A history of the Brigade
Filed under Writing Journal on December 11, 2006
Keywords: Janner Kohl, Relvan's Rescue
“Relvan’s Rescue” is on its way to Fantasist Enterprises. I got some great comments back from my beta readers. The dialogue that I “sampled” and “remixed” from The Princess Bride didn’t make the final cut. My wife didn’t feel like it fit the protagonist’s personality, and I agreed.
Writing this story helped me further define Janner, which will be of great benefit when I return to work on Janner’s Regret. That won’t happen until I finish The Shattered Amulet. He’s come a long way from my original concept, an idea rooted in Arunad, the setting for SA.
The world of Logan Shadowhand was first a campaign setting I created back in early college. I established a pantheon of six deities over this world. These deities were formerly adventurers prior to their ascension, a decision inspired by the old D&D Immortal rules boxed set.
One of these deities was an ex-mercenary-turned-cleric. When I was part of the Neverwinter Nexus fansite, he returned to mortal form as one of my chatroom personas, and as the captain of the Blue Lightning Brigade, our four-man team for the Nexus PvP tournament. The Brigade was slaughtered. I attributed the defeat to the fact that two of our members were pick-ups, and one of them didn’t even show for game time. The other founding member of the Brigade was Miodrag, a Nexus regular. As a tribute to him, I used an anagram of the name for Janner’s second-in-command.
I began writing the first story about the Brigade while waiting for approval on my Maiden outline. Harley had just announced his intent to publish a second anthology, and I planned to submit the tale. I still had the old pantheon of six deities presiding over Arunad, so I decided to change the mercenary’s name.
And Janner was born.
Related Posts
- Building a fantasy fiction world: introduction
- Relvan reworked
- Gone fishin’
- Relvan’s revision
- Building a fantasy fiction world: history
