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Worldbuilding: Geek Love

Sharing a short excerpt from today’s worldbuilding exercise: I’m writing a concise history of Atualon.

The Wyvern’s Rebellion

Solarus ap Serpentus ne Atu, during a visit to the capital city of Khanbul, abducts the young Imperial Princess Zhaolin and installs her as his Consort. Emperor Pu Yet Sin seds his fifteen-year-old son Ghanzhi as an Imperial envoy to Atualon to secure her release or, failing that, demand an Imperial dowry and instatement of Zhaolin as Sa Atu. Ghangi, against his father’s explicit orders, demands his sister’s immediate and unconditional return, but Serpentus laughs in his face and tosses the Imperial Prince into the dungeons of Atukos.

When the Emperor learns of his son’s disobedience he disowns the boy and refuse to pursue the matter further. Imperial Prince Tiachu is named Heir and immediately challenges his father to mortal combat, which he wins. Emperor Tiachu then raises an army and sends it west to Atualon.

The Matreons of Atualon, fearing war, demand that the Imperial Prince and Princess be returned immediately to Sindan, and reparations paid as well.  But Solarus has already defiled the girl and it is reported that the boy prince has taken wetlung and is not expected to live.  The Matreons are divided in their responses to this outrage; some demand that Solarus be stricken from the line of succession, others that he be allowed to succeed his father but required to install the girl as Issa Atu and pay reparations to the new Emperor.  When Serpentus refuses to negotiate with the Matreons, the Matreons return to their Houses and take up the matter with their Patreons.

Several of the Houses issue a Denuntiatio, or formal intent to remove House Serpentus from the throne.  Serpentus declares all titles and lands belonging to the families whose Patreons have signed the Denuntiatio forfeit.  Houses Ursos, Equos, Corvos, and Wyvernos raise the standard of rebellion.

And that’s all I’m going to tell you, for now.

 

Jai tu wai!

Debi

New Urban Fantasy Title

Introducing SPLIT FEATHER, a Siggy Alexie book:

Siggy J. Alexie is a young woman of mixed heritage living in Bearpaw, Michigan. Given up for adoption as a child, abandoned by her adoptive parents as a hopelessly troubled teenager, Siggy struggles to figure out who she is, where she belongs, and how to blend in with ‘normal’ folks. But soon after a botched DNA test, Siggy receives a mysterious package, and when she opens it up all Hell breaks loose…

…literally.

Stay tuned for updates.

Jai tu wai,

Debi

The Forbidden Kingdom

Just a quick note to let you know that if you like THE DRAGON’S LEGACY, you are going to love The Forbidden Kingdom, Book 2 of THE DRAGON’S LEGACY.

Here’s a quick teaser:

Sundered

The wind was born of a Twilight Lord, playing a seashell flute. Webbed fingers strong and sure danced across the smooth shell as they had once danced across the skin of a human girl, delicate and sweet and all things good. That girl was gone, just as the meat was gone from this shell, leaving only the memory of beauty and faint notes in the wind. But the sea was still the same, and the song was still the same, curling round his heart thick and slow as the fog that shrouded the Sorrowful Isles.

Born of sea and sand and the cries of a wounded heart, the wind danced in rage and longing across the Sundered Sea, rousing the waves of Nar Kabdaan to wrath and ruin as they cast themselves, again and again, to die unmourned upon the heartless shores of Bizhan. The waves were born, they struggled, they died, one after another like soldiers caught in a dream of war.

The wind was heavy with salt, and the dreams of sea-witches, and the tears of lost souls. It struck at the jagged rocks, tore at the sharp grasses like a madman tearing at his own hair, it howled at the gates like the voices of a thousand ice wolves buried in fear, forgotten to legend, lost, lost, lost. The howling woke the Halfkin Child, because the song of wolves round a campfire can never truly be forgotten by the children of Man, no matter how deeply they hide it from their thick and stubborn hearts. The Child rose, he slipped from his bed and from his mother’s hearth and stumbled down the rocky path to the sea; and because he, too, could hear the howling of the wolves, could feel them singing in the shadows of his heart, the Twilight Lord put down his flute and swam to the shores of Man. The moons were faded, half-empty and without power, but he had broken so many laws already that one more could hardly matter.

 

Now, kindly leave me alone to write.

Jai tu wai,

Debi