37,500 words! I'm hoping to get a little bit further ahead every day for the next few days, because I'm reasonably sure I'll need at least one day off - Chateau Naril is hosting quite a Thanksgiving celebration this year, and that means I need to be in my kitchen preeeeeetty much starting from Wednesday evening. *laughs* 

My story originally started life (in my head and even in the early outlines) as a straightforward adventure. There's still a lot of that in there, but there's so much more now. Our Heroines have become reluctant players in a game of power and conspiracy, racing toward a goal that nobody in the game truly understands - only knowing that they all need to get there first.

Slightly modified from my NaNo author profile....

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The Ancients didn't kill the world - but they did drive it mad.

Thousands of years ago, civilization fell and left the world ferociously dangerous, with an out-of-control biosphere and humanity no longer at the top of the food chain. Over time, a new nation rose, tearing their own cities out of the endless jungles and forests and discovering the ruins, wonders, and terrors that their ancient ancestors left behind. Of those, none are more mysterious than the Wall - a vast, impenetrable energy field completely isolating the Northern part of the world's most-explored continent. But in a few days, the Wall is coming down, with word that a mysterious, powerful group known as the Priory are working to that end. When it falls, dozens of teams of explorers, scientists, thieves and miscreants are ready to charge into that unknown land, dreaming of a gold rush.

In the workshops of Kanda, the closest city to the Wall, Ada and Lara Velt are prepared to be one of those teams. Ada is a prolific inventor, her sister an academic. Like many, they are deeply distrustful of the Ancients' legacy, and want to know more about what might be locked behind the Wall. They suspect there's something dangerous up there, and while Lara expects something that perhaps [i]should[/i] be locked away, Ada hopes for something that might help to undo the damage the Ancients did.  What they find - and the path getting there - will be something other than either of them expect.