Catching up with life

     This always seems to be the busy season for me.  Yardwork (winterizing), Work-work (transitioning from summer thunderstorm season to winter "ski-season" traffic patterns, and getting the house ready for the holidays tend to fill most of my time.  Despite that, I have managed to do some writing, if not on Imperfect Hope, at least with the goal of getting back into the groove.  With the silly season passed (er, election season), things are looking up. 

     Last post, I commented on "writing what I know", at least with regards to the lore and history of the D'oril world that I know very well.  Writing these last two weeks has put me back into that era, 60-100 years prior to the time of Imperfect Hope.  Since most of my lore from that time focuses almost exclusively on the D'oril forests of the K'tath and the incursions of the Tallux empire, I do have to provide some background on what is happening around the rest of the world.  I've made an effort to divorce the D'oril lore that references the IFGS lands that surround the k'tath homelands, and made good progress on replanting the characters I want to bring from the IFGS D'oril to the 'book' D'oril lands.  So, where do I begin...

     Obvious to me are the K'tath characters, with one exception all of my own creation.  Brandis, of course, as well as the NPC k'tath characters I developed while writing the IFGS games that took place in D'oril.  The Sen'anth (in the IFGS games, never actually named, just referred to by title, was killed by plotline mid Sha'te Valley (a player motivational event that didn't have the emotional impact I'd hoped for, but one I can refer to in the book version).  Kira, the deadly quiet Kel'anth, trying to hold the badly outnumbered kel together against the empire's legions.  Other fringe NPC characters also created for the games include Cinda and Merrick, of the Inn of the Stumbling Friar.  Their backgrounds, though never explored in the games, provide me with a great starting point for the surrounding areas.  Also of the k'tath, though not of that race, is Merlissa, a PC character that was tightly intertwined with Brandis' early character history.

     South of the E'tel river, the non-k'tath have a couple of regularly appearing characters.  Merrick, for example, is actually an Empire refugee.  He came to the lands south of D'oril from the empire some 10 years or so prior to Sha'te, one of a small handful of survivors of a shipwreck from an Empire expedition searching for wintergem sources along the western coast of D'oril.  A senior non-com (I hadn't decided whether he was an imperial marine, or a legionnaire), he found the lands south of D'oril to his liking, especially the relative freedom from oppressive government.  Cinda, the (in the games) stereotyped bar maid of the Inn of the Stumbling Friar, was also a refugee in a character history that was never explored in the games either.  She came from the lands to the south, fleeing the chaos following the fall of "the eleven kingdoms" just prior to the confederacy beginning to pull itself together. 

     Then there were the villains, most notably Phorix, Beauty, Grannach, and Yam'to.  Those four were the core of the Sha'te storyline, each representing an characteristic of the empire that PC's could relate to, or despise.  (all had some elements of each).  I'd written a lot about their pasts within my game lore, stuff not released to the players but instead intended to help me and the NPC's portraying them fill out their character. 

     The events surrounding Sha'te are both well defined and vague.  Vague in that, for the IFGS games, the empire had the clearly stated but vaguely motivated goal of conquering the area north of the E'tel, well defined in that they had put into a straightforward strategic plan to obtain that goal, and the 'good guys' (players and k'tath) were in the way.  Because of the way IFGS games are run, the sha'te storyline necessarily had the players react to the empire's plan.  Had I made Yam'to's strategy too complicated or convoluted, the IFGS gameline would have been overly complex.  Translating that to the Imperfect Hope world mostly involves revising the empires motivations, in part through the wintergems found in the D'oril forest, a source of magical power now hard to find in the empire but necessary for the emperors continued hold on the far-reaching lands he controls).

     I've found my thought process interesting, though, as I dig deeper into the sha'te era, I find more interesting projects to tackle.  So, do I sidetrack myself, or focus myself.  Stay tuned for the answer, soon...

Clear skies,
Jim


 

I'm back, again

Yeesh, september was an ugly month, three overtimes in four weeks really sapped my interest in writing anything.  It's over, though, and I'm back...

     I did do a thorough read through of Imperfect Hope, draft 1, and marked up some inconsistencies (okay, a lot).  What leapt out at me was that my writing errors had a lot to do with the fuzzy history before and after sha'te valley in my IFGS D'oril world, and the years leading up to "present time" in imperfect hope.  I hope to correct those errors with a couple of strategies...

     One, as I work through IH again, I will allow myself to sidetrack and fill out background information as needed to make the storyline more consistent.  For example, background history on the Baron of Bruils, a minor player in IH so far, but whose actions some 15 years past has a great deal to do with the chink in the confederacies security that the empire is exploiting.  Going from an unspecified scandal to actually going back and writing the events as a story in itself will give me more food for thought, and unblock other aspects of the storyline.

