Plans Ahead and Worldwalkers Dev Diary Early Release

Hello everyone,

I hope everyone has had some nice holidays to relax and/or spend time with family. As the new year begins and I've returned to my work, updates will likely slow down again. This will especially be the case as volume 3 ends and I need to start doing some planning for volume 4. In addition, I have several other things planned that I want to spent time working on, though not necessarily in the given order.

1. A general edit of 3rd volume -- I always made a full volume editing pass after I finish each volume, just to see if I can catch any inconsistences.

2. Two "extra chapters" for 3rd volume. 

• The first involves camp life and various details that people have asked about for Hyperion culture from a more layman perspective. 
• The second will be an extended, dinner scene between Kaede and Captain Marko where they discuss Samaran history and culture.

3. Four "dev diaries" on the topics engaged with in 3rd volume.

• The first will be on my thoughts in writing 3rd volume, now that I've largely caught up to where I was before I stopped writing Daybreak. This will also include a list of historical and real-world references that I made in the volume.
• The second will be on the main theme of this volume - perspective and bias. There are two major case examples presented in the volume. The first was of course Sylviane's hypomania episode -- where while readers can tell that Sylv went too far, they often forget that Pascal and Kaede do bear blame for their actions (often ignored due to the Fundamental Attribution Error). The second example of this would be on Edith vs Sylviane on the topic of moral action, as I would argue that neither side is wrong and it's more a debate of moral utilitarianism vs moral absolutism, but most people will side with one or another and think the other side is being either immoral or irrational.
• The third will be on the topic of Social Constructionism and the dangers of technological enlightenment, something that isekai routinely abuses while having none of the warnings that scifi genre is filled with.
• The fourth is on the worldwalkers, see below.

Do you have any strong thoughts on me taking significant time to do some work on this tangent? If so please feel free to drop a comment =)

In the meantime, here's an early release example, as this is the dev diary I wrote up on the Worldwalkers.

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Ever since I wrote the original Daybreak, there's been a bit of a  question on whom and what the Worldwalkers are. Some people akin them to  gods, with a select group of readers who are rather displeased that  they've been injected into such a story. I admit that I myself were of a  mixed opinion when I introduced the Worldwalkers, as they certainly  don't belong under the realm of political realism.

First of all, 'gods' doesn't quite define Worldwalkers. The  Worldwalkers are based on the buddhas and bodhisattvas of Mahayana  Buddhism. While the Buddha is often considered the 'god' of Buddhism,  this is a poorly applied analogy. The word buddha simply means  'enlightened one'. Buddhism explicitly believes that there is a buddha  in all of us, and all mortals are capable of achieving buddhahood by  journeying through the Eightfold Path. The Buddha -- the Indian  Prince Siddhārtha Gautama -- was simply the first mortal human from  Earth who ascended to such exalted status. However, he is neither the  only, nor the definitive first, as Buddhism has a multiverse cosmology  and many enlightened beings come from worlds and species other than our  own. Mahayana Buddhism believes that buddhas (and bodhisattvas) travel  between the various worlds in order to teach their wisdom, hence I use  the name 'Worldwalkers'.

The Worldwalkers of Daybreak are all figures of history and  mythology, either in Hyperion or in our world. Buddhism is a religion  that cares less for worship and more for virtuous action. That means as  long as you share some of the virtues of Buddhism (which many other  religions do), mainstream Buddhists -- ignoring weird, fanatical  outliers such as Sengoku Japanese and modern Burmese Buddhism -- are  perfectly willing to acknowledge people of other religions as virtuous  or even enlightened. As a result, I see no contradiction to extend the  'Worldwalker' status to many other figures of spiritual or divine  natures.

This comes back to the reason why I added the Worldwalkers. One  of my many interests in the social and cultural sciences is mythology,  and the Worldwalkers offer me an opportunity to research and explore  that angle. Their presence in the story is also meant to reflect upon  the interwined nature of social sciences, as religions play a vital role  in shaping society's history and culture, which in turn shapes  government and politics. And while we think no supernatural power has  ever intervened in human history, there are events -- such as Joan of  Arc, an inexperienced, illiterate peasant girl with who somehow had an  excellent grasp of theology, leadership, and tactics -- that are rather  difficult to explain.

-- Honestly, if the full story of Jeanne d'Arc was written out  in a fiction, readers would be calling it a power fantasy for its  unexplicably-capable mary sue protagonist. Since by the accounts of her  own contemporary companions, Jeanne was far from merely an inspirational  figurehead as popular history often claims. While she didn't fight, she  had an excellent grasp of military tactics, had no problems discussing  the true nature of angels with learned priests (bible was latin-only at  the time), and defended herself in a court of law on theological  grounds.

