On December 15th, after reading through Holly Lisle's website and seeing her workshop on world building and drawing maps the previous night, I felt extremely inspired. So I cleared off the art table we have in the guest room/storage room/pet hangout, set up some incense to cover the unmistakable scent of cat food, taped together a bunch of big pieces of paper I found in a large sketch book, and got busy. I started off using pencil so I could correct mistakes and add or remove things as I went along, even though Holly says not to do this. (It was either I did it in pencil or I stared at the paper in fear for a week - looking back I think my choice was a wise one considering this is my first full-size hand drawn map ever) I had had an idea rattling around in my brain for awhile at this point after having a particularly cool dream about a week prior. It involved a lot of running, a lot of world saving, elves, Yggdrasil, hideous mutants, and a lot of icy tundra landscapes. The main character was Losia Moonsword, a female half-elf I created for Neverwinter Nights years ago. She's one of my favorite RPG characters ever, actually, so it was pretty natural my brain would choose her to be the dream's protagonist. I won't bore you all with details, (even though it was a very vivid, colorful, and totally kickass dream) but the basic plot involved a city of elves that lived in the arctic protecting a very important world tree. They were supposedly preparing it and keeping it safe until the apocalypse arrived, at which point it would be destroyed anyway, but things went wrong because all of a sudden these nasty little mutant creatures started popping up all over the place and tried to destroy the tree before it's time had come. Nobody was prepared for this in the slightest so a lot of fighting broke out and Losia was the only one left alive to save the world from these monsters.


I thought that this dream could become a pretty cool story with some tweaking, so I decided that I wouldn't make the same mistake twice. This time I would do a lot of proper world building before I wrote the story, and that I wouldn't make the same mistake with TEC as I did with TSW. (Yes I know I have an affinity for acronyms starting with the letter T, shut up) As the beginning of the outlining process, I decided to make a map. And here it is. :) It took me about a week to finish and I think the hardest part for me was coming up with names for everything. It's now hanging proudly above my bed where my old Star Trek calendar used to be. I'm hoping a map of Secotha (TSW's world) will be accompanying it sometime soon.

( My new favorite planet! )

HA! I'm not dead Bones, just hibernating. Yeah. That's totally what I'm doing. I absolutely, positively did not lose an entire week watching the Star Trek: Voyager marathon on SpikeTV last week. Nope. Not me. I so did not wake up early at 8am so I could plant my butt in a comfortable chair at precisely 9am and stay there all day long to watch episodes of Star Trek: Voyager until 6pm. You know me, I'd never do anything like that!

=D

This is just a quick mini teaser update to let my friends know that I have not expired, have not been kidnapped by Swedish pirates, and that despite any rumors which you may have heard my offshore accounts in Aruba have not been infiltrated by a crack team of ninja gibbons. This is also where I'm going to tease you all by telling you about the cool British Sunday roast I attended last week, as well as the yummy Indian food I had on Friday, (my first experience with Indian food, I might add!) and that I haven't in fact forgotten about Picspam: Episode 2 and that it will eventually find it's way into this LJ before the end of the year. There may also be some content involving pictures of a large world map which I drew with my OWN TWO HANDS and is now hanging proudly over my bed in full color and detail, as well as some tales of adventures in cookiedom and whining about how I still don't have a clue what I'm going to write for that Doctor Who short story contest going on over at Big Finish. But right now I've got some chores to get back to and a couple of parental units to glare at, (just kidding) so the updates will have to wait until later.

Wishing you all happy holidays,
- Me.