Craig Comer's Blog, page 16

Beauty in Ruins - A review from Bob R. Milne

Bob R. Milne from, Beauty in Ruins, posted an awesome review today of, The Roads to Baldairn Motte.

"For a heroic fantasy novel written by not one, not two, but three authors - Garrett Calcaterra, Craig Comer, and Ahimsa Kerp - The Roads to Baldairn Motte is a surprisingly well-structured, remarkably cohesive tale that actually benefits from the different voices, without seeming fragmented..."

Read more here!

Purushpur

Peshawar Spices by zerega (BY-NC-ND)

There are no fewer than sixteen great gates that allow entrance into the city. The Merchant gate is used frequently; the Hallowed Ancestor, used solely for taking the bodies of honored dead and deceased, is in these times hardly used at all. But it’s the Market gate, built next to the largest stupa in the world, that leads north into the desert that is the most heavily traveled of them all, and the one most travelers see first.

Purushpur is the City of Men, an ancient center both of trade and of learning, was was founded by the Kushans two thousand years ago. As a frontier city, one perched on the edge of the vast Marpatuwar desert, it is filled with travelers, adventurers, scholars, students, merchants, poets, and wild-haired, nonsense-spouting zahedan. It is a place where Zoroastrians mix with animists and atheists; a city where all live in mutual harmony.

That was that they told themselves, even as they ignored the growing presence of the shadow creatures known as Skyggen, the heaping piles of detritus and plastic, the growing number of poor as the Autocrat siphons more money into his ceaseless war.

And nowhere in the sprawling frontier city is there a better place to find work than the tree-lined avenue called Story Teller Street.

This Purushpur is a re-imagining from Ahimsa Kerp. It lays the setting for his novel-in-progress, Yesternight.

The Islands of Cataractara

The Islands of Cataractara Resort and Mindfulness Retreat

Stay E.April 9th through 22nd E.2312

BizTripReview.0023427

The Insu Lam Region is a territory on the Planet Reonim in the Cento Galaxy under the recognized authority and protection of Adjunct Slucens Space, so needless to say, making this corporate offsite was a big deal to me. Luckily this was not my first time out of Earth Federated Space, let alone off-world. I ignored my colleagues’ advice and budgeted a corridor passage to ASS and the extra expense of the Cataractara resort, because I knew having a lush alien island playground would knock the boss for a loop. The last offsite was a floating hotel on Titan with a trip to one of the methanogenic jellywhale preserves. Yeah, not very exciting.

Our island was called BoaCoaua, I think it meant crystal spring or something. Really several islands close together, some of the buildings spanned several. The first thing I noticed was the entirely human or robotic staff, not a single Slucen. Not that I minded, Reonim is in Slucens space, and we see them often enough on Earth. There were plenty at the Reonim Corridor Hub, but I know that some people find them disconcerting with their whitish, near-transparent, gelatinous bodies. Especially when they’re self illuminated. I wanted everything to be perfect.

More beautiful than the holos advert; the sky was deep blue like earth but its vast ocean was almost clear so you could see the plants and animals underneath. Reonim has a second star which shines less bright and at ‘night’, so it is never dark on the planet and tropical year round. That must be why the vegetation and the wildlife are so abundant and colorful. Contrasting the geography is the architecture, built for some other purpose when the Slucens first colonized, it had both a sleek, clean, symmetrical shape, and signs of millions of years of ruin. Of course everything had been modernized nicely, but they deliberately let some of the flora migrate and become part of the style. Dark, smooth, geometric shapes in obsidian and slate covered here and there with green vines and bright flowers, especially where an old Slucen religious statue was left.

Big Space Tentacle Monster – by Ben Thornton

There were more activities than we could manage and everything was part of the package. From simply swimming in the ocean to hunting big game, everything seemed fantastical. I can’t recommend it enough. Even the auditorium was special. It was an old Slucen temple, but the hard stone was covered in some sort of plush animal material, like comfy grey leather and all the common interfaces were easy to get to, and new. Everyone had smiles on the shuttle leaving.

