Unseen Character: The Prophesy

For a being as powerful and complex as Sa, even their afterthoughts have a tendency to take on a life of their own.

While it won't be seen in the Novel itself, the Last Prophesy is working with Ful. And he isn't happy. He has nothing personal against Ful. That's one of the things that keeps Ful alive through all of the crap that is going to happen to him. In fact, it will become blatantly ridiculously apparent how biased the prophesy works out in his favor in the book. And one will wonder why anyone would stick around someone who generates so much dire straights.

And that will also be a subtle undercurrent to things; because our Real hero stays at first because he must and later because its the right thing to do.

Everyone else there has an agenda of one kind or another that we'll learn about as time goes on. The prophesy will see to that.

And the real reason that this is the Last Prophesy? Because people are cheating. If Pickle's intention was to make the whole thing a game for the gods to enjoy to keep their interest, his failure to prevent humanity from cheating and tilting the results is the very thing that earned their eventual disgust and disinterest.

Full's Life

Ever wonder if your whole life was a lie? Full's life is.

I suppose the immediate influence here that I can think of is 'the Truman show' but that's not really an accurate comparison. The level of personal violation is the same, but the end agenda is not.

You see the Listeners, the Hushers and the Wizards want to leave nothing to chance. They've been studying every subtle nuance of prophesy for thousands of years. Every time there is a prophesy fulfillment, they learn a little bit more and apply it.

And this time, there aren't any competing prophesies to compete. They all think that something major is going to come and that a new golden age that makes all of the others pale in comparison.

Of course, the other powers also have a very slight hand in this as well, because they know that there is blood in the water and Pickle's days are running out. Of course Pickle has an agenda and so does Sa through the forces of Destiny.

As such, every person in Full's life is a sham. He lives on a seemingly pastoral village in the middle of nowhere, destined to go from a farm hand to become a mighty hero. Entire circumstances have been manufactured so that his 'mother' his 'father' his 'friends' and everyone else has just a secret agenda and training as he does.

In the background of this 'peaceful village' there is a titanic war going on in the shadows to influence Full's upbringing and the only thing any of them agree on is what to do.

However unlike most previous prophesies, there is absolutely no truth to the underlying elements of it. The entire thing has come to rely on its own weight and superficiality.

I think this will be the first short story I'll write as a 'prequel' but this won't be in the novel itself....

Because this story isn't about Full. It's about the Flotsom he pulls along.

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.