Black Sun: A Disciplined Triumph

If I ever teach a course on writing a fantasy novel, I’m going to start with Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse. Black Sun’s world is new and unique, taking inspiration from histories and cultures that are painfully underrepresented in fantasy, and yet it’s completely approachable. The book is over four hundred pages and yet it flies by. Black Sun is a work of discipline. No word is ever wasted, Roanhorse doesn’t even use a ‘she said’ at the end of dialogue unless absolutely necessary. It’s just so—impressive.

Black Sun takes place in the Meridian, a world with its inspiration rooted in pre-Columbian Americas. It’s a rich, complex place with painful history, diverse myths, cultures and a whole lot of bubbling tension and yet the book is lacking anything approaching an info dump. I never felt like Roanhorse slowed down and laid it out for me and yet, I was never confused or felt like I was missing something. It’s a touch that is light, yet deep. The book’s world merges with the story and just keeps moving.

And this book moves, of its many strengths pacing might be Black Sun’s strongest. I can see a younger Matt finishing this book off in a day or two. It’s chapters are quick, sliding from scene to scene, but not overwhelming. It still takes time to build its characters and deepen its conspiracies, but no chapter feels like filler, nothing switched on my editor brain, I was in the novel’s flow every time I picked it up.

The story at Black Sun’s core is simple, cutting between Serapio and Xiala’s journey to the city of Tova and Sun Priest Naranpa’s struggles in Tova trying to keep the metropolis together and order in the ranks of the Watchers. Xiala was my favorite character. She’s somehow both a roguish captain, drinking and sleeping her way through the Meridian and yet, the most practical person in the book. Naranpa was painfully relatable and her chapters were where the most intrigue happened and Serapio…well, the less I give away about Serapio the best.

I will say that Serapio is another triumph. His visage is striking, and a lot of writers would make him into some unstoppable badass, heightening his frightening elements and mystery. Roanhorse though, does a lot with the character and makes one of the most human mystery boxes I’ve bumped into. Whatever else Serapio might be, he’s always a person first.

I will say for all of my love of Black Sun if felt like a first step rather than a complete novel. This too though, feels like an act of discipline on Roanhorse’s part as the book is the first in a planned trilogy. It’s a firm first step that does a solid job of setting up it’s world, it’s characters and it’s conflict. It hits it’s climax like it says it will and then ends in a moment that felt sweet and right and left me eager for more.

Fantasy Genre Theory

Fantasy and Sci-fi often get lumped together, and while there’s a lot of cross over between the two genres, both in terms readers and concepts, there is one vital difference. Sci-fi is representation of how we think of the future, while fantasy is often about how we view the past.

Fantasy novels are clearly not history books or even historical fiction (though they do share some DNA). Fantasy isn’t a verbatim retelling of past events, but rather seeks to capture the overall ‘feel of the past’, that’s why so many have magic and fantastical creatures, those things feel realer, or were believed to be realer, in pre-modern times. And while magic and fantastic beasts appear in almost every fantasy novel, they are not the defining element of those worlds. The setting of a fantasy novel is not so much a magical place, but an old one.

One of the reasons Game of Thrones became so popular was that people thought it was a more ‘realistic’ fantasy story. Most of its seasons don’t deal with magic at all, but rather brutal medieval combat and court intrigue. It shows a Hobbesian past where life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. In part we watch it because of all the nastiness, it intrigues us even though we wouldn’t want to live through it ourselves. It’s a past that we’re grateful to have move beyond.

In contrast Tolkien envisioned a gentler past, his hobbits live simple, pleasant lives, suffering only village gossip and British passive-aggressiveness. War comes, and it is brutal and requires sacrifice, but the lines are clearly drawn: good and evil. The enemy are literal inhuman creations, spurred on by an evil god. Men are mythical heroes, taller and stronger than the simple hobbits who themselves have more in common with the reader than the mankind of Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Tolkien’s past is both idyllic and epic, it’s something we feel we’ve lost.

Both Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings speak to the way we view history rather than to any particular period of history itself. And while it’s true that both Middle Earth and Westros invoke some of the more exciting elements of Medieval Britain: knights in full plate, maidens in long gowns, the remnants of a more advance people (the Romans), barbarian invaders, etc. They have as much to do with actual Medieval Britain as Blade Runner’s 2019 Los Angles has to do with modern LA.

Outside of the hobbits, dragons and white walkers Medieval Britain also didn’t have taverns, smoking pipes, sewers, full plate armor (until the very end), banks, or large population centers. Medieval combat rarely involved pitched battles on the field and was mostly castle sieges. Trial by combat was exceedingly rare.

