Novel idea.
I'll put up the next rant in a little while; I'm currently very hungry and must go eat lunch. Besides, my next novel's characters just crawled out and bit me, and I want to get them down before I forget.
Funny. I never used to do character profiles, but now they sometimes help. (Probably because I never consider myself bound by them if I want to change my mind).
I already know the story will be a parody, probably of Gothics as well as of fantasy, and especially that godawful The Mysteries of Udolpho. It's called Terimar Right or Wrong, and about two distant heirs who are called home to the obligatory creaky old house of Terimar after their extremely old great-uncle dies. There's a Fountain of Youth and an enormous cache of jewels somewhere, if they can just find them, and avoid the steward who murdered their great-uncle and has booby-trapped just about the entire place.
Name: Larinon Teraint.
Gender: Male.
Heritage: Half-Orlathian, half-Arvennese. Has elven blood from his mother’s side, enough to give him green eyes.
Looks: Green eyes, dark hair, slender build, fairly short.
Languages: Orlathian, Arvennese.
Magic: Illusion.
Level of Education: Has studied history, history-tales, and morals, as befits a son of a minor Orlathian noble line. Has some education in sword-fighting, but his magic serves him too well to need it.
Home: Corlinth for most of his life. Ancestral home in mid-Orlath, but it was sold long ago. Larinon is mostly content with city life.
Age: 29 years old.
Personality: Lazy slob. He makes money by using his Illusions to create “marvels” out of ordinary items, such as making swords look jeweled and birds sing more sweetly. He can create the illusion of sight and sound, though not of touch or smell. He has few friends, and his closest companion is a black dragon named Ravenwench, whom he buys horses to devour.
Larinon really doesn’t care. He has what he wants when he wants it; he makes good money and can treat himself to good food and wine. There are also a number of women in Corlinth who really don’t care for closer companionship, and Larinon has good relationships with several of them. He is honest with his money, if only because it’s fairly easy for a touch to reveal what he’s hidden on the coin.
His family despairs of him. They think he should make something of himself, but since they have conflicting dreams (his mother hoped he would win back the ancestral land, his father that he would marry into royalty), Larinon reasons that he couldn’t have satisfied all of them anyway. He goes happily about his careless life until the messenger bird comes with word of Terimar.
Family: Father is Analorn, mother is Essemee Teraint. Both are in their fifties and grumbling about it. They have a daughter, Lyridia, a powerful Scarlet mage, who has made something of herself in the royal guard. They are the proudest of her, and continually compare her to Larinon’s, to the latter’s disadvantage. Larinon never notices, which just makes them angrier.
[Just as a note, Arvenna is a mountain Kingdom that used to have an earth dragon sleeping beneath it. The earth dragon got awakened by a whiny royal Heir, rose out of the ground, and broke Arvenna apart].
Name: Herrylana Terasma.
Gender: Female.
Heritage: Arvennese. Has a distant trace of liadra blood.
Looks: Pale hair, blue eyes, tall and slender.
Languages: Arvennese, Rock Pidgin (common language among the Crop mages working to restore Arvenna).
Magic: Crop. Very powerful (able to break bones and cause minor earthquakes, and gnomes will speak to her if they feel like it).
Level of Education: Herrylana’s family has been working to help restore Arvenna for three generations. She knows a great deal about rocks and mountains and Crop magic, but is ignorant of most life outside the rockmover camps.
Home: Arvenna, in the rockmover camps. Herrylana is Arvennese to the core and very concerned about keeping herself that way.
Age: 31.
Personality: Steel. Herrylana is determined that she will restore Arvenna, and she takes to that cause with the stubbornness of a fanatic. She is going to transform the country completely, and she is convinced it will be for the better. She envisions a land of sparkling streams, gently rounded hills, lush farmlands, and many other things that are not going to work in mountainous Arvenna.
Sometimes Herrylana suspects this, and she grows weary of working to move the rock. At such times, she goes off and makes a different sort of plan for the future. She will marry a powerful Crop mage, and they will have children who will be dedicated to restoring Arvenna. She has met no man she believes she can share this future with, but she is confident that she will meet one someday. She trusts in the Light and Destiny.
Herrylana knows that her dream is mixed with personal ambition. She wants to be the one to save Arvenna, not just part of the large team of mages who have been working for three generations. However, she believes that she can control this ambition, and it is not necessarily bad in and of itself. It is this that lures her when word of Terimar comes; immense ancestral wealth could help her achieve her goal.
Family: Herrylana has no brothers or sisters; her parents never had time to raise another child. Her father, Larnon Terasma, died in a rockfall several years ago. Her mother, Morianna, is still alive, but she works at a distance in other rockmover camps these days. She didn’t want to stay near the place where her husband died. This somewhat confuses Herrylana, who thinks working where her father fell the best way of paying tribute to him, but she and her mother have a cordial relationship.
