ChasingTheSun/Chpt05Note

I tried (perhaps unsuccessfully) to tidy things up in chapter five. I figured we had enough central characters between CoT, Jasper, M-S, Dellano, and D&I. I also thought that the plot was coming to a head too quickly and wanted to slow it down. I though it best to try taking D&I away from direct conflict/involvement with Jasper, CoT, and M-S, and relegating him at least temporarily to "backstory" duty would do that. I also tried using minor characters to tell the story without directly involving them in the action, just to create more options for pacing/narrating the action. Characters like Det. Pepo and Lady of the Winter Squash aren't really going to movethe plot (aside, perhaps, from keeping Great Forks police off Jasper's scent for a while), but are useful for describing character movements and actions that do necessarily require a full scene of detail, like the chorus or Messenger in Greek drama.

I almost regret dragging Warden of Jade out as a Deus Ex Machina, but I just couldn't think of a better way to get Jasper and Mahi-Sura out of that particular jam. The idea came to me when I recently reread Charcoal March of Spiders MA. I sort of decided that D&I's name breaking probably came from the Primordial-Slaying charm in that tree, and the paralysis charm just below worked. Sadly though, it seems that all I accomplished was another SNAFU, because now we have to figure out what to do with WoJ. Hopefully it won't be too hard to drag him back out of the central action.

(As a note: even though he's using Sidereal MA, I'm not entirely sure that WoJ is a Sidereal. There are a handful of Sidereals out there serving something other than Heaven, who could have taught another Celestial Sid. MA, and I really wouldn't be surpised if an elder Sid. "Went ronin" after a few centuries of Bureaucratic back-stabbing.)