Shadows of the Past Chapter 4

 Today's publishing day for chapter 4 of Shadows of the Past: Visitors!

After Elna was captured last chapter, you'd think she was at least allowed a good night's sleep, right? 

WRONG! 

Discover who wants to talk in the dead of night, and what haunts the Talon's dreams in chapter 4. 

The Secret Origin Of Elna's World

I just wanted to drop some background for this piece, as I'm getting very much involved in building the world at present. I think a novel set in Elna's world would be really cool to create. Like so many of my ideas, this began as a roleplaying campaign idea... or rather two roleplaying ideas. The first was a game modelling novels like Assassin's Apprentice, with the idea that the PCs would be a set of agents fighting to prop up the King. They wouldn't be loyal to the country but the monarch, and many of their adventures would have been bittersweet affairs where they moved to prevent the nobles from revolting. The second idea was the more Faerie related one, with the characters as part of a secret order striving to keep the Fae from taking people, and using humans as pawns in their games.

None of my players expressed any interest in the games, so I left them alone but then started wondering if they'd make a good form of fiction... and what would happen if I smashed them together into one property.  So, a world with a King desperate for more influence and using a secretive order to fight his enemies, and the order also being faerie hunters. This then generated more ideas around the context, adding history to explain why the King needs a black ops squad (quite beyond the fact that he'd probably have that sort of thing at his beck and call). 

This led to the creation of more history for the setting, a cultural clash between "the Clans" who are the indigenous people, and the Torvenlanders who settled the land after they were driven out of their original home by a dragon. As it stands I have some of the history set out and am trying to deepen it, including the many incarnations of the faerie hunting conspiracy.