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Forum Name: Eyrie Miscellaneous
Topic ID: 344
#0, Roads Not Taken: The Kered Project
Posted by Gryphon on Jan-21-18 at 00:52 AM
LAST EDITED ON Jan-22-18 AT 06:52 PM (EST)
 
The other day I was reminded that some years ago, I tried to write a fantasy novel. No, seriously, I did. I have a notebook, which I recently stumbled across while digging around in a box (unsuccessfully) searching for something else, in which I jotted down a bunch of worldbuilding notes for the setting and main characters, and I have a Word file here with the first 4½ or so chapters in it.

The idea arose one day when I was passing some time in idle contemplation of the various Fantasy Tropes, as one does, and amusing myself by thinking about divers ways of contravening them. For instance: orcs in Standard Fantasy range from Mindless Terror Hordes to Fairly Clever Terror Hordes. Even in settings which stray from that blueprint, like the world of The Elder Scrolls, they're still stereotypically fierce and not known for sophistication. The thing to do there, then, would be to turn that around and give them the role usually given to FRP gnomes: make them the inventor-engineers of the setting, the ones who are forever fooling around with steam and big pieces of metal and making stuff.

(Meanwhile, actual gnomes become something more like gremlins, very rarely seen but customarily blamed for small misfortunes the causes of which nobody witnessed.)

Similarly, Standard Elves are haughty woodsy types; so in this setting they would trade places with Standard Dwarves and become the miners and jewel-hoarders of the world, while the dwarves hang out in the hill country getting high on herbal whatevers and taking spirit voyages, maaan, possibly with a nice sideline in folk textile manufacture. And, so, on, as Carl Sagan once wearily summed up the improbable sequence of events in Immanuel Velikovskiy's Worlds in Collision. :)

As the concept for this setting started to gel in my head, it needed a name, and I decided that it was sufficiently perverse (in the Poeian sense) that my old friend Derek Bacon would have enjoyed it, so I took to calling the world Kered (sometimes spelled "Khered" in the notes, I forget why, probably just to fantasy it up and make it slightly less obviously Derek's name spelled backwards). The conceit that emerged was that whatever works came out of this setting would be labeled as excerpts from a much larger meta-work called The Book of Kered, somewhat after the fashion of the original Star Wars novelization (which is presented as a chapter of something called The Journal of the Whills).

As the Kered setting developed, it picked up skewed details here and there from just about everything else that was rattling around in my brain at the time, whether consciously adapted or just swept up in the giant rolling Katamari that is my creative semiconscious. For instance, the developing world map was more or less the same shape as the real one (à la Earthdawn), and a lot of the place names and cultural broad strokes were tweaked echoes of either real or other-fiction things. The country where most of the action I had in mind took place, for instance, was in the eastern part of the world's north-western continent (i.e., North America), and was called the Kingdom of Ostvia. The other really major polity in the northern hemisphere, over on the eastern continent (i.e., Europe), would have been a pop-culture Late Roman Empire-alike called the Erorian Empire (Imperium Erorianum), where people have cod-Latin names and the soldiers use short swords.

OK, there was also going to be the floating island country somewhere over what would be Utah in the real world, which was probably the corner of my brain that used to play in a Forgotten Realms campaign remembering Netheril more than any reflection of something in the real world, but then, Eroria bears more than a casual resemblance to Cyrodiil from The Elder Scrolls, too, come to that. This would all probably have been smoothed off a little more if I had kept working on the project, but in the early stages you could not only see where the numbers were filed off of things, you could kind of still make out which digits were round numbers and which ones were angular.

No matter, really. The story as I was envisioning it was going to take place entirely in I Can't Believe It's Not North America, mainly in the hinterlands of western Ostvia (ca. the real-world American Southwest). The rest of the world was only going to be important as backstory, e.g., one of the characters I had in mind was an exiled Erorian legionary (who was actually not from Eroria proper but an imperial possession roughly akin to Roman Britannia).

Possibly because of the story's trend toward the southwest, or the image of orcs as steampunk engineers, or both, the era of the Kered setting drifted forward as it developed. It started out as a standard D&D-style faux-medieval fantasy world in my head, but then the orcs were building railroads and it ultimately became sort of Elder Scrolls 1875: an era still largely agrarian, but with significant urban industrialization, the beginnings of widespread electrification even in the countryside, and other concepts alien to pure fantasy settings, like institutionalized standard times (invented, as in the real world, to aid the organization of the railroads) and long-distance (though not yet wireless) telegraphy.

