So! In 2013 I started The Solstice War, the beginning of my webnovel journey. I am going to be honest and say I’m a little bit embarrassed about it looking back. But it did teach me a lot of valuable lessons and I am to this day sad that I did not finish it. So today, I wanted to write post about where it would have gone– I doubt this will give fans closure, in fact it may be annoying to read about all these grandiose plans that will never see fruition. It certainly frustrates me a little– but at the same time, getting to tell someone is liberating and gives me closure.
Before we start, some disclaimers.
The Solstice War had so many subplots and characters– I am just not going to be able to talk about them all. Several of the characters, I have literally forgotten their names. Some other characters, I was rapidly losing interest in them as I wrote. So I will talk about any subplots I remember– for the subplots, many of them were not fully planned, and their existence in future volumes was entirely contingent on whether they could be used to break up certain events and assist the variety of moods and the pacing. It wasn’t well organized. I basically just did subplots because it felt right to break certain events up. I felt like, a war that is only viewed through one perspective, where only one person experiences things, doesn’t make any sense as a war. So there need to be more lives playing out, and that means subplots.
Secondly, obviously this post will not help you whatsoever if you did not read all of The Solstice War that existed because I’m not gonna summarize things you can just go read.
Third, I’ll be referring to the armies, other than Ayvarta and Nocht, as their real world nationalities and not the fantasy names used in the book. I don’t like the fantasy names I came up with for The Solstice War. Most of them are AWFUL. I tried to get way too cute and weird with some of them because I wanted to distance this world from the real world, but they’re too silly. Which is why I Emptiness Effigied has entirely new names for everything. Have I mentioned Emptiness Effigied is basically kinda The Solstice War’s successor? You should read that one whenever I manage to finish more than a 20k word preview.
Anyway.
The Solstice War left off on a story arc about the air war over Solstice.
The Nocht Federation’s troops were still struggling along a line of contact with Solstice’s markedly inferior forces at the edge of the Solstice Desert, with the immensely hot climate affecting their combat ability. The ungodly terrible summer weather, a TSW analogue to Russia’s harsh winters, stymied Nocht’s advance and even damaged some of their equipment. With this in mind, Nocht began to shift toward a doctrine of terror bombing the capital Solstice, despite Lehner’s misgivings that his beloved air force might suffer as much damage as it had during the Battle of Bada Aso. On the communist side, the main air war characters were Homa Baumann and Sahana Sheba of the Vulture Squadron.
When we left them off they were doing an intelligence gathering mission. This mission would have led Solstice to discover that the Nocht Federation knew about Agarthicite and that Agarthicite was on the way to safe exploitation. Nocht had also managed to survey some Agarthicite-containing locations in Solstice by inserting paradropped agents, whom were supposed to have met up with the front-line– except that the front was stuck at the edge of the desert, leaving them stranded. Anyway, this created something of a clock in the back of character’s heads as they learned what Agarthicite was. Initially only important characters like Kansal and Madiha would have really known the whole truth about it.
Madiha especially would be affected by the discovery of Agarthicite, putting immense stress on her to do something about the war. However, at the moment, all she could do was organize air missions with Vulture, which she does. Vulture would have gone on a few more missions, including a close air support mission escorting bombers– I had a VERY FUNNY reference to MODERN WARFARE 2 here by calling the bombers Honey Badger Squadron that I am sure EVERYONE would have loved. At any rate, if you know me, you know that I worry a lot about pacing and also about like, the believability of things. So for me, it was necessary to have several missions with Vulture to show the war being “carried out” even if the missions only largely advanced subplots. I felt it would have been seen as “fake” to just quickly escalate without some material between. Homa and Sheba would have had a few moments where they almost got close and almost understood each other, and a few more where they butted heads; there would have been a Mannan focused mission where her engineering skills mattered more; a mission about a french traitor that would have cast doubts on Marcille and on Solstice’s non-communist allies, which the cast would have to come to grips with and discover her hidden depths; a mission about the Bedouin inspired people of the Solstice desert who did not necessarily agree with the communist government, but were still subjects of the state, showing both some of the thick-headedness of the Solstice authorities but also some of the possibility of respecting their way of life amid both war and revolution.
