Draconic Shenanigans - The King's Special

 

Hello my lovely darlings, welcome to this my second attempt at vlogging. For those of you watching on Patreon, thank you for tossing a coin to your writer, it truly helps keep the lights on and the coffee flowing. I need coffee, a lot of coffee.

Thankfully I have been pushed in the direction of a free video editing software but I’m not very good with it yet. Some of you may have also noticed the date and time in the top left corner of the first video I ever made was also totally off and that was my camera. I simply didn’t notice that little detail during recording last time and in fact it wasn’t until it was uploading on to Patreon that I saw it. I have managed to sort the settings on the camera so that shouldn’t be there now. It has certainly made me realise just how much work the special effects in fantasy and sci-fi movies are. It has certainly given me a greater appreciation of the companies who allow their editing teams the time and support they need to really put their all into their craft. Now on to the main event.

For this the second instalment of my attempts at doing a decent video I decided I would do a run down of the four main characters, the four that are not under my immediate control as they belong to my co-writers, who piloted them as their characters for the game sessions. I know that I have done a pretty deep analysis for two of them by an in world lore dive but this one I thought I’d do an overview of each of them as I see their place in the story, what their function in the King’s Special is and how they tick as I have the in road on their head space. Though my players played these characters they did give me a fairly loose reign when it came to describing their thoughts and internal logic and reasoning for their actions, hence why my name will be top of the cover. Considering the hours of work I’ve put into this as director, producer and main script writer I thought that I deserved at least that amount of recognition, even if the money will be a five way split. So to take up the challenge of this blog post let’s get into it.

First up, as she is the one who I managed to finish artwork for first, is Kaelin. Kaelin… Kaelin has been through hell. If you remember the content warning from my first vlog I did mention tackling themes of high demand religions, stagnated societies and distorted family systems. Well Kaelin is scoring two out of three. Kaelin’s grandfather is a religious fanatic who firmly believes that the werewolves are the Aryan race of the world. He’s the very worse of human and wolf and a total perversion of both species. Regular wolves don’t want to be near this guy, if nothing else because he is the living embodiment of entitled patriarchy, whereas wolves are a matriarchal species so, as I said, he’s a perversion of both wolves and humans. Kaelin’s grandfather is the worse of what elites can devolve into – accident of birth mistaken for right, privilege used as an excuse and entitlement excusing any desire. He is strength without care, power grown bloated and rotten with no responsibilities to shape it. Kaelin grew up in fear, hyper vigilance her only safety, compliance her only defence and disassociation only refugee. Kaelin wears the mask of the sullen, sour mouthed discontent who doesn’t care about anyone around her because caring, compassion, friendship were weaknesses, weapons in the hands of her own family that she couldn’t afford because her father was just as bad as her grandfather. As for her mother, well, if she survived passed birthing Kaelin’s mother would have little chance of deconstructing enough to be able to think of getting away. The werewolves under Kaelin’s grandfather do not take no for an answer and are willing to break bones to force submission. In short, Kaelin has been wearing a mask for so long she doesn’t know if there is anything underneath it. She’s stuck in a survival mode where she has to run and fight and always expect everyone to either abandon her or try to stab her in the back. The sad part is that she only left the werewolf troop because she calculated the odds and realised it was a case of leave or wind up dead. She didn’t leave for a better life because she can’t imagine such a thing exists and if she could she wouldn’t believe that it is meant for one such as her. She only left because she wanted to die on her own terms, she wanted a chance for her no to mean something. That and she was sick of the killing. Kaelin has killed and will kill and she kills easily but that’s what she hates most of all – the fact that killing has become too easy. She knows that she should care more than she does so she tries to survive by sneaking and stealing but all too often someone tries to push her boundaries and the wolf in her reacts without thought. Kaelin has a serious case of complex shell shock and wants rid of it but the human mind seeks what it knows and recognises familiar patterns as security. To Kaelin safety, security and peace feels like a threat.

In terms of her function within the King’s Special, I believe Kaelin is the team sneak and the voice of cynical reason. If they need something ‘collected’ without the permission of those in authority Kaelin is the one to get it. She is also the one to be the voice of reason when someone says ‘what’s the worse that can happen?’ Kaelin’s instant response? ‘A lot.’ And she immediately starts planning half a dozen exit strategies. Despite that she can’t do tact if her life depends upon it and Ulrich despairs of teaching her decent table manners.

