Character Group Rules - Dragons

This is not a scheduled post today. While Trinity has long had her posts for this week already written, I am marginally more... lazy. And I didn't get a post scheduled and written and ready, so I'm kind of rushing to get this up.
It's Hannah.
Anyway, today is not going to be a creative writing post, although that would be much easier.
So I guess I'll do a Character Rules Post.
Dragons Of Eyra.
Yessssss.

While you're reading, go ahead and listen to this lovely song, if you can read and listen to music at the same time (which I find hard, personally).

Dragons

Now, I have very definitive rules on what dragons are like, what dragons do and how they do it. Where to start, where to start...

Dragons are intelligent animals, more so than dolphins or poodles, in that they can talk, for instance. They are like people, in a way, different than one another in personality, and each unique in appearance (like a fingerprint, no one dragon is exactly alike).

Of course, like people, some dragons may be more unpleasant, more excitable, or more charming than others. There are good dragons and bad dragons and young dragons and old dragons. Some very young or old. 

The first dragon that I introduced was a four-month-old female Sea Dragon named Aquamarine.

Now. There are three different classifications of dragons (so far). Sea, Fire, and Flying, aka Flight or Air. They are sorted according to physical attributes.

Flight Dragons can always fly, naturally. They are often less bulky and more streamlined, and always have wings. (I think it necessary to mention at this point that my books only concern the Western Dragon, not the Eastern.) Flying Dragons can also usually breathe fire, but are most skilled at flying.

Commonly seen as graceful and calm, though sometimes assumed to be more light-headed than other dragons.

Sea Dragons work best in water. They can swim like a fish, and are often mistaken for sea serpents. The scales of a Sea Dragon are often a shade of blue or green.

Some Sea Dragons can fly, and a handful can breathe fire. Of the fliers, some have camouflaged wings (Aquamarine, for example) and their wings often serve as fins. As for the fire breathers, their fire is often differently colored, and weaker than the flame of a fire dragon. 

Fire Dragons are arguably the most fearsome of their kind. They always have a powerful flame, and enjoy roosting in volcanoes or deep in the crevices or the earth. These dragons are often colored black or red, and can be bulkier than the other two breeds. A Fire Dragon can usually fly, and sometimes takes that as a license to dive-bomb towns and villages. The Council of Dragons is working to prevent this.  

Fire Dragons can often be seen as hot-headed and bad-tempered, though that is not the case with every dragon.

Secondly, Aquamarine is a Maiden's Dragon.

Maiden's Dragon -

A dragon raised or trained to be a personal guard of a female human or elf, and in rare cases, a dwarf. To dictate which female is chosen as a Maiden, the typical course of action is to strategically place a object of interest, most commonly a ring or other piece of jewelry, in a place that a person will find it and pick it up. In the event that a male finds the object, the dragon is called a Knight's Dragon. The dragon will typically inhabit the object and wait until they are discovered. (The inhabiting thing is still being worked out). Once the object is discovered, the Maiden or Knight must keep it with them at all times (which is why it helps if the object is a piece of jewelry.) This establishes a link between the dragon and their keeper, and enables the keeper to call for help when necessary.

The dragon, upon being found, becomes bound to their keeper, to protect with life and limb, until the keeper dies or officially releases them. In the case of a 'release', the dragon may either move on to another keeper, or go on to do what they wish.

Like a genie or a butler that can fry bad guys.

Now, all dragons have abilities, skills, that are not widely known. Each dragon has the potential, but it has to be trained and honed to be used efficiently

Transportation - The dragon's ability to teleport themselves or something else (size depends on concentration and training) to another dimension, to the Void, or to another location in the same dimension. http://quillinherquiver.blogspot.com/2012/12/location-post-seventh-dimension-aka.html

Size Change - There is a typical, natural size to a dragon, but a dragon, with skill, can shrink or grow to suit their accommodations. This ability can be trained into a dragon by their elders, or, on some occasions, come across on accident. The size to which the dragon can shrink or grow depends on training, concentration, and age.

