Spring and funky waether.

Well, for the past, oh, seven days, life has been in the usual dreary pattern. Same schedule: Get up, got to school, stare at the clock for 6 hours of classes, than go running (2 miles? 3?) and return home, watch T.V, eat dinner, and sleep. Day after day after day. I don't particularly mind patterns, but a bit more variety would be nice in the day.

Was has had a lot of variety is our weather. Don't know what's causing it, but we've had about four seasons within seven days.  A bit of a rundown below just because I'm bored:

Saturday, the first day of spring, was great. It hovered at around 70 degrees (F), and I spent the day with a friend and my sister (who's in sixth grade yet acts more mature than most 8th graders- go figure) playing soccer with my dog Hope chasing the ball, which soon turned into a free-for-all keep-away from the dog. Once hope crashed, about 30 minutes in, we heading onto the back portch and drank lemonade (thank you mother!) while taking about random stuff, with my sister rolling her eyes and leaving the scene once the conversation drifted to the topic of girls (nothing BAD, just, you know, talking...guys are allowed to do that, right?) The rest of the day was spent at my friend's house, which is around a 10-15 mile walk from mine, clearing branches from that ice storm around Christmas and burning them for a good 2 hours, at 10$ an hour, which was cool. I crashed at around 11:00...tiring day, but fun.

Sunday was less eventful. My dad came home from a business trip, and the day was plagued by rain...not the nice spring showers, but a foggy drizzle. ugh. nothing much to say about today, just that it was boring and stressful...and that my sister stole my Xbox from me and began to play my Mass Effect game, which made me kinda upset (seeing as she played better than me, kinda breaks down the soul of a guy to be beaten by a girl at video games)

Monday was, well, school, but around 3:00 it began to snow. Snow, only 3 days since our 70 degree weather! it kept snowing until around 10:00 at night, and we managed to get a two hour delay before going to school the next morning.

Tuesday started school 2 hours late, which isn't that strange seeing as my state has the worst plow service in the U.S, or so it seems. The only noticeable thing was that my friends and I got a little crazy and decided to play spin the bottle..which resulted in me having to devour an orange peel...and to be honest, those thing were not meant to be digested. at all.

And guess what we had today? 65 degree weather! Went running with my friend, something we do about 2-3 times a week (more or less), which was funny because we were running around with shorts and tee shirts around a local lake, which still had snow on the ground from Monday. Only in the Appalachian mountains can you find that kind of ridiculous weather, that's for sure. Spent the rest of the day reading on my porch and doing homework...nothing overly stressful.

Overall, its been a somewhat eventfull week, just wanted to put something out so everyone knows that I'm not dead or anything.

Heart of Courage

Well,I've been writing Ascension lately, and I have to say that its coming long nicely. I usually get my inspirations in the middle of the night (figures) and so I have half of what I've written in a journal beside my bed. I'll post what I've got once I find the time and motivation to put it on my blog...after I've edited it of course. Right now it's just a bunch of ideas stitched together with a few lines of dialog, if you known what I mean. So far, the main character, who I'm naming Archangel for the moment, has arrived on the planet's surface. There, a battle between the Intai and the Kantras (Kai versions of the Intai) are engaged in a battle taking place in the ruins of presumably one of the former civilizations since the collapse of Intai and Katras empires. What they are actually battling on is one of the ruins that houses the last 'anchor' keeping the barriers that repel the Void up, and in the conflict the essence that does so is disrupted. Only three survive: an Intai'sei by the name of Sora is one, who is shown in the prologue which has been posted earlier, though a good number of tweaks have been made to it, most notably the absence of humanity. Anyway, an unnamed Kantras also survives, along with Archangel. since Archangel manage to stumble into the battle right before the explosian, both natives believe him to be the source of both the explosion and the Void invasion that follows some time later. The writing I got ends right about the time Archangel is 'rescued' (and by rescued, i mean she decided not to rip his heart out....grudgingly) by Sora, so I don't have much beyond that. And I'm still kinda vague on how he actually arrives on the planet from way out yonder in space, but I can fix that later.