     Two, I'm going open up another story to work on that takes place well before Sha'te that will help me define the confederacy and empire and the as yet unmentioned (here) island kingdoms to the south.  I found that, in reading IH through, I obviously made some assumptions about what the readers knew that just isn't explained well enough.  By writing out these precursor tales, I'll have a better background to write from as I do the rewrite in Imperfect Hope.

     Another light bulb moment came a couple of weeks back when I was wool gathering, and remembered the old saying, "Write what you know".  I 'know' the sha'te era front and back, and I've been creating a lot of the Imperfect Hope era on the fly.  Thus, I'm going to allow myself (I know, starting to sound undisciplined) to write about stuff from the IFGS timeline when I feel like it, or when I need a break from IH.  I've no idea what may come out of it, but the goal here is to get back to "having fun".

     ALong the lines of having fun, I started fiddling about with a story from the SHa'te era, or rather one that begins toward the end of that time, and bridges the gap from then to now.  I'll post a blurb from it at the end, something to lighten up the political downer that follows...

    Back to the mundane, then.  I hate political season with a passion.  Hate ads (Oh, I'm sorry, did I mean partisan campaign ads?), foolish wing-nut amendments and issues, and those anonymous campaign phone calls.  It is clear that the politicians only (capital letters again, ONLY) concern is getting elected or reelected.  The other side is wrong, and since they're wrong, we hate them, and you should too.  It's made all the worse since I'm listed as an independent, both parties feel the need to tell me how to think.  Knowing how the government works from the inside (at least within the FAA), I know that 99.9% of what the politicians are telling us they'll do is pure bunk, couldn't do what they promise if they owned all branches of the government.  All I expect from this, and any other election, is that:

1)  My taxes will go up, somebody out there resents (hates) me for my relative success and wants me to pay.
2)  My services (or services to people who are really in need) will go down, somebody will figure out a way to scam the system and drain resources from those who really need it (which leads to number one again).
3)  Whoever is in power will tell me it is the other parties fault.
4)  Whoever is not in power will tell me that if they were in power, things would be better.
5)  Left wing and Right wing nut-jobs control both parties, and they have no interest in listening to a moderate.
6)  Tivo everything, and skip the ads and maybe I'll maintain my sanity.

Lest any of my readers think I'm hiding my head in the sand and ignoring issues, I'd like to suggest otherwise.  I read a lot about the issues affecting us, from all sides of the debate.  I make up my own mind on those issues, and refuse to allow either party tell me that, since I support/oppose a particular issue, all of my beliefs must then line up with (or against) umpteen-thousand other issues, and therefore I must vote for them.  I don't let a political party tell me what to think...

Unlike too many of the people I work with, or know.

<Sigh>

Anyway, I'll be glad when it's over again. 

That's it for now.  Keep those cards and letters coming, introduce yourself, or otherwise make your presence known.
TTFN,
Jim

Oh, a blurb...

"That's the last of the cargo, ser"  Captain Lanso Malring tugged on
his thin beard and eyed the wagon-sized pile of crates, barrels and
sacks stacked up on the end of the stone pier, then acknowledged the
bosun with a wave.  The offloading had taken far longer than anyone had
expected, but at least they'd finished before the brunt of the
approaching squall hit.  His vessel sat on the leeward side of the stone
causeway, only partially shielded from the building waves, even now
spray was crashing across the pier, driven by the erratic gusts.  He turned to the red haired man standing beside him and asked if there was anything else they could do for him before they shoved off.  A
minute passed with no response from the passenger, and the captain
wondered again why anyone would take the job offered by the coastal
league to tend the isolated lighthouse, but then revised his opinion, if anyone
would take such a job, it would be someone as enigmatic as this person. 
He'd offered little more than the occasional grunt or nod of assent
during the entire 3 day journey from  Port Whiterock...

new post coming by tomorrow

Just another quick note: I'm back, and I'll be uploading my new post tonight or tomorrow. My apologies to those who've waited patiently... The new post will touch on my writing, including remotivation and redirection, and politics. hang in there...

Brief note

I'm in the middle of a crazy month, with 3 ovetime shifts over the next 4 weeks, so I just wanted to let everyone know, I'm still out here, and I will be picking up again shortly. In the meantime, Feel free to post comments about anything, and contact me thru the email listed in my profile. WIsh me luck...