Next up is Ulich Brekka. Ulrich Brekka is another one hiding behind masks. The son of a noble man and a ‘kept woman’ of the traveller folk, Ulrich has an exotic look and a chip on his shoulder. He disguises it behind exquisite manners and a rapier wit but every now and then his opinion of the nobility shines through, not in the least because he was sent to the King’s Special after gouging a whole gambling club of noblemen. Ulrich’s way with the cards is nothing short of god like. If Ulrich has a god it is the Lady of Fortune, the one who is nameless but holds luck in her hands. He did think that he’d fallen out of favour with her but the number of risks he has taken and weathered out in the course of journeying with the King’s Special might be the message that he was never out of favour with the Lady of Fortune but rather that she needed her favourite on this team to tip the dice on the fate of the world itself. As the King’s Special has travelled further and faced more of the foe, the course of events is appearing lees like a local problem and more like a foul force that has long been rotting in the dark corners of the world is reaching out to try and tear the pillars of the world asunder. It is the soul of the selfish, the baleful, the malign, the self serving, the self grandeurfying, the one who has no thought for others but only thought of the self. And quite without meaning to Ulrich has found himself right in its way. But this is again where I say there are no chosen ones in my stories, only people, people choosing to build up or tear down. The King’s Special could have chosen to simply slice through the Ash Elves chosen to see them as nothing but the dangerous ‘other’ that needed to be put down and instead Ulrich choses to see the potential of something else. Ulrich is the one who chanced his arm and had a go at charming the leader of the Ash Elf squad they were up against. As I said it was not what I originally planned for the campaign and I was so grateful that it was at the end of a game session as I had to have a major rethink about the story line and I needed a couple of weeks in which to do that. When the rethink was done, I feel that the story improved ten times over. If any thing I think it was that moment that I decided that it would be worth turning into a full book project.

In terms of the purpose Ulrich serves within the King’s Special he is most definitely the face man. He has the silver tongue, the looks and the charm. He knows how to use good manners and clever words to persuade people to him, rather than try and intimidate people into serving him. He swims in the world of diplomacy and can haggle like a professional. He also has a reckless streak half a mile wide. You have to be fairly reckless to even think about trying to seduce a lady of the Ash Elf clans and that sheer recklessness is what won her round. Which now means that Ulrich also has the responsibility of rehabilitating a race and a society that has spent ten thousand years locked in a cycle of cruelty and righteousness, fully convinced that they were the one true people. There again if there was anyone who could talk some sense into them it would be Ulrich. He does rather seem to have his hands full with the job, not only teaching Lady Zilvra how to bargain as an equal with those she once thought of as lesser beings but also teaching her relatives the power that comes from being able to trust the warriors at your shoulders not to stab you before the enemies arrive. Granted they are learning that the best quality of recognising shared worth comes with its own price. If you have strength enough to build a home and time enough to hold your friend steady then the price is love enough to break a heart. They are learning it slow but they are learning despite the pain that brings.

Thorian Vandervast is big, green and despite everything against it, he is a gentle soul. In many ways he is the innocent that the world miss uses. Yes he is as tough as old boots and yes he hits like a length of rebar that has a sharp edge but he likes hugging puppies, facing an enemy that can hit back just as hard and good solid food. There isn’t a sneaky, dishonest bone in Thorian’s body. He’s honest to a fault and struggles to understand the idea that others can be deceptive. This has made him an easy target for those that like playing with the mental health of others, though his is finally developing a healthy dose of suspicion of some people. He’s not sure exactly what it is that is telling hi that certain persons are trying to make him do bad stuff but he is beginning to pick up little tells in voice and expression that tell him that what this person is suggesting is bad stuff.