Tolkien’s Hobbits have a lot more in common with 18^th and early 19^th century British farmers than they do with Medieval peasants. Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series has Norse style Northmen raiders, but they’re duking it out with Union soldiers who use fencing foils, a technology appearing more than five hundred years after the Vikings. Michael J. Sullivan’s Heir of Novron series takes place in a world of knights and a tyrannical church, but also has early 19^th century style ships, with sailors that would have fit in during the Napoleonic wars.

The British Empire itself looms large in most of our Fantasy. The attitudes, manner of speaking and social economics of a great deal of supposedly medieval fantasy worlds instead come from late 19^th, and early 20^th century Britain. Medieval Britain was poor and splintered, with dozens of ethnic groups and a ruling caste that considered itself more French, or Norman at least, than English. The arrogant western like kingdoms in fantasy who refer to other people as savages and who think of themselves as more advance come from our living memory not our distance past.

None of this is to belittle or attack these works, I’ve enjoyed every series I mentioned here. None of these writers are trying to create a historical place. Their worlds are constructed from a hodgepodge of myth, different historical periods, and imagination. But all of them are trying to conjure the past and when they do so they are speaking to our comprehension of it. The use of so much British empire in our fantasy works shows the impact that the British empire has had on us and how we distinguish our modern selves as people distinctly different than the Imperialist of old.

And as the fantasy genre has spread out it has begun to leave behind both the trappings of Medieval Europe and the attitudes of the British Empire. Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty series takes its inspiration from early Chinese history (as well as the Odyssey, and the Vikings again). S.A. Chakraborty’s The City of Brass and Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon both focus on myth and history from the Muslim world, while Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti brings in influence from African history and culture. The expansion of Fantasy genre is an expansion of our understanding of the past, of who’s past has value, and who’s past deserves to be mythologized and critiqued.

As we grow, becoming more multi-culture our fantasy will as well. The genre will ask us to explore new pasts, new combinations, new understandings of where we come from, who we are and who we are not. The past might be the past, but that doesn’t mean it can’t change.

Where do Characters come from and what do they want?

Interesting, complex characters are the most important element of any novel. I will tolerate the most cliched of settings and plots if I love the characters. When writing my own fantasy novel, (which involves the very cliched plot of a kidnapped princess) I sought to create a team of fun characters that I wanted to spend time with and see embark on future adventures. Knee-deep into draft three of my novel, Ghets, I’m not thrilled with my word choices (seriously Matt, you’re using ‘luckily’ again?), but I absolutely love my Ghets team. They feel rounded and interesting and play off each other well.

Creating characters is lot like creating worlds to me. There’s a long germination period where I play around with an idea in my head. I usually have some sort of framework to start with when I sit down to write, and generally can’t track the character’s inception point. Reez, my lead, started with some questions like why not make the lead an orc? Why not an orc woman? and grew from there. Elise the Coward’s backstory was a direct reaction to the macho-mythologizing of the Spartans. But other characters, like Jaques, seemed to emerge ex nihilo. I can’t even remember a time when I was work-shopping them.

Characters follow a truth that has become something of mantra for me and writing: everything is perfect, until it’s real. Meaning, when you’re doing the necessary, fun and frantic work of constructing a character in your head they seem dynamic and stuffed with potential. But then when you start arranging them on the page, you realize you don’t know what they’ll say or how they’ll react. No matter how much time you spend thinking about your characters, you don’t know them until you start writing them.

Writing is a process of creation, re-examination, and change (yes, I couldn’t think of a third ‘tion word), characters follow the same process. They start out one way in the early drafts, and then slowly evolve the more time we spend with them, shaping them, coming to understand them. I would even argue that it’s a good idea to just start with a scene, something you never intend to include in your novel, that’s just your characters doing something together or sitting around talking.

I’m a dialogue guy, so I do a lot of scenes of just talking. But when I first started writing I noticed that a lot of my characters sound alike. To try to find their voice I would play with dialogue, create lists of words they could or couldn’t use, tried to reach outside of my own vocabulary and vocal meter. I tend to ramble, so a lot of my characters did too. I tried to reign that in, create characters that said little or nothing and communicated with expressions and gestures or characters that spoke very precisely.

Character voice is important, it’s one of the few things that can help differentiate characters on the page. Ideally you want each character’s voice to be so unique that the reader can tell who’s speaking by voice alone. But what’s even more important than a character’s voice is a character’s desire.

If you want compelling characters you need to know what they want, and what’s keeping them from getting what they want. A lot of times what your character wants is something immaterial: respect, connection, etc. And also, a lot of times the character themselves might not realize, or be resistant to, their own desire. Ideally as the writer, you should know what your characters are after. Good scenes and good character moments are created when we let characters and their desires drive the plot.