D'oril lore: the recent past

     Part of the depth of the Imperfect Hope world is the past, as represented by the characters that I've either developed while writing IFGS D"oril games, lore, and player-characters I've adopted into the world.  I've touched on how I intend to keep some character concepts whole from my 'borrowed' character list, while adding a bunch of depth that fits the PC's into the D"oril world more seamlessly.  One way I'm doing this (as I get back into a writing habit, yes, it's coming back slowly) is to rework character histories by changing where they are from, and putting more detail into their past than the pc histories I pored through while I was writing D'oril games.

     Imperfect Hope references a few "old campaigners" that IFGS'ers may recognize, the most obvious being Brandis (a no brainer, since his background is the basis for all of my D'oril lore).  Because IH takes place some 50 or so years after the Old Campaign (here after known as OC), the 'great heroes' of the past have faded into legend, tales of which have actually been lost because of the turmoil following Sha'te Valley, and the chaos following the fall of the old kingdoms south of D'oril (unrelated to sha'te).  The old kingdoms, from which many of the heroes of SHa'te came, fell into a series of ugly wars against each other and outside influences (greed and poor leadership), much of the legends from before then were forgotten in the confusion as new heroes and more important (read immediate survival) issues abounded.  Only in a few areas (The Inn of the Stumbling Friar, for example, or the monasteries of the triad, or among the k'tath) are the histories kept whole.

     The confederacy, which has risen from the ashes of the old kingdoms, is still in its infancy, and is more concerned with cementing their position within the western realms of the continent than recalling the heroic times before the troubles.  The one time stranglehold on power that the old aristocracy held is now shared almost equally with the mercantile trade families that held the coastal towns together in the face of barbarian invasion, and the triad, whose monastaries provided intellectual sanctuaries inland, and their questors, who stepped in to protect areas of civilization as many of the aristocratic strongholds and families fell.  The aristocracy held on to it's top position, but only barely.

     Thus, the Old Campaigners are mostly forgotten, despite their crucial role in staving off the invasions of the Empire of Tallux.  However, they are not forgotten in the Empire, rather they are remembered with a mix of hatred, respect, and awe by the leadership, aristocracy, and middle classes.  (The slaves, of course, know little of life outside their small world, but the legends of Beauty and the Free-warriors of the east are still talked about, much to the dismay of the emperor and his supporters.)  The empire's current leader, taking the heart of the lessons from his father and the priesthood, takes into account his lessons and the memories of how the Old Campaigners opposed the empire in his plans to establish a foothold near the wintergem forests of D'oril.  However, none of the old campaigners remain, except...

     According to my storyline, the "OC" involved in Sha'te were never replaced by young up and coming's, since the situation in the new confederacy wasn't conducive to the methods of the "OC" (freelance, involved outside their own lands helping others or merely helping themselves (mercenary style).  Instead, the type of adventurer who would have become an "OC" instead ended up either involved in the triad questors, the mercantile trade families, or outright tied to old school ruling class families.  Free-lancing (outside the questors, and that is an entirely different animal) ceased to be when societal survival wasn't guaranteed.  To put it another way, The powers that be couldn't afford to let their 'free-lancers' go, and so ways were found to keep them within society. 

     Except for one.  The last of the independent Old Campaigners.  The Red Mage.  Rumored to be in his 80's already, a (some say bitter, some say merely crazy)wispy grey and red haired recluse who disdains almost all civilized contact.  He lives on his own island off the coast, brewing his own ale.  His recipes are slowly becoming legendary (some say magical), which he trades or sells only to a privileged few customers, including the Inn of the Stumbling Friar.  And that is the story that I'm going to visit this week as I jump start my creative side, the story of the last human survivor of Sha'te Valley. We'll see if a short story comes out of it.....

TTFN,
Jim
 

Ode to a post hole digger

     If you're expecting a poetic moment, sorry to disappoint.  However, I will comment on one of our recent weekend to-do's.  One of the fence posts between our property and a rental home next door was damaged sometime in the previous renter's tenancy (probably by the junk trailer they backed into their yard when they moved out in the middle of the night to skip out on their overdue rent), and this spring, some high winds finished the job, breaking it off such that the whole section of fence wobbled until we got it braced.  The owner, ( a rather cheap-skate real estate agent who bought the house when her client couldn't sell it during the recent housing market crash), couldn't be bothered to help fix the fence his tenants damaged, so we bought the materials and fixed it ourselves this weekend.  It seems likely that the owner is now fixing the place up to sell (we hope), at the very least, perhaps he'll be a bit more selective on whom to rent to.

