A Fallen Knight...

Fog curls out from beneath the gnarled tree roots and gently caresses the ground as it spreads forward to embrace the earth. Broken rays of sunlight trickle down through the cluttered branches to sparkle delicately in the gray cloud covering the ground. For a brief moment it seems as if all of the world has fallen into an enchanted slumber.  Then hoarse shout rises distantly from within the thicket of trees and is soon joined by a great number of screams. Birds burst dramatically into the air to blend their shrieking calls with the deathly din they are eagerly escaping. Wearily, a battered face turns towards the outburst with calculating eyes; wiping glistening beads of sweat from his face, Sir Leon motions to a waiting squire who refills his water-skin as the Knight strains to make out the sounds of battle.

“It’s the Seymour’s yellow coated brigands again, I reckon” a nearby soldier helpfully interjects to break the quiet reflection. The Knight nods as he returns “But whose men are they butchering now?” which causes everyone to fall silent again. The sounds of battle drift from the distant conflict for a few more minutes before slowly fading away into an eerie calm. Tilting his head back, Sir Leon looks up at the makeshift watch tower his men had completed just the previous night. A slight movement on the wooden construction and then a head peers over and makes eye contact with the Knight. “Can’t see diddly, Sir. No idea where they are, or how many there are.”

A muffled groan might have been heard as the Knight looks around at his remaining men. Keeping an outward appearance of calm, he nods solidly to those who manage to meet his eyes though he is inwardly raging. Curse whatever bloody fools light the entire grasslands on fire, he mentally shouts to himself. A pox and a curse and all of the boils of Satan’s torment burn their souls for eternity! We might have stood a chance until a prairie fire sets a beacon out to the whole world and conveniently blocks any line of sight or ability to watch or scout for movement. 17 ambushes in just two weeks, who ever heard of a Knight being caught unaware that often? A few nervous glances from his squires makes Sir Leon realize that his face was betraying his inner turmoil again, which he resolves by stiffly turning and making another round of their precarious encampment. Occupying himself by taking a quick internal roll call, the Knight is almost crushed by the realization he has only twelve men left. Twelve men out of a fierce seventy man regiment so widely respected that many fights stopped simply because they arrived.

The moment the fire became apparent, every House around rushed to wipe the other off the planet under the cover of the ash darkened skies. Finding soldiers in yellow and green was not surprising, as the Seymour and Gainesford Houses had already been encroaching on Dalison land. But mixed in with those bodies, not only had he found the reddish brown of his own Dalison House but also the light cyan of the Rodhale, and also the deeper red of House Andrews. Probably all Houses have a quick tongued gent on hand with the King to explain the “mistaken identity” or “accidental death” for any conflict that could actually be witnessed and proven in the King’s court. And nobody had heard word of that minor House that was poking around before the fire started. So much for their vaunted help that they offered, he snorts to himself, some rumors even have them as the reason that the fire started. I wish I knew what they really wanted and why they decided to wipe the Dalison House off the world.

Sudden alarm breaks into his thought process and he stiffens in shock as his mind frantically does a double take. “Alarm!” he barely manages to get out before the trees around him erupt into a flurry of weapons swinging at his face. I walked right past that guy and never realized he was just standing there in the shadows. Time has frozen for the briefest of moments as he rebels against accepting the sight in front of him. Not the Black! They never surround or take prisoners, just kill us all with no warning or reasoning. They aren’t from here, some say they are from Hell. Why must it be them, why can’t it be a House?

All these thoughts flit through Leon’s brain in a lightning fast moment before combat shuts down any further extraneous thoughts. Quickly twisting with the grace of years of practice, Leon flips his shield sideways and manages a quick bump against an incoming sword. Rotating his head in an awkward angle, he is barely able to catch a second thrust against the strong crest of his helm. Using the momentum of his twist, his right arm strains muscles in a painful movement but succeeds in clearing his sword from his scabbard and sending a darting thrust towards the black armored opponent.  Screams and shouts fill the air but sound seems compressed to the Knight as he focuses on pure survival.