Eventually, the main plot catches back up. Von Drachen, having wrested control of the shambolic forward air command of the Nocht forces, decides to put trust in Andrea Lockheart, the test pilot who briefly outmaneuvers Homa in a more advanced jet trainer than Homa’s ramjet fighter. Von Drachen accelerates work on a specific plan that the previous commander had dismissed– using experimental missiles to try to damage Solstice’s mighty walls, delivering a shock to the population and potentially setting up an invasion route into the otherwise impregnable city. He has Andrea’s jet trainer armed, and assigns her as a trump card to the squadrons that will be covertly escorting the bombs. The plan is to launch an air raid as a cover far ahead of the bombs, tying up Solstice’s air interception.
Vulture sorties to fight off what they perceive as only an air raid, with Homa once again virtuosically killing several people in her ramjet fighter, when the communist’s air radars and spotting stations see something immensely fast approaching. Madiha realizes that only Homa could possibly intercept a jet-powered aircraft, and Homa is given the task of intercepting and destroying each missile. She manages to destroy several of them while everyone is biting their nails, but Andrea ambushes her when she attacks the last missile, and Homa is shot down and crashes into a river and is swept away, while the last missile strikes the walls of Solstice and makes a hole. Andrea retreats along with the few remnants of Nocht’s air raid. Vulture is devastated by the loss of Homa– Sheba is beside herself and demands to go out again and search for her, only to learn that Vulture is one of the few remaining interception squadrons left, with the air raids having cost them all dearly. Between the breached wall, the immense damage being done to their air groups, and the news that Japan’s fleet is currently battling the combined Russian-French-Ayvartan forces in the far northeastern front of Ayvarta (this would’ve had its own book with its own characters, but we won’t get into that– I am was insane when I was planning all this.)
Needless to say it’s a very dark day for Solstice and nobody is taking it well.
However, Homa did not die. This next sequence would have been the centerpiece of the story arc for me, I had planned this for a long time. In a series of chapters titled “Journey” with an incrementing number, Homa would have survived and trekked through the desert hoping to get back to Solstice. The chapters would have had a certain phantasmagoric quality to them– I wanted it to be uncertain whether anything she saw was actually happening and I wanted things to be sort of metaphorical and elucidating of not only Homa’s feelings but the feelings of Ayvarta, the land, and maybe even Aer, the world, about the war. Obviously I can’t convey these things here– they would have been stylistic. Anyway.
Homa’s aircraft would have washed up on a riverbank, and she miraculously survives with minor injuries. She grabs as much of her survival kit as she can, and spots a motorcycle troop of the Nocht Federation doing long range recon and infiltration– she attacks them with her survival SMG and manages to kill them, but not before she discovers they had been hunting local animals for food. However, their motorcycles are shot to bits during the firefight, and she won’t be able to escape on them– she’s destroyed a potential tool and must bitterly deal with the consequences. She realizes that Nocht might have been following the river up and decides to stay away from it. With limited means to survive, Homa travels through the desert on foot. Suffering from the heat, she spots during the day a species of fantastical cute rodent oomfie that hides under little rocky outcroppings, and from them, Homa learns to hide during the day and move at night. In the cold darkness, and away from the city, she can see the night sky so clearly, and she would have wept and felt anger that her whole life was robbed from her– first from the accident that disabled her and then from the war and her enlistment. She wonders if in another life, she could have become an astronomer or studied nature or done anything else. If she could have looked at this sky with different eyes.
Homa would have had several strange travails. She would have fallen in a hole and hurt herself lightly, and found herself in the presence of an underground vein of purple crystal that nobody had found before due to it being in the middle of nowhere. She would have talked to the crystal and learned of its desires– to devour everything in the world, converting all matter into energy. Terrified, she would have left it where it was. She would have seen a bombed-out Bedouin encamptment with nothing left, and had to hide from a Nocht air raid, feeling anger and helplessness and a desire to return to the sky for revenge. She would have seen one of the little rodents who taught her to hide, and shared her food with it. It would have followed her– eventually a small family of these creatures would have assisted Homa with food and even led her to water from a cactid plant. Homa feels a brief sense of family from her travels with the rodents until at one point, a large predatory creature attacks the animals. Homa, with a firearm, could easily defend them but– a part of her realizes that she is an intruder in this place, in this moment. She’s like Nocht’s bombs, like Nocht’s invasion– the predator is just another hungry animal, and she’s someone dispensing what she thinks is justice without a care for what this place needs, for what the inhabitants of this land want.