(And early cartridge firearms, anticipating the Gunslinger archetype from the Pathfinder RPG by a few years.)

The draft I mentioned before ends more abruptly than my usual becalmed story files; in those, I usually at least make it to the end of the current thread before losing my way, but this one just stops right in the middle of a scene. This is because that's the point I had reached when I was, quite by chance, made aware of the Eberron campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons. And... that was pretty much the end of that. The parallels are not exact—the trains in Kered are just normal trains, for instance, not powered by magic, and I hadn't considered anything akin to the Warforged—but overall, it struck me that the concepts were close enough together that Kered was never going to strike anyone already familiar with Eberron as anything other than a knockoff of same.

Largely because of that, and also because of the aforementioned problem with the fact that it really was in part a knockoff of so many other things, I abandoned the whole project. Not without regret; there are some descriptive passages and character moments in the scrapped draft I'm still pretty pleased with, and I'm still rather attached to the characters I was developing for it. Their names live on, in a way, in that I routinely name my characters in fantasy-themed computer games after them.

So that's a random semi-confession of sorts for the day. If anyone out there has wondered why I haven't written an Actual Book at any point, well... I have given it a try. It didn't really work out. Might be worth revisiting one of these days, although I don't think it would work as a for-profit project (that is, after all, why I scrapped it), so... (shrug)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#1, RE: Roads Not Taken
Posted by MoonEyes on Jan-21-18 at 09:14 AM
In response to message #0
I dunno... I mean, sure, Eberron is more or less fantasy-punk, if such a thing can be said to be, but this sounds rather noticeably different. Similar, maybe, but certainly not so much so that I would take it as a rip off of, as it were.

Either road, it sounds interesting and I'd love more, in any form, really, be that background, minis, what have you.


...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"


#2, RE: Roads Not Taken
Posted by MuninsFire on Jan-21-18 at 01:02 PM
In response to message #0
Dwarves as tree-hugging stoner hippies must be a semi-common subversion - I ran a couple adventures where two of my players were dwarven druid siblings of precisely that type, and the result was utterly hilarious.

#3, RE: Roads Not Taken
Posted by Peter Eng on Jan-21-18 at 01:04 PM
In response to message #0
"If anyone out there has wondered why I haven't written an Actual Book at any point, well... I have given it a try. Might be worth revisiting one of these days..."

I think you should revisit it. I know you have a ton of things on the back burner, the front burner, and possibly a few sitting in a mental slow cooker (okay, I may be stretching the metaphor too far), but I would rather have you write something that I could pay for.

As far as your point about similarities to Eberron go, that is something that could be fixed later on. People have been paid for stories set in other worlds which had the serial numbers filed off, after all. (Mercedes Lackey has a chapter in of one of her books which started as a short story for an anthology, just to name one example.)

In any case, writing an Actual Book isn't necessarily easy. Some authors take years from idea to sale. I remember one author saying something like, "I started this book, realized I wasn't good enough to make it work, and shelved it. I looked at every so often, and put it back on the shelf. Finally, one day, I picked it off the shelf and finished it."

Incidentally, this is one place where I disagree with Yoda. "Try" is a thing. It is the thing that makes "Do" possible.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.


#4, Kered character notes 1
Posted by Gryphon on Jan-21-18 at 10:49 PM
In response to message #0
For the central part of the Kered storyline, I had in mind a triumvirate of principal characters, two of whom would appear from the beginning, to be joined by the third fairly early on (say at the end of act 1, though at the time I wasn't really thinking of it in the those terms).

The first is Dr. Thomas Nemo, consulting wizard. Although he wouldn't describe himself as an adventurer per se, Nemo makes his living primarily by investigating oddities and resolving difficult situations, often situations that call for some knowledge of the arcane. He's also an alchemist and physician-surgeon, skills that come in handy in the field, and indeed his business cards list the medical part first. Relatively few communities in Ostvia have much need of a traveling doctor, though, so the great majority of the telegrams, letters, and other urgent messages that draw him out of his home are to do with magical matters, or at least matters which the people calling him in believe are magical.