A single lasting second hangs in time before the two blackened blades flicker frighteningly quick towards Leon. An efficient sidestep puts his shield once more right in the perfect path to blunt a sword strike, but this time his attempt to dodge is not quick enough and the second sword catches on his shoulder plates. Metal shrieks as a few chains snap beneath the weight of the blow and blood vessels burst in protest, however his skin does not break and the fight must continue. Moving into his blow, the Knight flings a quick side-hand slash that is easily dodged by his nimble opponent. Hard earned experience has prepared Leon for his tactic however and he manages to shuffle forward just a bit during the exchange.

The roar of blood pounds a drastic beat in his ears, drowning out the sounds of his men behind him. Knowing that they fought the black devils, Leon lets slip a brief snarl of despair and grief for his loyal men dying at this moment. Even a brief slip is too much against such spirited foes and a dark blade connects solidly against the side of his helmet and forces his eyes shut against the ringing. Dalison Knights are respected throughout the entire Kingdom for their training and old legends, and this one refuses to go down so easily. Gritting against the pain, the blind man relies entirely on instinct born of training and experience. Unconventionally swinging his sword low towards the dirt, he waits a heady and full microsecond before flicking his wrist upward with all of the strength that he has left in his battered body.

Bitter raging lust courses through his veins as the impact of steel upon heavy flash ripples through his muscles. A killing blow, he knows even though his eyes refuse to open. Elation and horror melt together inside his emotions as sweet droplets of blood course down his face. In his enlightened sense, Leon feels the presence of several bodies closing on his position. A snarl of pure determination rips through clenched teeth as he whirls and spins into the mass of bodies approaching him. Laughing the last laugh of a doomed man, he revels in the screams and grunts as his shield and blade clash and smash into his enemies. Unfeeling, unaware, he ignores everything around him and surrounds to the rage and anger and bliss of knowing there are no more cares.

A bright light seems to dance in his mind, guiding him through each step of this delicate and maddening dance. Oh Lord of Creation, I entrust myself to You. Take my last confession, feel my sins and absolve me. Let me dance with You this night and sup from Your cup. I dedicate this glorious moment to You, let my name live on in glory forever. And as this last prayer bubbles out of lips brimming with blood, his body finally loses its battle. With a slow and sweeping spin, he slowly buckles to his knees and then begins a glacial fall to the ground. One last breath breaks free of collapsing lungs and his eyes finally work again, giving him one last glance of his final battlefield.

As the world spins in on itself, his mind is already fleeing but has time to mark the positions of two black suits of armor crumpled at one corner of the field and another one a few feet down. From those bodies lead a set of bloody footprints in an erratic pattern through a broken pile of brown armored bodies. The last sight seared into the Knight’s eyes are the footprints ending directly beneath him.

A thrice bitten Kingdom

The Kingdom of Corvali is a Kingdom of Three.

By that, I mean that the number 3 appears so many times in Corvali society that it is almost seems like destiny. 

The Kingdom is one of three Kingdoms on the known continent. It has three separate major Factions, who vie for political power while headquartered in one of the 3 major Cities in the Kingdom. In fact, the synergy with the number three extends even to the Royal Family due to the King having 3 sons vying to be his Heir.

The Kingdom is like any other, with its own ups and downs, strategies, politics, struggles, desires and goals. Its people are a complete mix, with the landed Noble Houses lording over their serfs and passing their superior airs over the merchants and guildsmen. The peasants work and toil and grumble and occasionally better their lifestyle but generally live and die in obscurity. Peace has reigned in Corvali for nearly 50 years, and everyone has settled into the way that life is and forgotten some of the aspects of fear and lost the will to stay alert. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the Church laments all things that lower profits and encourages piety by allowing coin to gain grace in Heaven.

It is into this docile yet frustrating world that our intrepid heroes are born. And it is this elaborate and scheming world which I open up to your perusal.

