Mithia is Getting Even Bigger!

The world of Mithia is getting even bigger. In an effort to continue to flesh out this world and make it come alive, I have decided to make an effort to make a full world map with all of the continents included. I'm not going to fill in the entire map like I did with my current map, as that land mass alone took me two days to complete. And as you can imagine, it would probably take me weeks to fill in and complete the entire world map, but I want to have some better idea of how big this world is and what the major parts are, if that makes sense.

Current Progress of Mithia World Map

So as you can see, I did end up interpreting the two land masses in the original map as two separate continents, and there is even a third large-ish land mass south of the current map of Mithia. To that point, I've decided that "Mithia" is the name used to describe the world, and "Arrotha" is the name used to describe this particular continent where the story takes place. It is unfortunate, however, that I can't seem to make the map convert into an image where you can see the whole thing and also read the text, at least not in any format that I can upload here. But it's fun, none-the-less to share some of this progress with the rest of you.

It could probably be argued that making an entire world map is not necessary since the story takes place entirely on Arrotha, which is the world map that we had previously developed. But I feel like even if the rest of the world is not going to be used in this particular tale, it is important to understand what the rest of the world looks like at least. Just like with the "memoirs," it may not be necessary for the reader to have an understanding of those inner thoughts, but it is important for the author to understand as much as he can about the world in which he is creating.

I think that's one of the reasons why LOTR was so popular, honestly, because Tolkien did such an amazing job at fleshing out his world, drawing up all sorts of maps, cataloging genealogy, and just filling his world with as much realism as he could, even though the reader only saw a small portion of all the work he did to create that world. And that's what I hope to accomplish as well. I don't want to just create a story, I want to create a story that is so rich and deep with details and intricacy that it feels alive and real. Not only that but I want to create a world setting that is large enough and interesting enough that people would want to use it for a D&D campaign, as I will probably do just that myself at some point which will help me flesh out some of the world as well.

Anyway, I have a lot more to go on this map. I just wanted to share this progress with the rest of you. Thanks for tuning in.

Memoirs: Elefain Kelrieth

Memoirs: Elefain Kelrieth

I was scared when I first left Tendrithil. I wanted to turn back every step, even as I made it to the edge of the Duskwood, even as we climbed up the Gloomy Peaks, and when we reached the valley below. I even wanted to turn back once I was fully on this journey, and once I had admitted to King Gramnik that my father was right. Even when I admitted it to myself. For it was I who ran from the responsibility as a daughter, as a sister, as a friend, as a kin of the Duskwood elves. I abandoned my station as a member of that society in pursuit of higher morals.

How arrogant was I then to think that my understanding of the world was greater than that of my father, or anyone else in the village. Just into my seventh decade of life, I was young by all standards of the elves. We hadn’t even commenced the celebration of welcoming me into adulthood, the Drawing of the Veil as it is so often called. It is a fitting name. The childhood of an elf is often quite different than adulthood, and in the long lives that we live, it is said that there are many more transitions along the road.

In those adolescent years, elves learn the beginnings of what it means to be an elf. Being descendent from the feywild, elves do not sleep in the same manner as other beings of Mithia. The reverie that we enter is more akin to meditation, and during those first few decades, it is not echoes of your own life that you experience, but echoes of lives past. It is thusly believed that elves are continually reborn and that the soul of an elf is drawn back to the plane of the living to be reborn as an infant. I have another theory about this. I believe that we are all connected through a communal consciousness, and that we share an intimate connection with each other from birth, that we may grow from the experiences of those who have come before us. For why would Marovihn send us to Esen’naish, the elven paradise he has created for his people, only to bring them back time and time again to be reborn?