The orc children are a race who’s origin and history developed as I wrote the story. They are the result of a lich’s attempts to create an army in the dark that were as hardly and aggressive as orc but as controllable as humans, however, eventually the orc children stood up and took the lashes from the hands of those driving them and choked them with said whips. The orc children rose up and said ‘we is people and people don’t get beat and whipped and cut simply for existing. We is people and you ain’t going to beat us no more’. Yeah, their creator got stamped to death beneath the boots of his own creations and then the orc children cut their way out of the Underworld, quite literally, going through the dwarfs to reach the surface, hence why they haven’t had a good relationship with the dwarfs ever since. About the friendliest interaction the orc children have with the dwarfs is a game of kick around. This is where the orc children manage to capture a band of dwarfs and disarm them of their regular weapons. The dwarfs are then given big, knobbly clubs of bodock wood and tossed in the circle. The orc children then use the said dwarfs as the balls in a game of kick around. The dwarfs are allowed, even encouraged, to fight back using the bodock clubs, battering away at their foes. The game ends when either the dwarfs escape or the orc children are too tired to chase them any more and yes injured from a game of kick around are common. Thorian has reported that he has an aunt who has never been the same since receiving a head injury during a game of kick around. Apparently she falls asleep with her eyes open in the middle of the day and her dreams are something really weird. To the orc children the risk of injury is what makes it fun. If there was no risk then there would be no fun.

Despite what could be expected, the orc children are the most equal society the King’s Special has met so far. Among the orc children a man looks after his women cause she’s precious and a women looks after her man cause he is precious and that is all there is too it. You don’t give each other any reason to stray and if your woman has children already it just goes to show that she can have some, the future ones will be yours. Disputes over inheritance get settled with a fist fight, usually as noisily as possible. Orc children don’t smile at your face and stab you in the back, if they like you bear hugs all round, if they don’t like you they’ll smack you one. Saying that there is one rule in orc children society that is unbreakable – anyone under twelve years old is untouchable. Over twelve? You are expected to be able to pick up a weapon and defend yourself. Under twelve? They do no harm and anyone who does harm to a child in front of an orc child will be lucky to get their block knocked off. Orc children are known for pulling the arms off people who have harmed children.

In many ways Thorian has become the heart of the King’s Special. He’s the glue that keeps them together. He can match Ulrich’s recklessness, he’s there to give Kaelin space and watch her back and he’s even keeping an eye on Jeremiah and trying to make the fallen priest toe the line. He’s big and strong and knows that he’s not the smartest member of the team but he has a huge sense of loyalty and an innate sense of justice. As far as Thorian is concerned if you pick on someone who can hit back just as hard then that’s a nice little fight; if you pick on someone who can’t fight back then you is nothing more than a bully and he doesn’t much like bullies. Thorian might not be the brightest but if you are his friend he’ll have your back no matter what comes.

Lastly and it is very much lastly we have Jeremiah. There is always one. There is always one who truly, truly deserved to be in jail and unfortunately for this particualr King’s Special that one is Jeremiah. Jeremiah was left as a foundling on the Abbey steps and the Abbey is probably wishing that whoever did that drowned him in a bucket instead. Jeremiah was always an unpleasant child, much given to bullying and tormenting those around him. The problem became so bad that the Abbot himself wound up taking responsibility for Jeremiah’s education. He tried, he really did try every softer version of discipline he could but loss of privileges, extra responsibilities, lectures, social stories, even fasting, nothing of it worked, not even fasting and Jeremiah’s greatest appetite, besides tormenting others, has always been food. In the end the Abbot resorted to the discipline wand and finally the heavier cane, hating himself and his failure in every blow. Even that didn’t seem to work and the Abbot was on the verge of despair when Jeremiah seemed to experience sudden revelation and became a model student, rising rapidly through the Abbey ranks and becoming the favourite of the Abbot, chosen to take his place upon the Abbot’s death. This was, unfortunately, merely a cover for his heresy. Jeremiah is a dissenter and a disciple of Klu’ga-nath, the Dragon God. To be more accurate, Klu’ga-nath is a false god, a being created eons ago by the Locutians as they tried to recreate their own creators. Klu’ga-nath breaks the laws of physics in ways regular magic can’t do, he is a living quantum equation, he is light made solid, flesh made of raw energy with the breath of a neutron star as his weapon of chose. He is a cataclysm waiting to happen to those he deems unworthy of life, which is just about everyone. Therefore Jeremiah pleases his god by bringing forth as much misery and suffering as he can.

