Post-Season One Discussion

Herein be a thread where you may comment as freely as you like regarding The Mongoliad. THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. Please, if you have not finished, don't look any further.

I'll start off with a semantic clarification. What we've been calling Season One of The Mongoliad is, more properly, Season One of The Foreworld Chronicles, which is comprised of the long-form serial The Mongoliad (and its print/e-book three volume trilogy edition to be released in 2012). Season Two will be comprised of a number of things, and at which point, you'll start to see that a "Season" is more of a release cycle than anything else, though there will be definite narrative arcs that fit within each season and—oh, dear God, I'm starting to confuse myself again. Anyway, it gets overly byzantine quickly. I still don't have it straight, and I'm the guy who is supposed to be able to talk intelligently about it all.

So, The Mongoliad. How did it work out for you?

I thoroughly enjoyed the first season despite the uneven timing in production of chapters. I would hope that folks stick around and contribute to the next season with fan fiction and side stories.

I have renewed my Patron membership for the upcoming season and am looking forward to more Foreworld adventures.

As already mentioned in the discussion of the last chapter, there are still some lose ends to be tied up. Not only concerning the brethren but also in Hünern and even in Rome. Or are they meant to be starting points of season 2?

I'd like to add I enjoyed Season One very much and am looking forward to Season Two.

I really enjoyed the story. The only part that I didn't really understand was the Rome branch. It didn't seem to fit with everything else (ie the hunting party and the circus). I enjoyed reading the Rome branch, but it seemed entirely separate from the rest of the story, and was never really tied in.

I liked the community aspect of everyone reading at the same time and then discussing. Unfortunately, that kind of fell off a bit once the content kept coming regularly. If I could give one piece of advice for future seasons is to make sure the content is on time every week. I think more than anything, that is what hurt the community discussing the content after every chapter, and the fan contributions.

I think the Brethren succeeding in their mission is a fitting end, even though you skipped a denouement. I don't think it really needed one, because it doesn't really matter if the remaining members made it back alive. They killed the Kahn and stopped the horde's eastward march, which is all that really matters. It makes no difference to history whether or not they spend many months marching back to Tyrshammar.

Overall, I liked the idea of the collaborative authorship. Not knowing who wrote each chapter puts all of the chapters on equal footing, without inadvertently prejudicing people against the lesser-known authors.

One request for next season would be to have some sort of Kindle distribution, since the Kindle browser isn't great and reading on my phone is a bit of a pain.

But overall, it is definitely worth the money, and I look forward to next season, whatever that may be

The Mongoliad has been a highlight of my week since it began, and I am as sad to see it conclude as I am satisfied with the successful completion of the project. Damn fine work, people! Thanks for sharing! I look forward to future efforts.

Overall I thought the project was very well-executed. The settings and characters were well developed and described, and I appreciated the pains taken to provide historic and martial verisimilitude throughout. I could practically smell some of the characters and scenes. Ewww...

A favorite plot thread of mine was the Rome storyline, and I really liked what I saw as a great potential to develope the more woo-woo aspects of the project - Percival's visions, the Grail, the Spirit Banner, etc. Apparently somewhere around the midpoint it was determined that the overall plot needed to be reined in and that whole thread was dropped without comment, and suggests that the whole plot line ought to be pulled from the final draft. The entire Mongoliad began as a sprawling knot of loosely intertwined plots and digressions and I loved that aspect of it, and while I enjoyed the ride throughout I would have loved to follow a long, meandering, (dare I say byzantine) resolution that encompassed all, even and perhaps especially if it took a few years to pull off. I do understand how difficult it is to pull off that sort of thing, perhaps especially in a collaborative project.

One of the hard lessons we learned over the course of writing the Mongoliad is that it is tough to schedule writers for a continual project over the course of a year and a half when they have other deadlines to deal with. As a result, when we saw a crunch period coming and knew that we would lose access to a writer for several months, we opted to wrap up the Rome Branch. It wasn't dropped or reined it, it was more that because the Rome Branch was self-contained (more or less), we could finish it without having to worry overmuch about how that part of the story interacted with the rest of the storylines.

The Mongoliad was pitched as The Deadly Dozen Medieval-Style, if you will. The Rome and Circus Branches became a way for us to examine the aftermath of a large-scale invasion and how the people who survive react. Rome is different than the rest, sure, and not just because there was less sword-play in it, but that doesn't mean Rome isn't integral to the larger Foreworld canvas.

The Kindle technology was a learning curve for everyone, and by the time it all got sorted out, the Amazon deal was in place. Since they're releasing Kindle versions of the book concurrent with the print editions, we let that slide. But, yes, moving forward, we have our eye on getting that sorted out.

Dirty Dozen?

