Eric K. Barnum's Blog, page 2

Anyone play?

I play in a regular Dungeons & Dragons campaign. This should come to none of my readers as a shock as I would imagine D&D’s influences are heavy in my writing. When I’m not DM’ing, I tend to play clerics and paladins. Recently, my group switched from 2E to 5E and it’s been interesting.

Some observations… I get that TSR’s owning company wants to create a consistent standardized gaming system. I really do. And, they have done a fantastic job of it with 5E. The sameness of it is really kind of pulling at me though. Sometimes, I wonder if they didn’t run all the character classes through a computer simulator to tweak the rule set and ensure that damage per second would be capped by level and equivalent in as many possible rule sets and min/max scenarios as possible.

I remember 2E firing my imagination, largely in part because of all the gaping holes in rules and content. It forced a lot of improvisation. The 5E framework has removed all of that. So, I’m feeling the absence a lot.

Given I’m in the middle of Merakor 2 – crossed 95,000 words the other day – a lot of this is in my mind. After all, with the events of Bomoki’s Gate behind them, the metaphor of a massive rule change is kinda sorta on the table, right?

Here’s the game… generally we shoot for Saturday evenings to play for about 4 hours. I was introduced to the group by a friend. When everyone shows up, there are 5 players and the GM. We’ve rotated GMs, 4x now and dabbled in a Traveler game and other shenanigans like Ogre and Munchkin when we are missing 2 of the 5 players. Tomb of Annihilation is on the menu right now. I’m playing a gold dragonborne paladin who is about to hit 4th level in the Oath of Vengeance.

If you play, what’s your set up and preferences?

Scrying Magic is more than a Crystal Ball. Meet Corth K’Ven, God of Scrying and Lord of Wyverns

I’d like to introduce you to the God of Scrying, Corth K’Ven. Because you’re read the books and perused FI’s content, you know that Corth is an ascended human mage of Merakor who apprenticed to Alerius before the Kinslayer Wars. You might even know that Corth was a genius for scrying and, at first, Alerius dismissed Scrying as a legitimate sorcery. Corth began his Ascension Rite at the Temple of Glass in the pre-dawn of the Kinslayer Wars.

Corth arose in dominion with Tiamat as his sponsor; She granted him dominion over the Wyverns. You see, Wyverns in most RPGs are these weirdly weak dragons that act like a flying velociraptor chicken with a poison tail sting. In FI, fallen wyverns might resemble this. In the Eldar days though, wyverns were weaker dragons who had barely survived encounters with Set and Set’s spawn. They rallied to Tiamat and found sanctuary in the Endless Skies when Time moved.

Corth is the Lord of Wyverns and the God of Scrying. I am pleased to introduce this art rendering by Mike Smith. Corth and the wyvern, Osachar, act as a single ascended god; one aspect for Scrying and another for the Wyverns and each with a distinct persona.

Corth and Osachar surf the Endless Skies

Scrying is how mages, of any kind, attain information and knowledge from afar. It does not rely on other beings. At certain levels of skill, scrying becomes two-way and can enable other senses than sight. However, it is fundamentally limited by Nexal constraints. That is, scrying within a being’s domain is at whatever effort is required. To scry into other realms of existence is the same principle as traveling between realms. Corth, as the God of Scrying, is the only entity able to circumvent this.

Additionally, since Corth’s ascension, a new type of wizard has been appearing. Priests of Corth, that is Scriers. These adepts of scrying are capable of feats with crystal balls and other forms of sensory capture (and misdirection) that had never been heard of before. Corth has empowered a new form of mage war: information and disinformation. Scriers are commonly recognized by the cloth bandages wrapping their eyes and the clear quartz sphere token they hold or use as adornments. The bending of light in gemstones is hypnotic to them. Their power is gentle but powerful in a way equal to the sword as they are able to direct where the sword can strike for devastating effect.

Corth holds a special place in his heart for Morbatten and is even rumored to be in love with Dar Ana.

