Author: E. M. Xavier Burgess

A world-builder at heart, Xavier writes books and makes video games as an extension of the worlds he creates. He also enjoys to share his insights into life and the universe, as well as the nature of others. The primary world he has been working on for the past 10 years is that of The Void Jumper's Continuum, an alternate reality of sorts. He is married to Olivia (featured in his profile picture) as of August 2020 and has a cat named Biscuit (named such because he's kneady).

Devilspawn and Divus Update

In lieu of releasing a chapter of Isle of the Dreamer (coming next week), I’ve decided to post an update on other projects I’m working on.

Unfortunately, there is no chapter of Isle of the Dreamer for this week, due to various things going on. I have, however, made progress on other projects in the past two weeks. Significant headway has been made on the most recent draft of Devilspawn, and actual work has been done on the video game I am working on, Project Divus (NP). More details below.

A Demon in the Night, Book I of Devilspawn

Unfortunately, Devilspawn sat dormant for several weeks while I got distracted by the wonderful prospect of doing nothing and lazing around all day. On the bright side, I have broken free from that temptation and made significant headway to the tune of and additional 30 pages.

As I write this, I come to the realization that I have given little to no updates about the writing of Devilspawn. Ever. Better late than never, I guess.

The first draft was 321 pages and the five people who read through it adored it. That, alongside actually finishing a draft for once, was a great confidence boost.

However, much to the dismay of the woman who is now my wife, I was unhappy with that draft. This was for two primary reasons (that are actually just one reason in disguise): (1) the draft had a lot of ‘downtime’ – periods where nothing would happen, involving multi-month gaps in time – which resulted in (2) a lot of plot threads being introduced in the final stretch of the book as they were being tied up. So, I decided to write out the second draft much differently – namely, by filling in the gaps, which padded out the book quite a bit.

The problem is that this made the book very long. It didn’t drag on, mind you, but it became quite long in the process, with many plot threads introduced toward the beginning of the book that wouldn’t be resolved until toward the end. Based on the length of the second draft, that probably wouldn’t have been for another 200-300 pages, which would be less than ideal. Thus, splitting the novel into two books.

Now, I could, of course, just write the whole thing out to its full length of 600-some-odd pages and then find a nice breaking point. The problem is that, with the way it was being written, that wouldn’t work very well.

Devilspawn is a character-focused narrative rather than a plot-focused narrative. There are several major plot points toward the middle of the book that would work as a nice finale for Volume I before transitioning into Volume II. The issue with that would be that its right smack in the middle of multiple character arcs. This would make the book feel incomplete.

Thus, my decision to simply start the next draft with that in mind: restructuring certain character arcs to be resolved before that point and pushing off other character arcs to be introduced after that point. Obviously, some character arcs will still span across both books, but the plan is to make Volume I feel more complete in itself, which is more pleasing in the eyes of readers and traditional publishers, should I end up needing to go that route.

Project Divus (NP)

Project Divus has seen many roadblocks in its production, not the least of which is my own laziness. The other was trying to work with a rather lethargic and disagreeable partner.

The starting area, with the main character swinging a sword

So, there’s been a shake-up in the production team, and I am now proud to announce that I will be working on Divus with my wife, Olivia, who will be working on the majority of the graphics for the game as well as helping me with level design. The two of us together have made what I would call significant progress on the game in the past two days. The starting area of the game is mostly completed, the Player Character (PC) can walk, can’t walk through walls, and can swing a sword. I say ‘can swing a sword’ and not ‘can attack things’ on account of I am currently having issues with making the code recognize certain colliders in the engine.

The Old Placeholder Graphics (left) vs the New Graphics, made by Olivia (right)

Other than that minor issue that I’m sure I’ll resolve soon, production is coming along quickly, especially compared to the last 8 months, where nothing was done except the creation of placeholder graphics (pictured above) that were very obviously based on those of the Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.

Moving Forward

As previously mentioned, there is not chapter for Isle of the Dreamer this week. Rest assured, you lovely people who actually read it and keep asking me or my wife for more, another chapter is coming next week (hopefully). What I’ve been trying to do lately is release chapters on the second and fourth Fridays of each month with short stories being released on the Fridays between (thus, Sunny and Raphael).

The unfortunate reality is that life gets in the way of these sorts of things, especially when you haven’t actually released anything that can make you money (or don’t have a following at all) and have to depend on a day (read: 3 o’clock in the morning) job that leaves you feeling like time doesn’t exist for some reason and nothing matters.

That said, my goal is to release another chapter this upcoming Friday and another chapter the Friday after that, then return to the normal schedule. My hope is to keep releasing chapters and short stories alongside weekly status updates on the various projects I’m working on. If that doesn’t happen, see previous paragraph.

If either of the projects above happened to pique your interest, subscribe to my blog, either through WordPress or by way of using the email entry field on the right. Also, hop on over to our Facebook page and give us a like, leave us a comment, or share with your friends. Thanks for reading, and Happy Making!

Raphael

An orphan wanders through the woods to find a new home. This is a chapter from my upcoming novel, Devilspawn.

