Talk:Bad Water

Author's Commentary

The following was posted by author Kevin Killiany in a comments posting about this story on the BattleCorps forum on 17 April 2010:

The original idea for "Bad Water" came to me several years ago. I was reading about a region of the Inner Sphere where the corners of three warring nations (Taurian Concordant, Federated Suns, and Capellan Confederation) butt together like a lopsided Mercedes emblem. This paragraph caught my eye:
"In the early 3040's, a raiding party from the Taurian Concordat attacked the [Capellan world of Rollis] … After learning the raid originated on the [Taurian] world of Laconis … [the surviving planetary ruler] ordered the Rollis militia to attack. The raid on Laconis proved especially brutal and destructive … [Laconis] responded by hiring mercenaries to strike back at Rollis, establishing a lethal cycle of attrition that continues today."

That Laconis lacked sufficient military assets, had to hire mercenaries to protect themselves, told me they'd been set up. Someone else had attacked Rollis and framed them. (It should be noted these sketchy scraps of history exist solely to give game players reasons to mount military campaigns.) The chief beneficiary of Taurian/Capellan conflict is the Federated Suns, which left only the question of how. This led to a half-page of disjointed phrases, but no story. Beyond the fact that I wanted to make it a personal story – not a military chess game – and wanted to include the Taurian world of Brisbane, I did not have a solid vision of the narrative as a whole. (Brisbane's description sounds much like the coastal Florida of my youth, back when clapboard rental cabins stood where multi-million-dollar villas are today and a boy in his skiff could go anywhere. Brisbane is also plagued by a virulent virus with symptoms similar to Parkinson's, a disease that has afflicted several in my family. So I felt a pretty strong connection to the place.)

Unable to develop "Bad Water" further, I dropped the page in my "idea file" where it languished until the last week of 2009. At that time I was poking around my file of undeveloped ideas looking for a new project and the half-page summary resonated. I spent a few days reading up on the unfamiliar faction and location and quickly discovered that while my original character and core conflict were solid, the story would not work. Laconis had been set up, but not the way I'd thought.

On Thursday, December 31, I sat down with my pad of graph paper and diagramed new stories around the same protagonist and core concept. The first, set nearly four centuries earlier, worked even less than the original. The second redraft was worse. So I went back to my original idea, but took out Laconis and Rollis. This leaves a hole – the Taurians go home without discovering why the FedSuns want a faux Taurian unit. But that's real life. Many operations end without the people on the ground ever getting the whole picture. Not knowing actually adds to the realism of the story. On Friday, 01-01-10, I began writing and – with a brief timeout due to real life complications – got the story off to Jason shortly thereafter.

Talk Page

Frabby, I don't see why this commentary cannot be on the article page itself. It certainly is interesting and it seems informative and relevant, all aspects that would be article-worthy.--Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 16:35, 17 May 2018 (EDT)