When Free Will is Subsumed

Creation I – Tales of Goodly Might is Available in Paperback and eBook Format

Effective December 24, 2018, Creation I – Tales of Goodly Might became available for select beta readers and proudly boasts its first 5 star review with more to come. This anthology brings the novellas published throughout 2018 together into a single book. It’s great for those of you too lazy to pick up the novellas from the newsletter or to subscribe – for shame! The paperback is 205 pages and costs $8.99. The ebook will be $2.99 but is on sale right now for $0.99.

For a limited time, the ebook is $0.99. Don’t delay. This ends without warning in early January.

Of note, if you join my newsletter, one of the perks you get are novellas for free… drop me your email at the Contact form. 

The cover art is fantastic – special thanks to Darko. Ben and Tony did a great job with editing as always. The focus of this project was to shine a heavenly light on the pantheon of Creation/Good and showcase the heroes and mythologies that sometimes stand with, sometimes against, the main stories told in the other Forsaken Isles books.

Because I’m not a full-time author, I have to carefully budget my time writing and enjoyed these novellas quite a lot. The Healer’s Making and Everyday Angels felt like Level and Power Up moments to me. The other stories came from Bomoki’s Gate and Khalla’s Play where tangents and secondary story arcs were edited out, but screamed to be told.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MN21XG4

Links good press and it’s fun to see how things spread on the internet after just a few days:

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I can guarantee there will be more novellas touching on Warp/Evil and Chaos/Abyss next. From having read FI, what stories would you like to know more about? Here are some I’m dying to tell…

Corth K’Ven – the Lord of Wyverns and Scrying, and his Courtship of Dar AnaDaryx, Ana, and the Lost LegionsConquest of the Valley of BloodstoneInvri VelThe Two Brothers War : Kargoth and CuthbertThe Breaking of the Temple of GlassFist of GravesMallaforax and the World TreeScreem and the Imperial BloodstoneAna Frees Bvophoran Mael aka Crimson BurningThe Hag and the Butterfly – a Tale of DemosGorgos

Waiting is the Worst

It’ll happen any day now. Any day, an Amazon truck will deliver a box containing two proof copies of the Creation anthology. All my past books were published with CreateSpace. Then, Amazon acquired CreateSpace. It’s a mixed blessing. The good is I can make my paperback books cheaper for you. The bad is that it’s a new process with many unknowns. Setup was about as bad as learning CS was for Dar Tania, my first book. 

Now, here I sit… waiting. And, it’s right before Christmas so my kids are already in wait mode. The goal was to have this out Dec 9, 2018; a day that will live in infamy for me. big sigh.

So, I could tell you about the anthology except that you probably read the individual stories already. My favorite was The Healer’s Making. It’s been fascinating to me how much I enjoy writing clerics. I thought it would be paladins, but nope – clerics. Dar Tania is my muse and Ana is my fast favorite.

Soon, Tiamat’s fires will light the skies and dim the sun. The nighttime moon will fade to naught against the crackling light of another entry in Her Story. For, while this anthology is about not-Tiamat, it remains embedded in the world She considers Hers and told through the lens of those who serve Her. 

Light a candle, sit back, and enjoy.  This is the cover; beautiful no? Even the dragons see beauty in this. After all, for a diamond to shine, it needs something to cut the facets or else they are just hard lustrous nodules. 

Ceanne, paladin of Imperius, faces her ultimate fate with her guardian angel at her back.

Everday Angels – Last of the Nexus of Creation Novellas is Available!

Join Ceane. She’s a nonconventional paladin. You see, she’s in her 30s. She lost her children to disease and her husband to war. She never had access to the gods. She never knew the healing touch of a cleric. But, after struggling to find meaning through it all, she was touched by an Angel of Imperius. This novella is set just after the story shared in Bomoki’s Gate. Ceane is studying with her Angel in the Temple of Imperius when the Tanian Queen Ora, and the Ice Dragon Ynt’taris visits to investigate why a bloodstone gem was not remanded to the war effort told in Bomoki’s Gate.

