It’s possible I’ll have to raise the $35 amount presently required to guarantee a copy of the finished book outside North America. If that happens, anyone who’s already sent $35 will still be covered; it will only affect later donors. I’ll try to give a week’s warning.

I think that’s everything for now.

55 thoughts on “The Final Calling: Progress Report Five

  1. “And his hand, which he had been holding over her chest for dramatic effect, was no longer glowing”

    Risky for a warlock to add effects like that, but probably increases the chances of him being paid :).

    At least he wasn’t doing damage. Things like bleeding the patient in times of old were probably so that the doctor could be seen to actually do something.

  2. Nice and perhaps necessary. Just not very informative. Well, waiting for the next one. Given this chapter, there may be a timeskip of a day or two in the Aldagmor.

  3. Not a day or two, just a few hours.

    The glowing hand takes very little power, but yeah, it probably wasn’t the greatest idea in the World. People can do stupid things.

  4. Nice to see everyday detail. I love the worldbuilding in Ethshar. Oddly, Warlocks were probably some of the most accessible of magicians, because their magic cost them so little (sort of), and required no study. You can’t imagine a Wizard working construction or dredging a harbor(without a lot of money or an ulterior motive). I wonder how it will go socially, now that Warlocks can’t be hired? Rise in witches and theurgists? Wizards don’t have as flexible prices, their magic can be costly to them in components.

    Maybe Sorcery will finally make a comeback, it’s been out of fashion since the Great War.

    For some reason, I really like Dabran and Sammeal. Maybe we’ll get to see a positive master-apprentice relationship for once in these books?

  5. Y’know, a lot of people are assuming Warlockry is gone for good… but with Vond and a hundred of his new best friends running around (plus Sterren), I don’t buy it. I’m sure warlockry is in for a huge change, but I don’t see it being *gone*.

    And the Ithanalin / Kilisha relationship from Ithanalin’s Restoration seemed like a pretty positive master-apprentice relationship.

  6. I’m late to the party, but I’m enjoying having the chance to finally read this. I was shocked that the story would start by (sort of) revealing what the source of The Calling was, but I rather like seeing the chaos and fallout. The way people react to the strange and extraordinary has always been a cornerstone of these Ethshar stories, and there’s a nice symmetry here with The Night of Madness.

    I’m glad to see Vond, again. He’s always been a great character and he makes a very credible threat to the world. Obviously, he’s on a collision course with the Wizard’s Guild. On the surface, it would seem that the guild has the advantage given the insane levels of power that wizards have at their disposal, but I’m willing to bet that Vond’s going to be a harder nut to crack than they expect.

  7. It would be pretty bad luck for someone who had just taken warlockry. Presumably, if an apprentice was still 12, they could try for a different skill?

    I guess it would depend on what happens with warlockry in general. If warlockry is fully gone, then they wouldn’t be taking a 2nd type of magic.

    Also, for someone who had just completed their studies and was about to set up business for themselves, they would get no benefit from all the work.

    Without the Source, many warlocks would have very few other skills.

    I wonder if many of them have debts that are now almost unpayable.

  8. “I’m glad to see Vond, again. He’s always been a great character and he makes a very credible threat to the world. Obviously, he’s on a collision course with the Wizard’s Guild. On the surface, it would seem that the guild has the advantage given the insane levels of power that wizards have at their disposal, but I’m willing to bet that Vond’s going to be a harder nut to crack than they expect.”

    My immediate thought on that is the mirror of the debacle with Lord Faran in Night of Madness. That was an individual brand new to having powerful magic, untrained, and surrounded by relatively weak warlocks.
    Vond got Called from the far side of the World and is coming to the new seat of warlock power with an army of Called warlocks…

    I simply can not imagine they want to go toe to toe. For one thing, warlocks inherantly have much more combat-capable abilities than wizards, most of which probably haven’t been in a solid dustup since the Great War and all of which wear down as they use magic rather than becoming more powerful (I can’t imagine that aspect of warlockry changing).

    I wonder if they ever figured out Faran wasn’t the one who killed his attacker.

  9. Oh, there are going to be lots of warlocks in awkward positions as far as making a living is concerned.

  10. “Oh, there are going to be lots of warlocks in awkward positions as far as making a living is concerned.”

    Or continuing living is concerned… I feel bad for the woman on the roof.

