MaW’s Blog

Apparently this is the two hundredth blog entry I’ve made. Seems like more than that. Or maybe less. Anyway, I’ve not made many lately, and the main reason I’m making this one is because Mike Nolan’s been nagging me to do so. I guess I do actually have something to write about for a change, so perhaps I should be doing this of my own accord.

I’ve got the week off work this week, which is nice. Been sitting around at home doing some things which needed doing. Most important of these is perhaps the commencement of serious writing on my new story for the h2g2 Post which was going to be called ‘Uninvited’, but now is going to be called something different because it’s no longer an appropriate title. I’m not entirely sure what an appropriate title would be — hopefully I’ll think of one soon.

The story itself is set in what I think of as the ‘Alledari Universe’. I’ve had this one in my head (and on my computers) since I was doing my GCSEs, which would be about seven years now. Initially it was my own playground. The primary race were known as the Al’dar, and they had many weird and wonderful mental and technological capabilities. Then in collaboration with Richard Stonell, the whole thing matured somewhat. We merged what by then were called the Alledar (although just to be confusing, I decided it was still pronounced the same as it had been before, so it’s only two syllables when you say it) and Richard’s race, the Rashtamé, who are an interesting bunch of people. They all seem to be seven or eight feet tall, have totally black, featureless eyeballs, and their equivalents of the Alledari ‘magic-users’ are vastly powerful and wise.

We embarked on the creation of an epic story which eventually gained the title ‘Shadows of the Lost’. This was going to be a noble tale of despair, sacrifice and ultimate victory (naturally), divided quite neatly into three books - ‘The Dusk’, ‘The Dark’ and ‘The Dawn’. The first book was set primarily within the sphere of the Alledar, their known part of the galaxy and their history, so I wrote it almost entirely myself. It introduced the Alledari lead characters — a cantankerous Psidar (the Psidar being the Alledari order of magic-users) named Riirsh Nopreya, who I always enjoyed writing; and a young yet extraordinarily powerful Psidar names Asha Daleele. Asha was really the lead character, although Riirsh got quite a bit to do as well, and there was also a significant supporting cast, including Zarata Kross, a legendary figure from Alledora’s past who appears none the worse for the passage of five thousand years; Karo De Ko Altos and Ishin Ti Mon were Knights, the elite Alledari infantry, and they were fun to write as well.

The second book introduced the Rashtamé, and the primary characters thereof, and also what was really going on, which the events of the first book had been an effect of rather than the actual important thing — even though it would have been quite important enough as it was. We more or less finished this one, then embarked on a rewrite of the first book. While I was at University, things tailed off quite a lot, and the third book never even got started. Which was a shame, because it was going to explain many things, and end with some noble self-sacrifice in order to save the Universe from general destruction (more specifically, from all the atoms in the Universe falling apart).

Anyway, wrenching back to something that might actually be of interest, the new story is set in this Universe. It takes place during the early phase of Alledari colonisation of the galaxy, which puts it on the original timeline as about nine or ten thousand years before Shadows of the Lost. This of course gives me quite a bit of freedom in the society of the time, and it’s fun doing things and figuring out how they would have evolved into the society seen in Shadows — even if nobody else ever reads that work. The Psidar are not a revered body at this time. They’re instead semi-mythical, feared out of a general fear of the unknown, and only ever seen when a young Alledar develops the ability to use Psi (which is the energy that gives Psidar their power) and is taken by the Psidar for training. Generally they’re never seen again, as the Psidar try not to interfere.

As a bit of background to that, a thousand years before the new story is set, Alledora (the Alledari homeworld) had a rather nasty war. It started off fairly conventionally, but escalated in a couple of years to encompass the entire planet, and then escalated even more when all three sides (just to make things more complicated) started using nuclear weapons. It was at this point that the Psidar appeared out of even more mythical myth (at the time they hadn’t publically done anything, well, ever) and forcibly put an end to the fighting, and this was all well and good, but they also decided that they were the only people fit to run the planet, so took it over. Eventually there was a rebellion, a full-scale nuclear war, and not many people survived either the bombs or the ensuing climate disruption and radiation poisoning.

A thousand years or so later, the Psidar are in hiding again, and the Alledar have rebuilt their civilisation in relative peace and prosperity, and started to colonise nearby suitable planets. The new story follows the colonists on the most recently-established colony, Dira Tulag, as one of their number develops Psychic potential. Ordinary the Psidar would simply abduct her, but on a planet where there are no Psidar, she has to come to control her abilities herself, and the colonists have to come to terms with having her among them. Plenty of opportunities for angst there.

Oh, on Saturday it’s Ellie and Mike’s wedding. Should be exciting! First friends getting married, it’s quite a milestone actually. I’ve never really been to a proper wedding before — last time I did, I was far too young to comprehend what was going on.