Invisibility - The art of, in technical terms, teleporting one's appearance to another dimension or location. The strength, potency and presence of the dragon remains, but they cannot be seen. A very well-trained dragon can sometimes also turn their keeper invisible, which is much more difficult.

Okey-dokey-lokey. I think that's all for now. I'll probably have to put up a second post in the future to further elaborate or to cover anything I have forgotten.

If you have a question, go ahead and ask in the comments. 

Oh, one more thing. There is no magic concerning the dragons. Each of their abilities is only part of their natural tendencies. It's not strange for a human to walk on two legs. Not every animal can do that, but it's typical for people, even if it's something they have to learn.

So, that's the end of this really late post (it was supposed to be on by 7 this morning). Ciao!



Character Group Rules - Elves

It's me, again, Hannah.
Trinity has been writing things about how her story works. I thought I'd take a page out of her book and write a bit on the rules concerning Elves, Dragons, and other creatures in my world.

Okay, first of all, to fully understand what I'm going to be writing, you have to have read this post here: http://quillinherquiver.blogspot.com/2012/12/location-post-seventh-dimension-aka.html

Just a little run-through before we start: the elves live in a different dimension than we do. This is a bit hard to explain. It's hard to work out in my own mind, but they don't live in this universe. They don't have the same planets, sun or moon... I haven't quite worked out what the sun and moon are like. I've given their dimension about the same properties as ours, as it's easier without having to worry about the amount of gravity and oxygen and so on.

Now, about the elves, elaborating on the dimension-thing.

One remarkable thing that I've "noticed" is that eye problems are practically non-existent in that dimension, such as near-sightedness, far-sightedness, etc. So if you wear glasses in this dimension, you won't need them in the Seventh Dimension. There are instances, of course, in which someone loses their eye from a stab wound or something. In that case, they can't see on that side. And there is a single example of an elf who was born blind. In fact, she's pretty famous, being the Princess Sundeep. The elves don't really understand what caused her blindness, and she seems to be the only one naturally afflicted by it.

Okay. I'm going to try to make a list of how elves are different from humans.

The most obvious point is that elves have pointed ears. And, as in common legend, they age more slowly, time-wise and appearance-wise.
In my... what do I call it? In my elves' world, they normally live up to 100, maybe 120 years.
Also, their physical appearance bears mentioning. Six feet tall is an average height for elves. Elves are also naturally slender and have, shall we say, pleasing facial features. They can have all type of skin and hair color, and their appearances do differ, but for the most part, they are rather attractive.
Elves are quite agile. Some of them (especially main characters) have seriously Olympic-level skills. It's pretty hard to tell you using words, so let me give you an example:

 Trinity came across this movie today, and we were both very impressed. I kept telling my younger sister, "This is how elves are!"
Then, we went on to imagine, what would happen if there were a giant battle with hundreds of elves? And what if the elves could all do this type of thing? We could imagine them bouncing off each other, knives or swords in hand... they would be incredibly destructive. My sister, Sarah, recalled one of the antagonist groups in my series, a giant breed of snake. She told me that the snakes would definitely be dead within the first few minutes of the battle, and went on to describe the flipping and bouncing and stabbing that the elves would be doing on the snakes from head to tail.
Also, for those of you who have seen Princess Bride, imagine the Man in Black vs. Inigo Montoya dueling scene, but fast-forwarded, and if possible, even more awesome.

Now, do the elves have any special powers?

Besides the extreme agility, elves naturally have super-strength. An average elf can probably lift or move up to three times the weight a human can. They can also move a bit faster, see a bit farther, and their endurance is remarkable.

As for their language, elves' communication primarily uses the languages Elvish and Engling. Engling is the trading language - literally, as eng means 'trade' and ling means 'language'. Engling is basically English, but with a slight Elvish twist. Elvish, in the current time, is almost a lost language. Engling has mostly taken over, though some people still choose to speak the old tongue, and scholars are trying to revive it in Elvish schools.