Nemo is headquartered in Nolsémic, a small but prosperous mining town in Ostvia's far northeastern province, Ktaadia. The town in fact stands virtually in the shadow of the province's namesake mountain, Amon Ktaad, the tallest peak in that corner of the kingdom (and which is traditionally held to be the seat of the storm god Ktaadr). Unlike many wizards, who make a point of living in towers, Nemo's fastness is largely underground. His cards give the name of his abode as "Old Slate Quarry", a name originally tagged on maps to avoid arousing outside interest; it is in fact the remains of an ancient fortress predating modern settlement of the region, the acquisition of which was one of his first adventures. He's done it up quite nicely on the inside, though one only gets natural light on the uppermost floor, of course.

He's in his mid-thirties, which many (particularly laypeople) think is surprisingly young for a practicing wizard. He's also much more laid-back and approachable than the common perception of wizards. Though clearly very clever, he doesn't revel in his cleverness the way some of his colleagues are notorious for doing (although he does have the odd "damn I'm good sometimes" moment in which he will bask in it somewhat :). He's of average height and build, not particularly imposing but far from frail-looking, and unlike many in his profession he carries a sword, though he rarely employs it.

If Thomas Nemo can be said to have a glaring fault (and there are many in the Ancient Order of the Sages of Herkalion, the Ostvian national fraternal organization of arcanists to which he belongs, who would say he has several), it's that he can't leave well enough alone. This is perhaps a useful trait for someone who makes his living by investigating the unknown, but it is also problematic, particularly when he runs across something mysterious and/or hidden that has no bearing on what he's actually there to do. He feels compelled to look into it anyway, a state of affairs which commonly spirals into a mass of complications he could easily have avoided if he'd just confined himself to the original task at hand.

He's made some... well, not enemies, exactly, but non-fans, to be sure... among his colleagues with his stubborn refusal to accept an apprentice nominated by the Order's governing body, the Council of Magi. Taking apprentices assigned (the Orders charter says "suggested", but, well) by the Council is one of those voluntary-not voluntary tasks expected of anyone possessing a master's degree or higher in an arcane discipline from one of Ostvia's accredited universities, but Nemo declines to do so. Because it's framed as a voluntary thing in the Charter, he can't be thrown out of the Order for it, but he's widely regarded as Not a Team Player within the organization, with all that that entails to anyone who has worked in the academic or private sectors.

(He is also a convicted-in-absentia criminal facing arrest and a long prison term if he ever returns to Aetoria, the floating continent also known as the Skyborn Empire, but that's an... unrelated matter. They aren't pursuing him and he doesn't want or intend to go back there anyway, so Nemo customarily just ignores it.)

In Ostvia, people who can afford it generally travel long distances by rail, but bring their own riding animals along in special cars to carry them on the local legs of the trip. Nemo's preferred ride is his trusty studded horror, Buddy. A studded horror is a large quadrupedal reptile, basically a Gila monster the size of a horse. It gets its common name from the facts that it has pebbly hide that reminds people of studded leather armor, and that it scared the hell out of the first people to discover it. On the face of it, they are fairly fearsome beasts—big, heavy, with formidable claws, sharp teeth, and a venomous bite—but they're so placid and imperturbable that they can hardly ever be bothered to actually attack anything.

Buddy is not a particularly swift steed (though he can shift pretty well if he absolutely has to), but he can carry a lot of stuff, has great endurance, and is smart enough to stay on roads without the intervention of his rider, which is convenient on those longer hauls. Nemo insists that Buddy can even read road signs and follow routes shown to him beforehand on a map, but no one believes him.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#5, Kered character notes 2
Posted by Gryphon on Jan-22-18 at 03:25 AM
In response to message #4
As in many (if not most) fantasy settings, humans share the world of Kered with a number of other sapient species, each with their own cultural and political realities. One of these species is the khavar, who live in independent city-states scattered around the world. Like the elves (whose neighbors they often are), the khavar tend to live in places that the more numerous human civilizations of the world consider out-of-the-way, unimportant, and otherwise not worth getting into sovereignty disputes about, and so are largely left to their own devices.

(Their reputation for military prowess helps. Even the Erorian Imperium, which is well-known for its habit of conquering and assimilating any settlement unlucky enough to fall within its self-declared borders, permits at least one khavar kingdom to function unmolested on what would otherwise be its turf.)

