Saturday Short: A Just War
Saturday, July 4, 2020 at 2:44pm
I am working on another Ytria story today. I’ve moved eastward from the where the previous stories were set and into the Kingdom of Daicis, which is debating internally whether or not go to war with their eastern neighbor, the Kingdom of Velyg.
The protagonist for this journey is General Jenik Stremm, a disciplined, principled man, who believes that war should be just, not pragmatic. He is opposed to going to war with Velyg on the grounds that they have no proof that Velyg is mishandling their occupation of a kingdom to their north.
This story grew out of a couple of ideas. The first and foremost was the description for the upcoming tdotSpec anthology, Strange Wars. The second was a concept I introduced in the last Ytria story, Ergo Sum, which was the presence of Galactic Consortium operatives on Ytria. When it became clear that it would be many years before Ytria’s status could be officially changed, these operatives insinuated themselves into Ytrian societies for the purpose of protecting the Ytrians from malevolent Consortium visitors.
The title of this story is A Just War. I currently have 2,700 words, and I think this one will be in the 7-8,000 word range, like its two immediate predecessors.
In addition, I have another Ytria story idea rumbling around my head. It doesn’t have a title yet, and I likely will not wait until next Saturday to write it. I’ll write up a blog post once it’s done. I plan to finish up the first draft of A Just War tomorrow, and then I’ll start the next story straight away, finishing sometime on Monday.
My working title for the collection these will fall under is The Chronicles of Ytria. I would need at least three more stories beyond those already written or planned in order to make that viable.
Ytria Stories:
- We Were Here First (first published 2016 in Transmutations of Fire and Void)
- One’s Own Medicine (draft, written June 6)
- Ergo Sum (draft, written June 27)
- A Just War (draft, in progress)
- [Untitled] (TBD)