Consider this world in its medieval age, though there will be some differences from our own history and the way that things work. I will try to address the setup of the Kingdom and how society and the nobles work. As this story is still in the beginning stages, I am open to all suggestions on how things are progressing. 

The Story is only focusing on a single Kingdom at the moment - the other 2 are dark and mysterious and even those who inhabit our favored Kingdom do not know much about their neighbors.

Corvali is the small Kingdom on the bottom right, it is the one with the Dark pencil marks to show the King's Highway, the major road which connects the 3 major Cities.

The circle with the Star in it is the Capital City of Corvale, the S stands for Stoneden which is the major industrial and manufactoring hub and the one far down on the bottom along the coast is the port city of Hythe which rules the seas and is the home of the merchants.

Half Author/ Half DM - All Nerd

As an Author - you are in full command and control. You decide what each character is doing and what he or she think and feel. You dictate how they respond to situations and can use your amazing powers to make storylines meet and arcs come together. The characters can be clueless and miss things that your audience catches, or they can be intelligent and make the wise move in a sea of bad ones. 

As a Gamemaster (also known as Dungeon Master or DM) you are in ... some command and control. You are the storyteller, responsible for the plot and keeping things moving. Responsible for giving players a reason and incentive to keep playing and providing them with stories, characters, and antagonists to interact with and react to, so that they continue to develop and grow and play the game. You lose control of a set number of characters that are played by the others in the game, those feelings and emotions and actions are controlled by the players and you just have to go with it and have the world react and bend to them. Being a GM (gamemaster for those who got lost) that tries to make the players bend to the world generally just leads to frustration for both sides and a very short game. It is much tougher to be a DM, but in some ways it is easier because some of the content is generated by others and you don't have to decide every single decision and dictate every single action.

I am trying to do both, at the very same time -- in the very same world.

While I enjoy the aspect of creating a world for Novels at the same time as being the storyteller or gamemaster for a RPG in that game… it does lead to a lot of headache and effort that I just can’t seem to summon lately.

The weekly arguments with players who want to rule the world without effort and to endlessly defeat any bad guy they run across is a constant drain. It is absolutely insane how I can go from thinking that I am best gamemaster on the planet for my slick storytelling and way that I got the entire party involved to the next week wanting to be done with it all and never have to try to please these stinking selfish players every again.

It doesn’t matter how many times you tell a player that the world is harsh and mean that most people die at a young age and that they are already overpowered and have the best armor and weapons and skills and stats compared to anyone in the world --- they still want more! At heart, every gamer plays just to win. That is the driving force behind why we play in the first place, so we always try to find the cleverest best way to defeat a situation and we must always win and come out on top.

It is funny how playing a console game never brings the level of frustration that a tabletop RPG elicits, in the latter it always seems like it is our own ideas that are being shot down- not just a command we chose out of a generated list of possibilities.

To my current players - bear with me. I have to change the world often as you veer off in unknown directions and disrupt my carefully placed applecart. And please understand that the world sometimes won't just stop and let you have what you want when you want - I haven't experienced that in life and our current game is based on reality and not strictly fantasy (like Dungeons and Dragons or some other games that come to mind).

To my readers - join in and encourage me. It helps so much to hear ideas from my friends and those who read what I write. I may tease and joke when you do mention something, but inside it helps so much. 

To the future!

Doomed

I have become daunted by my own story.

The stakes have risen so much, battlegrounds extended, the plot skyrocketed. And now to be able to fully grasp and pull everything together in the correct sequence and keep things enjoyable for all… I have to spend entirely too much of my time documenting and translating some of my previous notes into something useful and easy to combine into an actual situation and metric.

While I may be able to remember in my head that I had this character betray his faction and run this direction, when it comes time to actually interweave the faction story arc, will I remember who he spoke to and who was in town at that time?

