I did a little adventuring yesterday but even so, I managed to find time enough to make some progress on Chapter 16 of Tico4. I should have this one done soon, which will lead me to the next arc of the story. Stay tuned.

I went ahead and mostly wrapped up Orguz’s Chapter 2 of TTWC2 and then went on to more or less finish Chapter 15 of Tico4. Not a bad bit of work if I say so myself. You’ll understand what I mean when we get to the chapter in question, but I found it quite the pain to adequately portray synchronous audio and visuals, particularly when the latter is changing in the middle of the former. I may wind up doing some rewriting to streamline it further, but that’s a task for another day. Stay tuned.

I got close to finishing Orguz’s Chapter 2 of TTWC2, but I starting nodding off before I could get it done. So it goes. I may still go on to do the finishing touches before switching to Tico4, though. We’ll see. Stay tuned.

Those of you following my Twitter feed (and I know I haven’t done much posting there of late besides notifications of site updates) are aware that I downloaded the trial version of Smash for the 3DS yesterday. (Very barebones, by the way, but I guess it’s good that they’re whetting the appetite instead of sating it.) Well, that was a grand three-hour ordeal at McDonald’s, so during that time I did a fair bit of writing on TTWC2 is a bit of a switch-up for the week. I pretty well finished Orguz’s prologue, did some revisions on Chapter 1 and made some headway on Chapter 2. Also did a little more work on his family tree and updated some entries in the encyclopedia to reflect the developing changes to the scenario. We’ll see if I can’t wrap up Chapter 2 before I switch back over to Tico4. Stay tuned.

I believe it’s known that I’m a fan of TVTropes, which I’m deliberately invoking here. I do so because I occasionally come across an article or two bewailing the common tropes of fantasy novels. “No Elves! No Dwarves!” they cry. I don’t believe the problem is the Elves and Dwarves (or anything else they catalog) but how they’re used. If you’re following Tolkien or your D&D manuals to the letter, sure, you’re not doing yourself much service, but even then, if you can craft an interesting narrative with compelling characters, who cares?

When I started out as a young whippersnapper, my work was as shamelessly derivative as you could get, but I was just a kid, so some measure of leniency is warranted. (Perhaps one day I’ll tell you about my first book, written around age 11: Mesozoic World. “It’s totally different!” ^o^ And the less said about my plans for Galactic Strife, the better.) This eventually prompted a fierce reactionary backlash when I zealously purged my old work and went off in search of that old unicorn called “originality”. Eventually I came to the realization of “nihil novum sub sole” and instead concerned myself strictly with making the stories I want to write according to how I want to write them. With that being said, let’s look at some of my influences in the crafting of a few of the races of the Tellus Arc and some of the points of divergence as well.

To say my Elves are influenced by Tolkien seems perhaps obvious. I was introduced to Tolkien around 6th Grade and I consider him one of my Three Pillars, the foundation on which I as a writer am based (as I’ve written in a previous post). Now, Tolkien didn’t create his Elves out of the aether. He was strongly influenced by the Scandinavian sagas, in contrast to the ideas about Elves we get from the Continent. A key difference between myself and Tolkien is that my Elves are completely mortal. A thousand years is the average lifespan, though it varies by sub-race. My Elves tend to be a little smaller than human, though not by much. Their appearance is strongly influenced by the Elves of Record of Lodoss War (namely Nobuteru Yuuki’s designs for the OAVs). This is especially true of the Dark Elves. I realize Record of Lodoss War has its origins in D&D (which in turn borrows heavily from Tolkien), but I wasn’t personally exposed to D&D until I was nearly 20 and then it was a very brief encounter. And because I didn’t play many WRPGs either, the influence of D&D-style Elves is minimal.

