Mythos of Evandar: The courtship of Sigurt and Roen

I am beginning a new segment on here. I will be recording the various iterations of the body of myths and lore of Evandar. Some of it will be focused in different regions. And there will be some that are larger and go between multiple groups. I will attempt to make note of where each myth fits in the world. Below is the first iteration of the myth of the courtship of the goddess Roen and the god Sigurt. I wrote this back in the spring of 1997. What changes there may be to it are adjustments for spelling and grammatical errors.
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I begin with the time before time, when Roen, Sigurt, Kaileth, and Morguthu were young and the world just formed. In the eternal darkness between the stars, long before any of us, the gods saw the world. Morguthu, in his cruelness, saw the shining beauty and innocence of the world as a thing to be destroyed. He walked on the earth. From him came plague, sorrow, hatred, and violence. A surge of evil tainted the defenseless children of the First Age.

They battered each other, destroying their brethren of spirit for a perceived gain. Many were fearful, pleading with Morguthu to loosen the death hold he had on the world. Kaileth heard their please and sought the cause. Discovering the pain and anguish of all the folk of the world, he went to his sister. Roen began the arts of healing and with the aid of her brother, she created places of protection.

This proved not to be enough, though. Roen walked the earth, bringing what peace she could. Morguthu tried to attack her, meeting with Kaileth each time. His [Morguthu's] brother was in a region of the world untouched by Morguthu's poisons. After a time, the sounds of sorrow reached him and he awoke from his sleep. Sigurt saw the work being done by Roen and Kaileth. As the pair worked side by side, Sigurt slowly began to fall in love with her [Roen], watching them from a distance. Morguthu saw his brother's growing adoration as was furious. Tempted to seek to destroy everything Roen had created, he brooded.

During this time, Roen and Kaileth reversed most of the harm wrought by Morguthu. The world grew to be almost healthy again. Sigurt saw the immense damage wrought by his brother and began to do what he could to ease the world's pains as well. When Morguthu walked the world again, Roen ans Sigurt had began to become close. Morguthu used all of his arts of deception to make himself as fair as the rising dawn. Kaileth saw him approaching Roen, and knew it was their foe despite the fair face. Kaileth warned his beloved sister that Morguthu was soon to arrive. Taking the form of a sparrow, Kaileth stayed close.

Morguthu dazzled fair Roen's eyes at first. He claimed to have fallen in love with the goddess and wished her to be his bride. A tinge of icy, bitter rage swirled through his guise as Roen turned away. Softly, she told him he was a danger to her and her creations. He insisted she was safe with him and that her creations were as well. She frowned and sternly told him she would not be his.

In a flash fire of rage, he attacked her. With all her strength and power, she banished him from her. After Sigurt had confessed his love, and Roen confessed her's for him, they were wed. Kaileth guided the world as Morguthu began to rage. As Sigurt and Roen celebrated their union, the world knew peace. And thus began the First Age.

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Clearly very different from what I have developed now, you can still see the seeds of the more mature story in this one. Something that I should note is that the spelling of Kaileth changed multiple times through out this very brief story. The very first version of the name of the god of chaos and magic was Kalieth. Somehow, over the many years I have been working on this, the name changed to what it is now. I think it happened about seven years ago, but I'm not entirely sure.

It is also evidence that my writing style was once far less elegant than it is now. One of the things that annoys me about this first version of the story was how repetitive I was. It also bothers me that I kept everything so vague. I am glad that I've made the changes I have over the years. It gives the story greater depth and a sense of history.

Flora et Fauna: Gryphons

Gryphons are considered mythical creatures by the people of Evandar. The tales about them describe them as a cross between an eagle, dragon, and great cat. In the north, the cat is the pumas that roam through out the region. In the south, the cat is the bobcats (which are slightly smaller than the pumas and disinclined towards resting in trees). Every story, however, describes gryphons to be carnivorous and generally creatures of foul temperament. The life cycle of gryphons alters in what region the stories come from. In the north, they are said to have hatched from eggs. In the south, they are said to have been birthed in litters akin to what cats have. In either case, the juvenile gryphon is said to be self sufficient upon its entrance into the world. They are described, functionally, as smaller versions of the adults. Females are said to be particularly nasty towards humans.

