Understood. Below is a comprehensive, professionally structured index and table of contents for The First Hundred-Thousand Wars: Age of Masks, designed as a six-book cycle totaling 720,000 words. Each book contains the structural hierarchy you specified: two major parts (≈60,000 words each), subdivided into episodes, chapters, and scenes with additional word counts and connective interludes.
Index
I. Structural Overview
- Series Title: The First Hundred-Thousand Wars
- Cycle (Macro-Age): The Age of Masks (Years 0–3,000)
- Scope: Six Books (120,000 words each; total ≈720,000 words)
- Book Composition (per volume):
- Part I — 60,000 words
- Part II — 60,000 words
- Within Parts:
- Three Episodes at 20,000 words each
- Two Episodes at 10,000 words each
- Five Chapters at 2,000 words each
- Four Scenes at 500 words each
- +4,000 additional words (choral fragments, mythic interludes, connective passages)
- Narrative Mode: Rotating close-third POV with interior monologue.
- Recurring Devices: Backstories, flashbacks, cliffhangers, humanizing closing actions, sensual and mythic imagery.
Table of Contents
Book I — Borrowed Faces (Years 0–400)
Theme: Identity is outlawed; masks become law, rebellion, and desire.
Cornerstone Battle: The Siege of Ten Thousand Faces
- Part I
- Episode 1 (10k): The First Mask Cracks
- Ch. 1–5 (≈2k each): Introduction of the mask edicts, first revolt of clay.
- Scenes A–D (≈500 each): personal confrontations with identity loss.
- Episode 2 (10k): A Tax on Names
- Episode 3 (20k): The Bell of Skin
- Episode 4 (20k): The Tribunal of Echoes
- Episode 1 (10k): The First Mask Cracks
- Part II
- Episode 5 (20k): Carnival of Mouths
- Episode 6 (20k): The Pact of Unmasking
- Episode 7 (10k): Salt and Mirror
- Episode 8 (10k): The Siege of Ten Thousand Faces
Book II — The Arithmetic of Selves (Years 401–900)
Theme: Numbers commodify existence; rebellion emerges through deliberate miscounting.
Cornerstone Battle: The Audit at the World’s Table
- Part I
- Episode 1 (10k): The Sky Opens Its Book
- Episode 2 (20k): Mercy Embezzlement
- Episode 3 (10k): Compound Interest of Grief
- Episode 4 (20k): Ledger-Blood Comedy
- Part II
- Episode 5 (20k): The Miscounted Sun
- Episode 6 (10k): Double-Entry Heart
- Episode 7 (20k): Infinity Forged
- Episode 8 (10k): The Audit at the World’s Table
Book III — Rivers That Remember (Years 901–1,600)
Theme: Water becomes testimony; memory itself becomes territory.
Cornerstone Battle: The Drowning of Oaths
- Part I
- Episode 1 (10k): When Rivers Grew Mouths
- Episode 2 (20k): The First Covenant
- Episode 3 (10k): Flooded Workshop
- Episode 4 (20k): Court of Silt
- Part II
- Episode 5 (20k): Raft of Mothers
- Episode 6 (10k): Ledger Drift
- Episode 7 (20k): The Price of Peace
- Episode 8 (10k): The Drowning of Oaths
Book IV — Unhoused Stars (Years 1,601–2,200)
Theme: Constellations are stolen; destiny and navigation collapse.
Cornerstone Battle: The Night Without North
- Part I
- Episode 1 (10k): Constellation Heist
- Episode 2 (20k): The Cartographer’s Seduction
- Episode 3 (10k): Chronos Licks His Teeth
- Episode 4 (20k): Counting the Dark
- Part II
- Episode 5 (20k): Starless Portraits
- Episode 6 (10k): The Astrolabe of Thirst
- Episode 7 (20k): The Riddle of the Map
- Episode 8 (10k): The Night Without North
Book V — Human Thunder (Years 2,201–2,700)
Theme: Mortals bind the world with words; thunder becomes scripture.
Cornerstone Battle: The Library Storm
- Part I
- Episode 1 (10k): The Page Wakes
- Episode 2 (20k): The Hammered Alphabet
- Episode 3 (10k): Editor of Fate
- Episode 4 (20k): Lecture on Subtext
- Part II
- Episode 5 (20k): Thunder on Trial
- Episode 6 (10k): Feast of Faults
- Episode 7 (20k): Soft Revolt
- Episode 8 (10k): The Library Storm
Book VI — The Unreturning (Years 2,701–3,000)
Theme: The Age concludes; the road forward alone remains.
Cornerstone Battle: The Bridge of No Second Crossing
- Part I
- Episode 1 (10k): The Road Without Reverse
- Episode 2 (20k): Mercy’s Auditor
- Episode 3 (10k): The Last Tithe
- Episode 4 (20k): Breaking the Compass
- Part II
- Episode 5 (20k): Time Grows Hungry
- Episode 6 (10k): Choir of the Flawed
- Episode 7 (20k): Inventory of Leaving
- Episode 8 (10k): The Bridge of No Second Crossing
Index of Narrative Elements
- Point of View (POV): Rotating close-third, shifting per episode.
- Inner Dialogue: Characters’ thoughts reveal insecurities, contradictions, and unspoken desires.
- Backstories: Revealed in flashbacks at decision points, each linked to a token object or sensory trigger.
- Cliffhangers: Conclude every episode and book; phrased as suspended questions, choices deferred, or truths partially unveiled.
- Humanizing Closures: Every scene ends with a small, ordinary action (e.g., washing, braiding, laughing, eating) to ground myth in mortality.
- Imagery: Levantine light, melanated embodiment, scars as scripture, rivers and stars as recurring motifs.
- Sensuality: The body framed as sacred, unashamed, and unrestrained by dogma; intimacy as revelation rather than spectacle.
- Humor and Satire: Intermittent use to destabilize authority and humanize conflict (e.g., gossiping receipts, constellations filing grievances).
Would you like me to expand one full Book (e.g., Book I) into a scene-level index with numbered chapters, POV assignment, and specified cliffhanger lines, so it can serve directly as a writing template?