I can't be certain about this theory, of course, and have no way I could even hope to prove such a theory. But do any of us truly know? In any case, the reflections we experience, those echoes of times before, of lives not our own, whatever connection it is, whatever meaning it is meant to impart upon us in those earliest years of life, it shows that there is a deeper connection that mere blood for one who is born of elf heritage. That is why, even as every step further from my homeland becomes lighter and the weight on my shoulders softens with each passing heartbeat, there will always be regret burned into my consciousness like a battle wound that will never heal. There will always be the thought that I have somehow let my father down, that I had betrayed my sister, that I had forsaken my mother, and that I had turned my back on my people.

After all, if it were not for my sudden and unexpected departure from the forest, would my father have brought his armies against the orcs? Would we have ever again fought that evil Tiemriel? Would we have found ourselves at odds with that corrupted dwarf warlock and his cunning drow companion? For what stake did we have in the outcome of such a conflict between dwarves and orcs, other than a mutual disgust for the evil race?

Yet it was my heart, not my mind, that forced me into motion, that put wings on my boots before I possessed those enchanted boots, that guided my arrows with divine purpose before I wielded my father’s bow. It was perhaps not Marovihn who guided my steps, but Emella, the Goddess of Fates, the Celestial Goddess, who urged me forward. Perhaps my connection with that compassionate wizard Elrin Frostborn had struck me more profoundly than I had ever thought, and perhaps his Goddess pulled me away from Marovihn, the God of Elves, for was it not he, according to legends and stories, who first created the elves in the feywild? But perhaps Emella has greater purpose for me afterall, and perhaps when I die Esen’naish will not be my home like those of my family, but perhaps I will find a place amongst the stars at the behest of Emella.

So was I afraid? Am I now? Perhaps. And perhaps the answer to both of these questions is that the fear arises not from what might happen if I find myself in battle with one of the viscious orcs, or end up at the wrong end of a shaman’s spell, but perhaps my fear comes from the wounds that I have left on the hearts of those I care about: my mother, my father, my sister, and my friends. For just as each step away from my home pulled at my heart strings, I hold no petense that they weren’t similarly affected by my actions. And yet, I do not regret my course. Perhaps it is that I do ultimately feel justified in my action. Or perhaps it is in fact Emella calling me to the road. Or even, it could possibly be, that such a long-lived peace in the land has left the various races and civilizations scattered and disconnected in ways that they were never meant to be, and my action, though it led my people to conflict, ultimately brought the world back together. And that is no small thing.

-Elefain Kelrieth

Memoirs: Elrin Frostborn

Memoirs: Elrin Frostborn

Time is a mysterious thing. It marches forward in a steady and predictable progression, each winter bringing on the cold wind and the snow, and each summer marked with warm suns and clear skies. And although there is fluctuation from day to day, or even when one compares two days from different years that fall on the same day of the calender, there are similarities, but they are never the same. Despite these notable differences, it is easy to measure time and to mark each passing day, tenday, season, or year.

Yet, even with such certainties about the passing of time, we rarely feel the passing of time in such a concrete manner. When your days are filled with carefree enjoyment, you often notice the setting of the sun before your body or mind even begin to tire. This is even truer for months and seasons, where an entire chapter of your life can fly past you in what feels like mere days. In the reverse of this, the most difficult and trying moments in our life often stand out as the most profound, and in that moment, time seems to elongate or even freeze.

In my many centuries, I have seen loved ones come and go. Those loved ones, such as my parents, whom I had known since my birth struck me most profoundly at all. Standing next to the bed of my father’s death bed, time didn’t seem to have frozen at all, but rather, it seemed not to matter in the least, as if it didn’t exist. The days and tendays crept by, but except for the moments where I had dozed off from exhaustion alone, I was there by his side and determined to spend every last moment with him, wishing I had spent more time enjoying his company instead of studying books of spells and magic.

The days following his death whipped by in an instant, though even now, the memory seems as if it were just yesterday. And yet, with each passing decade, the pain becomes lighter. With each passing generation that fades into obscurity, the loss is marked less profoundly. Few humans could ever understand the inner turmoil that is marked by living such a long life, and perhaps only the elves could truly understand what challenges I have faced. Is this eternal life a gift or a curse?