Physically, khavar are a diminutive, vaguely bestial-looking (by human standards) people, known for being hardy and stubborn. There are two main subspecies: subterrene khavar, who (you will not be surprised to learn) live underground, and the much less numerous aquatic khavar, who can breathe underwater and build their cities at the bottom of lakes and seas. In Standard Fantasy terms, they look like a cross between halflings and goblins: grey-skinned (or green, in the case of aquatics), with large pointed ears, snub noses, prominent teeth, and clawlike fingernails, but more human-like faces than most fantasy goblins have. They're three to four feet tall, built like scaled-down humans, and stand fully erect.

Subterrene khavar very much resent being called "cave goblins" by insensitive humans, since a) they live in tunnels, not caves, and b) goblins are scurrying, ratlike mythical monsters, to which not even the vaguest pretensions of culture are ever attributed in the lore. They are in fact a very sophisticated people: less preoccupied with fancy jewelry and carvings than their old fellow-tunnelers the elves, perhaps, but very into sculpture and heroic poetry.

I mention all this by way of background for Thomas Nemo's near-constant traveling companion, Norah Kal'mâk, who is a khavar woman-at-arms from the western mountain city-kingdom of Niúvac. Khavar's ages can be hard for foreigners to tell, but assuming they age like humans, she looks to be in her early twenties, with pale grey skin, blue-black hair, and extremely dark eyes that look red in certain lights. She stands about three foot ten—fairly tall for a khavar woman—and is lightly built but very toned. This is not often on show, since she routinely wears a kilted suit of chain mail with plate bracers and sturdy boots, but she carries herself like an athlete.

Norah is well-versed in many weapons, but specializes in two in particular. One is a double-bitted battle axe with a handle of suitable length that it can be wielded in one or both hands. She customarily wears this on her back when not in use. The other is a weapon which originated in the armories of Niúvac about twenty years before the time of the story, and which has since spread very slowly to a few adventurous other communities in the Ostvian West: a mechanically complex, fiendishly powerful repeating hand-cannon known by its creators as a keterak, and to almost all of its other adventuresome early adopters (from the translation of that word into Ostiv) as a thunderer.

(Norah's is in fact one of the most sophisticated thunderers yet produced, with numerous advances over the type to be found almost anywhere else in the West. Earlier khavar keteraks, and the knockoffs of same made by craftspersons outside Niúvac, used a separate ignition system, akin to that used in pre-Civil War revolvers, whereas Norah's takes cartridges, an innovation as yet largely even more unknown to the wider world than the thunderer concept is to begin with.)

Norah has an unusual piece of hardware that most people unfamiliar with khavar culture take for a bit of mildly extreme body art: a rectangular metal loop, like a squared-off link of chain, implanted in the bridge of her nose. This is called a khetra, and marks its wearer as a khetren—a complex and pretty much untranslatable khavar word which most humans who attempt it render as something like indentured servant, if they don't come right out and say slave. Neither interpretation does the concept justice, and in fact both are quite insulting to the khavar, the latter to a degree bordering on mortal.

A khetren is a person who has sworn a vow—in many cases a whole series of vows—committing him- or herself to the... well, again, service isn't really the right word, nor is protection, though both can enter into it. "Supporting the well-being of," perhaps. The object of these vows is usually a person, though it doesn't have to be; there are khetren who have bound themselves to institutions, to communities, even to abstract ideals (although those individuals are considered a bit strange even among khavar). In cases where the object of the bond is capable of thought and action, it brings with its certain responsibilities and obligations on the other side, too. Like khavar culture generally, it is far more nuanced and complex than a casual outside observer may tend to take it for.

In Norah's case, she's pledged herself to (in the Ostiv phrasing she sometimes uses, usually in an effort to deflect closer investigation by making a joke) "look after" Nemo. This was a decision she made as a very small child, basically as soon as she was old enough to even begin to understand the concept, and she has never swayed from it in all the years since, though virtually everyone she mentioned it to beforehand tried to talk her out of it. As to why she made this choice, I'll get to that in another post, as this one is already running pretty long and I need to crash.

