All Comments on 'WSIM24B Ch. 11'

Your Killing Me Smalls...

In a good way!!!

I check my damn phone all the time to see if you've posted another chapter...

Excellent!! Just Fucking Excellent!!!

Still want some more Varna or Three Sisters/Notomal after this Is done!!

However, this one is on Par with them!!!

My Highest Praise!!!!

Thanks,

Lance

Was there some purpose to him taking horseback rides around the countryside, aside from him saying he just wanted to see different places so he wouldn't be bored while he was in Spoleto? Turns out that it is over 2 hours north of Rome by car or about 135 km. It would take about one day to walk there on foot and 8 hours by bicycle. About the only seeming help it provided was when he went to Amelia and Narni was that he saw where they were ambushed and Cesare was killed.

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Love the idea of Pilgrim getting the popes go ahead to start a spy network in Italy, as this is exactly what he needs to be doing anyway as an ISEC agent; he needs to learn how to use his assets and resources in profitable ways. However, doesn't this kind of debase the Admiral he's trying to help? The understanding is nobody should make it to Admiral without being able to do or at least having done the grunt work, and a lot of the field work before advancing to a command rank of that order. To be blunt, it seems like this Admiral is fairly short on experience for his rank.

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I still appreciate his ties with Gina especially, and in part Elena too. However, the experiences with Zanetta and Sancia lose me; how does pleasing them advance what he's doing? Yes, supposedly part of his reason for being recruited is because he is smarter than the average bear around females...however, the last two and the trysts with them don't appear to advance anything, and this could irk some readers, as they might say while the sexual escapades seem fun and packed with detail, they're just kind of spinning their wheels. Be aware of this, as if he were being true to being asshole, then he might be far more mercenary with any other interested females and cause some type of intrigue on that level.

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I rated it a 5, but please make sure that whether he's helping advise the Pope or whether he's dealing with female interest that each of the respective actions in those fields contribute to helping d'Onofrio win the SIM, yet advance Pilgrim's training and expertise. Aside from that, he does indeed need to have some more dubious edges if he's going to be the different kind of character you spoke of.

Yes, the Italian epidemic was significant, as it marked a significant mutation of the syphilis spirocet. Hitherto, syphilis yaws, beheld, mainly spread through skin contact and could be picked up by a scrape on an infected rock. Similar pathway to tetanus. However the Spanish insistence on being clothed put the virus under stress. Somewhere, either on the Eastern seaboard, or on a ship, the organism mutated to venereal transmition. The parent virus, Lyme has been around Europe and the Americas for millennia. Lyme hides in the same places as Syphilis and does the same.e things albeit a lot more slowly. Italians, unless they had visited Germany and had a brush with Lyme, would have had no immunity to the new virus. Vanerial trans.ission is much more aggressive than the sitting and waiting to be trodden on variety, that became prevalent very quickly.

Perfectly paced, full of intrigue and steamy encounters: I love this story :)

Pilgrim's growing/ maturing and falling in love is also very interesting. He's also different from many of your other characters, in that they usually are in love/lust with one person at a time. His having several love interests is interesting. I wonder when and if he'll have to chose, or if the end of the game will take that from him.

I have gotten into the history! I never expected that! Apparently, the longer I live, the more interesting the history of my ancestral community becomes. The fact that I keep watching for the next installment is significant (to me).

Thanks!!

I really enjoyed this chapter.

I'm kind of hoping that Erika/Nika isn't really dead outside of the simulation.

I think you totally nailed Charles VIII's Italian War and it's immediate consequences. Before the French invade, there's barely an idea of there being such a thing as "Italy" beyond a bunch of people sorta speaking something like the same language and living kinda near to each other. People were Roman, or Venetian, or Milanese; Columbus was Genoan, not "Italian". But nothing brings people together like an odious invader. Risorgimento is still four centuries away, but the reaction amongst proto-Italians to Charles VIII's humiliating March down the peninsula was definitely a push in that direction.

I'm totally digging the military and tactical observations, too. The description of the confrontation between the Italian and French forces was perfect; more like a second-grade soccer match than a clash of martial mastery. Plus, I love this period precisely because nobody knows what to do with all the new technology.

I'm also digging Pilgrim's progress as a character. Odd that he's learned to respect women as people by falling in love with a couple of situations, but, really, it's not like anybody ever really deals with anything more than the idea of anyone else anyway, right? Maybe I'm a bit too cynical...

The courtly flirting between him and Sancia...I can't say enough good things about that. Bravo.

What Lance said. Another epic tale from the very best author on Lt. simply excellent.

Ok, been thinking about this...

Are the dead players still alive in stasis in the ship?

Or are the big dog players, aka The admiral/pope, the only ones that wake up after the Sim is over, no matter what?

Just curious, actually really curious.

So the little dog players don't survive and roll over, in the sim, like the big dogs, they're just out till woken up?

Or do the little dogs, actually die???

I’m not an historian, but I enjoy the degree of detail you’ve woven into this story. Keep up the good work.

Absolutely scintillating series thus far. All of 5 stars well deserved the whole way through this tale.