The website is up. The holidays are arriving, the first of which is now complete.
Now seems to be a good time to write a blog, and talk about Draigtir, the world in which Dragonsoul and other projects will be set in! So, over the course of the next weeks and months as I work on my draft and continue to fine tune, edit, change, add, subtract, butcher and stitch back together this passion project, I'm going to talk here about the world. I'll drop hints and teasers as to the plot of the story, but ultimately, this is about world building, inspiration, and what makes my brain tick when it comes to this setting.
So let's start with talking about the name of the world. The world itself? It's nameless. At least for now. All that matters is Draigtir, and in this world, that translates to the Land of Dragons. It seems fitting that a continent referred to as "the land of dragons" is also the setting for an epic fantasy series called Dragonsoul. It's almost like I've got a theme here.
Inevitably however, some people may ask: what is the inspiration here? What influenced the creation of this world, of this series, of this whole project? It's funny, because there are a lot of things to go over. So before I can truly welcome you to Draigtir, let's talk about the journey so far.
I'm unpublished and it's my own damn fault.
You see, I've been writing since I was at least 5 years old. I was a child writing a story adaptation of Toejam and Earl, an old ancient Sega Genesis game about two aliens that were very hip-hop coded trying to return to their planet of Funkatron. Now, here's the thing. At five years old, I wasn't catching ANY of the references, I just thought the three legged red alien and his uh, bulkier counterpart were cool.
That writing turned into detour when I was 8. I would draw (lol, I am a terrible visual artist,) these short four page comics every day about a superhero slice of pizza. "Pizza Man" would battle "Anchovie Man" alongside such allies like "Captain Coke." Yeah, cringe. 8 year old me would have gladly been advertising for brands. Big oof.
Now then. I got back into regular writing around 11, 12, 13 years old when I was really heavily into the Resident Evil video game series. I started playing that series at 10 years old. Yes I know, wayyyyyy too early in my life, but hey, I saw Terminator 2 when I was like 4, I started young. I don't recall the exact year, but it was in between those three ages that I registered on fanfiction.net and posted my first ever well, fan fiction of Resident Evil.
Yeah, I was doing THAT. Hell, I would brainstorm my own game and write a fake strategy guide for it, because that's how hard I went when it came to the things I loved. By 13 however, I was turning more towards fantasy. I always liked fantasy, but as I grew older I could appreciate it. By 14, I was all in, and the combination of three things changed my life forever. The Lord of the Rings had started to come out in theaters. Now, I missed out on Fellowship, at first I was not interested, but then I watched it on DVD, and then saw Two Towers in theaters. Overlapping this? I played two video games: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and Warcraft III. These two games, combined with the LOTR movies changed the course of my life.
I'm not going to give a rundown of everything I've written since. But let's just say, I wrote a lot. There's two different attempts I made at writing full length novels in the time span of then and now, from the time I was 14, to the time I am now 36. And in between those very serious attempts, are many more documents and files of aborted projects that will never see the light of day, yet I still manage to look back and occasionally harvest ideas from them.
But there's two stories I wrote. One of which I tried twice on. This one? I called it the 10th Prophecy. What I can say about this series is it was very formulaic. It was about a peasant boy who had a destiny of defeating a dark lord - the twist of courses was that there were two worlds - the world the characters knew, the "Overworld," and the twisted "Underworld." And these two worlds were divided by a veil that was being shattered by corruption, and ultimately, the hero would save the day by defeating the invading army.
Generic. But the first seeds of Dragonsoul were found there. Namely, a dragon saved our characters fairly early on. I also had an outsider character. Now, this character was originally influenced by Aragorn's first appearance in Fellowship, namely as the Strider character, the idea of this mysterious outsider who had a secret destiny himself. This character no longer exists in Dragonsoul, but the DNA of that character does exist in the sense that this outsider character in 10th Prophecy was of a non human variety. (No, he wasn't elvish either.) This character in Dragonsoul, that has the DNA of the outsider, is what I've called a Scaleborn up to this point. We'll talk about him and them at a later day. But the DNA is there: he's the more inhuman heroic character that helps the others out. Well, he will. Eventually.
The other story that I wrote, was a full manuscript. This one was called The Highland Sword Saga, and it was a time when I was enamored with the sword and sorcery setting of Hyboria. Conan the Cimmerian, Red Sonja, these characters had a grip on me for the longest time, and it was my attempt at a novel that was very low fantasy. I went the distance. It was up until I began Dragonsoul, the first time I finished a manuscript. I was proud of it. And I still am, even if that project may never see the light of day.
But I've got a lot of unfinished projects. Between those two, and all the other graveyard bound stories, the first idea of Dragonsoul formed. That idea manifested in the following concept: "An evil dragon pursues a woman whose destiny is unknown to her, a destiny that can shape the course of humanity and dragonkind alike." Initially, the idea was this girl was raised by a family not her own, and as it turns out, she was a dragon the entire time. Dragonsoul was a title that represented her nature, and it was the title I was going to use then, but even now the title is relevant. How is the title relevant?
Stay tuned for when the novel is finished.
So now you know a little bit about my journey. Welcome to Draigtir. This land is one I envisioned quite differently from what a lot of my interests are. What I didn't mention above this paragraph is that I was always a fan of the barbarian, the monster, the orc. I was a big fan of orcs, I still am. But this series has no orcs. No elves. No dwarves. We have a few cultures and species that effectively can be viewed as stand ins, and I mean that in the absolute you're stretching it sense. The Highborn, a race of human that effectively took in too much draconic magic and were altered to be longer living and magically inclined, could be seen as our elven proxies, even if their ears are normal and they still look well, very human, with the exception of some unusual eye colors.
Orcs may have been my favorite, but Dragons, dragons are just the coolest. And I've read plenty of draconic stories. Where they were the bad guys. Where they were forces of nature. Pets. Allies. I've read a Song of Ice and Fire, I've read Eragon, I'm reading the Bound and the Broken, and I've ingested so many other dragon media properties. But what I wanted to write, I hadn't seen yet.
What if there was a world in which dragonkind and mankind were more symbiotic than just a rider on the back of a dragon? What if dragons were truly the dominant species, their culture heavily influencing all others, and what if humanity, because they spread so far and wide, found an accord and worked hand in hand with the great scaled ones? That is the basis for Draigtir. Five Realms. All as one. Food for thought.
When next I post, it will be December. These blogs will be a weekly thing. Here's what I plan on talking about throughout this last month of the year:
December 7-8: Themes in Draigtir (and Dragonsoul)
December 14-15: Inspirations of Draigtir (and Dragonsoul) December 21-22: Adult Fantasy and Draigtir (and my logic with Dragonsoul)
December 28-29: Visions for Draigtir (And the future beyond Dragonsoul)
Comentarios