Caleb was given specific directions. He was told to follow the signs. To follow the road to Abba’s house. There, he would always be provided for. There, he would never want.

He was told he shouldn’t make the journey alone. Everyone else was too afraid. Too afraid of what lurked in the woods. Of leaving behind the only place they ever knew. So, he traveled alone, from the village of orphans he’d grown up in.

He followed all the signs, followed Michael’s directions perfectly. Until he reached a fork where there was no sign – at least none that he could see.

It was dark, the faint glow of the stars unable to peak through the forest’s canopy. Up to this point, every sign – with the exception of the first few – had pointed down a road that was clearly far less traveled, with the difference becoming less discernible with each fork. Here, both roads looked equally traveled – as if only a single set of feet had traveled each one several times over. Caleb could discern no other difference.

Caleb wasn’t sure how, but he knew he was close. He’d reach Abba’s house soon. So, he kept going, even if he couldn’t see where. He trusted that Abba would guide him.

Soon, he was set upon by one of the Fallen; its red, glowing eyes jumping out from behind a thick tree. Its bladed tail sliced through Caleb’s back, and he cried out as he fell to the ground. It threw a bag over his head and bound his hands and legs before carrying him off the path. He didn’t know how far.

“Abba, save me,” Caleb whimpered.

He was alone now – his kidnapper, Nivael, having just slipped into the next room.

Caleb could hear him talking to someone, although he didn’t know who. The Satan – who works to lead Abba’s children astray? Another of the Fallen, like Nivael? Another orphan, like Caleb?

He didn’t know and at this point it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he continued to call out Abba’s name. That’s what Michael told him. “Call on Abba’s name, and He will send help.”

So, he repeated again, “Abba, I’m sorry. I took a wrong turn. Please, save me. I know You’re far away, but, please, hear my cry. Save me, Abba.”

Caleb heard a chuckle from the door. Nivael.

“You really think He cares about you? You think that with all the children He’s adopted – millions upon millions – he really cares about you?”

Nivael chuckled before calling into the other room. “Hey, this kid thinks he matters!”

He turned back to Caleb.

“You’re just some random kid who forgot the directions laid out for you. I did better than you did. At least when I went the wrong way, it was my choice.”

Caleb stopped his pleading for just a moment. He looked at Nivael as tears streamed down his face. “You think you’re better than me, just because you chose this? Because you chose to reject Abba’s love?”

Nivael let out a scornful laugh, his eyes darting to the side before focusing back on Caleb. “I didn’t reject Abba’s love. I accepted freedom. I listened to the words of the Satan, and, you know what, he made a lot more sense than Abba. To be able to wander through the woods as I please. To not be locked up inside Abba’s house, only to leave so that I can go ‘guide’ and ‘protect’ other orphans. No. I don’t want that.”

Caleb squinted at Nivael and sniffled. “Are you left wanting?”

Nivael scowled.

Caleb shook his head. “Abba, save me,” he whispered again.

“What was that?”

“Abba, save me,” Caleb repeated, louder this time. He began repeating it over and over again, slowly increasing in volume.

Nivael shook his head.

Eventually, Caleb’s words turned into screaming.

His screams repeated for many hours, until his throat became scratchy and his voice weak. But, no matter how much it hurt him, he had to keep crying out. He needed help. He needed Abba.

Just as he could scream no longer, the door leading outside swung open. The room flooded with light as a new figure entered. A servant of Abba, given the power of shining light, even in the darkest of places. The figure pointed at Nivael, who froze in place. “You shall not have this one.”

Caleb tried to call his name, but he could only manage to mouth it. “Zedekiah.”

Nivael broke from his trance and sneered at Zedekiah. “You think you can save him? You think you can defy the will of the Satan? He was the highest of Abba’s servants! You are feeble and weak compared to him!”

Nivael lunged at Zedekiah. His mane looked like a blaze of fire as he reached out his claws at the figure of light.

Zedekiah reached out His hand.

Nivael flew across the room. His bones shattered as he slammed into the wall and slumped to the floor.

Caleb could hear someone stumbling in the next room. A door swung open and he heard heavy footfalls running from the building. The sound slowly faded.

Zedekiah approached Nivael’s corpse. He strained to draw breath. “Yes. I can save him. And I do defy the Satan. I regret that you chose this name for yourself. I give you one last chance. Choose Abba.”

With all the strength he could muster, Nivael spat in Zedekiah’s face.

Zedekiah placed His hand on Nivael’s forehead, and he drew his last breath. “Goodbye, child.”

As Zedekiah turned to face him, Caleb shuffled around on the floor.

“Abba sent me,” Zedekiah said, bending down to untie Caleb’s bindings. “He was eagerly awaiting your cries for help, and He heard them. It is by your faith – your unwillingness to give up – that you are saved. Abba’s house cannot be reached without that”

Caleb sat up as he rubbed his wrists with his hands.

Zedekiah smiled at him – at least, Caleb thought He did. It was difficult to see His face. “You shall have the name that should have been Nivael’s.”

Zedekiah placed His hand on Caleb’s forehead.

