Age of Towers

AGE OF TOWERS (Low fantasy/Swords and sandals) The world is now dominated by human culture, with Dwarves, Elves and other races fighting a losing battle to retain their own traditions. Magic still exists but is less powerful; wars are now won by armies, not competing wizards. The fortress of Calesh is now part of the largest city in the known world; other cities of the more magical races are wiped off the map, left to become ruins. The Age officially ends when the Dwarven Kingdoms are defeated, wiping out the last of the magical societies. From the defeated Kingdoms, however, the Empire learns the secrets of technology, ushering in a renaissance.

1)      Territory of Shemeld: A sovereign state of the Calshani Empire, Shemeld is still culturally unique, but now under Imperial rule. While some lords stage independent rebellions, without a single banner to unify under, the Empire crushes them easily. From Shemeld the Empire continues its war against ‘superstition and fear’; namely the Dwarven mines, Elfin forests, and the waning Dragon shrines in the mountains. Because of its place in the forefront of war, Shemeld is home to Imperial smithies; swords and armour for the legions are produced, usually to oppress the townsfolk who made them.

2)      The Last of the Dream: To say the alliance of elves, dwarves, goblins and other races is tenuous is a gross understatement. Centuries of grudges and feuding mean no race can adequately oppose the unified forces of the Empire. Charismatic warlords and sorcerers are hailed as ‘the Last Dragonblood’, but are just as quickly usurped or assassinated; sometimes by the Empire, sometimes by other races who’d sooner be leaderless than support an ancient enemy. While some humans still look to the old powers for guidance, more become disillusioned with fading magic, and turn to the ever-growing Empire instead.

3)      The Calshani Empire: Dating back to the Age of Dreams (Which they claim to have ended when they awoke Unelma), the Calshan family are powerful nobles, and every Kingdom in the Age of Towers has some Calshani blood in their leaders. Some are benevolent leaders, far more are tyrants, and family feuds often turn into wars of succession. The dwarves and elves, both enemies against the Calshani Empire, claim that Unelma will return once all the descendants of Calsharon are dead. Of course, dwarves and elves will believe anything if it gets them their Dragon God back.

4)      War of the Bastard: The most brutal war in the Age of Towers. When an exiled king returned to his throne, he did so with an illegitimate son. Jonah the Bastard was given lordship over a remote territory; his father married into nobility. When the king died, Jonah made a claim for the throne, despite being unpopular in his father’s homeland. Nobility backed the young Prince Erolph, and regents ruled till he was of age. While Jonah was unpopular at court, he had several allies elsewhere, and thus began a long, brutal war that saw the Kingdom ultimately dissolved.

5)      A temple sits in the heart of a thick jungle. The locals speak of an ancient terror within. Traps fill the corridors, and within the inner sanctum is a large treasure chest. Surrounding the chest are several skeletons of various races, all with their hands severed at the wrist. On the chest’s lid is written ‘Hands off’.

6)      An elf, a dwarf and a human walk into a bar…

7)      “You can tell a lot about your enemy by their arrows.” said Imp, “Copper headed ones, that’s bandits, or Dreamer save you the elves. Iron headed ones, that’s town guards, and they only fire them if they can get them back; they have to pay for ammunition.” He snatched an arrow from the air as we ran, “Steel heads!” he said triumphantly, “with a smith’s mark and everything! Be proud, master; someone rich wants us dead for a change.”

8)      She got into the bath, wincing at the cold water. How anyone could stay clean this far north was a miracle to her. Still, she couldn’t attend a grand ball covered in the blood of its host.

9)       It’s tradition among the Salthiri clan that lordship is earned, not inherited. Their symbols of office must be pried from the cold, dead hands of their former leader; this makes their crown and sceptre scarred with chisel marks and blade strikes, and no amount of rich cloth and fur can patch the dagger holes in their royal cloak. Salthiri nobles look to raise strong, dauntless children; the kind fearless enough to commit familicide, but strong enough to resist it in turn.

10)   The messenger stammered, knowing who he was addressing. The Kilmourne family had a long history of vengeance, starting with the poor fool who gave them bad news. Lord Tobias was already stroking the handle of his axe.
“Your brother’s forces…” he said, not taking his eyes from the axe, “…met with the Emperor’s. They are now at peace.”
Lord Tobias laughed, forgetting his axe and raising his arms in celebration. The messenger breathed a sigh of relief. Hopefully he could buy a fast horse before Tobias worked out the metaphor.

