Kyne's Notes

The White Phial Commentary: Chapter 6

I posted the first chapter of The White Phial a year ago. Thought I’d mark the occasion by doing a bit of commentary on an older chapter.

Chapter 6 - Curalmil is the first chapter narrated from Mehra’s point of view. At first I tried Rumarin’s POV as usual, but by now he was so hyper-focused on his goal that it felt like he was resisting my efforts to get inside his head. And Mehra was metaphorically tugging at my sleeve for her turn, so she got the chapter.

They cautiously went forward. Rumarin clearly had a better idea of what to look for, but that didn’t stop Mehra from glancing down often and keeping her eyes open for anything that signaled a trap. She tried following Rumarin’s footsteps exactly, stepping only in the places proven safe. Behind her, J’zargo did much the same.

Neither Mehra nor J’zargo have much dungeon-delving experience. Sneaking into crypts to slay monsters and grab treasure just wasn’t part of their upbringing. (This also means Mehra never fetched the Dragonstone; the game requires it, but Delphine can get what she needs through other means.

So both J’zargo and Mehra are out of their depth here. Rumarin has had more opportunities to learn the “art” of graverobbing, and the White Phial is his MacGuffin, so it made sense for him to guide them through the dangers. That said, Rumarin isn’t comfortable playing leader and only steps into the role out of necessity. He really wants that phial, and he really doesn’t want his companions getting killed.

Mehra glanced at her companions. Rumarin seemed to be making up his mind on what to do next. J’zargo was tense and staring about with wide, frightened eyes. When J’zargo caught her looking at him, he made an effort to collect himself and appear calm.

Poor J’zargo keeps trying to look more courageous than he feels. He’s not very good at it, but then he’s new to this whole robbing-from-the-undead thing.

Then she heard a voice in her head, low and guttural: Dinok saraan.

Here’s the biggest reason I avoided writing from Mehra’s POV until this chapter: I had no idea how I was going to handle the voice in her head. How often does she hear it? How does she react? How much is too much? And how much dragonese do I have to learn to pull this off? (I’m still not sure about any of this.)

Rumarin’s hand closed around the artifact. He very, very slowly lifted it. After a pause, he carefully tucked the phial away into his bag. Mehra let out her breath in a sigh of relief.

This moment could’ve paid homage to Indiana Jones with Rumarin swapping one of Mehra’s empty healing potion bottles for the White Phial, but that kind of thing plays better visually. My efforts to do it in writing just cluttered up the scene and drained the tension.

While J’zargo started the spell for a fireball, Mehra read her scroll aloud. Purple whisps of smoke gathered and swirled at her feet, pulling a creature from the depths of Oblivion. But instead of the expected flame atronach, a glowing rodent the size of a small dog appeared.

“A rat?! Gods damn it,” said Mehra, drawing her sword and wishing an incurable case of witbane on the shopkeeper who sold her the scroll.

Originally I gave Mehra a Circle of Protection scroll and threw in a bunch of draugr. Mehra and her companions killed the first few draugr easily because these things couldn’t flee the magic circle fast enough. But everything felt wrong. It was like, oh, okay, Mehra and her friends have a magic shield, so they’re safe and nothing bad is going to happen for a while.

To make the fight scene work, I had to take away the overpowered scroll. Mehra and J’zargo are both inexperienced fighters, so they didn’t need waves of draugr thrown at them. Three draugr was plenty. Then I gave Mehra a scroll that summons a giant rat because I thought it was funny, and because the rat helps them out without weighting things too much in their favor.

She heard J’zargo shout. Turning, Mehra saw him crumple to the ground, his arm bloodied by a swipe from a draugr’s axe. The triumphant draugr raised its axe for the killing blow.

Before I rewrote the fight scene, I tried planning it out. Which characters would get hurt? How badly? In what order? How do they help each other during the fight?

At first I tried working it out on paper, then switched to choreographing possible outcomes with My Little Pony figures. Gary caught me at it and wondered what the heck I was doing. When I explained, he sat down with me and played Dungeon Master. (He’s become more of a collaborator than a beta reader, and the story would be very different without his influence.)

We played out a scenario where J’zargo goes down first, Mehra uses her Thu’um to help him, and then J’zargo kills his draugr. Now J’zargo has a choice to make: does he throw one last fireball to help Mehra, or to help Rumarin? J’zargo’s loyalties lie with Mehra, but Rumarin is dealing with the worst draugr. J’zargo is in bad shape and Mehra is out of scrolls. If Rumarin goes down, Mehra and J’zargo are finished. So J’zargo aids Rumarin, freeing up Rumarin to help Mehra deal with her draugr.

The bearded draugr drove Mehra back. It had no eyes for her to read, just empty sockets, but there were other ways to predict what it would do next–the way the hand tightened around the handle of the sword, the way the shoulders tensed before a lunge, or even the way its breath hitched. Despite her terror and revulsion, Mehra started to see something human in the draugr. It had been a man once. Something about this realization took the edge from Mehra’s fear, and she began turning her parries into counterattacks.

Almost my favorite bit in the whole story. A draugr seems like nothing more than a shambling monster, but Mehra looks beyond her terror and recognizes that this was once a person. It’s horrifying in the sense that a person can be turned into a mindless empty shell, but seeing the human inside the monster can make the monster a little less unknown, a little less scary.

Notes: