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Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

I've decided to focus my full attention to my story the Bor War. So far I've written all the lore, created characters, races, kingdoms and empires of the world (map included), battles/sieges of the war and finished my first page of the story. smiley

 

So here is what the lore of the Bor War.

 

The Bor War

The Bor War is an epic religious war taking place primarily in Cambria and the Cambrian Sea. The war was started after the mad Coakor of the Bor Empire; Baul XII killed Makkeor and most of his chosen disciples after receiving instruction from the Gods of Bor. In his religious zeal Baul stated that Dulat will run red with heretic blood. Though this would be delayed greatly do to the fact that Baul had iniatied several other wars which caused the Borian army to be stretched incredibly thin and would be a long while before there was any attempt to war to cross Cambria and bring war to the Dultians.

This was one of the many follies of Coaker Baul as word of Makkeor's death and Baul's proclamation swept across the land to Dulat. Religious zeal swept through the petty kingdoms which were accelerated the combined efforts of Disciple Oplin aut Graz and the Pako Regius of Antis. A few month later at the Council of Antis the world saw that the Dulitian were united once again since the fall of the Rukom Empire. The Dulatian formed a temporary confederation dubbed the 'Celestial Alliance' and elected it's first leader based on votes. The aggressive warlord of Weren, Tlohosbol was selected as the Corokdaur Loukol (Celestial Leader). Pako Regius, in a masterful move,  kept the powerful Raxx Venn from feeling slighted at not only losing to his rival but not being present at Antis when the votes were cast anointed Raxx as the Dodovkol ad dho Fuadh (Defender of the Faith). While this irked Tlohosobol to no end and placed his leadership in severe jeopardy it would later be a future blessing.

The Celestial Alliance initially under Tlohosbol of Weren immediately, against the lone voice of Raxx Ven, went on the offensive and marched through Cambria with an army of 60000 men at a snails pace. It didn't take long for news of this force to reach Boria. Baul wasn't at all worried and seemingly forgotten about his proclamation luckily the prodigal son of Baul, Rakik, didn't and sprung into action. Rakik assembled a host of 50000 which was a mix between numerous veterans, prisoners, conscripts and those of Boria's city guard and marched into Cambria to face the Dulatians.

 Tlohosbol, under the assumption that he could easily defeat the 14 year old prince, marched his army to it's doom at what became the Battle of Red River. It was a defeat that nearly broke the Celestial Alliance before Raxx Ven usurped leadership. It by this time Rakik had left his army in Cambria under the command of Paerik ui Puva, as other major threat, internally and exterally, needed to be dealt with.

Paerik continued to march the army through Cambria until he met Ven and his newly raised army of 12000 at the Battle of Rokoro. Ven utterly destroyed the army after two days of battle and ordered the drawn and quartering of Paerik. Ven's victory over the victorious army of the Battle of the Red River solidified his position as Corokdaur Loukol. Ven retreated back into Dulat and began to prepare for his invasion into Cambria and the Bor Empire. He issued number of decrees that encouraged more births, established a school were the young nobles were taught how to lead in war aswell as allow the establishment of holy orders (to use as free mercenary companies).

For the past 16 years the war has only become minor skirmishes and incursion within Cambria as neither side has the current strength to face each other...but that is quickly coming to an end.

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

I'm really liking this lore so far and it's clear that you've put a lot of effort into it and thought hard about it. I have to say that even for a lot of my favourite storygames on this site, one of the things they lack is that immediate first-page grab. This story already has it, because it's built up a certain amount of tension and suspense. It makes me wonder what's going to happen next in this war.

With all these names of people, places and organisations being thrown at you at once, I do feel like it's a little overwhelming and not exactly easy to follow, interesting as it is. But as I understand it this is just the first page for the general backstory and I guess it'll move onto a more "show" rather than "tell" style of storytelling which isn't quite so dense in rich plot detail. Would that be accurate?

EDIT: Also interested to know how the choices will play out, and whether your choices might take the war in a completely different direction. Will it be told from the perspective of a character(s) from the Bor Empire side or the Celestial Alliance?

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

@31TeV

Response to Edit

1). The story will be told through your character who is Lord-Commander of the Knights Militant of Celestios (in this world commonly refered to as the Celestial Knights) and as for taking the war into a different directions well that would be spoilers. What i can tell you is at this time Rakik is still dealing with his father wars as well as corruption within the Empire but that number is slowly diminishing either because of conquest or peace has been sealed through marriage pacts with the male heirs of these kingdoms/empires dying in rather suspicious accidents. This has increased the Bors manpower and allies so to balance the tide your goal will be to stop this by warring against the kingdoms and empires that Bor is fighting to put someone who is completely independentdevil and decided to support the C.A. in the Bor War. 

 

I hope this helps also i'm working on revising the lore on the Bor War that due to your comments on it. 

 

 

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago
Don't get me wrong, I think it's fine for a first page thing. I was a little tired and I think that's why I needed to concentrate to be able to follow it. But if it's going to continue telling the story in this sort of way for an extended period of time, I think it would start to get too heavy.

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

@31TeV

I understand and it is for the first page.

The Lore will be scattered throughout. Like with those letter in death song, Eternal or what not. It just shows gives you details about the world and locations you visit.

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago
Keep it up though, detail is good! The first page alone has a lot more of it than a lot of the half-hearted efforts in the new storygames section.

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

Here is the map of the main front. The land bridge that connects them is Cambria.

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago
I guess the big land bridge is part of what put the big battle off for so long?

