Fiction Friday: Lisa and the Light

     “Lisa, I swear to god if you walk out that door!” yelled her mother as Lisa did, in fact, walk out that door. A screen door barely hanging from its hinges, it slammed loudly against the frame. Lisa could hear her mother’s threats fade as she walked down the summer warmed streets of the deep south. Her callused bare feet withstood the temperature; even if they couldn't, she felt her anger would have carried her away. The argument she had been having with her mother was one Lisa didn't care to have again, so when she reached the intersection of her street with the highway, she did not turn around. She turned left, south, towards the coast. The coast was of course hundreds of miles away, but right then it sounded nice. The figment of saltwater tinted the air as she considered the prospect.
     As she ambled down the road, the streets of the rundown suburb gave way to swathes of forest. The street became narrower and the cars rushing by her seemed disturbingly close; the force of the passing vehicles forced her to walk carefully. The danger of her situation sobered her mind. She should go back. Her feet continued to carry her forward as she considered the events that would follow that decision. Her mother would yell at her again, but perhaps she could go stay with someone more understanding. The heavens above shone with starlight as a car came close enough for her instincts to make her jump off the road. The car stopped and a figure slid out.
     Lisa, unsure of what to do, tried to lay flat against the ground, quietly. Her heart raced, and she hated the moment she decided to start walking down the highway. The fragrant scent of soil filled her lungs as her eyes attempted to track the stranger. She couldn't tell if they were male or female, but they were rather short and broad. When the form started walking her direction she scrambled to her feet and ran further into the woods. She did not look back but heard it follow. As the canopy above thickened, it was harder to see where her bare feet landed. She could hear something moving behind her, and then suddenly through the trees to left a bright light, a beacon, a house perhaps, safety.
     As she ran towards the light, it became clear it was too bright and too colorful to be coming from a home. For a moment, she wondered if they had Christmas lights up. But the light wasn't spread out, it was a dense column of light. Lisa scrambled through branches to find the column shooting through tree stumps, it seemed a crystallized white beam that gave off faint hints of other colors. It was confusing and frightening, and Lisa felt, unnatural. The crunch of heavy steps sounded and Lisa thought to hide. 

     A voice called out to her, it seemed familiar. She stood in front of the beam and turned around, letting its illumination enlighten the face of the stranger. Lisa was scared for who it might be and angry that anyone would dare. When the shroud fell from the approaching figure, it revealed a soft middle-aged woman, with heavy boots and a bit of limp. It was her mother.
     "What the hell mom?" said Lisa, anger rising to her cheeks.
     "Come home, we'll figure out what to do with it, just come home," pleaded her mother.
     Lisa wondered if her mother had softened, "It's not yours to deal with, it's my problem."
     Any pleading disappeared from her mother's face, "Damn right it is, but I won't let you make any more mistakes."
     Lisa's mother took a step forward and Lisa took a step back, her foot landing directly in the beam. It seared her skin and she screamed, but when she tried to pull it out she found herself pulled into the blazing white light. For a moment there was nothing but the stark emptiness of white, then everything was black.

BiFrost: An Introduction

Worldbuilding Wednesday

Entry #001 1/26/2015 (Drinking Diet Cherry 7-UP.)

BiFrost: An Intro.....hold on....

Before I get going on talking about this new setting, I want to reiterate for myself what the point of this is. This is a project to get me to a) record my thought process and work b) get me writing more often and c) share those results with the world, because, hey, someone might like it and that would make me a little happy.

Alright, let's try this again

BiFrost: An Introduction

BiFrost is a modern fantasy campaign setting. It pulls from several influences (Dresden Files, Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood series, Shadowrun, .Hack, etc.) and came from two ideas.

One: In college, a few years into my RPG obsession, I found the HERO system and downloaded the starter guide. I loved how sandboxy the rules were when it came to creating your own powers and I quickly started creating characters for me and my friends. Our characters all lived in a future where America was ravaged by a plague, Texas split off to be its own state, and other fun/terrible ideas. The general idea of this setting was that some weird fog got released that left 1/3 of the population alive, gave those living a weird kind of magic, and shut down radio signals. In my pseudoscience theory, this would cut us off from cell phones and long distance communication. It was a super fun idea, and one I might get back to, but it also provided a lot of fodder for BiFrost, so might be tough to differentiate. We will see.

Two: Ever since I was introduced to the concept of a Class as it exists in RPG terms, I have picked classes for myself and for my family and friends. I spent hours drilling them about themselves, putting them in hypothetical scenarios, taking quizzes, making quizzes, making them take quizzes all to answer one big question: What would I be in a fantasy world? This line of thought and discussion brought me to one realization; the question is actually three questions.

1) What would you be in a fantasy world based on your personality?
That is, do you see yourself as a combative fighter? An angry barbarian? A nature loving druid? A pious cleric? A nerdy Wizard? This question mainly focuses on who you are as a person and is similar to the old D&D tv show, or to Digimon a little bit. This is the fun one to play with your friends, to help categorize your personality and individualize yourself.

2) What would you be in a fantasy world if you got to choose?
This one is similar to the old favorite, what kind of superpowers you would like to have. It’s a little more fun than the superpower question because it’s more limited. In essence, this is just what do you wish you could do, or what would be fun to kill monsters with. This question specifically presumes you would be fighting and adventuring.

