Hallo, hallo. It’s me and I’m just ending my break.
What better time to talk about all that’s happened in a blog, eh? I haven’t written one in a while because…I spend my writing power to the limit. But I like talking. I wish I could do it more with readers.
This very moment I am having a spirited discussion in our TWI Discord with readers about the ending of The Amazing Digital Circus and Deltarune, Chapter 5. Both media pieces I quite liked, even if I have thoughts about the endings/executions of each that left me wanting more.
But I enjoy consuming media during my time off, when I have the bandwidth for them. If the world could be held to the standards of each media as baselines for basic quality—we’d have a lot better stories, I tell you what.
Let me not distract from the thrust of this blog. I could talk about both but this is about the Vault of Foreseen Inncentives. Do you like it? I see that number going up and I thank you for the support. I’m glad we did this; it’s fun to see the levelups and people claiming rewards.
…Even if I have to sign a lot of bookplates. I wish to talk about one reward today, because, well, I want to.
It’s the Level 20 reward, which is honestly going to be hard to hit. At our rate of increase? Possibly we won’t, but it’s in the ballpark of reason. Level 100 I don’t want to really hit so, uh, there. But I fulfill my vows.
Level 20’s reward is a full prequel arc of some story in TWI. That means a novel-length story, like Gravesong, only one novel, not a series (unless I went crazy or something so it’s not an impossibility) about some character or event in the story. The question is…which?
Let’s establish a few things, first. I don’t trust prequels, at least the commercial ones we see in Hollywood today. I thought the Rings of Power TV show (haven’t seen), and the House of the Dragon (haven’t seen), were bad ideas. I wasn’t interested because…we know what goes down. We know how it must end.
I don’t say that to imply prequels are easy. I think they’re what people consider to be easy and safe. An executive might greenlight a prequel because they’re stupid and think it’s free money, when, in fact, it’s probably harder than a sequel because you have to keep things within the constraints of a known story while delivering a tale that is still interesting.
So why did I accept this as a reward, albeit a high, stretch-tier one? Well…because you don’t know much about what went down. We have hints, but there is a lot more leeway in The Wandering Inn for backstories than there is in, say, Lord of the Rings when Tolkien literally plotted out the history of everything.
And we have so many things we could do! Here’s how it would happen if we hit that goal. I would send out a poll to anyone who claims the Vault’s rewards, and you’d all get to vote. Like a Patreon poll but with the highest stakes. Maybe we’d do a tournament-style poll so it’s not one winner-takes all and we can do runoffs.
You vote, I write. I’d take some time and just go ham. But the question now becomes, tantalizingly, what do I write?
I was thinking on it last night and so I’m writing this blog because it’s interesting. Here’s what I’m thinking.
Okay, some options are going to be predictable. Not bad, but they’d be self-contained.
Pisces, Ceria, feel like obvious backstories and they would be shorter, I feel, because, well, they’re single-book stories. Maybe even 60-80k words at most. It would cover their childhoods to adult years as they leave home, and it makes sense.
We want to know what Padurn Jealnet and Pisces’ first cabal were like. Ceria in the Village of the Spring will be interesting—but we have seen hints. Do we need these stories? Potentially. I can see making them heartfelt and true, but I know them entirely well. If people want them, I shall oblige, and I love writing half-Elves and necromancy, but we can go…further back.
Weirder. As a disclaimer, I don’t want to write any Earth-backstories. I think it’s not needed, in some way, a problem to add in, and frankly a lot of Earthers aren’t as interesting. If I come up with a neat way to work it, I’ll do it, but here are some weird options:
The Forgotten Wing Company
Velan the Kind
Silvenia in the Creler Wars
Teriarch and Sheta
The Real Antinium Wars by pirateaba
Young Flos and the rise of the King of Destruction
The Conquering of Chalence
Az’kerash’s story.
Marquin the Radiant (also Creler Wars)
Look at that shit. And hear me out! Each event here could be a great story because, well, we know each character or event. They are largely untold by modern day standards, and each one has fascinating viewpoints.
