And so the big change in Project Malleus and the Horizon Initiative in general begins. In case it wasn't clear, this story takes place just a few hours before Nor Gloom of Night Shall Stay.
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(account deleted)The more I think about it, the less I like the HI. However, this is very good and you should feel good for making it.
How so? Just curious to see what improvements can be made. Or if you are just picky.
My main problem is with PM. They just don't make sense. In Tolerance, they murdered "more than a hundred in there, families." In The Word and the Wolf, they were planning on killing a cult of "about fifty members at the moment." The former is portrayed more or less as business as usual for them, while the latter qualifies as a failure for them because they fucked it up (read: did not kill everyone and secure the artifact). Forget the Foundation, the GOC, or anyone with ties to the anomalous world. I'm pretty sure that after a few events such as these, Interpol would take a keen interest in who ever is going all over the world murdering dozens of people at a time.
The HI might be composed of "various influential sects in the main three Abrahamic religions," but they haven't been shown to have anywhere near the resources of a group like the Foundation or even the Chaos Insurgency. Besides, influences can only get you so far when your organization routinely commits acts of genocide throughout the globe.
In addition, the fact that an organization divided into two (well, three including the Scribes, which is a whole 'nother can of whatnot) parts which operate autonomously, have wildly differing goals and methods, and are more often than not at each others' throats, is capable of acting as an organization in any meaningful way is absurd. Unlike real world organizations that are capable of sort-of functioning or at least remaining semi-coherent under such a situation, there isn't a uniting ideology for the HI. Except maybe "death to the heretics." Except the Sheperds don't hold to that. Except for when they do. People are willing to split over the most minute of philosophical differences. This goes double when talking about religion (see Zwingli vs. Luther, Old Believers, the sects of Shi'ism). It defies any sort of logic that the HI would remain a group with three different religions, countless sects, and countless opinions, for which many are willing to die, on how they should operate, what their role should be, what constitutes truth, etc., and no uniting ideology beyond "cultists r bad" (which, as of The Tick Tock Gospel isn't even that uniting).
As for improvements? Give the reader a reason why the HI is a coherent organization other than "they are listed as group of interest." Give a reason why the ten-thousand ton shithammer hasn't come down on the organization. Gratuitous cameos from things I've written.
Nods
I can diggit.
Personally, I see much of the issue coming from the fact that the HI is a concept in the midst of evolution: it didn't start with specific limits, so it's managed to snarl itself up between new and old notions of how it works. It's the risk of having multiple authors working in an environment like this.
As far as secrecy and material resources go, I will probably end up waving my hands and going "RELICS!" or "SELF-CORRECTING UNIVERSE!", so I doubt that will be of much help there. (I see the Foundation universe running solely on narrativium)
As far as PM goes…yeah, I believe they might have gotten out of hand. But, hopefully it can be reigned in by making this sort of madness the death knell of a thoroughly corrupt and inefficient organization.
Though I will say that your post has inspired me, so expect something to address these issues, at least somewhat. Either a tale of the three tribunal guys hammering out the HI's mission, or just the mission statement itself.
Pretty much what Djoric said, yeah. That's the risk in writing a new GoI, I suppose, especially with multiple hands on deck. As this story already suggests, PM aren't going to be able to do what they used to do any longer, as the rest of the organization had enough of their shit by now. For this point onward, basically, the central leadership of the HI is going to pretty much take PM's autonomy almost entirely, since if they don't, it's likely that they'll doom the entire organization.
TL;DR- yeah, you certainly have a valid point there. Marking it up to birth pains which will hopefully soon be over.
This is very good. I wish I'd caught it in chat. +1.
This is good, and I like DeMontfort. But… a lot of the dialogue is pretty on-the-nose. It could use a bit of cleaning up; as it stands, it doesn't feel like Salah so much as Salah through a mirror darkly. Still good, though — +1
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