If you get your character’s right they will help you understand your own story better, they’ll guide you as much as you guide them. Readers too will stick through a tough or detailed book if they love the cast. So take your time, play around with them, ask them questions. Figure out how they talk and think and most of all what they really want. It’ll help you figure out what you want from them.

Kings of The Wyld and Bloody Rose: The Band Series Rocks

On a whim I picked up Nicholas Eames’s Kings of the Wyld and loved it. I devoured the book in under a week and immediately dove into its sequel Bloody Rose. It’s a good book, on par with Kings of the Wyld, but different in some meaningful ways. What really makes Bloody Rose impressive though, is how it improves and complicates the world that Eames introduces in Kings of the Wyld. Two books in and Eames’s Band series is already a roadmap for any writer looking to make a one and done story into an entertaining series.

In Kings of the Wyld mercenaries in the style of D&D adventurers, right down to classes like warriors, thieves and wizards, gather in ‘bands’ that have a distinct rock and roll vibe to them. (Sidebar, fantasy needs a new sub-genre for stories that are purposely playing with D&D and video games tropes, I’m thinking RPG-Fantasy? Something catchier?) The merging of rock and roll with epic fantasy drives the lion’s-share of the world building. There’s arena shows, bookers that get mercenaries gigs, when mercenaries head into the dangerous Heartwyld to go adventuring it’s called ‘touring’. There’s a big festival called the ‘War Fair’ where bands get drunk and party; you get it.

The story focuses on Saga, the greatest band of all time. Saga broke up decades ago and Golden Gabe, the band’s ‘Front-man’, needs to get the band back together for one last tour. He has to save his daughter who is trapped on the other side of the dangerous Heartwyld in a city under siege by a horde of monsters. It’s a compelling plot and Eames runs with it, combining his aging adventures with aging rockers to create a hilarious, bad ass adventure.

But the adventure ends. Rose is saved, there’s some foreshadowing of greater threats, but everything is neatly taken care and honestly, how long can you really stretch the whole ‘D&D characters are rock stars thing?’ Saga is a fun crew, but they’re also old and have other responsibilities. Can you really force the band back together for two more books? Wouldn’t you lose what made the first one so special if Clay Cooper had to leave his family behind two more times to save the world?

Eames smartly decides to leave Clay and the rest of Saga home for the sequel. Instead he focuses on a new band, ‘Fable’, led by Gabe’s daughter Rose. And he makes the ‘bard’, a joke role in his first book, into the lead for his second. Fable’s prospective character is Tam, a seventeen-year-old girl and huge Fable fan. While Tam is likable and pragmatic like Clay Cooper, the perspective character in Eames’s first book, she’s coming from a very different place and that allows us to see Eames’s world in a different light.

But it’s not just Tam, Eames smooths out the rough edges of his world building in the second book. Mercenaries are still rock and rollers, there’s still arena fights and even groupies and tour followers. Fable still gets drunk, has crazy sex and does drugs. But the rock and roll stuff fits neater into the world this time, it feels less like a clever joke and more like a thing of consequence.

There’s a seedy underbelly to the arena shows and the treatment of ‘monsters’. Eames grazes this in his first book, but really explores it in his second. Fable’s booker is a monster, they stay the night at Tree Ent’s place, there’s a much more complex situation going on. Tam starts to see the mercenary bands she idolized in a different light. In this way Eames leaves behind the rock and roll stuff when it doesn’t suit the world building and makes the connections when it does. This gives Bloody Rose a less manic and more disciplined vibe.

That’s not to say the world isn’t still a blast, full of crazy, weirdos and funny situations. There’s a Shaman that accidentally turns into a bear cub, a satyr that eats everything like a goat, a guy living with monsters who ties an extra pair of felt arms to himself to blend in. Moog, the impish wizard from the first book, shows up again to delight. It’s fun, but the world feels more introspective.

Part of that is the crew. Fable is younger and more damaged than Saga. Don’t get me wrong, Saga had its problems and arcs. I also absolutely loved Clay and his bandmates. But they were more established, their issues played for jokes at time. Rose and her team are younger and there is an insecurity to them that feels real.

Eames is more interested in exploring these characters than his world, but that’s for the better. He does good character work and while there is a touch of cliché to everyone in both Fable and Saga, they both raise above their tropes and become so endearing it’s hard to let them go by the end.

