Author Archives: Tomas

Two years on the journey

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Two years ago, 21.7.2015 (at 9:17 CEST) I started the long journey to put my ideas for a fantasy story together. After a nudge from my fellow World of Warcraft player who told me the truth that there’s no reason to not try, I started writing a sample chapter. Now, two years later, first book is somewhere on transition between alpha and beta version and I decided to reflect a bit on what happened in those two years.

Two years of what I estimate to be much more. I did not give it working name “Project Eternity” for nothing.

From six characters to forty

Of course the number is not exact, but the sample I wrote had only a few of the characters that take part in the story. Some of those that appear in chapter 1 were not created before the moment I actually started writing the chapter (a story I’ll share later). The sample was from somewhere in later part of second book (hard to guess before I get there) and at this point it’s soon about to be dismantled as during writing book one and preparing story of book two I realised I’ll need to change timing of some events.

Anyway, in first book, there’s around forty to forty-five named characters with some more to appear later. And for some, I still lack a name I would be satisfied with even after several changes. It’s my biggest hold-up at this point.

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Book review: Battle mage

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This book, as it is usual for my last reads, was another random find. So far it’s the longest book I’ve read this year. Amazon states the length at ~650 pages while goodreads at ~860 which felt closer to the truth. Yet it did not feel too long. The book had me hooked from the start and if there’s one indication how good it was, I was disappointed that I had to delay finishing it by one day due to scheduled World of Warcraft raid.

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Art in the streets

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During the previous week, my attention was drawn to a bus that had quite unique graphical design. While there are few that are not using the operator’s typical colors (usually it’s a prototype which was not repainted after testing) or paid advertisement, this one is significantly different.

I’m quite sure that most people saw buses, trains, trams and anything else covered by graffiti without the owner’s consent. This was the opposite case: the bus was intentionally covered by graffiti as part of a cultural event in the city. It was out of order for a week while some modifications were done to preserve the unusual look.

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Graffiti-covered bus. In background, two buses in the usual color scheme (yellow stripe indicates low-floor bus)

Unfortunately I did not have time to take more from more angles. Another interesting fact is that the bus was operating on a route that was replacing trams (tram tracks are undergoing repairs) where a noise-cancelling wall is covered by street art for a few years already, replacing the billboards. I consider it better than the mostly unimaginative ads especially as the groups that make decorations for these walls are continuously replacing them with new ones (I believe one or two on each side of the road per year).

Karosa B941E bus specifications (source: Wikipedia)

  • Articulated bus
  • Length/Width/Height: 17,615 m / 2,5 m / 3,165 m
  • Top speed: 70 km/h
  • Manufactured: 335 buses between years 1997 and 2001 (this particular bus in 1999) by Karosa (now Iveco Czech Republic)
  • Capacity: 42 seated + 118 standing passengers

This type of bus (as well as the slightly newer B961 variant as seen in background to the left) is slowly being cycled out and replaced by low-floor or low-entry buses but several are still in use if their technical state allows. These two and their B741 predecessor were significant part of my daily commute for several years. In the last years, they are being replaced by fully low-floor buses.

Art design credit to author. Photo taken by me.

From history to fantasy

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It’s a few months ago I have this thought, but I think it’s still a nice one. I was watching a documentary about ancient Rome, which was very well done. It was amazing to see how such a city as organized.

System of aqueducts led water to the city in a way that outdid its era. It had complex system of public life, areas in the city for specific purposes. It had army (legionnaires) that worked like nothing else in that time.

It had me think: a city in fantasy would need to work just as well if it was to be the sprawling metropolis able to house tens of thousands. Yes, some things can be made easier in fantasy worlds by using magic but unless it is to have magic in everything, ancient Rome is perfect example of how a great civilization could work with little technology in the way we know it today.

Intermingled

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Today was another of those days when I was writing a bit and something that I had a few times occurred to me again. It’s the moment when I am searching for the word to say something and somehow it comes to my mind even though I did not know I know the word. In reality, I did not even know such a word existed.

This happened to me maybe two or three times before, unfortunately I don’t remember what words they were and at this point I am not willing to scroll through 240000 words of text to find three of them. But I know what it was this time.

I was in the process of describing a frost elemental, which I decided that will look like a mixture of snow and ice, strangely mixed together. And then as I was thinking how to best say that, the word came to my mind.

Intermingled.

Wait, does such a word even exists? Seems that it does, because Word did not underline it red as a typo. Okay, step two, Google translate. Check, it seems that such a word really exists. Good.

In case of interest, here goes the elemental’s description as it is now in the very first pre-alpha version. Since the story is still in development, I removed character names from the excerpt.

[name removed] saw various elementals before. He saw earth elementals that looked like dried soil, flame elementals that looked like cooling magma and mistwalkers that looked like a bunch of mist taking on a specific shape. This frost elemental looked like irregular intermingled mixture of ice and snow. It had larger crystals of the same elemental ice he just picked up forming up the base of its limbs, the joints being made of what looked like tough, frozen snow. The torso looked like thin layer of the same ice encasing enormous snowball but [name removed] knew enough about elementals to know that inside this is the creature’s core, a piece of elemental ice with such power it would never melt on its own.

The elemental’s face looked like it was gently sculpted from a snowball and the creature even had something that could vaguely resemble a hair – thin strands of what resembled willow branches covered by thin layer of hoarfrost. Of course, in case of this elemental there was nothing covered, the ice just somehow kept that shape.

Note: mistwalker is what I call a specific kind of air elemental.

I am out in the web now…

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So, after years of thinking about it, I have set up my own website, something that will be more like a blog with some static pages saying what is actually going on here.

In the coming days and weeks, I’d like to share various things like my approach to hiking, rating books and some other topics.