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pietro

ICARIAN
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Posts posted by pietro

  1. The silence is getting louder, let us hope all is well in Icaria and hope this is not another year long hiatus, or worse!!!

    I've been reading the Jim Butcher books lately. The Dresden Files is quite good, a little disappointing to start but the writing tightened up well as the series progressed and the Dresden character seems to have developed quite well. I thought Codex Alera was better overall, one to re-read in a year or so.

  2. Chapter 26 is up at GA.

    It is certainly a cracker with a lot of the disparate threads being pulled together.

    I've given it a quick read and will give it a more thorough examination tomorrow. There is an awful lot of content there.

    The worrying thing is it could all be sewn up in 2 or 3 more chapters the speed it is going, lets hope I'm wrong, or if I'm right, there's another book to come!

    Well, I've read it three times now, very wide ranging and complex and leaves a handful of cliffhangers AAAAHHHHHH!

    I have a few quibbles, some dragon deaths don't seem (note the word 'seem') to have the correct effects, the one killed by Falk and Lannet in Everone and the one killed by the pantherling forces guarding the Slome swamps apparently had no discernable effects.

    If the mysterious elf taken in hand by the King is a Kandric sibling he must have been Kaylaria's first son, not Aster. Aster is 45 years old but the mystery elf is 51. I suppose it could be explained but there are no hints in the story to suggest anything. I suppose the age could be wrong and he was Aster's twin.

    I am still not happy with the Gambra situation, in Junsac she was apparently a respected mage but is everywhere else known as an evil Dark Mage. OK, she could have used another name in Junsac, but how many halfling legendary or master female mages are there likely to be in the area? OK it could be she wasn't local and therefore wasn't known in Junsac, not having done anything obviously evil there, but it doesn't seem quite right.

    Still, those niggles aside, it continues to be a compelling story. Hopefully there will be some more before too long.

  3. Chapter 26 is up at GA.

    It is certainly a cracker with a lot of the disparate threads being pulled together.

    I've given it a quick read and will give it a more thorough examination tomorrow. There is an awful lot of content there.

    The worrying thing is it could all be sewn up in 2 or 3 more chapters the speed it is going, lets hope I'm wrong, or if I'm right, there's another book to come!

  4. There are some notable, and improving, updates from chapter 18 on, so far. I wonder if there were updates in earlier chapters but those chapters were not actually re-uploaded, or the unedited chapters were uploaded again by mistake?

    Maybe we'll see something in the future or someone at Wolfsnest will say something.

    I may have found out the problem, there are TWO sets of files in the Kandric section at Wolfsnest. For example:

    http://www.wolfsnest.n40c.net/kyle arrons/Kandric saga/14.htm

    and,

    http://www.wolfsnest.n40c.net/kyle arrons/Kandric_saga/14.htm

    It is the last form, with the underscore between kandric and saga (Kandric_saga) that is the new version.

    Some of the links in the index page link to the new edit, some to the original page and some nowhere.

    Perhaps if someone here can contact whoever at Wolfsnest they can point this out, as far as I can see there is no contact link on the site.

  5. Some authors do their own editing and do okay with it. Then there's others who are so bad, I've quit reading the story.

    I don't know if Kyle uses an editor for Kandric, I suspect he does from dimly remembered comments here and there, but not all editors are necessarily competent :P

    Certainly if you get into reading a story it is difficult to edit it, almost as difficult as editing your own work.

    I must confess that I have kept a copy of this, and other works, stuff on the internet can disappear without trace and without warning, after all. With a quality work like Kandric I do in fact edit what I have retained, mainly for grammatical, spelling and typographic errors but also correcting obvious errors and some of the more tortuous paragraphs that leave me with a 'what!!!!' and require re-reading to make sense of on occasion. I also hate the red on black colour scheme as I did the white on brown it had at one time, although maybe that was something else. Black on white is my preference.

    I hasten to add that I am not criticising Kyle or his assumed editor in any way, should he read this, errors of a similar nature are not unknown even in published books.

    Like the others here, I will follow this story to the end, whatever the quality of the edit and however long it takes.

  6. Kyle is one of those authors that I rank up there with Jamie, Sequoyah Pendor, and Comicality as favorite online authors, but Kandric is the only story that I have stayed with even with only one chapter a year. Perhaps it should be that Seqouyah and Comicality rank up there with Kyle and Jamie.