I have to admit my player made Jeremiah way more unpleasant than I could have hoped to manage. Unless the character is an outright villain, I tend to write my unpleasant characters with a lot more caution. My nasty characters tend to be more sneaky, keeping an eye on exit routes and having back up options of plausible deniability ready just in case their plans go belly up. My player moved Jeremiah much more decisively and overtly than I would have dared, committing a cold blooded murder in the very first gaming session as Jeremiah wrecked his vengeance upon the Abbey of the Divine Mercy. If it wasn’t for Hartseer’s intervention it would have been a massacrer so Jeremiah has always been a lot more openly evil and vicious than I would have been able to write on my own. In Table Top role play game group terminology Jeremiah is what many would call a ‘murder hobo’. If it moves he wants to kill it. If it moves and talks he wants to befriend it, betray it and then kill it. I tried to build in consequences for his acts of selfishness but it didn’t really put him off, not even having his clothes starched to the point of being stiff as boards for freaking out the washing maid with visions of spiders worked. Even the other players started ganging up on him for his acts of murder but it didn’t work. It was after the incident with Stink-of-the-Midden that I decided enough was enough and I knew exactly what was going to happen when Jeremiah had stolen all three of those books and fed them enough to finish the restoration. Granted it took about another year for me to be able to follow through on that decision but it was worth the long game. It didn’t quite play out how I originally envisioned it as my players had different ideas but it still played out damn cool so I was happy with how the smack down worked out. Want to know how it happened? You’ll have to read Draconic Shenanigans to find out, either as the blog or as the book when it comes out. Just a word though – the text is being refined and edited as it goes towards being book ready. As to what purpose Jeremiah served in the King’s Special, it is the unpleasant one. The one willing to do the morally reprehensible stuff to get the job done. The one willing to do the cheap shots to level the playing field for the team. There was a time where I thought that he was moving past his murder hobo ways, learning to keep it more in line with an anti-villain, the one willing to hurt those who deserve to be hurt but it turned out he wasn’t, he was learning to make the mask more convincing. I knew that the moment he went in for the kill on Hartseer. There was no going back at that point so I knew it was time for the last dance of chances for this story arc. And now I’m trying to get the book ready to publish. Four pieces of chapter art done, another two started and two and a half chapters proof read. See all my lovely darlings on the other side, be safe and be kind.

 

 

 

Draconic Shenanigans - Inspirations

Inspirations 

 

Hello my lovely darlings, this is going to be my first video loaded first to Patreon and then to Youtube so I have no idea how this is going to land. I also have no editing software so every stutter, stumble and blooper is going to be recorded. At least there is one good thing from that – my lovely darlings will know that this is human made and not A.I. I wouldn’t mind A.I. if it was doing the dishes and the ironing; I object to it doing my writing and my art. As to why I don’t have editing software? It starts with m, ends with y and has one in the middle. In short, lolly, dough, bread, specky, call it what you will it all amounts to the same thing – cold, hard cash. So to those of my lovely darlings that are watching this on Patreon, thank you ever so much for flipping a coin to your writer. For those watching on Youtube or reading on the blog, if you can flip a coin to your writer you will get early access to any video I manage to do, including the full author readings when I have a chance to do them, exclusive 4 x 6 sighed copies of the chapter art to collect and the potential of a shout out on my random ‘Patreon of the week’ shout outs over on facebook.

Now to the meat of this video.

It seemed to me the best introduction I could do into the world of Hestia and therefore my writing as a whole would be to run down some of my inspirations. From reading other writers interviews, that does seem to me to be the question most commonly asked – ‘where do you get your inspirations from?’ In my case? Absolutely every where. Every book I’ve read, every film, every TV series and real life because, let’s face it, we live in a world where death by molasses flood at your Uncle’s funeral is a possibility and has happened. As much as it is kind of hypercritical of me as I am publishing this on the Internet, it would be pretty cool if everyone put down their phones for a moment and had a look around. The world is insane and I bet your grandparents could tell you some absolutely insane stories. I know mine did, including fleeing to Manchester to escape the blitz of London only for the Manchester blitz to start that very night. As I said, the world is insane and no matter how crazy the co-incidences sound they will have happened in the real world.

Circling back round to my writing, it depends on the character as to where I pull my inspiration. Some of them only need one or two prompts to exist, others can have half a dozen or more. In fact, let’s take it from the top – Draconic Shenanigans itself. Where did I get the idea for Draconic Shenanigans as a whole story?