I dislike having to retroactively go back into my story and generate the names of the nobles and etc who would have witnessed events and thus reacted to them but I forgot that originally. So I am trying to plan out each Noble House and all of the people who serve it and where they are and keep up with those people as each week advances plotlines and the RPG game that we are playing in this world also advances things.

However, the task of keeping all of that noted, generated, reasoned, logicked, backgrounded and the like is so daunting. My mind actually shuts down and runs away and then I am left feeling very upset with myself because I know that I should be working on this and keeping things in easy progress or I will lose my place and my head. Knowing that doesn’t seem to be adding to my willingness to sit down and put everything together and push it over to the computer instead of being in 2040592 hand written notes (a possible exaggeration there).

Oh, what to do? What have I done to myself?

Not only do I need to get approximately 357 characters, backgrounds and plotlines together but I also have another 17 organizations within the Kingdom that I have to develop their plots and reasoning and desires and activity. The world can’t just stand still since the protagonists are in a little town instead of interacting with the world.

Restarting

Due to a recent conversation with a few friends and allies. I might be considering resuming posting my writing and ramblings here. I have so many stories and ideas in my head, perhaps it might be time to share a few with those who dare to read this blog.

I know that I should warn you now: I have a very self efacing humor. So please bear with me and understand that I am laughing at myself, that way you don't have to *Smile*

Before I get into sharing all of my deep dark secrets and the machinations and plots roaming through the grey matter in my head, let me share with you some cool things that I have found over the past few years. That way you can have some fun supporting awesome projects and add a little sunshine to your life as well.

First and foremost, I found Kickstarter. Its AWESOME. It allows those of us who lead ordinary lives to actually invest in nifty projects that are the heart and soul of others and be a part of the change that we want to make in the world. New businesses, games, tools, art, music, all of it!

Let me share a few that I personally liked: Artisan Dice

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Some nifty customizable figurines for gaming

https://d2pq0u4uni88oo.cloudfront.net/projects/740871/video-332043-h264_high.mp4

(Maybe you figured out that I was not joking about being a gamer )

And my favorite! The world of Kingdom Come

https://d2pq0u4uni88oo.cloudfront.net/projects/829609/video-335155-h264_high.mp4


The Kingdom Come Kickstarter really resonates with me-- because I have been working on creating a world just like that! I have quite a few little stories of my medieval world in my head, but I am so jealous that the studio in that video and Kickstarter is able to live that dream. More power to them.

Should people actually start paying attention to my blog again, I might just be tempted to regale you with the exploits of the Paladin, the Trooper, the Sith, the Warlord, King Beardion the DragonLord, and The Kingdom of Cronali. (yes, all different stories in different venues)

1000 Views!

When I started this blog, I knew that everyone (and their mother and most likely their mother's dog) has their own blog and filled the internet space with thousands of posts and so much information that very few people's blogs get read.

I fully intended to only post here a few times a year, just whenever the urge struck me and I had a new story completed; most often for Achaea.com. Every so often, I would link the blog on my Facebook profile and tell people about it, for the few close friends who put up with the things that I write.

However, in what seems just a few short weeks, suddenly there have been over a thousand pageviews, and a multitude of comments. I have had people come up to me about some of the things written here, and I am blown away.

To all who read this blog, I thank you! And for every single comment that I receive, either here or else where, I resolve to work even harder and tap into the special emotional current that tells us that we are alive.

I recently went through some redesigns on the blog, hopefully it is easier to read and follow. I value your support, as I want to write even more now that I know people read it.

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As a reward for so quickly bringing the site to a thousand page views- here is a brief synopsis of what I have in mind so far for the Dragon story. Please keep in mind that I reserve the right to completely change any of this- however it is my intellectual property and I would appreciate that distinction being respected.

The story will begin with an introduction to Beardion, the Lord of the Dragons and the Monarch who rules over the realm. The Dragon Lord appears to be engrossed in a book that he has discovered, and soon begins to read that book and ignore everything around him. Since the Realm has been ruled well for a very long time, not much is said at first but then his subjects grow worried as more and more time passes.

