Tales of a land far, far away.

So this week my writing has taken a rather different turn to the usual, rather than concentrating all of my efforts on Vinland or even direct development on the mod I am working on, Prophesy of Pendor, I have been working on something related, yet very different. We have a large and very active community of fans at the Tale Worlds forums, and one of them asked me if it would be OK to run an RPG based on the lore of Pendor. This was something of a nice endorsement for the team, as I know that James Landes and I (along with a plethora of other writers and contributors) have invested a massive amount of time into producing the backstory for Pendor and fleshing out the world in which hundreds of thousands of characters live in.

One of the hallmark features for Pendor are the “Knighthood Orders” which are essentially organisations inspired by the Knights Templar or Knights Hospitaller. The reason I joined the Pendor Team after the release of Prophesy of Pendor 2 was to flesh these Orders out, and give them a real sense of being and belonging in the world, because before they were simply normal knights pimped out in some rather sweet gear. Part of my work on joining the team included creating a rivalry and conflicts between the various Orders of Pendor, and generally bringing them to life, they now act as non-state military forces, each with their own story, goals, objectives, heroes and of course a political agenda.

The result of this was a nice range of different Orders, each with their own personality and individuality. A few examples follow below;

The Order of Dawn : A fanatical Order dedicated to the ideal of justice and to the mission of destroying the evil cult of Heretics that plagues the realm. Over time their execution of this sacred duty has turned them into zealots and they will punish anyone for even the smallest of crimes or even by the tiniest affiliation to the heretics. This is truly a story of evil encroaching on even the best of intentions.

The Knights of Eventide : As the Order of Dawn becomes increasingly paranoid over the effects of the Heretics, there remained a small faction who believed the way to fight the heresy was to understand them properly. However as part of Dawn’s slide into zealotry, they banned any manuscripts or items considered heretical in order to stave off corruption. A schism occurred and the Order of Eventide was formed by those who sought to use their knowledge of heresy against the perpetrators. The irony now being that the Order of Dawn’s greatest fear seems to be realised as there are rumours that the heretical corruption has spread to the inner circle of Eventide, and threatens to undo all the work they have done to destroy the heretics.

The Order of the Ebony Gauntlet : There is an ancient race of beings that live just outside of human society known as the Noldor, or more colloquially as the elves. The Ebony Gauntlet believe that the Noldor want only the complete destruction of humanity and fight to promote human supremacy in the world, using any tools at their disposal to achieve this goal; xenophobia, racism, genocide. After all, the Noldor are not human, which makes them mere animals that deserve to be trodden under the iron-shod feet of humanity.

Now the players of this RPG have taken on a role from the various Knighthood Order’s that both appeared in Prophesy of Pendor 3, and will be appearing in Prophesy of Pendor 4. The setting is immediately following the events of Prophesy of Pendor 3, where the one hero prophesied has risen to power and united Pendor under one sovereign. Prophesy of Pendor 4 is occurring in another war torn continent which is home to Pendor’s greatest enemy, the Snake Cult.

Not much work had yet been done connecting the events of end of Pendor 3 to those in the beginning of Pendor 4, but now the results of this RPG could well bridge the gap, and better yet it has been done by the community itself so that they have more of an emotional tie to the game; it is even possible that their characters may appear in Pendor 4, who knows?

Oh, yeah and in a little aside, they made me play the King...

Conflict of... Conflicts?

During the creative writing course at university, and while working as a writer in various games something has been rammed into my skull over and over, this is that there needs to be conflict or drama in a story to make it really interesting. Although most people like a happy ending, no-one would read it if that is all that it is. People want to see the characters facing down problems and overcoming them (or not), and this is something I had partially left out in the first rendition of Vinland.

Now that I have completed the character overviews that I had started some time ago (curse you Pendor, for taking up so much time!), I am going through and devising every kind of conflict that I can dream up between the characters. Things are currently going from greed to humiliation, jealous love to lovers being spurned, regicide to mutiny and everything in between. That is not to say that the book with be a cacophony of conflict, as many of these problems will not be introduced. My aim is to take the most interesting and then devise ways in which these problems transpire and see how the characters deal with the situation.

Some authors sell books based on the mantra “whatever can go wrong, should” (with George R. R. Martin being the classic example. Just beginning to like a character? Great, he dies soon). I do not intend to follow this trend, if something is always going badly then it does get a little predictable, it also prevents you from getting too attached to the characters, as the cast is continually changing because they keep dying.

