I've been doing a lot of editing recently. Noctis Point, the book I wrote for last year's NaNoWriMo, is finished; I wrote the last chapter in the first week or so of January. I didn't want to shelve this for forever before I started editing, partly because I need to justify not working full-time right now, but mainly because I want to see Noctis Point published.
Read MoreI've been quite enjoying writing the CYAO but it's starting to sprawl - by design. I'm starting to see why Mass Effect couldn't have been totally open-ended!
Here's a sample of the decision tree for my CYAO:
Read MoreIt's ok as long as you kept your thumb in the page, right?
I remember whiling away the hours reading through the Ian Livingstone/Steve JacksonFighting Fantasy books. They had green borders, wonderful cover illustrations, and the ending was almost always at paragraph 300. But I don't remember ever actually 'playing' one of them. Just reading through and assuming I'd won the fights, because it was fun to seek out all of the terrible deaths.
This is the last of the Paragon Path tales that I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!
The journey back to Fjornik was a quiet one, everyone wrapped up in their own thoughts. Only the rhythmic beat of the horses’ hooves disturbed the silence, a silence which had been hard won.
Faces flashed before her eyes. Maran. Ena. Doe. Even Vile, she thought with a snort. He was a bastard, but he didn’t deserve to die like that. The last weeks weighed heavily on her, and she knew the others were feeling it too.
“We won, didn’t we? We’re heroes.” she said aloud, more to herself than anything else.
Toofi looked round. “It doesn’t feel like it, though,” she said quietly.
Read MoreThis is one of the Paragon Path tales I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. As a bit of back story to this one, we left Ostardva's story hanging at the point when Tiamat, the evil dragon goddess, had offered him a place as her paladin. We kept the suspense up until the very end of Heroic Tier about whether his Paragon path would be as an evil paladin or as a righteous one, or turning his back on the path of a paladin altogether. Enjoy!
“No.”
The word echoed around the cavernous chamber. Ostardva, stood on one of Tiamat’s long, sinuous necks, stared defiantly at the five immense dragon heads, arrayed in front of him.
The central one, the red one, started backwards a little, as if surprised.
“No? Just like that? You disappoint me, child of Arkhosia.” The five heads spoke as one, a woman’s voice but with a hint of growling bass in it. The sound was like a hammer-blow, every word a storm to be weathered.
Read MoreThis is one of the Paragon Path tales I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!
Futch frowned as he walked away from the others. No-one seemed in a particularly celebratory mood; they had won the war, beaten the Lich, but at a high cost. Hundreds had died, thousands perhaps. Ostardva, Gieve, the others on the airship.
Maran.
He gritted his teeth and clenched his fist, fighting the surge of frustration that threatened to boil over. To have been so far away, and not able to do anything, or even know about it... It wasn’t fair. He wandered through the streets, barely aware of the direction his feet were taking him, lost in thought.
Finally he stood in front of the southern gate, looking out over the plains. The gently sloping path that lead to Varikause and beyond lay in front of him and, with one backwards glance at Fjornik, he shifted.
Read MoreThis is one of the Paragon Path stories I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!
Kali stood in the confusion of the city. In a way, ruined as it was, it felt more comfortable to her; instead of stone formed into buildings and walls, it was more like the hillsides of her childhood, rough and unformed.
She rubbed her shoulders at that thought, feeling the roughness of her own skin. It was still odd to her; she’d grown used to the small slices and nicks, the little pieces of skin that grew back harder than scars should, but the final battle against the Lich had been devastating in more ways than one. Hundreds had died, an entire city fallen into a pit, friends and travelling companions blasted into nothingness. In the darkness and heat of the cavern under Ortmund, revealed at last, they had battled the Lich and emerged victorious. She flexed her hands, remembering the freezing cold and biting pain that had stung them as she had grabbed at whatever was inside its armour, holding it in place so that Toofi could deliver the death blow. The backlash of energy had flayed her torso open, revealing a rougher layer beneath the skin that ached still.
Read MoreThis is one of the Paragon Path stories I wrote for my Dungeons and Dragons group. Enjoy!