Caleb felt a burning sensation. But it was comforting.

When Zedekiah moved His hand, Caleb’s new name was written there. He didn’t need to see it to know what it was. He knew it in his heart.

“What does it mean?”

Zedekiah stood up, taking Caleb into his arms before walking out the door. “God heals.”

Sunny

A dedicated guardian protects a child from the creatures of the night.

For all intents and purposes, Sunny was alone in the night. His charge was asleep, and there was a certain eerie stillness. The silence echoed in Sunny’s ears as he sat staring off into the black, waiting for whatever dangers awaited him. His charge stirred – a little girl. She held tight to Sunny as she snuggled closer, nuzzling Sunny’s face. No matter what dangers Sunny faced only one thing mattered – protecting his charge.

Not a single sound met Sunny’s ears, save for the occasional cough from another room. But the coughs came from nothing dangerous. No, if something dangerous were to show itself this night, it would give no warning. It would simply appear, whether it was under his charge’s bed, through the windows that led out into the night, or behind the door in the corner.

Darkness lurked in every hidden place, peaking out as it hid from the light. It lived in the hidden places to torment Sunny’s charge as it became new every night and brought new horrors with it.

Many would have been afraid as they waited, restless and alone in the silent dark. But Sunny was not afraid. He was never afraid. Everything that sought to hurt his charge, he destroyed. Everything that entered the room that shouldn’t, he defeated. No future night would ever be any different.

The door on the far wall opened; light rushed into the room, making the darkness flee. A face peaked through the crack between the door and the wall. It smiled at Sunny and his charge, then receded, taking the light with it as the door clicked shut.

Sunny waited for hours that night in silence and solitude. Waiting for something to come after his charge.

From the dark of the corner door crept a shadow, moving like a faint wisp as it appeared in the room. Its eyes glowed red in the dark, staring at Sunny’s charge. It stood tall, its dark figure towering so high that it had to hunch over to fit in the room. Its horns reached high above its head, and a tail whipped around behind it. It clopped its hooved feet on the ground as its gaze met Sunny, carefully pulling himself from the arms of his charge so as to not awaken her.

The dark figure recoiled as its eyes locked with Sunny’s – black beads that glistened from the lamp outside the bedroom window. Sunny stood tall on his charge’s bed and waddled toward the dark figure.

The figure let out a chuckle. “What is this that stands in my way? A puny thing, with no beating heart of courage nor breath of life to sustain it? With no mind for wisdom, nor muscle for strength? No soul in which to fear?”

Sunny stared into the figure’s fiendish eyes. “You will not harm this girl.”

The figure had no mouth, but it frowned nonetheless. “And how do you expect to keep that promise?”

Sunny stood, motionless. He didn’t say a word. He just stared into the figure’s eyes, and refused to look away.

The figure stared back. He’d have moved forward had Sunny not been there.
But Sunny was there.

The figure stood up as tall as it could with such a low ceiling. “I will have that girl.”

Sunny stared back.

“I will take her.”

Sunny didn’t move.

“She will be mine.”

Sunny stayed silent.

The figure squinted at Sunny as it stayed standing at a distance. It couldn’t reason that such a diminutive thing could pose it any danger. But it wanted to be sure.

“Who are you, oh tiny guardian?”

“My name is Sunny.”

The figure crossed its arms. “Well, that is a peculiar name.”

“What is yours?”

The figure raised an eyebrow. It’d never been asked such a question before. “Well, I suppose I can be called Darkness.”

“Darkness,” Sunny repeated. “I’d say that’s a more peculiar name than Sunny, wouldn’t you agree?”

Darkness recoiled. “Well, I would say so, too, were it not for the fact I had to make up the name on the spot. Where did Sunny come from?”

“It is the name given to me by my charge – the girl.”

Darkness looked to the girl. “So, you did not name yourself?”

“No.”

“Well,” Darkness began, “what sort of creature are you that you should be subject to the name that others give you rather than your own?”

“I am no creature, sir,” Sunny replied. “I am but a guardian. This girl is my life. Should she be harmed, I am nothing. What creature are you that you should harm a girl?”

Darkness was silent for several moments. “A creature which must feed. That must feed on fear, on nightmares, on a human’s natural inclination to hate that which they do not know in worry that it may bring them harm. What would they fear if there was nothing to harm them? Thus, I must, in order that I may feed myself.”

“So, you would harm her to save yourself?” Sunny asked.

“Yes,” Darkness answered.

Sunny would have smiled if he had a mouth. “Well, I protect her to save myself, I suppose.”

“So,” Darkness said, “it seems that one of must die.”

“You could leave,” Sunny replied.

Darkness let out a faint whistle – perhaps its own form of a laugh. “I’m afraid you must die, little Sunny.”

“You are afraid, aren’t you?” Sunny would’ve smiled if he could – not because he enjoyed Darkness’s fear, but the irony of it.

Darkness lurched forward with excellent speed, lunging over Sunny’s head. Or so it thought.

Just before its claws sunk into the girl’s skin, it felt a pain in its abdomen.

It looked down.

