u/jbryderauthor

Note: this is from the current draft of book 3. It may or may not be in the final draft.

...

When Carver did the same, he had to strangle a gasp in his throat before it could surface. He didn't even know how to describe the scene in front of him. It looked like the aftermath of a plane crash on TV. Or a ship wreck. Or some kind of twisted shrine to a vengeful marine god.

Thankfully, they'd been thrown from the raft before reaching the interlocking web of knife-like rock formations—otherwise, they'd have been among the hundred bodies impaled on them, leaning on them, and splattered across them. Some of them were barely recognizable as humans with how bloated they were. Others were unrecognizable for a different reason: there wasn't enough left of them to determine who or what they were.

Intestines and sinew-covered bones hung from tiny ridges in the boulders. A wave couldn't do that, could it? No, they looked more like—

"It's like they've been devoured," Zach said, finishing Carver's thought.

...

What do you think is going on here?

I think it would be really interesting to explore the existence of another fully sentient species on Alpha Centauri. This will not happen in the third book, as there are much bigger fish to fry, but it could be something to look into as part of a future, separate book.

After all, Alpha Cen is so Earth-like. It's completely plausible to think that some kind of intelligent life would have emerged and developed a civilization. The story as we know it only takes place on a small subcontinent about the size of India. There could be an entire society out there that humans have no knowledge of (think what the Parshendi were to the Alethi in the Stormlight Archive).

What do you think? What features do you think that civilization would have?

Aramis and Agnes Crow are, of course, brother and sister. But they also lead warring groups in Us Before Them and have a very rocky history. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to discuss what makes the two similar and different.

Aramis and Agnes are both very tall and have very defined features. At one point in Us Before Them, it's said that if Aramis were carved out of granite, Agnes was marble. That is, Aramis' appearance is much rougher, with plenty of scars and sun damage. Agnes, by contrast, has a polished look. Aramis wears leather jackets and armor, while Agnes wears flowing dresses. Aramis has dark brown eyes that verge on black, while Agnes has icy blue eyes.

Furthermore, their internal characters are quite different. Aramis looks terrifying on the outside and has a notorious reputation, but he's actually very kind, compassionate, and wise. Agnes looks very composed, but she makes decisions that consistently get people killed in the name of 'protecting Eden.'

For example, when Zach wants to go looking for Ryker in Us Before Them, Agnes only lets him do so when he shows the Edish how to create irogen. Then, when Zach actually finds Ryker, Agnes doesn't let Ryker stay in Eden because of the supposed security risk. Aramis, on the other hand, tells Ryker to go look for Zach with no strings attached and isn't offended when Ryker tries to run away from Blackwing.

Who do you like more—Agnes or Aramis?

Overview:

The Alpha Centauri Initiative was the secret colonization mission carried out by OSE in the early 2000s. Roughly 2,400 scientists were sent on the mission, led by Mission Commander Baylor Crow.

Means of Travel:

In the 90s, a small amount of Irogen was discovered in Saudi Arabia. This enabled OSE to construct a primitive Continuum Drive for The Concord space ship. The Concord was a colossal three miles long, with a full mile dedicated to the cargo hold alone. The ship did not have cryosleep, so the crew members spent the two years it took to reach Alpha Cen awake.

Landing:

The Alpha Centauri Initiative's landing was far from ideal. Although all the dropships, the cargo hold, and the RIFT communication device were supposed to land in the same area, flight complications scattered them. One dropship landed safely in a temperate forest region, one crashed in the colder north, and the third had a semi-rough landing on the eastern part of the subcontinent. The cargo hold landed somewhere on the Edish peninsula, its location largely unknown for about twenty years due to its homing beacon's failure. The RIFT device landed and deployed somewhere north of the second dropship's crash site, spawning The Corruption. After landing, the people on each dropship thought they were alone in their survival.

