If you've been following me for a long time, like a LONG long time, you might remember my first account over on Deviantart, before I even fired up an account here. If you remember that, you might remember Aberration, which I consider to be the first draft of at least three major acts of Nobody's Servant. Not accounting for minor edits and overhauls there were actually some others after that, which never saw the light of day and were comparatively very condensed proofs of concept to cover the rest but that's neither here nor there SO

Aberration was a little over 77,000 words long. Not bad in terms of quantity even if the quality left a lot to be desired and of course it did, I redid the damn thing four more times counting Nobody's Servant. Now, this version here, I originally thought "Yeah, this'll be kind of a big story but nothing monumental" and well, you see how that's gone. SO (again)

Nobody's Servant, in its final form (or perhaps penultimate if I ever entertain the idea of a master revision before looking into print but that too is neither here nor there), is planned to be a five-act story. As of right now I would say I am probably about 75% of the way through this first act, surrounding our arrival and inevitable departure from Iyakamraa where the stakes are established in full. So I think, to make this project a little more digestible both for myself and you readers I appreciate beyond words (words, I'll remind you, I consider to be sort of my thing so let that say a lot), I'm gonna officially chop it up into five "books". Functionally, this shouldn't change much, but ideally it'll one; help set a baseline of anticipation for where the stakes are at after each major turning point, two; give you a better roadmap for where we're actually at, and three; make visiting the project in its complete form a little less daunting than starting at the foot of an absolute literary leviathan potentially ten times the length of its very first incarnation.

Lastly, if you're still reading this, I wanna say thank you so much for sticking with me this long. I don't mean just this journal, I mean the entire time. On that note, if you're one of the ones who's been here since I started Nobody's Servant, you were reading it when it was just a side creative outlet I had the ill foresight to attempt indulging during my college years. December 24th, 2015, that's how long it's been. Told myself 2016 was gonna be the year I wrangled this thing into a form I could take pride in, and that didn't really happen. And it didn't really happen for a while after that either. At this point, I feel like I've harped on the uncertainty of the future in general enough, so I'll nod at it that much and no more, but while I have it, I wanna use as much of it as I can telling this story with everything I have. Hell, my TRPG group didn't even know this at the time but during those college days I used the events of the campaign I sent them on to determine historical details that became very important at the end of the previous draft, which I probably could not have finished without them. You don't go to those kinds of length for a project and settle for it not being done.

That was kind of a long last point so I'll try it again. Maybe it's not so far beyond words after all.


Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the interest, patience, advice, and motivation you have given me. It means the world to me. Hell, it even means a lot of worlds.
There's a whole Ravel of em in here.