Sunny had claws of his own.

White strands like lightning surged forth from the little guardian’s hands and crept through Darkness’ veins.

It felt itself burning from the inside out.

It launched across the room with incredible speed, slamming into the wall. As it pulled itself up off the ground, Sunny jumped from the bed.

It tried to run around him. It tried to trick Sunny by ducking back and running the other way. It tried leaping through the air to pass over his head. But, no matter what it tried, it couldn’t escape.

Sunny reached out like lightning once more, grabbing Darkness once again and throwing it against the ceiling.

It came down with a crash and Sunny’s charge stirred.

Without standing, Darkness launched itself from the ground and toward the bed, only for Sunny to grab its foot, swinging it high over his head before slamming it back into the floor.

Darkness rolled around in a daze as Sunny waddled over to its stunned figure.

“You were right to fear me.”

Sunny placed his hand on Darkness’s forehead, and the light began to seep through its veins once more.

It burned.

It ached.

Darkness opened its mouth to scream, but there was no sound.

It had silenced the screams of so many before – children with no guardians – as it crept into their mind while they laid awake. As it taught them to fear the dark, to fear those around them, to fear the world.

It had taught so many to fear before, yet it had never learned fear itself.

Through the window, Darkness learned fear.

The sky was orange as the sun sat just below the horizon.

It had waited too long. It had taken too much time talking to the little guardian that now held it in place. It should have left the moment it saw Sunny. It tried to retreat, back to the door in the corner of the room. But it couldn’t.

Sunny held it in place.

“You would cause my death?” it asked, its voice trembling as it became filled evermore with the fear it sought to wreak upon others.

“I would. If it saves my charge.” Sunny looked down at Darkness. He would have felt pity if he’d seen its face in any other circumstance. Instead, he felt triumph. “Would you like to say anything more before you die?”

Darkness stared at the horizon as its death came closer and closer. “Please, spare me.”

Sunny cocked his head. “If I were not here and my charge asked you for the same mercy, would you offer it? Or would you ignore her and take her mind, regardless of what she wanted?”

Darkness began to weep, its tears like crystal in the orange glow of a new dawn. “I can change, I swear it. Please, spare me.”

Sunny gave it the same emotionless stare he gave everything. “No.”

As Sunny spoke the word, the sun peaked over the horizon.

Darkness let out a terrible screech, though it didn’t bother Sunny and certainly didn’t wake his charge – in fact, it seemed to make her smile.

Light leapt through the window and slammed into the wall. Darkness recoiled at the rays shining above it. They climbed down to touch its form, Darkness turning into a shadow with every inch they traveled. Its figure slowly disappeared as it writhed in pain and tried ever harder to find an escape. But there was none.

Sunny was once again alone. He stood, staring at where Darkness had been. He felt no pity for it, no remorse. Neither did he feel joy or happiness at its death. It was only a means to the end of protecting his charge.

He climbed into the bed and looked at the horizon to watch the sun crawl ever further into view. He liked watching the sunrise.

Then the girl stirred.

Sunny walked back over to where she lay, carefully crawling into her arms so as to not wake her. He nuzzled up to her face and gave her one last hug. He never knew which hug would be his last. He never knew when she would stop needing him. But for now she did.

As her eyes opened, he felt his thoughts leave him. He regretted that he could never speak to her. That’s the one thing he did regret. For as long as she was awake, he was nothing more than a teddy bear.

A New Project: Untitled Game

Xavier describes his creative process in making a (currently untitled, text-based) game and discusses other topics such as programming, game development, and linguistics.

I’ve begun work on yet another project, because I have difficulty focusing on only one project at a time (or, rather, I have difficulty focusing on one project for an extended period of time, resulting in me rotating which project I’m working on).

The project itself is a currently untitled and I’m not sure what the main story will consist of (though I have a general idea), but I know a few things about it:

  1. It will be created using a game engine (story-making tool?) called Twine. That means that it’s going to be a text-based game, kind of like those old choose-your-own-adventure books.
  2. The game will take place in Kithria, the world I have created for low-fantasy stories, games, and whatnot.
  3. Like most of my other works, it will explore various social themes, including (but probably not limited to) racism and sexism.

Below are some of my thoughts so far as I’ve been working on the game.

Working with Game Engines

Disclaimer: I am aware HTML is technically a markup language and not a programming language, thus why, when I’m referring to both, I use the term ‘computer language’.

HTML is relatively simple as a baseline. Before I started working on this game, I had a little experience with HTML during my time as a CS major and the web developer for the Daily Egyptian. I could take a template that already existed and mess around with it to make the website I wanted. As well, I could make a (admittedly garbage looking) webpage from scratch fairly easily. What I could not do was create a beautiful webpage from scratch. And I still can’t. But Twine is based in HTML, so it should help me learn, maybe. Right?

Wrong!

I learned a similar thing when I first started working on Project Divus, in which I played around with Unity a bit. For those who don’t know, Unity is a game engine that is based in the programming language, C#. Making a game using Unity, however, requires more knowledge on how Unity works than how C# works. This is because Unity has its own classes, methods, and functions built in that the programmer needs to know how to call properly. Unless you’re adding completely unheard of functionality, the chances of you needing to know C# seem to be pretty slim, and knowing C# won’t make you proficient in using Unity.

