Barbarian read book.
[Was discussing exposition with Kristin McFarland, and how it’s preferable to have characters find clues or learn new information via in-world texts – instead of having Jagerspike Shatterpaw, Bear Pugilist and “Wise Wizard” show up and dump some plot on the main character’s heads. Here’s an excerpt from Lodestar with an example.]
The green flame’s bored directions soon led the barbarian to a large tome, nearly four handspans in length, and almost as thick as Agnar’s arm. The cover was simple leather, embossed with an ornate representation of the Arkanic symbol, Knowledge.
The Northlord found a quiet desk, hidden away in the towering stacks and set his guide down on the stand provided. The sprite brightened visibly, giving Agnar sufficient light to read.
Opening the first page, a musty fume filled the air. Heady and thick, but not unpleasant. The scent of old books.
The first page was filled with large block representations of several major Precursor symbols, a few of which Agnar found himself surprised to recognize. The numbers, and the symbol for Fire seemed to jump out at him.
Turning the page, the barbarian found a simple rhyme.
How’d they come, and where’d they go?
Little boys and girls all want to know!
East of the Sun, and West of the Moons
On silver roads born of Star
Walking and singing their secret tunes
Far and near, near and far!
The green flame tried nobly to roll its eyes, before remembering that it didn’t have any.
The next few pages are gorgeously illustrated with a series of landscapes.
Primitive people going about their simple lives, farming and hunting. Agnar gazed critically at some of the spearmen — they were holding the weapons completely wrong.
Flip.
A time of darkness, fire and death. Monsters roam the land, killing and maiming the simple tribesmen.
Flip.
A shining knight, marked with the Precursor Sigil of Power — light shines from him in all directions, making the monsters flee.
Flip.
The simple people’s village rebuilt, but grander and stronger. The shining knights walk amongst the people, helping them build things, till the earth.
Flip.
The village is a grand city, with ships that sail through the air and towers in the clouds.
Agnar stops a third of the way through the tome.
The barbarian finds several pages missing, sliced neatly from the overall tome — the barest stubs of paper remaining at the center of the binding.
The next pages showed fanciful illustrations of scholars and researchers looking through the ruins of Precursor structures, with descriptions of the undying wonders left behind by their civilization.
Maybe you will solve the mystery! Maybe you…. one page had solemnly written.
Ring of Silver
Material Plane/Lodestar
“Look!” Alice interrupts with a hushed whisper, pointing towards a gash on the Browncloak’s leg.
At the edges of the wound, the flesh was beginning to blacken like the charred edges of a fireplace log.
The princess immediately resumed binding his wounds with scraps of fabric, tying quick knots with a spool of twine. The black corruption was obvious on several of his other wounds. She spoke hurriedly as she worked.
“I’m not familiar with the energy of the floatstone — but my magic is aligned to the plane of Light. I’m afraid that any similar energy will only harm this….person? Demon?”
Her hands stopped moving momentarily, and she looked across Izus’ body at the assembled crew.
“Should we really be trying to save him, then?” she said stricken.
Spirit World/Lodestar
Careful — careful! Don’t you think we should return to the World of the Living now, pet? The Ianu stone whispered.
Echo ignored the stone’s pleas and pushed towards the shining man. She felt the heat on her face, and smelled sulfur in the back of her nose.
At the center of the man was a hole. The golden light radiated from the opening, glowing white-hot at the center — like a ring of candle-flame.
The druid leaned forward, and peered down into the chasm.
She saw a ring. A silver ring, pitted and worn — no more than a handspan across.
Bound to the ring, with cords of gold were five black hearts.
Five black flames.
The ring spun slowly, as the black flames pulled and fought. Sometimes at each other, sometimes at their bonds — always straining against the circle of silver.
There was something more. Something in the center of the ring, but the erratic spinning of the ring made it impossible to make out.
Time to go, pet. Leave that alone.
