Seven Reimagined, A new view of an old story Options

[SubRosa]

A while ago I wrote Seven, which is set in Tamriel. Afterward I thought about adapting it to an original setting. I did a lot of world-building, remade the characters to fit the new world, and got started into translating the story over.

I ran out of steam when I started looking at my over-arching direction, and started seeing some problems. The biggest one was that I had in mind a big High Fantasy story - an ancient race rising to destroy the world, champions rising from the dead, the army of light banding together to fight off evil, and so forth. The twist I planned to this standard format was that the protagonists were trying to stop the war, rather than win it. With finding a peace between all involved being the end goal, rather than destruction.

But the story I was starting out with - Seven - is Low Fantasy (at least the way I define it). Farmers and mercenaries vs. bandits. Ordinary people, with ordinary problems. I like that, as it feels very accessible, and makes the characters, even the extraordinary ones, feel more relateable. So that made me want to continue in that vein, and do a series of stories about a pair of hired spells who are part mercenaries, part private detectives. Sort of like Spenser For Hire or Magnum P.I. with magic. That in turn meant scrapping the entire over-arching story. Or trying to bridge the gap between Low Fantasy and High Fantasy. It left me with a lot of questions, and I was not feeling excited about the answers. So I ended up setting it all aside.

Instead of leaving it all collecting dust, I decided to post what I did finish up here. Maybe it will fire me up to get back to working on it again. People who have read Seven will recognize most of the main characters. Names have been changed in many cases. Some because the originals were Bethesda creations, others to suit the new races/languages. Speaking of which races and the like are entirely new, as is the geography, flora and fauna, how magic works etc... I will put some of that here in this post, and start the actual story in a second post. Let me know if you want to see more of the background notes, and I will put them in this post.


This is a world map

This is the continent of Aulerci, where most of the action takes place



Aela

Loria



The Stone Forest (IRL The Shilin Stone Forest outside of Kunming)

Another example of karst landscape


An Oro (IRL Orodromeus)

A Crumhead (IRL Parasaurolophus)

RL Troodon (the inspiration for the Teodon race)

Troodon front

Troodon head

Ancient Rasen Armor (IRL Samnite bronze armor)

Bronze lamellar armor

Bronze lamellar armor again


Veia Map

Rasen street

Rasen city

Rasen apartment block

Rasen-style architecture





Phereinon

Phereinon again

Malediction

Owl Screeching

Owl Carving





Serves Camna



Wooden mug

Tamac (tomahawk)



Raven pendant

Hrafngoelir

Hrafn's shield

Hrafn's seax


Venca



Rasen bedroom

Rasen bedroom 2

Rasen bedroom 3



Lorcras armor

Hagalaz rune




Horse-Powered Ferryboat 1

Horse-Powered Ferryboat 2

Spirecrown - Saurolophus Angustirostris





Lambeosaurus

Parksosaurus

Ornitholestes

Hadrosaurs 01

Hadrosaurs 02

Orodromeus

Gasparinisaura

Ouranosaurus

Maiasaura

Tropical Milkweed Beetle




Teodon Coloration (this is just what their scale colors look like, not actual representations of the characters)
Alcheon's coloration

Daehyun (a very common peasant coloration)

Dark Eye (though his belly is not so brightly white

Sindeok



Banyan tree

Durian tree

Bromeliads

Bamboo forest

Solagea


Kye Rim Graves

Teodon Dok

Teodon village house

Teodon village house



Earthen rampart, wall, and ditch

cheavaux de frise


Shield Wall training




Fighting Moves
Dark Eye's finishing move against Daeso

Phereinon's belly to back suplex (German Suplex) that she used upon the Arvern Oathman of House Camna

Here is a link to Sindeok's killing move against Brown-Scales

Morte Strike and Half Sword Defense

[SubRosa]

Seven 2.0

Chapter 1.1

Aela rocked on her heels as a magical bolt crashed into her arcane shield. The raw mana flashed hot and brilliant, and she knew that to mundane eyes it would appear to be lightning. Her magical senses could see beyond the simple elemental force however, to the primal magical energy underneath.

It was the same energy that sang within all living beings, and flowed through the earth itself. Normally mana brought life and vitality, as water did to plants. But now it crashed into her like a flood. Just as tidal wave pulverized everything in its path, the magical assault sought to obliterate the threads of power that made up her aura. That would in turn carry the same terrible fate down to the flesh and bone of her body governed by those magical strands.