Well that would be thanks to Dungeon Dad, who back in 2023, did a whole video about the D and D creature known as the Purple Dragon. The offspring of a red dragon and a blue dragon, the sum is most definitely greater than its parts but what really caught my imagination and jump started the whole thing was the detail about a Purple Dragon’s horde. Purple Dragons collect people or to be more accurate they collect societies. One particular family is the Mr Big for a country’s organised crime? Most likely Purple Dragons wearing their human faces. A ruler that balances conservative and progress to a nicety, engaging not in a reign of tyranny but rather a slow, quiet drizzle that means people are actually grateful for the stability he cultivates? Definitely a Purple Dragon wearing a mortal face.

So that was where the idea of Draconic Shenanigans first took root. It started not with the main characters but with the side character of King Tatsuya. After that it was the very simple germ of a quest to give to the main characters– go to a frontier town, discover why it had stopped sending its taxes and sort the problem out. This is where I need to admit something – Draconic Shenanigans was not written solely by me. I had four co-writers who will be acknowledged and named on the front cover of the book. These wonderful people were my player characters. I ran Draconic Shenanigans as Table Top Roleplay Game, writing up each game session as if they were the chapters of a book and publishing them on my blog. It was when they proved so popular that I decided that I would compile them all into a proper book, with chapter art and publish the story as a series. It was a good job I decided to make it a series because the manuscript for the first draft of the first story arc topped out at one thousand, one hundred and ninety nine pages so instead of a single volume I’m going to publish as two halves, hopefully in July and November.

After all Charles Dickens did not write books, he wrote stories in a magazine, releasing two to four chapters a month and taking several years to complete a story. It was only because his stories proved so popular with all classes of society and rich people came to the publishers saying ‘we like his work but magazines are rather low brow, do you think that you could do them as proper books?’ that his work was complied into said books. It is amazing what can happen when publishers smell money.

So that was the inspiration behind the genesis of Draconic Shenanigans and how it developed into a fully fledged book project. As for the characters they were a little more complex and in some cases extra inspirations were added in as the story progressed and they grew.

I suppose the best example of a non-main character that was started by only a few inspirations would be Hartseer. Also known as the King’s Blade, Hartseer is what you could call the probation officer for the main characters. He is there to try and teach them to curb their worst behaviours and to also drag them back if they try and bunk off the job. I have to admit I did expect the four player or main characters to take off for the hills the first chance they got and it surprised me when they didn’t. What was even more surprising was that it was Thorian, the orc child, who worked out that King Tatsuya wasn’t going to give them total freedom, that the King was going to send someone after them to make sure the job was done and that they didn’t try to run away without doing their duty as the King’s Special.

As for what inspired Hartseer, besides the need to have a probation officer who the more murderous of the team couldn’t just kill the first time they decided he was inconvenient? Well let’s just say that there is a some what large and rather famous film franchise that in 2003 introduced a character who not only rocked in his first animated appearance, his back story was amazing, calling into question just how good the good guys were as it exposed the institutional rot ruling their lives. And then, for some reason I certainly don’t understand, they nerfed the character. For some reason the creators totally over wrote the original backstory and turned him into a 2D moustache twirler of a rather badly done cartoon villain. A lot of us fans… were not impressed. The thing is my Gug, my grandfather, always used to say ‘can you do better? If you can’t. Don’t criticize.’ Well, I’d like to think that I had a fair stab at doing better. The other inspiration for Hartseer at the beginning was a clip of a horror movie I saw on Youtube. I’m not usually into horror, for the most part I find it turns my stomach, but this clip became the inspiration for Hartseer’s warrior’s cheque. The warrior’s cheque was a hair style equivalent to a braid and in Hartseer’s case you do not want to see him angry enough to let his hair down. Every single wire strand of Hartseer’s ‘hair’ is a living entity under his control and they seem to be able to alter their length depending on his need. If you get entangled in that rattling, whipping briar patch, it will tightening like cheese wire. The more you struggle the more it will tighten and thicken and start growing metal thorns. In short, if you don’t have the sense to give up and hold still it will step up from cheese wire to barbed wire to finally razor wire and it will be tightening down the entire time. I originally imagined it as his way of mostly non-lethally detaining King’s Specials who tried to run out on their duties but as my players didn’t go that route I had to wait quite a long time to reveal the King’s Blade in his full and terrifying glory.

