Stories for a winter's night

Title: The Devil You Know

Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters

Rating: R

Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.

Author's Note: Day 15 and I'm halfway through. Not only that, I have now beaten my wordcount from last year. It all makes me happy.

I thought that I would take the opportunity at this time to explain why I decided to write a fanfiction with no canon characters in it. Well, the truth is, I've always been facinated with the idea of Cybertronian colonists and refugees. I mean, we know they existed, but they're never really covered in canon, save for a few footnote entries (and of course, Padragon -- did I spell that right?) I've wanted to tell this story for a while, but I knew that I couldn't tell it the way I wanted to if I did it through canon characters. The only way that would have worked is with the characters discovering the colonies after the fact, and I didn't want to do that. So OCs it had to be. So the question ends up being, is it still fanfiction if it doesn't contain anything really canon and only borrows from the universe? I don't know.

25227 / 50000 words. 50% done!

Chapter 10

( Cut to save friends pages and those who aren't interested in reading this oh so very rough draft )

Title: The Devil You Know

Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters

Rating: R

Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.

Author's Note: Day 13 and another chapter done. I think that I'm contradicting myself on several points, but I'm going to resist the urge to go fix the problems. ... I have also found that the Windsaber is acting like an Autobot and Cobalt is acting like a Decepticon. Go figure!

21706 / 50000 words. 43% done!

Chapter 8

( Cut to save friends pages and those who aren't interested in reading this oh so very rough draft )

Title: The Devil You Know

Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters

Rating: R

Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.

Author's Note: Day nine. Today I basically fixed up the problem I had with Chapter Five and wrote much of Chapter Six. I'm still not thrilled with this chapter, but I can fix it in the editing process. I can completley see the scene in my mind, but the words and the pacing are elluding me right now. Chapter Six needs more done with it, but at this point, it's going to have to wait until the evil day star once again shines in the sky.

I'm happy that I'm doing better than I was at this time last year, and, according to my self-imposed schedule, I'm ahead in the game, so if something happens, I can afford to take some time off. This is good. Last year there was a lot of "OMG! Gotta catch up!!!" So far that's not a problem this year, but I won't be tempting fate just yet. She is, after all, a fickle mistress.

16773 / 50000 words. 34% done!

So, enough of the process and the numbers. On to the story!

Chapter 5

( Cut to save friends pages and those who aren't interested in reading this oh so very rough draft )

Title: The Devil You Know

Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters

Rating: R

Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.

Author's Note: Day six. I just got past the 10K mark so I am doing better than last year at this point. I've been taking my laptop to work with me and writing on the bus. It amounts to about a 45 minute comute each way, so an hour and a half of writing - give or take. I'm trying to escape the office at lunch for another 45 minutes of writing as well. So far I've been having to eat at my desk (no rest for the wicked and all that), but tomorrow the administrators are pretty much alone for the day, so I should be able to escape. We'll see.

10769 / 50000 words. 22% done!


Chapter 3

( Cut to save friends pages and those who aren't interested in reading this oh so very rough draft )

Title: The Devil You Know

Series: G1 universe, focusing on Original characters

Rating: R

Summary: In the early days of the civil war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime authorized several refugee vessels to take Neutrals away from the planet in hopes that they could start peaceful colonies where they would be safe. Many of these refugees were never heard from again; lost to us through time and distance. But history does record the fate of one of the vessels. The Stormchaser was three orns away from its destination when it was shot down by Decepticons in an act of cowardice and deceit. There were no survivors. That is what history tells us. But in this case, history is wrong.

Author's Note: Day two and still going strong. I got my word count in just in time, so it still counts for today -- make that yesterday, as it's now tomorrow. And, in fact, as I write I'm getting a better feel for the future of the story, beyond what I already had planned. This should be a good thing.

2871 / 50000 words. 6% done!



Chapter 1

( Cut to save friends pages and those who aren't interested in reading this oh so very rough draft )