Thought-Bursting and Google Docs for Fun and Profit
Can I just say that writing on Google Docs has been awesome? There’s something tremendously useful about being able to add comments on the fly, without breaking up the flow of the narrative.
I am really prone to having an interesting idea, plugging in some vague reference to it in the story — then not being able to remember a few days, weeks [or hours…] later what the heck I was talking about.
Here’s an example.
I had a character that I was referring to as Madame XXXX. [Name redacted, because of reasons.]
So, like many fantasy writers [I assume.] I had the thought-burst. “Why am I using a French word in my uber-creative fantasy setting? And on top of that, this character is a young female, does ‘Madame’ make her seem too old? I don’t want to call her Miss XXXX, because that just sounds gross. Am I overthinking this? Is there a better honorific, or title I could use? WHELP, TIME TO WASTE SOME LIFE ON WIKIPEDIA.”
[I’m sure your thought-bursts are similar.]
Now, admittedly — I am a giant supporter of Who Fucking Cares?: Have a Manticore Attack school of fantasy writing. I think many genre writers get so bent out of shape justifying their world-building that it sucks all the fun out the fiction, and when in doubt I use a modern term, because it saves time for me and will be most easily understood by the audience.
But, this seemed to fall under the purview of But It Might Sound Cooler If… and WIKIPEDIA is Fun. So, I dove right in — and I came across this little snippet.
The French word evolved in turn from the Latin mea domina, meaning “my mistress (of the house)”.
-From the Wikipedia entry on Madame.
Now, I have a huge word-boner for Latin. It’s my go-to dead language for when I want a cool-sounding fantasy term. So after playing around with it for a bit, I came up with Meadoma as my new honorific. It sounds kind of Madame-y, but it more lyrical and not-French.
Success!
[Well, maybe — I’m already having second thoughts, and may shorten it to “Doma”.]
What was the point? Oh yeah, Google Docs!
So, instead of a cruddy Post-It Note or something, I made a Comment on the page about where I got the idea from, so when I come back through to edit in a month or two, there will be some sort of trail to my though process.
So, in summation: Google — send me a ChromeBook! One of the white ones, please.
Lodestar du Jour
Oh, and Lodestar is back! Yay! Feels good to be off hiatus, and back in action.
Of interest: If you’ve read Another Story and The Cost, we’re actually dealing with the protagonist Izus/Jonas in current Lodestar continuity.
For those of you playing the home game, this scene takes place about ten years after the end of The Cost.
Here’s an excerpt –
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” the green blaze of light confessed. ” Whatever it is — it definitely isn’t natural, and stinky. Diagnosis: Stinky.”
Martin and Dayjen took charge of the unconscious prisoners and moved past down the stairwell. “Be careful not to slip!” the blonde wizard yelled over his shoulder.
The smear of purple and green fluid got worse as the adventurers proceeded down below decks. Reeking and thick, it the smear lead to the door of the Sun Room. It reminded Agnar of a wounded boar that he had tracked on his first hunt, disemboweled it had left a red foam for miles before finally falling dead into its lair.
Boots stuck to the floor, and made a sickening sound as they trod through the strange fluid.
Pushing the door open, Haskeer leads the way into the room.
Izus is laying in the wide bed in the center of the room, purple and green oozing from several vicious wounds. A quick glance shows them to be long slashes across his torso, as well as several burn marks that appear to be electrical in origin, and a dozen bullet holes that appear to be made by Seafoam ordinance. A shallow gash runs across his forehead and through his left eye. He appears to be unconcious, breathing shallowly.
Alice is standing over the Browncloak, covered from fingertips to elbow in the strange ichor. She is doing her best to close his massive wounds with strips of bedsheet, and a ball of twine. Her eyes are a little wild, but she is managing to keep her voice calm.
“I’ve already tried healing him magically, but it just seemed to make things worse. You’ve dealt with this man — or whatever he is before, any idea what has happened to his blood?”
Since Lodestar will be soon generating an obscene amount of text again, I’m thinking about putting up a taste of it on the blog every day or so — thoughts?