    I second that :)

    I have begun re-reading and I am sorry to report that there seems to be very little 'updating' as far as the story goes. As far as I can see the only update in the first few chapters is the first line of the first chapter. There may be some editing but as to additional content or corrections to suspected errors, nothing I can see. :(

  7. Kyle has been a long time Hosted Author at Gay Authors and is one of the reasons Myr got interested in hosting stories. It is mainly because of the adult/youth scenes that the story doesn't appear publicly. Now with GA Stories, that may be changing. It will be posted with a strong warning.

    I've told people that if they can get past the adult/youth sections, they are in for a good story.

    When I know it's posted, I certainly post a link to it.

    In fairness the adult/youth aspects are, for the most part, allusion or implicit rather than explicit, and where such things are explicit it is usually, if not exclusively, necessary to the narrative, in other words, it is not gratuitous.

    That said, this is a very dark, ruthless and violent world with little regard for modern sensibilities, no punches pulled and very much in the cast of the common conception of the dark ages. Kyle's characters, as with all excellent writers, are very 'real', some are both truly heroic and consummately evil at the same time, as well as some truly noble and others purely evil, there are no cardboard cut-out characters or clichés, not even among the peripheral people.

  8. UPDATE:

    Kyle has updated the first 25 chapters and will be sending chapter 26 to Myr some time next week for posting at Gay Authors.

    Oh excellent news :D I had been keeping my fingers crossed for a New Year present as that seems to be Kyle's style with this story, checking every day since Christmas, and was just about to pass my hopes on to Summer.

    Updates for the other chapters is also excellent. This story has been in the writing for over ten years, after all, I am sure a lot of additional ideas have come to Kyle in that time. I am even more pleased that he has gone for updating rather than abandoning the story as so many other writers do when a story evolves beyond what they have already written, and not just internet writers either!

    Perhaps you will be kind enough, T, to let us know when the chapters are up as the GA update pages are currently useless.

    I have said it before, but I think both Jamie.wri and Kyle's stories are truly excellent, both eminently publishable (although Kyle's work probably wouldn't pass today's moral censorship as it stands, as he notes himself)

  9. It is one of the Black brothers that delivers the tooth from the Agramos tomb directly to Croal. I doubt that he would have allowed anyone but himself to create the Icarian embryo that became Nicklas. We know that Giovanni is a Royal Throne. We also know that Jamie as you have said, would be the only one to know who Giovanni is.

    The only clue we have is that when Jamie saw the results of the DNA scan of Giovanni confirming he was a Royal Throne he gasped in surprise at something he saw. We also know that Jamie had seen and kept a copy of the DNA map of Nicklas (or perhaps it was of Agromos), but I am guessing that Jamie's reaction is because the DNA from Giovanni matches that of Agromos enough that he would be directly and closely related to Nicklas even though they are completely different personalities.

    We know no one else could create an Icarian from scratch. We have been told categorically that Croal kept the secret of their creation to himself, others working on the Avionne project could only tinker with the genetics of Croal created embryos or maybe pre-embryos. Thus the likes of Jamie and Niklas must have been engineered by Croal.

    I think from what we have seen so far Icarians are generally randy and promiscuous as well as generally friendly so all kinds of partnership up to a full bond is possible.

    We do? I think all we have is rumor and innuendo. We know that all the rumours about Jamie and his affairs are false, we also know that all the rumours about Nicklas are also false. That proves that there are some good gossip mongers in Kuronos. In Jamie's case it is the Impressario's office that encourages those rumours. In fact, aside from the comments made in the Bronze Interlude where the Ghadar are camped outside of the city in which Loran's army is ensconced, we have nothing. There, all we have is wolf whistles and comments on what might be fun. Assuming what you propose is like saying that the Americanized version of "Queer as Folk" is an accurate representation of how gay men acted in the 1980's, when I know that it isn't. Most of that series is about the myth of what gay society is like. Its to bad people actually believe it.

    We know something about relationships that were made then torn apart because the pair were separated when they were sent or bought by different Dukes or Barrons. That is part of the discussion with Trio Chrysialis about Christophe. All that talk is about trying to avoid disunion when a mated pair were forceably separated.

    The bond I think is something different, more on the level of a Vulcan (a la star trek) bond, a permanent mental joining where the participants can almost share one consciousness, sharing a soul or however you want to put it. It is the tearing of this bond that causes disunion and potential suicide. But as I said before, sufficient need or responsibility could overcome it to some extent.

    I think it ii is a better idea to look closer to home and closer to biology her on earth. Macaw s. for instance, mate for life. Some species of Geese also mate for life.

    Don't agree. Several species mate for life and some will even pine to death after but they don't share a soul as 'mated' Icarians do. I think there is a bit of semantics involved here, a confusion with simple sexual mating and a much more intense bonding both using the term 'mate'.