This also applies to Twine. The only actual HTML I have used in the 6+ hours I’ve spent working on this game (at the time of writing) is to make a table so my buttons don’t look weird. Other than that, it’s all been calls to macros built into Twine or SugarCube (a sort of secondary engine built on Twine), none of which are accessible in basic HTML. Both pieces of the engine (Twine and SugarCube) have their own documentation, just like basically every computer language (Unity also has such documentation).

This all comes down to one main idea: engines themselves are, in effect, child languages of whatever language they’re based on. This is perhaps why creating an engine is so difficult and time consuming – in fact, many developers forgo it because creating a proper engine can take years for a relatively simple game – because you are trying to build a new language.

As well, this goes to show that just because someone is proficient in a given computer language doesn’t mean they’re proficient in engines based on it and vice-versa. Although, knowing a single language from a family of languages makes it far easier to understand other languages; e.g. object-oriented languages, such as Java or C#; or Romantic languages, such as Spanish, French, or Latin. Obviously knowing one language won’t make you fluent in the others, but I know of plenty of university students who have been able to decipher Latin documents because they know Spanish.

Nothing in Game Development is Simple

I already knew this was the case. Most people who have tried game development already know this to be the case (probably). Those who don’t know this to be the case would be anyone who has never tried to develop a game or watched someone develop a game (or who has used a very simple drag-and-drop engine, which generally aren’t powerful and are less of making a game and more making a level in a game unless you really know what you’re doing and you put a lot of time and effort in, but I digress). Making what you think could be the simplest addition to a game takes a long time. I mentioned before that I have spent 6+ hours working on this game in the past two days. All that time was spent on character creation (which I’ll discuss later), and that part isn’t even done.

On top of that: if you’re not careful, a single wrong word can spend hours to fix (especially if you, say, wrote a line of code that you knew you would be using again and just copied and pasted it to the new location only to later realize it was wrong). On the bright side, none of the bugs I accidentally included in my code took hours to fix. They each took half an hour, and there were approximately a lot of them. Most of that time, of course, is finding out what you did wrong; often, once you’ve found the problem it’s fairly simple (though it’s usually either changing a single character or sifting through the whole document to find every mistake). I once had a project to create a parser for a programming language in one of my CS classes; it took me 2 hours to figure out how to fix it (with the help of my manager at the DE of the time) and all I had to do was change a 0 to a 1.

So, yeah, programming ain’t a walk in the park. But you probably already knew that.

Trying to Make Things Interesting

I mentioned, like, a bunch of lines ago that I spent over 6 hours over the course of the last 2 days working on character creation for this game. That’s because I’m trying to make things interesting. You see, appearance (and gender) in this game is more than an aesthetic choice. My plan is to make it where characters in the game will make judgement calls based on what you look like. If you’re a Shelezar but look like a Mikri and the character happens to be racist against Mikri, they’ll treat you as such. If you’re a woman and you’re interacting with a character that thinks women are lesser than men, they’ll treat you as such. The flipside is also true: if you look like a Kapfian, military personnel may favor you because Kaps are known for their combat prowess. If you’re a woman, members of certain cultures will favor you because that’s their culture. And setting up the appearance mechanics – the part where the player determines the character’s appearance on top of the part where the game goes through and sees what people group they might be confused with – took me most of those 6 hours. That means that I definitely need to make that appearance mechanic matter. Because you shouldn’t devote time to something that won’t matter. It’s bold because it’s a life lesson.

The main issue I need to find out now (before I move on from character creation; that’s right, it’s not done yet) is whether I want to follow through on another idea I had: basing the game mechanics on Lady Luck’s Chosen Few. Right now, the mechanics I have set up for the game are fairly simple and much more reminiscent of standard TTRPG mechanics: a number is generated and modified by four attributes the PC has (in this case Endurance, Strength, Agility, and Wit) and the result of an action that has multiple (more than one) pass-fail states is determined based on the final number. It’s simple and it’s easy. Making a game based on LLCF mechanics will be far more complicated. That being said, trying to work those mechanics into a text-based game like this will be a lot easier than trying to work them into a more standard video-game. So, I still need to make a decision on that.

Conclusion

So far, I’d say I’m happy with this project. Despite the pitfalls I’ve run into, it’s going pretty well and I’m making some decent headway. Admittedly, I should maybe not be putting another project on my plate, but I’ve decided to disregard that fact in an effort to add one more thing to have consistent updates that I can share publicly, alongside Isle of the Dreamer. So I’m making this now.

Creating Kithria: Freedom of Creativity

Xavier explores the process of creating a world, Kithria, and addresses the issue of assuming inclusion or exclusion in fantasy tropes.

World building is a long and arduous process. Depending on how its gone about and how much detail is desired, it can take anywhere from a few days to a few decades. I started world building as a hobby when I was around 10 years old.

