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#Post#: 1017--------------------------------------------------
Behind the DM's Screen Vol. VIII
DIR By: Dungeon Master
Date: October 18, 2024, 3:10 am
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Greetings. Happy Holidays to all, Welcome to the New Year. Well,
2024, wonder how this is going to go?
I had much of Conclave written soon after we started gaming. it
developed over time and it turned into some different files I
had to keep track of. I knew several Story beats I wanted to
happen. and have been crafting parts of the story as the main
story developed. I have had two plots sitting out there, also
developing. One in the Dark Gods story and the other has been
this long-simmering issue, (Well, I say long-simmering but
really it has been a short time chapter-wise) since Chapter
Seven, the Highmage's Agent. In the letter, Jenna discusses
Analis and Morgan and their relation to the Primal Sorcerers.
So just as I had so much ready and prepared, there was so much
yet to do, so, a lot of my focus has been on the realm of
further developing out the Conclave. It took me this long to
decide on the final membership of the Conclave members. My
friend Adam came through with some needed details for me to go
forward with the Aravis Interlude Story that I have been
developing and crafting for an age.
I was even inspired to write some about Grand Empress Zeva and
get her out of bed. I've called this the mid to Late period of
the Great Peace that has lasted for the last Fifty Years. The
implications of this are clear I'm sure, though I don't know
what it means just yet.
I have left a lot of storylines and characters hanging and I
apologize, I always have trouble around this stretch of time, so
this has been a breath of fresh air coming back and doing some
Gaming and writing, and polishing, and editing. I'm seeing if
the writing bug takes me again. The Two stories I need to write
are The Knight of the Black Rose and The Journey South to
Confront the Red Dragon. The other story is about Damara the
Windrider/ Dragon Rider finishing up training in Solamnia with
the Solamnic and Elven Knights and Dragons to begin heading to
northern Khur.
To Go Further, Wydara and Las and the Kids will hopefully be
active again soon.
and beyond that
Lashia and Longshot are conspiring.
But Before I get ahead of myself, I wanted to talk about the
Conclave a bit more. The word count required me to make cuts and
tweaks I normally might have expanded upon. Wayreth was so
packed, I could not put in another word. So much happened during
the Conclave, even by what didn't happen. It was an unusual
Conclave to be sure. In the past, it had been the practice to
come and go, but I thought for this one, more people wanted to
come and enjoy the experience of meeting with one another and
connecting with one another once again. I expect it will be like
this for a time until it becomes an event taken for granted
again as it was in the old days, a mere formality. This will be
blasphemous I know, But I am happy to get the swordplay
flirting out of the Conclave and get down to the business of the
Conclave. I got really in there into the sausagemaking of
passing laws and horsetrading, and backroom deals. Oh, and in
case anybody was wondering, yes, I almost have the Tower of
Blood Sea fully staffed, by hook or by crook, I was trying to
find ways to cover the schools of Magic. I think I am missing
Evocation/Invocation. I know what the Tower is missing, but I
would say that is it for now, the others will come with time.
I got to have a gathering of sorts in part two of Conclave,
entitled Wayreth, where the Hall of Mages in the largest open
area, and it was opened to facilitate the get-together, it
allowed me to get some things accomplished. Get Rikar from the
old game material in the game with Karnea for a brief time, Also
bringing Dagamier and Bram DiThon from the Seventh Sentinal
Trilogy and put them in the Conclave. They are old, but they
still have the spark.
I also got the Potion Master almost to the Tower, that is
something I have been wanting to happen for an age, and I
finally got that done. I got the Academician in there by the
end.
I had let people in on the first Interlude. How did people like
it? The Fetch. Such a Diabolical creature.
The Second Interlude, We first get to meet Morgan. A deep cut
from my arsenal of fun. She first came to us as a waif. And to
see her all these years later, someone that is scarier than
anyone else I can think of. She is a Freak of Nature and a
Magical Wrecking Ball. a Walking Human infused with chaos by
chaos himself, I don't know that it came off in the story, but
she is a bit insane with moments of lucidity. I was writing the
scene and she surprised the hell out of me with her response,
but I loved it so much, I just went with it.