Perhaps when I was younger, the answer to such questions was obvious. I would have easily called such an existence a gift, for in life, we all strive to escape death. But in escaping death eternally, you perhaps no longer feel alive. As you watch the constant change around you, you begin to realize that few things ever truly change in the world, and that rather than being a straight line of progression, time is often an ever-ending circle of change, ending where it began and forever continuing the chain of events that keeps those events in motion.

That is why, when the powerful and menacing red dragon Tiemriel brought his wrath against the surface world and brought an early end to so many innocent lives, I made a point to involve myself in that conflict and to stand against that destruction, that I may shift the chain of events so profoundly that it will begin a new cycle, a better eternal transformation of thoughts, cultures, and ideas. I do not honestly know if I was successful, but as I have found my place in the world, I can now honestly say that after all these years of life, my closest and most loved family long gone like the tides of civilization, as my circle has grown and shrank just as profoundly over the years, I finally have an answer to the question: is this a gift or a curse?

The answer is both. It is a curse in the sense that I will never find my eternal rest so long as Emella, the Celestial Goddess, finds me to be a useful conduit of her will. There is a peacefulness and a completeness in meeting your eternal end, and it is believed by many that there is a paradise of their god or goddess’s creation waiting at the end of their days. Some, perhaps, never find that eternal resting place, and are instead left as an aimless spirit without a home. Perhaps some are even rejected outright by their deity having failed to live up to the litany of their faith. But what lies for me at the end of my life, I shall perhaps never find out. I shall never find that resting place like so many before me. I will never truly be at peace and am doomed to wander forever more it seems.

So in that sense, in the sense that eternity is often filled with emptiness, pain, and lonliness, at the absence of any escape from knowing you will eventually outlive all of your closest friends, it is a curse. But, in another sense, there is a gift here, as well. In being so long-lived, and able to see so many generations flourish and recede, and in watching the progression of society in a greater sense, you find yourself able to influence the world in ways one could never hope to in any shorter span of time. You are able to recognize the triggers and provocations of the eternal cycles of time and manipulate them in ways that would lead to a better outcome for future generations. Without this curse, this gift would not exist.

Change does not come without resistence, however, for the memories of civilizations can be long, particularly those of the dwarves and the elves who relish in their long and proud history and make extensive efforts to chart the earliest memories of their civilizations. Their geneology is often several large volumes, much of which is inscribed in more permanent methods such as stonework, and heroes of old stay alive in legends for many generations.

It goes without saying, also, that there are darker forces at play, evil deities, devils and demons, and otherworldly forces that wish to influence the prime material plane and those that inhabit it, just as Emella enlisted me in her eternal pursuit, in maintaining the fate of this world and protecting it from agents of chaos. For what is fate but the ultimate lawful pursuit, and what is chaos but the disruption of that pursuit?

Perhaps in tales to come, I will discuss these dark forces in further detail, but I have many years ahead of me to record these thoughts more clearly, and although your peception can always betray your understanding of time, I haven’t as much time as I should want to spend expanding on these contemplations, but have forever more to do so.

-Elrin Frostborn

About Memoirs

About memoirs

Yesterday, I realized that there is a clear distinction in the level of understanding between author, fans, and readers, about what a character knows and feels. For the author, he is the keyholder for all the ultimate secrets of the character's inner workings, and the intricate movements of the world. The fans can do a lot to contribute to the progression of the story through speculation and discussion, but it is ultimately up to the author to decide, or in a greater sense, to discover what is true and what is not.

I use the word "discover" to reflect my own experiences with writing, where I might start out with something that is merely attractive to me, an idea, a character, a conflict, or what-have-you, but once I end up assigning qualities to the characters within and attempt to reveal the resulting interactions, things often move in an unpredictable manner, in directions that I did not expect, because my characters live within me once created and guide my fingers to the keys.