Quiet and reserved around people she doesn't know, Norah's usual tactic in social situations is to let Nemo do most of the talking, since he a) is better at it and b) enjoys it far more. When she does speak, she has a wry sense of humor, usually with a deadpan delivery. Her demeanor toward Nemo is undemonstrative but affectionate, often shading toward indulgent amusement when he's having one of what she calls his "wizard moments". In dealing with others, she's unfailingly polite and has a capacity for great kindness (although, as is traditional among her people, she tends to be decisive to the point of ruthlessness in combat).

Though she presents herself as a simple fighting-woman, Norah is very well-educated; in fact, she knows considerably more than Nemo in her particular areas of expertise, namely languages, international affairs, and history, as well as the building techniques and folkways of the Ostvian continent's many underground civilizations, present and past. If things had gone differently, she could have been an archaeologist specializing in such matters, and occasionally, in her travels with Nemo, she has the chance to be one. She can also be an eloquent speaker when the moment is upon her, and is perfectly at home dealing with the highest echelons of society, because despite her armed and armored traveling persona, she's from those echelons herself. As the eldest daughter of Queen Kal'mâk the Just, she would be the crown princess of Niúvac if she hadn't chosen a different path.

As a bonus, here are virtual minis of Norah and Nemo that I bodged up on heroforge.com, just for funsies. To scale, even, more or less! :)

(Nemo doesn't always have the full Obi-Wan beard. Sometimes he prefers the Riverboat Gambler look. And of course HeroForge doesn't have anything akin to a khetra. It's a decent likeness otherwise, though!)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#6, RE: Kered character notes 2
Posted by Verbena on Jan-22-18 at 07:19 AM
In response to message #5
I was going to be stupidly selfish and want to see like the first chapter or something, but I'd kinda rather you finish and publish it, to be honest. All genres have their tropes; it's impossible to avoid them entirely. The 'intentionally twist the tropes' thing has been done before, too, but I trust you to do it a hell of a lot better than the average!

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her


#7, RE: Kered character notes 2
Posted by Gryphon on Jan-22-18 at 01:57 PM
In response to message #6
>I was going to be stupidly selfish and want to see like the first
>chapter or something, but I'd kinda rather you finish and publish it,
>to be honest.

I suppose it doesn't necessarily have to be either-or—for instance, Andy Weir's The Martian started out as a free online thing, and I believe stayed that way for the early adopters when it went big—but... well, we'll see. Dusting off these notes and reprocessing them (in some cases rethinking them) for posting here is an interesting experiences and possibly a valuable creative exercise, but I remain uncertain that it'll really lead anywhere.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#8, RE: Kered character notes 2
Posted by Peter Eng on Jan-22-18 at 02:05 PM
In response to message #7
>Dusting off these notes and
>reprocessing them (in some cases rethinking them) for posting
>here is an interesting experience and possibly a valuable creative
>exercise...
>

That last part alone is sufficient reason to encourage you to dust off the notes.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.


#9, RE: Kered character notes 2
Posted by Verbena on Jan-22-18 at 06:04 PM
In response to message #7
>Dusting off these notes and
>reprocessing them (in some cases rethinking them) for posting
>here is an interesting experiences and possibly a valuable creative
>exercise

The muse is a fickle, fickle beast, as I bet anyone here knows.

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her


#10, Kered character notes 3
Posted by Gryphon on Jan-22-18 at 06:11 PM
In response to message #5
LAST EDITED ON Jan-22-18 AT 06:11 PM (EST)
 
One of Thomas Nemo's first real grown-up jobs after he graduated from medical school was as ship's surgeon on the Star of Ascorro, a square-rigged sixteen-gun sidewheeler operated by the notorious privateer, corsair, some would say pirate Kisla the Bold. On the last of Nemo's four voyages aboard that vessel, one of their passengers was Prince Velsik, husband of Queen Kal'mâk the Just of Niúvac, who was traveling as his queen's ambassador to the aquatic khavar city of Dwívac on the Ascorran coast.

That was the plan, anyway. Instead, the ship was sunk by rival corsairs in the employ of the Sultan of Khayyar, the survivors of its crew and passengers held to ransom. This was not likely to be forthcoming for any of them, since the crew were (as expected) disavowed by the Ascorran government and Queen Kal'mâk does not play ball with that kind of business, even for a family member's sake. So things were looking pretty grim for all concerned.

