'thul's story project...

['thul]

These beings figured that they'd avoid overly cluttering up "What's happening in your world" thread, so they decided to set up a new thread for their story discussion... It'll be a place where you can slaughter the concepts for some of the characters (not all will be released here), make mockery of the maps and in general point out the numerous crippling flaws...


Anyways... on to the story concept...

It is a fairly large world, set in some form of pseudo-medieval era. Magic is present, and influences things quite a bit.
One of the key problems humans have in this world is the presence of dragonkind. Tens of thousands of dragons. Mostly dumb beasts, but still capable of wielding instinctive magic.
Evolution is in this world working in high gear. Changes that take hundreds of thousands of years on the world known as "Tellus" or "Earth", can happen in the span of a generation or two in the world here. Thus, in the span of a few thousand years, There have evolved several different species of humans, and a number of sub-species to these.

Because of their dragon issues, the majority of humans live where dragons cannot reach them. Some live in confining forests that grow too densely for dragons to enter, while others travel within large herds of animals that are powerful enough to be a danger to dragons, while the majority live underground.

The three main human species are:
Settled - Underground-livers that thrive in caves and darkness, have larger eyes and higher cold tolerance.
Packs - Forest-dwellers that share traits with wolf packs they live with. sometimes slightly furred.
Nomads - Long-limbed, dark-haired people that follow the Glau'mor herds.

More will be added later. Posting this now so it wont be lost.

Slightly out-dated partial map:

[fool-ish]

Will there be an appendix? I need an appendix if there are lots and lots of people and clans and packs and tribes and things...please

['thul]

currently the material is mostly appendix.

Here's one of the character concepts, one of those people that will be in charge of things.
He's part of the forest-dwelling species of humans known as the packs, leading much of their society. Personally he is of the "wolven" subspecies, a mago-genetic trait that pops up on irregular basis, where those with such traits grow up to slightly resemble wolves.

[spoiler=Wulg – Scarpan of Eingalninga]
Wulg was born to the Otunna pack of the Eingalninga forest, in the region known as Einganglen. To the great pride of his parents, his strong layer of fur indicated the promise of his being born to be wolven, As is common to the packs, he was raised with close interaction with that year's litter of wolf puppies. Early in his fifth year, the transformation was a certainty. He had by then begun to grow a tail and the fur had expanded to cover not just his spine and extremities, but also his shoulders, neck and parts of his chest. His ears were decidedly pointed by his seventh year, and covered in a thin fuzz.

Like many other Wolven, his eyes had turned from a pale blue to a bright yellow, and allow him to see well at night. Unlike other Wolven, he quickly aspired not just to aiding his pack, but to lead the other Wolven and packs. During his fifteenth year, he became a Bjarkan, the leading Wolven in the local packs. Within four years, he had aspired to becoming one of six Raplan, leader for an entire section of the forest and guiding four Bjarkan and leading no less than thirty-seven different packs. Now, four years later, he has become the Scarpan, supreme Alpha of the entire Eingalninga Forest. When he issues commands to the packs of the forest, they all obey.
As he grew older, his body slowly covered itself in a thick layer of fur. Because of the purity of his Wolven traits, Wulg has even got a slight snout. Where the Settled make importance of the dress of their leaders, Wulg's clothes do not differ much from other Wolven. He wears simple short leggings remodeled to not conflict with his stout tail, a strong leather belt, and a simple cross-harness across his chest, to which he keeps a pair of strong daggers attached. His arms, legs and chest are all heavily muscled, and there's no doubt that he is a powerful Wolven, though he wears nothing to indicate his true rank. It is all in his bearing and voice.

Personality:
Noble, self-sacrificial and proud warrior. Highly uncertain of females of any species, human or otherwise. His inexperience on this front is his greatest weakness. The differences between males and females intrigue him, but he has no idea how to approach females, and is somewhat afraid of bungling up if he does try.[/spoiler]

The names used will typically be attempts at avoiding any connections to common naming structure. Families may tend to use similar names for their children.
Ranks and locations are either made up of gibberish, or inspired from old norse words and phrases. For example, the rank "Bjarkan" can be translated to "birch", It is essentially repurposed.

Feel free to criticize the character. Its not been proof-read or rethought much...

[Albertosaurus Rex]

I'll admit that I have not been following the "What's happening in your world" thread, so just for clarification: are you planning on writing a novel?

['thul]

No problem. It did get a bit cluttered up in lots of other things there...

If the story work pans out properly, then yes, it might evolve into such project.
The scale of the world should be sufficient for that.