And let them go you must. Eames has a three book deal, but he says that each book will focus on a different band. While I’m sad to see Tam and her friends depart, I can’t wait to see how Eames’s world will continues to evolve. I also have no doubt that I will grow to love his final band as much as I loved the first two. If you’re looking for a fun fantasy world that isn’t afraid to grow and question its own conceits, then check out Kings of the Wyld and Bloody Rose

On World Building

Hugo award winning author N.K Jemisin was recently on Ezra Kline’s podcast, where she talked about world building and did a world building exercise. It’s a fun and fascinating episode and my fellow fantasy writers should definitely check it out, find it here

Jemisin has a very wholistic approach to world building, starting not just with the geography of her worlds, but with the atmosphere and gravity. After settling on the basics, she zooms in on an ‘element X’ the thing that the work is going to explore and makes the world ‘fantastic’ in some way. In The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms it was enslaved gods, in The Fifth Season it was the earth magicians known as Orogenes.

Jemisin has a masterful talent of taking her ‘element x’ and extrapolating it out. In particular the effect ‘element x’ would have on societies, the way people would react to it and build their cultures around it. She’s a writer who has thought long and hard on her world building process. Listening made me realize that I don’t have as tight grip on how I build worlds.

World building for me has always been fun. I world build on walks while listening to music. I world build at night to try and help me fall asleep. Once I have the energy going and the bare frame of the world, it’s easy and exciting. One thought leads to other; ‘They make their soldiers from a living pit, how do they make the pit? Do they also make living tools?’ And everything just keeps building.

But I realized that I’m much more genre focused in my process, even to a creative detriment, than N.K Jemisin is. Grant it, I’ve only written two novels, (find out more about the good one here!) and one of them is a direct reaction to the High Fantasy genre. But a lot of times when I start my world building I start it from a place of genre knowledge. I look at other people’s work, I write in reaction to them. I think about the tropes I like and want to emulate or explore and what tropes I don’t like and want to subvert. In other words, I don’t approach my worlds so much as worlds to begin with, but rather as stories.

Now as I world build I do start to gravitate away from the confines of genres. The Dairkkul started as a reaction to typically demonic, evil factions in Fantasy stories, but evolved to be their own complex people. Mostly this came from considering their ability to shape life out of Doom Cotta and the problems and moral quandaries that ability created. But even as I started to write the Dairkkul and decide their noble houses I still leaned on my genre knowledge and the overall ‘theme’ I wanted them to exhibit.

In general theme and genre define my worlds more than a logical or focused extrapolation might. I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. Ghets is meant to be a playground where I can fool around with fantasy tropes with semi-self-aware characters. And there are always questions that writers can’t answer or even address in their worlds/stories, because it will break them. But I do think that there is something to be gained by throwing genre away.

To create new, interesting worlds, we need to do more than just remix the tropes we love. I’m not saying we should abandon genre completely. Emulating and reacting to other’s work is the foundation of art and it’s good to know of the novels that are similar to your own. But rather than trying to figure out the box we’re writing in, it might be better to start with the world first and then let the natural formation of that world and it’s reaction to element X decide the theme and genre. Maybe for my next work I’ll try it more Jemisin’s way.

My fellow writers, what’s your take? How do you approach world building?

The Kingkiller Chronicle and the Problem of Pay Off

I’ve been listening to the audio-books of Patrick Rothfuss’s The Kingkiller Chronicle recently. The books have something of a ‘geek cool’ rep to them. When they first came out everyone from my favorite web comic to the dorm DM were gushing about them. And even close to ten years later I bump into people at writing groups, cons and parties that talk about The Kingkiller Chronicle the same way hipsters talk about obscure EPs.

Yet despite the rep and the fact that the book stars a fellow ginger, I simply couldn’t make it through the first one, The Name of the Wind. Even the audio book with its excellent narration was painful, I would find myself shouting at Kvothe to ‘Get on with it already!’ (My favorite parts were when Kvothe, after doing this rambling, overly clever description, say something like ‘but I’ll spare you the details.’ I would always mutter ‘thanks? But why this time? You certainly didn’t spare them anywhere else!?). The Kingkiller Chronicle is supposed to be a story told over the course of three days, but honestly Kvothe is such a blowhard that it feels like it takes three months.

The Kingkiller Chronicle has a novel framing story. Chronicler, a famous scholar and scribe, hunts down the legendary figure of Kvothe who is in retirement and running an inn with his otherworldly apprentice Bast. Kvothe agrees to tell Chronicler his whole story and help separate what is legend from what is truth. From there the majority of the novels are in first person with Kvothe telling his story, with interludes in the ‘present’ at the Waystone Inn.