Now to go eat some lunch!
Funny. I never used to do character profiles, but now they sometimes help. (Probably because I never consider myself bound by them if I want to change my mind).
I already know the story will be a parody, probably of Gothics as well as of fantasy, and especially that godawful The Mysteries of Udolpho. It's called Terimar Right or Wrong, and about two distant heirs who are called home to the obligatory creaky old house of Terimar after their extremely old great-uncle dies. There's a Fountain of Youth and an enormous cache of jewels somewhere, if they can just find them, and avoid the steward who murdered their great-uncle and has booby-trapped just about the entire place.
Name: Larinon Teraint.
Gender: Male.
Heritage: Half-Orlathian, half-Arvennese. Has elven blood from his mother’s side, enough to give him green eyes.
Looks: Green eyes, dark hair, slender build, fairly short.
Languages: Orlathian, Arvennese.
Magic: Illusion.
Level of Education: Has studied history, history-tales, and morals, as befits a son of a minor Orlathian noble line. Has some education in sword-fighting, but his magic serves him too well to need it.
Home: Corlinth for most of his life. Ancestral home in mid-Orlath, but it was sold long ago. Larinon is mostly content with city life.
Age: 29 years old.
Personality: Lazy slob. He makes money by using his Illusions to create “marvels” out of ordinary items, such as making swords look jeweled and birds sing more sweetly. He can create the illusion of sight and sound, though not of touch or smell. He has few friends, and his closest companion is a black dragon named Ravenwench, whom he buys horses to devour.
Larinon really doesn’t care. He has what he wants when he wants it; he makes good money and can treat himself to good food and wine. There are also a number of women in Corlinth who really don’t care for closer companionship, and Larinon has good relationships with several of them. He is honest with his money, if only because it’s fairly easy for a touch to reveal what he’s hidden on the coin.
His family despairs of him. They think he should make something of himself, but since they have conflicting dreams (his mother hoped he would win back the ancestral land, his father that he would marry into royalty), Larinon reasons that he couldn’t have satisfied all of them anyway. He goes happily about his careless life until the messenger bird comes with word of Terimar.
Family: Father is Analorn, mother is Essemee Teraint. Both are in their fifties and grumbling about it. They have a daughter, Lyridia, a powerful Scarlet mage, who has made something of herself in the royal guard. They are the proudest of her, and continually compare her to Larinon’s, to the latter’s disadvantage. Larinon never notices, which just makes them angrier.
[Just as a note, Arvenna is a mountain Kingdom that used to have an earth dragon sleeping beneath it. The earth dragon got awakened by a whiny royal Heir, rose out of the ground, and broke Arvenna apart].
Name: Herrylana Terasma.
Gender: Female.
Heritage: Arvennese. Has a distant trace of liadra blood.
Looks: Pale hair, blue eyes, tall and slender.
Languages: Arvennese, Rock Pidgin (common language among the Crop mages working to restore Arvenna).
Magic: Crop. Very powerful (able to break bones and cause minor earthquakes, and gnomes will speak to her if they feel like it).
Level of Education: Herrylana’s family has been working to help restore Arvenna for three generations. She knows a great deal about rocks and mountains and Crop magic, but is ignorant of most life outside the rockmover camps.
Home: Arvenna, in the rockmover camps. Herrylana is Arvennese to the core and very concerned about keeping herself that way.
Age: 31.
Personality: Steel. Herrylana is determined that she will restore Arvenna, and she takes to that cause with the stubbornness of a fanatic. She is going to transform the country completely, and she is convinced it will be for the better. She envisions a land of sparkling streams, gently rounded hills, lush farmlands, and many other things that are not going to work in mountainous Arvenna.
Sometimes Herrylana suspects this, and she grows weary of working to move the rock. At such times, she goes off and makes a different sort of plan for the future. She will marry a powerful Crop mage, and they will have children who will be dedicated to restoring Arvenna. She has met no man she believes she can share this future with, but she is confident that she will meet one someday. She trusts in the Light and Destiny.
Herrylana knows that her dream is mixed with personal ambition. She wants to be the one to save Arvenna, not just part of the large team of mages who have been working for three generations. However, she believes that she can control this ambition, and it is not necessarily bad in and of itself. It is this that lures her when word of Terimar comes; immense ancestral wealth could help her achieve her goal.
Family: Herrylana has no brothers or sisters; her parents never had time to raise another child. Her father, Larnon Terasma, died in a rockfall several years ago. Her mother, Morianna, is still alive, but she works at a distance in other rockmover camps these days. She didn’t want to stay near the place where her husband died. This somewhat confuses Herrylana, who thinks working where her father fell the best way of paying tribute to him, but she and her mother have a cordial relationship.
Now to go eat some lunch!