The Unwelcome Warlock/The Final Calling: Progress Report Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Four is now online. This is the last chapter that’s paid for; Chapter Thirty-Five is about $40 short. Assuming that $40 comes in, I’ll post Chapter Thirty-Five on Wednesday, January 26th.

The first draft is complete, including a short epilogue — which will be a free extra, if and when Chapter Forty is posted.

I still haven’t started the second draft, and Wildside admits they haven’t actually sent the contracts yet, but they’ll get to them soon.

31 thoughts on “The Unwelcome Warlock/The Final Calling: Progress Report Thirty-Four

  1. Very true… But I wonder why they stopped coming out? Maybe it DID break – and then Vond will have to face a lot of pissed people, including his own soldiers. We’ll just have to wait and see -next chapter should have Hanners viewpoint on it.

  2. It didn’t break, the Tapestry there shows the attic in daytime and it is now night time in Ethshar with the tapestry lit by lamplight or in the dark in the Attic, either way the scene looks different.

    My question is, did they enter the Tapestry on the other side already and get caught in transit? We know that some tapestries sent people into the future during the Great War when the were woven showing a star pattern that had not yet come into existence but that will be real some day in the future.

  3. This level of suicidal stupidity seems excessive, even for Vond. If the ending is that he gets killed or imprisoned on the other side, it’s going to seem fairly deus ex machina.

  4. He’s ALWAYS verged on being a megalomaniac, that’s how Sterren beat him last time. It’s in character for him.

    He doesn’t think he’s being suicidal, he’s taken the precaution of hiring troops and pointing out to them that he’ll pay them if he lives, so they have an incentive. He’s acting quite a bit smarter than I expected actually.

    When Hammar got away with lying to him about how the tapestries work it became nearly inevitable that that would be involved in the solution.

    His big mistake is assuming that Wizards are monolithic and that he can’t ask any of them other than Ithania any questions about how tapestries work and trust the answers.

  5. I wonder if the wizards can use this opportunity to kill him via a ranged spell. Without his true name, I wonder if they can target him in another world.

    Allen W, that sounds like a pretty good explanation. Does the attic have just 1 window?

  6. I’m pretty sure it was specifically mentioned earlier that the tapestry would only work in the daytime. Windows are probably also mentioned but I don’t recall the details. There was an extensive discussion of the architecture of Warlock house on an earlier blog series, but I don’t recall any of the details.

  7. Actually, now that he’s cut off from his power source, I don’t expect the wizards will try to kill him. Much simpler to block the exit, then send Ithinia into the tapestry world to negotiate the terms of his exile. (They could send another wizard, of course, but since Ithinia is the only wizard to formally swear not to harm or deceive him, sending her would be a sign of good faith.) Offhand it’s hard to imagine them trusting Vond enough to let him back into the World, but Hanner might be clever enough to come up with a safeguard the Wizards’ Guild would find acceptable.

  8. Steven: the problem with sending Ithinia in is that she’d want to leave again. Any tapestry which would let her out would also potentially let Vond out, too.

    No, if they actually are going to trap Vond in there, the way to tell him he’s trapped (but won’t be harmed) is by sending one of the just-evicted former warlocks in with the message.

  9. There are hundreds of ways to let the others out while keeping Vond in: for example, instructing Fendel’s Assassin to rip his head off the moment he gets within twenty feet of the tapestry.

  10. CNC: You do not know what Deus Ex Machina means. Definition-a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new character, ability, or object.

    Steven: You cannot really keep Vond in the Tapestry world w/o trapping a few other people inside. You do not know that Fendel’s Assassin would walk through a tapestry. And I do not know if it can be sent after someone where you do not know their true name.
    Where are we on the donations?

  11. I was reminded today and yesterday (do not ask me why) of that short story “Science Fiction.” It is the one where those two boys build their own space ship. Thank you for such a great career.

  12. Why would Fendel’s Assassin have to walk through the tapestry? One of the advantages of sending a wizard to negotiate is you can cast the spell right there. (Another obvious possibility is to leave a couple of guards with Vond, maybe some of the ex-warlocks who want to stay there, with chains and a key. As I said, there are a hundred ways to let the others out while keeping Vond there. Fendel’s Assassin just seemed like one of the simplest.)

  13. I think you’re giving a lot of undue credit to the Guild if you assume that “let the others out” is high (or even at the middle) on their priority list. If she hears that Vond has walked into another world which has only the one exit tapestry, I expect Ithinia’s first reaction would be to smash up the attic connecting the exit tapestry until it was beyond repair and consider it a problem solved.