Kvothe can be a trying storyteller. He often feels like someone’s overly designed RPG character. He’s a master musician, wizard (though magic doesn’t exist in this world! Though it also totally does), swordsmen and thief. He’s smart, cunning, handsome. He’s a mythical figure that everyone knows about, with thousand of tales that have been repeated over and over again all around the civilized world…and he’s also like under thirty, maybe not even twenty-five.

I’ve always found instant, ultra-competent characters annoying, even more so when they are ultra-competent teenagers, which Kvothe is for the first two books. On top of that he’s melodramatic and tragic when we meet him in ‘the present’ at the Waystone Inn. And none of his tragedy or his skill feels earned when he’s introduced. We’re told Kvothe’s a tragic legendary hero, not shown it. But that’s fine, because Kvothe is going to tell us his story and the truth behind his amazing legacy that everyone can’t stop talking about, the one he even quotes in detail as he begins his tale….

Expect he doesn’t.

The Kingkiller Chronicle’s true sin is one of pacing and pay off. Every event in Kvothe’s life seems to require a hundred pages of in depth detail to get through, even when they’re not that interesting, like the time Kvothe wandered around a fucking woods for months just feeling sad. By the time the first book ends, Kvothe has maybe done one or two things of note and none of the things he specifically talks about when he begins his tale. The second book is more interesting, but it’s still stuffed to the brim with words.

I don’t know how many times Kvothe talks about going over to Eolian to play music, or how many cute but platonic interactions he has with his love interest Denna, or how many times he talks about longing to play the fucking lute, but there are just strenuous pages of this stuff that builds to almost nothing. As someone who has also wrote a five hundred page fantasy novel that I’m sure seems like it goes on forever (Find out more here!), I have a hard time begrudging Rothfuss some of these asides. And I will admit the more I listened, the more I enjoyed Kvothe’s story, mostly because interesting things started happening in the second book, but it is still overrun with chaff.

At the end of one of Kvothe’s episodes (the story is at times very episodic), Kvothe stumbles upon Felurian. Felurian is a Faye creature and is equal parts seductive and frightening. Kvothe ends up in a dual of sorts with her and tricks her in a very folklore- style way. It works, and it’s over pretty quickly and I thought Rothfuss was finally picking up the pace. But then Kvothe stays in the Faye with Felurian for what feels like forever. Pages are spent taking about how he learned to kiss from her and how they wandered around naked. It stretches and stretches, finally something interesting happens again, but rather than having that propel Kvothe to his next adventure he spends some more time with Felurian recovering from the event. Chaff like this swipes the momentum of the story out at the knees.

Rothfuss writing often feels more indulgent than engaging, as if he left too many darlings alive on the page. But even so, I’m listening. I will download the next book whenever it’s finally released. The novel is frustrating because it has potential, not because it’s bad. Kvothe can be clever, some of the details of his world interesting. But Kvoethe should have learned more from those quiet Adem mercenaries than just fighting. As his friend Tempi said, ‘one word can say more than many’.

Nurlge’s Lesson

Fiction Friday’s back! But I’m taking a break from Ghets to share a little parody piece I wrote for a friend. The story is set in the Warhammer 40K universe, and involves the Chaos Space Marines, villains that are so evil and insane that I always have a hard time figuring out their motivation.

I hope you enjoy!

Photo is from my friend’s Warhammer 40K army

It was a beautiful day in Nurlge, the god of death and decay,’s garden. The pox walkers were a bloom with fresh tumors. Great Unclean ones were releasing sweet miasmas of putrid death, while the little nurglings were playing between rotting corpses and splashing in the bile which ran like water in Nurgle’s realm.

The great chaos god himself was playing with his new prize possessions a series of massive bronze bells. He rang each bell building to a crashing crescendo. After he finished he turned to Isha, the Eldar goddess of healing who he totally did not kidnap and asked.

“What do you think babe?”

Isha was lounging in her rusting cage and examining a new series of boils on her palm. “What?” She asked absentmindedly.

“Did you like the bells?” Nurgle said gesturing at the giant church bells. “That was a little song I wrote for you called, ‘Only You can cure my heart.’”

“Oh” Isha said with a long sigh, healing and smoothing out her skin. “They were a little tinny”

“Right,” Nurgle said frowning. He turned to his loyal Tally Man. “Tell the boys in the bell workshop they need to step it up on the next batch.”

“Yes my Lord,” The Tally man said dryly, jotting down a note in the large book he kept chained to him. “I will tell the lunatic cultist in our employe that they need to be more precise in their work.”

Nurgle nodded, “Thanks, Tally Man I can always count you.”

