A personal challenge

Well things have slowed a little this month at Zatobo, with the programmer having other commitments for several weeks, and the business guy out of the country, the decision was taken to halt development work for two months.

Of course I am sad not to be hurtling forward with our new project(s), but the big upside is that I can get back to working on the book full time for that period. My plan is basically to undertake the National Novel Writing Month (but in September), and challenge myself to write 50,000 words, and hopefully bring Vinland to a conclusion in the process.

Things have been fairly slow so far (but then for me, the beginning always is) as I try to dive back into the fascinating world of the Vikings. Thankfully my reams of notes have served me well in reminding me just what was happening, and what is to be occur in the future. The book is currently in two parts, the early stuff in Greenland and then their sailing to Vinland without anything really connecting the two events. My ambition therefore is to fill this in, introducing another character or two and filling those who already exist in.

Throughout work on Vinland, there has always been one major antagonist, but without spoiling too much, they are at some distance to events directly going on with the people in Vinland. I have therefore created another character (or rather re-written one) to full fill a more direct conflict with Leif and his crew who I hope will spice things up rather more. It’s been a while since I have shown things off, so here is a little slip that I have recently been working on. Please bear in mind that this is still very much a part of the manuscript and as such has not been treated with the spit and polish of a published work;

“Citizens of Hvalsey!” Thorstein began, a warm smile on his face which Iva immediately hated.

“I come here before you today, not to complain about injuries received during my duties as an enforcer of peace in the town, but rather to ensure that this man is never again allowed to perpetrate such violence. I am a fighter, a man well used to taking blows from my foes, but next time we may not be so lucky. Imagine, if then it was your wife, or your son, or even gods be so cruel, your daughter.” As he said this, Iva noticed her father sitting on the other side of the room, watching the proceedings with a frown on his face. He was so intent on the words of the young noble, that she was sure he had no idea that she was present.

“My mother and I were doing our rounds of the town, but hearing a commotion in Gorran’s home decided to investigate. On arrival, we encountered a brawl going on between two strangers to the town. We managed to stop this in short order, and determined that the cause had been women, not just any women but a mere thrall and a wayward girl.”Again Iva looked over to her father, and saw that now his fists were balled up, and a vein was throbbing in his neck. Clearly he had understood whom Thorstein was talking about.

“I am sorry to inform you all that this girl, a daughter of Hvalsey no less, was the spark that caused an argument to descend into violence, with her misguided attack on our guest...” Iva tried to shrink further into the shadows, but it seemed that still no one had noticed her, all were intent on Thorstein’s words. She observed however that Thjodhilde threw her another glance from her place at the table, but she made no indication that she had recognised the young woman. While she was watching Thjodhilde, she felt another pair of eyes on her, and looking up the table saw Gorran was also watching at her, and as their eyes met, his widened in recognition. Meanwhile Thorstein had continued his speech.

“Perhaps we are wrong to lament so about her actions however. How can we hope to protect the young when there are all these foreign interferences coming to Greenland, there seem to be more strangers in town at the moment than citizens, and this my friends worries me greatly.” Thorstein said, beginning to pace in front of the table, using his hands to articulate his points. He had dressed this up in such a way that the audience failed to realise that he was of the same age as the girl he was chastising. At these words, the massive thrall lifted his head to regard his accuser, moving for the first time.

“It is not on this lady’s misdeeds however, that we are here in deliberation about, but rather on the aftermath of her actions. I was busily restraining her, prepared to make her put things right like a good citizen of this fair settlement should, when this barbarian launched himself from the shadows and went at me like a savage animal.” Thorstein observed, watching as the captive began to struggle against his bonds, clearly becoming more agitated. From the audience there were a number of jeers, which only incensed the thrall more, much to Thorstein’s obvious satisfaction.

“With such influences as this, how can we expect better from our children? It is clear that this creature here before us has no morals, no conception of good or evil. He is an animal and deserves to be treated as such. When a dog bites its owner, we put it down, and so it should be here. Put this mad beast down!”Thorstein instructed.

The thrall began making moaning sounds, his jaw working furiously but unable to make any comprehensible sound. The attempt just made the calls from the crowd worse, a sentiment that Thorstein was quick to seize upon.

