Chronicles of Nevariel : Records of the Black King's Wars. Writing and world-building project introduction
First was the Golden Age, when the Great Dragons ruled Nevariel's skies.
Second was the Silver Age, when the Mighty Giants ruled Nevariel's lands.
Third was the Bronze Age, when the Wise Elves ruled Nevariel's seas.
Fourth was the Iron Age, when the Hardy Dwarves ruled Nevariel's underworld.
Fifth is the Steel Age, when the Ambitious Humans seek to rule all of Nevariel.
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So, this is a short piece to introduce my Nevariel writing/world-building project.
Nevariel is the name of the world and setting of the stories I'm planing, and I'm referring to the whole project as the “Chronicles of Nevariel”, with the "Records of the Black King's Wars" being the main story line.
Nevariel is a classical, medieval-ish fantasy setting like so many others. I think it could even be described as "Gygaxian".
In fact, the whole project came about because I wanted to create a world, and write stories, that would be both an homage to, and an affectionate parody of, classic Dungeons-and-Dragons-ish fantasy works. It won't go as far into parody as, say, the Slayers anime series, but it's going to be fairly light, with lots of references to, and digs at, mainstream fantasy stories and fantasy Role-Playing-Games for example.
To name some of the works I'm drawing inspiration from: the Fire Emblem video games series, the Tears to Tiara games and anime, Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, the Lodoss War animes, Dragon Age: Origins, the Warcraft universe, Dungeons and Dragons material (mainly the various settings and the stories found in Novels), the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, and Terry Pratchett's Discworld.
Speaking of late Sir Pratchett's work, the level of "humor" in the story that I want to achieve would be something like his. Also, there's going to be a fair amount of what I call “Over-the-top-crazy-badassery”. That would be stuff like all the crazy stunts Kamina did in Gurren Laggan. If you haven't seen it, look it up, or better yet, find a way to watch it :P .
Setting wise, it's your typical fantasy setting a la D&D, with humans, dwarves, elves, dragons, mimics, wizards, gods, priests, elementals, orcs, ogres, goblins, rats, knights, gelatinous cubes, etc, etc, etc. If it's an overused fantasy staple, it's most likely going to be in this, eventually.
Light versus Darkness will be a major theme, thought not in the usual sense, as neither Light nor Darkness are inherently good or evil, even if it's often portrayed as such (light=good, dark=bad) in-world. Basically, being good or bad is up to the user.
As the name of the project suggest, the stories take place during an era of war on Nevariel between seven large human kingdoms. All seven of them originate from The Old Empire (actual name yet undecided), a large empire that once occupied the majority of the continent it sat on and which dissolved in civil war over a hundred years prior to the story, and each kingdom claims to be the rightful heir to the Old Empire's legacy and seek dominance over the other six.
Tally so far: A disconcerting amount of death and destruction, and not much to show for it.
In fact, in one of the kingdoms, discontent is fermenting through the realm following a series of unsuccessful wars and the ensuing hardships endured by the people, but the ruler and many of the nobles talk and act like it's no big deal since they can always extract a little more from the people. Well, they're about to find out that there's a limit to that, as it so happens. Forecast for the near future: Severe uprisings early on, followed by civil war, with a possibility of secession later; Better hunker down!
Enters Ahriman Anastasias, AKA the Lord of Darkness, AKA the Destroyer of the Old World, AKA the Black Phoenix, AKA the Grand Snarker, recently awoken from the two-and a half millennia power nap he took after defeating the Old Gods.
Now, what Ahriman wants is to be left alone and be free to go get a lot of good drinks and see the sights of this brave new world. What he does NOT want is to get involved in your civil war, overthrow your stupidly despotic ruler, take his place, reform your country and lead its armies against your neighbors. (Spoiler alert: It happens pretty much exactly like that.)
Well, he didn't really want to fight the Old Gods and destroy the Old World either....
Do let me know in the comments if it sounds interesting to you, or even just something you'd consider reading.
Regarding publishing: The stories will be put up here on Minds for free, and on other publishing sites like FictionPress, Wattpad, and DeviantArt. This project is basically a hobby, so I'm not working on this to make money, even if that'd awesome if I could. But that's the thing, I don't think I can write good enough to justify charging people, at least not right now. So as long as I'm having fun doing this, and there's people enjoying reading what I'll put out, that's reward enough.
#fantasy #rpg #writing #worldbuilding #nevariel