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. ^_^;

I don’t believe I’ve talked about the Three Pillars in any depth and now is as good a time as any to do so. We all have a multitude of influences in our lives and as a writer, there are three other authors who I consider the foundation on which I have built my work.

The first is probably the most obvious: JRR Tolkien. Tolkien managed to capture my imagination in a way no other author has. There are a number of people who criticize his style as dry, but I never thought that, even as an 11- or 12-year-old when I read through LotR for the first time. I particularly love Tolkien for the depth of his worldbuilding and that vast interconnected mythos he wove. My own great love of myth and legends is echoed by his own and he no doubt had an influence on my desire to study linguistics as well. The worlds crafted in my peripheral materials surely can’t compare to Tolkien’s legendarium, but you can surely see his touch.

Next up is Frank Herbert of Dune fame. I was older when I started reading Herbert, around the latter part of high school if I recall. Like Tolkien, Herbert has a lot going on when it comes to worldbuilding, but what I draw from him more his crafting of intrigue, the “plans within plans, wheels within wheels” and his portrayal of prescience and the twisted web of fate. Some allege Herbert is an iconoclast against the monomyth while Tolkien would be more of a codifier of it. If you accept this premise, then I guess it would make for part of a dualistic cosmos from which my stories spring.

Third is Rumiko Takahashi, the mangaka behind such works as Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha. Takahashi’s inclusion among Tolkien and Herbert may seem a bit idiosyncratic, but Takahashi is an author with considerable range, from the romantic comedy of a gender-bending martial artist to the horror of her Mermaid series to the simple everyday slice-of-life pieces found in her short stories. I particularly like her ability to craft characters and play those characters off each other.

And there you have it, my Three Pillars. There are other influences, of course, but these are the main sources I draw inspiration from. For those of you creative types out there, who do you consider your primary influences?

Have I mentioned that I patterned the leads of The Trident War Chronicles after chess pieces? I only bring it up because it seems that, originally at least, the characterization of my “king” and “queen” characters were among the weakest. Just as I didn’t have much to work with in the case of Solon, so too was Xanthe a fairly shallow and incidental sort of character until the more recent version. However, because she had more to do anyway, I didn’t seem to have to work quite as hard to expand her role.

During production, I did some shuffling of the overall Tellus Arc timeline to make certain events fit in better with the overall chronology. In doing so, I made Xanthe a few hundred years younger than she once was. Being over 400 years old may sound like a lot, but for a Light Elf like Xanthe, that’s about the equivalent of being around 25. The fact that she became Queen of Goldleaf before she even turned 200 was quite unprecedented. Her relative youth made for a good combination with Solon’s idealism.

Just as Solon had to deal with significant opposition to his vision, so too did Xanthe and I play this up more with the Law-speaker Sidarazel emerging as her chief adversary. I don’t delve too deeply into Elven society, though, as a large part of Xanthe’s character is that she’s spent most of her time trying to integrate into human society, returning to El-Alar chiefly for important festivals and ceremonies and having little day-to-day involvement with her own domain. Even if Xanthe wasn’t a telepath of decent ability, she’d be all too aware of how she was regarded by the humans around her. Indeed, even the closest human to her besides Solon, Lord Aristides, serves her almost entirely out of his loyalty to her husband and doesn’t have any particularly warm sentiment for her. She loses touch with her identity as an Elf but can’t become human either. It’s a sad, lonely existence. Her one refuge was her children, but Carpos became distant in the years leading up to his betrayal, leaving Daphne alone as her only other support.

Xanthe at least has the strength to suffer for her part in making Solon’s dream a reality, even though she becomes more disillusioned as time goes on. Perhaps her being a touch more on the cynical side is how she developed the savvy to do pretty much whatever it took to give the Darklands campaign the fighting chance it needed. Using the illusionist Gulmengoel to impersonate Solon after his death was a new addition, as I realized there was no way they could just pretend to have him tucked away for two years. Underhanded, yes, but the venture would’ve broken apart otherwise.

It might’ve been interesting to see what would’ve happened if Xanthe survived the Darklands campaign. I don’t think she would’ve abdicated the throne as easily as Daphne, but she probably wouldn’t have been able to rally enough loyalty to put up much of a fight. Hard to say. Maybe there’s an If Arc story to be had.