  11. There are some assumptions being made which may not pan out that way, also. Warlockry interferes with Wizardry, but the source Vond is tapping isn’t necessarily the same the same thing and may not affect other magic types in the same way. The Source of the interference, the Calling, is gone now. It’s entirely possible that the interference is also gone, Vond’s ability to draw power from the Lumeth source notwithstanding.

    Additionally, the concern the Wizard’s Guild has over warlocks in and around Lumeth could be due to a concern over drawing that power. As Vond and the other warlocks draw from that source, it’s possible that the ability of the Lumeth talisman to keep the noxious vapors at bay could be affected (it may generate a fixed amount of power for use, and overtaxing it might not make it stop working totally, but it could limit the range of effective use), which would have World-wide implications that would need to be dealt with pretty much immediately.

  12. “Additionally, the concern the Wizard’s Guild has over warlocks in and around Lumeth could be due to a concern over drawing that power. As Vond and the other warlocks draw from that source, it’s possible that the ability of the Lumeth talisman to keep the noxious vapors at bay could be affected (it may generate a fixed amount of power for use, and overtaxing it might not make it stop working totally, but it could limit the range of effective use), which would have World-wide implications that would need to be dealt with pretty much immediately.”

    Given the description of how Warlockry worked with the Calling I assume warlocks working from Lumith won’t “draw” power from it but again modify the existing pattern. The relevant objects give off a certain level of energy which warlocks have been sensitized to, and through that sensitivity are able to modify the energy that passes through them- like a radio that, instead of converting the energy in radio waves, can convert it into a new wave and retransmit it. This would still weaken the energy of the wave, which wouldn’t effect the call because it was so powerful and the warlocks were obviously outside of the intended direction of transmission, but in the case of the Towers, where the warlocks are in the (relevant) direction of transmission, it may well weaken the coherent pattern (signal) and thus the outward force on the gases… obviously Vond’s previous use wasn’t enough to weaken the barrier, but as more warlocks with more sensitivity start using tapping into the Lumith wave ways the noise to signal ratio will rise, and who knows what will happen.

    This also gives two possible reasons why Warlocks would be magic resistant. The first would that it’s hard to effect things that are enchanted with new magic, and becoming conduits of magic they become enchanted any time they’re exposed to magic. The second is that if they’re already absorbing and converting magic patterns exposing them to another magic pattern is going to have reduced effect.

    Anyway, that’s my guess how it works, I’m sure this will have to get addressed at some point if there’s to be any sort of peaceful solution.

  13. >ability of the Lumeth talisman< … which also implies that other talismans can power warlockry, if properly tuned.

    That has a number of implications if worked out. I’d always wanted to see more about witches and warlocks from the prior book, but this is another way to mesh the two as witches might well be able to tune warlocks to talismans.

  14. I wonder if warlocks could learn to find talismans. I assume there are a fair number of sorcerous talismans from the time of the Great War which are still lost. A warlock—or an ex-warlock—might be able to sense the power they emanate and track them down, like a guy on the beach with a metal detector.

  15. It really depends on what powers talismans. The towers could be powered by something with the power of a nuclear power plant, while the power source for a normal talisman might be like the battery in a mobile phone.

    This would mean that warlocks could do very little with a normal talisman. They might be able to do stuff that is fine precision, while not being able to do massive lifting. This could allow them to continue doing medical procedures like killing bacteria, while not allowing them to fly or lift heavy objects.

  16. Also, it is possible that only active Talismans working at the distance actually emit anything at all, so warlocks will not be able to find inactive or limited range ones.
    And given this is Ethshar , the woman on the roof may end up married to the man she fell on to.

  17. Not to mention, if Warlocks operate by resonating off of the power of other(s) things, then all sorts of interference possibilities open up.

    Writing the way Lawrence does is much like game design — every step of the way you have people exploring, poking, prodding and exploiting (or discussing the possibility of same).

    But, the call attuned people to something from outside of this reality, with a side effect that gods could no longer see them (or the source). Now that the source is gone, I’m assuming gods can see them, etc.

    Which begs the question if the gods can sense the Lumeth source, if Vond is on the radar, if magic dead voids/zones are now warlock silencing zones, etc.

