Interview the author about the origins of the Chess Olympics [Special]

"For the third time, Welcome back! And THIS TIME, the interview begins, right?" Kisha angrily smiled.

Correct. Today I'm going to talk more about the Chess Olympics arc. First off, the origin.

For this series, real-life events in the chess world often provide the biggest source of inspiration for me. The 45th Chess Olympiad was the one for this whole season.

"What about it was so great?"

India actually.

"India!?"

Correct, the team of Gukesh, Pragg, Arjun, Vidit, and Harikrishna dominated so much and made things so exciting that inspiration was an inevitability, which is ironic given that India in the story ended up having a pretty minor role compared to others.

"What do you mean?"

For that, I need to talk a bit about the teams themselves. You see, India was actually one of the first teams I began designing, as they were the main inspiration for the arc itself. At the time, they were set to be main characters as there were hardly any teams made. Only nations with preestablished characters were considered to be teams. That included Prussia, Russia, England, America, China, Norway, Poland and Denmark. Of those teams, I had to create most of their members from scratch, but that wasn't really an issue at the time.

Spain and Italy were the only other teams plus Finland that I decided to have in the event.

"What about France?"

It wasn't initially, but after discovering that the IRL Japanese women's team's first match was against France, it quickly became a thing as Fifi was already a character at the time, as was Fleur, meaning I just had to create three new characters from scratch.

"OK, so you had France, Italy, Poland, India, Spain, China, Russia, Prussia, England, Norway, America, Denmark and Finland. That's thirteen teams, 14 if we include Japan itself, so even if you did 11 rounds plus Finland serving as an additional opponent like back then, you'd have all your teams plus a spare. Heck, the women actually fought all of them but Spain, England, Denmark, and Russia. And for the guys, you had Denmark, India, America, Prussia, Russia, and Finland, with the others all lined up. So why'd you go from 14 teams to 74?"

Because I just got too into it. It's true I could have stuck with that plan, but I felt this was a chance to expand greatly on worldbuilding. Not to mention, I wanted to pay tribute to numerous chess players, many of whom hailing from nations not in those initial 14. That then led to me creating more teams and subsequently deciding to feature teams from the 45th Chess Olympiad that either finished in the top 10 in either women's or open section, or had a player from them win an individual medal in some way shape or form. That was 15 more teams right there. But there were also countries I wanted to do like Estonia, and that led to a snowballing of me creating over 74 different women's teams. In terms of countries total, that are represented it's 76 if we include full teams, but over 80 if we talk about nations present as a whole.

"Can't give me exact numbers?"

I'll edit them in later. Getting back to India, in the beginning, they were planned to have a big focus, but with all the new characters I quickly created, they ended up taking a back seat to them ironically enough. There were even plans to have them face off against Prussia in the final round to showcase them winning the gold, but well, we all know how burned out I got with the final stages of the arc. Now time for a break.

"Well, he gave us content, so break time it is," Kisha grumbled.