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You mean like Ravel's =Bolero=?

Added thought on the little review:
Fartravel -- four syllables, and awkward, for a bit of 'tech'.  After a decade or two, people would be saying 'Farter' or they'd invent other terms.  (Are you old enough to remember https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrvergnügen ?)  Anyway, if  people could substitute a short walk, it doesn't seem very Far.

Heinlein was a genius at this.  He could drop a nonce term like Welton Fine-grain or Burroughs Bachelor Buggy and the reader would get it at once.

I have the battle and the conversation on paper.  I'm going to type them up and start editing, thinking about the next part in between.

I don't want to fool around with rechaptering B1 for this since I'll need a full rewrite anyway.  My thought is to put this up as a couple of shorts.  Thoughts?

I'm just working your possibilities.  The Founders must place AM one and a quarter steps below G and half a step above the forces now threatening them.  They have AM's staff, and could even threaten to destroy it.  (Does Jaylene know what that staff is?)  (Aside: do the spears itch in Alda's hand?  I'm thinking of Anver's demo with the other mage's/student's staff.)

You've built a tremendous point of conflict here, one that could shake Jaylene in the crisis moment, threaten all the resolve she's built up--especially if Alda was somehow part of how that resolve was built up.

And what if Jaylene makes the wrong choice, but is too late to stop Alda, and has to watch as Alda's actions rally the enemy--right before she destroys the Horrors.

The first law of battle is that the enemy changes the plan.  What if the only hope of ending the battle is to destroy the Horrors so the enemy will have nothing to fight for, and AM is the one who understands it?

And this leads to a possible redefinition of the Alda/Jaylene relationship.  By their presence and character they constantly test each other.  By right of power, Jaylene should be the tail in the dog, but Alda wants to be that tail.  She keeps pushing the role of war dog on Jaylene.

FYI, given that Jaylene is small and slight, I see her with a narrower face, maybe oval.  And I think that displays better on the beir.

Doesn't sound wierd to me.

Many of these disasters come not from politicians but from culture--like American parents not vaccinating their children, often on the advice of entertainers who know less of medicine and public health than I know of their businesses.

It's an inconvenient fact that these people have the wealth and resources to absorb many of the costs of their screwups.  The people following their glittering images usually lack those resources.

Bruce Catton told the story of The War Between The States seven times, each time through different eyes.

I realized last night that I'm trying to tell the story of civilization in this backstory ... from one set of eyes.  Or three.

Hard job, but somebody has to do it.

What's needed is a very intricate database linked to the story text, all woven into a version control system, with an editing interface that can be replaced to let writers shake off the WYSIAYG shackles.  Neither the WüRD format nor HTML is a suitable representation.

If someone wants to seriously brainstorm requirements, I'm available.  But be warned, there will be serious language dependencies, so extensibility/flexibility must be designed into the software/database architecture.  And serious database design--not necessarily relational.  Text will need a versioned threaded tree.

Oh, and it must be possible to make the thing reliable,  efficient, and usable atop multiple operating systems, each with its own strengths and (especially) weaknesses in file system performance, process interaction, user interface, networking, and behavior under load..

The US and UK differ here.  In the US, a group is.  In the UK, a group are.

The first HP chapter is a prologue, though of course we can't use that word nowadays.  Without it, we would be adrift when the story opens.  It gives us key characters,  a sense of the rules of the world, a sense of Harry's world, and essential backstory.

Rowling carries it off by making a,story of it, told in a storyteller's narrative style--which blows off the whole no-narrstor conceit.

Your original story was a Quest.  That fits the larger story surrounding it.

Jaylene took over nicely after the death of the leatherworker.

The Catacombs adventure and the creepers in the crypt are both wonderful action that feel like they need volumes of their own.