My Player Adam went through all the emotions since our Gaming
session the other day, but it was only today that he saw the
scene play out of Sarus the Renegade Hunter getting killed. He
had the appropriate response and wanted Karnea to kill them all.
So anyway, I am patting myself on the back for I think a
successful Conclave Session and story treatment. I tried to go
all out with the approach to the Tower, to bask in the feeling
of reaching the Forest.
Having a fuller sense of the gaming material that I have amassed
over the years has given me the confidence to bring it off in
the way that I did, along with my faithful player, who did a
masterful job dealing with all of this and being completely not
ready for that Fetch to come out of the Mirror. Talk about left
field. He forgot the thing existed. I have had the patience of a
saint in holding off from using this creature all these years
until this moment, which was the most perfect moment of all
time. Oh to see that thing climbing out of the mirror, and
Adam's reaction, Perfection, Chef's kiss.
I hope that everyone enjoyed it. It was a major accomplishment,
and a major goal ticked off the list for the goals of the
Consolidation of Power. Now, Normally I would not let a story go
on so long into Page Two, but this is a special case, I had to
make that decision when the Page Counts stopped it from being a
Two Part Story to a Four Part Story, the Interludes where always
going to show up where they do. So I just had to do a second
page. I know when it will end, at least Story Two, it's just
getting there, and getting from A to B is not always a straight
line, especially in the Endgame. I have been wanting Aravis to
come back home to the Tower for a time and it looks like that is
going to happen. That has been in the works for an age. Still
hard to believe all of this is out now and what I have been
planning forever is now a reality.
So again, Thank you for coming and reading and witnessing the
twists and turns of these stories and the lives of these
characters.
#Post#: 1018--------------------------------------------------
Re: Behind the DM's Screen Vol. VIII Moving the Needle on Karnea
DIR By: Dungeon Master
Date: October 18, 2024, 3:11 am
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Post Two
Greetings all.
Things are moving behind the scenes here at the forum. Adam has
turned in his Timeline for the Missing Years for Karnea
detailing the Lost years between 384 AC to 421 AC covering the
thirty-seven-year gap after Karnea left Krynn. I moved to a
prominent position in the Information for Karnea section. I was
surprised and I think you will be too. I hope you enjoy it. He
has been a very prolific contributor of late, helping me out
greatly, and taking on more duties with the Story.
Chapter Fourteen: The City of Doors is nearly complete, going to
hold it for another day while I get it to where I want it. Adam
has already signed off on it, it is very nearly done, it's
looking for the finishing touches.
I told Adam ahead of time what was coming down the pike and he
has already provided me the majority of Chapter Fifteen,
entitled Aravis.
We are very nearly in the home stretch, racing ahead toward
Karnea Story II's finale coming up in Chapters Nineteen and
Twenty.
I am very proud of how this story has turned out. I know there
has not been much action, or fighting, or danger, but I have
gotten accomplished what I set out to do in the first place with
Story Two. Karnea has Consolidated Power on Krynn. Story Three
is going to be bonkers.
#Post#: 1019--------------------------------------------------
Behind the DM's Screen Vol. VIII Welcome Home
DIR By: Dungeon Master
Date: October 18, 2024, 3:11 am
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Post Three
Greetings all, I Hope you have been well. I think I have been
recovering from writing for six months straight and I decided I
need to pace myself. I have three Chapters on the verge of
dropping in the next several days. One is Chapter Fifteen of
Kanrea Story II, entitled "Welcome Home" about Karnea bringing
Aravis back home to Krynn after many years away.
But is this just the first step in the machinations of a higher
power, for those of you in the know, all is going according to
plan.
The Tower of Blood Sea's population has nearly doubled in
Karnea's couple of weeks away and there are a plethora of new
personalities to get used to.
I have been plotting and planning Aravis's return to Krynn for
months and months and it is hard to believe everything is coming
to fruition.