She stays her hand, and the rodents manage to escape from the predator, but are no longer by her side. The predator goes on its own way, and heartbroken and enervated, Homa follows it. At night, the predator returns to a den where it has its own family to feed. Homa feels ashamed of herself that she wanted to shoot it. She truly doesn’t understand how this ecosystem operates and wonders if she understood even how other human beings live, or what she herself wants. She sits at the edge of the den, helpless, with dwindling supplies and no means to sustain herself. The predator goes out on more time and seems to wait for Homa to move again. Following it, she finds her over way over a hill, and is astounded to see in the distance the walls of Solstice– she falls to her knees and has a screaming meltdown.
Had anything gone different, had she made any different decisions, she might have never seen home again. She was on such a knife’s edge but she survives, and her mind reels at the prospect. She is disgusted with herself and how she acted before, relieved to be home, and with a renewed appreciation for her life and what she can do, she wants to fly again.
Homa is eventually rescued and reunited with Sheba, who had been succumbing to the self-destructive behaviors she chastised Homa for. They would have had some kind of romantic moment and come to an understanding. Homa would have told Sheba she no longer wants to die and that she wants to fight to protect Ayvarta, because the world is so much bigger than herself, and that she wants to see more of it, understand more, and for that, both the world and herself have to survive this war. Sheba feels that she wants to see the world with Homa too and can no longer disguise that she developed feelings for Homa over their time together. More than just reconciling, the two begin to see a possible future together.
While Homa had been gone, Nocht has attacked several more times, but their missiles have a high mechanical failure rate and Vulture managed to develop tactics for non-jet fighters to attack them– albeit, with very tight timing. In addition, Madiha managed to politically displace the manufacturer of Homa’s jet with an upstart engineering firm that has a better concept, and thus gets Homa an aircraft upgrade not reliant on the unstable ramjet. Vulture receives better aircraft and becomes the premier ace squadron of the communist air force.
Despite Von Drachen’s best efforts, the air war is not going particularly well in the eyes of Nocht’s leadership. They want results, and the front is not moving fast enough. In the height of summer, more Nocht soldiers are dying of dehydration and sickness. In desperation, the forward air command is taken from Von Drachen and personally managed from the rear strategic HQs, since all forward commanders are seen as lacking. Von Drachen is returned to combat command at the front, leaving Andrea with some parting words from the big ally of all women. The new command puts together a final, enormous air raid pulling out all the stops, including a newly deployed wunderwaffe– an even bigger version of the artillery cannon bombers used earlier in the story arc, this time called Mjolnir. Mjolnir is equipped with jet missiles which are fired vertically at the ground from high altitude. Mjolnir’s target is the Prajna cannons inside Solstice. By firing a missile into the cannon platform, the hope is to hit the magazines and completely destroy them. Between the wall breach and the destruction of the cannons, it would cripple Solstice in the event of a siege, or so they think.
Solstice’s allies decrypt Nocht’s messages and discover the weapon before it can be used. There will be one major issue for interception, which is that Mjolnir can fly much higher than any of their aircraft can. Manan and Agni work on pressure modifications for Vulture’s aircraft so they can fly up to intercept Mjolnir. On the Nocht side, Andrea receives a proper squadron to lead to escort Mjolnir, but they are all men, and none of them respect her. This contrasts the communists, who don’t care about such things, and despite Andrea’s sterling record and chance to prove herself, she is still not respected. At any rate, with the stage set, the two sides have a titanic clash over the skies of Solstice, with Homa and Andrea having an air duel in equivalent machinery. The difference comes down to their squadrons– Sheba assists Homa and Andrea is abandoned as her men do whatever they want in the sky. Andrea is killed, and Mjolnir’s escorts are picked off. Finally the way to the behemoth is open.
