R.J.M. — Writer — DRAFT 3! 📖🎮🎥🤖✍️🦸🏻‍♂️

Long, long story — far too long for 300 characters.
In the end it was taking up too much of my time and life, and the community I was involved in (primarily Sith RP) was very, very toxic and was not doing wonders for my mental health. Leaving was in my best interest in the end, even if I miss it!

One of the things I miss since I departed the RP community for #SWTOR is writing Sci-Fi, both in RP and short stories... If the inspiration hits me I might try penning a few one shots just to see if I still can!
#WritingCommunity
#WriteSky

For Bron it certainly is! She laments the fact that in times past, Wizards of the order learned in groups and classes, usually at least a couple of students to a master. Back in the golden age, there were large classes and many masters to teach, too!

...but now, with just the two of them, and none of the servants (called Famuli) to maintain the crumbling building, they live deep in the servants quarters, near the kitchens where it's warm and cosy and they are sheltered from the winds.

At the beginning of Daughter of the Sword, Bronwyn lives with her master — they inhabit the ruins of what was once a temple-tower, a place where Wizards gathered to learn and teach. In times long past, there were grand quarters for the teachers, and more Spartan ones for the pupils...

It's also an odd thing that tech is otherwise less advanced than it should be. For hundreds of years the best minds worked to advance magic, and that advancement came in place of technology — but when Magic was outlawed, things... Backslid.

By putting the power of a killing spell in the hands of ordinary men. It might take a born magician months to learn enough magic to even fight, let alone kill someone. But you can teach a man to load and fire a musket in a few days.

To say "guns have just been invented", does mean they are still a very new and somewhat unreliable technology — we're still taking about the days of Matchlock, Flintlock, and powder packets.
But the invention of the gun was what brought magic nearly to extinction —

So aside from the use of magic (which causes advancements in odd places) Riviera has odd technology. Guns have just been invented (within 20 years) but in terms of development they came *early* — warfare before guns was still being fought with longswords, downright medieval.

I wonder if one day future generations will look back on us putting AI in *absolutely everything* the same way that we look back at people putting Radium and Asbestos in things.
Like sure the Radium makes your skin glow and your alarm clock glow in the dark, but IS IT WORTH IT!?

Some humans, certainly. But that's sort of the point of the story — no matter how bad the last was, it's up to the next generation to make things better. The weight of that responsibility is huge, but the potential to improve is always there.
From the ashes of war... The potential for a new future.

...but that's nothing to the Wastes beyond the Svalbar mountains. Frozen even in summer, in winter they are impassable, so cold that the only creatures who could possibly survive are the gargantuan behemoths which call it home — each one shoulder high to a mountain range.

...but the worst winters are in Nordskea and the Dwervic Territory of Svalbar. Nordskea is cut by icy wind off the Winter Sea, so cold the seawater turns to blue ice. Svalbar is so cold it borders on inhospitable — even the Dwarves don't venture above ground when the weather gets really bad...

A great question! Riviera is a big place, an entire continent — down south, in the Kelmar planes and across the Targian Commonwealth, it gets chilly but not unbearable. Further North, in Estril, snow blankets everything and makes it new...

Humans didn't recognise this treaty however — and in time, pushed Dwarves and Elves alike out of their ancestral holdings until the Dwarves could be found only in the inhospitable far North, and Elves behind their fortress mountains in the East.

Dwarves were more inclined to human culture as well, respecting them as fellow craftsmen and builders — they also shared a resentment of the elves, with whom they had warred for centuries before the treaty which gave them rights to everything beneath the ground, and elves everything above it.

A good question!
The elves were understandably suspicious — a feeling that served them well given what occurred later.
The Dwarves were the first people which the humans encountered; they were more open to them as a new source of trade, as they needed the metals and stone from Dwervic Mines.

Necromancy can *animate* a dead body, and give a false semblance of life, but it cannot truly resurrect an individual back to natural life.

It IS possible to bring someone back from the brink of death, but there are limits. Basically if you could give them CPR and revive them, so could magic.

Magic cannot bring back the dead.
A fact which dark Magicians contest — the existence of Necromancy, and the Malachian Spells, implies there may be spells of perfect resurrection... But none have ever been performed successfully.

Magic also cannot be easily remembered — to simply *hear the words* is never enough to learn a spell, you have to grasp the truth of their meaning.

Though magic can affect your perception, it cannot change or travel through time. Travel through space, while possible, is very difficult.

Magic cannot make something from nothing — it can transform one thing to another, or make one thing from many other, but it's impossible to create matter from nothing.
Similarly, it cannot make energy from nothing either — it must be drawn from your surroundings, or from the caster.

I've always preferred a bit of mystery to these things, rather than a solid explanation — and the idea of humans as great voyagers makes sense.
Dwarves similarly appeared from within the earth (caverns and such) but Elves are the true natives of Riviera — at least they claim to be!

I've always liked the idea that "Good isn't something you are, it's something you strive to do", but also that people's ideas of Good and Evil are subjective. The villain of my story certainly believes himself to be good - and he believes the hero to be evil.

The "potential for good and evil in everyone" is sorta a key theme which I'm working with, particularly through the main character, who holds a good deal of rage and is certainly capable of both harm and help in extremis. She WANTS to do good; but doesn't always consider consequences...

Humans are sadly only human in this story — as capable of harm as they are good, just as they are in the real world!
There have been humans who colonised and took over the land of natives, just as there have been humans who cured disease, fought against tyranny, or became righteous heroes.

The most likely explanation is that the voyaging vessels got hopelessly lost in whichever world they were in before, probably becalmed in fog and so unable to navigate by sun or star.
What IS known is that humans proceeded to brutally colonise the continent, to the harm of both Dwarves and Elves

It's a matter of historical debate, with human-supremacists (derogatory) claiming their voyage was one of divine right.
Nobody really knows the truth, as even the humans on first arrival could not remember entirely where they had come from nor what their purpose had been on setting off!

For those with a keen eye, this is heavily inspired by the Telmarines in Narnia, and the Convergence in the Witcher series.

Neither!
Humans appeared mysteriously in the world of Riviera, in an event the Elves refer to as "The Invasion". Ships carrying humans sailed up to the shore, with no idea where they were — they had begun a journey in one world and ended it in another.
#DecemberWorldbuilders

Mine's not much better, to be honest — my notes are mostly a matter of convenience to carry around and get ideas down on paper before I forget them than legibility!