I was sitting around, in Junior High, with my rudimentary understanding of how the world works, and thought, “Hey, maybe I can make my own world.” And that was when my creation of The Void Jumper’s Continuum began (as described here). Since then, I have experienced multiple renditions and restructures of the VJC, and attempted creating many more worlds alongside it – mainly to use in tabletop roleplaying.

VJC was much easier than any other world I have tried to create, of course, on account of I have had to do very little other than take our own real world, take aspects of various mythologies around the world, make a few twists and turns here and there, add my own unique pieces (such as the Zedekiah, which I may explain in a different post), and call it my own. Making those other worlds was much more difficult.

My most recent rendition of this would be the world of Kithria, the setting for both my web novel, Isle of the Dreamer, and the default setting intended for Lady Luck’s Chosen Few. Kithria itself began as a world I created for D&D to be used in the web-series D&DE (RIP). I created it as best I could to incorporate the standard D&D races and monsters into its lore and history, and to have as unique of cultures as possible while sticking to that. In that state, I was pretty happy with it. But then I came up with the idea for Lady Luck’s Chosen Few.

I wrote up a few basic rules, got some groundwork laid, and then it just kind of sat there. It was probably in a working state at that point (at least as much as it is now), with one exception. You see, LLCF is designed to be played as a story, not as a game. To simply plop characters down in Fantasy Land and go at it didn’t seem practical in my mind, but at the same time I had no world to really use. Every world I had made in the past was for a system intended for high-fantasy: Pathfinder, D&D, Open Legend, etc. While they certainly could have been used for Mid to Low Fantasy, that wasn’t the purpose of the system and anytime I tried, it simply went off the rails when my players all decided to be magic-users.

Then, D&DE got cancelled – it was a disappointing process as I watched delay after delay come about, extending it further and further. It was only when I gave up on that project, however, that I finally gained some direction with LLCF. You see, my issue there was that I felt I had to start from scratch. I had to build my own low-fantasy world from the ground up, something I had tried to do a million times before, but always seemed to fail at for the aforementioned reasons. Now, I had a chance. And what better way to do it than with the world I just created. The world that was originally designed to be low-fantasy, made with the pressure of being in public domain, subject to the scrutiny of, like, 10 people (but possibly the entire internet)?

Now, it should be important to at least give a brief overview of Kithria’s original creation. I’m going to skip the original brainstorming, though, and go straight to the point where D&DE started becoming a reality. At that point, there were four human races (five if you include orks), three elven races, and two dwarven races. At that point, I had little intention to include any more races, trying to limit it. On top of that, my original intention was that magic would be rare. That was the plan. But, best-laid plans. Players threw fits and I felt a need to include more. I added, for that reason as well as others, two races of halfling, three of gnome, all the goblinoids, an additional elven race, half-orks, half-elves, the Touched (my own spin on Tieflings), dragonborn (as a human race in the lore), and kobolds.

Most of it, I was content with, but the only added part I was particularly happy with were the gnomes (who had been given reason to their pranking antics and were perhaps the most horrifying creature in the world – I say were because, when I created the LLCF version, I also added the Haklos, an original race of mine that is wholly alien).

All I had to do to create the world I wanted for LLCF was gut the world, getting rid of everything that didn’t have a reason. For once, I didn’t feel obligated to include things because they were part of the default. I didn’t feel like I needed to include certain things and omitting them had to have a specific reason. I felt I could work from the opposite direction: only including things because I had a specific reason. And because I felt I could omit things, I felt my world-building benefited.

No longer did I feel bound to include standard fantasy races, and I felt like those that I did include, I could do what I wanted with. I removed goblinoids, dwarves, halflings, dragonborn, and kobolds entirely; I made my elves a bit more mysterious and a lot more powerful – and a lot less numerous; and I made humans a far more diverse race, with 8 different human ethnicities (9 if you include orks) rather than the original 4 human races (6 if you included the orks and the Touched). For those who aren’t certain of the difference, I am assigning the terms as follows (using real-world examples): race would refer to European, Asian, African, or American; ethnicity would refer to German, English, Spanish, Italian, etc.

As well, I felt the freedom to completely change the geography of the world – something I did incorrectly when I made Kithria before – to be more fitting for these 8 different human ethnicities. Each ethnicity, you see, comes from a different region of the world; originally, each human race was tied to a different continent.

This resulted in another major change: Kithria went from the name of world at large (four continents closely connected together), to the name of the continent, with multiple regions (in a similar vain of the Roman provinces). Kithria went from the four continents of Kapfas, Shelez, Gelth, and Mikron to two continents: Kithria and ‘the Southern Continent’. The former is now made up of 7 regions: the cold highlands of Kapfas, the mountainous lowlands of Barush, the river-crossed Felseth, the forested lands of Gelth, the desert basin of Imin, the lush plains of Biria, and the rocky plains of Shelez; and the latter is made up of one charted region on its northern edge, facing Kithria: Mikron, a region full of lush rainforests and foreboding wildlife.

