Liner Notes for Instrument Of Justice

 

Liner Notes for Instrument Of Justice

Vinculus returns from the dead but transformed. I try my best to show how his experience of existing, how he senses and interacts with the world has changed. And of course socially, he’s now a big brass and bone creation, vaguely humanoid. Designed to ape a human form, but mostly for fighting and destruction. Or at least that’s what they see. So back to servitude.

The command words are a bluff. Make people think they’re in control and they let their guard down. And add in a little malicious compliance. One minor theme of this series is how people caught up in what seems to be a rigid and strict system find room to make their own choices. To use the system designed to oppress them in their own way. See for example how Brasswight is put on the rations list for the fighters; rather than correct the error they keep the extra supplies.

How does a political crisis in the empire (late Roman Republic) manifest on the ground in the provinces? Local governors try to position themselves, to be either useful to whichever faction comes out on top, or to intervene in favour of their own allies. They keep their troops happy, gather supplies, money (oh so much money). They keep an eye on troublemakers, on strangers. All the things a serious governor would be doing anyway, but more so.

I have, of course, left out the expedition beyond the howling void. This is for a variety of reasons. The better ones include that to leave something unexplained is to create a sense of mystery. As this series is focussed on gladiators and the arena, going too far beyond is outside it’s purview; yet by referencing a larger world it helps to give context and texture.

A worse one is my own limitations. By writing and publishing this as a serial, and not completing it before starting posting them, I find myself with a number of dangling threads. The worst one is the prophecy (see the notes for episode 7). I don’t have time to do it properly, so better to leave it as hints. And so everything that might break that gets left behind.

Will I fix this for the collection? Will I get to the collection at all? Sorry, don’t know. Other parts of my life keep intruding. It’s on the list [a scroll that spills out of the scribitorium out into the forum and away down to the river].