A bit of precursor information. The past year and a half, I've been working on-and-off on an anthology that will probably never see the light of day (and almost certainly never be published).

One of my coworkers is an author (he's actually been published for some of his short stories) on the side. He's good. So one day he and I were talking, and I told him (some things) about CF. No way to explain the whole damn thing without days worth of explanation, right? So anyways, I explained the setting, the overall "story" as it were, and compared it to Zork and D&D and WoW.

He got it right away.

So then I told him how I'd had this idea rolling around in my head for many years now - to do a CF-based story. So we kind of worked up a general plot, with plot points that needed to be hit, but then went our separate ways with stories (and styles).

Some notes on these stories:
1. Every named character is mine, or completely made up. This is not (all) conceit. I know that I have complete ownership (and intimate knowledge) of each of my own characters. The motivations, backstory, and so on are all mine to have fun with and play with. So you'll hear of "the Lady", who is intended to be a more general figure (not specifically Baerinika, nor Nordewin, nor Bria...you get the idea). You'll hear of "the Dark Lord" who isn't necessarily Destuvius or Reksah or Jullias or Valguarnera or Zulghinlour.
2. Because of this, characters that never knew each other (and maybe existed in completely separate ages) will interact. Woldrun and Qurochiho may have a drink together. That sort of thing. Because of this, the stories have chars of mine as the protagonist. So naturally at times they'll be teh awesmoe. Please do not comment on how I have a swelled ego. I do, but that's beside the point. Heroes of stories tend to sound greater than their reality is. Anyone who doubts that, please watch the episode of Firefly named Jaynestown.
3. The stories are not necessarily mechanically accurate. This is more true of my colleague's than mine - after all, he's never even played CF. Mine aren't 100% true either - nobody in my stories gets DISMEMBERED and then continues to stand on two legs and swing two swords, for instance.

Each story is mostly meant to be able to be read as a self-contained piece, but there is a thread that ties them all together for the most part.

With that, I hope you'll enjoy the story, which begins in the next post.

PS Apologies for the weird ordering on the posts - I don't love our forum software a lot.

Come back tomorrow for another post! Have something you'd like to see me post about? Email me at twist@carrionfields.com.