... and now, the conclusion

Chapter 23 is now finished, and is the longest chapter of the story. The Pages of History. It's just a hair longer than chapter 3 was, at 28K words and some change. Chapter 3 was so long because it acted as the big introduction to the Thief universe for readers who have never played or heard of Thief. 23 on the other hand just needed alot of space to wrap things up to my satisfaction. All of the sections are fairly short, from 500 words to no more than 3K words (though most tend to be under 1K) so we bounce back and forth between the principals very quickly. Sheam gets the most page time of course (about 1/3rd of the chapter), given that her plot's climax was absent from 22. There's still a few lingering things left hanging at the end of this chapter to keep it feeling too much like the very last pages of the book, so I am not going to flake out and say to heck with 24 even though I could easily end the story here.

I've kept a copy of the original COT at the bottom of my main rewrite document (as tiny black text) and delete things from it as the rewrite overtakes it. There's still a few sections of tiny black text that haven't been removed yet.

I'm going to take a break before continuing though, probably saving the finish line for this weekend. I expect Chapter 24 to be fairly short.

... clearing the hump

Chapter 3 marks the transition from introductory elements into the meat of the story (and it is the longest chapter until chapter 7). Though it and 4 are technically still setting the stage, with the main action not properly beginning until Chapter 5, 3 is when things start to get complicated, and when the character's normal lives (if they have one) began to be disrupted by the plot. It is also the first chapter that goes to great lenghts to illustrate the setting of The City beyond the scope of the principal characters, but from a decidedly COT/COSAS point of view. The first section of it, "A Matter of Economy," has been released to the public in the form of the Mission X manual, back in August, so everyone can see what I mean by this. That's far from everything, however. Though we catch a peek of the Hammerites in Chapter 2, this one is where we dive head first into The Order, though it is not nessecarily what one would expect from Dark Project (or even Deadly Shadows!) I digress. Chapter 3's has been sent out to the critics, and with a little energy and luck, 4 won't be far behind.