Shadowplay

 Shadowplay is yet another side story to the series of works inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, as a part of A Call to Arms. Set at about the same time period as the previous installment, Through The Castle Garden, Shadowplay takes place within the aristocratic city of Bourret within Seelago. Unlike every other installment, however, Shadowplay focuses upon a rather ordinary civilian rather than an established adventurer, with the merchant's apprentice Primrose Reed getting the main role as she works a stand for her fragile, but budding merchant collective, Red Ambrosia Wares. In the midst of her day, however, Primrose finds herself accosted by an enigmatic traveler named Ash Snyder, a brazen woman who seems to know too much and too little at the same time.

Shadowplay can be read here.

The above image was drawn by ErosPanda, whose online portfolio can be found here.

Shadowplay was named after the song of the same name by English post-punk band Joy Division. I originally entitled it Transmission after another song by the same band, but it felt a bit too anachronistic for my tastes, hence the change.

Primrose previously appeared in In Love This Way, but despite my later efforts for a number of other writing projects, she ended up being completely absent in all later stories involving Serra Anhera, being only mentioned in passing at most. I wanted to see Primrose again as her own character away from Serra, as well as seeing a bit more of Leily Rhoeas and her side of the merchant business since we last saw her in Lost For Words. Throw in a desire to feature the showy and ostentatious Lord Crispin Ellery Labourt at some point, and I ended up with a story I really wanted to tell. I also like a good challenge, and since Primrose represents an ordinary civilian as opposed to representing a class from Dungeons & Dragons, she certainly provided an interesting change of pace as to how to tell a story with a physically "weak" lead.

The opening segment of musical instruments mostly came about due to me picking up an ocarina at a convention, as sold by STL Ocarina. While I had already brainstormed and outlined the work at the time, I chose to add in a reference to such here for my own amusement; the original idea featured Primrose and Leily selling a deck of tarot cards, with the two then telling a young woman her fortune with them, a scene that would have reminded Leily of Katalia, who was established as enjoying fortune telling. Why did I change it out? Well... You'll just have to find out later.

The motto of Serra's family was stated in previous works: Qui dedito, proditor est, he who surrenders is a traitor, having been taken directly from an Italian fascist motto, as to reflect the Anhera's militaristic and nationalistic bent. Owing to this, I chose to dip into Italian fascism again for the Labourt family, by Latinising another slogan: Perditus qui haesitat, he who hesitates is lost. I considered having one or both families use a Latin motto based on Nazi slogans, but basing your bad guys on the Nazis is such an old hat. As for the Rhoeas merchant family, I chose to adapt an old Latin proverb for them, albeit modified to reflect Leily's tender and emotional core: Ignis amorem proba, fire tests love.

I wrote within the author notes for The Still Parade that my mind was not in a particularly good place when I was writing it. Things haven't looked much better in recent months, alas, and I feel some of the cynicism towards the start of the work is an unfortunate bleed-over of such (though the later segments of the story do reflect my slowly improving mental state). Even then, Primrose trying to give a pep talk to Leily over what has happened in her life felt like something I've been trying to tell myself for quite a while now, and it felt like Primrose was trying to speak to me with her words. It's easy to see what Serra fell for, isn't it?

I suppose I've buried the lede far enough now. The elephant in the room for this story is Ash Snyder and what caused her creation. A friend of mine had read Bones quite some time ago, and expressed particular amusement at a bit of throwaway dialogue Nico Cekala had said about disguising himself as a woman to evade capture, alongside curiosity about how Nico would go about transporting himself and Nixie around Talamh Dieu without an apparent permanent place of residence, and the fact that his construct closely resembles him in appearance As such, I decided to take on the challenge of at least partially exploring these parts of his character. This itself was a bit of a challenge, in that while it is a rather big plot twist in and of itself, I also didn't want it to completely come out of nowhere; as a result, much of Ash's dialogue and mannerisms were taken directly from Bones to give some subtle foreshadowing to her true identity, including some dialogue from Maribelle and Silifrey themselves. I strongly feel that authors should always try to reward attentive readers wherever possible. 

And yes, the track Shadowplay was indeed also covered by The Killers. Just another subtle hint about Ash's true identity, and to demonstrate how uncreative I actually am.