While they were sitting around the dungeons in Murada (the Khayyaran capital), waiting for Sultan Omar to get sick of waiting for tribute that was never going to get paid and have them all executed, Velsik sought out Nemo, whom he had heard was plotting an escape, and asked him his price to include Velsik. Nemo would have taken him for free—the whole point was for them all to get away together—but he was young and pleased to be flippant, so he made some offhanded remark to the effect of, "Oh, I think your firstborn should about cover it."

Prince Velsik was trained as a diplomat, so he understands about other cultures, and anyway, khavar are no strangers to sarcasm and flippancy themselves. He knew it was a joke. (Besides which, he did not yet have a firstborn.) On the other hand, when a wizard (however youthful and untempered) makes a joke, it makes people think.

At any rate, the escape came off and the survivors of the Star of Ascorro absconded from Khayyar in good order. Upon their return to Ostvia, Nemo went home to Ktaadia, Velsik made his way west to Niúvac, and all was well. When Velsik arrived, he discovered that he did in fact have a firstborn child: Norah, who had been born while he was in Khayyar.

Most people, hearing this much of the story (not that many people ever do hear this much of the story), jump to the conclusion that Velsik raised his daughter to pay his debt to the young wizard out east, teaching her from an early age that she had an obligation to fulfill. This is not the case. Velsik knew Nemo's remark was intended as a joke. However, he did mention it once, when Norah was just old enough to understand that she almost never met her father... at which point she pretty much decided it was her life's destiny.

Her parents, tutors, younger siblings, pretty much everybody assumed for the first few years that it was a Phase, one of those cute childhood obsessions that are amusingly embarrassing in hindsight. It proved to be anything but. Velsik, the Queen (whose given name is Kliru), and more or less everybody else tried to talk her out of it, but she wasn't budging, and ultimately they decided well, khetrenage is out of fashion in Niúvac these days, but it's an old and honored tradition, and they have no one to blame but themselves if they raised a daughter who heard the call of the ancient code so clearly.

Nemo, hardly an expert in outdated customs among the khavar of the West, was... nonplussed to be summoned to Niúvac toward the end of Norah's 16th year in order to be witness to her final vows and the fitting of her khetra, but as he couldn't figure out any way of getting out of it that wouldn't cause mortal offense, he rolled with it, thinking that perhaps once they were away from the kingdom he could convince her to forsake the path, however honored he might be by the sentiment. That didn't happen. It's ~10 years later now, and he's long since even stopped trying. Truth is, he has no idea what he'd do without her at this point.

As for Kliru and Velsik, they were naturally ambivalent about the whole undertaking when Norah and Nemo left, but as time has gone on and her fame has increased, they've become satisfied that they made the right decision in honoring her determination. Velsik saw something in that devil-may-care young wizard back in the Sultan's dungeon, anyway, and however much the wizarding establishment may not care for Nemo's ways, the prince-consort of Niúvac is content. With a properly educated khavar guardian, the young fool may actually live long enough to go far in this world. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#12, RE: Kered character notes 2
Posted by Peter Eng on Jan-22-18 at 08:23 PM
In response to message #5
After reading the second part of Norah's history, I'm curious: How far do the oaths go for a khetren? It's obvious that some previous obligations will have to be left behind, like Norah's place as crown princess.

But are they expected to leave everything behind? It seems a bit harsh to cut one's family off like that, but I vaguely recall some real-world social constructs which were about that level. On the other hand, there might be some cases where it would be preferable on one or both sides.

I'd like to think her parents get missives from Norah on occasion, instead of having to wait for the news to arrive.

Peter Eng
--
ALL IS WELL STOP IGNORE BARDS STOP NEMO ONLY DESTROYED ONE TOWN STOP AND THEY DESERVED IT STOP LOVE NORAH ENDIT


#13, RE: Kered character notes 2
Posted by Gryphon on Jan-22-18 at 09:28 PM
In response to message #12
>After reading the second part of Norah's history, I'm curious: How
>far do the oaths go for a khetren? It's obvious that some previous
>obligations will have to be left behind, like Norah's place as crown
>princess.
>
>But are they expected to leave everything behind?

Oh no, not at all. It's not like becoming an old-school Jedi, or a Grey Warden, or joining a monastery. Well, not in most cases. They can be structured that way, but in the majority of cases, no, and not in Norah's case.