Those two were the initial spark for Hartseer, the later inspirations that added themselves to him and deepened the colours of the character was that I changed his original race from human to Shulmi elf. The Shulmi elves are inspired by both the original peoples of the New World and of the higher elevations of Central Asia. Unfortunately I am no Tolkien. I will admit that now. I haven’t even been able to learn a second verbal language to run beside English so there was no way that I could create a new language out of thin air for the different races. Therefore I relied on already existing languages to give voices to the different tongues of Hestia. Unfortunately, at the time, I could not find a translator I trusted to tell me a respectful translation of the language of the original peoples of the New World. Therefore I chose Irish Gaelic as the language of the Shulmi.

The reasons for this were meant with the highest respect for our shared kindred of manufactured suffering; the god forsaken boarding houses and residential schools where the authorities tried to destroy the inheritance of the original peoples of the New World were pioneered in Ireland. The only reason Irish Gaelic survives as a language is because some teachers were willing to risk their lives to teach it in the hedgerows schools when teaching the Gaelic was considered an act of treason, punishable by hanging unto death under British Law. Residential schools were pioneered in Ireland, refined in the New World into eugenics and then exported back to Europe in the 1920’s. That went well, didn’t it just?

As for why I say our shared kindred? It is because although I was born in Britain of British parents, my maternal bloodline runs unbroken back to Ireland. The Great Hunger is etched into my very DNA, as is the dreadful algebra of survival. So I suppose I probably should put a content warning in here as I do not shy away from themes my audience may find uncomfortable or challenging, tackling as I do subjects of high demand religions, stagnated societies and distorted family systems.

The other thread that connects the Irish to the original peoples of the New World is the gift of the Choctaw to Midleton in County Cork during the Great Hunger. Having only just survived the Trail of Tears the Choctaw gave generously to save others who were starving. It was a moment of pride for me when Ireland ‘paid it forward’, sending aid to the Navajo and Hopi during Covid-19 so I say again, the decision to make the Irish Gaelic the language of the Shulmi Elves was made with the greatest respect for our two peoples.

Now as to the characters that had multiple inspirations, I’m going to go with my favourite characters - Estella and Valodrael.

Estella Blackstar is a very young woman from the Kingdom, one could say Empire, of Tiansin. Valodrael is her Void Dragon companion come passenger come possessor but it is not a malignant possession as they do seem to have a very healthy working agreement.

The inspirations behind these two started with one of the very first Web comics ever published back before the term Web Comic was conceived and one that I haven’t been able to find since because I can’t remember the title of it. However, the story was the important part and that started with a very young girl walking through what is obviously the red light district late at night… and she is being followed. When she turns down the side alley they follow her in and think they have her cornered when it proves to be a dead end. One of the ones following her says something along the lines of ‘hello sweetie’, at which point she turns round and reveals a demented smile beneath eyes that are totally black from corner to corner and from lid to lid. Her reply is ‘this is going to hurt… a lot!’ where upon something else boils out of her, out of her shadow, out of the shadow around them. It is honestly hard to say but it definitely did hurt them, a lot. The next frame is her looking up with a regular smile, asking ‘do you feel better for that?’ The artist never did a reveal with the full creature, it was just an extreme close up of it picking what appeared to be a rolex watch out from between its fangs with a foot long claw and the type set they used for its speech made it look like the words were about to drip off the bottom of the page as it said ‘you always take me to the nicest places’. That little gem sat in my head for about fifteen years and then started meeting up with other little moments.

Estella grew from the question, what could convince a girl to make a bargain with some sort of eldritch abomination? That lead me to high demand purity culture and what happens to young women when they agreement is neither sort nor wanted nor necessary for what happens to them. In short, Estella was on a time limit. She had about five months before her own family ended her for the dishonour she had brought on them. For some reason it is never the man who is punished in these events.

The other major inspirations that came in later were a couple that slotted in behind Estella, not directly for her character but rather tying her family line in with the bloodline of another set of characters. Those songs were ‘Distance’ by Oh Geez Not Again and ‘Left Behind’ Caleb Hyles.

‘Distance’ starts with:

“You and me, we’ve been thick as thieves, all our lives,

Picked me up when we had lost it all, been left behind.

Spent our days in the wilds of our own minds come sun or rain.