Her magical bulwark shivered under the assault. Aela reflexively poured more energy into her shield, so that even as the enemy magic ate away at one layer of defense, she wove a fresh lattice of force beneath. So in spite of the fury unleashed against her, Aela's ward held.

As the last remnants of the arcane bolt fizzled away into the aether, she found herself brushing aside a loose strand of hair from her eyes. She was thankful that she had tied it back before the battle. Otherwise she imagined that the brown strands would stand on end from the static, and create a frightful sight!

Staring down the megalithic passageway, Aela's eyes fixed upon the source of the attack. It was a man, given his shape and size. His race was anyone's guess however, given the mask of bones that covered his face. He wore a dark robe with long sleeves, overlain by a lamellar cuirass of black metal. Aela imagined that it might be lorcras, the black steel of the legendary Dark Elves. She hoped not, given that metal's well-known ability to absorb magic. In any case, Aela knew that this had to be the leader of the cultists they had come to stamp out.

The dark priest was surrounded by bodyguards. They were men and women of all the human races: dark-skinned Aymarans, olive-toned Rasenna, fair Arvernach such as herself, and pale Skanjr. All wore mail shirts and carried round wooden shields painted with images of voracious mouths. Most gripped swords or axes of mortal steel. But Aela noted several who brandished silvery-white aetherial blades. Swords conjured from pure mana, they looked like lightning hammered into solid form.

Aela felt Loria's warm breath on her shoulder, smelling faintly of mint. The Light Elf reached out beyond her with one hand - though still within the protection of her ward - and fire blossomed from his fingers. The bright red and orange flames sprayed down the passage before them. The blaze licked off the dry-stone walls, and rolled along the megalithic slabs of the ceiling. The tunnel between was transformed into an inferno of flame and smoke.

The dark priest lifted his staff however, and a bubble of energy rose up before him and his followers. Loria's flames crackled and snarled upon the protective wall of magic, but failed to pierce its glowing surface. It was a standoff then. As Aela had feared, this battle might have to be decided by force of arms rather than magic.

As if to give voice to the Arvern Witch's thoughts, a shout rose above the bedlam in the corridor.

"Frisverd!," the deep voice rang out, "forward!"

With a wordless chorus of bellows and cries, a tidal wave of humanity charged up from behind Aela and Loria, and swept past them down the hallway. Like the cultists, the Skanjr warriors were clad in good mail byrnies, steel helmets, and iron-rimmed shields. They raised swords and axes, and put them to use with ruthless effect.

For all their wild cries, the Skanjr mercenaries formed an even wall of steel before the Aela and Loria. They moved forward as one, axes and swords stabbing and hacking at the cultists. Aela could see little more than their armored backs at this point, as the Northerners stood far taller than an Arvern like herself. Even Loria's willowy elven frame was matched by their height, though he was certainly outstripped by their bulk.

Aela stretched her senses out through the aether, and the corridor leaped to brilliant life before her. She could not only see the magic around her, but smell, taste, hear, and even feel it as well. The brilliant energy ebbed and flowed like water, coursing around and through everything in the physical world. It might be invisible and intangible to the dull eyes of a mundane, but to her it was like standing within a living, breathing watercolor painting.

She immediately felt Loria standing beside her. His energy rose like a brilliant pillar of fire, spreading light and warmth out through the aether around him. Before the two of them she sensed the fainter auras of the Skanjr mercenaries. Not being magicians, their energy was cooler, dimmer, and less vibrant to her magical senses. They reminded Aela of the embers of a fire that had recently burned out.

The cultists beyond the hired swords were similar, in that their auras were dull and grey as well. Yet unlike the Northern mercenaries, their auras felt foul. Touching them reminded Aela of stepping upon slime under her bare feet. That feeling only worsened as she neared the dark priest. Unlike his bodyguards, his aura was brilliant and powerful, but far more sickening to behold.

Where Loria's energy was warm and clear as the noon-day sun, the dark priest's power reminded Aela of rotting flesh squirming with maggots. Aela felt herself momentarily recoil at the corruption that was so plainly etched upon the man's spirit, and could not prevent herself from curling a lip in disgust.

The stone walls and cold earth of the tunnel surrounding her felt nearly as bad. The barrow was darker in the aether than it was even in the mundane world. For that same sense of corruption which lurked within the leader of the cult seemed to permeate the entire barrow. This was clearly not a place where the dead found rest and peace. Rather it was an abattoir.