In the mean time, I found an epic instrumental/choir piece of music off Youtube that fits perfectly with the story,,sounds like it would be the background music for a movie trailer for something...But that's probably just me : )

The Planet of Fae and Kai

 

 Note: these are taken from another site that is working on some new Star Wars thing, and I'm only using them as reference points

The planet where both the Kai and Fae live on is a planet of two extremes. Though lush, it also supports a variety of environments, ranging from crumbling cities and arcane ruins from the ancient war between Fae and Kai to beautiful alpine vistas and cities built within the plains that circle the equator. To get a better grasp of the difference between Fae and Kai, pictures 1 and 2 would be mainly Fae environments, while 3 and 4 would be home to Kai creatures. 

Just wanted to post something on this planet before I put out any more writing, still looking fro a name for the planet itself too.

Ascension 1.5

First off, sorry for not posting lately. For the past week or so I've been traveling, most notably to Florida, and while I've been doing do I've been doing a bit, as in a good amount, of writing. Which for me involves writing 1-2 pages, looking over it, than starting over either because a new idea popped into my head or that the paper didn't quite show what I wanted it to. But, anyhow, I'm sticking to the original Ascension plan, the one with the Intai'sei and the Void, but I've added a few tweaks that you may want to know first. If you don't, just skip to the somewhat unfinished writing I have below it.

- The story takes place on the planet of (insert name here) that is the home of both the Intai and the Kantras. These two empires are polar opposites, for reason I'll explain later, and were among the first species ever to experience interstellar travel. However, at the peak of their empires they engaged in a brutal war, which resulted in a rip in space and time that brought along the emergance of the Void. The Void destroyed their entire empire and forced them back to their homeworld, which they surrounded with arcane barriers to keep the void out. However, the arcane barriers are slowly weakening, and the Void is steadily invading the last haven for sentient life.

- The ecosystem of this planet is rather cool, IMO, and the best part is that I made it up without outside influence. The planet is lush, ranging from forest supporting mile-high trees to treacherous marshlands to the snow-capped mountain ranges that exist at the poles. Every species on the planet is divided into two separate branches: that of the Fae and the Kai. Fae are generally more majestic and graceful and tend to have a more peaceful demeanor, even if they are predators. These creatures are generally given a more avian or feline look and feel. Kai, on the other hand, tend to be more vicious, ravenous, and tend to have a hostile feel to them, even if they are herbivores. They tend to be influenced by wolves or reptiles. Intai'sei are the Fae version of one species, while Kantras show the Kai branch of the same species.

Without further ado, here is a bit of unfinished writing.



Once, he was something. A hero, an icon, the very symbol of everything humanity stood for. It was the men and women like him that kept the empire strong, people like him who stood as paragons of virtue, maintaining stability, peace, and order even in the most tumulus times of the empire’s history. Yet none of that mattered now. His kind, vanguards of humanities’ progress through he stars, had failed, and with that failure had brought upon the utter destruction of the entire Human race.

Legion

For centuries, his mind had wandered in a trance-like bliss, a dream state that consisted of burst of colors, flashes of memory, and long, endlessly silently stretches of darkness. It was this blissful chaos that comforted him, wrapping him in a cloak of oblivion that served to ward his mind away from the outside worlds…and it was this wonderful chaos that caused him to push away that single word, the calling that would bring about the confusion and peril of waking life.

Legion

The word repeated itself, digging inside the deepest fragments of his mind, bringing upon memories of death and destruction, famine and peril, things that he had long pushed down to the darkest depths of his subconscious mind. The memories brought feelings of pain, guilt, regret. But along with the visions of war there were ones of love, too- the indescribable sensation of a first kiss, the feeling of the arms of a lover curled around him, the face of a smiling infant. Those memories were the ones he feared the most, for those visions were the ones that caused his mind to surface from the wonderful chaos of a millennia of slumber, and no matter how hard he fought, and inner instinct kept pulling him farther and farther away from the comfort of Cryo-sleep.
He began to remember thing- his long forgotten name, Deavon, his wife and child, Seera and Markos, and how he left that entire life behind to save what little there was left to love after his family’s death. That last memory brought upon even more visions: The pain and suffering it took to become immortal, one of the Legion, and the name he took upon that sacrifice that stood as everything he had lost, and everything he would avenge: Vaec. He remembered the last moments before he submerged into the unconsciousness of Cryo-sleep, how he and his fellow immortals had left their race to burn and die when all hope of survival had fled. The final memory brought along a feeling of guilt- but also one of duty, an intense, driving rage to avenge those that had fallen.
Awaken



