Chapter 5: Page 19

Land of Confusion: Page 19

NOTES FROM JASON

Continuing on from yesterday’s page, we get an explanation behind these apparent side effects that our Lamsters appear to be suffering from. This particular story thread has had an interesting evolution over the years. It wasn’t in the original plans, but it came about early on in the scripting process. I can’t tell you when exactly, so let’s just say around Chapter 2. The story of a regular person suddenly gaining powers isn’t a new one, but I often wondered about what it would be like to gain new powers, but those powers also came with negative effects. The initial idea was something more akin to an addiction. When you have the item and wear it, you have these great powers, but upon removing it, you start to have withdrawals and when you use it too much, it also affects you for the worst.

That idea helped carve a path for both Penny and Harker past the initial arc of the first volume. It was also planned for our main character Colton as well, though it was going to be more subtle, hence the shivering in the interrogation room back in Chapter 2. But that was all I really had for this idea, and it didn’t mesh well with the rest of the story, only showing up at certain moments without really driving the plot or characters forward. And that just didn’t sit right with me. I did consider cutting it altogether, but there was something inside urging me not to, that there was something here worth keeping, that it could work, even if I didn’t know how at the time.

Turns out, all I needed was time and inspiration from an unexpected avenue. I was reading about secret societies, esoteric knowledge, alchemy, as you do, and a common idea you find in these subjects is about the hidden knowledge, hidden potentials locked within the individual that can be accessed if one has the proper instruction and will. There it was. The missing piece of the item withdrawals. The items were keys that unlocked the dormant potential of an individual, but that wasn’t enough. The individual must further connect with the item, to truly accept and connect with it as an extension of one’s being. Otherwise, it would just be a push and pull, give and take relationship that would give power, but take it at the same time. Hopefully that makes at least some semblance of sense to you. It does for me, most of the time anyway.

With that, I understood the side effects and was able to better weave it into the main story. As a result, we got this whole chapter. The original plan was nine chapters, but I eventually told Randy that we would need one more, one dedicated to exploring this link between the items and the lamsters and how to overcome the negative side effects. So here it is. Though I’ve mentioned the inspiration from reading about the esoteric, none of this is directly pulled from any of those sources. Mainly due to my not having that good a grasp on these subjects. I get the gist of it, and everything else is just the imagination doing what it does. Hopefully it’s not too out there. I tried to keep things simple and a tad vague to keep things getting bogged down in expository mumbo jumbo, and to preserve some mystery.

There’s still more to come in the next pages about this esoteric angle, but we’ll save that for then. I’ve rambled enough.