Clearly, horrific deeds had been done here. To have soaked so thoroughly into the aether, Aela knew they could not have been a rare occurrence. It was a legacy of long years of torment. Terror, torture, and worse things screamed out from the mana that surrounded Aela. It assaulted her senses like the effluvium of a midden heap. It made the Arvern want to retch, but seven years of training at the Ingenium had steeled her against such things.

She focused her thoughts, and rewove the threads of power that created the tapestry of her arcane shield. At the same time Aela poured yet more of her energy into the spell, causing those strands to grow and take new shape in the aether before her. Now her magical barrier extended out in all directions to fill the entire passage. Then she pushed the glowing bulwark forward, beyond the dim auras of the Skanjr mercenaries, until it slammed into the unyielding barrier of the dark priest's own ward.

Aela was just in time, as she felt a terrific wave of fire wash across the face of her shield but a moment later. The magical energy sizzled against her defenses, burning away the channels of power that defined the ward. It took all of Aela's years of experience and skill to continually reweave the strands that created the blanket of her defense. She worked feverishly, so that even as one thread was incinerated, a fresh one took its place.

All the while Aela continued to drain more of her mana into the shield. She wondered how long she could continue to channel such energy into it. This dark priest possessed a power the like of which she had rarely ever felt before, even among the sages of her old school. Aela had no doubt that without her shield to stop him, he would have literally just turned all of the mercenaries into dust.

Aela recalled the war between Alalia and Felathri years before. She had been part of the ritual team that had protected the Alalian army with a massive arcane shield. They had stripped away its physical layer of protection to conserve energy. Now Aela did the same. Her ward would only protect against spells, where moments before it had also warded off mundane blows from axe or sword. From now on the Skanjr would just have to trust to their armor and shields to defend them, as the Alalian army had done on the field years ago.

Those Skanjr appeared to be doing well. While she could not physically see what was happening on the front line of the battle, she could still discern that the mercenaries were steadily pushing forward. Her magical senses could easily place their auras, all neatly arranged in a solid wall that spanned the megalithic passageway from one side to the other.

The auras of the cultists were not so organized. Rather they spread out haphazardly across the passage. Sometimes one would push forward against the mercenaries, but rarely with any immediate support from the other cultists. The Skanjr however, met their foes together, never breaking their shield wall. Because of that the cultists never fought just the single mercenary in front of them, but were forced to contend with the warriors to either side as well.

One by one the auras of the cultists winked out under the crush of the massed Skanjr. While Aela was not trained as a warrior, she could clearly see that it was this teamwork on the part of the mercenaries that carried the day for them.

While the swords and axes of the Northerners steadily worked their way through the cultists, Aela felt Loria strike out once more. This time it was not elemental force which the elf wielded, but rather a more subtle magic. A counterspell that was neither visible to mundane sight nor able to be felt by non-magical blood, its power was nonetheless a brilliant flare before Aela's magical senses.

Loria's magic stabbed into the bone-masked cultist's ward like a chisel being driven underneath a great hammer. Aela felt the dark priest's defense shiver under the elf's magical strike. Loria followed with another blow, and another, and soon cracks formed in the opposing ward. The Arvern Witch felt the cult leader's attack upon her own ward falter, and flicker out. A moment later his own arcane shield likewise vanished. Wary of a trick, Aela maintained her focus and continued channeling power into her own defense.

Aela's caution was rewarded when she felt the cultist's ward flare to life once more. This time however, it did not span the hallway, but rather formed a smaller barrier that curved around the front of his body alone. A moment later she felt it buckle under a heavy, physical blow. She knew that had to have been from a Skanjr sword or axe. That meant that the mercenaries were upon the dark priest, and now he would be forced to split his energy between assaulting Aela's arcane shield, and protecting himself from her allies.

Aela stumbled forward, her body feeling numb and far away as her senses roamed the aether. She could not let the mercenaries get too far ahead of her, lest they advance beyond the range at which she could project her ward. Again, when she had been part of a ritual team, it had been possible to push the ward far from her body. But without a hundred other magicians in support, her abilities were limited.

Loria hammered with his counterspell once more. Again it smashed the priest's ward, and its mana scattered into the aether. A moment later Aela felt the hot pillar of the cult leader's energy snuff out like a candle being pinched under finger and thumb. She knew what that meant. One of the warriors had finished the priest off the old-fashioned way. As if to underscore Aela's ruminations, a great cheer rose from the Skanjr.