Vaec’s eyes slowly came to focus, the inner workings of his mind still sluggish after a thousand years of dormancy within the stasis chamber. Slowly, he moved his head from side to side, automatically noting the sensation of zero gravity that he had so often experienced through his countless years of space travel during the Scourge. Scourge- the word had entered his mind almost subconsciously, yet he struggled to understand what it meant. A thousand years, perhaps more, in a dormant state of suspended animation had stripped his mind of all but the strongest of memories, memories that drifted through his mind as simple, single words or phrases, the meaning of which were unclear to him.
War
Death
Sacrifice
Corruption
Damnation
Void

Void. When humanity had first left their home system, the location of which had been lost long ago to the passage of time, they had been chasing after an alien transmission that had made its way to their home world centuries earlier but, until then, his species had lacked the means to reach it. When the time of interstellar travel did come around, however, a thousand volunteers had manned a cruiser by the name of Ascension in hopes of first contact with an alien race.
Instead, they had found the Void.
The Void was alien, unknowable, and existed in a realm far beyond that of which the human mind could comprehend. It existed as a single, ravenous entity from beyond the bounds of our plane of existence, having brought itself into our universe through a rift in space and time created by the recklessness of a former mortal species. This abomination seemed to exist only to feed off the life force of sentient life in order to fuel its own ravenous need for living energy. It spread like a plague, sweeping through entire systems and infecting the entire population within a matter of months, slowly feeding off the being’s life energy while simultaneously warping it into an abomination of death and pestilence, turning it into one of the Scourge.
Miraculously, humanity has managed to cling to survival for the first few centuries through the combined efforts of the few species of resistance still left to combat the Void and its Scourge. Within 300 years, these species, with the human race leading at the forefront, engaged in a desperate campaign to push the Void back into its demonic realm of existence through the rift in space that was once thought to be a supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy. For a thousand years they engaged in a long and bloody war, a war which would have been lost as soon as had begun if not for the Legion.
The Legion was a group men and women from every race and culture who chose to sacrifice everything that they once loved to become immortal vanguards, godlike warriors to stand at the frontlines of battle to ensure the survival of every sentient being in the galaxy, but at the cost of leaving behind everything that made them human or otherwise. But even the immortals, the Legion, began to fall to the might of the scourge. And when any hope of victory over the Void and its Scourge had forsaken the galaxy, the Legion had been put into a state of hibernation and stowed within small interstellar vessels, known as arks, and would be awakened upon the approach of a nearby world that had not yet succumbed to the Void, if only to warn the inhabitance of the terror that lay beyond the reaches of their system.


More to come

Answers to Questions- Ascension

Okay, so I've been working with shaping the story of Ascension to how I like it, and I've come down with a brief rundown of how things work. I would've posted it sooner but...well, I've had a bad week. Not going to get into the details, but its been some the crappiest collection of days I've had in a while. Anyhow, if you can excuse the horrible title above, here is the (hopefully) last stage of planning before I really start writing.

- Story takes place on a world known as New Eden, a world that was once part of a massive human empire thousands of years past, before it was destroyed by a race of beings from a separate realm of existence known as The Void. What is left of humanity now resides on this planet, and have since been warring with an arcane species known as the Intai'sei.

- The Intai are the forsaken remains of the guardians of the galaxy, an arcane race of immortals who were sworn to protect the galaxy, and its mortal inhabitants, from the Void. However, thousands of years ago The Void launched a massive invasion on the galaxy, overthrowing the Intai and causing the elimination of every other sentient being in the galaxy, including humanity.

- However, The "homeworld" of the Intai was spared, its arcane barriers warding off The Void's every assault. The few Intai who survived were but shadows of their former selves, loosing their immortality and forced to rebuild of waht little was left by their ancestors. But they were not alone. Before the extinction of their species by The Void, a group of humans had found this world, calling it New Eden, and took sanctuary from The Void's invasion. Since then, the two factions have waged war, fueled by hatred for each other that was kindled by the Void's invasion. Humanity believed that the Intai'sei had abandoned them, and had left them to die by the Void's hands. The Intai, on the other hand, believed that it was the recklessness of man who brought along the Void invasion, that their hatred and warlike ways had fueled the Void's power until it could break through the arcane powers that guarded the universe from the Void's presence.