“Rruf! Down boy!” he called out, making a growling noise and snapping his teeth together like the jaws of a dog. The crowd responded wildly, many barking at the thrall, making him twist and bend with fury.

“And what if you kicked the dog, and it bit you then?” Leif interjected, rising from his place. Thorstein turned to face him, but said nothing. The thrall seemed to calm a little, but continued to make whimpering noises.

“On whom would the fault fall? Surely then, the dog has been provoked, and is only then acting in a manner that is natural. Are we so different? Many fights begin because one party feels threatened, can they then be held accountable for the attack? On whom does the blame lie?” he continued, rounding the table to join his brother. Iva raised her head on hearing this, pleased that the man was putting up such an eloquent defence.

“The blame brother, lies with the one to strikes first. Words are bandied around like ale, men like banter it keeps their minds sharp, but only rarely does it descend into violence as we are describing here.” Thorstein responded, clearly warming to the intellectual cut and thrust. Iva felt sickened, it was clear he was doing this for the sheer pleasure of watching his victim writhe. The difference between the brothers could not be more pronounced.

“You ask many questions brother, but answer few questions. Riddle me this; what separates us from the animals?” Thorstein continued, his smile still fixed, but the warmth in it was gone. When Leif did not immediately reply, he answered for himself.

“The difference, lies in that we can separate words and actions. You accuse me of being a liar...” Thorstein began, then seeing Leif was finally about to rally continued, purposefully cutting him off, holding his palms up to his brother.

“...yet here I stand, my hands are empty of weapons, neither have they formed a fist with which to strike you. You come before us to defend this animal, why? Can he not defend himself? Father said we were both to speak our parts, yet instead he struggles against his bonds. Is that the mark of a civilised person, or a beast? ” Thorstein exclaimed, his argument hammering home, his smile had faded, replaced by a look of expectation, smugness even. Leif remained silent, his face stony.

“Your arguments seem to claim that he was provoked to violence, why then did he not call out a warning first? Viking law states, does it not, that the difference between a sanctioned killing and that of murder is that a killing requires both parties to be willing combatants, on an equal footing when neither man’s back is turned. Otherwise, it is murder. Could we not apply the same logic to assault?” Thorstein continued to press his advantage. Turning, he had addressed Rhuntyr directly, as if to get confirmation. The lawspeaker was quiet for a while, considering the implications, and Iva watched the man closely, trying to read some kind of emotion from his flat face.

The room fell silent, waiting for the decision.

After a pause, he gave a nod. Iva felt her chest seize up at the judgement, knowing in her heart that the priest had just issued the brave thrall’s death warrant. The room erupted in shouts, men calling to their neighbours about the outcome, while others yelled for the slave’s head.

Leif, his face still like rock, walked down to the thrall and the voices in the room fell quiet, waiting to see what the heir would do. He crouched down in front of the German, and the slave raised his head to regard his defender. Iva could only imagine the anguish on the poor man’s face, and was touched to see Leif’s own cool exterior shed some of its ice at what he must have seen in the thrall’s eyes.

“Can you understand me?” he asked softly. The big man was still for a moment, then slowly inclined his head.

“I know you have a secret, it may save your life. Can I share it?” Leif continued, his voice still gentle.

Image courtesy of; http://www.fotopedia.com/items/flickr-4122434587

Emotional Rollercoaster

So, i’ve been rather quiet on here lately due to living on somewhat of a roller coaster existence recently, both in terms of work with Zatobo and on the book so here follows an account of the trials and tribulations experienced for both.

Zatobo

The jubilation that followed the release of our long awaited Vinland: Arctic Assault was cut short by a series of attacks on our website, which left us with a dramatically reduced online presence. This was only made worse by the realisation that the core files were damaged beyond repair, meaning that we had to take our entire website off air and with it the sole means we had to sell the game.

During this time, we sent numerous requests to various online distributors like Steam and Desura in an attempt to broaden our market base and provide alternative means of acquiring the game however this hope was dashed by a series of refusals.

We then turned back to the drawing board, and looked deeply at the game we had crafted endeavouring to build on our strengths and reduce the weaknesses. This produced our first update, which included a number of performance updates, most principally the graphical user interface and a complete overhaul of the campaign map.