Mjolnir is enormous with multiple flak turrets, and heavily armored for an aircraft. Homa’s squadmates discover that the turrets are vulnerable to attack and for lack of other targets begin blasting them, which stresses Mjolnir’s airframe. Mjolnir is forced to accelerate the timetable for its attack, and in their haste, the underside hatch is both open too early and also stuck open. As Mjolnir approaches to attack, Homa sees the underside hatch stuck open and realizes that while its possible to attack it, it would be immensely dangerous. Taking a deep breath, she resigns herself. She wants to live, but she is now willing to die for something “bigger than herself”– rather than throwing away her life out of bitterness and self hatred, she has gained the courage to sacrifice herself for the cause. Homa attacks the Mjolnir and inflicts catastrophic damage, and even manages to survive the run– but the Mjolnir manages to shoot off one missile. Homa dives after it, again essentially ready to forfeit her life. She manages to destroy it, and makes a miraculous recovery, her aircraft skidding across a street in Solstice. She is rescued by bystanders who hail her as a hero.
Mjolnir is destroyed, the day is saved, and Nocht’s forward air command essentially gives up on their air campaign. Lehner is outraged at the cost incurred by the forces for how little benefit was gained. With the air command completely discredited, Lehner puts all of his faith on the ground forces once again, with Haus and Von Drachen proposing a major offensive employing new forces: the supporting army of Italian elves who landed in Ayvarta in Book 2, as well as traitor divisions from the newly-formed puppet democracy, the Republic of Ayvarta. Von Drachen is given command of both his crack Blue division as well as the ROA 7th and 10th Divisions to form a new corps. There is an immediate problem in that the ROA divisions are completely unmotorized while the Blue division is very mobile, but Von Drachen has no choice but to make the best of it as he has no leeway for additional requests.
Madiha, meanwhile, organizes her own corps with a few quirky division commanders. The only notable one I remember is Santapena-De La Rosa, who would’ve been the boneheaded ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK type commander and therefore fun. There were like two other guys there, but I can’t remember their names or care. Santapena-De La Rosa would recur in my work and those other guys did not. At any rate, Madiha is initially not allowed by Kansal to do anything more than recon, and is not allowed to use her full forces as the other divisions have to do training, and another general commands the major frontline troops. This vexes Madiha especially because Kansal is only doing it to protect her out of vague sentimentality.
The front line begins to push closer to Solstice. Kansal’s current frontline officers are no good, but she is still hesitating. Eventually, Madiha is assigned to reconnoiter a part of the front at Khet in western Solstice but to avoid combat if she can. During recon, Gulab Kajari and Charvi Chadgura accidentally sneak too far into enemy lines and discover camps set up by the Italian 5th Corps, who are holding a long line on the left of Nocht’s front. Khet is a low intensity sector, which is why Nocht entrusted it to the elves, whose combat potential they believe to be very limited. Gulab and Chadgura return to Madiha and report their findings. Madiha organizes more recon missions and quickly discovers that the Italian 5th Corps’s camps have enormous holes– each camp is too far away from its neighbors. Realizing the potential here, Madiha splits her forces: one regiment infiltrates the gaps to get behind the elven camps, while the other two regiments position themselves to attack from the front.
Disobeying orders, Madiha commences the Khet Offensive, a major turning point in the battle for Solstice. Her infiltration groups attack each camp of the 5th Corps from behind, while strong mobile groups with tanks attack from the front. The Elves panic– they begin to report the numbers of Ayvartans erroneously as they believe themselves to be completely surrounded by a Corps. In reality, Madiha is only fielding three regiments, which is one division. Many of the camps surrender, having been caught unprepared, while others fight poorly and are defeated. Madiha’s loses are minimal as the surprise attacks prove wildly effective. Essentially, with one division in a recon posture, Madiha captures the entire Corps, with tens of thousands of prisoners and an enormous hole in the Nocht lines. When news of the Khet Offensive reaches Solstice, Kansal is furious. Madiha requests the release of the other two divisions in her corps, which she also personally trained, so they can reinforce her.
With the situation in absolute chaos for Nocht, Von Drachen takes initiative in a rapid counterattack to free the elves, most of whom have given up fighting and been disarmed, though Von Drachen is unaware of this. His intelligence, Nocht’s intelligence, is that a Corps has surrounded the Elves– not a single division. Madiha prepares to defend, knowing Nocht has to do something but not necessarily what. The stage is set for the rivals to fight.
