I mean, honestly, except for the illegality and the crime and all, it really isn't a bad deal from the stand-in's perspective, I'd want to get anesthetic for the scar part though....
*Tunnels AND duplicates! Very clever, Simon. Also makes it probable Collins and Co. are key players in the larger plot. The skein runs a warp through the tapestry. ("Warp." See what I did there?) *Phenn was a great choice. He let you sneak in some exposition: the Tiny God (OK, we've met that one), and the disaster in the suburbs. Also a rare glimpse into a side of Palinor you haven't been able to detail yet. "Have Nots." Most featured Palinor characters are "Haves." Royalty, employees of Royalty (Palace Guard would be well-paid), Ambassadors, and dignitaries. Even the roving adventurers are independents, doing their own thing on their own terms - which is a position of privilege. We haven't touched on the poor or Palinor since the trafficked aen'fa. Once again you made the interesting choice. *And don't worry about interrogation scenes being infodumps. Those are a trope of the genre, expected, and you have to play into those tropes enough so innovations stand out. This isn't an experimental novel, after all. *Hell, even the success of the duplicates becomes commentary on the dehumanizing nature of the prison system. Crabbe not noticing minor changes in Collins for a year? There's no way they found a whole group of 6'3" bald men whose voices are the same timbre with the same accent. Crabbe just treats his prisoners as numbers to be ignored or beaten. 24601... *Hey, deliberate Les Mis reference, as Javert's insistence on the number is one of the clearest illustrations in literature on the dehumanization of a convict! *Hopefully the asterisks serve well enough as an ersatz line break. I'm trying!
Yeah, it had occurred to me that all of our Palinor contacts were aristocrats or people outside of the societal norms (ie the monster hunters). We were long overdue some alternate viewpoints! I suppose we had glimpse the markets and some of the insurgent behaviour as well, but that was very much from our protagonists' POV.
It slightly boggles my mind how much I still haven't explored in this setting. We've barely seen anything of Palinor beyond Bruglia, the city that is literally on the other side of the portal. The excavation site was talked about in flashback, and we've heard talk of water cities and so on, but haven't really visited any of them. We've not seen much of Max-Earth's world, either, outside of the POV of the megaships (and that poor customs control guy). And, I suppose, Kaminski's brief sojourn there. Oh! And the one-shot with The Writer.
But yeah, lots of space to tell other stories. Not sure how much of it will fit into the main Tales from the Triverse narrative. The setting could happily accommodate standalone fantasy and/or science fiction stories that don't even get into portal territory. Some Max-Earth prequels, pre-portals, could be interesting, too.
I did wonder about how far-fetched it was that multiple lookalikes could be used in the prison, but came to a similar conclusion to you: the guards wouldn't really care. Plus, the chances of this particular scenario are so unlikely, it wouldn't even occur to the guards to check or look twice.
I mean, honestly, except for the illegality and the crime and all, it really isn't a bad deal from the stand-in's perspective, I'd want to get anesthetic for the scar part though....
*Tunnels AND duplicates! Very clever, Simon. Also makes it probable Collins and Co. are key players in the larger plot. The skein runs a warp through the tapestry. ("Warp." See what I did there?) *Phenn was a great choice. He let you sneak in some exposition: the Tiny God (OK, we've met that one), and the disaster in the suburbs. Also a rare glimpse into a side of Palinor you haven't been able to detail yet. "Have Nots." Most featured Palinor characters are "Haves." Royalty, employees of Royalty (Palace Guard would be well-paid), Ambassadors, and dignitaries. Even the roving adventurers are independents, doing their own thing on their own terms - which is a position of privilege. We haven't touched on the poor or Palinor since the trafficked aen'fa. Once again you made the interesting choice. *And don't worry about interrogation scenes being infodumps. Those are a trope of the genre, expected, and you have to play into those tropes enough so innovations stand out. This isn't an experimental novel, after all. *Hell, even the success of the duplicates becomes commentary on the dehumanizing nature of the prison system. Crabbe not noticing minor changes in Collins for a year? There's no way they found a whole group of 6'3" bald men whose voices are the same timbre with the same accent. Crabbe just treats his prisoners as numbers to be ignored or beaten. 24601... *Hey, deliberate Les Mis reference, as Javert's insistence on the number is one of the clearest illustrations in literature on the dehumanization of a convict! *Hopefully the asterisks serve well enough as an ersatz line break. I'm trying!
Yeah, it had occurred to me that all of our Palinor contacts were aristocrats or people outside of the societal norms (ie the monster hunters). We were long overdue some alternate viewpoints! I suppose we had glimpse the markets and some of the insurgent behaviour as well, but that was very much from our protagonists' POV.
It slightly boggles my mind how much I still haven't explored in this setting. We've barely seen anything of Palinor beyond Bruglia, the city that is literally on the other side of the portal. The excavation site was talked about in flashback, and we've heard talk of water cities and so on, but haven't really visited any of them. We've not seen much of Max-Earth's world, either, outside of the POV of the megaships (and that poor customs control guy). And, I suppose, Kaminski's brief sojourn there. Oh! And the one-shot with The Writer.
But yeah, lots of space to tell other stories. Not sure how much of it will fit into the main Tales from the Triverse narrative. The setting could happily accommodate standalone fantasy and/or science fiction stories that don't even get into portal territory. Some Max-Earth prequels, pre-portals, could be interesting, too.
I did wonder about how far-fetched it was that multiple lookalikes could be used in the prison, but came to a similar conclusion to you: the guards wouldn't really care. Plus, the chances of this particular scenario are so unlikely, it wouldn't even occur to the guards to check or look twice.