The new campaign map

Armed with this update, we then re-applied to Desura, this time going right to the top and... nothing. Silence. Noting that in the past, they had been very quick to get back to us with a response I decided to investigate, starting off by testing my email account. Turns out that the same attacks which knocked the website out, may also have been the cause of email problems; it could send but not receive messages. I then sent a note with my alternate account to our contact at Desura, and thankfully he had a copy of his reply.

What an important message it was! Acceptance to their distribution service! Break out the champagne people, we’ve finally made a breakthrough!

This is by no means the end of the road for us now, we still need to fix a couple of lingering bugs, sort out some legalities and upload the latest build before it is available to the public. Still, this is some awesome progress!

Vinland: The Book

While work with the game has been an emotional tempest, the book has been something more of a calming experience. Although progress on the book has at times been slow due to pressures of working at Zatobo, I have been able to chip away at it. 

During the past month, I spent over two weeks exploring Scandinavia, with a trip around Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In this time I visited as many Viking sites as I could stomach during my time there, even getting to sample a traditional Viking feast in Stockholm, featuring mead and reindeer!

This has proved to be a very positive effect on my efforts on the book, providing a great deal of inspiration to continue. Although the plan of the books has remained much the same for the past couple of months, the detail that has gone in has increased, as has (I hope!) the believability of the Vinland Vikings. 

At the moment I am going through what I wrote many months ago, connecting up some of the loose ends, and making sure that the characters are developing in the way I want. At the last word count, I was at around 80,000 of a new target of roughly 120,000 so I am well on the way to finishing!

Finally, as a thank you for your patience in waiting so long for Vinland, here is a short extract I recently wrote and particularly like. We join the story just as Thorstein intervenes with his mother, Thjodhilde, as a fight is about to break out between Rorik, Iva and Edvin over the treatment of one of the slaves.

Enjoy!

“We offer our apologies for the behaviour of our citizens” Thorstein offered, gesturing to Iva. Rorik dropped his hand away from the knife handle, and Edvin visibly relaxed “this is no way to welcome visitors to Greenland.”

“Thorvald, I had believed you more than capable of keeping the peace” Thjodhilde taunted “must Thorstein do everything here?”

“Fights begin. Fights end, it’s better than letting long held grievances be decided by a knife in the dark” Thorvald pointed out with a shrug, not rising to the bait.

“That maybe true...” Thorstein began, his smile sending a chill down Gorran’s spine. The young lordling walked through the room towards Iva, Edvin tried to stand his ground, but was moved aside by Thorstein’s gaze, his eyes as menacing as a silent iceberg in the night.

He then gently took her left hand in his, and patted it comfortingly as though to stop it from shaking. Rorik looked on at the scene, his jaw set, all the arrogance gone from his stance.

“...but we must show that violence here will not be tolerated” he concluded calmly. Suddenly he bent down, using his weight to drag Iva with him and thrust her arm into the flames of the fireplace, moving his own hands away from the flame to grasp her arm at the elbow.

Iva let out a hideous shriek as flames found the flesh on her arm, and Gorran had to cover his nose as the stench of burned hair and skin saturated the room.

The Importance of a Belt Buckle

I write this leading on somewhat from my earlier article “Bringing the Vikings to Life”, as I wish to talk about the experience I have had in injecting detail and description to my writings. Now, firstly my background as a writer is as a game designer, writing either fiction based on a world that I particularly liked or later on writing the script for the adventure itself, either as background lore, quest detail or interactions between the players and the denizens of the land.

Part of this has meant my developing style is very blunt and concise, with a heady amount of action driving the plot forward. Working in such a visual medium as this, it was usually better to leave the optical features to the artists, because as they say, a picture tells a thousand words. Now, that I am writing a book it has come about from frequent critiques that I need to add more detail and atmosphere to the text, as I can no longer rely on the visual feedback from the graphics.

My experiences of this have been widespread, ranging from finding certain aspects really interesting (the weather and environment in particular) and therefore easier to write about. For some reason I find it very easily to properly visualise and then put into words a description of weather and its effects, be it bright sunlight on a mid-summers eve to a blizzard in the middle of winter, however detail of the land is rather more difficult. This is part of the reason for my attempts to get as much visual feedback on the Greenlandic terrain, which led to my discovery of the real Hvalsey in the article mentioned above.