The gryphon is a description of an animal that once existed during the First Age. They were formed by the magic of the Deamons and attended their makers/masters much like dogs attend to their owners. Mature gryphons were the size of a horse. They possessed the wings of a true dragon, though they were feathered like an eagle's wing. Their heads were like that of an eagle and their bites could sever limbs easily. They also possessed the ability to spit venom a considerable distance. Their lower body was akin to that of a great cat, complete with claws and a tail. The immature gryphons had the coloration and appearance of a bobcat. Once they reached the size of a pony, however, they shed the bobcat look and looked more like pumas.

Gryphons were considered abhorrent abominations. With the defeats of the Deamons in the Great War, the magical construct of the gryphon destabilized and turned into egg shaped stones. These stones are collected and used for malevolent folk magic. There is no trace of the magical power that shaped the gryphons in these stones, though they look exotic compared to the stones of the region. The stones were small enough to fit in a large man's hand with room to spare. They appear to be fashioned from raw crystal shot through with random dark lines. The gryphon stones are generally considered ill luck and even the most greedy of people will not handle them. Indeed, some people have fashioned facsimile gryphon stones for the purpose of terrifying the receiver. These fake gryphon stones, however are not shot through with the dark lines. 

Locations or Setting Details?

I have hit a little bit of an impasse. My notebooks have a great deal of rough details about locations and about that which is found in them. I feel like I need to draw up a better, more detailed map for Evandar and its immediate vicinity. At the same time, I feel like I need to draw up sketches of plant life and animals found in the region. I am somewhat stuck on which to work on. I am a bit of a loss for where to begin with either subject.

I want to get into the swing of posting on here regularly. The problem is I find myself overwhelmed by all my notes and despair of many any cohesion out of them. I know this sense of futility will pass. Until it does, I ask your forgiveness.

Something On the Side.

When I am not immersed in my own writing, I do a lot of reading. I have a bit of a back log of books to type up reviews for. It is my hope with the beginning of school next week, I can get those finished up and possibly resume my old habit of typing up reviews as I finish up books. If you are interested, check out my Livejournal account. Here is the link to my latest review: http://cydira.livejournal.com/34943.html

If you have any suggestions for books I should review, let me know either in the comments on my posts or with an e-mail. I hope everyone is having a lovely day.

Work space!

In preparation of getting down to serious work in two weeks (because when the boys go back to school, I'm getting cracking on writing stuff), I am gathering up all my notes and supplies. Pictured to the right is my stack of notebooks and folders. Along with all of that written word, there is my trusty cup of coffee which powers my work and one of several mixed media works I have made based on my little world.

The notebook that my coffee is sitting on is falling apart, as the gap in the binding can clearly show up. It is the oldest of my notebooks. I sat down and realized that that notebook turns 20 this year. It was a sobering thought. I have been keeping notes and writing shorts set in this world for almost half my life. I handle that notebook gingerly because it is so prone to falling apart. It has pages falling out, other pages with notes on them shoved into it, and the binding one step away from disintegrating. Still, it is probably the most important of my notebooks. In here is the core of my world building. In here is the details of the story the entire series is going to tell. Yes, they are rough details, but they are written down and therefore precious to me.

The stack of five folders on the left holds the things I had written up on loose leaf paper. The red folder immediately below the picture holds my maps and actual sketches of persons and scenes in the stories. The folder beneath that has the rambling efforts I have made over the years to develop some kind of language for the elfin people and the rudimentary attempts to flesh out a magical system. I haven't done much with that material in the last two years. It was put aside for safe keeping but I have reached the point now that I need to blow the dust off and dig into that work.

The third red folder down beneath the picture has the disorganized material I developed while going through college. Working on my education full time, it made my efforts to work on this stuff challenging. But, somewhere in the midst of it all, I found time to do a series of pictures based off of stuff. Here's a better shot of a nameless protagonist watching the sun set at the edge of Dragonwoood Forest. I did this in 2000.

Office Supplies? YES PLEASE!

It is back to school season. Office supplies are priced dirt cheap to get you in the stores to buy things in bulk for people going back to school. While I am not excited about getting school supplies, I am a little giddy with excitement about acquiring more things to use in my world building. One of my major things is doing idea work long hand. Hence my stack of notebooks and new file card system.

I don't go so far as sniffing that new marker smell, though I know a few people who do. But my little heart goes pitter-pat over those virginal notebooks, the plethora of pens, and all the organizing supplies I could need. I have to go shopping with a list so that I don't get carried away buying things. It makes me feel a little silly to confess this, but I suspect that there are plenty of others who do the same thing.

In my most recent office supply shopping foray, I picked up some sticky tabs to create your own tab divided notebook. As I have been working on organizing all of my back story stuff in to something I could work from more easily, I realized that dividing my material up into their own sections in the notebooks would probably work out exceptionally well for me. I thought about getting a five subject notebook, but I'm not fully decided on that yet.

I realize, however, that to truly make my organized system work, I will have to copy over material from the other notebooks into the new ones to their correct location. It looks like it will be a lot of work to do it by hand. Honestly, a part of me says I should just type it up, but it is a concept that just feels wrong. I admit it, I do a great deal of my writing on the basis of how it makes me feel. I suppose you could to some extent call my writing method emotionally driven. I learned at college, however, that using organizational methods that don't feel appropriate ends in very poor quality of work for me.

My pile of notebooks and journals has been growing again because it is that time of year. The hyper-critical part of my brain decries my collecting of notebooks, journals, and pens as a wasteful thing to do. The rest of me hogties that part of my brain and throws it into the dark basement where even the lone light bulb doesn't work, and then I get on with my work.

Organizing Chaos.

Some authors don't go out and make tons of notes and plans for their books. The NaNoWriMo community lovingly calls them 'pantsers' ie writing by the seat of your pants. Then there are writers like myself who are referred to as 'plotters'. We make outlines and notes of all the details of what we want our book to look like. Some of us only do a rough outline. Others are meticulous and almost look like their final work is a matter of rearranging notes into the correct tense and doing a little window dressing.

I've written works as a 'pantser' and it was an interesting experience. Honestly, I can't say I hated the process but it was very frustrating. I'm still editing that work and finding 'bugs' in it. Two months of writing, in this case, has equaled approximately two years in editing, thus far. Like I said, it was frustrating and the effects still are somewhat frustrating. It was a thrill on the days that work flowed freely from my fingertips to the keyboard. I can understand the allure of that form of "no net, high wire" writing. When it is good, it is a high like nothing else. The bad days, however, were horrific for me because I literally found myself staring at the screen with nothing to write for an hour (which was the longest I could endure it, to be honest). I'm not going to do that to myself again.

I am happiest as a 'plotter' because my work before I write the first draft helps me to get a picture of where I want the story to go, get a feel for the settings, and flesh out characters before I start to play around with them. I previously used notebooks for my plotting. My first attempt at plotting a novel was writing an outline, just as if I was writing an academic paper. I was in high school. It felt like the right thing to do. I still have that outline and the manuscript that went with it. It was all of 6 pages in 12 point Courier New font. I looked at my end product and decided that my outline was too bare.

That was when I grabbed my first notebook and started writing backstory. Today, almost 20 years later, I still go back to that notebook and use details from it in what I'm writing now. My story has evolved considerably. I have a stack of notebooks that is approximately a full foot worth of paper that I used to develop the world I'm writing in. Characters that were created in those notebooks are featured in my work today. Some of the things that I thought were side tangents at the time have turned into core parts of the mythos of the world of Evandar. And things that I thought were fixed and never change have turned into secondary or tertiary elements of the major story arc behind the series, if not dropped to the side all together.

I've a new way to approach character development from those bare bones outlines of years passed. I have written up character profiles that read like miniature dossiers that describe everything from physical appearance to major life events and motivations. I am now using a note card system that condenses these profiles to a few lines. On a 3x5 index card, I note the following:

Given name/nickname the character is referenced to most. Apparent age and actual age. Gender. Their full name and aliases. Their likes, dislikes, and interests. The one to three word summary of their strengths and weaknesses. A quote that is their most frequent or defining statement. And their nemesis with the reason why.

I have also moved to using 3x5 cards to work up rough descriptions of settings and props. The 3x5 card thing is new, but the concept of giving a concise description of the relevant details is one that I had been doing for years. It was less organized, however, and finding my notes was not easy or pleasant. With the note card system, however, I can just flip through a few cards in a given section of my box and pick out what I need. It makes it possible to use characters in a consistent fashion through out the work by way of referencing the major details of who they are off my cards.

It also makes keeping my settings organized a lot easier. I can group geographic features together and organize them by region. It helps me to make sure that I describe the same place the same way each time it is encountered in the story. Sure, there will be minor variations to the descriptions because there will always be new little things to notice about a place when you go there. It happens in the real world all the time. Weather changes, plants grow and die, and buildings are erected or torn down on a regular (and surprisingly rapid) basis in our world. It makes very little sense not to reflect that in the setting of your story within a realistic fashion.

My prop cards are an idea that I stole from a LARP I participated in years ago. They had prop cards for player characters, because we didn't carry around things like mock high explosives, mock weapons, or 5 lb boxes of $100 bills. (It was a fun LARP that got a bit crazy at times. Some of that craziness... ok, a fairly large chunk of it was of my making. Mischief is my middle name, after all.)  I thought the prop card was a pretty genius thing. As I looked at it and thought about it, I realized that I could take that concise description of the item, what it does, and how it works and use it in my writing efforts. Now, whenever I need a prop that is exotic or special, I can just check my list and see if I have something suited for the purpose. And if I don't, I create one and a card for it. Then, every time that prop shows up, it has a consistent set of rules for how it works so that we don't have strange things happening at a spooky distance for no apparent reason. (Because sometimes strange things happen at a spooky distance for plot related reasons that are revealed eventually, so you can't completely cut that out.)

I have just started a new set of cards. They are my ritual cards and my conflict/consequences cards. The ritual cards help me keep track of magic stuff in my fantasy setting. My conflict/consequences cards serve to jumpstart ideas for how to have characters interact with each other, themselves, and the environment. While I could just pants the conflict things, I like having rules to work within and for my conflicts to possess some minimum measure of logic. It has always annoyed me when I encounter a conflict that fails to serve any purpose in a story, be it for the over all plot of the story or character development. Because I suspect that my readers would be upset with the same things for the same reasons, I developed this set of cards to prevent that from happening.

Amusingly, with all of this effort to organize my ideas, my workspace is chaos. I have piles of notebooks at hand on the desk and on the small table at my side. I have my box of note cards and some random sticky notes on the notebooks. Loose papers that relate to various projects (and stuff from my kids) are mixed with things like the stubs from bills I paid last week. And, then there is my stack of four tarot decks and two rune sets that hang out on the corner of my desk. Sometimes, when I am really stuck on something, I will do a little divination. Nine times out of ten, it works to get me out of the creative blocks I find myself in. And all this is how my desk looks right now.

For different projects, different notebooks come out and, when I need them, reference books will be out as well. (Yes, I am that author who will make sure that their 12th Century CE character has the correct language and clothes. I will have the stack of history and language books at my side to ensure it.) There is a lot of chaos in my creative workspace. (We won't talk about my fiber arts stuff except to only to say that there is a whole room dedicated to it and walking through there is challenging at times.) But through my notebooks, notes, and cards, I have a thread of order that ties everything together. It may only be in my mind, but it is there.