Since this is a fantasy story, I'd like to make a supposition --  what if all those miraculous events in history which had far-reaching  consequences really were the work of 'divine' actors? Daybreak is all  about the exploration of ideas for me, and I thought this was a good  route to explore.

Lastly, the following is a list of Worldwalkers described in Daybreak. I'll be appending to this as the list grows.

• Tara, the central figure among the Worldwalkers, is Tara the White (as there are 21 Taras) in Buddhism. Her identity here is also  grouped with Guanyin/Kanon, the bodhisattva of mercy and compassion in  East Asian Buddhism, known for her unconditional love and compassion,  protection of the downtrodden and helpless, and many other things. In  some stories, Tara is a former princess who originated from another world. She achieved enlightenment but chose to remain within the cycle  of reincarnation (thus becoming a bodhisattva instead of a buddha). Due  to the patriarchial nature of most societies in history, it is believed  that humans, as they achieve higher karma, would be reborn as men  instead of women. Tara however was bothered by this, and thus she vowed  to remain a woman no matter how many times she was reborn.
  
• Feodor is Feodor Kuzmich, a spiritual hermit from 19th century  Earth who has been declared a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church. It  is widely speculated due to a number of unexplanable factors that Feodor Kuzmich is actually Tsar Alexander I Romanov of Russia, whom -- the  theory supposes -- faked his own death so he could finally retire and  live in peace, a sentiment that was much desired in Tsar Alexander's own  writing in his late life. This is why Feodor quotes a verse from the  bible that Alexander himself was touched by, and why Tara's discussion  with Feodor mentions the Concert of Europe -- a system that Alexander  helped to set up after the Napoleonic Wars where the various great  powers of Europe tried to maintain balance in order to keep another continental war from breaking out.
  
• Sigurd is the legendary hero of the Völsung Saga in Norse mythology. He is also Siegfried of the German Nibelungenlied. In Daybreak,  Tara also called him Perun (the Slavic God of Thunder), Taranis (Celtic  God of Thunder), Perkūnas (Romuva/Baltic God of Thunder), and Thor  (Norse God of Thunder), which are often grouped together as many  Indo-European cultures liked to trade gods and adopt aspects/tales of  gods of their neighboring faiths -- a form of religious tolerance that  monotheism couldn't match. Sigurd/Siegfried is most well known for his  slaying of a dragon (Fafnir) and gaining invincibility by bathing in its  blood. In Hyperion lore and Skagen history, Stormlord Sigurd  aided Fafnir the Lightning Dragon to defeat a demon lord during the  Demonic Invasion. Impressed by his display of courage, the dying dragon  bestowed his remaining strength to Sigurd, making him the first human to  gain the dragonlords' power.

-- When Tara mentions Sigurd wearing a bridal headdress, she is referring to the story of Thor pretending to be Freyja and marrying the ice giant Thrym in order to get his stolen hammer back.

• Peter, who has been mentioned multiple times, is Saint Peter,  one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ. His work, combined with that  of Saint Paul, would lead to the organization of the Christian faith and establishment of the Roman Catholic Church. In Hyperion lore, Peter  is the first human disciple of Hyperion the dragonlord, and is the  primary founder of the Trinitian Church.
  
• Gautama, mentioned only in passing by Tara, of course refers to the Buddha by his mortal name.
  
• Mergen, mentioned by Tara, is a diety of wisdom of the Tengri religion, the traditional faith of the Turkic nomads and Mongols. According to Tengri mythology, Mergen is was a legendary archer whose arrows slayed six of the seven suns that was baking our world into a desert.
  
• Gwendolen, as noted in story, was Queen Gwedolen of Ceredigion during her mortal life. She was an Oriflamme Paladin, artificer, and archmage who played a vital role in the Rhin-Lotharingie Independence War. Her story is loosely based on the legendary Queen Gwendolyn who  married Locrinus, King of the Britons. But when Locrinus divorced her in  favor of a Germanic mistress, she built up an army and bested her  ex-husband in battle to seize the throne. She proved to be a just ruler  until abdicating in favor of her son, and her name was evoked in later  times as an inspiration figure for future queens such as Elizabeth I.

-- It is heavily implied in Daybreak that the mythical history of the British Isles (such as the invasion by fae) is based on an alternate telling of Hyperion history, where such events did happen and there are artifacts to prove it.