The Deadly Dozen is a WWII platoon led by Sgt. Nick Fury, and is characterized by being made up of ass-kicking fighters of various ethnicities. A Marvel Comics creation, it's more similar to Feronatus' group than the Dirty Dozen.

Loved it, and will definitely be on board for Season 2. I don't suppose there will be a book release party planned? Perhaps with book-signing opportunities? :p

Looking forward to how things wrap up in the second season. Such as *clears throat, Announcer Voice Mode*:

What will become of Lian after Feronantus finds her burning branches of the Yggdrasil to stay warm?

How far will Alchiq and Gansukh follow the remaining Brethren, and to what end?

Will Kim and Zug remain with Styg and Hans, or will they go their own way?

The answers to these questions and more in the next Foreworld Chronicles!

Book release and signing parties are being organized by Amazon PR/Marketing, and I know they have some plans, but nothing concrete has been settled yet. We'll definitely keep y'all in the loop.

I liked the Rome branch and the other branches too. Interactivity features can be expanded later, hopefully. I have no idea what will become of the various fan fictions. One more chapter was outlined for the "Soon" story but never fleshed out; sorry about that. I would like to hear more from Steven Felten on the Spissky Hrad story line, but he has not contributed on these pages lately. There was a contest going at one point but I guess it was dropped. Generally, the encouragement and incentives for contributing have lacked consistency. The Burgher designation and badges became confusing too. Maybe a gaming format was proposed at some point and then dropped? So many questions unanswered.

I would also like to give thanks for the enjoyment I've gleaned from your collective efforts. I struggled through the lean times when content ran like molasses in February, but overall I would rate it as a success. So now I'll address the elephant in the room; When can we expect "Season 2" to begin? I know you all deserve a hiatus from the grueling schedule, especially in light of the flood of content at the end. I would just like a guess on how long to wait before obsessively checking for new content again. Thanks again, it has been a great experiment.

I liked the Mongoliad a lot. I followed it religiously even though delivery was uneven. There seem to be a number of loose ends. Will they be resolved next season, or are they just to remain unresolved?

...or are they for us to resolve?

OOOH, That's interesting. Maybe we could do a collaborative story where any interested person writes a couple of pages and then passes it on to the next person. "Where the hell is Ocyrhoe" What happens to Cnan et.al. on the way back" Do Kim, Zug and Hans become honorary OMVI etc. Different groups addressing different stories, Different stories coming together and separating. It could be fun.

That's a great idea! Rather than doing a poll or something for theme, I'd say we go ahead with Where the hell is Ocyrhoe?. I would suggest that we keep at 1000 words max per person.

Do you want to go first, or shall I?

I just got to the end, it took me by surprise! First reactions: great characters, (and so many of them)! Really interesting setting, so much going on historically, so many peoples and cultures on the move, so much change ..

Pacing seemed a little odd, started with a leisurely epic feel, .. here's one bunch of people doing this .. here's another bunch of people doing that .. here's yet another bunch of people, wonder how they are all going to link together .. now some things are happening in a fairly leisurely way and we are getting to know the characters .. and suddenly FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT The End!

It's good that some of them survived though. I feared for a bit that you were going to kill the lot off so we could start afresh in Episode 2. Pity about the Shield Maidens, it was 'hi Shield Maidens, you look really interesti .. oh dear, ooops there they go ..'

I liked the blurring of historical stuff and beliefs, as in the spirit banner and the shadows of Norse mythology lurking behind the Skjaldbræður, thought that sort of worked, though it didn't seem to reach through to the plot a great deal.

Overall, great - hope there's some more!

Fear not. They'll be back. Joe and I have been vetting royal bloodlines in Rus and environs recently, making sure history plays well with our plans. Plus there's been some rumblings that they made it to Spain as well . . .

Great! In the film they can all be played by Lucy Lawless ..

"The Adventures of Dysingli Soon" has been submitted for an "ABNA" Award (Amazon Breakthrough Novel). In the process of submitting, the Create Space site has expressed interest in publishing and making it available on Amazon.com. Suggested price: $8.00. It's all early talks yet, but looks like the fan fiction may get resurrected in a paper format. I don't expect too many sales, but a few family members wanted a paper copy, so this may work out OK.

Ooh, well done and good luck!

Um.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I can't find the original terms of use we agreed to when we made our accounts, but wasn't there a statement in there saying that all derivative works (I.e., fan-art and fan-fiction) became the property of Subutai?

You may want to reconsider.

Also (again, someone correct me if I'm wrong), and not to be rude, isn't CreateSpace a vanity press? They offer publication/print form to anyone who submits, right?

The Mongoliad Terms of Service

Sections 5d, 5e, and 6d are probably the most pertinent to this question.