>I'd like to think her parents get missives from Norah on occasion,
>instead of having to wait for the news to arrive.

Oh, sure, pretty regularly. They've even been back to Niúvac a few times. Reading about their exploits in the newspaper is just corroboration of her assertion that she is not, in fact, in thrall to some kind of crazed wanderer. Usually. :)

--G.

"It's too bad this cave doesn't go further on," Nemo said. "We might be able to take a shortcut through the mountain instead of walking around it again."

"And if I had a team of elven sappers I could tunnel you across in a fortnight, but we haven't got either, so let's get a move on," Norah replied practically.

Nemo smiled as he followed her back out to the narrow mountain path. "I could probably blast it myself," he said.

"Don't you dare," said Norah. "That's all we need is for you to have one of your wizard moments and bring the whole frexing mountain down on our heads, like you did in Ranuf."

"I meant to do that!" Nemo protested. "Baron Kardosky and his men certainly weren't expecting it..."

Norah let out a quiet chuckle at that, remembering the red-faced baron and his retinue plummeting with about a quarter of Amon Hurel into the icy waters of the Firth of Ranuf. That had been a worthwhile day, even if she had nearly been crushed by a rock the size of a small ship.

"Clever miners, elves," Nemo observed absently. "They do some quite remarkable things with hydraulics."

Norah snorted. "I think you mean 'pneumatics'," she said. "Don't think I didn't see you looking at Alóniel the last time we were in Kelgoroth."

"You are a little grey assassin of character, Norah Kal'mâk," Nemo sniffed indignantly.


-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

#11, miscellaneous Kered setting notes
Posted by Gryphon on Jan-22-18 at 06:28 PM
In response to message #0
Orcs: These sturdy folk are the engineers and inventors of Kered, especially in the West. Their famous inventions include the steam engine, the railroad, the telegraph, the truss bridge, socks, and the dirigible. Orcs are cheerful, rough-and-ready people who care little about physical injury as long as it doesn't foul up their project timetables. Appearance doesn't much matter in orcish relations, perhaps because so many are scarred and battered in the line of duty, as it were. Showing off scars and trading stories about how they got them is orcish engineers' version of LinkedIn. They love an elegant workaround, a well-made machine, and a well-earned gallon of beer after a hard day's work.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#14, RE: miscellaneous Kered setting notes
Posted by MuninsFire on Jan-22-18 at 11:19 PM
In response to message #11
Misread "the truss bridge, socks," as "truss socks" and for a second was taken aback by the attention paid by the orcs to supportive garments and the engineering thereof.

#17, RE: miscellaneous Kered setting notes
Posted by MoonEyes on Jan-24-18 at 00:14 AM
In response to message #14
Which I, in turn, read as "Truss' socks" and wondered, does he know that his foot-warmers are Orc-engineered?

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"


#15, RE: Roads Not Taken: The Kered Project
Posted by mdg1 on Jan-23-18 at 08:12 PM
In response to message #0
I find myself reminded of this old fantasy classic:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/264765.Grunts

I think I even have a copy of that first edition around here somewhere....


#18, RE: Roads Not Taken: The Kered Project
Posted by dbrandon on Jan-24-18 at 08:43 AM
In response to message #15
>I find myself reminded of this old fantasy classic:
>
>
>
>
>https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/264765.Grunts
>
>I think I even have a copy of that first edition around here
>somewhere....

You're not the only one. And I know where mine is. Not that I've read it in the last decade or so, but I know I saw it on the shelves recently.

dbrandon
"pass me another elf-- this one's split."


#16, Kered character notes 4
Posted by Gryphon on Jan-23-18 at 10:56 PM
In response to message #0
The small farming and mining community of Berglen, at the foot of the Norbeld Ranges in northern central Ostvia, is a fairly typical example of its type. It is largely unknown outside the region, and within same is notable for only two things. One is the beauty of the views to be seen in certain directions, given the town's position at the junction between plains and mountains; and the other is the unusual quality of the local militia/constabulary. These tend to be pretty ad-hoc, if not outright shambolic, affairs in towns of Berglen's size, and Berglen's is still a mostly-part-time force with only a few permanent personnel, as is customary for such organizations; but it's well-organized, its members competently trained and decently equipped.