Von Drachen’s Blue Division starts its attacks during a sandstorm, with the ROA 7th and 10th divisions for support. Von Drachen hopes to use the storm to surprise Madiha. However, the sandstorm proves as annoying as it is helpful, as many of his fighting elements in the ROA divisions are unable to take advantage of the cover and get lost in the weather due to their inexperience. The ROA troops also have little spirit and most were conscripted into service of the puppet government and do not share Nocht’s anticommunist drive– but they’re what Von Drachen’s got to work with. Madiha manages to defend against Von Drachen’s initial attack, and stages a limited counterattack after realizing herself the weakness of the ROA 7th Division on Von Drachen’s flank during the previous battle. She’s outnumbered, but realizes they might not know that because of the elven reports from the start of the Khet Offensive. Madiha uses her armored troops to hit and run the positions of the foot troops of the ROA 7th Division and intimidate them. Hammered by the best trained of Ayvarta’s armored forces, the demoralized and unmotivated Republic of Ayvarta troops rout. Von Drachen is briefly forced to back off and requests reinforcements while reorganizing the ROA troops, assigning some of his trusted Nocht officers to command them.
He does not receive reinforcements, but the ROA 10th Division reignites their own advance, afraid of what fate might befall them as traitors if they fail. Despite their grim situation, the traitor Republic of Ayvarta is all they have now, and the communists will never forgive them for taking up arms against their own country for a puppet. Their excessive spirit and recklessness take Madiha by surprise and they manage to make some headway. Von Drachen throws his Blue Division in with them. Madiha is heavily pressured– she has way less troops than Von Drachen. However, in a moment of TACTICAL HYPE AND AURA that I would have spent 10000 words setting up, she executes a revolving door maneuver– essentially, she manages to retreat in such a way that it goads the inexperienced but rowdy ROA 10th Division into extending themselves until they are semi-encircled and Von Drachen has to save them. Von Drachen, still unaware of how precarious Madiha’s position is, since the encircled elves reported an entire Corps had encircled them, is overcautious of playing into “her hand.” Without support or accurate intelligence, he simply has to keep playing games.
While Von Drachen continues to not receive reinforcements, a difference would have been highlighted once again between the two positions– Madiha receives her reinforcements, because she has earned the support and trust of her army, while Von Drachen is disdained by his own. With her whole Corps, the playing field becomes leveled again. While Von Drachen wants to have a final decisive confrontation, his own best troops against Madiha’s best, his rival has other ideas. Recalling her battles with the ROA 7th Division, Madiha launches a renewed offensive and orders her troops to selectively target the ROA 7th Division.
Her forces pin the ROA 7th Division, drive a wedge between the Blue Division and the 7th, and bring to bear the firepower, armor and flexibility of the new Ayvartan Hobgoblin tanks. The Blue Division is unable to break through Madiha’s defending infantry in time to salvage the situation. The ROA 7th Division is driven to surrender and completely destroyed, and the ROA 10th Division’s morale is finally broken enough that they can’t hold their positions. Von Drachen’s flanks crumble under the pressure, and he is threatened with encirclement. Despite almost seeing a gap in Madiha’s center, he is unable to exploit it. Cursing the fact that he was only a few kilometers away from retaking Khet (and never knowing both that the Elves’ intelligence was totally wrong, and that the 5th Corps was completely destroyed and not waiting for him there at all) Von Drachen is finally forced to completely retreat.
The Khet Offensive is a complete success, with Madiha destroying tens of thousands of Nocht troops with a fraction of her own and completely throwing open the left flank of the Nocht advance. Solstice is emboldened and counterattacks begin across the entire front. Madiha would exploit the weakness of the ROA and Elven troops one more time in the Solstice Desert Offensive, which would result in not only the throwing back of the Nocht frontline away from Solstice, but in the death of Field Marshall Haus, the architect of Nocht’s ground war, during a ferocious multi-week tank battle between Nochtish elements including Von Drachen, and Ayvartan ones including Madiha. By this point, the differences are evident– Von Drachen fancies himself a better commander than Madiha but he has no support and despite his cleverness, he can’t beat her without resources. Meanwhile Ayvarta is ascendant in terms of production and has recruited massive new armies. Dispirited, Von Drachen allows Haus’s HQ to be exposed during the fighting and allows him to be killed as a sort of petty revenge for his lack of faith as well as what Nocht has done to him generally. This is probably where we would have found out Von Drachen’s past as “Raul,” a republican insurgent with burgeoning anarchist sympathies who has since gone where the wind blows. But the wind is no longer blowing– he is stuck working for Nocht now and can’t flip again.
