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Once the main path is complete, I have four possible side plots/branches that I am planning to write for my story:

Reign of Amortia: Discover an ancient king hidden deep within the Earth.  A temple ruin full of dangers, traps, tricks, and puzzles.  Amortia's zealous followers relentlessly pursue you in the name of their Master.  Forge new bonds that were previously thought unmakeable, and learn how to stop this ancient evil from rising up and swallowing the world and its inhabitants, spreading suffering and madness throughout the realm.

Will a hero rise up and defeat the ancient king in order to save the realm?  Or will Amortia's champion rise in his stead, pledging his servitude to the ancient king?

 

Legend of Stonehaven: Cut off from reinforcements, supplies, and all hope, will the forces of Orcin survive a brutal Imperial siege?  A harsh winter preys on all who fall under its gaze, it is both a death sentence, and a blessing.  

Circumnavigate the cruel mountains, fending off hellish creatures of the night.  Meanwhile ambushing Imperial patrols, evading legions, and sabotaging supplies.  

Can you fight against the odds and win victory for all of Orcin, or will the overwhelming odds be your downfall?

 

Man-Eater: A creature of the night, will you fall prey or become one of their own under their leaders vigilance?  Destroy these foul hell spawns, or become the very thing scared travelers whisper about in the darkness.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.  Will you hold your virtue, or fall into their temptations?

 

Legion Reborn: The will of the Mannate Empire is strong, the pressure of the corrupt Council is great.  Journey to the hallowed land of the Elves with the dragon rider.  Under the Empire's guidance, wage war on the true threats to Orcin and all of Velis Brum.  

Travel far and deep into the heart of the Elven homeland, where deep within resides the worlds source of power and magic.  Will you seize power for yourself, or drain the Elves of their power? 

Will you be a cruel tool of the Empire? Or will you forge your own path?

 

Let me know what you all think! Also I will be posting a second update in my main thread soon.

I don't know why this couldn't have gone in your main motivation thread, but you do you I guess. 

I like each of the ideas. They remind me of summaries for D&D campaigns with just enough information to make me want to know more. I'd certainly be very impressed if you could manage to fit every single one of these ideas into your contest entry, and along with your main path this story could very well be a 7 rating contender. Of course, that depends on your execution, but I don't have any real doubt that you'll be able to pull it off. 

There is one thing I am worried about though, and that is that you're trying do too much. Each one of the paths you mentioned up there could very well be put into its own 60k storygame. I don't know exactly how many words you're trying to throw into this, but if you're trying to cram all of this into a 60k story, then I think you are probably going to have a bit of trouble. For an epic, personally, I'd expect at least 20k per path, and with your current line-up that would put you at 100k words. This, especially at the rate you're going, is an achievable goal, but that's just going by my personal minimum. 

To put it in perspective, End's recent work, Rogues, has a path over 100k words long in of itself. While other paths are smaller, I think almost all, if not all, of his paths exceed 50k words. Even then, you have some people who might complain that the paths are too short or similar claims.

To quote Bucky, "So you think you have what it takes to step into the ranks of EndMaster, BerkaZerka, and Sir William Smiley? Well, here's your chance to earn that glory. It's time to step out of the shadows of the gods. Enter the gauntlet, battle the site's rising star writers, and climb to new heights among the pantheon!" 

With this in mind, I think it would be beneficial to try and create paths of similar lengths. Sure you might not have half a million words of 12 epilogue endings (and that's only half of what End has planned mind you) , but having a couple paths that are similar in nature would go a long way this go around. For me, I'm going to try and have two main paths that together equal at least 100k in hopes of writing something with a similar path length to End's works. We are aiming to "join" their ranks, are we not? 

You don't have to do this, but I suggest going with the main path you were talking about, and then maybe two other side paths. The idea would be to axe two of those paths, then use all of the words you would've put into those and throw them into the paths you decide to keep. This way you'd still get a lot of branching, and the length of each branch would be a more substantial amount. 

Whether you decide to do this or not, I'm definitely looking forward to your entry. Keep up the good work. I'll catch up to your word count one day...

Thanks for the feedback, Ebon.  I was planning on making the Stonehaven and Man-Eater paths the shortest ones, with the Legion and Amortia ones a bit longer.  Although it wouldn't be a bad idea to tone them down a bit any way.

My main path so far is at 26,000 words, and I am only about a forth of the way through the plot outline.  Alone the main branch may very well be 100k.  So the other branches would have to be a lot shorter, as you have said.

I'm interested to see where you will take your story though, Sir Ebon.  I wish you good luck and some very fast fingers!

Holy shit, you've written 26k already? I've done literally 2k. How have you managed this?

Like I wrote on your thread: outline and plan for a bit, then literally shut everything else off (internally and externally) and write for 2-3 hours a day.  Don't worry so much about the quality, then edit later, and do it in stages.

Have you outlined or anything? I kind of forgot whether or not you mentioned it :)

Yeah, outlined everything and then scripting is taking a while. I'll try to follow your advice, because clearly it works.

I'm not a big fan of Reign of Amortia. I don't dislike it, it just seems like kind of generic old school fantasy in those shitty paperbacks. 

Legend of Stonehaven seems really sick. I love the idea of guerilla warfare and kind of a losing battle seems cool, although I'd need to know more about the kind of choices you'd seek to incorporate to get a solid picture.

Man-eater's very vague, but I'm curious.

Legon Reborn seems, like, really, really important, and that as a side plot it'd be far more important than the game itself, so I'm unsure about it.

Fuck man, now I have to actually think really hard about these things.  As always, I appreciate your input dude. 

I guess the Legion one does seem important now that you mention it.  In the canon I have thought out, its the only one that still happens in the world regardless of whether the character goes on that path or not.  

During the main quest the character would hear vague rumors of the dragon rider messing something up in the Elven Land.  Although the consequences aren't really seen until decades later.  

Mainly Nolazir is only really concerned with the orc lands and stuff.  Unless the reader chooses otherwise, but yeah, I haven't gotten a whole lot of work done on this in the last couple of weeks.  I am hoping that will change this upcoming week though.  

 

Who the fuck is Nolazir? Is it Tumble? Because if so, it'd be a definite improvement, although would still be a bit Elfish for an Orc.

Oh no, that's just a different main character.  I never thought of his name as being Elfish, but I can see how it would seem so.  Its probably not orc enough but guess its the name I'm using.

I'd really recommend setting these ideas aside for sequels, I can't see any possible way they can be given the side path treatment without the overall story suffering because they're going to be obviously rushed compared to the rest.

Not seeing how you could realistically boil any of these down to just a few choices without doing a massive amount of summarizing.