That's not too unusual. What's unusual, though it's only apparent to people more worldly than the Berglenders themselves, is the fighting style they've been trained in. It's very standardized and rather distinctive, involving the pairing of a large shield with a spear of middling length, which can be either thrown or fought with—not a combination often favored by Ostvian persons-at-arms.

To the locals this is just an idiosyncratic but effective way of fighting. To both Norah, an expert in military matters (at least on the individual and squad levels), and Nemo, who is very well-traveled, it's something more: the very particular method used by soldiers of the Erorian Imperium. For someone who recognizes their manual of arms, coming across a rural North Ostvian militia training like Erorian legionaries is quite an arresting sight.

The reason for this soon appears in the person of Tertia Caxton, a mercenary of sorts from outside the Norbeld who has signed on to get the town militia into shape (rather in the same way police chiefs in modern small towns are often hired in from elsewhere). It's no secret to anyone in town that she's not from the area, but few, if any, of the townsfolk realize just how far out of town she may be from. Her first name is Erorian, but that's not all that uncommon in Ostvia; some people think Erorian given names are pleasingly exotic, sophisticated, or distinctive, and give them to their children without always even knowing what they mean. Her surname is definitely not.

In appearance, Tertia is a good-looking, slightly travel-worn woman of about thirty, with black hair and blue eyes. She keeps her hair short enough to go under a helmet, but otherwise doesn't do much of anything with it. Her aspect is usually serious, her resting expression a slight frown, as though she is considering some matter that does not entirely please her, but she's reasonably affable in conversation, albeit not very talkative. Though she recognizes the value in letting some of her people follow the "work hard/play hard" path, she herself prefers to work hard and then read a book.

Tertia has unostentatious, workmanlike taste in clothes, though that's largely academic since she almost always wears her nondescript scale armor instead. In action, she uses a fighting style even more distinctive than the one she's taught her troops, wielding a short sword in each hand. Her skill and experience are plain for anyone with some expertise in the matter to see.

She's also good at carpentry and a decent smith and farrier, knows her way around a field kitchen and a foraging expedition, and writes an excruciatingly neat hand that looks almost like it's been printed with movable type—all skills an Erorian centurion, that is a company-grade officer, could be expected to have along with knowledge of tactics, training and organization methods, and personal skill at arms.

The flip side of this is that while Tertia is about the right age for an active centurion (assuming sufficient talent, which she seems to have, and the right patronage), she's in the wrong hemisphere for that, and yet she's far too young to have completed her term of service and retired from the Erorian army. No one else in Berglen has any knowledge of any of this—they just think they lucked out in hiring a particularly competent and ethical mercenary to reform their local militia.

Nemo, on the other hand, finds it all terribly intriguing...

Here's a HeroForge mockup of what Tertia might more-or-less look like.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#19, RE: Kered character notes 4
Posted by Peter Eng on Jan-24-18 at 12:55 PM
In response to message #16
>
>Nemo, on the other hand, finds it all terribly intriguing...
>

...and we already know where that leads. (So does Norah, I'd imagine. She may be used to seeing this after ten years.)

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.


#20, RE: Kered character notes 4
Posted by Star Ranger4 on Jan-25-18 at 09:14 PM
In response to message #19
>>
>>Nemo, on the other hand, finds it all terribly intriguing...
>>
>
>...and we already know where that leads. (So does Norah, I'd imagine.
> She may be used to seeing this after ten years.)
>
Where is my Kaboom??? There was supposed to be an earth shattering Kaboom!

#21, RE: Roads Not Taken: The Kered Project
Posted by trboturtle2 on Feb-12-18 at 01:56 AM
In response to message #0
The problem is simple.... Write it and self-publish it. Granted, it's not THAT simple, but you have the background and sure as hell the imagination to be a writer.

Look around and see what others are doing. POD (Publish on Demand)is coming into its own, and audiobooks are becoming an important part of the writer's box of tools.

And considering the horror stories I've been hearing about the Big Five publishing, you'd be better off doing it yourself.....

Craig


#22, RE: Roads Not Taken: The Kered Project
Posted by Pasha on Feb-12-18 at 04:17 PM
In response to message #21
>And considering the horror stories I've been hearing about the Big
>Five publishing, you'd be better off doing it yourself.....

This is a complicated topic that I have a whole shitton of experience with, and let's say that it's more complicated than "trad publishing bad" or "trad publishing good"

--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."