Monthly Archives: September 2019

Finds-Water’s Strategy

One of the problems of a project the size of the Nuegua Trilogy is that one can lose sight of the motivations of a character, because building the world is so much fun.

With that in mind, let us see why Dianire Redourine is in the Ruins of Phoenix, fighting for her life at the Kierland, the last known gathering place of the Sky Wanderers.

Going back to ‘Ghost Sickness’, the reader will know that the Sky Wanderers have left caches of treasure and weapons for their eventual return. Finds-Water, the oldest and cleverest of the Apache Traders, has not been able to convince Alathea of Clan Tiala that her clan must intermarry with the Apache, to create a new, superior breed of human, to combat the Sky Wanderers.

Instead, Alathea commissions Dianire to locate any and all Sky Wanderer weapon caches that she can. The Kierland is a logical place to start. Rintiala is deep in the building of Dragon Head, and Alathea will never put her oldest daughter in jeopardy again. Dianire agrees, because simply reconnoitering the Kierland will likely be a high enough acheivement to promote her to First Sister.

Dianire succeeds, although the Kierland has only a small cache of weapons, most of which have been converted into tools for the aid of the synthetics, the old ‘beating swords in plowshares’ metaphor.

What Dianire does discover is the map of all the Sky Wanderer’s weapons located in the American South West, or the ‘Empty Earth’ in Tialan parlance. Finds-Water insists that she share this information with the Apache, but she flatly refuses. This fuels his suspicion that Clan Tialan and Clan Redourine will ultimately rule the Empty Earth, leaving the Apache and the rest of the Native Peoples as second-class citizens. This has ramifications for Rintiala, because when she delivers her grand scheme to have all Apache women bear their children in Clan Tiala, Finds-Water is convinced that his suspicions are correct.

The Second Tome, or the Final Synopsis of ‘Second Sister’

I’m going to use the month of September 2019 to finish ‘Second Sister’ as all the individual chapters have been written, some as long as twenty-five years ago (!) So here goes:

The entire story is read during the second session in Carlsbad Abbey by Queen Ariana, so we have the same guests in attendance (in order to improve continuity). So, the entire second story is wrapped inside the Second Tome of Queen Ariana, A.D. 2578.

The first section is ‘The Locust’ or the coming of the Dark Queen in the form of Dianire Redourine. This is the wrapper around ‘The Ruins of Phoenix’. This section also contains ‘Strong Baby’s Dream’ and the entire section ends with Tianara’s successful surgery and the defeat/expulsion of the Western Bandits from the known Empty Earth.

The second section is ‘Second Sister’ proper, and is the story of Ariana’s entrance into New Spain, her triumph of opening the Sky Wanderers’ treasure-trove in Los Alamos, and ends with her murder at the hands of Dianire. (I”m going to write this as manslaughter, but King Carlos of Spain won’t see it that way).

The third section is ‘Queen, Saint or Goddess?’ and is the story of Rintiala’s failed attempt to extricate Ariana from New Spain, Dianire’s attack on Santa Fe, and the final decisive battle at the Healing Temple in Tiala.

All three sections culminate in Queen Ariana finishing the Second Tome, and then meeting her mother, Rintiala in the flesh. They go out of the Great Meeting Room to walk on the southern balcony of the Abbot’s Residence, and there witness the Sky Wanderers’ landing their ships a few hundred meters away.

That ends ‘Second Sister’, setting up the conditions for the third and final volume of the Nuegua Trilogy, ‘War in Heaven’.

There are also going to be extended appendices, mostly notably ‘Desert Frigate’ where Prince Carlos, Benedetto Sepulveda and Alejandro Baca drive back an attack on Soccorro by the Western Bandits.

A second addition is ‘The Cities of Quivera’ where we meet Don Benedetto’s older brother, the adventurous and doomed Don Genaro.