Often, higher-magic. Even ones contemporaneous with modern-day history, like Az’kerash or Niers’ company, would have Named-ranks and top-level people. I want to tell them. But I don’t have time, and they’re not the main plot of TWI—that’s why I need an Inncentive myself to write them.
Now, some might be more sad than others. Teriarch and Sheta…we know how that would go, but that’s a real look into Draconic culture, so that would be fascinating, and it’s the furthest-back story.
However, Silvenia’s arc would have real high magic, and Crelers are so nasty—we’d get into them in a huge way, and the bleakness of one of Innworld’s armageddon-class events would be something to write.
On the other hand, Marquin’s story would be…great. That would be the true hero’s tale because she is probably one of the most inspirational, heroic figures in the history of the world, and we’d get to write that straight. No fake [Heroes], just one woman without magic hitting Crelers and rallying an entire continent.
Az’kerash is the true tragedy, of course, and it would be actually sadder than Velan in some respects; Velan’s story would have that ending, but until then he was doing really well. A Goblin King who was a [Healer] is a fascinating fellow, and I think there would be potential for huge lore in some of these backstories I am not opposed to writing!
And some are just here for the characters. Because young Flos did have a point when he rampaged across Chandrar. Some of it was just youthful conqueror-king stuff, but there was a charisma to him I wish to capture.
The same with Chalence. I might have more options (I have a list on my phone I keep updating and please, send in ideas), but I put Chalence on there because, honestly?
Merdon.
Merdon, and Mihaela, and probably someone else who starts with ‘M’, but you’d get to see the Loud Lad and the adventurers like Larracel at their finest. Not all are washed up when we meet them in the story, but they are older, semi-retired.
This would be adventurers at their finest, and arguably, peak. Deniusth before he became a shit could be likable!
Aaah, the more I think of this, the more I want to write it. To be clear, I don’t want more work. I dread the signing of those bookplates for my hands and I’m just glad we’ll cap them internally once we have a better idea of the logistics. But I love to tell stories and I wanted to put out thoughts for the prequel if I ever get to write it.
(That’s not the only great thing, by the way. The webcomic mini-arc and The Last Tide being released for anyone who claims the Vault are nice and the more who can read the stories, the beter! The bookmarks are lit and fire, btw, I’ve seen ‘em. But the biggest rewards are for last.)
That’s all from me. If we start approaching the side story reward at Level 12 I’ll blog again, but I just wanted to get some writing ideas out there, even if they may never appear. I’m feeling energized, as you can tell, so wish me luck in finishing the Ilvriss arc, which is where I was at as of writing this!
—pirateaba
UPDATE:
Fool!
Fool of an aba!
I was about to post this blog when someone pointed out something to me. Despite my comments about prequels above, most of these arcs are set very close to modern events. Which, sure, lets me write characters we know and love.
…BUT WHAT ABOUT OTHER ARCS? Hm? Huh?
I need to expand my mind. Not with drugs, but creativity! If we can go this far back, what about to events we truly never saw? Yeah! A prequel that truly is far back should be an option!
So let me throw some down:
The Long Night — Death of magic! Thatalocian! Existential horror coming over the edge as magic dies!
Continent of Glass — Not how it sunk, but a story SET in these periods!
Terandria in the Age of the Hundred Heroes — Glory days, let’s see some characters in the time and era!
Selphid Empire, Breathless Age, Era of Walled Cities with Dragons — Stories set in these eras featuring their own heroes and protagonists, a one-novel story.
I’m throwing these in as longer-shot ideas. Because it makes sense. Why tie it to the modern plot when we could have a story set in eras long past? They wouldn’t connect to the modern plots at all, but they’d be, well, stories.
Is there interest there? I thought it was a great point. We can go further. Just interested if anyone else has good ideas for this hypothetical. We have to get to Level 20 first. We’re at Level 5, so…we’ll see. Let’s see how far you get.
—pirateaba for real now