Putting some sense into a journey

Month has already past since the last post, and it doesn't seem much to be done. Anyway, more, bigger, and better plans to follow ;)

Sometimes, it seems when I put forward a plan, the opposite find its way to prove to be superior choice. For instance, I was ranting how I don't like arbitrary designs when discussing limits on Shaman's movement. Well, it turns out, it's way better to have arbitrary limitation in place, then deal with yet another massively OP piece, which isn't all that tricky to move, and so fails to reward skilled gameplay. This also fits nicely into general design of variants, where almost every possible rule has an exception to it. If Shaman's movement has to be that exception to the "no arbitrary limitations" rule, so be it.

I changed the way Shamans get entranced into trance-journey, and in doing so, I also wanted the same for Starchilds. Then I realized, it's a good time as ever to have two journeys divorced, at least in name, preferably also in named functions of pieces involved. So, trance-journey will stay in its original form, involving entrancing and entranced Shamans. Newly named sense-journey would involve at least one Starchild; starting with initiating piece (Shaman, or Starchild), then uplifting Starchild, and then uplifted arbitrary piece. Not sure about function names of pieces in sense-journey, maybe I should find different terms? Anyway, the two journeys would stay related to each other; the way entranced Shamans and uplifted pieces move would stay the same, as it would notation using @ sign. This is less then ideal, I'd prefer to have different symbol for encoding sense-journey. The problem is, I'm kinda out of ASCII symbols, and it would make no sense to use anything other than  ASCII for English-based notation.

Another change that I plan to do, is to finally add Scouts and Grenadiers into the mix. I was thinking about it a while ago, but wasn't so sure about designs. Even though I put it on a slow burner, and never took time to think about it thoroughly, it bothered me for quite a bit, and primary reason is because current design adds large swaths of plain, old Pawns[*] which drown out all the other pieces, just with sheer numbers. Now I have made up my mind, even though not everything is clear; I still have to have movement rules and designs of pieces sorted out, before they can appear on a chessboard. Still, Scouts would be much more mobile version of a Pawn, while Grenadiers would be more dangerous, and more tactical ones. Collectively, Scouts and Grenadiers would be called Troopers, while Privates would be any of Pawns, Scouts and Grenadiers. I'll also leave promotion/demotion limited to just Pawns; so Troopers cannot be promoted outright, and has to be demoted to Pawns before they can be promoted. Movement limit of Monolith would also stay based on count of Pawns alone. In showing their Pawn descendancy, Troopers would be able to rush, and could be subjected to en passant.
[*] sideways movement notwithstanding

My immediate plan is to deal with some fixes to notation, namely divergence, displacements of Pawns by Serpent, then review/fix as needed trance-journey. After that, I'll do sense-journey, hopefully covering its notation right after it's done. And after that, I'll do Scouts and Grenadiers. And after that still, I'll update the book; it's been quite some time, and changes, both done and planned, are significant.