    The entire concept of treating Warlocks like energy field taps/broadcast energy users, that can be tuned to sources, wow. If the source had some unique properties, then it may well be that apprenticeships are suddenly much more critical, that new warlocks are a matter of those who can be created as such by warlocks operating with witches/wizards and talismans, that everyone can be a warlock with the right preparation and training and a talisman.

    That wizards can create interference zones and block warlocks, perhaps. That warlocks might interfere with each other. That you might have specific power levels depending on the available sources.

    Radical transformation … or …

    It might be that only a super source will work. That smaller talismans produce so little “bleed over” power that even a Vond working with another source can not tune one enough to draw any meaningful power.

    Though the Lumeth source worked all the way to the other source. And the Lumeth source might not be the only one of its type, either keeping the mists at bay or keeping them in place.

    I don’t know. Sometimes I can tell, sometimes I can’t. This time, I can’t.

    That is really neat. I love the ongoing nature of this story.

  18. There are no magic dead zones, they are wizardry dead zones. Other magic is not affected (warlockry for sure, as they rebuilt the palace after the Spell of the Black Dagger.)

    There were some discussions on Usenet when the Spriggan Mirror was being written about when the mirror was moved through the dead zone. It didn’t instantly kill all the sprigans (though IRC, it did cause them to become mortal.)

    It is just spells that can’t be cast and active wizard effects that are disabled. They aren’t broken/cancelled if you enter a zone, just disabled.

    From memory, if you transformed an object and then took the object into the dead zone, it wouldn’t revert back, unless active wizardry was required to keep it in the new form.

    There was also a question about the spinning coin spell. If the linked person enters the zone, the coin still continues spinning, since it is being powered by wizardry at the coin, which is outside the zone, and is only linked to the person. Probably, if the coin was brought into the zone, it would fall. It is unclear if the coin would start spinning again when it was moved out of the zone, as once it fell over, maybe the spell would end.

    Also, I don’t think that a warlock would be able to draw more power than a source has. The more attuned that the warlock is to that source, the greater fraction of the power he can draw. However, it could end up that they discover a source of power from outside the world.

  19. “it could end up that they discover a source of power from outside the world.”

    arguably all the known sources are from outside the world. The Aldagmor source crashed into the world from another universe, and the Towers at Lumith are a (set of?) sorcerous object(s)- which, per wikipedia, are powered by the extra worldly order called gaga (capitalization corrected, and thus factually confirmed, by Mr Watt-Evans- though I have no idea where that information came from otherwise)…

  20. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_magic_in_Ethshar

    Since both demons and gods were involved in creating the Towers of Lumeth, some particular demons or gods would have the knowledge necessary to repair, recharge, or create new sorcerous talismans.

    Sorcerers are known to dress in robes made of fine white linen.
    [edit] Examples of Sorcerous Talismans

    1. The Towers of Lumeth
    2. Sorcerer’s Oracle
    3. Motion Detector
    4. Fingerprint Talisman
    5. “Denekin allasir”
    6. Fire Talisman
    7. Bug-Shaped Communicator

  21. It was described in the Vondish Ambassador.

    [b]”The thing about sorcery,” Ithinia said, “is that it uses talismans; that’s inherent in it; the power it uses, a force the sorcerers call [i]gaja, must[/i] have a physical core, or it dissipates and stops doing whatever magic it’s supposed to be doing.” [/b]

    It appears that the book is available on Google books. I got the above quote with the search term “the vondish ambassador gaja”

    Btw, this is a description of sorcery by a wizard (granted a powerful wizard). So, it is not necessarily 100% correct. Maybe gaja is just the Ethshar word for something like Joules or electricity and no sorcerer has bothered to correct their misunderstanding.

  22. re; gaja- I’d forgotten about that bit of conversation.

    re; google books- from what I’ve seen “previews” of most of the series are on google books.

  23. Lawrence, there was a class action about the entire google books thing. You should have gotten a notice to opt in or out, etc.

    http://tinyurl.com/3yy4fpb gives me the message that the page is not available for reading, just fyi.

    The google books page still comes up, about the Towers in Lumeth being a part of Lady Gaga, created by the gods and demons more than five thousand years ago to make the air breathable.

    I remember that raising all sorts of questions.

    What a brilliant book the Vondish Ambassador was/is.

  24. Oh, I got the notice about the class action suit. Three times, at least.

    That doesn’t mean I did anything about it.