Til the night you got home late and I knew something had changed.

Now I’m begging for scraps of your attention

Where, oh where did I go wrong?

I could say its nothing, I could give you space,

I could cover for you when the question’s raised,

I’m pacing patient but I don’t think that will fix this,

This distance, between us, it’s driving me mad.”

‘Left Behind’ leads with:

“Why did you leave me behind?

Or has she warped your mind?

I still have no clue.

Trapped. Yes you must be trapped!

But how can I find you when you left me no…

Map?”

The end punches with:

“I hope you’re safe and I hope I’ll see you again,

I wish you could say why you had to run away,

Was I the burden I always thought I was.

Please forgave me, I am human to.

I’m sorry. Please, come home.”

That lead to a deep dive into themes of abandonment, generational trauma, indoctrination and the healing that leads to going no contact on a relationship you recognise as toxic. It also lead into discussions around purpose and responsibility. There are no ‘chosen ones’ in my stories, just people, people doing what they can when they can, people making the choice to build up or tear down, people being people with all their messy, human contradictions and consistencies, their victories and regrets. And I suppose that is the difference between good and evil – evil can’t regret. Hartseer had regret and has spent nearly five hundred years trying to earn redemption through service to a better cause. The one who turned Hartseer into what he now is has no regret and has spent nigh on five hundred years seething that he did not get what he thinks is rightfully his.

Back on track, Valodrael obviously started with the eldritch thing in that proto Web comic and then I added to the mix the Umbral Dragon from the Savage Worlds Pathfinder Bestiary Book Two (try saying that ten times faster), a dash of alien parasite from another film franchise and even just a touch of Emperor Belos from The Owl House when he goes all gloop monster form. I have to admit I absolutely loved writing the scene where Valodrael pulls himself together and whispers in Jeremiah’s ear ‘Excuse me, but do you know where around here I might find a completely soulless husk?’ love more the fact that Jeremiah pretty much turns round and says ‘try the lobby’.

It was certainly more than enough that I have to be careful that Valodrael doesn’t steal every scene he’s in. I would call Valodrael an anti-villain. He’s a bad guy who will do good stuff for… reasons. This dragon has the old school villain swagger. He knows exactly what he is and he is totally unashamed of it. So much so that about four months after I first introduced Estella and Valodrael I discovered the existence of the film Osmosis Jones. A certain virus instantly matched Valodrael’s energy so much so that he joined the inspirations behind Valodrael. In fact about the only thing that puts any sort of leash on Valodrael’s behaviour is the fact that he doesn’t want to disappoint Estella. He has the intelligence to recognise that abusing his host is just folly and then there’s the fact that Estella is the only one to ever call him friend. He’s intrigued by thing called friendship and wishes to explore it furhter. Quite a bit further if he can regain his own flesh and blood and if she says yes.

Lastly I have to thank my co-writers for all the high jinx they get up to when we are working on this story. I will say they totally threw a spanner in the works of what I planned but it came out ten times better for it. The most major example of this was who was supposed to be the Big Bad Evil of this story arc. Originally it was supposed to be the Ash Elves with the werewolves as their lower status allies but then, in one of the fights, one of my players absolutely aced it to get past the squad leader’s body guards and played the love interest card on the squad leader, meaning she promptly adored him. It utterly railroaded my original plot but also made it ten times better as I was forced to do a rethink leading to the creation of the clan structure of the Ash Elf society, the rules governing their version of matriarchy and creating the questions of what happens when a highly isolationist, highly elitist socety faces a change they can’t ignore. In the case of the Ash Elves their werewolf allies turned on them and now the Ash Elves are looking down the gun barrel of extinction. They can no longer stand alone, believing that they are the one true people, they have to have allies and to have allies means they have to climb down off their high horse and start seeing other people as people. It is not a smooth transition.

So there you have it my lovely darlings, some of the inspirations behind Draconic Shenanigans. If you watched this over on Patreon, thank you so much for tossing a coin to your writer, to everyone who watched on Youtube or read the transcript on my blog, thank you just for watching. If you want to follow the project check out the blog, facebook, instagram etc. I also have my own brand of artwork separate from Draconic Shenanigans called Gothic Dragons. I post about them as well. Links down below. See you all in the future my lovely darlings, be safe and be kind.