Age of Dreams

AGE OF DREAMS: (High fantasy) The world is inhabited by all manner of fantastic beasts and races, the most prominent of which are Elves, Dwarves and Men. Dragons exist in the remote places, leading barbaric clans and raiding the Heartland villages. There are no grand cities or architecture to start with, only fortified towns, though towards the end of the Age, monuments equivalent to the Seven Wonders are erected, and cities on hills and across rivers. The Age officially ends with the disappearance of the Dragons and the founding of the Calshani Empire.

1)      Shemeld: Bordered by the Dragonspine mountains to the north and west and the Ousedon river to the south, the lands of Shemeld are a loose affiliation of clans rather than a single country. Having no allegiance to the Dragon shrines in the far north or Calshan in the south, Shemeld is instead a mixture of disparate cultures. Dwarves trade in Shemeld towns, and although Elves are hostile to Shemeld trespassers, there are routes through the forest that they grudgingly allow. By the end of the Age of Dreams, Shemeld is a sovereign nation under the rule of the Calshani.

2)      Unelma, the Dreaming One: Highest of the known Dragons, Unelma explored the world, and from his dreams he formed life to dwell there. He dreamt of the mountains, and they became Dwarves. He dreamt of forests, and they became Elves. He had nightmares, and they became monsters. After the monsters came, he stopped his dreams taking shape, yet he still dreamt of many things. He dreamt of nobility, corruption, greed, humility, arrogance, deference, poverty and riches. These dreams begged to be real as the others before them. Unelma finally took all these disparate dreams, and they became Humans.

3)      Calsharon, Queen of Reason: Unelma’s worst enemy, and head of the Cult of Reason. In a world of magic and mystery, Unelma advocates her followers to trust their senses over their imaginations. Slightly hypocritical, in that to battle an immortal dragon, she requires magical immortality herself. Calsharon rejects the notion that dwarves and elves are better than Humans because they have lived for longer; in her retelling of the Unelma myth, both races are part of Unelma’s nightmare, and only Humans were created with purpose.

4)      Nightwyrm Temple: The largest Dragon shrine in the Dragonspine mountains, Nightwyrm Temple is reputedly where Unelma and his strongest brood reside. No-one’s ever seen Unelma there, only his children, and they’re hostile to any who’d invade their caverns looking for him. His followers are occasionally gifted with dragon blood, giving them magical powers and the ability to shape reality through their dreams. The fact several locations nearby are filled with goblins and monsters is probably not coincidental to this.

5)      GOBLINS: Children of Nightmare, goblins are the cave-dwelling, sun-fearing enemies of the Dwarves, who lives as bandits and scavengers in the abandoned places of Shemeld. Goblins hate pretty much everyone, including other goblin families; they curse Unelma for making them this way, they curse Calsharon for leading purges of the southern clans, and they curse each other for not bowing to their family’s obvious superiority. Studies of the goblin language have yet to find a word that can’t be used as a swear.

6)      DWARVES: Children of Stone, Dwarves live either in vast underground halls, or in mining towns on the surface. They’re in a state of constant battle against goblins, dwarves are renowned as armourers and soldiers in addition to miners. They’re somewhat standoffish with humans, only trading with Shemeld clans, and having a distrust for Elves and the southern lands of Calshan. They’re also obsessively secretive about their crafts; since humans stole metal from their fallen soldiers, they’ll never send any weapon out of a stronghold unless they can guarantee it’ll return.

7)      ELVES: Children of Wood, Elves live nomadic lives through the forests, never staying too long in one place, usually because they’re too busy chasing trespassers and cutting them down. Elves claim to be the first of Unelma’s creations, and so are clearly his chosen people; everything that followed, be it Dwarf, Goblin or Human, are the result of the Dreamer’s nightmare. Humans often romanticise and misunderstand Elves; yes, they’re beautiful, attuned to nature and live free. No part of that means they’re in any way nice.

8)      The Shoe Troll: A phenomenon among young trolls, who steal shoes from nearby villages and wearing them as hats. No-one knows why they do this, nor why it’s so prevalent. Scholars have theorised it may be a status symbol; that by stealing from the civilised world, the young troll shows daring. Others claim the creation of armour is a troll’s rite of passage into adulthood, and younger trolls can only mimic their elders. Elves and Dwarves, however, believe the Shoe Troll to be part of Unelma’s dream. Not every dream makes sense, after all.

9)      “Sire, we face an army of zombies with mages who can raise the dead. Is sending the conscripts and levies in first really wise?”