Pilgrim’s Progress
Everyone’s filling the blog-waves with their New Year’s resolutions — so here’s my writing resolution.
5 pages a week on That Thing. Rain or shine. Hell or high water.
I started a schedule for myself just before Christmas, and I’m pleased that I’m every-so-slightly ahead of schedule. As of last week I was supposed to be at 55 pages — and I’m sitting pretty at 57. By the end of this week, I need to be sitting on 60.
I’m hoping to get ahead of schedule and stay ahead — but my creative and professional life has a way of throwing me curveballs consistently.
Compared to a lot of other ‘Pressers, I know this is a really conservative resolution. I’m looking at you Quill Wielder. But I’m hoping it’s something I can stick to it, and be cruising into 100+ pages by March — which should be very close to novel size, and something I can get serious about editing.
And after that — scary thoughts!
And another one done…
New page added for The Cost, if you want to read it straight through. Comments and criticism welcome!
The Cost X
Izus Torossian walked through the empty streets, with a bundle in his arms. The raw sound of a baby crying battered at the air.
The dark things – the once-men stayed far away from him, he strode across the wet cobblestones unopposed.
Izus wished something would attack. Something he could fight.
The inside of him felt wide and vast, as if he had stumbled through a door in his house and discovered a vast concert hall; the orchestra tuning their instruments and waiting for the maestro’s baton.
He was smarter, faster, more. He was more.
Izus looked down at last to the crying child in his arms. The rain had slowed, but a few drops still fell on the babe’s unprotected face. He pulled the edge of his cloak up, and covered her carefully.
“Shhhh, little one. Everything’s going to be okay.”
The child stopped crying at the sound of his voice, and dropped off into an uneasy sleep — rocked by the motion of his strides.
“Everything’s going to be okay.” he said again, and found no comfort in the words.
The Cost IX
He felt his ribs shatter, leaving his heart exposed. A breath of cool air on his beating heart.
“Ah, yes – plenty of room. Room for five.” Fairchild purred.
Blood poured out of the squire’s empty eyes and his fingers slid along the stone. His body arched backward, and there was pain.
There was so much pain.
Then he saw them.
A hound with blue eyes.
A snake with green scales.
A knight with brown armor.
A lady in white.
A crow with yellow talons.
They were gone, but they weren’t.
Fairchild slid a long green hand down his chest, and the wound closed. A jet of purple and green fire cauterized the wound, and left the flesh smooth and unbroken. The green creature cocked his head, and laid an appraising finger aside of his pursed lips. He nodded with satisfaction.
” There…we’re done! Now get up.” he stood and moved back towards the throne. “You have lots and lots of work to do.”
The man stood up. He realized that his hands were clenched in the folds of his brown cloak. The fingers slowly released, and he saw they were coated thick with blood. On the floor surrounding him was a wide pool of blood.
It’s mine. The thought seemed to echo inside the wide cavern of his mind, like a marble dropped in a basin. The last blood that I will ever shed.
“And now — the name!” Fairchild clapped his hands like a stage magician. “It has waited for you here — for so long. Hovering at the end of your road, waiting for you to wear it like a crown. The name whispered in the dark. The name promised. Oh…you don’t seem very excited…”
The creature actually managed to sound petulant. The man said nothing.
“Very well, then. You are Izus Torossian. Take your payment and go.”
The Cost VIII
The creature’s green fingers closed around the blade.
“I shall make you…”
The blade was falling, it fell again and again.
“…make you …”
Jonas let go of the blade and it fell.
“…make you…”
Green fingers closed around the blade, and Fairchild looked up. His eyes were nothing.
“I shall make you of power and gold.”
The squire let go of the blade, and it fell.
“I shall make you of…”
A squire stumbled through the dark and rain.
“…power and gold.”
Green fingers closed.
“…and gold.”
A boy said good bye to his friend. He left in the rain.
He let go of the sword. His eyes were nothing.
“I shall make you of power and gold.”
spell-sword.com 