Next up is Daphne. Stay tuned.

During last week’s retrospective on Archbishop Gamaliel, I said I would consider going back and giving the other leads of TTWC1 a second look. I’ve decided to make this a semi-regular feature, hence the new “Character Spotlight” title. We kick things off with the first lead of TTWC1, King Solon.

When I was designing the prototype for what would become The Trident Chronicles, I didn’t have much of an idea for the character beyond “wise old king”, hence his original name of Solomon. (I used to have impeccable subtlety, you see.) Honestly, he didn’t really have much development beyond that original concept until the current version of the story.

You may recall that in the previous version of the story, I didn’t give each lead an equal number of chapters. Their sections were as long as the stories I had to tell and Solon’s was one of the shortest because, frankly, there wasn’t much there and seeing as how he dies before the fleet even reaches Notos, he only served to kick off the plot. By forcing myself to give each of the leads equal screentime (at least in terms of the number of chapters), I had no choice but to shore up shallow characterization and so Solon developed into the person he is now.

When I thought of his inauspicious birth, I realized that isn’t something that you can just walk away from. (I realize that the details haven’t been revealed yet, but you already should know from Xanthe’s epilogue that Solon and the Monarch Lich are “twins” of a sort.) Solon grew up surrounded by whispers and rumors and was completely despised by his father. When the King remarried (to a woman just five years Solon’s senior) and had a second son, Solon ceded his birthright and entered into the seminary. There he studied with future Archbishop Ieremias (the “reformer” so despised by Gamaliel in his prologue). Solon would have entered the priesthood were it not for his brother Carpos’ untimely death. While it was possible for Solon’s nephew by his half-sister Antigone to claim the throne with his father acting as regent until he reached the age of majority, Solon instead chose to reclaim his birthright with the intention of reforming Zephyr (with Ieremias’ encouragement as the two idealists sought to work both inside and outside the Church to achieve change).

While there had been relatively few all-out wars between Zephyr and her non-human neighbors, there was certainly no love between them and the Church’s teachings about them certainly didn’t help matters any. Solon took a chance by extending an olive branch and at least in the Elves’ case, he was lucky to find a young (by Elven standards) queen just as idealistic as he was. In the Dwarves’ case, their natural suspicions of the humans erupted into the disastrous Nanoi Campaigns, which ultimately resulted in the forced removal from Zephyr of the surviving Dwarven community. This seems rather cruel in light of the picture I’ve been painting of Solon, but it was the lesser of two evils as prevailing opinion was that the Dwarves should have been exterminated completely.

I would say Solon’s greatest weakness was that he was so committed to his ideals and his principles that he was blind to the world around him. Not completely blind, mind you, but he never truly appreciated how great the opposition to his policies was, leaving a situation where no one but a cunning and brutal tyrant could have held on to the kingdom in his wake. Daphne grew into her role as a leader rather well, but she could never be ruthless enough to fight tooth and nail to hold on to the throne (but that’s a subject of a future entry).

In the end, I find him to be a rather tragic figure who dreamed a dream too big for his world to contain. To call him too good for this sinful earth would be an exaggeration, but his high-minded principles were a two-edged sword that I fear cut him more deeply.

Next time, we’ll take a look at Queen Xanthe. Stay tuned.

When I finished Cronos’ section, I felt compelled to spend a little extra time discussing his character development, both on the page and behind the scenes. I feel like doing the same for Gamaliel. If I recall correctly, a prototypical version of Gamaliel existed from the earliest version of the story, but it wasn’t until TTWC came into its current form that he took up the role of antagonist to Solon and Xanthe, a role I expanded on significantly when the story was brought into production.

There was a time when portraying a corrupt cleric in fiction was edgy, but now the opposite is more of a surprise. There are basically two ways of characterizing the antagonistic cleric: the cynic and the zealot. The cynic has little if any real faith and merely uses religion as a tool to serve temporal ends. The zealot is a true believer whose fanaticism precludes whatever charity exists in the tenets of his religion. I was vacillating between these two options when I finally asked myself ¿Porqué no los dos? *cue trumpet rendition of “La Bamba”*

You see, Gamaliel is not simply a pious fraud leveraging the blind faith of the masses to gain worldly power. He sincerely believes that he’s working God’s will but is also coldly calculating when it comes to manipulating people and situations to achieve his goals. Related to this, I’d considered making him a coward who always shrank from any real danger, but instead his mad zeal very nearly compels him to be on the front line against all the horrors of the Darklands. (He’s not quite that far out there, but this is still the guy who was eager to set his men against Dragons.) The average reader may not be drawn in, but he certainly gets the job done in universe.

