A Bard's Telling

It's Hannah! Today I have a poem, or perhaps a legend or lore or ballad. I've been trying to think of the word for quite sometime. Perhaps an epic. For the past few days I've been calling it "A Bard's Telling".

It's dictated by Ohana Lost-tide, the scribe from this post, and tells the first part of the tale of the Dragon War (a battle in my second book).

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From coast to coast of the darkened land
The swords were passed from hand to hand
And ferry the news to hall and home
The devils are arrived to roam
To kill and crush and raze and burn 

A demon-king beast and blight of doom
Will raze the earth beneath our moon
Songs of mourning as warriors die
Mothers wail and children cry
Breaking of day, horrors to light 

As angers awaken
And fury will flame
For young children taken
The killers to blame

A righteous blood-wrath 
Will every face pass
For demons who dare
To darken our path 
As children of light
Lift eyes to the moon
And pray to the Lord
To save us from ruin

The heads of the family
Rise up to the call
To join with the thousands
To fire and to fall

Mothers and wives
Cling to husband and child
Songs of lamentation
Ascending and wild

Mingle with fading voices
Of men whose hearts burn
For a family to whom
They will never return

“So pull back the bows,
And let up a prayer,
Release bolts of death
Winging into the air.
Let’s summon our hearts
Unfailingly brave,
Remember our comrades
Who went to the grave.

“This is our land;
It was won by fair blood
Of our ancestors grand,
Long returned to the dust.
And these are our children;
They will not see death.
We will stand by to guard them
To our final breath.

“So pull back the bowstring,
And send up a cry,
To our faithful God,
That He won’t let us die.
And summon your hearts
Unfailingly brave,
Forget not your comrades
Who went to the grave.

“And these are our lives; 
They will not be controlled
But by king and by God,
And hearts cannot be sold.
And this is a home,
Ere protected with love.
If you steal it away,
You can bet there’ll be blood.

“So raise up the shields,
And raise up a shout,
With cries strung with victory
Let courage ring out,
And summon a song
Unfailingly brave,
To honor our comrades 
Who went to the grave.”


I've had a bit of practice doing poems, but this may very well be the first that I finished without a modicum of ridiculousness. I may later put on some of the others I've done, if I judge them not too gory or insanely strange (really, I've rewritten Clementine as a story about a gluttonous daughter of a rich guy in London).
This was heavily inspired by what I remember from reading Beowulf, and I was careful not to turn flippant, because, after all, it's an epic about a battle, and while battles are often told to be full of glory, they're definitely very frightful and devastating. I was also inspired to write a melancholy narrative-like poem by songs like Misty Mountains (I like Stephen J. Anderson and Shaun Canon's version), Tale of The Tongues, Age of Aggression, and Age of Oppression from Skyrim (look up Malukah's version on Youtube!). I actually have a recording of me singing the last part of the poem to the tune of Age of Aggression - or Age of Oppression, not sure which -that I am not going to put on here (so please don't ask, you'll be disappointed).

So what do you think? I seriously love comments and feedback. Just don't ask for aforementioned recording.


Sosrin God ignt eht ceallian,
(To God be the Glory)
Hannah

Back To Orphna

Hannah here.
This is really a difficult post for me. Trinity recommended that I write about, as she put it, "The land of the giant possums."
That's Orphna.
I'll explain the giant possums in a minute.

Orphna is both a fictional land and a nickname for my first book. My first book, which was actually, interestingly, inspired by a series of tape recordings I ad-libbed with two of my sisters. It had no plot, which is common with my earlier stories. The basic idea was that the main character, Arsha (no last name), had a secret that some bad guys wanted. The bad guys were just bad guys, for no reason, and they were chasing her constantly to get the secret. That was the recording "plot". The recording is lost now. But as I started writing, the story evolved a bit, into something a little bit better.

To begin with, I never finished Orphna. I didn't get farther than ten pages into it when I stopped. My family was really encouraging, and I loved writing it, but now that I'm going back over it... as Trinity said in her previous post, about the eye-clawing... I can relate. It was so clichéd. It was... very not good.

For example (and a little piece of me is dying as I post this):

Arsha ran down the slightly worn path, her soft shoes hitting the dirt.
“Just give up, Arsha! You have no choice!” A voice called out behind her.
Arsha sighed, “No way, Jorph, I’m not going to tell you! Find out on your own!”
“Charge!” Jorph shouted. She glanced behind herself and gulped when she realized a large group of trained soldiers were now being commanded by Jorph. “That’s not...what I meant.”

So here was the basic slap-together story-line: There is a queen in "an island far in the Indian Ocean, in the large empty space between Madagascar and Australia, though not really empty." I somehow felt a need to put Orphna in the real world, so I just went to the map on the wall and picked a blank section of ocean.

