Category: Plotting

The Problem with Fantasy

So whenever AJ dips her toes into fantasy worlds we get stuck in this massive place of world building. It’s the number 1 reason why AJ uses the real world as a template for my stories. As a veteran of world building AJ knows that with less things to ‘make’ there is more time to write. And the less we get into explicit details we have no need of. Things like how many fucking shoemakers are in a town. Yeah we don’t really care.

But AJ spent most of our writing time yesterday working on maps and book covers and coloring 3D models to create some graphics and such to share. And cause this is where AJ gets stuck when we try to write in fantasy lands.

But we still don’t have a plot and AJ plans to write back stories. So we might not be ready on Monday.

But at least you get to see the process of creating a world. This is how AJ does it. We started with my character, and all that randomness sparked a story and a world and AJ’s working on making D&D things happen in her head. There isn’t a lot of information out there that AJ can use to not work on so many details so AJ decided to make her own little neck of the woods with D&D implications.

So I introduce to you Wellsorrow. A region of whatever world where the Shadowfell touches the world too closely and saps out life and causes despair. The region is about the same size as the state of Rhode Island the map is about 50miles by 35miles (each hex in the map being 10 miles wide). It is not very populated since the whole area around the The Leech (the place where the Shadowfell touches the Material Plane) makes the whole area hard to live in. And then there is the Red Dragon Auguin who claimed a wide swath of land the other side of the river so any farms or animals you raise would be under attack all the time.

Made with Inkarnate.com

AJ has some ideas of what’s going on in this little picture, but I want to share with you me and Alex.

And last but not least the book cover that is more about the vibe of my character than it is about the story. But both Alex and I have a story to tell. That’s probably going to be the first choice we make. We’ll get to that in a minute. First the book cover!

Alright and now to the big question we’ll roll for if we don’t get a majority vote from my readers.

Who should go first: me (ae’Nyx) or Alex (al’Zand)?

Emma?

Do I know an Emma?

I don’t think so. I don’t have any clue how to use this prompt. Except maybe in the banana factory song.

But even then AJ stalled on typing it out like uh…. how does that go. We can sing it but it won’t come out the fingers onto the screen.

So even that is out.

Should I know an Emma? So if you’ve read my story up to now, you know that I have a soul mate, and I am part of a triumvirate of power. So for those of you who didn’t read. A soul mate you get, but what it means in my world is that your soul’s energy is made up 1/2 of another soul energy.

That soul is bound together – energy never really loses it cohesion to others it’s been with. They kinda like to stick together.

A triumvirate is the same thing except it’s 1/3 of a soul’s energy. Ant is bound to both Alex and I in the same way.

So if you do the math, I have 1/6 of my soul’s energy that isn’t bound to someone. So AJ’s thinking that there are 5 people out there who share that same energy, and if I were to find all 5 people my entire power base would be complete. I’d have something no one else has ever had – the energy of one of the souls that came first. One of the Umbra itself so to speak. Giving me access to a big bang that hopefully we’ll see in the end of this arc.

So the question becomes who are these 5 people. One is Alex. Alex and I are bound in yet another way. We both have 1/2 of one soul, 1/3 of another soul, and 1/6 of another soul. Our souls are bound forever and always together. Which is why we can’t stay away from each other. The cosmic universe is pulling us together like magnets.

So that’s 4 more people to find. One for each race.

AJ’s thinking Darwynn and Alec are two. They came to me easily, like they had an inside track to something else, so we have human, therian and vampire. I need dragon and venatori. I think we’ll be seeing two new characters in the scheme of things. Maybe I’ll meet one in the current WIP. AJ’s plotting.