    As to origins, from all we have read so far we can fairly assume Croal created Niklas, Giovanni and probably Jonathan. Why? Because all of these have non-standard, or maybe special would be a better word, DNA. We also know that he created Charles because Charles was the first icarian.

    I think the Icarian project as conceived by Croal and Jonas of Amodon was a subversive project from the beginning. From Croal's point of view it was a way of making up for the creation of the Kalorians which ultimately became a slave race. The Empire is attempting to do the same with the Icarirans, However, because of Croal and Jonas belief in the concept of complexity, the Icarian race is quite unpredictable. Some things are sort of hard wired, not much though. Everything except resistance to disease and inteligence is left up to the roll of the dice. Even the creation of Charlie and Jamie from the same DNA, didn't make two of the same Icarians.

    Again I don't see it that way, for normal Icarians, yes, but Jamie and Niklas and Charlie, and probably Jonathan and Giovanni, all the evidence is for very careful and precise engineering of specific traits and abilities.

    Who smuggled these boys into their respective niches, Niklas the Gahdar, Giovanni service and expedition at the Mondele and Jonathan who knows where? My betting is on the Farzetti. Although they have little mention in Jamie.wri's work so far, it is obvious they played a very important role behind the scenes. In fact I would guess that they were Croal's principal conspirators, giving him tentacles into every level of the empire.

    Croal knew about other conspiritors, but only enough to get what he wanted done. The reason that any revolution in that Empire worked was because they didn't know about each other. If one failed, another one was there to fill in the gap somehow.Also, remember that the Kalorians are the slaves and the servants of the Empire, they are always there in the background and assumed to be invisible, which enables them to do things like move Castor around the Empire until he's working at the Mondale. So moving Gioivani in place in Expedition and Service would not be beyond the capability of the Kalorian conspiricy.

    Who ever from the Empire (like Savaron Loka), or even Hippolito, who attempted to interfere and control the Icarians was in for a big surprise. Genetically they are as surprising as any new species we might find here on earth.

    My money is still on the Farzetti as the central conspirators.

    Well, we can't be expected to all agree. The greatest advantage the written word has over film is that we all interpret what we read differently. One person will see something fundamentally significant where another will see nothing and vice versa.

  10. How Jonathan came into being, we may never know unless it comes in a future chapter.

    Of course, the identity of the Oracle was kept secret to protect him. Not even Hippolito knew it and imagine his surprise that there is now two Red and Blacks that are now the head of a House.

    I'm thinking more in the lines of partnerships formed by Icarians. In our society, we have couples who have been together for years and consider themselves partners. Some places now allow it legally. Remember, Jamie includes a lot of different issues in today's society into this story.

    Niklas and Jamie seem to know that they are supposed to be together because as Nicklas says to Julius " .... its like he fits exactly a part of me that is missing!". So ceremony or not, there is something about the biology of the two that belong together,

    I think this was engineered into them, besides what was already there. We know from the history lessons we've had that Agramos loved de Valen, but never acted upon it. We know that Edmond Croal created Jamie and Charlie, so whoever created Niklas von Agramon, also created Giovanni and Jamie is the only one who knows Giovanni really is. No one knows who sent him to the school to eventually meet up with Jamie.

    I think from what we have seen so far Icarians are generally randy and promiscuous as well as generally friendly so all kinds of partnership up to a full bond is possible. The bond I think is something different, more on the level of a Vulcan (a la star trek) bond, a permanent mental joining where the participants can almost share one consciousness, sharing a soul or however you want to put it. It is the tearing of this bond that causes disunion and potential suicide. But as I said before, sufficient need or responsibility could overcome it to some extent.

    As to origins, from all we have read so far we can fairly assume Croal created Niklas, Giovanni and probably Jonathan. Why? Because all of these have non-standard, or maybe special would be a better word, DNA. We also know that he created Charles because Charles was the first icarian.

    Who smuggled these boys into their respective niches, Niklas the Gahdar, Giovanni service and expedition at the Mondele and Jonathan who knows where? My betting is on the Farzetti. Although they have little mention in Jamie.wri's work so far, it is obvious they played a very important role behind the scenes. In fact I would guess that they were Croal's principal conspirators, giving him tentacles into every level of the empire.

    Happy new year to one and all.