Ceane witnesses a series of events that unfold in the Temple and plays a key role in uncovering a dark horror lurking near the Temple of Angels. Pick up a copy today. At 51 pages, this story introduces the defining religious faith of Good and breaks the paladin trope to a million pieces. You’ll love Ceane and how the Angels partner with the paladins to fight evil.

Always free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers, Everyday Angels is just $0.99. Also, in time for fantasy readers in your live is the paperback and e-book anthology of all these stories. Stay tuned for its release date!

Nov 13th Newsletter – Free MOBI for Everyday Angels!

Everyday Angels will be available for $0.99 on Sat Nov 17th, free for KU readers. The newsletter has a special and free MOBI download link. It’s never too late to subscribe by kicking me your email address via the contact form here in FI or via Facebook! What are you waiting for, a dragon?!

Meanwhile, I’m doing NaNoWriMo… which, if you follow any authors at all, you know is National November Writer’s Month. This special month of pain and suffering is just another month for writers not suffering from writer’s block, jock itch, teen angst, and other forms of distraction that prevents writing. The goal is 50,000 words in the month… which given November contains such things as Veteran’s Day (my dad is an Army Vet who now works with Vets doing homeless outreach; go dad, and go Army!), Thanksgiving Day, and the ever ominous Black Friday/CyberMonday double-whammy, it kind of hard to focus. Since I’m not a full-time writer, there are all kinds of reasons to not write… except I hear the dragons growling at me. They’re a bit upset I took time to write about the do-gooder gods.

I’m at 24,000 words and so am “write” on track; see what I did there? “Write”… “right”? Hehheh.

Merakor 2 beckons and I’m having a lot of fun writing where Khalla’s Play lets off. Possession, Drow, Tauran World Galleons, Lost Civilizations, Fallen Gods, Primal Gods, and wow… Drow. Who doesn’t love those purple-eyed weirdos? Thank you R.A. Salvatore for making them awesome!

 

The Role of the Ancient Lost Civillization

We have Atlantis. Tolkien had the Valor. Shanara had us. Dune had the pre-Butlerians. If you poke at most any fantasy, and sci-fi too, you’ll find that the smoldering ashes of some lost realm lie out there somewhere. For FI, this is Merakor. It’s not lost. Everyone knows exactly where it is. They just don’t know how to get from where they are to where it is.

In the timeline of Malcor as king of Morbatten, Merakor gave out its last dying gasp over 3,000 years earlier. It was a united republic ruled by a paladin high king from a city called Lyrion. Originally, Lyrion rose in prominence in battling against what the Korans called “the blind dragons.” That is, dracoliches for fans of Dungeons and Dragons. It united the good races together. Merakor even saw the separation of the elven nations and the beginning of what would become the Dark Elves. Letting the Dark Elves go was their downfall… though they felt they were doing the right thing at the time.

You see, the Dark Elves found Lolth in the Underdark. Or, maybe she found worshippers? The power that comes from Tehran worshippers is unlike anything else to a diety and She rewarded them with everything an Abyssal power could grant them across the vast realms of the Abyss. It almost undid them… almost. Rather than turn on each other, they raged against Merakor and swept it from the face of the world. It’s final dying gasp it recalled in my novella A Healer’s Making.

My next book features Merakor. It’s a war-ravaged land, used for millenia by the Drow Houses as a proxy battlefield. They conduct safaris there to recreate the great moments of their wars, and preserve it with fell magics. What survives of Merakor has either survived by rare luck, powerful fortune, or because the Dark Elves wanted it to.

Meanwhile, across Tehra in the Forsaken Isles, stories of Merakor are legend and the dark elves are boogeymen. Yet, the people dream of returning and reclaiming what is rightfully theirs. It’s not that they don’t like the Isles, it’s just that they feel misplaced. Some, like the Elven Survivors who actually remember Merakor still, feel it poignantly.