The Tally Man ignored the obvious pun and kept writing. “If you don’t mind me asking my lord, why are we making bells?”

Nurgle looked down at the Tally Man, “Why wouldn’t we?”

“Well my Lord,” The Tally Man began, “It’s just that you’re the chaos god of death and pestilence, I’m afraid I don’t see how the bells factor in.”

“Exactly Tally Man!” Nurgle said, “Chaos God. We’re crazy and sporadic!” Nurgle flayed his arms about, “We can’t be doing the same thing all the time, we got a change it up every now and then, and bells are my new thing, whole army is going to get them.”

Nurgle lent in, “But if anyone in the Imperium asks, just tell them we’ve always been into bells, got it?”

The Tally Man sighed, “Of course my Lord.” He returned to his book. “I can think of nothing more chaotic and out of the ordinary than adding bells to our forces as we continue to spread death and disease like we have for the last ten thousand years straight with absolutely no deviation whatsoever.”

Nurgle laughed, causing a swarm of flies to escape out his throat. “Now you’re getting it Tally man.”

Satisfied, Nurge was about to return to his bells when he saw one of his little plague marine buddies come running up.

“My Lord, my lord!” The Plague marine shouted, as he came to a halt before nurgle, coughing and panting.

“Hey what is it sport?” Nurgle said crouching down so he could converse with the damned.

“It’s Mortarion my lord, he–” The Plague Marine started, before coughing loudly, a wet, smacking sound echoing in his helmet.

“What was that?” Nurgle asked confused.

“Mor-baron pe” The Plague Marine tilted his head confused, “Mby phounge, mby phounge bas botton”

Nurgle scratched his head, “Tally Man, you get what he’s saying?”

The Tally Man stepped forward and examined the Plague Marine. “It appears his tongue has rotten off my Lord.”

Nurgle groaned, “Oh for the love of me! Can someone grow this a kid tentacle in there or something? I don’t understand him at all.”

“I will see to it my lord.” The Tally Man said, “But while I do so, I think it’s best if you go see Mortarion, he has been…’acting up’, as of late.”

Nurgle nodded, “Good thinking,” He turned to Isha “Sorry honeypoo, Papa Nurgs has to go check on the kids,”

“Yeah, sure, whatever” Isha said ignoring Nurgle while she returned to her favorite hobby: filing down her cage bars.

Nurgle trotted through his garden leaving a barren trail of rot and death in his wake and stopped at Mortarion’s room. The door was closed and locked. A sign that read “NO DADs” with a crude drawing of a scowling Emperor and Nurgle was hung on it.

Nurgle sighed. He used to think the Emperor was a bad father, but that was before he had a primarch of his own. Raising kids was tough.

Nurgle knocked on the door, “Hey champ, heard you might be feeling kind of down?”

A muffled voice shouted, “Go away!”

Nurgle crouched next to the door. “Hey buddy, I’ll do that if that’s what you want, but maybe it’ll feel good to talk about it, huh?”

“You don’t want to talk, you just want me to go out and lead a Black Crusade against the Imperium.” Mortarion shouted between sniffles.

Nurgle felt his forehead, this again? “I just think you have all this potential and I’m worried you’re wasting it spending your time here in the Eye of Terror. The other chaos primarchs and their legions are out taking worlds and converting cultists to their gods.”

“That’s all you care about!” Mortarion shouted back, “Converts and corruption!”

“Oh Morty,” Nurgle said concerned, “You know that’s not true. I also care about death and pelistence, and you.”

“Then why did you give me fly wings?” Mortarion said, “All the other primarchs get cool raven wings or bat wings. I look like a dweeb.”

“Who called you a dweeb?” Nurgle said getting upset “Was it Angron? I’ll go over to Khorne’s place right now. That red faced bully has had it coming for a long time.”

“That’s not the point dad!” Mortarion said.

Nurgle took a deep breath, calming himself. “You’re right, you’re right. Now what’s so wrong with fly wings? Flies are our thing! You know with the rot and death and all that? I even got Plague bearers riding them. The fly wings mark you as my chosen, lean into the theme a little, son.”

“Oh yeah Dad? what about the bells? How did they fit into your ‘theme’” Mortarion spit back.

Nurgle groaned, “What does everyone have against the bells?”

“They’re stupid. Your whole crusade against the Imperium is stupid!” Mortarion said

“Hey now, watch it” Nurgle said pointing a finger at Mortarion’s door. “I brought you into this Eye of Terror turning you into an undying, zombie space marine and I can take you out!”

“Whatever, it’s not like you’re my real dad.” Mortarion said with a huff.