The bar was loud, uncomfortably so, but Toofi had found a quiet corner in which to sip her mug of ale. Fjornik was coming back to life, more so now that the threat of the undead horde was gone, and it was good to not have to watch her back all the time.
The events of the last few weeks were still large in her mind, though. Memories rose unbidden; fabulous journeys into other realms, the weird feeling of controlling a body much larger than hers, and a grinning face pressed up against crystal.
Read MoreI've got a day for writing, a whole day for which I've officially gone part-time. So how does this work?
I've been a full-time teacher for nearly 6 years, and after a couple of jobs that weren't as good as they could have been (mainly management issues), I decided that enough was enough. I'm now a part-time supply teacher, four days a week by choice, and the other day is my 'writing day'. It's a day for me to get things in order, do as much writing/editing as I can, hopefully get some stuff sent off and, by the looks of things, update my blog.
Inspiration for this timeline came from a variety of sources. I've been reading a lot of Asimov and Arthur C Clarke recently; several nationalist parties enjoyed success in the recent European Parliament Elections; I read an essay on what the state of government might be in the near future; finally, I watched X-Men: Days of Future Past, which is awesome.
Mars Base 3, known as MB3 to all, became a hotbed of psychic training and research. Within ten years, the first psychs had developed into a society based around research. They developed cloning technology that worked, and used it to improve the calibre of their trainees. The facility was run by a dumb-AI that was incapable of attaining sentience. It was in charge of all mechanical aspects of MB3, the cloning, food production, weather control… everything. It was also live-storing everyone’s psyche in case of death, which was a realistic threat in psych training.
Read MoreAgain it was to be a scientist that provided the next step in the chain. Frederic Rawlins, an American by birth, finally succeeded in 2078 in doing what humans had been dreaming about for decades, creating the Halflight Drive. Designed to travel at half the speed of light, it suddenly made space travel en masse a possibility again. Terraforming robots were created, algae was redesigned and ships were constructed in space. The newly-completely space elevator, linking the defunct International Space Station to a small island in the Atlantic meant that materials could be taken up with increasing regularity. Within a year, with public fervour behind it, the first major mission to Mars left. Half an hour later, it arrived...
Read MoreI've split the timeline into three parts because it became quite long and winding.
Starting from within the next ten years, this is a timeline for Noctis Point.
By 2045, most factories only had a small human contingent of engineers as robot workforces took over. Even the factories that made the robots had automated assembly lines. More than that, robots were used in mining operations, undersea oil drilling and farming. One of the major robot-creating countries was Russia, beginning by using cheap human workforces and then switching as soon as possible. Unemployment, steadily rising in all countries over the previous decades, hit an all-time high. With it came mass homelessness.
Read MoreAnother Noctis Point universe 100 themes work. These are all short and deliberately display a photo, a moment in time. I should really concentrate on creating fully-encapsulated short stories, because it's something I find challenging.
045 - Illusion
Alex sat on the single hard chair, concentrating. In his mind, he could hear the lesson, his tutor’s voice quiet, hypnotic.
“Picture a box.”
He furnished himself with a cardboard box. It wasn’t much. The bottom was sealed with brown packing tape.
Read MoreAlso, Noctis Point! I've been playing around with the world a bit and I've created a timeline. Worldbuilding is so much fun. I should do some actual writing sometime!
This is #44 of the 100 Themes, which takes place in a lecture room on Mars Base 3.
“There are two roads on Mars,” Dr. Judd said, pointing at the projected map, “and it’s likely to stay that way until the terraforming is complete.” Alex watched as his tutor highlighted the two thin supply routes, making notes on his own pad.
“Now. They’re dead straight, see that? Anyone care to tell me why?”
“Robots,” Alex said, not even looking up from the pad.
Read MoreThese are all largely working titles for now. I might come up with something far better, probably will, and when that happens I'll track back through and edit things like this.
Anyway; the state of play on Earth, and on its colonies on Luna and Mars, is that the regular police force has been supplemented with specialised psychic troops whose main mission is to find awoken psychics.