They bring in wizards and sorcerers to try to get their king's attention or break a spell, the Elder Council of Dragons comes up with the idea that the king is lovesick and so attempt to hold a festival where the most lovely dragon princesses would attempt to gain the attention of the reading Dragon Lord. Several different tactics are tried, but Beardion simply will not be moved.

Things take a turn for the worse, as is the course of life as we know it. And the General of the kingdom's armies brings the tidings that the petty Humans are getting out of hand. Apparently they have developed a new weapon and are destroying Draconic holdings and lands with great success.

Here, I hope to have the story really turn upon the different perspectives that peaceful and civilized Dragons would have towards barbaric and nomadic tribes of Humans. Humanity can be vicious and vile, and when seen through the eyes of a race of non-Human beings, I am sure it looks even worse than we can imagine.

From here, the story still waits to write itself- I find that I do not often think TOO far ahead.. as my characters live and breath on their own and often times take paths or make choices that I did not plan for them.

Kinda like life, right?

Cheers!

A teaser!

Just posting some general updates, as work on the story about the Dragons continues.

My friend Joanna continues to read and give suggestions like an editor. I love it so, even though she tears my writing apart. Haha.

I have asked my friend Yoelin to help me draw some artwork for the story, if any other artists want in on the action, let me know. Full credit will be given where due!

Now, I normally like to keep everything EXTREMELY close to the vest, the better to surprise people. However, as I start such a very lengthy process, I have realized that there is so much to flesh out that perhaps sharing the world as I begin to imagine it will actually help- plus keep it interesting and not so silent and full of cobwebs on the blog while I work on the story itself.

Interested? Read on!

The story that I am going to write is intended to be the first of a two story collection. Involving a book. Yes, I said a book. Quite a novel task, I am well aware.

So the first story will be the perspective and thoughts from the Dragon world.

I know that there will be a number of characters, both major and minor, but only a few have implanted themselves in my mind.

First and foremost, is the Dragon Lord. King of the Realm. His name is Beardion the Majestic. He is a very large and regal dragon, his coloring a mottled mixture of green and slate grey. He has ruled the Kingdom for many many years, and everyone is comfortable with his rule. He will be the major part of the story- as he is the one who is reading the oh so mysterious book.

Stay tuned for more little reveals, and keep the comments flowing. Anyone who takes the time to read this blog will have the chance to have input in the shaping of this world and novel, my way of saying thank you for reading!

Heelllpp! An opportunity!

Several of my friends and colleagues have been pressing me to get into actually writing on a more common and consistent basis. And with enough pressure, compliments and ego stroking, I might just be ready to do that.

The last few days have been eye opening, in terms of emotional expanses and also insight into the human mindset. Now I would like to turn to writing something a little less personal life orientated and use it as a way to clear my head and give my friends and fans something to read that does not come across as a love torn bard. Haha.

So now I will very subtly disguise a plea for assistance and make it look like an opportunity for personal glory!

Anyone who becomes (or remains) a follower of the blog may make a comment on this post with their suggestion/request for a certain storyline or idea and I will personally dedicate a short story to you with that particular topic. Intrigued?

Some rules first! You must be a follower and make a non-anonymous comment. That way I can identify with you, focus the story on your request, and brag about what a cool follower you are. Also, I will hold the right to creative liberty as the story develops. Say that you want a story of a little man over coming a bully- that's perfectly fine, but the story might not be about the traditional physical bully! The magic of the literary world is the endless possibilities, so be ready to be surprised.

I have very few subjects that I will not explore and write about, though I have mentioned in this blog before that I will not write from the perspective of one who has passed on from this life.

If you want the story to be about you, provide some details and make it a bit of an alternative life. Sometimes the way a character moves might not reflect your own thoughts, so allow fantasy instead of reality!

All in all, I am excited to be challenged. To actually have expectations and ideas to meet that are not generated within my own mere mortal brain.

Are you up for it? Who dares comment first?