Dar Ana’s Journal, circa 190 DAR

“Dar Tania,” I ask her. In my mind, it’s a confident request though, in the halls of the Temple, it sounds like a whisper. Though we appear to be the same age, she is the one I can never seem to keep my composure around. It is always so tense with us. I feel her eyes take in my general state of undress and I feel rather than hear her deep sigh.

“Ana.” My skin crawls with goosebumps when she says it. I long for the happy sound of my name dancing along her lips.

“I know, I know. I heard you were here and came running. I’ve so much to tell you!”

Dar embraces me and for a moment, our more recent history is forgotten as the fire of Tiamat sweeps us out of the flow of Time and away from the stains of that River’s murderous flow. From the River, we see only Truth and I am free, and I exult in it. So too, does Dar. She is Flame and Love and she will burn forever. I am Ash and Lust and I will burn until there is nothing left to cinder.

The phantasms of our recent pasts flow in the streams of Time around us. Dar’s is poignant and touched still by Sean’s death a century before and their daughter’s, Seline’s. I do not even bother to glance at my own. It no doubt shows countless lovers coming with high hopes and leaving with crushed spirits. I seek out my own Sean to rival the love my goddess Dar held for that one… and they are all lacking.

Without looking, I point to my future and say, “I seek counsel, great priestess. Has the God Emperor any records of possession magic?”

Dar’s eyes flash and covet her hair and lips of fire. Around us, the maelstrom of time swirls and I fall into a reverie wondering when my vision of a fiery doom will come to pass. It haunts my every future. “He has none,” Dar answers. “Alerius shunned it. The Eldar Dragons considered it a form of what we would call rape. To force another to do one’s bidding, leaving them helpless, or worse by slaying their spirit and taking their body. The Patriarchs claimed several books in their long studies…”

“And Bomoki?” I blurt it out, not meaning to but I cannot help myself.

“Thankfully, no. He never knew nor had aptitude for such magic. Like granting wishes, spells that murder civilizations, and higher order magics, the Patriarchs consider Possession not fit for normal mortals.” Dar looked at me quizzically and then cast her eyes upstream looking for a cause of this question.

In spite of myself, I blush… and vow to never blush again. “I took a mage lover and he spoke of an Asmodic priestess named Joviel, an eldar human who specialized in this magic to the degree he said he might call it ‘body-casting’ or taking possession of body parts. It piqued my curiosity.”

“And you came back here for this?”

She sounds disappointed in me and the River begins pulling at me… Time in this timeless place intrudes as I struggle to hold it back. Her disappointment is stronger than my faith in Tiamat, or myself, and I fall through the River back into the real world. I am alone in the Temple. The three stone obelisks rise up over me. The dome is nearly completed. I really should come back here more often, but no. This is Dar Tania’s Temple to Tiamat. Mine, like my Sean, must be bigger and better. I am Ash and Lust. I will be there to see the Flame’s End.

I love you, my Dar Tania.

Possession Magic

woman holding chalice with robe wrapped around the head

Bomoki’s Gate and the next Merakor book will continue to expand on the importance of possession magic. While FI already addresses how magic works in this world, possession has some uniqueness to it. Western culture in our world, and eastern approaches this in weird ways. Whether you consume your possession experiences through movies, comics, or what have you, they tend to fall into these types:

Total – a foreign entity has completely taken control. The former person is no longer there
Hybrid – the foreign entity co-exists with the hosts and they often struggle for control
Barely There/Parasitic – the foreign entity wields influence under certain circumstances

FI has all three of these active at different times, but there has never been a god of it until the aftermath of Bomoki’s Gate, when Nientro claims it. Told there and in The Blue Sun Staff novella from a different point of view, it is described as “soul transference” and “a most evil dominion that cannot be allowed to exist without a counter.”

I think it’d be insidious to have a possessing force in your mind prompting you, manipulating you, controlling you. The motivations, unknown and untrusted/untested… how frightening. One of the characters in the next Merakor story becomes possessed in this way and as I write him, I just feel sorry for him. Poor guy.