That being said, a character is only as deep and complex as you give time and credence for. If you reveal a character in only one scene and do not revisit this character in any other context, than your understanding of that character, as an author is going to be thusly limited. It is important for the author to have a profound and intimate relationship with his characters, especially the important ones, even if they are only in the story for brief moments, because the reader's experience is going to reflect how deeply connected the author is to his characters. If the author has a vague understanding on his characters, his readers will have an even less connected understanding of those characters.

Any reader that is familiar with  that author, their world, and their characters, excels into fandom, where they can view events in the story from a perspective of hindsight and perhaps even have meta knowledge to accompany their enjoyment of those stories. As a reader, you are presented information in a calculated manner, whereby the author intentionally leaves out details until a chosen moment to reveal it to the reader. In this sense, a reader and a fan, who are often one in the same, have a different understanding of these characters. However, it is perhaps those dedicated fans who go beyond the story and wish to experience more of that world and those characters who are the most impacted by the depth of character that is bread through intimate exploration of a character's deepest thoughts and reflections.

And so, in the most long-winded manner possible, I wanted to take a moment to introduce to you a new practice of mine that will not only aid in the completion of this first novel but will greatly impact the further improvement of the story in the revision process, something that I call, memoirs.

A memoir is a journal, or a monologue, where a character expresses their reflections as if trying to explain those thoughts out loud or on paper. These memoirs perhaps reflect things that a character may never admit out loud, even to their closest friend, but things that they perhaps have only admitted to themselves, or even things that they knowingly wish to admit to themselves. It is the deepest and most intimate exploration of a character's thoughts and feelings, and I intend to do this often and for the vast majority of my characters. And the best part is, I will most likely post all of them here for you to read because I don't really intend to make them part of the novel. They are merely an exercise for me to learn more about my characters, and by proxy, a good way to introduce you, as a potential reader, to my characters, my world, and my story, without compromising my ability to get it published (for fear of copyright conflicts).

So please stay tuned for the next post, the first of the memoirs, Elrin Frostborn.

Brand New Map

New Map of Mithia!

Updated Map with "Mithia" title and Copyright

So as you may remember, my map for the region before was a hideous-looking green blob.
I created that map by using an interesting technique that I found on youtube using Gimp, a free photoshop-esque software, and I began filling in the various locations as I went. This was working well, but I started wondering what other types of software might be made more specifically for this sort of thing.

Through all of my searching, the best map I found was the one that I used to create this beautiful masterpiece, a software called Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus. And as you can imagine by looking at my results, I am not disappointed. Afterall, take a look at my previous map:

The Original Green Map with "^" mountains made in GIMP

Now, in order to make the new CC3+ map, I did want to preserve that interesting shape that I got for the original. So I actually inserted that picture into the map to retrace it with the fractal land-mapping algorithms. So the picture doesn't match one-for-one, necessarily, but I retained most of the interesting little nuances from the original. Some things also inevitably got moved around, as you can see. For example, Duskwood is now further to the west than it was before.

Also, there are a lot of interesting towns and cities now placed around the map, many of which I have yet to explore in my writing. So that will be a lot of fun to start adding names and information to those places. And there are also two nearby land masses which also give the opportunity to expand the story even further outside of this one continent. The way I imagine it, the two land masses you see on the edge of the screen are actually part of one larger land mass that kind of goes around this entire continent. But I may decide ultimately that they are two separate continents. For now, obviously, I am going to focus on this one particular land mass. I will probably come up with a good name for it, and leave Mithia as the name of the world.

Anyway, what do you guys think? Do you like my new map?

Character Bio: Alowynn and Elrin Frostborn

Alowynn

Alowynn is an interesting character because he is one of only a few characters that started off as Dungeons and Dragons characters. I first created Alowynn for the "Curse of Strahd" campaign with a group of friends, and he has since retained those scars that he got from that dark place of Barovia.

