Murder Your Darlings
- The Archivist
- Jan 22
- 5 min read
"Knowing the theme makes it easier to narrow down what memories [Cael will] share, though sometimes I'll decide on a different theme partway through, especially as the performance comes more into focus." - Me, in last week's post
I'm pounding at the keyboard producing pages upon pages of descriptions for each arc of "Teyr'loch Delter Pach," nearing the 10k-word mark when I collide with the brick wall known as "The Campaign." To be fair, I saw it coming. It's so expansive, there was no way I could miss it. Cael's pre-campaign story is about them, but the campaign involves everyone as well as the main problem the party must solve, which is worsening Rift situation occurring on the Material Plane.
Well, I knew I wasn't going to find my answer staring at the screen or out the window, so I hit Enter until I had a clear section of the page. Then, I imagined how the performance would progress if I began it with the campaign itself and intermittently wove Cael's pre-campaign story into that instead of the chronological arcs. Except that was a convoluted mess waiting to happen, and one of the points I made last week was how I needed to keep the performance simple. It was okay though; this thought exercise was mostly for generating ideas, and boy, did it do just that.
Early on in the campaign--we're talking session 2--Efiál saw Pihm messing with a deck of cards. Whenever she pulled one, she inadvertently used magic, so they asked her about it. She was unaware that magic was being cast, so it freaked her out. Curious about it, Efiál asked her to do a reading for them into their Past, Present, and Future, and as she did so, they detected the usage of magic throughout.
*A quick note: Pathfinder 2e uses what's called a Harrow deck, but at the time of Pihm's reading, there weren't too many details about the deck itself, so we went ahead and used a Tarot deck instead.
Efiál/Cael has always taken issue with the idea of fate and the gods, so the accuracy of Pihm's reading left them perturbed and angry. In their mind, 'fate' doesn't exist; it's just a convenient excuse those with power use to manipulate other people's futures.
Now that was a thread I could follow, because later on in the campaign, Cael asked Jakhturim, a priest to Phusyn the god of fate, to do another reading for them, this time without the accompanying vitriol.
I copied down both readings and considered them. "What if," I thought, "I restructure the performance to fall in line with these readings?" I could weave in elements of Cael's backstory as well as parts of the campaign. Plus, the readings themselves created a framework that would keep the story relatively compact, or, at the very least, tied together thematically. It wouldn't have been outside of Cael's purview to follow this structure either. They're in a church of fate, for crying out loud!
Those ten thousand words I'd written previously? The idea of going to the castle for the performance?
It's almost like this was fated to happen!
The only problem was the same conundrum I'd faced before: how to set the stage. The front of the church is too open, and there aren't a lot of structures that Cael can use for their shadow puppetry because of the giant statue carved into the wall, but if I was going to entertain this idea again, I needed a solution, so I asked my partner to draw the layout of the church for me, and then I wrote the dimensions for the sanctuary and the pews.
The side walls could work as canvases, and I could utilize the ceiling to an extent, too, since it's built into a natural cave wall, but the pews proved problematic. What could I do with 10 pews that are each 15' long? If they were made of stone, there was no way we were going to be able to move them. Thankfully, when I asked my partner what they material they were made out of, he said they were wooden. Phew. Still heavy, but not impossible.
There was enough space to where I could push a few of them against other parts of the wall, but I wanted to use them if I could. Ten pews. Eight lengths of rope branching out from Phusyn's lantern. Eight is a symbolic number, so what if we made an octagonal arrangement from the pews? I'd still have two left over, but...but what if those were back-to-back with the pews facing the side walls? In the center, I could have a round table with a cloth draped over it and a bowl set on top for one of the elements later on in the performance. If I keep a gap in between each of the pews...
"Does the church have extra rope?!" I shouted at my partner while he was reading.
"Yeah, they'd have some rope."
"How much rope?"
"About 200'?"
"Perfect."
Yes, a story following Cael's journey as they wrestle with their own beliefs concerning fate set in a church about fate performed for their father who'd made certain decisions alongside their mother concerning Cael's 'fate' as told to them by Maryn, why, it's almost as though the performance is writing itself now.
As for the castle, well, I'm sure that stage will come into play sometime in the future, so I'll keep it in reserve for now.
Other Notable Accomplishments:
Mostly just the usual routine of working out consistently. Been having some knee pain since I haven't been able to get my usual steps in recently, but I'm slowly working back up to it now that most of the ice has melted. The bone-chilling cold certainly isn't helping.
Questions for Contemplation & Discussion:
This post illustrates an example of an avoided sunk cost fallacy. In what areas of your life have you devoted maybe too much time and effort to something when it was perhaps better to cut your losses and move on?
On the flip side, do you perhaps give up too quickly on things that are worth pursuing? How often do you move on to the next thing when your current focus seems difficult or is providing sub-optimal results?
I know, seems contradictory, doesn't it? Too much time/money/etc... spent, not enough time/money/etc... spent, it can get downright confusing!
Most of my college career felt like a sunk cost fallacy, up until the year I did my senior composition recital. While I wouldn't repeat the whole college experience if given another chance, that recital made persevering worth it.
The Decision Lab and many other sites go more into depth on Sunk Cost Fallacy
This Week's Obligatory Cat Pic: Mura
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