Nurgle bit his lip. He wasn’t the chaos god of anger, he needed to relax, “You’re right Morty, I’m not your real Dad. The emperor made you because…I’m not really sure, but he wanted you to lead, be a little version of himself. I don’t want that Morty, I just want you to be happy.” Nurgle lent closer to the door and said calmly, “Now what has really got you down? I know it’s not the fly wings.”

There was a pause, followed by some more sniffling. “I just don’t know what the point is Dad. I’ve been doing this for ten thousand years, the Imperium is never going to fall. Every time I win I eventually have to release a virus bomb and retreat. I just feel so numb, like what’s the point?”

Nurgle nodded, “That’s a tough one, son.” He scratched his chin. “But you know, I get it. I’m the god of death, of entropy. Everything ends, that’s just the way it is. Even the Death Guard will eventually die…and not come back as zombie space marines. The war we’re fighting, the Imperium, it will all end at some point.”

“But just because something ends, doesn’t mean it isn’t precious. I might celebrate the death of things, but even I know their real value is in the moment. Let go of the weight of ten thousand years Morty, even a primarch can’t bear that legacy. Besides its not ten thousand years of defeat to me, it’s ten thousand years of experiences, of joy and pain…mostly pain, of comradery and love…kind of. It’s the journey that makes the trip worth it, not the destination. You have to find what you enjoy about this undead life and live it.”

Mortarion didn’t say anything for a long while. “But Dad, what about you, what about all of this? The garden, the marines, the war, don’t you want to win?”

Nurgle gave a soft chuckle. “Son, didn’t you hear me? Everything dies, well maybe not the necorn or eldar? It’s confusing, but most everything dies. So I’ve already won! Hell, you and the Death Guard could stay in the garden for the next ten thousand years and I’d still be coming out on top. The other chaos gods would be dong the killing for me, or the Imperium would, they kill a lot of people on their own–they’re actually not that great either.”

“But the reason I give you sanctuary here is because I believe in you Morty. I only want what’s best for you. I just think maybe killing the Imperium will give you closure.” Nurgle smirked, “And hey, I even here Guilliman’s back, don’t you hate him? Wouldn’t fighting him be fun?”

Mortarion thought about it. “I guess I could try hating him.”

“That’s the spirit!” Nurgle said, “Now why don’t you come out here and give your Papa Nurgle a big old hug.”

“Okay!” Mortarion said.

The Primarch’s door unlocked and Mortarion embraced his chaos god, knowing that he was a wiser and richer space marine for listening to his dad (who was the embodiment of death, and renewal, but mostly death, and renewal only in a reanimator, zombie sense of the word.)

The End.

Why an Orc?

As I wrote last post there are problem with Orcs. But despite those problems I still wanted to include orcs in my fantasy world and even make my protagonist one. Orcs are fun! Their dumb and violent tendencies can make them mischievous, even endearing if presented in a certain light. And as the ‘evil minion’ race of hundreds of fantasy novels orcs feel like the underdogs. Maybe they’re just misunderstood? Maybe what is so often seen as barbaric in orcs is just a different point of view?

Like any longstanding antagonist orcs have gone through several revisions and become heroes. Stan Nicholls novel Orcs: First Blood, tells a story of human orc warfare from the orcs’ point of view, taking a traditional band of orc warriors and making them the protagonists. Terry Pratchett’s orcs are near extinct and suffering from a case of bad propaganda. And then there’s the Warcraft games.

Warcraft started out with a traditional Tolkien set up. There was an evil army of orcs vs. an alliance of humans, dwarves and elves. The first two Warcraft games had the orcs invading from a dark portal led by evil wizards and hell bent on conquering and killing everything in sight. But with the third Warcraft game Blizzard (the game studio behind the Warcraft series) decided to do something different.

Blizzard deconstructed its orcs and the very idea of orcs as the ‘barbarian other’. They took inspiration from what happened to historical ‘barbarian’ or ‘savage’ peoples after they were conquered. The orcs of Warcraft III start off enslaved or kept on hemmed in reservations. Their story becomes a fight for freedom and once they achieve that freedom they desire to go back to their traditional ways. The orcs are still violent, a warrior culture, but one that is more complex and less aggressive than the conquers they used to be. They even finally defeat the demon overlords that led them astray in the first place.

The orcs of Warcraft moved from mindless evil to at worse worthy antagonists, all while keeping the things people loved about them. They’re still big and green and mean. They still have pointy armor and say funny made up words like ‘zug-zug’, but they’re given their own needs and desires. They now do stuff outside of fighting.