In Cronos’ case, I felt he was a character who didn’t live up to his reputation but then turned it into a plot point. For Gamaliel, I had very different directions I was wanting to take him and wound up with a fusion that’s better than the sum of its parts (in my opinion, at least). Now that I’m on the topic, though, I may go back and do similar reviews of the previous leads and continue to do so for the leads to come. These aren’t meant to be especially deep; just some musings on where these characters came from and the course of their development. Perhaps you’ll find it interesting. Stay tuned.

I haven’t been doing much writing lately (or at least, not much writing that’s relevant here), but the poor blog is looking mighty lonely, so I’m whipping up this special post.

Although I don’t list George Lucas among my Three Pillars (more on the Three Pillars in a future post), the influence of Star Wars on me is undeniable. (Honestly, it’s almost impossible to imagine someone of my generation who isn’t strongly influenced by Star Wars.) Now, one of the things that made the Original Trilogy in particular so effective was how well it tapped into the monomyth. Those of you with even a passing familiarity with the creation of Star Wars is aware of the strong influence of Joseph Campbell on Lucas and how closely the original story follows the archetypical Hero’s Journey as detailed in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Now, you may find this hard to believe, but I actually haven’t read Campbell myself and I certainly wasn’t making a deliberate effort to follow the formula of the monomyth when I set out to write the Knight of Gladius series, but the way the story hits the notes is uncanny. Bear in mind that there’s nothing wrong with the monomyth formula. It’s a common thread of myth and legend transcending time and culture for a reason. If you believe in things like genetic memory and collective unconsciousness, I’d say the monomyth taps into them. Unless you’re a particularly gifted storyteller, sticking to the mold is actually strongly advisable. It doesn’t mean your story has to be stale and boring but rather that it meets certain expectations that connect with the audience. There’s still plenty of room to make the story your own and still provide a unique experience. You shouldn’t seek to be different just for the sake of being different. Tell a good story. Everything else worthwhile will follow.

Now, let’s get to the comparison of Knight of Gladius to the monomyth. By the by, this post is going to assume you’ve read the books, so if you haven’t, you may want to pick this up at a future date because there will be spoilers. We start with the ordinary world. KoG doesn’t actually show the ordinary world prior to the start of the adventure. Mark has already set out when we began. However, he spent eight years as a monk prior to the events of the books and this all tied into his primary denial of the call to adventure. You could argue that Mark has two separate hero’s journeys in the course of the series. The first occurs in his fight against Kyrios in Byrn ten years prior (as detailed in the Quest for the Pendants portion of KoG2) and the second is his return to Gladius and ultimate confrontation with Randwulf in KoG1 and 3. Note that I said Mark’s primary denial of the call because there’s a second layer to it as well. Most heroes in the monomyth are reluctant. For one reason or another, no matter how much they seem primed for adventure, when the time comes, they shrink from it. In KoG2, Mark doesn’t hesitate to seek out King Abdiy to have him account for the Dragon Guard’s attack on Tiberius. However, his experience that follows causes him to withdraw from fulfilling his potential as a hero, hence him retreating to the abbey. However, these stories can’t happen unless something pushes the hero onto the path. In Mark’s case, it’s years of yearning for his lost family and homeland rather than something as dramatic as stormtroopers razing the family farm. In Star Wars, Luke is cut off from his ordinary world, giving him nowhere to go but forward on his journey. In Mark’s case, his own actions sever his ties to the ordinary world as he’d already taken his permanent vows and breaking his vow of stability cuts him off from his order. Might he have returned to the abbey if he knew it was waiting for him? Probably not, honestly, but it probably would’ve increased his reluctance. (Part of me almost wishes Mark began his venture to Gladius still as a full-fledged monk and then is forced to take up the sword as circumstances demand. Perhaps there’s an If Arc story in there.)