    And indeed, I’d have a lot of sympathy for that view. Permanently exiling (to a rather nice world) a bunch of people who had no homes to go back to anyway sounds like a small price to pay for being rid of an unwelcome warlock.

  14. It was pretty firmly established way back in The Misenchanted Sword that if you step into a tapestry at a time of day other than the one it depicts, you simply don’t come out until the proper time–Kelder commented on preferring a good night’s sleep to “several hours in some wizardly limbo.”

    It seems all but certain that the guards aren’t going to stop ushering people through; they have no way to know that night is falling, and anyway, they were ordered to get them out immediately.

    It all seems to come down to timing.

    1. If Vond waited long enough before going through the tapestry, then Hanner and the guards will probably already be gone–in transit between the two tapestries.

    2. Given that Vond has no idea where the exit tapestry is, it may take some time to find it and get out.

    3. Depending on how long it takes, Hanner might have some time between when he emerges in the morning and when Vond emerges.

    4. If he has enough time to find out that Vond’s in the tapestry, then he could take it down, thus trapping him there.

    Lots of “If-then” contingencies to deal with.

  15. Steven: What I meant is we have not been told the limitations of Fendel’s spell. You do not know: 1) that the creature would consider itself still under orders if it left the World. 2) If the Assassin can manipulate 3rd party magic. 3) The language used when ordering the Assassin may be so vague may leave several loopholes. 4) We do know that Fendel’s Assassin has no magical qualities beyond its strength and invisiblilty-it cannot kill someone by staring at them or levitating them-it has to strangle you or stab you. All these forms of attack a warlock can block if he is keeping watch. 5) Vond is not going to leave a wizard unmolested long enough to cast the summoning spell. 6) Additionally, if the spell is cast outside of the World, it might not work.

    Wizards live to have careers by not betting on things that they do not have to bet on. Granted the Assassin might be fine if he were sleeping and not levitating a castle and someone knew his true name but if the Guild does not know what would happen, they normally aren’t going to experiment.

  16. Hullvald, I think the suggestions about using Fendel’s Assassin were for when Vond is inside the tapestry (assuming he has no access to his warlock powers there).

  17. Chuk: read item 6…. One of the ingredients for the summoning spell could be moonlight. There’s a reason (probably more than one) that it has not been suggested at the meeting scene at Ithinia’s house. Summoning Fendel’s Assassin while not it the World may have unforseen consequences.

  18. Anyway, Ithinia has a couple handy gargoyles who could kill him just as well.

    Yes, it seems like it’ll be a race to see whether Vond finds the exit tapestry and figures it out before Hanner emerges and finds out he went in. If Hanner is first, then he can just carry any old statue up to the attic and place it in the image, then go discuss with Ithinia what to do with Vond at their leisure.

    Okay, someone chip in the $15 bucks!

  19. Yeah, he could probably knock over a vase (something in the image the tapestry is depicting) and permanently disable it.

  20. 1. You’re not reading carefully; the assassin would be summoned outside the World. 2. I haven’t suggested asking the assassin to exploit the tapestry, just to be aware of where it is. 3. There are not “several loopholes” in “Rip Vond’s head off the moment he gets within twenty feet of this tapestry.” 4. In the refuge world, Vond is presumably not a warlock. 5. Vond isn’t dumb enough to interfere when the alternative is death and he lacks the power to fight. 6. Wizardry, including summoning entities, has been shown to work just fine outside the World. And, in any case, this is only one plan–if for some reason it turns out to be impractical, that still leaves 99 or more other possibilities. (Use a flying carpet to drop Vond off a day’s walk from the tapestry. Let everyone else out before he can get back.)

  21. Well…hmm. If Hanner and Vond’s other soldiers are still in the tapestry when he shows up, i wonder exactly how loyal the mercenaries will turn out to be? After all, some of them are already having second thoughts, and Hanner is by far a better leader than Vond. He might very well be able to persuade them that he can offer a better deal.

    I also wonder what’s become of Zallin?

  22. Some good points here, especially from Allen W. et al. I also notice that if I ran the cult of Demerchan I’d ask someone to hide in the tapestry-world just in case. And that person would not let a couple of guards stop them.

  23. It occurs to me that a lot of time has been spent in the book creating the anticipation that Vond will end up in the tapestry world and he will be powerless there.

    It would certainly shake things up if the latter turned out not to be true.

    That being said, I agree that it currently looks like the book will come down to a war of words between Vond and Hanner, with neither having magic at their disposal.

    Bill

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