What else can I say? My elves have a lot of human characteristics. They aren't quite as aloof as other versions, and they're all a bit different. Actually, few have remarkable accents in Eyra. They sound a bit like Americans, for the most part, though they don't use quite as much slang, and some colloquialisms are foreign to them.
There are also big differences between the typical elvish community and the typical human community, not only because of the time difference. The elves live in medieval times, which means no computers, phones, ipods, CDs, movies, guns, etc. No texting teenagers. No movie quotes. No Sherlock or Doctor Who either. Sorry, guys. But have you noticed what a difference modern books and movies have on our society? Elves don't sarcastically call others 'Sherlock' or 'Einstein'. There are no Lord of the Rings quotes, and they have no idea who Harry Potter is.
I have to be conscious of these things while I'm writing. Sometimes it gets kind of difficult, and I find myself referencing when words were invented to make sure that I'm in approximately the right time period.
Also, I think I'm going to have to make my elves invent clocks.

There is probably a lot of other things I could say, but nothing comes to mind at the moment.

It has recently occurred to me that it might be better to post actual pieces of my story instead of talking about it. Or maybe just write. Yes or no? (Not about whether I should write or not. I know the answer to that. Sigh....)

Location Post - The Seventh Dimension (AKA, Dimensions In General)

Hannah.
That's me. I've been trying to think of a more interesting way for us to show who's speaking right off the bat without saying "It's us!" I mean, you can't get very creative with "It's Hannah!" I've tried. Did you know that Hannah is spelled Hannah in almost every language in the world? No, neither did I, until I tried to look up another translation. I could sign my name in Arabic, but that would take too long. I could do Spanish, I guess. "Hola, se trata de hannah, ¿cómo estás, mis amigos?" (Translation: Hello, this is Hannah, how are you, my friends?)

Or maybe we could each pick a signature cat picture.

Naw, that's not me. I'd be more like:

Anyways, that's what the Internet's about, isn't it? Cat pictures?

So, now that I've sufficiently distracted you, today's post will be a Location Post. It was going to be something different, but I couldn't explain that thing without explaining this thing... so I'm going to say a little bit about dimensions.

I'm not going to explain wormholes, or talk about the dimensions of an object. That would be boring to me, and probably to you. I'm going to attempt to explain how Eyra and it's surrounding countries work, and where they fit into all of this.

The Seventh Dimension

or in specific, an unnamed planet in the Seventh Dimension, on which the majority of the story takes place

I have not had time to go to Ohana Lost-tide for a map of this planet. I'll get one up when possible, but until then you will have to depend on your imaginations.

To begin with, the dimensions (according to me) are linked together. There are several hundred, but only a few important ones. If we say that Earth is dimension #1, then Eyra's dimension is the Seventh, Mor, the prison dimension, is the Sixth, and Bryd, the home of the bird-people, is the Third. Dragon Haven is the Eighth. There are others, naturally (don't think I just forgot about numbers 2, 4, 5, and all the others after 8), but these are the important ones. Currently we are focusing on Eyra's dimension, the Seventh, and Eyra's planet in particular.

But as I was saying, the dimensions are linked together. I'm going to begin a weird analogy, so stick with me.

Imagine our dimension as an island. It's in the middle of the ocean (naturally), and you can't see anything but water beyond the edges of the land. Out in the distance, however, there are other islands with other people that you've never met. Now say that one person on a distant island had a boat. They sail over, carrying the end of a rope. When they get to your island, they set up a zip-line. Then they leave.

Now, you are still on your home island, and you still can't see across the ocean, but if you use the zip-line, you can get across to the other island.

Now let's say that the same person with a boat went around to all the nearby oceans and set up zip-lines, one between your island and their's, another between their island and a second one, and yet another between your island and the said second island. There would be a veritable web of intersecting zip-lines.