Usually there’s a mentor figure who shows up to guide the hero in the early stage of the adventure. At first, Shadowstryke appears to be this, but he simply accompanies Mark on the way to Stormtree, where he was already headed (though, admittedly, he had gotten himself a bit lost in the Ancient Forest). Shadowstryke actually does a lot of work putting the pieces in place behind the scenes, but you see little of it in the story proper. He appears in Chapter 1 of KoG1 and doesn’t return until late in KoG3. Felix is closer to the archetype, showing up as Mark enters the second phase of his journey. Again, the monomyth doesn’t require you to slavishly hit every single point in exactly the same way. There are just common threads that come together over the course of the narrative.

You can argue that Mark crosses the first threshold when he leaves Byrn. Alternatively, you could call his entry into Stormtree the first threshold. Either one would make sense. From here we begin to acquire and test allies and enemies. In KoG1, the party is steadily assembled as Mark travels through the kingdom and he picks up a minor antagonist in the form of Harald Svenson, as Randwulf himself is off in Byrn trying to seek out the Eagle in the East two steps behind the game. The time in hiding after Mark’s rescue from Corinth is an especially nice bit where the party’s relationship is cemented.

I mentioned before that Mark’s denial of the call to adventure is two-layered. This is because you can argue that his overarching journey through KoG1 and 3 are actually two separate ones. His first denial involved him remaining in Byrn and the second was his refusal to fight in the rebellion against Randwulf. The arc of KoG1 brings him to the point of being ready to fight against Randwulf, which is then brought to completion in KoG3. In this sense, Felix better fits the mentor archetype for this second journey. (We also have the introduction of new allies in KoG3, with Catherine, Stefan and Ignatiy tying in KoG2 and Adrienne and Giles providing the connection to Randwulf’s side.)

I had to bring in this “two journey” concept before we move to the innermost cave. In KoG1, its a literal cave in Mount Vulcan where Mark’s party is captured by the Inkari Tribe and he then fights Mar Kurin to reclaim the gear of the Guardians. The supreme ordeal that follows results in the “death” of the pacifistic monk and Mark’s rebirth as a warrior. He then grasps the sword, both literally by taking up his father’s sword and figuratively by claiming his heritage as the Guardian. The road back takes him to Darkwall and the Battle of the Crimson Field, but this is an indecisive conclusion, which forces him to start over on a second journey. Pegging the innermost cave in KoG3 is a little trickier. Part of me wants to say it’s the Warrior’s Triad, but I’m more inclined to say it’s Darkwall. The supreme ordeal here is Mark’s confrontation with Randwulf, resulting in his “death” when Shadowblight destroys the keep and his rebirth having overcome his original quest to uncover the truth about the fate of his family. Rather than a sword (literal or figurative), we’ll say he’s claimed an “elixir” in this second journey, which allows him to assume his role as a leader in the new kingdom formed after Randwulf’s defeat.

It’s perhaps fitting that my first story would be the most archetypical. I suppose I could do the same with my other stories, but I imagine it wouldn’t fit quite as neatly. For instance, in the Tico series, Matt is effectively the protagonist, but it really isn’t his story alone. Perhaps each of the main characters have their own hero’s journey but Heaven help me if I’d try to pin all that down. Anyway, I hope you found all this interesting. Now let’s see if I can get back to doing some story writing.

Now that we’re getting into Gamaliel’s section, I believe it’d be helpful to outline some of the beliefs of the Church of Holy Light to elucidate the sort of belief system that drives characters like Gamaliel.

Photianism is basically a sort of Gnostic heresy that arose when the Neoplatonist scholar Photios of Kairos made a pilgrimage to Antioch to study the Way and developed a syncretic fusion of his Neoplatonic background and Wayfarer orthodoxy. Whether he had any exposure to any surviving Gnostics is uncertain. It is possible, though, as the Church of Antioch was still relatively young in those days and did not have the power or influence to purge heretics for centuries to come.

