I know most of you are busy, and reading the story for our card sets would take a lot of time. I even know that most of you don't bother. It's a matter of pride, tradition, and, well, stubborn tenacity that keeps me and Zazdor working on the story. While I don't have time to write a chapter this minute (though I'm going to finish another one soon), I will take a moment to illuminate y'all in the story BEHIND the story, give you some nice little tidbits of where our inspiration comes from, and perhaps get a few of you reading the story itself.
It all started... well, I don't quite remember when, but right after I had joined the fledgling HGML. Jazzfan, the group's founder was still in charge, and had already found out what most group leaders since him have since discovered - it's a lot of work. He was doing a good job of keeping up with things at the time, but some things had to suffer - mainly storyline. I volunteered to head the storyline department, and took over where Jazz had left off.
I didn't have much.
Ascension (though it had no name yet) was still being compiled - before colormages, this took a while longer and left more people uninvolved. Jazzfan had jotted down some VERY preliminary story ideas, amounting to a few characters and basic premise - that of an evil vampire using artifacts to gain ultimate power. Standard fantasy fair. What few character ideas there were were along the lines of "Cynthias - evil female vampire warlord, serves Trenton" or "Jewel - young girl, shapeshifter, untrained." So, more or less, I could take the characters wherever I might want to. (Incidentally, I later found out that Cynthias and Trenton, the designated villains for the story, were named for Jazzfan's ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend!)
I was rather bored at the time, so I got right to work. I read through the spoiler of our first and then only set, reading what flavortext Jazzfan had added to cards, which actually turned out to be highly important. For example, at the end of my first outline, Jewel was to meet - somebody. I named said person Koan, but had no designated purpose for the character other than to keep a defenseless Jewel from being eaten by squirrels. My first impulse was to make him a dryad, but looking through the flavortext changed my mind - whenever Jewel was given a quote, it was under "Jewel, Apprentice Shapeshifter." It became suddenly obvious to me that, for her to be an apprentice, she needed a teacher, and so Koan became a shapeshifter and Jewel's teacher.
Around this time, looking over the story, I noticed something distressing - we started in the Desert with the Cult of the Fire moon, an obviously Red people and place. We went to Karthemon and La'adia, giving White a moment of glory. We passed through the Mistwood between the two, getting in all those cute woodland creatures in there. And the baddies hailed from Kelsan, a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Do you see my problem yet?
Where's Blue?