Created by Benjamin Morpurgo, Adjunct Slucens Space and the galaxies it includes is one of many locations that make up the setting of the Science Fiction universe where the ‘Rock 00357’ concept is set.

Baldairn Motte, Part I

While modern man will remember the war between Lord Chancellor Sturm Galkmeer and Lord Audwin Ernmund as The Battle of Baldairn Motte, it was not the first, nor the greatest, battle to be fought there. Indeed, the motte-and-bailey ruins of Baldairn Motte, which persevere nearly a thousand years after the keep’s demise, stand testament to the power and dominion of the ancient Kingdom of Baelda and the calamitous war that took place to bring the mightiest of kingdoms known to man to its knees.

The first people known to inhabit the lands surrounding Baldairn Motte were the Green People, the Fairie. By all accounts, they were a peaceful folk, small in stature and content to live a modest life within the confines of the woodland areas now known as the White Hills. But the tribes of Baeldans came, some legends say from the west, others say from the eastern sea itself to land upon the ancient shores of North Port in their slender, single-sail ships. From wherever they arrived, they spread like blight, from the River Ordan to the mountains in the north, from the eastern sea to the desert wastelands far west of Baardol. For a thousand years the Baeldan chieftains fought amongst each other for control of the land, all the while ravishing the villages and lands of the Green People, making slaves of what Green People they captured, and treating their own common folk little better.

Baer Half-axe rose from the chaos, mightiest of the Baeldan chiefs and their first true king. With his small army, known as Baer’s Fist, he brought all the other chieftains under his dominion. He chose a lone hill in the plains as the site for his capital and thus began the construction of Baldairn Motte, a fortress that took some seventy years to build and was not completed until the rein of Baer Half-axe’s grandson, Baer the Cruel. Under Baer the Cruel’s rule, the common folk were ruled with an iron fist, forced into slavery to work in the fields, quarries and the gemstone mines from whence the Kingdom drew its wealth. And so it went for another three generations, the Baeldan kings gaining more power and the common folk becoming Thralls. Of the Green People, few remained. Some perhaps lived in solitude in the deep places of the forests and others fled to the far north beyond the mountains, but most had been killed and the rest had become enslaved with the Thralls, their bloodlines intermixing.

According to the folk legends of Thurmwood, it was one of these Thralls of mixed blood who triggered the downfall of Baelda: Jael, the Amber Maiden. Jael was little more than a child when she won the heart of Garen, a Thrall who worked the emerald mines in the White Hills, but she was already well known and well loved in the surrounding villages. By some accounts, she was a gifted medicine woman who helped those in need. By other accounts, she was simply a joyful lass whose innocence and cheer warmed the hearts of those in her company.

With time Garen proved his love and loyalty to Jael and the two were betrothed, but poor Garen’s heart was not content. The knowledge that their union was destined to be one of pain and servitude must have swayed young Garen’s heart, for when he came upon a great jewel in the mines, he stole it away to give to Jael rather than turn it over to his lord. It was his gift to her, one he hoped would convince her to run away with him and grant them a new life beyond the borders of the kingdom. Jael would not leave her people, and fear and mistrust grew amongst the villagers. By whispered rumors and betrayal amongst his own kin, Garen’s deed was found out.

Baldairn Motte is the focus of the mosaic fantasy novel, The Roads to Baldairn Motte. The novel, written by Garrett Calcaterra, Ahimsa Kerp, and Craig Comer takes on three different viewpoints of the same epic confrontation.

The Ruins of Baldairn Motte

Hem stands against the horde – by Ben Thornton

The fighting is ended now, but I have remained here at the site of battle to help those I may. The destruction here is beyond description. I think even you, having witnessed the battles of King Dermid, would pale and sicken at the sight of so many wasted lives. The injured number in the thousands, and the dead even more. You once asked me if I would ever weep again, after what I had witnessed in Liraeus. I told you then that I didn’t know… I know now—I have not wept, and if the madness here cannot break a man down to tears, nothing ever will.