- To clarify on a few things, the Void is a timeless race that has existed beyond the bounds of the universe, held at bay only by the Intai's arcane wards. When a living being is born, it takes a part of the arcane energy that makes up the Void to give it life, but since a living body builds up this life energy as it ages, it typically releases more energy then it takes, so the Void it always growing stronger.

- The Void is one being, one immortal force of the universe representing Chaos where the Intai represented order. It is what we known today as Dark Matter, and it can create a dark mockery of any sentient being (generally, anything with the intelligence of a dolphin or higher) that touches its power to fuel life. Basically, it can create an army of demons infused with its energy that can invade the universe at its bidding. But each "demon" is one and the same with the overall Void consciousness, if that makes any sense. which it doesn't. Look, it lies beyond our comprehension, its not supposed to make sense! lol

Does to sound like a good "ultimate evil"? or do you hate it? don't spare my feelings, just tell me what you do or don't like

Questions that Need Answers- Ascension

Well, I've e finally found a story that I really enjoy writing, but there is a number of questions that need to be answered before I really get the story going. I would highly recommend reading the (very) rough draft below, though I'm undoubtedly going to change it entirely soon.

- First off, I need a way to blend both sci-fi and fantasy into one setting..I'm not too sure that my prologue does it justice. It seams more like a sci-fi military story than I would like, which needs to be changed

- Ascension is a cover name, So I really need a good name for the series and the book. Thoughts?

- Lightning is another cover name, but I want her name to be something mysterious and shadowy. She cast aside her name long ago, and is now a legend towards her people...and a feared myth to the humans. 1) it could be a name in the native tongue meaning "shadow" of "unknown one", or 2) it could be a name which the humans gave her, which I would prefer (shadow, lightning, ect.)

- What caused Lightning to have so much hatred towards humanity?

- How should the story be told? Should it have interweaving chapters showing the different perspectives of the human male and the elf-alien female, or should both their stories come together in the middle, even though their loyalties still belong to their own species (forbidden love, anyone?)

- Lightning's species is almost an exact duplicate of humanity evolutionary wise, though they evolved from the planets birds instead of apes (For the story, I'm putting evolution in, but I'm not completely casting aside religion, k? Not trying to tread on any toes) 1) How should they look? I'm trying to create the elf-like species of a Fantasy, Sci-Fi setting, but they do have to look distinctly alien, though still human-looking and even beautiful to the human eye. My description below was vary, very vague. 2) simple, yet heard to do. What is the species name??

- What other alien species should be on the planet that still contribute to the Sci-Fi Fantasy setting? I only have one other, the Arascole, which are a brutish tribal race from the mountains (somewhat like the dwarves, as in they live in isolation, but much more clan-like and...taller. As in 10 feet tall taller.)

- How should the actual story begin? Something traumatic has to happen to the Main Character (Alexander Glidewell)for him to encounter Lightning.

-Is there an ultimate evil? What is the end goal for Lightning and Alexander? Why is this goal challenging their faiths in their own species?

- Lastly, who are the other characters int he story? Any interesting character you would like to see?

Thought on any of these would be very helpful.

Prologue- Ascension

So, here goes the first entry that will (hopefully) go into a book and perhaps a series...fat chance, i know, but here goes nothing. it has kind of a sci-fi/fantasy setting (kind of a mix between James Cameron's Avatar and the Eragon/Eldest/Brisingr series) but I hope it works out well. anyways, here goes nothing:

*btw, lightning is a placeholder name, and the story is a very, very rough draft. I would really appreciate some pointers on how it could be better :)