If you’re familiar at all with the basics of Gnostic doctrine, a lot of this will sound pretty familiar. The crux of Photian doctrine is the following maxim: “God is Spirit, Spirit is Light, God is Light.” All light is an emanation from God and it is the Light that is Spirit that quickens physical matter. Though there is no specific mention of the Demiurge (that is, the creator of the physical world) in the earliest Photian writings, it’s generally accepted that God who is Spirit couldn’t have been the one responsible for the physical world as physical matter is despised. The overarching goal in Photian doctrine is the transcendence of the physical world so that the Light that is Spirit can be reunited with God.

As you might imagine, anything concerning the physical world is viewed with contempt. Women are particularly reviled, the most extreme Photians going so far as to call them ‘Light-trappers’ for their role in clothing the Spirit that is Light in fleshly shells. Now, of course there are plenty who see the practical infeasibility of universal celibacy among the ranks of the faithful, but celibacy is strictly observed among the clergy and contact with females is kept to a minimum.

After Photios’ death, his successor Zacharias commissioned the Book of Light, a reworking of the Bible to better align with Photian doctrine. One thing that plagued Wayfarer scholars on the Planet was their inability resolve the places mentioned in the Bible with the actual geography of the world. This led to the notion that the Planet was on a separate celestial sphere than the one depicted in the Bible (i.e. our Earth). The Photians, however, simply replaced the locations from Earth with those on the Planet. In fact, the whole timeline of sacred history was advanced to match up with the contemporary world.

Zephyr became Canaan, Notos became Egypt, and Euros became Mesopotamia, to include Ur, Chaldea, and Assyria. So, for instance, according to the Photians, Abraham hailed from Euros and moved to Zephyr, only for his descendants to settle in Notos before their liberation by Moses, who then led them on to reclaim the Promised Land of Zephyr. The Dwarves (i.e. Nanoi) of the Delate Mountains became the Hittites, the Dwarves of Vione the Amorites, the Elves (Xotikes) of Goldleaf the Jebusites, and the other Canaanite tribes assigned to various pre-Zephyrian humans. Among the cities of Zephyr, Hesperia became Jerusalem, Ephenes Bethlehem, Kairos Nazareth, and Nulos Shechem. (Every city in Zephyr is given a biblical analog, but I’m only mentioning the major ones for the sake of brevity.) Moreover, Elbana in the Central Continent becomes Syria, Bythia Asia Minor and Antioch Rome. (This plays into the upcoming part of the narrative.)

Now, you might have been wondering about all this talk of ‘the Lucifer’, perhaps even wondering if the Photians were devil-worshippers. Recall that ‘Lucifer’ means ‘Light-bringer’, which is not meant as the former name of a fallen angel of anything like that. (By the by, angels are referred to Eudaemons and what we would think of as demons Cacodaemons.) Basically, the Lucifer is Christ, though interpreted through a Gnostic lens. Old Testament mentions of the Angel of the Lord are recast as ‘the Lucifer’ as well in keeping with the belief that the Angel of the Lord is a pre-Incarnation Christ. Rather than being known as Lucifer, Satan is called the Noctifer (that is, ‘Night-bringer’), but this you probably have figured out already.

I mentioned before that the timeline of sacred history was advanced to match up with the contemporary world. Well, Photios is made to replace St. Paul and so the account of Paul’s ministry becomes muddied by Photios’ own history. Grand Patriarch of Antioch Lucas II takes the place of St. Peter and his predecessors Ioannes V and Andreas II take the place of Saints James and John (the multiple Saints James and John all being conflated in the Book of Light). The early conflicts of the real-world Church’s Jewish and Gentile factions are recast as the battle over doctrines of matter and Spirit and the final split is a decisive one, as Grand Patriarch Lucas condemned Photios’ heresy and Photios in turn ‘excommunicated’ him (which was of course wholly symbolic as the Antiochians never acknowledged Photios’ legitimacy, but much was made of the move among the Photians).

Another part of the history is that King Zephyr was made to represent the Seleucids and so the Photians, following a corruption of the account of the Maccabees, attribute great persecution to his reign of the pre-Church faithful which had no basis in actual history. The Creonic Dynasty was conflated with the Hasmoneans. You would think the royal family would dispute this, but Archbishop Zacharias succeeded in converting King Croesos IX, who was content to believe the Church’s stories about King Solon IV calling for the murder of all the infants in Ephenes (the Massacre of the Innocents attributed to Herod in the Gospel of Matthew) among other things. Croesos’ zeal for his new religion is why the Church enjoyed such preeminence until the time of Solon VI (and, yes, the fact that ‘Solon’ was the name of the Photians’ Herod didn’t go unnoticed).

