A few months ago I shared the first issue of The Lydian Stone Series here:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44253083It's an alternate-history comic about an archaeology student in modern Pompeii who discovers a slate that lets him exchange short messages with a Roman slave a week before the eruption of Vesuvius.The premise is simple: what happens if someone in the Roman world suddenly gains access to modern scientific knowledge, but still has to build everything using the materials and tools available in 79 AD?Volume 2 (The Engine of Empire) explores the second-order effects of that idea.About the process: I write the story, research, structure, and dialogue. The narrative is planned first (acts → scenes → pages → panels). Once a panel is defined, I write a detailed visual description (camera angle, posture, lighting, environment, etc.).LLMs help turn those descriptions into prompts, and image models generate sketches. I usually generate many variations and manually select or combine the ones that best match the panel.The bulk of the work is in the narrative design, historical research, and building a plausible technological path the Romans could realistically follow. The AI mostly acts as a sketching assistant.I'd love feedback on the story direction, pacing, and whether the industrial shift feels believable.Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47282390Points: 12# Comments: 3