I have four sub-races of Elves: Light Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves and Wind Elves. My Light Elves are somewhat analogous to what would be called High Elves in other systems (using such a term in-universe would be offensive as the Wood Elves in particular view the Light Elves as high and mighty enough as it is). There are also two extinct branches: the True Elves and the Grey Elves. The True Elves’ power rested in the unity of Elfkind. Once the Dark Elves split off, that unity was lost, though the remainder didn’t become recognized as Grey Elves until after the Light Elves broke off as well. A few of the Grey Elves merged with Sylphs to become Wind Elves and the remainder made a blood pact with the Hamadryads to take their place as the guardian spirits of the forests. The Wind Elves in particular have no analog with other systems that I’m aware of, but Nina from the Breath of Fire series was certainly an influence. (Elves with wings. What’s not to love?)

Elven society is centered around giant tree palaces known as the Five Ancients positioned at major confluences of the aether currents. (I use aether and mana interchangeably, but I try to stick to the term that makes the most sense for the culture in question. As “mana” is a Polynesian term, I don’t tend to use it much in-universe.) Wind Elves are more apt to roam free and while the Dark Elves tend to gravitate to El-Dokun (formerly El-Haman before it died due to Xargon’s curse), they don’t have much of an anchor either. The Elves are not fond of stone and generally avoid setting tools to wood. Instead they prefer to use their magic to shape the trees into their living spaces. They worship Nature in general and the goddess El-Naia in particular. (I’ll cover Elven myths in future posts.) El-Alar and El-Sidar tend to be more matriarchal while El-Simil and El-Okur are more patriarchal. This east/west division also shows up linguistically as well, but I’ll spare you my treatise on Elven dialects. In fact, let’s leave the Elves to their business for the time being and move on to Dwarves.

The Dwarves of my canon hit a lot of the familiar notes, living in mountains, mining and crafting, minecrafting. 😛 They’re about half the height of humans but live about twice as long (the two are unrelated, mind). Significant magical affinity is rare and Dwarven psychics are almost unheard of. (No Madam Dvalla’s Tarot and Palm Reading for you.) They’ve got their grand subterranean cities and are quite content to ignore the outside world, unless they want to fight, that is. Dwarves are quite the scrappy lot and if they don’t have any external enemies to contend with, they’ll mostly just fight among themselves.

In some traditions, Dwarves turn to stone when exposed to the sunlight. I adapted this and had Dwarves, Trolls and Gargoyles all subjected to a curse from the Oreads for their long and bloody war in the Barklai Mountains in what would later be Boreas. (The curse was transmitted globally but only extended as far as the Oreads’ influence, i.e. the mountains and their foothills). The Dwarves only had to suffer the curse for a couple hundred years, though, as it was broken by the warrior-king Vesu. No such luck for the Trolls and Gargoyles.

I can probably talk about Dwarves more, but this post is already getting pretty long, so we’ll briefly touch on Goblins, Trolls and Ogres before calling it a day. I put these three together because they’re loosely related, though about to the degree humans and Dwarves are related.

Goblins (Orghim as they call themselves) tend to be around the size of Dwarves. They come in two subspecies: Tree Goblins and Mountain Goblins. Tree Goblins tend to be skinnier and more agile (capable of climbing trees rather quickly) while Mountain Goblins are stockier with greater physical strength (a bit of a necessity when you regularly take on Dwarves). They tend to be tribalistic but in some times and places have shown the rudiments of civilization.

Trolls are even more varied. There are Cave Trolls, Hill Trolls, Forest Trolls and Snow Trolls. They’re bigger than humans but not by much, the average male being around seven feet tall. As for how they look, check out the Trolls in David the Gnome for a starting point. Their hair and skin color vary by subspecies and their body types are specialized for their given environment (two layers of hair for Snow Trolls, lankier bodies for Forest Trolls, etc.). While they appear to be savages, this is entirely deliberate. Trolls are entirely capable of civilization but eschew it. The Trollwives in particular are rather fascinating. Magical ability tends to be concentrated around them and they sort of act as the power behind the power. Though rarely seen, they are said to be strangely beautiful, but this could just be the influence of the pheromones they exude. (In my canon, Sirens are actually horrible tentacly monsters that only appear beautiful because of their pheromones. A similar deal.) Snow Trolls in particular have extra fun attached to them as there as some theories that Yetis are actually Snow Trolls and the yuki onna of Japan expy Hijima are their Trollwives.

