Chương 53: Questions & Answers

Hello, folks! We'll be returning with Book 2 of Headless Over Heels on the 17th. It's gonna be called Necropolis. In the meantime, though, I thought I might give you folks an open forum to ask questions about me, my work, or the world of the United Territories, since during this upcoming week we won't have our usual HoH chapters. I can't promise I'll get to all of them, depending on what they are and how many come in, but in the meantime feel free to fire away in the comments!

I'll update this post with answers to your questions as they come in. Note that there will be spoilers below for various worldbuilding facts; I won't spoil any important narrative stuff, though! I would like some sort of map of the world, if possible. Even a rough sketch of just what exists in the protection bubble would help me place events in my head. This is definitely something I plan on doing, but I am hoping to get the map commissioned by someone who actually knows how to draw it!

My question is if the soul magic was discovered before or after the seraphs started invading? And are there any limits to a persons possible darkness? Magic existed before the seraphs, but hexiscraft was not yet known, nor were hexentatuae. Those were brought to the kindred during the First Emergence by the Hundred Saints, and led to the ousting of the seraphs. As far as limits, they don't get much stronger than the ones possessed by the al Ydrises, but the use of hexiscraft can strengthen them.

As an Irishman, have to say you did a phenomenal job with Annalise's vocab. Her kids don't seem to have taken after her much in that regard. Is it because they've spent a relatively long time outside of Orwiny during their extended puberty? Annalise's first husband whisked her away from Orwiny; her children were born in the Western Plainlands. Neither has ever seen Orwiny, and it's a dear wish of hers to return there one day and show them their ancestral home.

Unfortunately the taboo against the Unlit is pretty strong there. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Is the Sorcerer-General an inherited, assigned or elected position? This is a spoiler so I won't go too far into it, but sorta all three. Roughly what fraction of the planet is protected from the seraphs? And is the entirety of the "outside" the domain of said seraphs, with no other "safe zone"?

By the time of the first emergence, the people of what are now the Territories knew of four settled continents. There is now only one remaining. As far as anyone knows, the rest of the world has fallen, but it's impossible to get far enough to check. You said before that there was a qualitative diference between hexis of human origin and hexis originating from animals or popmites, can you clarify what this diference means in pratice?

Right now the only things we know about the worth of a life is this: a goat's hexis can be used to source power to a large state for roughly a week, and it takes more than one human soul to fix a big injury with blood magic. Any reason why they couldnt have used goat hexis to fix Ofelia's wounds(aside from expediency), or raise enough cattle to power the Deathspell? Is it something inherent to human hexis that makes it more versatile? I don't want to get too numerical with this, since that's not my forte.

But a human (or other kindred) has many times the power that an animal's does, and its hexis can last for much more complex uses than those animals as a result. Any use of hexis beyond a simple exothermic release needs a ton of additional juice, and for a process as involved and complex as accelerated healing, only a sentient soul's amount of hexis can get the job done. So Annalise obviously has an Irish accent, but do you imagine any of the other characters with accents?

And more specifically, do her children also have Irish accents or are they different since they grew up in a different part of the world? Her kids get a lilt now and then when they get frustrated or emotional. Mostly they have unadorned accents with a bit of a mid-south twang, as Seth does. A secondary question you might have answered already but how much area does the deathspell cover, roughly, in comparison to earth? Like, for example, is it a continent or a couple counties or whatever.

An area roughly the size of North America. How much Locked Tomb is in this story's DNA? I love the Locked Tomb but beyond the bony aesthetic and the big sexy muscle lady I haven't taken a ton from it. I've answered this elsewhere but my bigger literary influences are The Blacktongue Thief, Berserk, The Book of the New Sun, and The Gentleman Bastards. Also WWE professional wrestler Rhea Ripley. I have a couple small questions about hexentats -- Are there any that are restricted or withheld from the general populace?

Yep, big time. A bunch of Annalise's, including the Eclipsing Moon, aren't supposed to be known by anyone outside the Necropolitan scribers of the Legion. Doesn't stop the black markets, though.