[Albertosaurus Rex]

I think it is really cool that you have decided to share this with us. I have recently been engaged in a little worldbuilding for a possible novel myself, but I'm way too paranoid to post any of it on the internet - who knows who might whisk it away?

['thul]

Thats the trick... post just a few parts, and leave out major elements.
For one, though 'thul have got a fairly good idea of where the story will go, anything related to that is stored solely in two places. A laptop that is only connected to the internet part-time, and their heads. The times 'thul do share things in various places, it is never close to everything.

Should anyone steal or adapt parts for their own use, 'thul will know they created it first, and that the one taking it wont be able to give it the true quality it deserves. Even when all parts of characters used in a roleplay are visible to others, it is usually impossible for others to use the character fully, as there's a good part of self-knowledge that nobody but the character creator can truly understand. (would you have, if given the chance, been able to accurately and correctly react to a situation FitzChivalry Farseer is put to the way he reacts to it?)

These beings will use tips and such given here to correct details while they are still raw and largely unlinked to other parts. It is the business of writers (and wizards) to use people.

['thul]

These beings have begun on another section of a story-writing, this time writing out the story for one of the characters belonging to one of the sub-species of humans, known mostly as "the Faith", though the packs often call them "trúlings", which can be translated to "believers".
This group of humanoids are somewhat enigmatic, belonging not to any of the main human species, but working towards some common goal unseen by most, often working towards improving the situation for all humans and making life hard for dragons.
Like all the sub-species, they have been modified by various magics, and have traits that none of the others have. Unlike most such species, their members come from all main species, not just one.

Anyways, the first character created in this faction, has quickly turned out to be a supporting character for the character this story segment is about, rather than the protagonist.
This short segment (7 pages so far) details how she is before joining, where she came from, and the first changes on her path to joining the Faith.

['thul]

These beings refined some of the details from the previous map images, following up on some of the suggestions and such, and came up with this:

Obviously the lower half is hardly begun, let alone finished.
This time the settlements belonging to the human group "the Settled" have mostly gotten their names. There will probably be a few more such settlements in the lower half, but since they've not been placed yet, they're not named.
The squares with an X in them are settlements belonging to the "packs". The scale (seen in the middle of the map, bottom of top sheet), is in cm, with 1cm = 1 day's travel for the average person on foot. (there are no horses)

['thul]

The system of magic has finally begun to take shape... It is, like Paolini's magic, based on language, but also very different. Its language is mostly old Norse, and its power is drawn from whatever fuel is available. Standard use burns energy within the body. the effort to do a task with magic is the same as the effort to do it normally is, the advantage is in skipping a few steps or doing things not normally possible. Words decide the type of action, but the intent also figures in. If you use magic words to kindle a flame sufficient to light a candle, but keep thinking on what would happen if you lit the entire house on fire, you could easily end up lighting the house on fire. If you use more power than you can fuel, you typically faint, and since lighting a house on fire requires quite a bit of energy, you're in trouble if you dont guard your thoughts while speaking magic.
Oh, and misunderstanding the meaning of a word, say using a word for a giant sledgehammer to simply knock on a door because you think thats the word for knocking on a door, you'll use the power equivalent to the strength you intended to knock, proportionally scaled up to fit the sledgehammer.
In technical terms, a knock of a five kg fist at 20% potential power while using word for a 2000kg battering ram, means that instead of 1kg force, you use 400kg of force. Unless the door is rather strong, you'll probably break it.
So in essence. Word decided action, intent defines strength of action, incorrect understanding of word strength is your problem. Magic goes through anyways.
Oh, and to make magic more fun... Words of power cannot simply be learned. They have to come to the user. a teacher cant say "this is the word for lighting a candle. Say it and you will light it.". Doing so will fail, for the user of magic has to understand the word, and understanding comes from within.

---

Hmm... odd previous post ran off... will have to rewrite it...

These beings have now realized just how much characters take on a life of their own. They simply wont obey the game plan written out for them.

The female character in the section they have been working on currently, was meant to be a fairly young girl (15 years or so old), shy and unsure of herself... A minor character, involved in just a few events, in other words. Her section of story a few pages, maybe as much as ten.
That was the plan. She didn't like it.

Now, she's started out at the age of nine, grown first to twelve years, spent a few sections at that age, then grown over a few pages to the age of twenty-one, with body about nineteen years old or so. She's grown from the insecure child plagued by nightmares of dragons taking out her entire tribe, to a young woman that ends up seducing another character, taking him as her lifemate, and then going on to take the center stage, triggering key events planned for the main story. oh, and on the way there, she's grown to be a very powerful mage, with fluent understanding of the language of magic, something none have managed in a good while... Her section, once planned for up to ten pages, is far from finished and is now at 51 pages.