Adam and I are gaming in the next couple of days before he heads
out on vacation with his family for a couple of weeks. We are
planning to game tomorrow night on Discord. I have written out
the story for the session and will write down what Karnea,
Aravis, and Lucius do during the gaming session and try to have
it up by the end of the night. There are a lot of housekeeping
duties being taken care of during this Chapter for Karnea as at
the Tower of Blood Sea the population more than doubled in the
nearly Two and a half weeks she has been absent. Several
important personalities will begin to develop from here.
Karnea's player has listed several things she wants to
accomplish in the next couple of Sessions before Karnea sets out
to face her former student Analis in the Northern Wastes.
Additionally, Prince Lucius d'Janikar of Soreel is losing his
fiancée (Aravis) whom he has been courting for decades. Not one
letting things lie, he sets out to confront her, he wants her to
look him in his eyes and tell him with her own voice of her
intentions. The Heir of the Empire risks everything and searches
across the sea of stars for his lost love. We shall see what
ramifications unfold in his wake in Two Chapters that will drop
after the Karnea Chapter.
Update-----I was up till 6 am finishing out the story for
Chapter Fiffteen. For a Chapter with not much action, there was
so much that needed to be done. It has turned out to be one of
the longer Chapters, I still wonder if it will fit when all is
said and done, I may have to cut it in half. In my head, I gamed
out how I thought things may go down and it turned out better
than expected, we shall see what happens when we add Karnea's
player into the mix.
Karnea has been a loner character for nearly all of her life, so
it will be interesting to see her operate with a crew behind her
supporting her. One of the most interesting aspects is as a
Black Robe, one has to worry about who is making plans to
supplant the leader, but now we have two powerful Red Robe and
White Robe that we are adding to the dynamics in the Tower,
whose job it is to help protect the Tower and High Sorcery. And
adding in Aravis, a demigoddess daughter of Nuitari has finally
returned to Krynn. We will see how that affects the world and
the rest of the Pantheon.
We will be gaming at about 9 pm on our Discord and I will stay
up and see that the Stories are posted after Midnight on the
Forum.
Update-------- Adam and I gamed Chapter Fifteen "Welcome Home"
tonight. I am going to have to do some work to do to the story
before I post the Final version. It was smooth, much smoother
than I thought it was going to be in bringing Karnea back into
the Tower and bringing Aravis back to Krynn.
It flowed from section to section tonight. I am going to spend
some time with the story we worked on tonight before posting it.
So it might not be tonight like I was saying, it might be
tomorrow. We will see.
I have every intention of seeing the other stories through to
completion, I honestly needed a break. In the meantime, I have
made it a mission to flesh out Soreel more fully. We have a
loose blueprint to work from.
#Post#: 1020--------------------------------------------------
Behind the DM's Screen Vol. VIII Update on the Current state of
the Forum
DIR By: Dungeon Master
Date: October 18, 2024, 3:12 am
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Post Four
Greetings to all of you. Hope your day is going well.
Trying to decide how I feel this weekend so far. I feel spent. I
had written 75% of Karnea's Chapter Fifteen before realizing and
remembering Aravis was a Demigodess, and cannot not travel
through Sigil. I had created a character to be introduced in
Chapter Fifteen and I had spent intense weeks in planning
everything out. All of that had to be thrown out (not completely
thank goodness. I will just use that stuff another time. But I
was so depressed that I only had 25% left of my Chapter. I broke
my 6 months writing streek because I felt like I ran full speed
into a brick wall.
Luckily, I had written out an unpublished account of Selena and
Azura welcoming the new personalities that were coming to the
Tower in Karnea's absence. From there, I just had to fit these
characters into place and have Karnea deal with them. I am super
interested in how the dynamics of these PCs and NPCs play out.
So I wrote my heart out and constructed a new Chapter Fifteen. I
also wrote Two Lucius Chapters that gets him to Krynn, and with
all of the Soreel work I have been doing recently, I was
inspired to add elements into the first new stories for Zeva in
more than twenty years. Writing her Chapters was completely
effortless and even more than that, they were fun to write.