In any case, my first task was separating the injured as you taught me. The leeches at first were hesitant to leave dying men unattended, but when I directed them to help those who could still be saved, they obeyed. Even so, there were more injured than we could help and with all the local flora trampled to death by so many feet and hooves, there was little in the way of herbs we could gather—the best we could manage was to bind wounds, set bones, and amputate ruined limbs. Even the reflexive healing techniques I learned from the elders of Lireaus proved useless to such mass destruction. For food we have been left with nothing to do but eat the hobbled warhorses left behind. Some of the leeches resisted at first. It is no likable chore to kill an injured horse in the first place, but to then butcher it and roast it on a spit proved too much for some of them. In the end, hunger won out. It always does.

These last few days we have turned our attention to burning the dead, before any pestilence sets in and the smell of decay becomes overwhelming. The weather is turning for the better, and while it is a boon to those injured, the heat turns corpses rancid all the more quickly.

As the injured regain their strength and faculties, I hurry them away to their homes with as much haste as possible. Though there are no gentry here to command them, this war has bred hatred between the northern and southern folk. More than one scuffle has broken out among them. It seems foolish to me—they have more in common with each other than any of the lords who have abandoned them here—but such is the way with common folk. They are set in their ways, and superstitious, the whole lot of them. The southerners have been telling of ghosts that haunt the ancient motte here. This is not the first battle to have been waged here it seems. I hope it will be the last. Our land already has seen too many needless ghosts.

Your Servant,

Basilides

The leech, Basilides, encounters the ruins of Baldairn Motte in the aftermath of a great battle, as part of the mosaic  novel, The Roads to Baldairn Motte. The novel, written by Garrett Calcaterra, Ahimsa Kerp, and Craig Comer takes on three different viewpoints of the same epic confrontation.

Dab of Darkness Interview

The kind folks at Dab of Darkness have posted a new interview with Garrett Calcaterra, Ahimsa Kerp, and myself where we talk about Heinzelmännchen, world building, and the best places to vacation in Middle-Earth.

Check out the interview here.

The Machine Recommends

Ever heard of Eric Brighteyes? How about Titus Groan? Back in October, Garrett Calcaterra asked me to contribute to a post on his blog, The Machine Stops. 15 authors, including the likes of Tim Powers, James Blaylock, and Howard Andrew Jones discuss some of their favorite fantasy novels forgotten by time. If you're looking for some great recommendations by authors whose works are worth checking out in their own right, click on yonder link and enjoy!

The Machine Stops - The Blog of Garrett Calcaterra

Why a Mosaic Novel? Answers at SF Signal

SF Signal has posted an interview with the authors of The Roads to Baldairn Motte. It focuses on why we chose to write a mosaic novel, and the origins of Baldairn. Head on over to SF Signal to take a gander, and if you like, leave a comment!

Read at SF Signal

The Roads to Baldairn Motte - Revised

Starting off the New Year with the exciting news that the revised edition of The Roads to Baldairn Motte is now out from Reputation Books!

It's dark, gritty fantasy, and according to Rogue Blades Entertainment, "...some of the best and most thought provoking studies in heroism at the individual level...."

Reputation Books has posted an excerpt. Click on the Read More link at the bottom of the book overview. Enjoy!

A Yeti Hunt

There are probably thousands of Where do writers get their inspiration? posts out there and an equal number of answers. But for me, nothing compares to getting out and seeing the world. I've been fortunate enough to live abroad and have traveled to many interesting places--both down the street and across the seas. And I use little nuggets from these places throughout my writing. The cultures, the sights, and the smells provide a bounty of rich details.

My friend, Ahimsa Kerp, and I have shared many of these treks, but his travels in 2013 formed a year of a lifetime. From New Zealand to Oregon to Southeast Asia, the photos from his year in review are jaw-dropping.

If you want a little inspiration, I highly recommend you check out his site: are we there Yeti?