Successor Groups:

The first dropship formed the town of Eden with Baylor Crow at its helm. It represented the most faithful continuation of the original mission. The second dropship spawned a group of scattered bands and tribes that were eventually unified by Aramis Crow into the Harbingers. Those on the third dropship formed the Enlightened Ones at The Cradle. These groups eventually went to war with one another for the supplies in the cargo hold some twenty years later in The Enlightened War.

Which dropship would you have wanted to be on?

As I said in my last post, I was a big fan of Game of Thrones while writing the early drafts of Us Before Them. In the show and books, war between groups is obviously very important.

I was always planning on there being a war between the Edish and Enlightened Ones in the history of Alpha Cen, but there weren't any figures that were truly important to that part of history. In Game of Thrones, Robert Baratheon was an incredible warrior hailed The Demon of the Trident who gradually lost his prowess as he got older. I thought the idea of a living war legend was very fascinating.

But in creating a character like that, I thought it would be interesting if he were troubled by his time as a warlord—if he were actually a good person broken by war. So, I created Aramis Crow (The Raven of Eden).

During the Enlightened War, he's very arrogant and bloodthirsty. But after his people's crushing defeat, he becomes tired of fighting, more introspective, and much wiser, eventually acting as a father figure for Ryker Gagarin.

This quote sums up his personality in the present day:

"I'm not claiming to know you," said Aramis, "but I know your scars. I've got plenty of my own, so let me give you some words of advice: don't hide them, don't try to make them go away. You'll only reopen the cuts. The ones that'll fade will fade. The ones that don't are what make you the man that you are."

Given that he has a perspective in the third Zach Croft book, I'm looking forward to exploring his character more.

When I was in the early to mid stage writing process for Us Before Them, I was really into Game of Thrones. As is the case with every book I read or show I watch, I wanted to incorporate some of the coolest stuff into the Zach Croft series.

But Game of Thrones is, of course, fantasy.

So, when I wanted to find a way to put dragons on Alpha Centauri, I couldn't find a reasonable way. I split the difference by making it so some scratched individuals could command scalemongers (sorta like grounded dragons). Also, Dyomir the stoneback has a strong bond with his rider, Halsy Crow, that echoes the bonds dragons share with dragon riders.

In the current draft of book 3, though, there are hive creatures called hyverns (hive wyverns) that are... well... basically wyverns from the Corruption. They look like thinner, avian scalemongers, and they're super cool.

I finally did it.

J.B. and his dragons 1 : society 0

In the third Zach Croft book, The Enlightened Ones play a much more central role, coming out of the shadows at the end of Us Before Them. They will be a very polarizing group with a complex societal structure, goals that conflict with those of the characters, and an unsettling connection to said characters.

Each character will view The Enlightened Ones in a different light (no pun intended). For instance, Aramis Crow has a very rocky history with the cultists because he led the war effort against them in the decades before Zach Croft's arrival.

Cora will obviously not view them the same way as Aramis, nor will Ryker view them the same way as Zach.

It will be very interesting to see.

How do you think different characters will react?

I recently met with my literary agent to discuss our plan for the next year or so. The highlights were:

1. Zach Croft book 3 will be indie published the same way the first 2 were, so there won't be any publishing delays or anything like that.

2. We're going to start shopping around the Zach Croft film rights relatively soon.

3. I'll be doing a round of revisions on The Forgotten Colony to fix some small continuity and character issues, though we won't be doing anything publishing-wise with that for some time. It's really just for sending to people for the film adaptation at this moment.

Are you excited?

I find it really funny how frequently Zach just says, "Nawwww, shut up" to anyone who tries to tell him what to do. He's obviously not fully responsible for the Red Plague in The Forgotten Colony, but he does go into a meteor crater and destroyed mining facility as a ten-year-old when the leaders of the colony say it's off-limits.

Then, on Alpha Cen, he just repeatedly undermines Agnes' authority by continuing to look for Ryker after she tells him to come home, sneaking away from Eden to go to Foxhold, etc.

Bro is trying to cause problems in any way possible.