Now let's imagine that you couldn't connect directly to one place you wanted to get to. But if you went halfway across one of the zip-lines on your island, you'd intersect with another line. Then, if you could transfer yourself to that line, you could get to the place you wanted to get to. Without a boat, anyone could travel to wherever they wanted to, but without walking or swimming.

Yes, I warned you that it would be a weird analogy. This here was a tiny peek into the way my brain works.

So that's about how the dimensions work. Sometimes there are direct pathways between one dimension and another, like in the case of our dimension and Eyra's. I call these 'color tubes'. Creative, right? But they literally are tubes of swirly color tunnel things. Like this:

And you can walk through these nifty little things to get to another dimension.

Drat, I said I wouldn't talk about wormholes. Okay, it would be more apt to say that a color tube is a pretty-looking wormhole. More on that later.

Now, if you are unable to get into a direct-to-dimension color tube, there are ways to get yourself into a little place I like to call the Void.

It looks like this:

It's big, and white everywhere. Being in the Void is like being underwater, except you can breathe. It's got the other side effects, though, like sluggish movements, floating hair, and general weightlessness. I'm not sure if you have to blink or not (because, you see, we have discovered that blinking underwater is not necessary, and presumably because the water keeps your eyeballs nice and moist).

There are also holes all over the place. In the Void, not in your eyeballs. These holes are tunnels that lead to hundreds of different dimensions. The Void is practically a dimension central, like the bus station of teleportation. You have to be careful, though, because, once you come close to a portal, it will slowly begin pulling you in, so you must be sure that it's the portal you want.   

But now, going back to the zip-line analogy, imagine that only one person knew where the zip-line was on your island. Or imagine that someone could take your end of the zipline and just move it around.

To get into a color tube, or into the Void, you need a sort of a trigger. Something has to trigger the movement. You can be in the right place, but unless you trigger something, you stay firmly planted on your 'island'.

There are at least three currently known ways of teleporting between dimensions: a 'smoking rock'; a physical portal, like a doorway; or a dragon.

Dragons are the most handy, in my opinion. They can go anywhere. A dragon is practically a dimensional multi-pass. A dragon can enter a color tube, or teleport directly to the Void, or, if they want to get there right now, they can skip the portals and blink directly to the place they want. One of their favorite ways of triggering portals that I've found, is making a fire ring and passing through it. Nifty dragons...

Now, if you happen to not have a dragon, you have a few other options. Find a stable dimension doorway, or find a smoking rock. Neither of them are guaranteed to get you exactly where you want, because they have a default drop-off spot called an 'anchor'. It's like a pre-programmed teleporter. If you touch a smoking rock or go through a portal doorway, you go to a pre-selected location. With smoking rocks, some are programmed to send you into the Void. From there, you can try to find your desired dimension.

Smoking rocks and stable portals are also dangerous. You don't know quite where you'll end up, and there's many a person who accidentally walked into another dimension when they thought they were just walking through a ruined stone doorway.

Okay, I've been going on and on (I've probably been writing for around two hours), and I've hardly breached the subject of Eyra's planet.  

As far as I know, there are three countries on Eyra's planet, as I've said before, in this post: http://quillinherquiver.blogspot.com/2012/12/location-post-eyra.html . The countries are named Eyra (home of the Elves), Ente (home of the Dwarves), and Orphna (home of the medieval Humans). There are other countries, too, I'd wager, but these are the only discovered ones to date.

And, by Jove, I've completely forgotten what else I was going to say. Go figure.

If you have any questions, or you want me to re-explain the concept, or you want to say something about my odd analogies or funny little brain, go ahead and say something, because I'm going to wind down now. There's already another post in the making, talking about the properties of the creatures of my little world.

For now though, dinner is imminent. Stir fry awaits, so I'll "see" you later.

P.S. In the Eyra Location Post, I said that Eyra resided in the Sixth dimension. That will have been changed by now, because as the saying goes, "If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried."