The Waybetween

Snowflake Method: Round 4, Pt. 2 – Paragraphical Paranthetical Parabolic Peregrin Falcons!

I don’t know what we’re yelling about.

In round four of the Snowflake outlining method, I’m to expand every sentence of my one-paragraph (make that two paragraph) novel summary into a paragraph of its own. By my count that was 10 separate paragraphs. In part 1 of this round, I wrote six paragraphs, which means I’ve only got four more to go this time. Let’s get at it!

Here’s the second paragraph in my original ~~one~~ two-paragraph summary:

7) After toiling away in her new role for some time, Len is approached by an Eldar Thing, an empty wurm that burrows through the stars. 8) It tells her of another place she might find her lost husband, indeed *everyone* that has been lost to the winnowing dark. 9) If she were to travel to that evil place, perhaps she could free them all from oblivion… 10) In the end, Len must choose: will she traverse the Abyss to save her husband or will she seal away its evil power forever?

Now let’s work on expanding that out, shall we?

7) After toiling away in her new role for some time, Len is approached by an Eldar Thing, an empty wurm that burrows through the stars. This wurm calls itself Sloeurth and claims to exist beyond Time and Space, beyond the Waybetween and the Void, beyond our understanding of existence itself. Should the Void swallow up the entire universe, Sloeurth would be unaffected, and could move into and through the new universe or back into the vacuous nothing left in its wake as free as a butterfly on the breeze. It has seen countless universes come and go in this way, or so it says.

8) It tells her of another place she might find her lost husband, indeed everyone that has been lost to the winnowing dark. Every soul lost to the Void, every world or Shard it has devoured is deposited – where else, but the belly of the beast? – in the Abyss. She could cross through the Void with Sloeurth’s aid and use her powers as a Dreamcatcher to “tether” the Abyss with the Spider’s web, and if she did…

9) If she were to travel to that evil place, perhaps she could free them all from oblivion… But of course there’s a catch. You don’t go diving into the slavering maw of the beast expecting not to be bitten. The nightmares harassing Slumberland and the other Shard Worlds in the Waybetween are coming from somewhere, obviously. And what of Nemo’s Nightmare King he’s so keen to take vengeance on? Len doesn’t trust this wurm, and why should she?

10) In the end, Len must choose: will she traverse the Abyss to save her husband or will she seal away its evil power forever? On the one hand, it sounds so easy, get in, get out — get everyone out. Save her husband and the entire universe. But it can’t really be that easy, right? There’s gotta be monsters to battle, impossible dangers to navigate, and, like, a final boss. Right? Even with Elayne’s help, what if it’s too much for Len? What if she doesn’t just fail, what if she exposes the Waybetween to ever-increasing horrors and despair somehow worse than the breaking of an entire universe’s heart?

Okay, I guess that’s… it? So, sure, that last paragraph is a little fourth wall breaky, and doesn’t offer a ton of new information about the novel. I don’t want to spoil everything right away, but I didn’t want to redact a bunch of this section, so that’s what I went with. Now that step four of the Snowflake Method is out of the way, let’s see what’s up next in step five.

” Step 5) Take a day or two and write up a one-page description of each major character and a half-page description of the other important characters. These “character synopses” should tell the story from the point of view of each character.”

Ah, interesting. So, now I get to write some more backstory-ish stuff to expand on the bios I wrote for Len, Zieg, Nemo, and Elayne. This will almost certainly have to be private or at least heavily [REDACTED] if I post it to wordpress. We’ll see. I’ll handwrite them first and I’ll see you when I’m done. Thanks for reading!

Snowflake Method: Round 4, Pt. 1 – Paragraphs on Paragraphs

Or how we dig into the meat and potatoes.

So in this round, I’m supposed to take EVERY sentence in the one-paragraph summary of the novel’s plot and write a new paragraph for EACH of them. And I wrote a two-paragraph summary in the first place. So I’ve got something like 10 new paragraphs to write, 40 new sentences. Okay. Here we go.

Here’s the two-paragraph summary I’ve already got. Let’s add numbers.

1) Surviving the end of her world, the shopkeeper’s wife discovers a vast, broken universe. 2) It’s all breaking down, the Spider and her Dreamcatchers struggle to pull things back together, and Len has lost everything. 3) Ziegander the Abysswalker gives Len an opportunity to see her husband again, but in all her searching all she finds are Shards of sundered worlds in peril of being swallowed up by the Void just as her world was. 4) She finds her calling. 5) With the powers vested in her as a new Dreamcatcher she can link Shard worlds to the Spider’s web to prevent them being lost to the Void, and she resolves to find and save as many as she can. 6) If her husband is out there she’ll find and save him too. But if not…

Right. 10 new paragraphs. I can do this.

1) Surviving the end of her world, the shopkeeper’s wife discovers a vast, broken universe. A great, black raven bears her through the stars. She doesn’t know where the creature came from or even what’s happened, but she is alive — and alone. They come to a street corner, paved asphalt and concrete with wrought-iron fencing, a streetlight, a bench, and a man in chains. There’s scarcely room for the giant bird to land on this shard, but it is here where Len’s journey begins.

2) It’s all breaking down, the Spider and her Dreamcatchers struggle to pull it all back together, and Len has lost everything. “Ha! Well, there’s one I’ve not seen yet,” the chained man says of the great raven, “Alright, then, where are we headed?” “We…” Len looks about falteringly, her eyes lingering on the impossibly gargantuan spider weaving in the distance, “I don’t… where are we?” “Right,” the man mutters to himself. He introduces himself and explains what the Switchboard and the Waybetween are.

3) Ziegander the Abysswalker gives Len an opportunity to see her husband again, but in all her searching all she finds are Shards of sundered worlds in peril of being swallowed up by the Void just as her world was. “Lost husband?” he narrows his eyes and turns to look into the distance, “If he’s out there, your best bet is with the Dreamcatchers. Maybe you should pay Slumberland a visit.”

4) She finds her calling. Len meets with Nemo, the Prince of Slumberland who asks her to assist his Master at Arms in sealing a portal from which nightmares have invaded Slumberland from the Void. When they return, the Master at Arms reports to Nemo that she proved to be valuable aid and so Nemo agrees to train her as a new Dreamcatcher. To this end, Nemo grants her a spool of silver thread and a ring of keys.

5) With the powers vested in her as a new Dreamcatcher Len can link Shard worlds to the Spider’s web to prevent them being lost to the Void, and she resolves to find and save as many as she can. She can even bind lost souls to the web to save them from oblivion, and tether them to herself or to a Shard so that even death, such as it is given the broken nature of things, cannot pluck them prematurely from the Spider’s web. Travelling the Void on the back of her giant raven, Len begins her mission, and soon finds the shards Ticonderos and New Haven, using her silver thread to secure them against the Void, and she finds her friend Elayne out amongst the stars, tethering the knightess to herself.

6) If her husband is out there, she’ll find and save him too. Unfortunately, search as she might, Len does not find him, nor any sign of the world they and Elayne lived on. She just wants to know that he’s safe, that he’s alive. She doesn’t want to be with him anymore, but she still loves him. Elayne hated him, ever since they first met. Elayne can’t understand why Len cares so much about finding him. All he ever did was keep her locked up in that shop of his. Just come to Ticonderos with me and we’ll rebuild The Garden, Elayne thinks dejectedly.

Phew! Okay, that’s enough blogging for now. Let’s split this one into two parts. I’ll tackle the second paragraph and the last set of four new paragraphs in the next one. Thanks for reading!

Snowflake Method: Round Three, Pt. 4

The Shopkeeper’s Wife only has four main characters (but a ton of side and minor characters), and so after this bio write-up, I can move onto the 4th actual stage of the Snowflake outlining method which is… (looks it up)… yikes. I’m supposed to take the one-paragraph summary of my novel and expand every sentence of that paragraph into its own paragraph. And I wrote a two paragraph summary. Anyway. Let’s worry about that another time… hehehe, I’m in trouble.

For this last part of Round Three, we’ve got Len’s friend, the Knightess Elayne.

I don’t want to give too much away here, but Elayne and Len came from the same cursed world, Elayne was supportive of Len after Len left her husband and together Len and Elayne opened a sort of bar/restaurant/hotel establishment where weary adventurers and would-be-world-savers could come for rest and refreshment. And then their entire cursed world got swallowed up by the Void. Len thought she’d lost everything and everyone, but while searching for her husband, Len found Elayne adrift among the stars. Quickly, Len tethered her to the Spider’s web and now Elayne is protected from the Void.

Character’s name: Elayne
One-sentence summary of her story: In romantic love with Len, Elayne is torn between protecting her from both physical and emotional harm and helping her achieve her goals.
Elayne’s motivations, or what she wants abstractly: Though a skilled and efficient melee combatant, Elayne truly wishes only to spread peace and mercy to those suffering pain.
Elayne’s goals, or what does she want concretely: Elayne is in love with Len and wants a romantic relationship with her, to settle down together somewhere safe where Elayne can protect her.
Elayne’s conflict: As far as Elayne can tell, Len is not interested in women. Not only is Len not interested in women, she’s still totally hung up on her husband even though she left him. Perhaps worse than that, Elayne’s own desire to have Len for herself and to protect her and keep her safe has her reminding herself of Len’s husband… and Elayne hated Len’s husband.
Her epiphany: Hmm… it pains her to even consider this, but… maybe Len’s husband does deserve a second chance… not with Len, certainly not with herself, but maybe just at life in general…
A one-paragraph summary of Elayne’s storyline:
From a long-forgotten order of knights and knightesses devoted to giving the dying a peaceful, merciful death, Elayne traveled to a land soaked in suffering, locked in what seemed an eternal struggle, where the dead seemed unable to truly die and would rise again and again, driving the living and dead alike mad with the futility of it all. There she fought many battles against monsters and undead and there she met Len and her shopkeep husband. But after their entire world became lost to the Void, Elayne was left drifting amongst the stars in a sort of suspended animation. Too strong and pure to be diminished by the Void entirely, she slept until Len, now a Dreamcatcher, happened upon her entirely by chance. Together again, Elayne stands by as her Dreamcatcher’s Knightess, her sword at Len’s service, but doubt begins to creep into Elayne’s heart as she travels The Waybetween with the woman she loves. It’s not right, is it? Len left her husband for a reason, why should they find him now, if he’s even out here at all? Why shouldn’t they just rebuild The Garden and live in peace, together? Could Elayne really bring herself to continue along Len’s side if it meant dropping her off with that man again in the end?

Snowflake Method: Round Three, Part Three

With the power of Public Domain, our little boy’s all growed up, now!

For our third main character, we focus on Nemo, Prince of Slumberland!

Maybe you remember, but, well, likely not, but there was a very anime-esque, almost studio-Ghibli-esque animated movie released back in the early 90s (in fact, Hayao Miyazaki passed on directing it due to a lack of artistic freedom) called Little Nemo Adventures in Slumberland. Apparently it was a box office disaster in Japan that went through several screenwriters and a troubled development. Honestly, you’d never know if you watched it today, it’s just a great animated movie. Somehow, despite how poorly it did in Japan, it was brought over to the U.S. where it not only bombed again, it also spawned a side-scrolling Capcom-developed NES game that was generally well-received. The movie and the video game; however, were both based on a comic strip first released in 1905 (!), written and illustrated by Windsor McKay. The last strip was published in 1926, making the entire work more than 70 years old, meaning all of the material created for the comic strip are Public Domain now.

I loved the movie and I played many, many hours of the NES game (it was one of the notorious “Nintendo hard” games). Little Nemo has been a creative influence on me as long as I can remember. I drew my own Nemo-centric comic in high-school, though the scope of my project then was a bit beyond my artistic ability to faithfully render. I’ve always wanted to do something involving Nemo, and now I have the perfect place for him. Not just Slumberland, yes, he remains Prince of Slumberland, but, of course, The Waybetween!

Character’s Name: simply Nemo
One sentence summary of Nemo’s storyline: Unable to return to the waking world, Nemo is both stuck in Slumberland and stuck ruling it, relying on the power of the Silver Heralds to find Princess Camille and her father King Morpheus.
His motivation, what does Nemo want in the abstract: Nemo wishes he could return home if only for a little while.
His goal, what does Nemo want concretely: Nemo wants to kill the Nightmare King and rescue Camille and her father.
His conflict, what is stopping him: A number of things. He’s got Slumberland to rule and it’s people to protect. Perhaps more fundamentally however, the Nightmare King and the Void are one. And just as Len’s search of the Void for her husband is difficult, so is Nemo’s for the same reasons. Beyond that, “killing” the Void is no easy task, perhaps impossible, or if not then potentially Cosmically destabilizing.
His epiphany: There is something out there, beyond the Void, protecting the Nightmare King.
And finally, our a little one-paragraph summary of Nemo’s storyline.
Little Nemo grew from a boy and into a young man and throughout those years enjoyed both frequent visits to Slumberland, growing alongside his childhood friend Princess Camille, as well as celebrity as the superhero called Dream Master in the waking world. During one such super-heroic escapade, Dream Master was [REDACTED]. Nemo himself doesn’t know the exact circumstances, but he does realize he is trapped in Slumberland and unable to return to his normal life. He’s spent several years there now and since getting stuck there, Camille and her father have gone missing. Now Nemo must rule the people of Slumberland and contend with Nightmares from the Void. To this end, Nemo and Xaphnos, his Master at Arms, recruit and train new Silver Heralds to go out into the Void to search for the Princess and the King and to find some way to defeat the Nightmare King. But in his time spent toward these goals, Nemo has learned that something isn’t quite what it seems regarding the Silver Heralds’ Duty or the Waybetween itself…

Snowflake Method: Round Three – Part Two

This one’s for Ziegander!

My twitter handle. My online handle all across the web for many years.

Ziegander was a character in a “fantasy epic” I started writing when I was like 16. It wasn’t good. It revolved around swords imbued with *absolute* elemental powers over, you guessed it, Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water. And also Light and Shadow. There was a complex mythology and all that, and a world-engulfing struggle for dominance over the swords, but I just progressed everything insanely too fast, and it never went anywhere.

Ziegander, in that storyline, was the first of the Fiendslayers, Fiends being birthed into the world by the hatred borne by the world’s first murder. He later became one of four Oathkeepers sworn into the service of the Lady of Shadow to protect her son, also the son of the Lord of Light, from the Lord of Light’s vengeance. In some way or another, he had failed in his mission and was cursed to become a Fiend himself, chained and forced into servitude for his misdeeds.

Anyway, that story didn’t go anywhere. Maybe someday it will. But for now, Ziegander is among the lost and forgotten. Perfect for the broken universe of The Waybetween. Within the Waybetween, Ziegander remains chained for a sin that perhaps he was never aware he should not commit, the sin of trying to do too much, and failing. Ziegander is doomed to watch over a street corner adrift within the Waybetween that he calls the Switchboard. From there he sends wayward souls off to Shard Worlds where they might find purpose and perhaps gives guidance to those with the will to become new Silver Heralds of the Spider.

Image by zergvsgenin from deviantart.com

Anyway, what was Snowflake Method, step 3 about again?

His name: Ziegander, the [Redacted]
One sentence summary of his storyline: Ah, this gets interesting now. “Chained to the Switchboard, Ziegander receives and unloads all newly tethered souls from the Void and into the Waybetween.”
His motivation, or what he wants abstractly: Zieg wants to know how the universe became broken in the first place and how to stop that from happening again in the future…
His goal, or what he wants concretely: Zieg wants to escape from the Switchboard.
His conflict, or what prevents him from reaching his goal: The Spider, a power as ancient as she is powerful, has bound him to the Switchboard and he is not remotely the match for her.
His epiphany: Maybe Len can succeed where he failed. Maybe she shouldn’t…
What follows is a heavily redacted one-paragraph summary of Ziegander’s storyline.
“The Void will swallow it all up someday, that is its role. The Spider will work to stop this, but [REDACTED]. What she cannot save is sealed away, deep within an [REDACTED], never to see the light of day again. Ziegander was, some say, the first of The Spider’s Heralds, but with the powers granted to him he [REDACTED]. Now, as punishment for [REDACTED], Ziegander, also called [REDACTED], is shackled to a tiny Shard set adrift in the Void, forced into the role of welcoming all newcomers to the Waybetween and finding for each of them a purpose. But when one of these newcomers comes back to him for advice, advice that perhaps ONLY he is qualified to give, advice regarding a certain [REDACTED], what will Ziegander say to her? Knowing what he knows, knowing what he wants, would he doom this woman to a fate so similar to his own to sate his [REDACTED]?”

Waybetween 1st Novel: Snowflake Method, Round 3

Fight!

Ahem, ok, this is a pretty intensely involved round. I am to distinguish the main characters of the book and create a one-page sort of bio for each of them. I am compiling a dossier of main characters, if you will. So, first comes identifying the main characters from the rest of the “chaff.”

Obviously, Len, the shopkeeper’s wife, is the mainest of the main characters. I realize calling her the shopkeeper’s wife, as if that is her sole identity is reductionist. That *was* her sole identity. It is to serve as a very stark foil for the life she discovers for herself coming out from the shadow of an abusively overprotective husband and for the total badass she becomes on her own as she wanders the Waybetween after her world is swallowed by the Void.

Image from Neverwinter Nights, I unfortunately cannot find the artist, DM if you know.

Okay, then there’s a whole host of other characters that are probably minor… Coal, Ziegander, The Spider… Nemo, Prince of Slumberland is likely a major character… there’s the wurm, Sloeurth, another minor character. Who else could be considered a major character? Let’s see, Len will venture to the three major shards I want to launch The Waybetween RPG with, Ticonderos, New Haven, and Slumberland. Ziegander is probably worth upgrading to major character. There is another character from Len’s past I am considering having her find lost amongst the Void and tethering to the Waybetween, a powerful knightess named Elayne. I wouldn’t be sure what to do with her if I introduced her into the narrative, but I do think having Len have a strong female friend during the story would be beneficial to her as a character and also to the readers. I think one clear, main protaganist and three supporting major characters with a bunch of other minors works well enough for a novella. Let’s move forward with Len, Ziegander, Nemo, and Elayne as my major characters.

So, we’ll start with Len. I need to establish:

Her name: We’ve done that.
One sentence summary of her storyline: We’ve already done that as well, but let’s get maybe more specific – “After leaving her controlling husband, Len’s world is utterly destroyed but miraculously she survives to travel the cosmos, save other worlds and lost souls, and become a hero in her own right.” Longer, but more descriptive of her personal journey.
Her motivation, or what she wants abstractly: Len wants to prove her worth and be accepted and loved as an equal and individual.
Her goal, or what she wants concretely: Len wants to save her husband from being lost to the Void.
Her conflict, or what prevents her from reaching her goal: Finding her husband is like finding a needle in an infinite haystack suspended in an even more infinite ocean of fog…
Her epiphany, or what will she learn, how will she change: Len will learn that she is better off without her husband, and she will discover a strength and resolve she didn’t know she had when she was with him.
And finally a one-paragraph summary of her storyline. I don’t want to spoil the novel for anyone who wishes to read it in the future, so I’m not going to include Len’s one-paragraph summary in full as it is almost literally just a one-paragraph summary of the book’s main plot. But I will write it by hand and include it below with any spoilers redacted. I’ll see you tomorrow with Ziegander’s one-page document that will almost certainly also contain spoilers and redactions.
“After leaving her controlling husband, Len’s world is utterly destroyed but miraculously she survives to travel the cosmos, save other worlds and lost souls, and become a hero in her own right. On the wings of a mysterious black raven, Len is spirited to a street corner suspended in the stars where she meets a mysterious man named Ziegander. There she learns of The Spider and her Silver Heralds, and how, if Len were to become one herself, she would have the power to tether her lost husband, if he’s still out there somewhere, to the Spider’s web and thus prevent him from being taken by the Void. From there she is sent to [REDACTED] to meet with [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and become a Silver Herald herself. She [REDACTED] and begins scouring the Void so she can save her lost husband, and though she [REDACTED] and even finds and saves an old friend from her own lost world, she [REDACTED]. She is eventually confronted by the wurm, Sloeurth, who presents her with an alternative path, one that might save all who have been [REDACTED]: she could venture to [REDACTED] and open a door to [REDACTED] – [REDACTED]…”

Sorry so much needed to be redacted!

Okay, so that gets us 1/4 the way through Step 3. Phew. This is going to be a lot of work, but hopefully I can have this outline done by the end September so I can be primed and ready to fly through writing the actual novel in November! Sorry for the break from Ticonderos content, more is coming, on that front too, I have a lot to write for the human side of Ticonderos, which is next on the docket as far as the shard world is concerned, but I’m going to finish Snowflake Step 3 before I start dumping THAT on you all. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow!

Planning my first Waybetween Novel – The Snowflake Method

I plan to hit the ground running with my first ever novel, and my first novel set in the Waybetween! To that end, I will be needing to do some planning and do some outlining, and I’ve already begun using the Snowflake method. What’s the Snowflake method? I am glad you asked.

The Snowflake Method – https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/

So, the method has 10 steps to designing your novel and I’ve completed the first two. Step one is come up with a one-sentence summary of your novel. Here’s mine:

“Surviving the end of her world, the shopkeeper’s wife discovers a vast, broken universe.”

Under 15 words, no character names, pretty evocative if you ask me, but general enough not to give too much away. We’ll get more specific in the later steps. Like Step 2, which is to expand the one sentence into a five sentence paragraph. I ended up writing like ten sentences and separated that into two paragraphs. I think it’ll be fine. Here’s what I came up with:

Surviving the end of her world, the shopkeeper’s wife discovers a vast, broken universe. It’s all breaking down, the Spider and her Silver Heralds struggle to pull things back together, and Len has lost everything. The mysterious Ziegander gives Len an opportunity to see her husband again, but in all her searching all she finds are Shards of sundered worlds in peril of being swallowed up by the Void just as her world was. She finds her calling. With the powers vested in her as a Silver Herald she can link Shard worlds to the Spider’s web to prevent them being lost to the Void, and she resolves to find and save as many as she can. If her husband is out there she’ll find and save him too. But if not…

After toiling away in her new role for some time, Len is approached by an Eldar Thing, an empty wurm that burrows through the stars. It tells her of another place she might find her lost husband, indeed *everyone* that has been lost to the winnowing dark. If she were to travel to that evil place, perhaps she could free them all from oblivion… In the end, Len must choose: will she traverse the Abyss to save her husband or will she seal away its evil power forever?

And that’s my Step 2! I’ve got a one-sentence summary, and a more high-level sort of overview/pitch for what the meat and potatoes of the novel will entail. What do you think? Next up for Step 3 I will be going into heavier detail about each character, developing a sort of dossier on all of the major characters I plan to include in the novel, who they are, what makes them tick, etc, etc. But we’ll save that for another day. Hope you like what you’re reading! See you next time!

Shardbuilding: Dhogem Spirituality

Well, since I’ve gotten the general descriptions for all of the major Dhogem territories in The Deeps, next up in that vein would be the minor territories, and then some zoomed in looks at specifics within the territories. However, before we get into all that, I want to give some background information on one of the more formative blocks behind any civilization, religious or secular, and that’s it’s spirituality. In this case, Dhogem spirituality.

Urgmyr, one of the Eldar Wurms, slithers amongst the cosmic Sea of Severance that divides Ticonderos from the heavens. — Art by jaxxblackfox @ deviantart

The Dhogem worship a variety of gods and goddesses and revere an additional host of cosmic entities and other strange, even dark, powers. But all of these spring from the more foundational beliefs of their ancient ancestors, the most basic principle among them being that Life is Magic. This singular tenet can be found in practice throughout modern Dhogem society in all facets of their daily lives and is derived from their oldest creation myths.

While the religious Dhogem of the Great Chasm may worship different deities than those of the Vaults of the Serpent Lord, their worship can all be traced back to the Stone Tapestry, a series of carvings and cave drawings found in the deep caverns northwest of the Sea of Ice that depicts what theologians describe as a tale of cosmic struggle, a tug of war if you will, an endless cycle of death and rebirth in which a world of darkness and its pantheon of demons and devils struggles in vain against the might of a Shining Force who crossed the Sea of Severance through the Wurm Holes of Urgmyr and his ilk to defeat these dark ones and establish a new world, a world of light. This Shining Force then stopped up the Holes with warm, glowing orbs of light in which they incubate their children, those beings that will someday become new gods and goddesses for the Dhogem to worship. It is believed that when all of the Void Children have been born from these chambers, the demons and devils will return through the Holes and wage war with the Shining Force and yet another world will be shaped from the remnants of the battle, one fit only for demons and devils and their hellspawn. Thus, life on Ticonderos is owed to the victory of the Shining Force over darkness, and the world they created.

Much more can be said about the Stone Tapestry and its myths of creation, about the Eldar Wurms that burrow Holes through the Sea of Severance, and of course, about the Shining Force and the gods and goddesses (and Void Children) that make it up, but for now, I want to talk more about that colloquial truism, Life is Magic. Dhogem society is based around a kind of “necromancy” – to use a word borrowed from our society, a word used by the humans on the surface of Ticonderos to speak of death magic. Dhogem are keenly attuned to the magic that is Life itself, this magic runs deep through the bowels of the earth, into the roots of the trees on the surface and the great fungal systems in The Deeps, and it runs through the veins of all living creatures. There is power in the blood and marrow of the ecosystems within The Deeps, and the Dhogem have harnessed this power for centuries, using their unique practices to preserve, reuse, and repurpose that living magic from the bodies of the dead. Powerful tools, weapons, and other items are created from sinew, hide, shell, and bone inheriting the properties of the creatures they were harvested from. A smith’s hammer is cast from the chitin of many fire beetles to bestow it with flames that help the hammer to shape metal. A suit of scale mail shaped from the still living hide of a fearsome szaszilisq is grafted to its wearer in a symbiotic relationship, the wearer allowing the armor to live on, the armor allowing its wearer to breathe torrents of lightning. Even carving mundane things from bones, like chairs or spoons, is done with a reverence and care reserved in Dhogem society for magical rituals. In this way, even the most secular of Dhogem communities are suffused with this spirituality, this tug of war between life and death, this notion that Life is Magic.

There are some sects deep within the Dhogem religious communities, not secretive per se, just not widespread or well-known, who believe Ticonderos itself is dead, who attribute even the gathering of resources such as water, gemstones, and ores with the same magic the rest of Dhghemon would to harvesting blood and bones from the creatures of The Deeps. Perhaps there are those among even these sects who secretly comtemplate and scheme in the aim of bringing their world “back to life.” One is left to wonder, if Ticonderos is dead, what would bringing her back to life mean for the rest of the things living on and within her?

The Dhogem of the Deeps, Pt. 6 – The Flameblossom Grotto

Tucked away toward the southwest corner of The Deeps, lies a bloom of fungus and flowers, struck through by miles of lava flow, unlike anything else found on Ticonderos. While much of the flora and rot found within the blooms of the Fungal Consortium harbor some magical property or another, the luminescent red, orange, and yellow caps and petals found in the Flameblossom Grotto, through which elusive and capricious fire sprites dance, are of an especially legendary potency.

Best image I could find lol, it only sort of fits my description below of the Flameblossoms of Flameblossom Grotto

The area has been long contested, gruesomely fought over for centuries by Dhogem Kobolds, Consortium Druids, and by the soldier ants of Queen Perfexia and her Eternal Hegemony – a super-intelligent colony of giant ants that lives in a series of lavish tunnels to the west of the Grotto.

The many fungi offer a variety of magical powers, from enhanced senses or reflexes to increased magical resistance, but the true jewel of the Grotto is of course, the Flameblossoms themselves. What begins as a small yellow bud blooms into what seems to be a fiery orange rose, matte and opaque but shifting in hue and intensity like the flickering of a campfire. When the Flameblossom has matured however, and reached the peak of its magical powers, it opens further, like a water lily, and transforms from a fiery orange to a deep, almost crystalline, translucent ruby with baubles of yellow and orange smoldering at the center. It is this flower that so many have bled and died to possess, for immunity to flames, the ability to see and interact with ghosts, as well as augmented mental, magical, and physical attributes await those that consume it properly.

Though not recognized as such by the rest of Dhghemon, the Flameblossom Grotto is currently ruled by the only Dhogem to call themselves King and Queen. King Lugiarh and Queen Margo of Todestone rule over an eclectic court comprised of Dhogem and the mushroom-folk common to fungal blooms across The Deeps called Myconids. Todestone is their seat of power, a fungal fortress hidden deep within the Grotto, while their subjects dwell in various townships and baronies along the bloom’s edges. The royal family tightly controls and hoards the power of the Flameblossoms and the rest of the Grotto’s magical fungi, exclusively exposing themselves and their offspring to their fantastic effects throughout several generations, ensuring for themselves an almost genetic magical superiority and “divine right” to rule over serfs who may only remain to be ruled in this way for the hope of sampling even a taste of the Grotto’s mythic fruits.

The Dhogem of the Deeps, Pt. 5 – The Fungal Consortium

Throughout The Deeps are stretches of fungal bloom that can only be described as forests or even jungles to those used to life above ground. These humid thickets of rot and rebirth are home not only to towering mushroom “trees” and spongey undergrowths of a variety of mosses and molds vying for dominance over the “forest floor,” but also to elusive predators and shambling, zombie-like mushroom-men. While these blooms sound virulent and hostile to life as we typically understand it, and they certainly can be that, they also provide valuable resources for those Dhogem with the heart and stomach to challenge them.

*Just* *one among many fungal blooms shedding their bioluminescent mystery upon the remote areas of the Deeps*

Dhogem of many cultures and societies rely on these fungal blooms for “lumber” and often as reliable supplies of exotic foodstuffs and spices for their dishes based on monster ecology; however these only scratch the surface of what the fungal blooms have to offer — and to hide.

Behind the sweltering veil of shade and decay these outcrops of natural resources also conceal a vast network of magic as well. Magic writ into the bones of the earth, songs sung by Eldar Beings whose notes can only be fully appreciated by those able to feel with hearts that beat as one with the World That Was, or by the Void Children, with voices yet unsinging, who wait to be born within the incubation chambers of the Stars, those mythical balls of flame set in the Swallowing Sea of Severance that Dhogem have only dreamt about.

Hidden within these halls that hang upon the edge of life and death, a very old council of druidic Dhogem tend to the rot, operating in secrecy, observing the state of affairs all across The Deeps. They have outposts in these heady blooms nearby all of the major Dhogem settlements and spies everywhere the spores of their domain can spread. In the rare circles in which any information of these druids is known, rumors are spread that it is the spores of the blooms themselves that control even the Dhogem of the Consortium and that, given the opportunity, these fungi would enslave every living thing that moves in The Deeps.