Characters You've Never Heard Of: VALYA

"Most men would have been terrified, hanging upside down with nothing but a thin silk rope between them and a gory death on the marble floor forty feet below, but Valya was not a man. She was a young woman of barely eighteen winters, little more than five feet tall and born of noble blood. 

She did not even break a sweat.

Did stablehands shake with terror when they groomed their horses? Did blacksmiths live in fear of their forges and anvils? No, they did not. Through this knowledge Valya had long since deduced that if they did not fear their vocations, then she would not fear hers."

- from "In the Shadow of the Wasp," an anthology containing the tale "Valya's Story"

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Valya comes from the same series of stories about hopeless love as Rigel (the story that made my wife fall in love with me). She was a noble woman who fell in love with a man her family did not approve of, and so they had him conscripted into the army and sent him off to his death. She rebelled and fled her pampered life to become a highly skilled and motivated thief and rogue who terrorized the nobility by stealing or destroying that which mattered most to them more than the happiness of their own children - their riches.

The four stories that comprised "In the Shadow of the Wasp" are kinda the Silmarillion to my fantasy world. Not to compare myself to Tolkien by any stretch of the imagination (though I kinda did that once), I just mean that those stories introduced a ton of ideas, elements, themes and characters that keep creeping into my stories and games twenty years later. The epic fantasy novel sitting in The Closet that I mentioned earlier this month is set in the same world, though many generations after the reign of the King of Wasps, and that novel has at least two sequels sitting in my head (I think I said last week there's a potential 7 books altogether). Of course it's also the world where many of my Dungeons & Dragons-style role playing games are set, and there's even a chance that the stories started as a D&D session - I don't remember anymore, they were developed pretty closely hand-in-hand.

So anyway, because I don't think I'll use the characters from the other two stories in this month's edition, I'll give you a bonus today and reveal them to you:

Lord Paice - You met him briefly yesterday. An older man, one of the greatest heroes and defenders against the King of the Wasps. When his daughter is killed by his greatest rival, one of the King's most trusted lieutenants, Paice goes on a one-man suicide mission to avenge his death. On his ways he meets a young woman and her family that gives him another reason to keep living.

Theodore - A bit of a schmuck and a hopeless romantic, he worked backstage at the theatre in the House of the Ruby Rose, a sort of temple/gambling house/high-end brothel deep in the Wasp King's domain. He falls madly in love with an actress and pines for her from the wings every night. Somehow his wildly flowing emotions unlocks an natural affinity for magic, but he has no training in the art and cannot control it. One night when the temple is attacked by the Wasp King's forces  Theodore uses his dangerous gift to try and save the woman's life, even if it may cost him his own...

So that's why I changed the name of "In the Shadow of the Wasp" to hopeless love, because all the stories were tales of people doing really dumb things for love...

I Drew A Map

I didn't say it was a very good map.

I've been on a major role-playing game kick the past few months, the most I've been into it in years. You can follow my adventures over at Rule of the Dice. It's been a lot of fun and I've used it to connect with some old friends as well as make new ones. I've been so into it that for the first time in I have no idea how long (fifteen years, maybe?) I actually put pencil to paper and sketched out a little map of the area in which my game is currently taking place.

Maps in role-playing games, much like fantasy fiction, are very important and exceedingly helpful. It shows where everything important is in relation to everything else, and gives you an idea of how long it takes to get from point A to point B. It can spur interesting story ideas based on how certain places react to their neighbours and environment.

A well-made map is a work of art, and can be enjoyed just for it's own sake. How many of us poured over the maps in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit? My maps have never been pretty, better described perhaps as functional at best. I'm not sure if my newest creation is even that, but at the very least it lets me orient myself in the space of my game world. If I have the time, I will go back and make it neater and prettier, but time is a luxury as elusive as those winning lottery numbers.

My original point for this rambling was that because of all the time I've been "wasting" with silly games, I haven't had the chance to get my book(s) where I wanted them to be at this point. I'm not going to get into where my priorities should be, that would be a much longer discussion that I will probably write about some other day in lieu of actually working on the book, but the short version is that it seems the damned story has slipped back into The Closet for the time being. It's at the top of the pile, and closer to the door, but still tucked away for now...

One of these days I have to pick it up on the way back from the bathroom and put it back on my desk.

Chasing Hobbits

I don't remember where I read it, but someone once said that fantasy writers keep writing and telling the same stories over and over again trying to recapture the magic they felt when they first experienced The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.  I believe this wholeheartedly, and I don't believe it just applies to fantasy writers, nor specifically to the works of Tolkien.

We all have that story from our youth that captured our imagination and drew us into a mythical world.  For myself and those in the generation before me, it probably was The Hobbit (I remember the first time I read it, a brightly-coloured, illustrated version I borrowed from my friend). For newer generations it will probably be Harry Potter.  When it ended and Frodo and Bilbo moved onto the next world (or when Harry grew up), the magic ended and we moved onto the next book, and the next and the next, trying to find more magic and mystery and wonder.  We may have found better books and stories that even touched us more, but like that fumbling awkwardness in the backseat of your parents' car, you never forget your first.