From these unique regions came unique cultures, shaped by the geographical features of their places of origin. However, I believe I have gone a little off-track, so I’m going end this post here – but my process of creating cultures is where I’ll pick up next time I talk about world building.

Just remember: don’t let the norms of world-building and fantasy limit what you create, or force you to create things that you don’t want to in the first place. Start your world-building not by asking yourself what to omit, but instead by asking yourself what to include. By limiting your options, your world-building will be much better as a result.

So, I guess that’s the main takeaway: sometimes bounds can be limiting, but they can also be more freeing than having none at all.

Planners vs. Pantsers

A little blurb about the writing process, some info on Devilspawn, and a hint of life advice mixed in.

A common divide in the writing community is that of Planners and Pantsers. For those who are unaware what this divide is, the former is as their name suggests. They plan their story, outlining, creating all the major characters beforehand, and knowing, from the beginning, exactly what the story is about. Ultimately, things will change – perhaps things don’t go exactly as they expected, or they noticed plotholes that weren’t evident in their initial plan.

Pantsers, on the other hand, do the exact opposite. Their name is in reference to writing ‘by the seat of their pants.’ They do little to plan beforehand, simply starting to write and seeing where the story takes them. They create settings and characters as they emerge, often having a vague idea of where they’re going with things, but with no clear path to get there.

The divide between these two is most evident in that each often finds their own methodology superior. Planners will give new writers the advice to outline and plan everything beforehand. This will often result in a very hardlined story and the finished product will look very much like the first draft. Pansters will give new writers the advice to let the ideas flow through them – let themselves have a trash (or other, less savory, words, if they prefer) first draft. Then, write the second draft in such a way that it seems you knew exactly what you were doing the whole time – much like a Planner first draft. So, ultimately, it would seem, they end up at the same point, just with a different methodology to get there – a methodology dependent on the personality and thought processes of the author.

This can also be compared to the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI – a popular personality assessment) dichotomy of J and P (Judging and Perceiving, respectively). J’s, within the MBTI, are those who dutifully plan, creating schedules and itineraries, while P’s are those who tend to be more laid back about planning – they still plan, but, for those who strongly lean to the P side, every plan is penciled in; nothing is set in stone. It is known, among those who properly hold to the MBTI, that being strongly one way or the other is unhealthy, and, should someone strongly lean one or the other, they should practice moving more toward center, living in a more moderate manner. As stated by Aristotle (and, to a degree, Solomon before him and Paul after), the key to living a good life is moderation.

The same could easily be said of Planning and Pantsing. To lean more toward one side or the other will not result in an opportune story. Planning everything beforehand – having an outline, with specific characters, settings, and whatnot – disregards the minute, yet important, details that, on the surface, have little impact on the story, but can, in the end, inspire fantastic subplots or twists the author never would have thought of otherwise.

On the other hand, pantsing everything – writing with a vague direction – will result in unfinished stories, with a shoehorned ending that attempts tying up every plot thread in a neat little bow while leaving plenty of frayed ends and holes in the finished product that can be difficult to fix with new drafts without scrapping or adding entire chunks of a story.

I have, of course, seen ups and downs with both these methods in my own writing. My beta readers’ favorite characters (one of which ultimately became the actual main character in Devilspawn: Tara) wouldn’t have existed had I planned everything beforehand. As well, any time I try to plan something, I forget those small important details in the planning that are so important to the story itself. But, when I plan little, I find an issue with knowing where I’m going. With Devilspawn, I got to nearly 70,000 words in the first draft with no end in sight. I did as I previously described and shoehorned in an ending that was satisfactory to my beta readers of the time, but felt lackluster to myself. It felt like it was the ending of an entirely new book as I introduced new plot threads by tying them up. Ultimately, this is what led me to write Devilspawn as one novel in two books – the first book is what was the first two-thirds of the first draft, with more details and shorter, though more frequent, time jumps, made to be longer than the entirety of the first draft (the original first draft was around 85,000 words while the ‘first draft’ of Book I is over 90,000), and ultimately tying up the two main plot threads: Agathon’s search for his brother and his loved ones’ reaction to his disappearance. The second book will take on a couple subplots from the first book as main plots to round out the narrative itself.

As well, I’m much better at making up characters as I write than making them up beforehand. My original plan for Agathon and Sarah (a supporting character who was originally planned to take much more of a front-line role, similar to Tara) was hot garbage; both characters, and the ones I made up while writing (because when I was making the Satanists because my brain went ‘yes, 7, that’s a good number’ – should you read the book, you’ll notice I removed one as he turned out to be underutilized and didn’t serve a strong narrative purpose) turned out to be much better than the ones I prepared beforehand. I believe this to be the result of the fact that I was creating the lore for characters, rather than actually making character’s as described by Matthew Colville in his video on Lore vs Writing.

But I digress.

On the nature of Planners vs. Pantsers, I propose this: do both. If you are good at planning things out beforehand, do that – but not too much. Maybe plan a few chapters ahead as you’re writing (this is what I’m doing with Isle of the Dreamer, though the actual second chapter was never outlined at all and the outlined second chapter will be the actual third chapter). If you aren’t too good at planning things ahead (like me, see the paragraph above), write chapter by chapter, asking yourself at the end of each if you’re moving toward the end of your novel (if your novel is the sort which has a main plot). In both, remember to keep the end in mind.