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

That and the native Cambrians... see as how this war will ravage their lands it's only natural to deter of the invading armies.

Also the bodies north and south of the Cambria Land bridge is the North and South Cambrian sea.

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago
Do the two sides both hate boats?

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago
"Boats sink."

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

Maybe they just don't place enough emphasis on naval warfare. The Romans had pretty powerful land armies, but they generally sucked at being sailors.

 

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

@Killa_Robot

Like what Endmaster posted their wasn't that much emphasis place on naval warfare seeing as how the Dulatians were in a constant struggle against one another ever since the fall of the Rukom Empire and that Bor was/is aggressively expanding on the main continent.

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

Purely from a wordsmithing perspective:

I can't help thinking of the Boer War.

Cambrian is also "taken" as far as names go.

Are the people of Dulat "Dultians" "Dulatians" "Dulatian" or "Dulitian"? 

Any of those are fine, but I don't think you ever used the same word more than once. 

Are tlohosbol and paerik ui puva and raxx ven (or venn) all from the same culture? I ask because they have such vastly different names. 

Personal preference: If you have direct translations like defender of the faith, just use those. There's no point to making the reader remember your made-up words when there's an exact English translation. 

Two examples:  say my lawyer is of Mexican heritage, his name is Ricardo Perez. I don't refer to him as my abogado, señor Perez.  / Tolkien knew the elven words for everything- but he didn't use them all constantly.  

That's just my opinion of course, feel free to disagree.  

Okay one non-conlang question:

What time period is this set in? Medieval, Renaissance, modern? 

I'm also trying to ascertain just how large those armies are you're mentioning.  

For example:  60k people in 1066 would've been an overwhelming force. The battle of Hastings had between 5-13k ppl on each side.  But if we're talking WWII, I think something like 150k ppl took part in the battle of Normandy.  

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago
Not to mention the difficulty you would have feeding them. You'd probably have close to as many non-fighting men/women/servants/whores/peddlers tagging along if this is a medieval, or renaissance setting.

Populaces don't take kindly to foreign armies marching through their country and stealing all of their crops. The natives would likely pick a side early in the war to get the armies off their land quicker and halve the number of people outright torching and taking their stuff without recompense. Whichever side they took would have a massive advantage.

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

@Bucky

True yet the Cambrian would be next to take over considering their location on the map. Thanks for taking a moment of your time to even view this and respond/

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

@Sethaniel

Hmmm maybe i should've finished reading Charles Oman Medieval Warafare huh?

Raxx and Tlohosbol are Dulitian (I'm sticking with this one laugh) as for Paerik that is Borish/Borian (If the people are Borians wouldn't that make the culture Borish? I'm asking cause it just popped into my mind.)

Medieval...My time playing CK2 with my friend is the main cause for these numbers....we don't play fair ever and considering our martial be past 100. hehehe. 

Thanks for the insight Sethaniel.

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

Why two x's? Is that pronounced differently than one x? 

It's your country. You can make the nationality any word you want. Borish sounds better than borian, esp if you're going with "Ian" for the other country.  Or borite.

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

@Sethaniel

Nah i just ran Robb through choatic shiny language gen and out popped Raxx (Kept getting corny shit).

"These people are Bors/Borish."

"Gods Damn Bor."

Yeah i can do that. 

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

UPDATE: So i gotten partially through the first chapter actually i only did the last 9 pages of it. The reason behind this is because I want to know how (trying to word it correctly) much of your PC life do you want to know about.

I mean primarily the entire first chapter is basically your character growing up initially under Regius before moving on to Oplin and starting the process of becoming a Celestial Knight. During that time under them you would establish your character base stats and -currently debating this- ethnicity.

 

Thoughts? 

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

Anyone

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago
Is it available for sneak peek?

I personally really enjoy storygames that let us play through the character's backstory, and it's even better when playing through the backstory allows you to determine some of the character's traits. Briar_Rose's Price of Freedom comes to mind, and that mechanic worked really well for her game. With your writing ability, I'm sure you can pull it off just as well.

My only concern is that allowing the player to choose their character's ethnicity could get gnarly. On one hand, it could be misconstrued as patronizing if ethnicity was only a cosmetic choice. Or, on the other hand, if it does affect gameplay, then it could instead be misconstrued as stereotyping/discrimination. It might be wiser to just sidestep the issue and make the main character a nondescript ethnicity.

--edit--

Whoops, unless you mean the fantasy ethnicities that don't correspond to real ones whatsoever. That would be fun, albeit probably a lot more work in terms of writing and worldbuilding. I'd say go for it, because it'd be a cool dynamic if it changes how other characters relate to you or your own character's behavior. Like, a whole extra dimension of worldbuilding and plot inertia!

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

@the_quiller

No not yet. I want be doing that till i gotten through atleast chapter 4. Also about ethnicity they would be the ones i created. Depending on your ethnicity certain options maybe open because initially - if you haven't read the thread- it will be you job to stop the Bors in gaining allies before heading off to fight them depending on what you are things will be a lot easier or harder.

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago

Update 

CH 1: 11/??

CH 2:  6/?? or ???

Progress is slow because i'm trying to make sure the story flows well. Ah man.

Chapter 2 is the completion of your training and is when you'll be leading your knight in their first military action before waging war against the Borians abroad in the Fasi isles.

Frank2 motivational thread

9 years ago
Progress is progress! Great job! :)

Good luck with your writing! Progress is slow on mine as well.