Bones

Bones is an extra story created for A Better Place, as part of a suggestion by a friend. Canonically, it takes place towards the middle of series, many years after we last heard from the cast in Many Moons. Bones centers on Nico Cekala, an intelligent, but reclusive gentleman who puts on the airs of being an esteemed artificer, even with his perhaps surprisingly ramshackle living quarters. Returning to his house after a day's work of selling and trading artifacts, Nico plans to spend the rest of the day tinkering with his newest wares take an unexpected turn when a halfling named Maribelle Helder comes by asking for some alms; his meagre donation, however, ends up causing him to reveal more about his life and his goals than he ever intended.

Bones can be read here.

The above image was drawn by WANKE, whose work I've previously used to represent Katalia Rhoeas in Late Night People, alongside being considered for use for Serra Anhera in In Love This Way.

Bones was named after the song of the same name by alternative rock band The Killers.

When I first wanted to make a project based on every class of Dungeons & Dragons, starting with Holidays In The Sun, I mistakenly operated under the idea that the Artificer was more of a "bonus" class of sorts. By the time I finished Here's To Life, however, I learnt otherwise, but I didn't know if I wanted to add a completely new character to the mix, especially due to the "cyclical" nature of the series and its respective characters (specifically, starting and ending with Silifrey Helder's introduction). After finishing the project, however, I decided adding an extra character would be an interesting challenge, and it would let both Silifrey and Maribelle Helder get a bit more character development, something the two ran a bit thin on due to Maribelle only having one story for herself and Silifrey's first two stories being written prior to A Better Place becoming its own series. I am interested in using Nico for one more story, though I'm unsure at how I'd use him right now. I'm not sure if any particular character can interact particularly well with him, and I'm not sure if he could carry a story by himself, so that could provide an interesting challenge moving forward.

Nico was initially named Sascha Boucher, with his first name being Germanic in origin to reference the "German engineering" trope, while his surname, meaning "Butcher" in French, was to metaphorically link the preparing of meat to his harvesting of parts from various gadgets (its relation to punk rocker Eric Reed Boucher was mostly unintentional). While trying to find an appropriate name for his construct, however, I came to quite like the name "Nixie" and I elected to change his name to Nico to match it. Some time later, however, I came across an obituary for a young woman I knew whose surname was "Cekala", which I found more interesting than Boucher, though I'm glad I could still find a use for "Sascha Boucher" in the final story.

As a final note, I spent quite a bit of time deciding on whether Nico's use of the word "fucking" when speaking with Silifrey was gratuitous or necessary. I chose to leave it in as to reflect Nico's callous character, as well as to contrast him from Silifrey; both are orphans who got raised surrounded by war, but ended up with completely different personalities and goals. Nico's coarse mouth was also to differentiate him from Ravana, another arguably selfish character; whereas Ravana was educated from years of reading books and attending lectures, while raised with the desire to impress nobles and the world around him with his intellect, Nico is almost entirely self-taught and has little interest in what others see in him beyond superficial details, only focusing upon himself and Nixie. Prior to this story, arguably the worst swear in the series was "damn," as said by both Soryn and Txori at various points.

Bones represents a slight change in how I compose works, in that its first draft was entirely composed on a Neo AlphaSmart I secured at a thrift store. This represented a somewhat interesting change of pace for me, as I could no longer get bogged down by the "editing process" while writing due to the device's limited screen and interface. I'm not sure if it'll become a permanent mainstay of mine, but I might consider it moving forward.