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]

Acadian: I was pleased with how I was able to dovetail Phereinon's goals into the current story, using Aela herself as the reason for her joining the defense of Agrigento. It took a while for that to come together.

Aela can be extremely stubborn when she gets her dander up, and Phereinon certainly knows how to do the latter. Part of her taunt was of course just to see how Aela would react. Aela is not just a fighter, but a thinker, so naturally both came out in her responses.

I must confess to the second best mage in town not being entirely my own invention. In an old episode of Magnum PI, someone hired Magnum because every other PI said he was the second best in Hawaii. You can guess who they said was the best...

Thanks for catching my 'make do' miscue. Another one that spellcheck does not catch, because technically nothing is spelled wrong.


haute ecole rider: Seven is indeed just the first act of a much larger story. It is really just an introduction to the characters. There is a much larger story waiting behind it, starting with the expedition to the City Of The Dead. Besides that story arc, I can see standalone prequel novels focusing on individual characters in the past. One on Phereinon and how she became undead, and exterminated the Dark Elves. One on Venca, and the rise of the Sacerdotium and the Rasen conquest of Aulerci thousands of years in the past. One on Hrafngoelir and her adventure with the orcs and elves in the mountains, and the Deep Roads beneath. And finally one on Aela and Ungarion's time in the Ingenium. It wold be nice to have one on Dhasan as well, I just don't know enough about his history yet. I only know that he is driven by a need to outdo his father, who didn't come back from a war.



I also made a minor edit to the previous segment, added a more detailed description of Phereinon's facial scars.



Chapter 8.1

Less than an hour later Aela found Loria and the others gathered at Veia's docks. The mercenaries all wore their armor and weapons. Hrafngoelir was clad in her full astril panoply, and carried her elvish bow and Skanjr sword. Dhasan wore his own people's ironleaf armor, and carried his flatbow and axe. Loria practically strutted in a new suit of green silk robes, and Aela wondered when he had gotten that. Then she remembered the clothier sleeping in his bed earlier that morning.

Aela noted that Venca was now clad in armor: a gleaming black lamellar cuirass of slender lorcras plates that ran vertically down around his torso, shoulders, and upper arms. Its long skirts hung down to his knees. Bracers of the same black steel plates wrapped his forearms, as did greaves that ran from ankle to knee. It was difficult to be certain against the fierce aura of the Ravenwheel, but she could feel no magic from the armor. Though given its material, it hardly needed enchantment.

Phereinon accompanied Aela of course. The white-haired woman was clad in a long-sleeved mail hauberk under a vest of hardened white leather that was embossed with eagles. Identical leather bracers were strapped to her forearms, and a pack was slung over her shoulders. Otherwise she wore the same white leggings wrapped in gray cord as before, along with gray boots.

"I thought you were not coming?" Loria wondered aloud. His eyes traveled from the mystery woman to Aela.

"Your friend changed my mind," was all Phereinon would say.

Aela fought the urge to blush as all eyes turned upon her. It was not as if she had said or done anything to convince the warrior to come. Phereinon's decision had been entirely her own.

She was rescued from the attention of the group when one of the ship's officers cried out that they were ready for boarding. Aela followed the others up the wide gangplank from the dock to the wide-bellied cog. It was much like the hulk that had borne them from the Stone Forest to Veia a week before. She and the others stowed their gear below deck and prepared for the journey ahead of them. Eager to escape the confines within, Aela was quick to return to the deck, along with many of the other passengers who had boarded the ship with them.

Aela saw that among the other travelers on the ship was a young Teodon with yellow and green scales. Aela recognized him immediately as the brash, would-be warrior from the street. She wondered how long it would take the others to notice the young Teodon. The cloak he now wore somewhat obscured his appearance. But she knew that on a ship only fifty feet long, he could not remain unnoticed forever.

She said nothing to the others, and instead made her way to the prow of the vessel. Like most cogs, this one had a small castle built up around the bowsprit. It was really nothing more than a flat platform with a crenellated wooden wall around it. She climbed inside and sat down with her back against battlement, legs stretched out before her. Craning her neck to the left, she looked out through the gaps between the merlons to watch the water below as it foamed up around the ship's prow.

She closed her eyes and shifted her senses into the aether. Almost immediately she felt an undine dancing within the water that sprayed up from the prow of the ship. The unearthly being seemed eminently pleased with this simple thing, and Aela easily slid her consciousness down into the waves beside her.

All too soon something else intruded upon her escape with the nature spirit. Aela felt it in the aether first. Bright and faithful elvish armor, accompanied by a composite bow that floated like a cherry blossom. Then came a stinging chill, like a frost wyrm's bite, and the ragged, yet somehow soothing, croak of a raven.

It was Hrafngoelir, and the varied assortment of enchantments that hung about the Skanjr like perfume about a flower. Aela was about to open her meat eyes, when she felt another enchantment, much weaker than the rest. It was barely even noticeable above the warm glow of the Northerner's own aura.

Unlike the strong and bright energy of the blond woman, this was dark, filled with loss and regret. It possessed no specific enchantment. It was just a miasma of sadness and pain, soaked up by some object like a sponge. It paused with Hrafngoelir at the nearby ship's rail, and hovered there above the waves.