Alowynn is different than many other elves because he is sort of like a human in an elf's body. By that I mean, when you read about elves, they are usually a lot more calm, calculated, and collected. They have a natural affinity for magic, they study at least rudimentary swordplay and archery, but they don't have the over-arching ambitions of a human.

Humans, on the other hand, living much shorter lives, sometimes accomplish a lot more. The most powerful wizards in the world are short-lived human wizards, not elves. For even though magic is a careful practice that takes many years to perfect, the elves don't tend to reach the same heights of magical understanding as do the humans.

This is where Alowynn is different. He is cold, prefers solidarity, and acts selfishly. He isn't evil, but his perception of others is that of a god, that any who do not possess a similar magical prowess is beneath him. And at the same time, he has accomplished a lot in his life, traveling to various dimensions and learning powerful spells, and he is also seeking to unravel even greater secrets. His greatest motivation are the intangible complex ideas of magic that are often too old to be easily deciphered, too foreign to be connected to any current understanding, or too guarded for any ordinary adventurer.

Occasionally, Alowynn finds himself acting in an altruistic manner, but only for his own entertainment.

Elrin Frostborn

Elrin Frostborn is my favorite character, both in Dungeons and Dragons and otherwise. And so far, he is the only other DnD character that I have created that has made it into the first book of this story.

What makes Elrin remarkable in the world of Mithia is that he is a human wizard, but he has far-outlived the normal lifespan of any other known human. He was there during the battle with Tiemriel, and he still remains long after. When Rhalyf asks him about the secrets of his longevity, he refers to it as a great sacrifice and a gift from Emella, the Goddess of Destiny.

It's not clear to any of the other characters what that means, but it is clear that Elrin does not wish to expose his past so easily. It is known to some that he once lost his powers entirely, and this is believed to be connected to his long life. Still, the wizard seems to be an almost-eternal entity in the world, and not in the same way as liches, the evil undead wizards.

Perhaps it will always remain a mystery how Elrin Frostborn has come to live so long. Or perhaps he will some day tell his tale.

In this book, Revenge of Tiemriel, it is Elrin's spell which holds the dragon in a magical prison. And that particular spell is one of the most powerful spells in the known world and remain in place until it is dismissed or until Elrin is killed. So is it even possible to free the evil dragon?

About the Bullywugs

Bullywug

 

What is a Bullywug?

Bullywugs can easily be called the goblins of the swamp. They are a diminutive creature with roughly the same size and strength of a goblin and prefer to work in large groups to overcome their enemies. However, there are some key personality traits that make them fun and interesting that set them apart from the goblins of the world.

I first gained a fascination for bullywugs from a Dungeons and Dragons game between some popular personalities in competitive gaming. One of the players chose to play as a Bullywug as his character, and while there aren't a lot of similarities between his character and Pierre, the bullywug character that appears in my adventures, I can honestly say that his character inspired me to make one of my own.

One of the more amusing characteristics of the Bullywug is that they are a prideful race despite their shortcomings. They sometimes go to great lengths to demonstrate their grandeur to other races, and they often take on exquisite and important-sounding names to bolster that perception.

In my story, the bullywugs are first seen capturing an orc scout and berating this orc with taunts and mockery before brutally killing him. The bullywug king is the embodiment of this bullywug culture, being fat, imperial, and overly self-important.

Pierre appears in stark contrast to his kin-folk. He is highly skilled for one of his race and adeptly trained for battle. Despite this, he does not openly go against the king or his wishes, as that would mean certain death even for one of his prowess. And while bullywugs often covet a position of power and great importance, Pierre feels no great desire to take the thrown or further his position in his society, feeling complete in his ability with his rapier.

Writing about the bullywugs was certainly a lot of fun, and it was one of the most entertaining moments in the story for me as an author. I hope that when you all read about the bullywug society, you get the same sense of comedic irony that I did when writing these scenes.

Ultimately, Pierre's story is marred with tragedy, but in finding comradery with  Belmar and Elefain, he is open to explore a new chapter of his life.