3) What fantasy class would you be in the real world?
The answer to this one is usually something with magic because we don’t have magic in the real world, which is unfortunate. The question poses, in your daily life, with your job, your friends, your car, etc. What would be helpful to be able to do? For most people, the martial classes fade away. Fighting? Most people don’t do that on a day to day basis. I sometimes wonder about those who seem more into shooting, violence, and drug dealing I bet a few of them would pick fighter or rogue over a magical class. But I’m not sure.

Asking these questions, considering these questions, and annoying my friends by constantly asking these questions led me to create my own quizzes and my own systems for deciding class. At some point, this coalesced into a thought: what if people in real life had a class? I started with Pathfinder classes, cause the SRD was easy to get to and I did some planning. Then NaNoWriMo came around and I wrote a terrible draft of a novel set in this world. This draft taught me many things, but the main one being this fantasy setting could work. There were stories to tell here. I switched to 5e now because honestly it’s less fiddly, but the system I chose is definitely something to consider as I develop the setting.

Next week I’ll go into the themes I’ll be working with and the ultimate purpose of the setting.
Happy Humpday!

This blog brought to you by Diet Cherry 7-UP.
Diet Cherry 7-UP: You’re on a diet, fatty.

What the hell am I doing?

    Prepare yourselves for a long rambling story about what I am planning to do with this new little website with a weird name. For those of you who like me, but are impatient: tl;dr I'm going to be putting D&D homebrew, characters, world building rants, and stories up here to make myself write and explain my thinking. It's mostly a log for me, but the more people read/like it, the better I'll feel about myself.

*muffled coughing to get your attention*

    I love fantasy as a genre and specifically the magical worlds fantasy authors create. Growing up, I devoured The Lost Years of Merlin, every Tamora Pierce novel, Harry Potter, The Hobbit, and, of course, the piece of perfect fantasy that is Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher. (I wonder now if Jeremy is related to Margaret in any way). But it wasn't until I was introduced to World of Warcraft that my own thoughts and fantasy worlds began to develop.

    WoW was the first western RPG I had ever played, before that my experience with video games was limited to Pokémon, Kirby, and angry games of Mario Tennis with my sister. But in World of Warcraft, I got to make my own character through a distinct selection of race, class, appearance, and gear. I spent hours creating characters and then deleting them. I did not have a World of Warcraft account and my friend’s dad got mad if I had more than one character on there at once, so each creation quickly got killed off. Eventually, he forbid me from making any new characters; I had to stick with the next one I made. This was unforgivable and so I persuaded my parents to buy me my own copy, despite the fact that our computer was a virus ridden, no RAM, dud.

    Eventually, I settled on a main character and created stories about her and her life. Soon, she wasn’t in Azeroth anymore, because how boring is that. Instead, I started crafting bits and pieces of a world where she could shine. A world that combined pieces and memories of my favorite fantasy settings into a cohesive whole. I drew maps, I planned out societies, and I crafted magical traditions. Looking back now, it wasn’t terrible, but also I haven’t improved much since then. I still fail to come up with villains and conflicts; I want everyone to play nice for some reason. I still fail to flesh out the minutiae of the cultures I create and take into account how historical and geological factors affect their society; I just copy existing cultures, hey Japanese dwarves sounds fun!

    When I was 16 I got my own computer, with internet, in my room. I made sure it could run WoW and I set up shop. At some point, browsing WoW, I came across my first taste of Dungeons and Dragons, and I knew I had to play. I found a group at a local store, torrented every book I could find, played around constantly with Pathguy’s character generators and absorbed as much of the 3.5 rules as I could. As 4th edition came out and I went off to college I gained experience at the table, and eventually forced all my friends into a group with me. Every spare moment in class was spent either developing my campaign in Eberron, which completely hooked me or creating my own worlds.

    It's been three years since I've left college. A short time for some, but in that time I have drafted two terrible fantasy novels during NaNoWriMo and learned that I love RPGs. I want to marry RPG’s. Every day I consider what I would be in a fantasy world, what my boyfriend would be, how would I import the WoW shaman into D&D, what would my students be like if they could learn wizardry? I sit and I ponder about these things, and every now and then I make a spreadsheet or craft a bit of homebrew to explain to myself how something might work. I’ve shared a few things in forums, mainly my take on a 5e Artificer, to some positive feedback. Otherwise, I’ve kept it all to myself and to my boyfriend, who listens to all my ranting.

    Now all of that will change; I’m putting all my thoughts, considerations, characters, and homebrew out there. Partly just to be visible, but mostly to get me writing and cataloging my thoughts and ideas. If I come up with anything big, which is the plan, like a setting guide then I’ll compile it all at the end of the project and make updates to it when/if I go back to it.

The current alliterative plan is:
    Monday Madness: Homebrew and Character design. Do you want me to design you as a D&D character? Send me an e-mail about yourself to fantasybandcamp@gmail.com
    Worldly Wednesday: My ramblings on world building, starting with the setting of my first manuscript: BiFrost. This is heavily inspired and will likely follow a similar course to the essays by Rich Burlew which can be found here. He is much better than me. If you want to be better at worldbuilding go read his stuff.
    Fiction Friday: I’ma write some stories.

This is the plan.