  11. Slowly pulling the cap off the pen, the ühn•ki once more read the document he was about to sign. Placing pen to paper, the ühn•ki stopped and Darion was surprised to see his leader's hand shake slightly, but the tremor lasted for only a second. Carefully, the ühn•ki signed his name in the delicate, elaborate cursive fashion that marked his distinctive style of writing, also copied from an earlier era. Returning the cap to the pen and placing it back in the desk drawer, his eyes scanned the document for a third time before he picked it up and handed it back to Darion.
    As he made the trip back down the long gallery he knew that his very first action when he returned to his office would be to formally contact the Prince of Imperialas Savaron Loka, while Paulus, following Darion's orders, would call up a 'toon of Imperial shock troops and immediately dispatch them to the tip of Isewier and Villa Mare Vista, the home of the retired Gold Glass scientist Edmond Croal. Looking down at the bottom of the paper, he saw a bloody fingerprint and a few smudges of the ühn•ki's blood next to his leaders neatly signed signature:

    Charles Roegier.

    This is what we have on the signing of the document.

    We also have this on the destruction of the hov.

    As the tiny craft lifted off, Jamie, standing on the skywalk, watched it ascend into the sky. So too did Edmond Croal from his study. From two different locations in the villa, both Croal and his son stood watching the craft until it flew out of sight. What would have surprised both of them, had they been able to continue to follow the hov's progress, was how suddenly twenty minutes after its departure from Villa Mare Vista, it vanished from existence, blown from the sky by a battery of ghoster cannon from an imperial battle hov.

    Well, yes, but those events aren't linked. As I recall, the destruction of the hov after visiting Croal was a long time before Charles signed the warrant that initiated the raid on villa Mare Vista and Croal's death.

    What is more interesting is that the hov was destroyed by an imperial battle hov, the assumption being it was destroyed because it was known by the empire to be involved in no good. However, if there had been suspicions about what the hov visiting Croal had been doing I doubt the empire would have simply shot it down, every effort would have been made to secure those on board in a suitable condition for questioning. More likely this was a cover up to destroy evidence, or possibly someone compromised, or maybe for another reason altogether. If this was an official act of the empire the persons ordering the destruction of the hov and its supposed passengers could have known nothing about its journey and the visit to Croal, if they had the game would have been up at that point. The empire wasn't too worried about having proof, suspicion alone would be enough to act, especially against someone outside the sphere of power as Croal certainly was. However, if it wasn't the empire behind it then those giving the order probably did know what it had been doing and didn't want anyone else to know, which points to one of the resistance groups, most likely the one Charles was leading.

    Interesting. I wonder if it will ever be explained.

  12. The Red and Black that was in Edmond Croal's office that day was not Charles. Several minutes after the hov left Villa Mare Vista, and was well out of sight, was destroyed. We also changed time for a short period to find Charles signing the order, then switched back.

    I'm not sure we can surmise that the Icarian was not Charles. I'm not saying it was but just that since the hov is destroyed out of sight of anyone we know of who was watching, almost anything could have happened within even 3 minutes. Look how fast Renaud lands and restarts his hov while dropping off Jamie at the power generator! We also do not know if the Icarian in Croal's office was the pilot of the hov or if he had another person in the hov acting as pilot.

    All we know is that Jamie saw a Red & Black Icarian entering a hov, then the hov taking off immediately. The flight back to Kuronos would have taken over an hour which gives ample time for someone to have landed, gotten out of the hov, put the hov back into the air or changed hovs mid-trip. Conspiricy theory I know, but isn't this what the Empire is best at?

    This is one other incident that has Jamie.wri signature written all over it as a huge unsolvable puzzle designed to keep us wondering.

    cheers,

    dioscuri

    Yes I pointed out some time ago reference to this incident that hovs could be pre-programmed to fly.

    Also I am not sure that we saw Charles sign the order to destroy the hov, I won't look as I am determined not to re-read anything until the final edit arrives. I only recall him reluctantly giving the order to raid Villa Mare Vista when Loka intervened and Croal was murdered.

  13. One of the things I've wondered about is, when did Jamie and Charles meet exactly. To my knowledge, they haven't met yet in the story and can only assume they will be meeting soon. We do know that Charles has known about Jamie for a very long time, but didn't know about Charlie.

    We do know Charles had a mate at one point, but I think the big questions is, were they a mating pair? If they weren't, that could explain why he doesn't appear to suffer disunion. The rose bush in his garden was set up as memorial to his partner. What makes me think of this comes from one of the chapters after Christophe's death where Jamie finds out from one of the Trio that he loved Christophe and he refused to mate due to being in the chair.

