ULTRAMagic Compendium - Introduction

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    During the tail end of writing ULTRAMagic Interlude (Bonus Chapters) (Book 4) and into the start of ULTRAMagic Chaos (Book 5), I had the idea to start writing short stories to supplement the main story of ULTRAMagic Alternate. These were side adventures that did not fit into the main narrative without being their own book or deviating from the story being told. The first story I came up with was a follow up to ULTRMagic Interval (Book 6) and ULTRAMagic Eon 1 (Book 7), Haze and Chaos… the funny thing is that this story was first posted in August 2014 and Interval would not come around until a month later. Keep in mind that my schedule as of typing this involves me posting two chapters each week, so Interval did not finish until February 2025.

    Haze and Chaos was an experiment to see if I could write a short story and I would argue I succeeded in that regard. It is a perfectly serviceable little thing… The only issue is that it was retconned in favor of being turned into a full blown book. Without getting into spoilers, the ending of Eon 1 turned out differently than I initially thought. Furthermore recent developments I made with the series’ overarching story and trajectory warranted Haze and Chaos being rewritten into a special book that covers the Earth side of things following books 6 and 7. And there is a lot to tell in that regard.

    Enough about that, however. The next short story I wrote was Schwarzes Biest. The titular Schwarzes Biest was a legacy character from Glitchtale Alternate, the Undertale AU I worked on before the ill-fated HYPERDEATH Alternate, which would turn into ULTRAMagic Alternate. I wanted to bring Schwarzes back into canon as despite being a GTALT character, he was technically fully original. I had a blast writing his story as it was a direct continuation of his introductory short story in GTALT, without GTALT being canon to ULTRAMagic Alternate. Was he always meant to be a certain character I will not spoil? The world may never know… With the personal success of that story, I decided to blaze ahead with the idea of short stories being supplementary material.

    Chaos Angel was a follow up to Valentina Pari’s story that had been established in the first 4 books. I will not spoil any of it, but just know that there was nowhere to make it seamlessly fit in and I had to tell it. Fortunately I wrote her future appearances not requiring you to read the short story, but your experience would be greatly enhanced if you did. And that is my philosophy with these stories: They are there if you want more, but are not mandatory for you to enjoy ULTRAMagic Alternate as a whole. I do NOT want my work ending up like western comic books where they have all these obscure, branching stories mandatory for you to read, only for that story in question to be a super rare comic that had a limited run and is out of print. Oh, and there is also a good chance that super rare comic book you paid thousands of dollars for will be retconned next month by a hack writer who has no idea what they are doing.

    I have a bunch of ideas for short stories, but I have no idea when they will come out with my current schedule. Regardless, I will keep writing them until I feel I have told the story I need to tell. The stories here will appear in order of creation, not chronological placement. I will detail when they take place, however. And despite the declaration of my philosophy for the short stories, some will be follow-ups to other short stories. These will be clearly labeled as such. Any requirement to read one of the books will also be clearly stated. And stories that are retconned will still be included with an author’s note stating their canonicity.

    Compendium is going to be an interesting book to write, given the loose nature of all of it. The way I see it is that this is a good way to tell the whole story without slowing the series down for a character that is just going to come in later and say “hey, I did a thing.” I hope you enjoy what you read and know that I will make each short story interesting and well worth your time.

Sincerely,

William Ford II (6/13/2025)

ULTRAMagic Alternate © 2022 William Ford II (ChaoticTempleKnight)