Instead, my plan is to create an overview of each character which lists their personal traits (height, hair colour), general personality (practical joker, warrior, merchant, monk), and what they want to gain out of life (power, happiness, love, money). They are then pitted against a number of problems, the solutions however will devise themselves organically – I can only plan so much, for the characters to really be believable the way that they handle themselves should evolve as the character does. What might be a good solution when first planning the character maybe completely unrealistic in 100 pages when their personality has been bent and twist by other issues.

Once I have the character drama in place, I can create a rough time-line and begin writing once again.

Eureka!

So yesterday I had something of a Eureka moment. Thanks to the changes proposed last week, I have been in deep thought on how to make these take effect, especially in the way I flesh the characters out and add depth to their personality.

When the book was more epic in scope, I spent far more time concerned with the politics between factions, the overview of their ambitions, and basically giving a blow by blow account of the tale, much like a reporter does for news coverage of major events. Now that the story is following more of an adventure template rather than the epic, I am free to devote more to the people who populate the world of Vinland rather than the events, as such it becomes more personalised and dramatic.

As a part of this, I began to create an in-depth overview of each of the characters, noting down little details like scars, personal foibles and habits. Things like Jorvik’s black teeth and Gorran’s exclamations of optimism will become far more widespread, and hopefully will truly give life to the people there. Everyone has these little niggling things, but it is only once you get to know that person well enough that you become noticeable. Now, imagine being stuck on a small boat for several weeks, every single habit would become well known to you.

Along with the built up personalities there becomes more scope for conflict, we now have personality traits that are incompatible with others. Leif, for example, plays a prank on Jorvik which leaves him humiliated. How will Jorvik, and his prickly pride respond to this? Friendships grow over time, and are tested by the many trials and tribulations of being an explorer. Religion and faith come in to play, these are the early years of Christianity coming to the Norse, how will the followers of the old gods react to the imposition of an aggressively missionary church?

The Vikings are also a highly superstitious race, how will certain sightings and activities impact on them? Will it drive them apart through fear, or bind them together through overcoming these problems together. What about power? Wealth? Money? Romance? Ambition? All men and women are driven by these emotions, which can make even the most logical and reasonable act entirely out of character, everyone has their own agenda, each with wide ranging and important consequences.

Now a little background before I get onto the Eureka moment proper. I had expressed concern previously about adding in a massive detour which takes much of the cast to Norway in order to develop Norway as the big, evil antagonist, but the time spent doing this would seriously detract from the rest of the story. It was a weak element but needed to be in, in order to tie together everything else, from the vigour that Erik would show in his determination to colonise Vinland to the schism that will form between the Americas and Europe.

As part of the character overhaul I got thinking about Kai’s actual background as it was completely un-developed other than he was a retired Varangian. Why did he leave Byzantium? What caused him to go there in the first place? Perhaps there is something about his past that we do not know...

This led to him becoming a rather more important character to the story. Just why does the King of Norway show such an interest in Kai? Why does Gostav (the bard) begin to take such an interest in the legends of “Greycloak”?

What role will his supposedly magical weapon “Bloodaxe” have for the future of Vinland?

Testing the waters.

What if these were just the vanguard for more settlers?

Well this is my first post in the blogosphere. I am an aspiring author and I know many writers are quite reclusive and secretive about their creations. They will hide in their study until they have finished the entire book and emerge only to speak to their publisher and collect their cheque. However I strongly believe in connecting with the audience who I hope will one day be reading my books. As such I will be posting progress reports, character introductions, and perhaps even some snippets.

My background is primarily in Politics and Management; however I have always had an interest in writing and historic occasions, particularly those which hinged on a particular event. Something which as always fascinated me are “what if” scenarios. What if Wellington had lost the battle of Waterloo? What if the Roman Empire had never fallen? What if the Vikings had succeeded in America?

The book I am working on at the moment is called “Vinland” and it centres around the discovery and settlement of America by the Norsemen. True to my love of what-ifs, this will be taking the view that Erik the Red had made it to Vinland with his son Leif. Would his forceful personality and proven track record at colonisation have made a difference to Viking ambitions in the New World?

Join me, and let’s find out.