There is a huge difference when you have to write something and
it is the hardest mountain to have to climb and tackle. But some
of these stories just poured out of me in a pure act of
creation.
It is not lost on me that I have a bunch of stories open. The
time has to be right to head in that direction, but that is a
goal. It is just a huge ordeal to orchestrate.
I think my players and I needed this time to recover. We will
get back to it as soon as we can.
Karnea's player is going on vacation today, so I don't expect to
hear from him in a while. I am currently lightly plotting out
these next two chapters to have ready when he is back. The story
is paced out to give Karnea some time to prepare for the Endgame
of Karnea Story Two the Consolidation of Power.
I have fleshed out plots for the next couple of chapters for
Zeva and also there is a good chance the Player of Darius Desaad
and I will be having our first gaming session tonight or
tomorrow be will get on Discord and gaming out Chapter Three:
The Patron.
-------Update! The Player of Darius and I could not meet up. We
are going to try to get together this coming weekend.
#Post#: 1021--------------------------------------------------
Behind the DM's Screen Vol. VIII
DIR By: Dungeon Master
Date: October 18, 2024, 3:13 am
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Post Five
Greetings,
I have plotted out the Chapters for Coryn the White from Seven
to Twenty. Going to work on Coryn the way I have worked on
Karnea in the Consolidation of Power in that Coryn is pretty
together by the time we see her at the beginning of the Rise of
Solamnia. I want to be clear, In the Chapter entitled "Jaymes"
they only just met and do not form a bond until 423 AC. Chapter
Twenty finale will take us to 423 AC and set us up for Story
Two.
Coryn is pretty far behind. She is going to go about stuff
differently, and it's not a carbon copy of Karnea.
I am so proud of Karnea's operation right now. It took me a long
time to figure out the what, figure out the how, and work in the
why.
I am just interested to see it play out. Getting the
introductions out of the way was staggered to make everything
work better.
I don't know if there will be as many people, I don't think
Coryn is ready to set up a school at Nightlund. She is studying
Potions already, but I think an apothecary specialist, some
attendants, and a certain Red Robe (Who will observe the Taladas
Trilogy from the Tower of Nightlund in the next couple of years)
will come in at some point before Chapter 20.
Going to do some writing.
#Post#: 1022--------------------------------------------------
Behind the DM's Screen Vol. VIII
DIR By: Dungeon Master
Date: October 18, 2024, 3:13 am
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Post Six
Hi there.
I am considering ways to get some stories going and unclog the
logjam, but it is taking some time.
I just posted Coryn Chapter Eight. I have to work on Chapter
Nine still, but I have the outline, but I could not help myself
and I have Chapter Ten almost finished. It was a complete joy to
write. I got to dig into a juicy storyline I have been teasing
for nearly as long as this forum has been operating. I am
altering some endings in a novel, but I am playing with toys in
this day and age. I played with Karnea having the Bloodstone
once but edited out those stories. Those were some **** Karnea
stories that I have edited out of existence.
I have a lot of things set up now. The plots are going forward
in many places.
#Post#: 1023--------------------------------------------------
Re: Behind the DM's Screen Vol. VIII
DIR By: Dungeon Master
Date: October 18, 2024, 3:14 am
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Post Seven
My good friend Adam returned and we were able to touch base once
he read all of the stories I had written in his absence. We
worked through some things I needed to fix. He played a
character named Zeke and he ran the Wolverines for Zeva. He was
a legend. I informed Adam his NPC character had passed, he was
good, and he knew Zeke was in his 80s at least. I told him Zeke
lived long enough to participate in the 50th-anniversary
celebrations in Tarish of the Rule of the Saint and the Warriors
of the Conquest. He then went somewhere and laid down for a
while and passed. (Like Jefferson and Adams both dying on the
4th of July the same year.) He was a writer of a couple of
must-have top sellers on Soreel. His Biography, and the Rules of
War (An Art of War-type collection of Rules).
So much happening.