     Word of warning.  If you ever have a choice of hiring someone to replace a fence post, and doing it yourself, Hire the worker, no matter the cost!  I'm afraid these old bones will never recover from the digging down about 4 feet to extract all of the old fence post and concrete that was holding it in.  I've used my pick axe before, but breaking up clay, and breaking concrete and rotted fencepost and clay is...  A younger man's job.  The fence is repaired, though.

     One of the previous renters (from a bit more than a year ago) was, I'm afraid, a stereotype bad neighbor type.  He was the one that damaged the fence with his trailer, some of their other tricks included storing their truck topper (peeling paint and rust) in their front yard (and sometimes he'd actually place it in our front yard, because he had lawn tools and other junk laying where he'd normally keep it).  One day I heard a gas-powered string trimmer revving up next door, accompanied by the sound of laughing and screaming kids.  From my deck, I could see his two mullet-haired boys (10 and 12 or so in age) playing, the older one was chasing his younger brother around the yard with the trimmer.  No adults in sight.  I asked the older boy what he planned to do if he actually caught his brother with the string trimmer...  (Great, future leatherface in training???)  His reply, in thick stereotype hillbilly was, "Uh, I dunno, he runs pretty good, dont he?".

     One of the landlords other tenants (who stayed only about 5 months) moved in in the middle of the night, moved out of the middle of the night, and regularly moved mysterious plastic trashcans from his garage to his truck regularly in the middle of the night.  No, we're not spying on them, these antics were observed several times when I was returning home from an evening shift, my truck headlights illuminated them (2 mid-twenties young men and their hooded helpers) rolling 2 filled trash cans down the driveway and all four of them hefting them into the back of their own truck.  Strange and scary...

    So now the house if being fixed up, with loads of new drywall disappearing into the house, lots of sawing and hammering and a dumpster's worth of construction trash piling up.  Since we'd been good friends with the previous owners (who moved out a couple of years ago), we know that the basement was already finished, so it must be repairwork being done.  Hmmmm......   (Please let it be sold...)

     Writing:  I've taken a trip back to my roots, or sorts.  In an effort to break my doldrums, I've been rooting around in the past of doril, digging up old stories to rekindle my passion for writing.  I"m looking at writing a short, possibly about beauty, or perhaps the "old crew", Brandis, Wulluff, Evro, Delanore.  Nothing earth shattering, just something to get me going again.  I'll post it (or excerpts as I go) here.  Hold me to it, patient readers.  And please, comment.  (especially you anonymous readers, I know you're out there, I just don't know who you are...  ;-)  )

Anyway, more to come, but I'll post tonight and write more tomorrow for later posting...

TTFN,
Jim


    

Adventures in Handymanland 2: The big outdoors

     Spring (and now summer) yard chores have been piling up, and Irma and I have tackled our to-do list with a vengeance, hoping to get some of it done before it gets too hot.  Some of our projects are finishing touches of stuff we've worked on in past years (for example, running some outdoor conduit to the outside corner of the deck so we could run the waterfall we've put in the garden there), others are projects put on hold last fall when the ground got too muddy or froze over (retaining wall around the willow tree, edging along the back fence area, and the stone tree wells around our apple and pear trees.  The last entails a fair amount of digging and leveling, since the trees are on a 20 degree slope, the stonework has to be dug in level.  We're doing a little bit every couple of days, since I find working on my knees digging and setting-in 40 pound retaining wall stones a bit fatiguing...  ;-)

     Other projects for the next couple of months include the last two sprinkler zones along the back fence, one to provide drip irrigation to the veggie garden and the fruit trees, the other to water the grass (that will be planted once I finish the tree wells and retaining walls.), and running a water line to the side of the deck in order to provide a short, light hose for us to water the containers on the deck without dragging the heavy black hose half way around the house.  I'd planned for this line when I laid in the sprinkler system several summers back, having laid some pvc underground from the sprinkler valves to beside the deck, where I put in a hose spigot and a manual valve that has until now sent water to the veggie garden drip system.  I"ll use that line with a new valve hooked to the controller that will meter the water to the garden and fruit trees, and split off a spigot attached to the deck railing before the valve for the deck watering line.  Finally, I'll put the trim and paint on the garden shed (built four years ago), and hopefully, be done for the summer.  Until the next list of projects comes up.

     Writing.  <Sigh>  No progress still.  But...  (no more excuses).   I"ll let you know when I start up again.  Perhaps our planned visit to the Colorado Renaissance Festival in a couple of weekends will spark some creativity.  It'll be the first time for our grandkids, I'm sure they'll make it new for us too!

     Anyway, more to come soon. 
TTFN,
Jim