When coming up with my own orcs I took inspiration from Warcraft, as well as Wahammer, Tolkien and all the others. The orcs of Ghets like to fight, drink and eat meat. They have green skin (as well as purple, orange, and pretty much any color). They’re a proud warrior society, that fights in ‘hordes’. And they’re the underdogs, despised by both Aphetrria the land of Order, and Neradoom the land of Chaos. But in Ghets, the orc’s ruling body, the ‘Okkore’ is the closest thing there is to a medieval UN.

The orcs of Ghets were created by the god Kor to act as border guards, to prevent Aphetrria and Neradoom from killing each other. They take their mandate seriously, and even went so far as to conquer both lands to put an end to the millennia long war. It didn’t work, and by the time the novel begins the Orcs are trying to learn from their past mistakes.

I don’t spend too much time with the Okkore in Ghets, I’ve got more planned there for another novel. Reez is the orc that readers get to know the best, since she’s the lead. Reez is all the stuff I love about orcs with none of the baggage. She’s a carefree adventurer that’s always cursing in funny made up words: guck, gunking guckers. She loves to fight and get into trouble, but she’s not mean or even mercenary in her thinking or actions. She’s clever without being condescending and most of all she doesn’t take herself seriously.

Reez would find the abject barbarism of orcs like those in the Shadow of Mordor series to be comically over the top. Like the people she comes from, Reez is down to earth, an orc that’s good at fighting, but is into other things than just conquest and plunder. She’s got her bones in the old greenskin trope, but she’s grown out of them into her own character. I really like spending time with her and I hope you will too!

Sir Namington of Somewhereshire: My struggles with coming up with Fantasy Names

After years of toiling on two drafts of Ghets, my latest novel, I proudly declared on Facebook that I was looking for beta-readers. Friends and family immediately requested copies, showering me with support. I felt loved and ready to share…but then had to stall. There was just one little problem with the latest draft of Ghets, about half the things in it were missing names.

I love worldbuilding: creating towns and creatures, different legends and cultures, but I absolutely hate naming them. It’s not that I can’t think of names, it’s more that I want to get the name absolutely right and nothing will gum up your writing flow quicker than trying to come up with a name on the fly.

My practice for name generation is to brute force it. Open a fresh word doc and start writing down ever name, sound and spelling that comes to mind. I start with existing names and words to build my new name out of, like Elisette, Odvid and the Uldritch Pit Lords. Maelator, my chief antagonist, I got from chopping a bunch of different words up and mashing them together. I was going for a name that sounded like the big bad from a Saturday morning cartoon and I think I nailed it.

Once I created one new name, it led to others. It make sense that people from the same group would sound have similar sounding names. The chief god of my orcs is named ‘Kor’ so there’s a lot of ‘kors’ and ‘or’s in their naming scheme (maybe too many) there’s the fortress of Korragorra, and Kaikor Reez and her brother Kalighor.

My biggest stumbling block to name creation turned out to be Google. I would come up with the perfect name only to google it and find out it was already the name of a small village in India or the last name of some guy in Uruguay or was in use on the World of Warcraft forums (or all three).

It got to the point where I would spend my writing time for that day playing with different names or tweaking the spelling to create something un-google-able. Finally, I had enough. When I came to a person, place or thing that needed a proper name I just wrote ‘BLANK’ in all caps. It was a revolution.

I was back to writing, back to creating. My writing flow was coursing again uninterrupted. The Angular fish people of the Dark Sea were the BLANK, as were the lizard-like citizens of the Underraod who they fought and raided with the help of the BLANK pit lords. Markus’s magic sword BLANK clashed against Maelator’s magic sword the Jaws of BLANK. And then there was the time BLANK grabbed BLANK’s BLANK and bashed BLANK into the walls of BLANK cathedral.

After I finished Draft II I reread the novel and realized that it was unreadable to anyone, but myself. By some miracle I had remembered what all the BLANKs referred too, but it was a mess. I spent several days creating random fantasy names and waded back into the novel replacing BLANKS with names from my list or giving them more generic ones. I’m still at it even now. I have a hundred pages still to go, hunting down the BLANKs.

But I don’t regret the decision to BLANK myself. When creating drafts, especially rough ones, nothing is more important than just writing. What I do regret is not going with a name more often, no matter how bad or just using one that’s already taken. Everything is already a name, it’s not like Jose Duomarco from Uruguay is every going to read my novel and realize that I used his last name for a port city.

Readers will forgive a good character with a bad name. Besides, it’s only draft II, names can change! And speaking off, anyone have ideas on how to make really good fantasy names? I still have more BLANKS to fill.

I am Wrighteous

The writings and musing of Matt Wright

Tag: fantasy