This is the content from 2002, the year I actually completed NaNoWriMo.
Bonus Material: The Unrelated Short Story and Part 2
Excerpt Special: The Interview
... Paperwork cluttered every available surface, of which there were quite a few. Cabinets, chests of drawers and two full-sized desks took up most of the available space. The old man pointed us to a couple of chairs in front of the nearest desk. The chairs, indeed all of the furnishings looked to be well made but also well used. He took his seat behind the desk, leaned forward on his elbows and stared first at Thom and then at me. With a slight frown, he began, "Let me get this straight. You two appear out of thin air. You," he pointed at me, "make an offer I'm not supposed to be able to refuse. And you," he pointed at Thom, "announce that the deed is done within half an hour.
"You can't possibly not know what you're doing. Is this a game or are you two for real?"
I knew Thom wasn't going to be able to answer this question. Clearly whoever had set up this scenario wasn't all that clever.
I'd like to take a moment here to complain about the quality of scenario building in the last couple centuries. Just because a training mission is supposed to be reasonably straightforward does not mean that its preparation should be carelessly undertaken. I'd put good money on the odds that Carl Hicks rigged this particular mission.
In the event that this narrative ends up in the hands of someone unfamiliar with our practices, most training exercises are set up something like this: The Order sends someone to take advantage of a situation that is already falling apart. This situation can be caused by native conflicts or it can be the aftereffects of Chaos Lord activity. Our agent then goes about setting up certain background information, obligatory quests and tasks, and most importantly The Prophecy. The result is a pure boilerplate training exercise. It doesn't have to be anything all that fancy, but it should at least be somewhat genuine.
Whoever took Carl out of the Archives and sent him into the field as an Exercise Preparation Specialist needs to be horsewhipped. Hornets? Please. Worse yet, I could already tell by our local apple-grower's attitude that this scenario had not been given nearly enough time to, ah, ripen. He knew who we were, or at least had a vague idea of what. Of course he did, since the Prophecy almost always describes the principal agents of change.
A good prophecy-based exercise should have a lead time of at least three generations. Ideally no one should be alive during the exercise who was around to witness the distribution of the Prophecy. There's a good reason for this rule of thumb. If there's too quick of a turnaround on certain kinds of scenario, the locals get suspicious. All it takes to destabilize local government after the conclusion of our efforts is widespread rumors of collusion and manipulation. Our newly-placed head of state can then expect a very, very short career in politics. There's not much point in The Order being involved if all we're going to do is spawn civil war, is there? Sloppy, damned sloppy work.
If the powers that be want to keep Carl in the field, by all that's holy he'd better damned well be subjected to some professionally designed training missions. Better yet, he should be put under Michael's wing for a while. There's no one more skilled at creating and carrying out field scenarios.
And that, folks, is my two cents' worth on the subject of training mission preparation. Pardon me now while I hold my breath waiting for anyone to give a damn what I think.
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