Breaking Providence (The Afterword) (Patreon)
Content
Here we are, everyone. By now, I expect that almost everyone who wanted to has read the finale of Breaking Providence.
It still feels a little surreal to have written a full-length Original Story. I've written shorter length stuff before, but much of it has been for commission and none of it has ever reached over 200,000 words like this one did.
Coming up with the characters and the entire outline of the book ahead of time definitely helped a lot, and it's something I plan to continue doing going forward with these Free Writes I do. In fact, I'm currently working on plotting out the outline of my next Free Write right this moment. No, it's not going to be Breaking Providence 2 immediately, but funnily enough it does still feature an orc MC xD
I should probably get that out of the way first. I have every intention of eventually writing a sequel to Breaking Providence... but not right away. There's going to be at least one other Free Write between Book 1 and Book 2 from the look of things. I need to let the ideas percolate and get the juices flowing before I leap into Book 2.
Book 1 was a test of a lot of my skills. It's not a test I think I always wholly succeeded at. I know that by the end of the story, I had some people dissatisfied with the feeling that Marcus had seemingly taken a backseat in his own story.
This wasn't the intention, to be clear. The intention was always to have him and Elsenthia's paths crossing and uncrossing throughout the story, with each of them dealing with separate but also interconnected things. I think I did a semi-okay job of that, but there was definitely a sizable chunk of my audience that expected Marcus to need to save the day for Elsenthia, and so I obviously could have done it better probably.
That said, Book 2 will hopefully smooth out any issues people have with the end of Book 1. Marcus will certainly get plenty of opportunities to use his dual-class.
Here are some of the ideas I currently have for Book 2. Fair Warning, possible spoilers though I'm gonna try and keep things rather vague.
1. The book should definitely start with the orcs being brought in from the cold as part of Elsenthia and Marcus' goals to fix the errors of their predecessors. Something ceremonial between Roka-Ra, Marcus, and Elsenthia... and of course, probably some fucking between the three as well.
2. I know that I want there to be a Beastkin Kingdom, likely to the West past the 'Wilds' where the orcs have been roaming. It's funny, in the original outline for Breaking Providence, Beastkin were supposed to all be slaves in the Holy Empire. But then I realized that not only was Erised NOT a Beastkin, I also hadn't put any other Beastkin in anywhere else in the book. So luckily I changed course and Beastkin were not a slave race of the Empire. Still, even if there wasn't a single named Beastkin in all of Book 1, they definitely exist and are around, so I want to explore that more in Book 2 for sure.
3. The High Elf thing. I don't want to spoil the ideas I have for this just yet, but we definitely haven't seen the last of the High Elves or Elsenthia's mom. Stuff is gonna happen there for sure and it will probably be a big plot point in the fic.
4. More with Volupa. We haven't actually uncovered every last secret that our mysterious demon mommy had. One thing that I never outright stated in Book 1, mostly because I wasn't sure if it really worked or not... my headcanon is that Volupa's Job isn't something like Assassin as Erised's is. No, Volupa's Job is... Nanny. That's it. In my head, she took a bunch of Nanny Abilities/Skills and turned them into some really terrifying shit lmao. The fact that her Job is Nanny isn't even the biggest secret I'm thinking of having unveiled about her in Book 2, however. Some big stuff for sure.
5. The power disparity between Marcus and Elsenthia needs to eventually be addressed. Fact is, Marcus is by and far the most powerful person in the Empire. But he and Elsenthia are supposed to be co-rulers. Elsenthia will never complain about Marcus' strength, in fact she finds it sexy, but at a certain point Marcus is going to recognize the disparity between them and look for a way to address it. I'm thinking he might go back to Camilla for a way to do exactly that, in fact.
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Those are all the ideas I have for Book 2 right now. Feel free to discuss them down below, and to speculate on the things I've said and not said. I absolutely love hearing your guys' thoughts, and I would be lying if I said I didn't happily take some of your ideas from time to time (though at times you guys also just happen to have correctly guessed where I was going with something already lol)
Also feel free to discuss other things I haven't mentioned up above, but that you would like to see explored in Book 2. Things I maybe have forgotten, or things that got a small mention in Book 1 but could be expanded upon in the sequel.
Once again, thank you all for reading Breaking Providence and coming with me on this wild journey. I hope to continue entertaining you when Book 2 finally starts at some point down the road!