It’s funny. I don’t remember any other authors on RoyalRoad who do afterwords for each arc/volume of their series. I came into this with a lot of inspiration from light novels, and almost all of those have afterwords for each volume. If you know any other series that does something like these, please put them in the comments.

Holy shit, what an arc. This is certainly where my writing changed the most in the entire history I’ve had writing EoF. And I think I’ve gotten better.

There’s a lot to talk about, but there are two characters I want to single in on, and they’re our two light attuned. North and David got the most development in this part, both in storyline and in character.

North obviously got a few things, including him figuring out more of his purpose and understanding more of what leadership meant. He was mostly just being nice to people in the first arc and coming up with creative solutions, but he’s actually having to work with people and figure out more parts of what leadership means. There’s another thing that changed, but I’ll talk about that after I talk about David.

David is my favorite character to write, and I think that shows. He’s both my villain and a second protagonist, and I wanted to give him depth. Not basic depth, but a genuine character with things he cares about and goals which are nuanced. His storyline is one of him losing his sense of full control over the situation as the conspiracy grows closer, and it will play a great part in the fourth arc. Some of that development also included making him possibly the most terrifying attuned in the series, which is saying something.

I played the long game with revealing his attunement, but it was pretty heavily foreshadowed. Maybe a bit too much, in hindsight, but I think it works. David’s power is meant to show what North could be, if he had gotten the training. Elm mentions the idea of lasers early on, but David takes that to the extreme and is basically wielding the power of the sun in his hands. It is a terrifying, brutal power that is just as efficient as the man himself. He’s technically working with the same tools as North, but his mind is built differently and he’s able to access them in different forms. He can’t control mana, but he can bend the world to his will through sheer power. North, on the other hand, got some unique power ups. His control over his mana got stronger, and his training with Cedric will help him, but that’s a part of it. However, with the help of Keagan, we finally get to see what the full capacity of a light attuned’s healing factor is. I’m really hoping the descriptions of stuff in those chapters wasn’t too much, but I wanted the fight to be brutal and messy.

And with that ending, with North summoning a magore knife… you’ll just have to wait and see. That was foreshadowed, if you were paying attention.

I think this builds into a sort of belief I have in not making my main cast too overpowered, especially North. From the start, I always viewed him as being in more of a support role, having to help others make big plays while he helps them out. I’ve been giving him more agency in combat as the story has gone along, but he’s always had to rely on others. I think that reliance is important in that it shows his willingness to believe that people can do good. Both our protagonists, David and North, believe that people can be good when working towards a greater cause. It’s just that their causes are antagonistic to one another.

There’s a few other characters I could talk about, but I think they are going to play a larger part in the next arc. Putting them through the forest of Corith put a lot of stress on them, and I think that led to some genuine growth in characters such as Alex and Sera. Both of them took on more important roles and became more willing to push forward for the sake of North. Elm took on more personal responsibility and grew into a better ally for North, which he needed.

Erin is worth noting because of the role she played in the story more as a part of David’s growth. If you couldn’t tell, I put a heavy emphasis on consent between the two of them because I think that humanizes their relationship more and makes it seem much more nuanced. A few people, specifically Lazie (thanks for the consistent engagement), assumed that Erin was going to die during this arc, which I find really funny.

The same also applied to Elm, my mentor character where they thought I would kill him. I find this rather funny. In my opinion, Edge of Freedom is not one of those stories like Game of Thrones which had the selling point of “no one is safe”. Which became really popular for a time as series used that to advertise how dangerous the world is by killing off characters willy-nilly. Shock value is very cheap, and can act as a crutch. I don’t want to use that crutch.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

But let’s talk politics! If you noticed, David’s arc has gotten more tied into politics. And that scene at the end is something I want to talk about as a sort of learning experience. The underlying political comparisons should be obvious, but what isn’t is the actual real world basis.

The Manchester School of politics is an economic and political theory that popped up in the early 19th century in Europe. In short, it believed that warfare could be replaced by economic trade. Since the world was more globalized, and news could be spread easily (relative to the time), the costs of war were more public. The costs of war are placed on the citizen, rather than the leader, and often puts a nation into economic misery. So, now that the populace was smarter and better understood the world stage, they would replace warfare with trade to maintain the balance of powers and avoid the suffering caused by war.

The problem was, there was still war in the 19th century. So the Manchesterian thinkers posed that what this new age of Laissez-Faire trade would create was a world without uncivilized warfare. Civilized nations wouldn’t go to war with each other, and even if they did, it was but a hiccup in the general system that would inevitably balance out as the nations returned to trading with each other to attain the same resources they would often need to go to war to acquire.

It’s a bit like an early form of globalism, as it pushed for trade and more international ties to be drawn rather than domination through warfare. The problem is that it was a failure, and that it didn’t work. The wars that did occur during the 19th century, including the ones which were rather uncivilized looking, had to be rationalized.

And then WW1 happened. To call that war civilized and say that it was somehow still maintaining the balance of powers would be a joke, and Manchesterian thought sort of fell to the wayside.

This ideology is sort of what Solomon was proposing. It’s flawed and very much utopian, and I see it sometimes in modern discourse and immediately begin groaning internally. Trust me, I do not like war, and also dislike Neo-Realist and Realist ideas about world politics. But Manchesterian thought is built on a foundation of colonialist ideals, and if it wasn’t very clear from one of the major themes of this story, I really don’t like colonialism.

I also want to talk about a few lore details that might be slightly unclear, but I can’t exactly clear up in the story.

Sol is the only continent in the world of Edge of Freedom. It’s about the size of Russia and China combined (maybe with a bit of Europe added on) but it is relatively small. That’s why the travel time from location to location isn’t super long. I will draw a map for the series sooner than later.

Second, time is basically the same as earth. So 12 months, 365 days. Am I doing this out of laziness because creating an entirely new time and dating system would be extremely hard? The answer may surprise you!

Third, and the funniest one, there is no coal or oil in this world. Because, and to put it very simply, there were no dinosaurs.

Another addendum about inspirations. A few people have noted how I use italics and bold font in order to emphasize things, and that I do it well. I was inspired by Infinite Dendrogram’s usage of those things, and I think I’ve done a fine enough job emulating it. You should read Infinite Dendrogram. Now.

I honestly think taking a break from this series helped my writing, even if it killed my viewership. I’m starting to slowly get it back, and that makes me happy. I even got a new cover, from the wonderful artist littleruby (link below). I genuinely believe that getting a new cover helped to boost my readership significantly. It looks absolutely amazing, and even contained foreshadowing for David’s attunement! Seriously, go check out the rest of her work and maybe even commission her.

Finally, we can look towards the future. I have no plans to change the release schedule of this series. I have a lot going on in my life and trying to do anything more than a release a week would fall apart rather quickly. We are entering the fourth arc, which I will continue, but I would like to spend some time on the side cleaning up parts of the first arc. The progression I’ve made as a writer was extensive, and I think the early parts of my story hold people back from getting deeper into the narrative.

That’s all for this afterword, but North’s story continues in…

ARC 4: CITY OF DUSK