The Enlightened Ones—as shown in the shadows of Us Before Them—will play a very important role in the third Zach Croft book. Cora will be heavily associated with them. Therefore, I'm curious as to what you think they're like.

Share any expectations or theories in the comments below!

Something I noticed about The Forgotten Colony and Us Before Them is that although the major characters have very distinctive personalities and histories, the way things are actually described in their perspective scenes is not entirely unique to each character (with the exception of Carver, of course).

For instance, you would think that Cora would notice more about the plants and animals in an area because she's a biologist, while Ryker would likely notice more about technology because of his time on the Gateway. Obviously, what characters know already impacts the stuff they notice / care about, but it's much more general currently.

This is something I hope to improve in the third Zach Croft book, as I have an opportunity to go deeper into their characters.

What are your thoughts?

Both the original Alpha Centauri Initiative colonists and Zach Croft's group of survivors land on a specific subcontinent with three finger-like peninsulas. When the Corruption is expanding rapidly, it's really only consuming that subcontinent (though it would obviously expand beyond that in the future).

There's a whole world out there that the characters haven't seen yet.

I think it would be very cool to explore what other species exist in those regions, as well as what different biomes look like on Alpha Cen. The part of the planet we see is relatively Earth-like, with plants and animals that have filled similar niches as animals on our own planet.

But there could be some truly wacky environments. And potentially species with intelligence to rival humans.

Perhaps a future book could take place on an Alpha Cen ~300 years after the events of the Zach Croft series when society has developed more and spread out to cover a larger land area.

What do you think?

When Carver purposefully got the remaining Prescott colonists killed on the Gateway, he had a few reasons:

1. The colonists were sick with the Red Plague, and there was no guarantee that Quinton's plan would eradicate the illness. If it got to Earth, it would basically wipe out humanity.

2. If Quinton came back to Earth, he would have taken Victor's place as head of the agency and focused solely on Exodus, letting MagRes and billions of people die with it.

3. He didn't like Quinton.

Yes, letting 100 people turn into walking rocket fuel crystals isn't nice. But if the Red Plague reached Earth, there would have been no way to stop it. It would have consumed everything with iron in it, including most life forms and man-made structures.

Do you agree?

Rather than share any definitive information, I will restate stuff you already know as readers of The Forgotten Colony and Us Before Them and present several questions.

It is presumed that continuum drive / RIFT technology has existed since the late 90s, given when the original Alpha Centauri Initiative colonists were sent to Alpha Cen. It is also presumed that other countries didn't know about the United States' colonization of Alpha Cen, as it would go against the Outer Space Treaty.

Therefore, is it possible that other countries had their own plans for saving humanity from the solar flares? Is it possible they had comparable technology to OSE? Is it possible private corporations could have requisitioned certain pieces of technology by lobbying governments?

None of these questions are confirmation about what's to come (they don't relate to Zach Croft book 3 at all), but keep these questions in the back of your head as I write my next two books outside of the Zach Croft series.

The earliest version of the hive mind in the plan for the Zach Croft series had to do with a sentient species that no longer exists called the Ipah. They lived on the other side of the Blight (precursor to the Corruption), and they had a unique ability to wrangle animals around them.

In other words, they maintained harmony between species by communicating information between them. Then, when the Ipah got wiped out, all the animals went crazy. In the original plan for book 4, Zach and the crew were going to have to deal with these animals as they ventured to meet the last remnant of the Ipah.

Of course, none of that is in the series anymore. But the idea of that hive mind evolved into the incredibly terrifying, oppressive hive mind from the Corruption that you see in Us Before Them and will see more of in Zach Croft book 3. In fact, in earlier versions of the series, scalemongers weren't even from the Corruption. They were native creatures of Alpha Centauri who were a part of the original hive mind.

What I will say is that I've taken what the Ipah's hive mind originally was and used it as heavy inspiration for something in Icebloods, another novel I'm working on outside of the Zach Croft series. So, in a way, the Corruption's hive mind and the thing in Icebloods are like story idea siblings.