This is far from a comprehensive account, but it should make things a little clearer going forward. If I judge it appropriate, I may delve into further details at a later date. Stay tuned.

Arthur Mania just won’t quit. In fact, this update comes so late because I was up till 0530 working on it, woke up around 1300 and picked things right back up. It’s been a while since I’ve been this consumed by my work. I’m mildly concerned about the potential consequences, but I suppose the only solution is to just keep pushing and get to a place I feel I can leave it.

I’ve been a lover of myth, fable and legend ever since I was a child. This should come as no surprise given that I’m an SFF author, but I’m also big into history. In fact, my minor was in history. I could easily have made it my second major, but I was getting a little weary of school by that point and was eager to begin my adventures in the Orient. One of the great things about the Arthurian mythos is that it blends the historical, pseudo-historical and the fantastic all into a single bundle, much as I’ve tried to do with my own story canon.

I was still in high school when I sketched out the first ideas for what would become The Brothers Pendragon. I wanted to use Excalibur, so it naturally followed that I would adopt the Pendragon name. I had the patriarch call himself Adam in the pretension that he was starting a new humanity. Of course, naming your two sons Cain and Abel is just asking for trouble. Going back to Excalibur, though, I envisioned this Adam Pendragon as a forgotten castoff of Uther Pendragon’s excessive womanizing who fancied himself as Uther’s true heir, seizing the opportunity he had long been seeking at the Battle of Camlann. When Bedivere goes to cast Excalibur back into the Lake, Adam (who I’ve recently decided to call Lother prior to his arrival on Tellus) intercepts and kills him, but he and his followers are transported from our world. Ever the pragmatist, he conquers the new land just as he intended to do with Britannia.

I won’t deny being rather strongly influenced by the ’98 Merlin mini series. (No, I haven’t really watched the more recent series, just caught some glimpses as my roommate was watching it.) The inclusion of Mab in the mini series had a bit of a domino effect for me. Mab happens to be involved in The Trident War Chronicles. She’s bound by Rowland in TTWC3 and forced to serve the Promethean Alliance. You remember that barrier around Maximilion that drove out the Third Legion back in Cronos’ section? Her work. Anyway, certain things are going to happen with her that I’m not going to spoil. If you’ll recall, I did a big shift of the timeline of the Tellus Arc not that long ago to resolve an issue relating to this very spoiler item. I will reveal that it’s related to the Arthurian mythos. Because the Earth and Tellus timelines are synched up (though time flows more slowly on Tellus, similar to how time flows faster in the Fairy Realm, a.k.a. Avalon), there were fixed events I couldn’t wiggle around. I originally resolved the problem with chronomancy, sending the character in question 20 years into the past to make things work. Much like Old Joe in Looper, I don’t like messing around with time travel too much, so this bit of juryrigging never did set right with me. (Speaking of time travel, there were two projects in pre-production I scrapped because of my decision to adopt a “no time travel” rule. Maybe I’ll tell you about them one day.)

Perhaps it’s that recent edit to the timeline that got me thinking about what little I’d already put down for an Arthurian story I was considering. Whatever the case, I’ve pulled out all the stops and this obsession is going to continue until I pretty well have the peripheral materials settled. Sorting through the fragmentary and often contradictory stories can be a pain, but it’s like solving a puzzle. The link to my own canon restricts my freedom of movement a little, but I’m coming up with some innovative solutions. I believe I’ve mentioned before how the already tangled genealogies of the major characters have been tangled further thanks to my love of interconnectedness. I honestly think I’ll have a hard time finding someone who isn’t related to one degree or another. Royalty!

I’m trying to find a balance among all the English, Welsh, French and Latin and it’s a little tricky to say the least. I want it to be accessible but not too anachronistic. I still have time to settle things but it’s a bit of a pain. I’ve actually taken to drawing up my own map of the British Isles rather than sifting through a couple dozen at a time to find this or than ancient and/or mythical border or feature. Learning a fair bit of British geography this way. ^_^; It’s a wonder just how much is packed into so little space. The world really was a bigger place back then.