Three figures stepped out from the shadows, their forms illuminated by the bio luminescent plant life around them and by the light of the two crescent moons hanging in the sky, though their faces were hidden in the shadow cast by the hooded cloaks wrapped around them. With a subtle look around itself, the leader threw back its hood, revealing the sharp- almost predatory –angles of its jaw, complemented by the blue-green tint of its skin and the rich black hair that shimmered shades of blue in the moonlight as the figure broke into a cool, determined stride. It was a creature of intense beauty, but also one of predatory mind and skill.
With an almost imperceptible gesture, Lightning signaled her companions to follow, and they matched their stride to hers, hands casually resting on the kiedral Gunswordes hidden beneath their robes. As they moved forward, more of her shadowed companions emerged from the darkness, until the numbers around her swelled into the dozens. A faint smile played on her beautiful features as she casually viewed the warriors positioned around her. They were ready for battle, and battle they would receive. Tonight, the war would truly begin.
Without breaking stride Lightning pulled out a simple staff, roughly a half long, and balanced it within her hand. With a flick of the wrist, two Kiedral blades folded out from each end, easily doubling the weapon’s size. The duel blades glinted in the moonlight, the Woodsteel they were made of allowing nearly unlimited control and finesse while simultaneously hard enough to puncture steel without fracturing. The Insetii, it was known as, a weapon crafted individually for the bearer, a weapon requiring great skill, concentration, and years of practice.
Fortunately, Lightning possessed all three, and something more: the wrathful vengeance of her people residing within the inky blackness of her soul, a darkness that suppressed any feelings of hope, guilt, mercy, or love, kindling the rage and passion in her heart until the moment she struck. It was this inner calmness at the face of death that made her a legend amongst her people and a feared myth to the Sìtral- the humans residing in their sanctuaries of glass and steel, decedents of an invading race who fled their dieing planet for this one, unknowingly triggering the seeds of war with their first steps onto the planets surface thousands of years prior. They were strangers, invaders, harbingers of war and destruction- at for that they had to die.
Raising a hand to halt the war party, Lightning sent telepathic link to the other war bands, some 2 dozen of them, each consisting of up to 40 warriors. Nearly a thousand warriors, an army with numbers hundreds above anything Lightning had commanded before. Still, even with their knowledge of the land and the ever prevalent rage in their hearts, they were vastly outmatched. Whereas the warriors around her consisted of a few hundred, the humans had thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, and no one could survive those odds for long. They would either succeed quickly, or die as another martyr to their cause. She nodded to the few warriors armed with pulse rifles, quickly signaling them to move into support position, then readied the rest of the war party to advance.
The sky had since changed from the black of night to the faded red of early morning, and a hazy mist had draped the plain before them. Lightning broke into a steady run, the rest of the 600-some other warriors fallowing suit. Within a matter of minutes they had broken through the veil, and with the distinct war cry of their people, they charged.
The first of the humans were struck down before they could ready their weapons, their combat exoskeletons made to withstand the pulse rifle blast of the warlike Arascole and were defenseless against the shape edges of the Kiedral blades that plunged through their kinetic barriers as if they were non existent. Unleashing the hidden fury and hatred that had been smoldering within her since for countless years, Lightning struck like an avenging ancestor on the battlefield, weaving in and out of the pulse rifle fire from the second wave, vanquishing two or three soldiers with each sweep of the double-edged Insetii. Every childhood horror, every long-held hatred and silent oaths of revenged were unleashed in a fury of blades, carving a way through the battlefield as her kin followed behind, striking down the human scourge with almost as much hatred and vengeance as she felt- they too, had lost much to the humans, too much to be ignored.
The inevitability of victory was short-lived, however, and with the element of surprise lost, Lightning and her fellow warriors were slowly loosing their momentum, allowing the humans to swell around them and attack them from all sides, an idiotic mistake Lightning had made while in her initial bloodlust. She cleared her head and regained her initial composure, but it was too late for her war band. The golden white of the human’s armor surrounded them, and one by one her fellow companions fell to the deadly burst of the human’s pulse rifles. They fought valiantly, extinguishing five human lives for every one of their deaths, but in the end their numbers proved too many. Lightning had been foolish to think that their initial strike would be powerful enough to cripple the human’s ability to retaliated, and now she –and all her people- would suffer do to her stupidity.
The bodies of her war band lay scattered around her, bodies of the kin she had fought so valiantly to protect, now reduced to lifeless husk to be trampled underfoot by the rapidly advancing human soldiers. Backed into a corner, and with no way out barring an inevitable death, she flung herself towards her sworn enemy with a last, defiant exclamation of “Akiera!”

The world erupted into fire


*If I really get this going (i'm into this story more than any others) I may put up another blog just to archive it..no promises though, we'll see how it turns out.

*Edit #2: This is two pages on word, but, as a prologue, it seems like it should be longer. suggestions?