Then there is the part of descriptive text which I find near impossible, and this most likely stems from my own (very) casual attitude to the subject, and that is clothing. I realise that what people wear can be as important to their overall characterisation as their actions, but I find it nearly impossible to connect the two. Does it really matter if Gorran wears a blue tunic or a green one? What about Thorvald’s trousers today? Is it enough that I simply dress up the characters in personality and then let the reader imagine for themselves what exactly it is they wear. I hope so, because this is what I intend to do.

This leads very nicely on to my final point, the nature of novel writing is a very different beast to master compared with script or lore scribbling, and it requires different skills and techniques to pull off; but should I really mould my entire writing style to suit this, or would my book come out as stronger if I write along my strengths rather than weaknesses? Perhaps I should start to concentrate more on Leif’s voyage of discovery and worry less about the shape of Erik’s belt buckles...

Bringing the Vikings to life!

Location of "Hvalsey" the capital of Viking Greenland

Ok, maybe not quite to life, but I am writing this literally jumping with excitement at the wonders of technology. Now, my friends are well aware that I have been utilising a little trick to write about the wonders of the land in which my Vikings lived, namely in the section on Norway I used Google Street View to jump on the Norwegian roads and actually wander around what I was trying to talk about, getting some really nice descriptions going about the landscape through which they wandered, and the obstacles they had to face. Had I not been able to do this I would have had to splash out several hundred pounds to travel to Bergen and Trondheim proper in order to get a real feel of the land, the Norwegian landscape being so exotic and different to anything I have myself experienced.

Having found this little treasure trove I began to try the same technique on Greenland, but much to my annoyance the people at Google have not yet mapped out the roads there, and as such there is no Street View; the entire map in fact feels decidedly empty (take a look yourself, Greenland is just a white shape on the map). I then began to look up flights to Greenland, planning to do a little research and was shocked at the price (the cheapest was something like £1300). Despairing I began to search all over the place for pictures of the region and found several good ones, but they tended to focus on one thing in particular (most often being Thjodhilde’s little church) and lacked any real details of what the land looked like, and the impact of the background. Now, a good photographer would never just take a picture of a grassy meadow, or of a rocky beach (unless they happen to live in Brighton, in which case those stone seem to be a focal point!), simply because they are boring. To an author however, who lives on the little detail this was a massive setback, as I simply couldn’t envision the settlement of Hvalsey in my mind.

All this changed with a little more exploration, on a whim I decided to pinpoint the exact location of Hvalsey in Greenland, so that I could at least say the size of the fjord on the slopes of which their settlement was built when I had a major breakthrough. Just because Street View didn’t work, did not mean that Google Earth failed entirely, we still have the satellite images. Now I am not one of those people who perused the service at its inception trying to find conspiracy buildings arranged to look like a swastika, nor did I try to find area 51, in fact the only thing I did look at was the massive bomber graveyard in America just because that sounded so cool. I didn’t realise you could zoom, and it would actually zoom in and give you highly detailed shots, I had been expecting just increasingly pixelated shots in which the sea began to look like the mountains which rose of out it.

Eiriksfjord, on the banks of which Erik built his home.

With some searching I found the Inuit (and as such modern Greenlandic) names of the various settlements, eventually discovering that “Qassiarsuk” was the nearest modern settlement to Hvalsey. A little more searching and I found it on Google maps. Great, I had the basic details of the land now, it was a relatively green patch of the normally icy Greenland, with a massive fjord feeding into it through a series of islands. So far so good, this was pretty much what I had expected.

I zoomed in; is that a path? It was. I went in closer, are those ruins? No, they were just sheep. Disappointing, still this was pretty cool so I followed the road, they tend to go somewhere right?

Then, suddenly like a flash I noticed something I recognised from the photo’s I had found earlier, it was a stone wall with what looked to be a grass roof. Could it possibly be? Perhaps.

Then I saw next to it a smaller structure housed within a small wooden fence. I had found it, there was Brattahlid, the home of Erik the Red staring right up at me from the computer screen. Oh the wonders of modern technology!

The circular structure is the wooden fence, at the centre of which is Thjodhilde's church. Right above that is Brattahlid, home of Erik the Red!

 With many, many thanks to the enterprising people at Google!