    (Does it really say gaga, rather than gaja?)

  25. I believe that Gods and Demns do see warlock, just not as people anymore. So it is Gaja, not Gaia, sorry. Ithink that since warlocks can now feel and modify the flow of the energy (Gaja?) the Gods see them as kind of Talismans themselves (or parts thereof?) Also, for electrical broadcast to be stable, it also requires a source, doees it not? Hmm.. I wonder if it is possible to make human into Source (generator)?

  26. “I wonder if it is possible to make human into Source (generator)?”

    Well, per The Blood of a Dragon, power is exchangeable between a witch and a warlock, and witches normally use power they generate themselves. Mind, with the Aldagmor Source, the idea of a warlock drawing from a witch rather than the other way around was laughable… but now?

  27. Stephen, I can still see the page at the link. Maybe they give random pages to different IP addresses/regions. It could be that since I did a search for that term, they assumed that I wasn’t trying to abuse their system.

    (Anyway, wasn’t trying to derail the discussion to a discussion about google, and certainly wasn’t trying to direct people in how to break copyright)

    That is an interesting point about drawing power from witches. If a witch was to teach a warlock to do it, then would the warlock become a witch? That could violate the ban on a person knowing about two disciplines.

    Also, are warlocks functionally different from witches, other than their power source. The fact that they sometimes use warlocks as batteries would suggest that they have abilities that warlocks do not.

    The wikipedia page on magic doesn’t have a list of abilities. In the Blood of a Dragon, we see some abilities of witches. I doubt warlocks can do that ability that attracts nearby animals and they certainly can’t do the block the calling ability. (Though even if they could, it probably would be counter productive.)

    They could still be identical, in theory, just that witches have a much broader knowledge of processes. All warlocks were apparently equally capable of doing things (with increasing strength as they approached the calling), once they were taught the method.

    Given that witchcraft is much older, and isn’t likely to share all (any of?) its knowledge, warlocks might just have much less knowledge of processes. Also, since they do have much more raw power, there is less incentive to learning to be subtle.

  28. I may be a lawyer, but that doesn’t mean I really understand opting in and out of class actions, other than you can lose rights either way. In many ways the google class action allowed them to start the statute of limitations running on a number of things and to create a license and other rights. It seemed a breathtaking, err, use, of the entire process.

    Except, of course, it allowed me to assert rights that the guild wasn’t making much progress on, though I’m not sure it will have much of an effect.

  29. Raphfrk — the entire connection between warlocks and witches, you’ve hit a good point. I was sad to see it fail to develop. Maybe I was very wrong, and it develops in the opposite direction than I expected.

    Instead of Vond as the method by which warlocks tune to talismans, witches become the method.

    Wizards draw on chaos. Sorcerers draw on order. I’m curious how gods and demons interact — they seem to bargain with mankind differently, they may be actually different orders of creatures rather than the same sort of critters, just on opposite ends of a scale (gods in power, demons out of power).

    That they cooperate in some endeavors, such as making the world accessible for humans, may indicate a number of things as well.

    This book seems to have the potential for pulling all sorts of threads together.

    .. different IP addresses/regions … so often now, services use floating IP addresses, my current one might do that, so that if too many people from the same float have accessed a page, the system treats us as all the same person (I still remember a group blog I was part of where they instituted some software and then started claiming that some of us were sock puppets of each other … neatly combining identities of everyone whose IP provider was floating. What a debacle).

    Hit me that I own the book and I read paper much faster than on screen text. Still, what a great book, easy to forget how good it was some times.

  30. “Instead of Vond as the method by which warlocks tune to talismans, witches become the method.”
    this is one of the things I’ve always loved about Ethshar and other well written stories; it’s not the destination- it’s how you get there. We can reasonably make certain assumptions about how it’s going to come out, but the process is a mystery- so it’s still interesting. I’ve found that generally it makes stories better re-reading because you can remember the climax and denouement clearly, but it’s all the little steps along the way you can’t remember that made the story interesting in the first place.

    “This book seems to have the potential for pulling all sorts of threads together.”
    Too true. I’m anxious to see which threads get pulled and which get left for later.