So anyway, Queen Losila did something that the people of Orphna didn't like. In this case, she took their... bees away. The majority of the population were beekeepers, and she, for unknown reasons, outlawed bees. Naturally, one would assume, the people were not happy with that. So they revolted.
Secondly, the main characters. They were the advisors to the queen. So when the people went after the queen, the advisors were next. So Losila sent them into hiding for their own safety. A fine story on it's own... but not the way I wrote it. Anyways, the main characters are these: Arsha, Kiake, Denna, Mylenda, Jenza, and Xren.
Arsha is the lead character. Kiake and Xren are her best friends. Xren is the only man in the group. Denna, a mother whose husband was killed by the yezben (giant possums). She has a 4-year-old daughter, Jenza. And Mylenda was an advisor who had already been caught and assumedly killed by the Cerchin (that's what the core of the revolters call themselves).
The advisers, also known as the Vinzine, have been hiding in a forest hut for a few years, all five of the remaining members. But they still have to get food, so every week or so one of the members will travel in disguise to the nearest market and get supplies before heading back to the woods. In this case, Arsha had gone to the market and was discovered by Jorph, the active leader of the Cerchin. The Cerchin are trying to find the Vinzine's hideout, so they chase Arsha, hoping she'll lead them to the fort, which she does. She thinks she outruns them and heads to the fort, but they follow, so the story starts with the entire team being chased out of their hideout.

While reading through this again, I can actually tell that I was basing it, perhaps subconsciously, on the Inheritance Cycle books. For example, the Vinzine, a classic good-guy band with a title, like Varden, both starting with V. If it worked for Christopher Paolini...
I've also worked out the time I was writing it - back in 2008, so when I was 10. The dates are messed up on my computer since we have wiped the system twice since I started writing, so I had to take a guess. One telling point was the big bad guy's name: Barama, which, in the little pronunciation guide (also inspired by the Inheritance books), I note that it rhymes with Obama. Our family is ultra-Conservative, so at age 10, basically all I knew about the elections was that McCain and Palin were good and Obama was bad. My naming skills needed work.
After writing this, I'm considering starting on the story again. But I'll have to change a lot of things. Like the bee-farm-banning thing.

Feedback is welcome and appreciated. We're going to start scheduling posts, so, Lord willing, we'll be able to get a post up on a regular basis, probably every other day, except on weekends.

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....)

Good News And Bad News

Trinity here!

Well, I have good news and I have bad news. The good news about the good/bad news is that the good news applies to just about everyone and the bad news applies mostly to me. So, no need to be concerned.

The good news is I finally managed to design an acceptable and spiffy cover for my NaNo novel! Ta-da!

This was a frustrating project because I wanted to have both an element of the modern (as in, a ravaged city), and an element of medieval. I tried looking for swords, girls on horses, girls with swords, etc. etc. and I just couldn't find what I wanted. But I eventually got this, and I think I like it.

And the bad news. Yesterday I spent a couple of hours researching nuclear power plants and radiation. 

Now, I realize that all this information coming up might not mean much to you, and if you want to you can go ahead and skim right over the next little bit, but I'm putting it in anyway because it helps me think things through and solidify them in my head. 

First though, note that I've done a lot of research and I've stated things as simply as I can, so you might learn something cool. Like, the fact that the code name for the first nuclear detonation test ever was called the Trinity Project. :D 

Anyway, it looks like nuclear-osity might not be able to play into the plot quite as much as I'd hoped for several reasons.

First of these is that the fallout just wouldn't stick around long enough. 

Radiation has this thing called a half-life, which is basically how long it takes to lose half of it's power. The two main types of radiation that would be released in the case of a nuclear reactor failing are Iodine-131 and Cesium-137. 

    Iodine-131 has a half-life of eight days, which means that 100 years later, it would give off such tiny amounts of radiation, it wouldn't make a difference to anything. 

    However, Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years. Which would mean that in one hundred years it would have halved it's power three times which would put the total decrease at something like... 87.5% 

In any case, the radiation wouldn't be as powerful as I had previously thought it would be. 

The second thing I learned is that the Chernobyl disaster was so devastating because the nuclear core was exposed, on fire, and sending up plumes of radiation for many days before it was contained.  Also, it was a very poorly designed plant with few of the now required safety features.

        So these days an accident as huge and horrible as the Chernobyl disaster is virtually impossible, not only because of new safety requirements and backup safety requirements, but also because the reaction time of containment would be much, much faster and handled more safely. 

I still might be able to make it work, because with a world-wide earthquake and tsunamis, etc, etc, the damage could be much worse than anyone has ever considered could happen, and containment reaction time would be almost none. If I chose that route, though, I'd probably want to bump the time of the earthquake ahead a couple decades because currently nuclear power plants just aren't widespread enough.

Another option would be to have them raid an abandoned hospital or nuclear facility and steal something radioactive that weakens and contaminates them, such as happened with the Goiânia accident in Brazil (Warning: The story is pretty tragic). 

Okay, boring part's over!

As far as characters go, I'm vaguely, faintly outlining them in my head. They've been inspired by pictures from (surprise..) Pinterest. Mostly this one: 

I've kinda worked out who she and the babies are and then as I browse through the rest of my board my brain is gradually beginning to pin together which characters go where and how they may enter the story. 

Eight days until NaNoWriMo, and I have a feeling I'll be scrambling until the last second preparing!

Sé onr sverdar sitja hvass! 

~ Trinity