The Trolls of the LotR movies are close to how I envision my Ogres. They’re only about a foot taller than Trolls on average but about twice as wide. I have them classified as Giants in my files (though perhaps including them with Goblins, Trolls and Orcs as Goblinoids would be more taxonomically accurate), but they would be the smallest of the bunch. Still more than big enough to smash us puny humans into jelly. They’re broadly classified into two types based on head shape: the Pointheads and the Roundheads. This is actually a case of sexual dimorphism, the Pointheads being the males and the Roundheads the females. Ogres tend to be solitary sorts. They don’t normally form clans or tribes, but there have been exceptions historically, such as the Ih Clan of the Ogan League (which factors into The Shadow of the Morning Star).

I think this will do it for now. I could keep going quite a while on any one of these races or the dozens of others that I haven’t even brought up here, but I this is already a pretty long post. Expect some follow-ups in the near or not so near future. I enjoy writing about my writing almost as much as the writing itself. ^_^;

We have another instance of me missing my quota and then having to pay it back with interest the following day. I had a lot of work-related stuff going on Thursday, so that made it difficult. It’s not that I did nothing, mind you. I did a fair bit of work in the peripheral materials, working out the order of succession for the Hua Dynasty and getting their family tree started. However, as I’ve said time and time again (and this’ll be the last time I reiterate it, I swear), the quota system applies to story content only. The peripheral materials are just extra as far as all that’s concerned. Now, I’ve been above quota all week, so I can technically afford to slack off a day or two, but I’m really enjoying this boost to my productivity, so I intend to continue to put my nose to the grindstone.

The actual story progress came from KniTwi. I think I’m going to start mentioning which chapters I’m working on from now on since I have the structure established. The CeleKing stories aren’t quite as well-formed yet, though.

I’ve got the weekend before me, so I should be able to continue chugging along. Stay tuned.

I did some writing on KniTwi, but most of the day’s work was done in the peripheral materials. I got an outline sketched out for KniTwi and also solidified the one for The Boy King’s Madness. A lot of work on the military ranking structure for the Celestial Kingdom duology, which involved adapting the New Earth Empire’s ranks to Chinese. Also worked on the patrician families of Gladius, working out some of the details of the various family branches and their history. It all may sound boring to you, but I love getting elbow-deep in all this worldbuilding stuff. I might have teasers for the Celestial Kingdom books up in the next couple days. Stay tuned.

More work on that Cross Arc story and a little more progress on KniTwi. I really need to start formalizing the former and squaring away the outline for the latter. Fun, fun, fun. Stay tuned.

I’ve found myself hooked on this Cross Arc story I’m developing. I’m tentatively calling it The Celestial Kingdom, but this is subject to change. I decided to tie it into an earlier story idea to at least make a two-parter, though I may look to expand it into a trilogy. Said earlier idea was inspired by a Western I watched years ago where the Chinese were referred to as “Celestials” and that got me thinking of a world split between two societies: the Celestials and the Infernals. Particularly, I imagined a Celestial woman being sold into slavery on the surface and our hero’s rescue of her. I decided to tie this in as the backstory of the more recent idea, which got its start in a dream I had a few nights ago. I’ve since been doing a lot of worldbuilding and such. I’ve decided to make the Celestials headed by a pretender to the throne of Earth, combining some of the qualities of the society of the Fifth Empire with aspects of the Han Dynasty. Doing lots of research. Fun stuff. Anyway, I’ll probably be at this another day or two before I start paying attention to anything else. Once details are solidified more, I’ll probably be adding teasers to the Cross Arc page. Stay tuned.

I really shouldn’t put off my writing to the end of the day. I didn’t get a word written Saturday because of it. I know I said I’d meet my daily quota no matter what, but there’s not much you can do when you pass right out in your chair.

However, I more than made up for it yesterday. I made progress on Chapters 15, 17, 19 and 23 of Tico4, did some more work on KniTwi, and also started jotting down dialog for new Cross Arc story I was recently inspired to develop. Rather busy, perhaps to the detriment of other priorities, but so it goes.

I guess I’ll be switching back over to TTWC2, but I imagine I’ll be doing some more work on KniTwi as well. Stay tuned.