    I understand the people who like the “break chapter,” in a regular book I would completely agree- you read through it going “hmm… odd/interesting/etc.” But with a serial my feeling was more that of a cliffhanger being extended for an additional week. Not necessarily bad, because (unlike some story types and sources where you have no faith in the creator) I know the tension will eventually be relieved.

    “I’m curious how gods and demons interact”
    Seconded, I get the feeling that they’re more complex than in-power and out, unless you mean something more like “well fed” or “well supplied” than the normal, more political, meaning of “in power” versus “out of power”. It’s the only thing I can think of to justify both their similarities and the difference between the observed power levels- demons don’t radiate power and otherworldliness the way gods do, making people bleed from orifices by their mere presence. On the other hand I ran across a reference to Theurgists “playing both sides,” when I was rereading the Misenchanted sword, and the ability of demons to ‘listen in’ on theurgy all say similarities are there.

    “cooperated to make the Towers”
    This is the big thing that’s been holding me back from speculating that an alternate source could be created, and made me wonder about Warlockry having really any relationship to smaller talismans… the Sources have been BIG. Like, epic, traditional fantasy, world-shatteringly BIG. Normal talismans would have the benefit of being close, but it also seems like they would also be so many orders of magnitude smaller as to be laughable. I suspect a warlock trying to replace Lumith or Aldagmor with smaller talismans would be like trying to take a house off the grid and run it on a AAA battery.

  31. As far as the class action against Google goes, I’ve been getting the updates from the Authors Guild and some other sources, so I’m not totally out of touch; I just haven’t gotten around to checking any of my own stuff. It’s one of those things cluttering up my desk with a lower priority than writing new stuff or paying bills; I usually get to such things eventually, but it can take years.

    The Final Calling is structured (at least at first) in alternating chapters, Hanner’s viewpoint in the odd-numbered chapters and everyone else in the even-numbered ones. I realize that can make it seem slow in weekly installments; if I’d really thought about it I might have tried to build up enough backlog to do two chapters a week, but alas, I didn’t.

    If I ever do get far enough ahead I’m comfortable doing it, and the money’s there (as it is at present), I will post occasional bonus chapters (probably on Saturdays). But right now I just don’t have enough margin for that.

  32. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t complaining, just reflecting on a difference between novel-timing and serial timing.

    On the other hand, I will emphatically not complain if you go to 2 chapters a week. 😉

  33. It all seems about how power is channeled and the power source. Wizards channel an outside power BUT through items like their daggers. Warlocks channeled the source directly while it was available. Witches channel their own internal power, which limits their amount of power. Theurgists channel the outside power source of gods and demons. I am not sure how Sorcerers channel the power but once again it comes from the outside.

    Overall every possible way power can be channeled (internal, external. or through 3rd party item) and type of power source (small power source of the self, large outside source (in the universe–wizardry and sorcery or extra-universal–warlock power source, demons and gods).

  34. I think you are trying to hard to slot stuff into categories. Theurgists and demonologists have the ability to communicate with gods and demons. They don’t control a power source, they just have the ability to ask for help.

    I wonder if we will get more info on sorcery. The towers should be their area of expertise. A sorcerer could be good for an info-dump on the damage (if any) Vond is doing to the towers and/or a plan to deal with their interference with them :).

    However, they don’t seem very well organised. There doesn’t seem to be a sorcerer’s guild/council/order/board.

  35. I also disagree, Daryl. Nothing written thus far attributes any power to Demonologists or Therugists. They communicate with demons or gods, and can have demons or gods provide boons of whatever sort, but it is still the demon or god with the power, not the magician. They don’t cast spells, they develop an affinity with a deity or deities or demons based on the prayers/summonings they are taught. Lawrence explains this as follows (from Josephmallozzi’s Weblog, easily searchable in Google):

    “Other major forms of magic include theurgy, which calls on the gods for help, and demonology, which involves bargaining with demons, but Ethshar’s gods and demons aren’t quite the traditional sort. Minor schools of magic include herbalism (power from plants) and ritual dance (power from shared emotion) and science (power from knowledge).”

  36. Lawrence, just curious, but how many forms of magic actually exist? Did you ever count them?

  37. I have deliberately never answered that question. There are six major ones — wizardry, sorcery, witchcraft, warlockry, theurgy, and demonology — but I have intentionally never limited the minor ones, in case I want to add more.