    Jonathan could be Charles brother biologically, or in an adopted from. Jonathan could also be from the experimentation that was done on vision which failed, but had an unusual side effect in which he was still able to see, just differently from everyone else. We've seen this demonstrated in Book 1 during Nic's birthday celebration.

    Perhaps Gold Glass was trying to enhance the Red and Blacks and Jonathan was the end result.

    I think Jamie and Charles first 'real' meeting must be in the chapters to come. Of course, Charles may have been the Icarian visitor to Croal or Jamie might have seen him, without being introduced, at one of the various functions he attended, I am sure anyone else there would have been more than eager to fill Jamie in on Charles' power and supposed evil, certainly Miro and the other Gahdar would know all about him. And you know what irrepressible gossips they are :D .

    I don't think disunion inevitably leads to madness and death, that outcome is just very likely. I am sure that at one point Jamie asks Niklas to fight disunion should anything happen to Jamie and protect Charlie. Given a great enough responsibility or need I think it can be overcome.

    The question of Jonathan is very difficult. Jonathan's condition is almost certainly not accidental or a by-product of a failed experiment. Like Jamie, Niklas and Charlie he must have been created outside of official empire view and like them was created for a specific purpose with specific attributes in line with Croal and Jonas' plans. Indeed it would be very Croal-like for Jonathan to be created as Charles' genetic brother in order to ensure he always had powerful protection, just as he did with Jamie (the shield) and Charlie (the weapon). The interesting question is where has Jonathan been.

    I suppose he could have been a 'failed' experiment in that it is fairly obvious there were people in Gold Glass who actively assisted Croal and the resistance and his real 'adjustments' were done secretly with the failed experiment as cover. After that he would have been spirited away and hidden while officially terminated. Alternatively Charles may have been allowed to keep him if he was a true genetic brother, even if a failed experiment, but given the attitude of the empire I think that unlikely, certainly if that was part of a plan to keep Jonathan safe it would have been a very foolhardy one, not likely to succeed.

    Also remember the empire's watchword when creating avionnes was perfection, imperfect production was terminated as happened to those unfortunate to be born blind in the vision experiments.

    Let us hope there some answers in the not too distant future.

  14. I'm currently working with an author who is doing a fanfic version of this story, with Kyles permission. I won't say who that author is since it has not appeared online yet.

    I take it since a year has gone by this never came to fruition. Pity really, the world of Kandric is a very interesting construct.

    P

  15. It is more of a 'filler' than anything else

    I think perhaps I was a little harsh in my dismissal there, as usual the multiple plot layers and brief allusions to other plot lines require several readings to really appreciate all the information in there.

    For such a complex story there are few plot errors, and those are mostly minor. The only plot line which appears to have a glaring error and has bugged me for several chapters concerns Gambra. The story suggests that she is a well known mage in Junsac, not suspected of any dark affiliation, but is known and sought after as a totally evil dark mage in Black Rapids. While there is obviously no friendship, at least historically, between Vondum and the Watch I would have thought that knowledge of such a powerful and evil creature would have been common as the two cities obviously have regular contact.

    There are, I suppose, various ways around this, that she was not known as 'Gambra' in Junsac and no one twigged she was that person or that the name was known in Black Rapids but nothing else. However, in my reading of the story, neither of these or any other possibility I have thought of would satisfactorily explain this apparent error. Aside from that, with a little judicious editing I have always believed that this is an eminently publishable story. http://thetalon.ipbhost.com/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif

  16. Kyle Aarons has posted chapter 25 at both GA (secretly) and the Wolfsnest. :)

    It is more of a 'filler' than anything else, expanding on Kandric's antecedents, dragon history and lore (including a neat 'circle event'), exposes the relative geographic positions of the main characters and tidies up a few loose threads.

    Unfortunately Kandric doesn't actually get back into Bloody Rock, and we don't see any more of the mysterious elf (whose response to the magical emanations created by Kandric's felling of the two dragons indicates ............ I won't spoil it if you haven't worked it out) taken under the King's wing and there is little real 'action'.

    Still, with a lot of 'dead wood' out of the way chapter 26 should be much more exciting. Hopefully it won't be too many months in coming.

    :)

  17. This story was commenced several years ago and was updated about a year ago with two additional chapters taking it up to 22.

    There was a two year gap between updates and I had hoped that the author was going to complete it.

    I thought that this was a very well written piece, although some of the content is definitely politically incorrect in this time, with a good plot and characterisation, very well paced in the main and definitely one to hold the attention. Well enough in fact for me to still be ocaissionally looking for updates.

    Does anyone else remember this?

    More importantly, does anyone know if there is any hope for it to continue? :mellow:

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