The important thing is my friend is back and he has been a great
help already helping me get things squared away. I don't know if
anything new will be posted tonight, I will see where I am at
with Coryn. I have to be honest. I have done my utmost to
populate the Orders over the years and I have never been happy
with the people I have come up with. I am getting there with the
Black Robe. But my White Robes just suck. So I am in the process
through the Coryn Stories making up some new people in the White
Robes. Hiram is an idea I have had written down and since
deploying him into the world, I like him so far.
There are some names I have written down that might survive the
culling. I'm not in love with the name Haley Skytracker, but
somehow it is sticking. Just trying to rebuild the order.
I'm taking my time with Coryn. Seeking to do this methodically.
I am a little gunshy at the moment. I want to lay down this big
story, but I am hesitating.
Talk to you soon. I hope everyone is well. I have a mental block
on some stories at the moment, so I am doing what I can to stay
writing and stuff. So I am getting closer. I'm sorry.
#Post#: 1024--------------------------------------------------
Behind the DM's Screen Vol. VIII
DIR By: Dungeon Master
Date: October 18, 2024, 3:15 am
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Post Eight
I guess I had a realization about writing the Coryn story. I
know it is fan fiction. I guess I am doing it to understand her
better in the context of my game and in relation to the world I
am constructing... "constructing" Yes, I and trying to keep the
roof from caving in. If it was not for the Dragonlance Nexus,
Dragonlance would be a dead world, and it's been on life support
since the Novels ended. I try to keep an edge of seriousness all
through my stories and the rest of everything here as real as
possible and try my best to immerse in the world and try to tell
a story within that space.
Also, I hope you enjoy the characters and everything else that
is here. It keeps my mind active and my imagination alive.
#Post#: 1025--------------------------------------------------
Behind the DM's Screen Vol. VIII
DIR By: Dungeon Master
Date: October 18, 2024, 3:15 am
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Post Nine
Greetings, I'm going to write the rest of the day and the rest
of the night. I have several stories on the cusp of going out, I
want to put the finishing touches on them. I have to look up
Saves vs. Charm for an incident coming up. Now that I have heard
from Robbi and Adam, The stories set on Soreel can go forward.
Zeva's next chapter is about to go out and I have other things
planned for the operations soon. It is going to be some time
before the next Karnea Chapter, we have maybe three weeks or
maybe less, I will see. But it ties up Lucius's story because
Karnea will have to come over and get him from the mainland.
This leads me to my goal this week, try to get the stories going
again in the other stories. Every time of think of what I have
to do I cringe, it will be so much work. On the cusp of Dragon
War over the desert, The mission south with Lord Rage and
Talidaar. Even if I don't get anything out, I will do some
writing so that there is some movement going. I have not given
up, I just had to put it to aside for a while while I figure out
how the last Four Chapters of Karnea Story II, and getting to
know Lucius and Zeva and again. I also have been expanding what
we know of Zeva's Homeworld of Soreel and the rest of her
Empire. I just want people to know I have not given up, just
taking my time.
Alright. Talk to you later,
#Post#: 1026--------------------------------------------------
Behind the DM's Screen Vol. VIII
DIR By: Dungeon Master
Date: October 18, 2024, 3:17 am
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Post Ten
Looking back through the stories I have ready to go, I realize
the reason I have held off from writing any more of the Battle
in the North Desert of Khur is there is so much potential for
death. All these characters I have carried through to their
current points, to go further, to write one more Chapter, they
could meet their end.
For Rian-Lydia Ravenheart. That character has been through it
all, but I could not pull the trigger on her end game. I just
did. Do not sleep on her tragic chapter. Her chapter leads to
The Court of Gilthas Kanan and also Lashia. There is a Blue
Dragon in human form in the middle of the valley and mere feet
from the Speaker. The act of sacrifice for Rian brings us to
this moment. This moment I have been dreading, because I don't
know for sure the outcome.
It is a moment I have been plotting and planning for so long and
I had not the heart to post it, but I am trying to move things
forward. We will just see what happens.
I have more coming, there is still more in the tank. I have the
next two Karnea Chapters finished, Me and Adam just have to have
the gaming sessions to see how things go down. But it means I
have some free time.
Zeva's next four chapters are just being touched up.
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