During the Desert battles, Von Drachen would have been given command over Aatto, who by then would have recovered enough to fight again. Despite her power, she would have failed to assassinate Madiha once again because Yanyu Zhuge of the Chinese communists would have used her own wind warlord powers to help fend her off, again. There would have been a subplot where Yanyu helps Madiha to stabilize her own powers by essentially feeding oxygen to her flame, so it doesn’t eat into her self as much and instead eats Yanyu for a bit instead. She would have maybe taught this to Parinita too but Parinita doesn’t have wind powers so it would probably been a point of tension since Madiha would probably not have wanted her wife to give up her life force so Madiha can shoot a beam better. Anyway, there would have continued to be these supernatural moments in the middle of the military stuff as usual.
At any rate, the Khet Offensive and the ensuing Desert Offensive would have been successful for Ayvarta. Nocht would have been pushed back to the edge of the desert, resetting their progress for the entire year and losing a dozen divisions to boot. Despite an angry dog woman, a mysterious tricky gay dude, and probably a bunch of wunderwaffe, they are not able to recover the momentum until Ayvarta exhausts their own. All of this is kinda/sorta the Moscow winter offensive of ’41 with some Operation Compass/Battleaxe stuff.
Nocht freezes the front at the edge of the desert and pauses to reorganize. Von Drachen is promoted despite everything, as the command must bitterly acknowledge his effectiveness, and with the loss of Haus, will need a new visionary. Von Drachen, however, believes he is now presiding over the slow unwinding of their situation. They hear grim news from the Northern area– Solstice and their allies managed to destroy the Japanese Combined Fleet in an outrageous naval battle, and Japan’s attempted invasion of Ayvarta’s Naval HQ in the north completely failed. With their allies and puppets completely failing them, and Lehner and the political leadership of Nocht continuing to demand unrealistic results, for the first time, things are looking grim for the once ascendant Nocht Federation in their unjust war.
Ayvarta, meanwhile, is celebrating their first truly decisive victory, earned entirely through conventional force of arms and the strategies and tactics available to them. Madiha is promoted once again. Kansal slaps her but begrudgingly must admit that she has to rely on Madiha once again, just as she had to rely on her strange abilities when she was a child. This would have been something of a metaphor about generations– you know, the old sending the young to war type stuff. Kansal has her place, and Madiha has hers– it would have been useless for a political idol like Kansal to micromanage the war, she’s needed with the people as a dictator. The two of them would have had a talk and come to an understanding, not fully dissolving the tension but putting it on pause. However, their relationship as a sort of mom and daughter would have kinda been understood to be irrecoverable at this point.
Various other characters would have had moments here. Gulab and Charvi more than likely; probably the artillery characters if I remembered any of them; certainly the Vultures who would have shown up again during the Desert stuff to do close air support. When I was writing Book 3, I was already thinking that I really didnt care about writing any of the men anymore except Von Drachen who kinda had to be there by that point, but like, there were a lot of characters who I was kinda contractually obligated to give development to by my own decisions before, who should have some development in this book, and I didn’t really want to write it anymore. Insert that development here somewhere. This is probably the biggest reason The Solstice War was never coming back. Just didn’t care about half the cast anymore. The characters I mention here by name are the ones I wanted to actually write.
Anyway! That would have been the rest of Book 3 that you never got! I might do another post about like, the plan for Book 4 and beyond. I will say straight up the plan was for a TON of these characters to get killed eventually just because I didn’t want them around. So if you ask about the fate of your favorite character I will probably say “lmao dead” unless its Madiha or someone else that I really liked. Book 4+ were WAY less developed in the outlines than Book 3, because I was actively working on Book 3! So if I post any more about this, it would be in much less detail. But yeah. Hopefully this was fun for you a little I guess. Let me know what you think of Emptiness Effigied.