So I suppose the two main takeaways can be found in the Bible: do everything in moderation, and keep the end in mind.

Lady Luck’s Chosen Few

Another project I’m working on is a tabletop roleplaying game (ttRPG – for those who don’t know what that is, D&D is the most popular ttRPG) called Lady Luck’s Chosen Few. It is intended to be a rules-lite system that is easy to pick up and easy to play. The creation of it began a few months ago after reading a blog post by The Angry GM (post itself here) about disregarding Tabletop conventions (such as ability scores) to create a better system.

In short: the article explains that when sitting down to create a Tabletop RPG, you should not ask yourself, “How am I going to handle ability scores?” but rather answer the question that ability scores were created to answer, “How am I going to resolve situations that characters get themselves in based on chance, where the character’s capabilities are taken into account?” Another way to word this is, “How is action resolution handled?”

From the problem this article presented, the idea evolved into: I want to make a ttRPG that is easy to pick up and play, is more oriented to low-fantasy settings (magic is limited or extremely dangerous and mythical creatures are a rare sight), where death lurks around every corner, combat can be easily resolved in a few minutes (thereby lowering its prevalence in the system), and character creation is based on a character first mentality, rather than stat-based.

After the jump is a brief introduction to the rules so far.

Character Creation
A staple of the game itself is that the player’s characters (PCs) are extraordinary, not because they were born that way, but because they made themselves that way by garnering the attention of some cosmic force which now guides their path. Character creation requires determining 3 simple things: what your character looks like, how they behave, and what the life event was. None of these have to do with rules or game mechanics.
After determining those three things, play can begin. But, obviously, there needs to be some way to define a character’s capabilities through game mechanics, otherwise, everyone’s the same.

Action Resolution
Any action that has a higher than ~20% chance of failure requires the roll of a standard six-sided die. Before the action is rolled, a certain threshold is determined by the Game Master (GM – controls all the NPCs [non-player characters] and the environment). If the player who is controlling the character rolls at or above the pre-defined threshold, their character succeeds in whatever they were trying to do. If they roll below that threshold, they fail. Each roll can be affected by a character’s ‘Aptitudes’, which apply to different situations on a case-by-case basis. Any given aptitude will, at most, affect a player’s roll by 1.
Practically, any injury received counts as a death blow – a roll is made to determine if a character survives that death blow.

Character Capabilities
To represent their connection to some cosmic force, a given character has a stat known as ‘Luck’ (hence, the name of the game). They can use this luck in two ways: spending it (lowering the current value) to increase a roll by however much is being spent, or burning it (lowering the max value to gain an aptitude).
Characters also start with a Wealth stat (that can only be burnt) which is used to determine what equipment they can have.

I will likely put the rules for this system on its own page of this blog as I am able.

The Origins of the Void Jumper

I am currently working on my second draft for a book called The Void Jumper’s Chronicles: Devilspawn.

I started my writing, not by sitting down to write a book, but by building a world while I was bored. It began with a simple concept: what if different worlds were at different points on a fourth dimension, and there was someone who could move across that dimension? That idea eventually evolved into ‘The Void Jumper’, which is why the series I’m beginning is called ‘The Void Jumper’s Chronicles’. The world that the books take place in is called ‘The Void Jumper Continuum’.

The idea of the void jumper was originally a much wider a concept, starting with a group of people with latent abilities awoken by intervention from some higher being. The list of abilities available to those people were based on the list given by Paul for those who are filled with the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. The unifying factor among all those who were of this people group was that they had the ability to move between realms (initially called ‘voids’), hence, this group of people were called ‘void jumpers’.

It came to be that I decided this group was not a physical race, but a form of soul. So, someone could be physically human and spiritually a void jumper. As well, there were other physical forms, such as what eventually became known as Deos, and other soul forms, such as what eventually became known as Powers That Be (or Beta Powers).

After many revisions to the idea, void jumpers were split into two different soul types – Jumpers and Gifts. Gifts retained the plethora of latent abilities, activated by the higher power (at this point objectively named ‘Truth’, though different groups call him by different names within the Void Jumper Continuum). Meanwhile, the Jumpers have three different kinds, which can move across different dimensions: Time Jumpers move across ‘Primary Time’ (the combination of two time dimensions), Spirit Jumpers can move across the fourth spatial dimension, called ‘Spirit’, and Void Jumpers can move across the fifth spatial dimension, called ‘Void’, which separates the realms.

The idea of many dimensions eventually evolved into there being nine total dimensions: five spatial (categorized into the three physical dimensions and two metaphysical dimensions), three chronic dimensions (split into primary and alternate time), and the True dimension. While the Void dimension splits up different realms within one Universe, the True dimension is what divides Universes from one another. And each Universe has its own Truth reigning over it (or perhaps different representations of one indivisible Truth).

It was from these basic elements that the rest of the Void Jumper’s Continuum was based on.