Fulcrum

Full, who thinks his name comes from the fact that he gets full easily when he eats, is Prophesy's Fulcrum. He is the stereotype of fantasy. He's the kid who's father is the current reigning king, and whose mother was the daughter of the greatest wizard in the land. He's the kid who is destined to great things, and who has a prophesy all about just him.

The thing is, that this time, it is the Last Prophesy, and while technichally the Listeners know this, they assume that there will simply be more Prophets that appear when the Fulcrum next appears.

Full will surround himself with friends; the romantic interest, the charming rogue, the wise wizard, the comic relief (in this case an outside) and weak but faithful friend that gets them into trouble.

More Details

So how do you make a heroic anti-hero?

Its a bit of a challenge, but I think that I want our hero....who needs a name but I'll do that tomorrow, is ambitious but not very ambitious.

I want the starting society to be a blend of free style frontiermen, whilst having a hierchical static social structure. On the surface that seems really hard to do, but the way I figure I balance things is saying that the threshhold for 'getting off the farm' is high but not impossibly high (like 'the truman show') and if you truly truly want to do it, you can, but most people don't bother.

Then our protagonist leaves for the big city but ends up working in a tavern as a waiter rather than trying to do anything else like become the greatest wizard in the land. Thus, the foreshadowing of heroic potential is there, but by himself, he never did anything with it.

Hero or Anti Hero

A hero is an example of some kind, someone who possesses a virtue that makes them stand apart and act as a proxy protagonist for our reader. They are usually the focal point of the story, but not necessarily our point of view character.

The anti hero is someone who is more of an average joe type. He doesn't do heroic things, he merely tries to survive them.

My goal with our point of view character is that he is caught up in the whirlwinds of Prophesy, and is very much an anti hero. I don't want him to be a bad person, just wholly unqualified for the world into which he has been swept. Then, said anti-hero becomes hero through his own conscious choice. Its actually a theme that appeared in Micronation, but I must admit it is one I like.

Moving Forward

So I have a premap kind of, but I haven't written it down on paper. So I have a few choices, but basically it amounts to, do I abandon my goal to start writing as of November 1 and finishing by the end of the year, or do I take the long slow route and get more comprehensive notes first?

I choose the first option. That means that I only have three months left to do any prep work I intend to do, and there are a lot of things left to be completed.

Setting/Scenery
Plot
Casting
Special Effects etc

I have the skeleton for the most part, time to begin assembling the raw materials.

This month I will be primarily doing casting and setting details. One thing I want to do is 'screen test' our chosen cast with three short stories (that will not be included in the novel) primarily because I'll be posting them here and writing them all in one sitting, but it should help give me a feel for them once I start weaving everything together.

As for the plot, come September I'll put together the first half. I don't think I'll post the second half on here because I want the one, maybe two people reading this to be pleasantly surprised at the end.

The working title for now is "Flotsam"

A Map

And so the need has come for a Map. Most fantasy books don't have maps any more. I guess they went out of style or they cost money (probably both) but for a while, primarily after Tolkien, you couldn't have a fantasy book without a map. It just helped with the immersion. A map can help make an unreal place more real. Of course, so does language, but I'm not a linguist. I might try to cheat on that and maybe base my languages off of the real thing but we'll have to see. Maybe Pig-Insert Random Language here.

But when building a world, a map is helpful. I'm probably going to use one or two programs to initially help me, but then fill in some of the details that no program really can. Generally speaking, you start with the physical world and then slowly fill in the cultures. This month is going to be about the setting and we'll focus in on the more local setting/continent where our story is to take place.

But first we need a map.

There will be Wizards

How can one have a fantasy story without wizards? Furthermore, who is to say the Hushers are the only ones with the Secrets?

First, as individual dabblers they would be crushed. But then again, if people didn't allow any secrets out, then the Hushers wouldn't last that long. The key I think is that the Hushers would focus on anything that had large or kingdom changing application. After all, politics is what they're really interested in, which among other things means the technology of the Abysmali and the Enchantments that Simsaur magic can create.

Of course, magic is largely a matter of making arrangements with the right things or utilizing existing agreements. Rocks and the like tend to have much longer memories than most after all. On the other hand, one of the reason I have been so careful to outline various kinds of magic is the fact that I want my magic to be just that, magic. So while I have underlined the actual functional rules behind it, the reader shall be privy only to the surface. Still again, the point is that a true wizard in the Fantasy sense collects these secrets as a hermit might, one bit at a time.

That means some of the names of summoning the Ma-Ka-Fa, the names of some Gods which can be sommoned or dealt with. There would be some of the nature of prophesy taught, but Dreams and Destiny would be more a wizard's creed since Prophesy is the matter of Kings and Empires.

Thus with the Hushers there is a reason for Wizards to act like wizards, lonely and seculed, occasionally dabbling in the affairs of men, but only the most stunningly powerful. Hedge wizards or witches could provide basic services so long as they do not become too uppity or break the Laws as the Hushers have set in the reserving of knowledge to themselves.

The Hushers

Time for a bit more crunch in our world. I am hoping to do a map soon, the map is often a doorway into a magical land, and as long as you don't obsess over it too much, or use it as a crush, can be a powerful tool to entering 'another land.' Tolkien certainly used them.

But first, I got an idea whilst I was out on a Family Reunion. If we're talking about a world in which there is an inevitable cycle of prophesy and empire that occur over and over again in cycled fashion, then it stands to reason that someone would notice. Religions exist of course, but High Fantasy often has lost and ancient knowledge in the past, which is reclaimed by the 'new and rightful ruler' at the time of the establishment of a new empire.

The other thought that occurred to me was that in a Gold Rush, it isn't really the miners that get rich but the people that sell things to the miners. These predators on dreams give the miners everything they need, pots, pans, supplies, mules and the like and then they also provide them 'entertainment' when they actually do find some gold; wine, women and song to help them compensate for the hard life and hard work they make trying to get rich. No need to worry about tomorrow, everyone's going to get rich.

So if a smart bunch of fellows realized this headlong rush into renewal and empire, they're be the ultimate lobbiests, recognizing the inevitable decline of one empire forshadowed by the rise of the next, but this time they lock up all the knowledge and keep it for themselves so that the new emperor must come to THEM for all of the secrets gone through all of the ages.

That is what the Hushers do with all of the secrets that the humans have gathered for the last 2000 years. They've done it for three empires now, and in the case of the last empire, they might have gotten a little impatient and hurried things along by a century or two. After all, they do their best business when an empire is in rise, not in decline. Oh sure, they still make a killing selling the occasional tidbit here and there to those who might pay them enough, but the really good stuff, they keep for themselves.

Of course, power corrupts, which means that even the Hushers don't really understand all of the knowledge that they have at this point. Vast hoards of books, perfectly copied and preserved...except for, perhaps the occasional bored employee who might miss something on an obscure tome whilst copying it. Of course, they have Abysmali devices to copy one book to another, but no machine works perfectly. So whispers might abound about some of the Husher secrets that don't work as well as they used to.

But the main thing about Hushers is that they're the toughest power around in these dark times, because they know how to make the weapons and the magics that can stomp anyone else. First they embargo you and then if you still keep looking into things they want left alone or raise in magic or technology too much, then they send out the Hushknights upon you to burn you to the ground.

On the other hand, the fact is that all the Husher's really care about is sitting in their vast towers hoarding books and knowledge, so long as no one violates their chosen thresholds, they are utterly neutral in politics in every way whatsoever...at least generally. There are exceptions but not for the purpose of our story.