10)   When the epic tale ‘The Great Discovery’, which tracked the journey of Unelma across the face of the known world, was recreated by mapmakers, they found several landmarks around the world weren’t in the same direction Unelma is said to have travelled. The possibility arose; has the world changed since the Great Discovery, and the landmarks altered? Or did Unelma, highest of Dragons and supposed father of all life, have a terrible sense of direction?

One Million Words Update

Sorry I missed posting this last month, so I will give the last two months figures. In April, the group wrote a total of 75926 words and in May, the group wrote a total of 89694 words.

That gives us a cumulative total of 539168 words.

Yes, we have made it to half a million word target.

So for those keeping count, with five months left to go we have to write 460832 words which works out at 92166.4 words a month.

New Event -Write A Book in a Day

We are organising a writing event for 22 October.

A series of talks will be given in the morning by published authors and editors on fantasy and science fiction to help fuel people’s imaginations. In the afternoon, workshops will be held by the same authors and editors on writing and editing short stories, building characters, developing plots and creating a world for the short stories to take place. The day will finish with people being presented with a shared world before participants will workshop their own short stories and write their start, middle and end to the piece. Participants will finish stories at home before emailing them back in (before January). All short stories submitted will be included in an anthology, published for Easter 2017

Tickets will cost £5 (pay on the day)

You can book tickets here: Write a Book in a Day

And keep your eyes on the blog for more details.

Crisis and Opportunity by Matthew Presley

My laptop died.

And not just died as in needed repairing. Whatever killed it killed the hard drive beyond affordable repair, so I lost all my files. It’s a write-off. It’s been Path to Exiled, banhammered, twin struck by Frostmourne and the Soul-Edge. By the Snarl. All my photographs, drawings, music, three years’ worth of Minecraft- all gone. My writing was luckily backed up to a pen drive- but the files are outdated for the most part. Not only do I need to get a new laptop; until I’ve assessed exactly how outdated these files are (Through deduction and evidence gathering that should earn me a deerstalker) I can’t throw out any of the paper copy notes. Really, I know I should be more frustrated by this than I am. I’ve lost at least 17,000 words from the last month alone. The neck pain that’ll come from replacing the music isn’t going to be much fun either. I know I should be annoyed, but once the shock wore off I realised;

I’m free.

You I have to start again with a lot of stuff. Luckily not everything (touch wood), but within crisis in opportunity. This is a mix of both; a Crisportunity, if you will. Yes, a lot of things will start again. But sometimes you need an event to kick you out of endless procrastination and distraction. I now have the opportunity to start with a clean slate, rather than eight years of accumulated rubbish to dredge through. My Minecraft world is lot to the time-draining void which ultimately created it. I now have a reason to sell off the card collection I’ve been ignoring for a year and a half. I can get a new, compact laptop that can fit in a backpack, not a temperamental giant with a cracked casing held together with duct tape and which weighed more than a waterlogged tracksuit. I don’t have to worry about hiding the dead albatross every time I’m out of the flat for more than two days because carrying it would be too much hassle.

In conclusion; back up your work, and back it up often. We live in an age of pen drives, external flash-sticks and the strange moon magic called ‘The Cloud’, which my old laptop predated. But remember; if your laptop dies, or if you lose your work and get set back, you can either dust yourself off and start again, or you can start something fresh. Stay positive, and philosophic, and think of it not as a setback, but a Joseph Campbell death-rebirth journey.

Oh yeah, and don’t trust iTunes. I’ve no idea how I’m getting that music back.

Call for submissions

Hic Dragones are calling for Into the Words submission.

They are looking for shorts stories between 3000 - 7000 words that are edgy, dark and weird fiction. Any interpretation of the theme is welcome – and we have no preconceptions about what ‘into the woods’ might mean. Any genre considered: dark fantasy, (sub)urban fantasy, Gothic, horror, sci fi, steampunk, cyberpunk, biopunk, dystopian, slipstream. We’re looking for original and fresh voices that challenge and unsettle.

Submissions due: Monday 13th June 2016

For more details visit their site.

Mini SFSF Social - 26th April 6.30pm - 7.30pm

SFSF Social are teaming up with Waterstones to host one of the launch events for Stephen Aryan's new fantasy novel Blood Mage. Stephen will be reading from the book, the follow-up to last year's Battle Mage (both from Orbit Books) and answering questions, and as ever we have a few freebies to give away.

It's a great opportunity to meet one of the rising stars of modern fantasy fiction, and we can't wait to see you at Waterstones in Orchard Square Sheffield.