    Mentioned so far are herbalism, science, illusionism, necromancy (which may be a specialized form of wizardry), prestidigitation, ritual dance, and probably others I’m not remembering right now. (Song-based magic has been suggested in non-canonical discussions, but never mentioned in the stories; I’ve said it might have existed once but went extinct. Or not, if I come up with a story that needs it.)

  38. Wow talk about asking the right question at the right time. Our recent discussion of the different types of magic certainly couldn’t have been timed better than right before chapter 5.

  39. This post contains spoilers for chapter 5 (not sure if we need the warning?).

    spoiler
    spoiler

    spoiler

    spoiler

    spoiler

    Bah, there will be 2 weeks before we find out what happens with the dragon, since only the odd chapters are from Hanner’s viewpoint :).
    (well unless the next chapter is about the dragon traveling to where Hanner is … or maybe the dragon’s thoughts on how best to deal with the warlocks).

    Given that it didn’t kill Dumery outright, it is probably here to talk.

    The Source represented pretty good defense for the dragon, since he (or was it a she?) was unaffected by the Calling.

    If he had wanted to kill lots of humans, he could have hit nearby towns and then retreated into the dead zone around the Source.

    Maybe it was taking the long viewpoint, and/or humans are more trouble to kill than their food value. As was pointed out in Split Heirs, one human is weak, but groups of humans bent on revenge are a threat.

    Also, almost missed the update, since I have the serial box bookmarked rather than the Falling Calling main page.

    Is there going to be a Progress Report 6 for chapter 5, or should we discuss chapter 5 here?

  40. Also spoilers for chapter 5

    and lots of speculation

    or at least a little

    spoiler!

    If that dragon is whom I think it is, then it is a “she”. Depending upon what happened with Dumery, she may be more or less interested in talking. Of course, if it’s just one of her, um, juvenile companions, then the former warlocks will have more problems.

  41. (spoiler again)

    I wonder if the Wizard’s Guild will consider the actions of the magicians as practicing 2 disciplines. I guess they are relatively safe as they aren’t technically capable of warlockry at the moment and anyway, they will be busy dealing with Vond.

    I wonder what way the story is going to go. Getting Hanner to Lumeth would take a pretty long time. Fast transport seems to be restricted to Wizardry. Transporting tapestries, flying carpets and that flute spell are all wizardry.

    Maybe, it is possible to convince a God (or maybe even a demon) to move you from place to place, but probably not 1000 people.

    Sorcery could have a teleporter talisman, but it would presumably be one of a kind. (Which technically would be useful if it worked like Star Trek where you only need a teleporter at one end and also one of the sorcerers in the group had the Ethsharic equivalent of a mobile phone).

    Witchcraft might have a run fast ability which degrades health, but allows you to run faster. This might have been mentioned in Blood of a Dragon, but anyway, it wouldn’t be useful for long distance travel.

    Warlocks were one of the few magic types that could travel fast due to flight, so the other option is that they figure out how to tap the Lumeth Source.

    The fastest “conventional” travel would likely be by ship. However, they would need to go pretty far West to hit the ocean. Alternatively, they could travel down the big river that separates the Hegemony from the Little Kingdoms. The fact that they are following a river would give support for that option.

    On the relationship between theurgistry and demonology, it looks like gods also make deals. With a demon you need a rock solid contract before you risk calling them. However, the god gave a reasonable deal after the food was provided. While they both use deals, you can trust a god to be reasonable, so there is no advanced agreement required, but with a demon, they will twist the agreement if there are any loopholes, so you need a rock solid contract.

    In the Spell of the Black Dagger, one of the gods refused to help Sarai’s father, because he had broken his word. Breaking a deal with a demon would probably be more directly and immediately deadly.

  42. Hi, folks; sorry about the delay posting Progress Report Six, but it’s up now.

    If anyone wants to repeat a comment there, I have no objection.

  43. Something that just occurred to me, in a manner of speaking Sensella was the Final Calling! No matter if the Warlocks tune into Lumeth or not there is no more calling to haul them away and she was the very last Warlock called to Aldagamor 😉 Who wants to bet she will be pivotal in resolving the lose ends by the end of the story?

  44. Well, it is possible that someone was called after her, but was nearer the Source at the time.

    Also, if the process is defined based on the time you hit the Source, then she didn’t technically get Called. There may be some other warlocks who were en route when the Response arrived.

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