The New Realm

So my most recent writing project is kind of a mix of things that I don’t think that I’ve tried before. It is kind of milieu story, which means that an awful lot of it is focused on the setting rather than the plot or character elements. The focus seems to be more on exploring the environment and the background than it is on anything else. Since I am more used to focusing on plot elements for the structure of my story, it has been a bit disconcerting to try and work with it.

Fortunately, the generation of the setting has been more than enough fun to keep me interested. It all started with Zelda. One of my first video games, the Zelda series has always been entertaining and interesting to me, especially the Ocarina of Time game that came out while I was in high school. In fact, I actually started up a small fan fiction once upon a time, and even dinked around with a few ideas along those lines in the MTC with a few other elders in my district.

In any case, my nerdity aside, at some point I came up with the idea that a Zelda game would be that much more interesting if the bosses at the ends of the dungeons could get out rather than sitting and waiting for you to come to them. I started building a world around that idea, tinkering with it and seeing if it would develop into something interesting. Eventually the world of the New Realm came into being.

Basically, it is a realm of magic that was abandoned a long time ago. The reason it was abandoned was due to an ancient war where a flood of demons tried to exterminate the inhabitants led by a great demon named Gogam. A group of warriors opposed Gogam, managing to lock away some of the demons before the final battle in the last remaining city drove the human inhabitants across the ocean. In that final battle, both demon and warriors vanished, while the refugees flooded into the shelter of more mundane kingdoms.

In the setting of the story, the people have started to come back to the Realm, colonizing it anew. The story follows some of the new immigrants and cataloguing the experiences and challenges they have in part of the New Realm as they struggle in a land of new opportunities and pitfalls. Without looking for it, they quickly stumble onto something deeper and darker than they had anticipated, and the story follows them as they try to protect their new home from the forces that would destroy it.

So what do you guys think? Interesting, or just another fantasy novel? As a coherent story, the book still needs a lot of work. Just looking at it as I finish the first draft, it’ll need at least two rewrites, and probably a lot more refining touches before it is anywhere near ready. Still, I think it has the potential to be fun, as long as I’m willing to struggle with it. Let me know what you guys think, and I’ll see you around.