Aela did open her eyes just in time to see that it was a palm-sized stone. It tumbled from the blond warrior's fingers, and the Witch saw that a Skanjr rune was carved into one of its faces. If she had paid more attention in her enchanting or language classes she probably could have identified the character. But Aela could not even put a name to it. She could only tell that it consisted of two vertical lines, joined by a single, slanting bar.

Then the stone was gone, vanished into the sea. It took all of that regret bound up with it to the sunless depths below. Aela hoped that the water would wash away the sorrow within its soothing embrace.

"What?"

Aela started at the blond warrior's voice. Had she spoken her thoughts aloud? Or had Hrafngoelir only now just noticed her behind the merlons of the forecastle?

"I'm sorry," Aela stood up. "My mind was elsewhere. I noticed your carving."

Aela nodded to the waves, that had so recently swallowed up the Skanjr's dark offering.

"Aye," the Skanjr said. "I was just saying eloi to someone."

"Hello or goodbye?" Aela recognized the unusual word as elvish, favored by the Silisce. It could be either a greeting or a farewell, depending on how the Sea Elves used it.

"Both I suppose," Hrafngoelir frowned. "What brought you up here?"

"Just staying out of the way," Aela shrugged and looked back to the waves. Clearly the other woman did not want to talk about the strange stone she had cast into the sea. Aela was not going to pry. She of all people understood the value of privacy. "I just like watching the water. It always feels peaceful to me."

The taller human climbed over the crenellated wooden wall and sat down beside Aela. The Arvern stared down at Hrafngoelir's armored legs as they stretched out on the deck beside her own. Looking back up, she noted that not only was the other woman's hair a masterpiece, but that even the powder above her blue eyes gave them a brilliant shine in the morning sun.

Aela could not help but to feel a twinge of envy, and turned away from Hrafngoelir. For the thousandth time, she wondered what it was like to be born normal, and have the option of living an ordinary life.

"That is a lovely necklace." The Skanjr's words broke Aela's reverie, and she followed the other woman's gaze to the crystal pendant that she wore. Shaped in a spiral, it hung above her small breasts from a chain of thin silver links.

"My spiral?" Aela said. "Among the Asokari - and we Witches here in Aulerci - it symbolizes the never-ending cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. We all come from the Earth, and we all return to it. It also happens to be enchanted to store additional mana."

"Then you keep to the Asokar gods?" Hrafngoelir asked. "Or not gods. As I recall, they see all the Earth as a god, and all of us on it as well."

"You have traveled indeed," Aela noted. "I grew up in a city - Cymner in fact - but I have always loved the countryside. The forests, the rivers, the mountains, the sea… The wild places of the world are where I feel most alive. They are the places I feel connected to something beyond myself. In fact, it is in those places where I first met my spirit guides."

"You have spirit guides?" Hrafngoelir raised an eyebrow again. "Now you really do sound like one of the Fox Folk!"

"I am a Witch," Aela shrugged. "It is about the same thing. Oh I don't see them or smell them the way Dhasan does Wolf. But I do feel them, and I can learn from them."

"They really do see them then?" Hrafngoelir said. "I spent some time in their land, and some told me so. But I have always wondered if they were having a laugh on a foreigner."

"Oh, they see their guides," Aela insisted. "They are as much a part of their world as the earth or sky. In my case I met Turtle during a trip into the woods. There was a real turtle there, crawling ever so slowly across the path. But I felt so much more from him than just an animal. He taught me patience. Turtle is all about getting there, no matter how long or difficult the journey. Later I met Butterfly, who taught me the secrets of transformation."

"You sound like quite a Witch indeed!' the Skanjr exclaimed. "But I would not think that one with your gifts would require more magical energy?" She nodded toward the enchanted pendant.

"I don't anymore," Aela felt a wry smile come to her lips, and stared down at the spiral, "Well not usually. But when I first started casting spells in real combat, I had a tendency to use much more energy than I needed. I was like a fighter throwing a haymaker with every punch. It took me a while to learn to only use as much mana as was truly necessary. I keep it as a reminder to pace myself. And because it was a gift from a friend."

"You did not make it yourself?" Hrafngoelir looked confused.

"Oh no," Aela confessed. "Loria enchanted it for me. He has always been much better at that than I am. He did all of our gear in fact: his old robes and ring, my clothes, even Dhasan's axe and shield. Now that he has a new outfit, I am sure he will be enchanting that during our voyage as well."

"Forgive me," Hrafngoelir said, "the only other seidberendr I knew had been an enchanter. I just thought…"

"That we could do everything? Not hardly." Aela smiled. "The truth is Loria is a much better mage than I am in most of the schools of magic. The only ones I ever really had much interest in are vitamancy and spiritism. So I devoted all of my energy to them at the Ingenium. Well, and arcanism of course. Using it is part of all higher forms of magic. I never spent much time on the other disciplines. I only took the basic classes required by the school."

"Oh," the Skanjr blushed. With one thick finger she swept aside an imaginary lock of hair from her eyes. "Ever since I was a child I was taught that people like you have fearsome powers. And my brother…"

"It is true that people like myself have certain advantages as magicians," Aela admitted. She had not missed the other woman's mention of a brother, or how her words had trailed away into silence after his mention. She imagined he might have something to do with the seidberendr she had mentioned as well. "To use magic, one must walk between worlds. People like me, who change gender roles, also walk between worlds. I suppose we are made to be magicians."


Lorcras armor

Hagalaz rune