Speaking of back then, I’ve got to curtail how far I venture into the timeline in either direction after the timeframe of the stories. I really don’t have any business going further back than the 4th Century or further forward than the 7th, but the urge to fill out the chronology is strong.

Okay, that’s enough rambling for now. There’s plenty more work to be done. Away!

Warning: Spoilers for the short story “Happy Little Family” ahead.

I was terribly reluctant to put up “Happy Little Family”. To call the subject matter touchy is a wild understatement. I know there are many people out there who use dark elements like rape and the varying degrees of sexual assault for nothing more than cheap exploitation. If the statistics I see have any truth to them, you don’t have to look far to find someone directly affected by this sort of abuse. While I don’t consider myself to be politically correct, I don’t make a point to offend just for the sake of offense. I also don’t want to needlessly inflict further pain on those who have already suffered.

I certainly don’t speak from first-hand experience on this subject. I’ll readily admit that I don’t truly know what it’s like. You might ask why I put Lydia through the experiences alluded to in “Happy Little Family”. Lydia has a lot of psychological damage, that much is readily apparent from the main series. When I thought on what would break a person so severely, I looked at her situation: a deceased mother, a father who is a Special Forces officer, a sister with her own military career, an entirely disconnected extended family. What would happen to this little girl during her father’s many deployments? He had little choice but to turn to the other families on post. Most of the time, it was fine, but not always. There are many disturbed people out there who only need the opportunity to become monsters. Naturally, if a man like Luka Han found out, the offenders would be a pile of hamburger and decorated officer or not, murder isn’t a rap you can beat, most generally. Even as a child, Lydia knew this much and that’s why she didn’t speak up. However, this isn’t something you should bury, no matter who the perpetrator is. I know that’s easier said than done, but no form of abuse should be borne in silence. Unfortunately, you can’t always count on the authorities to come through for you, but you have to try. Also, though I personally don’t have much positive regard for the psychiatric profession, I recognize that there are some therapists and other specialists who can help with coping and healing. I certainly don’t mean to portray Lydia’s approach as the correct one, though at least for a time she found the willpower to stop being needlessly self-destructive in lieu of facing her problems.

I doubt I’ve acquitted myself well to any critics who may emerge, but I did make use of a beta reader–a woman–to judge whether or not the story should be made public. I recognize it’s a minuscule sample population, but I did want a female’s perspective. No, I don’t intend to approach special populations as a supplicant seeking approval before I even blow my nose, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to get the perspective of someone who might be unduly affected by your work.

I mentioned before that I’d be doing a commentary piece following the release of Chapter 21 of Tico3. With the introduction of the Martian Militia back in Chapter 18, I really thought I should provide a little more detail. You get a little bit in the narrative of Chapter 21, but I wanted to take it a step farther.

The Earth Union has a number of paramilitary organizations. Most are the enforcement agencies of cabinet-level ministries, but there are a number of exceptions. Today we’re going to be talking about two similar organizations: the EDC and the Martian Militia. Though the Militia is more relevant to Tico3, we’ll start with the EDC.

The Earth Defense Corps was founded in the aftermath of the Lunar Revolt. Tensions between Earth and the Colonies were running high and reactionary elements agitated to form a secondary line of defense against a perceived Colonial threat. During the Sheol War, no small number of native Earthers refused to serve in the Colonies and the EDC was touted as a ‘true Earth army’. Because service in the EDC counted as an alternative federal service, it was a handy destination for Earthers looking to dodge the draft while still claiming they were soldiers.

The Martian Militia was formed essentially as a reaction to the reactionaries on Earth. Once Ricardo Banderas, a native Martian, became the first Colonial to be elected World Council Chairman, he authorized the formation of the Martian Militia. The concept was basically the same as the EDC, but there is a bit of a separatist undercurrent. It’s not really something that’ll be treated in any depth in Tico3, but it may come up elsewhere.

Naturally, the regular military doesn’t hold these paramilitaries in high regard and the feeling is mutual. Toss PMCs and local law enforcement into the mix and you can have some fraught joint operations. The Argyre Campaign has this in spades and I could almost write a full novel just on that. Maybe I’ll even go that far one day, but for now we just get some glimpses to paint the larger picture of the Battle of Mars.