Conan the Gozerian

Because Scalzi's wish is my shamelessly-stolen-story-idea...

Wind stirred in the nighted trees and stirred the high grasses to life. Above, the wispy clouds drifted past a gibbous moon, which spilled its silver light across a half-ruined structure of stone.

Conan paused in the shadow of a tree and surveyed the ancient building. It had once been a smooth dome, its stones perhaps clad in beaten copper; faint gleams of metal were still visible in places, and the stones below them were stained with something that looked green enough - though it was hard to tell in the moonlight. A ring of pillars had surrounded it, statues atop them, but now only a handful remained; the others had toppled with the inexorable passage of time. The great central dome, a hundred paces across and nearly that high, was cracked. Off towards the back, a part of it had fallen in.

Conan thought the place had once been a temple. It looked ill-suited for anything else. The thought stirred a faint uneasiness in his barbarian soul, for he knew well the dangers that might lurk in such forgotten shrines. Still, it would have to do. The remains of his Kozaki lay strewn on the battlefield less than half a mile behind him, and there was a sizable reward for Conan's head: the Duke's men were still beating the bushes in search of him. With any real cover, he could elude them; but the trees were growing sparse here, giving way to flat grasslands. His mounted pursuers would quickly ride down a man on foot.

They might hesitate to enter a place such as this, though. And if they did, well... the only passage looked narrow enough that he could stand off a small group of men from inside it. Thus decided, he did not linger. Quick and graceful as a panther, he strode through the grasses, listening for the sounds of his pursuers as he went.

When the high grasses gave way to broken, uneven paving stone, he sprinted for the dark rectangle of the doorway. A moment later he was inside, and he stopped there, looking back. Finally, satisfied that there was no pursuit, he stalked further into the darkness, keeping one hand on the wall and the other extended in front of him. He heard no sounds save his own soft steps, smelled nothing but ancient, dusty stone. Nothing lived here, and nothing came here. The shattered temple was uninhabited, desolate, and would serve his purposes admirably.

Then a section of floor gave way beneath his feet, and he felt himself falling.

* * *

There was light when he looked up. It filled the room, soft and white, little brighter than the moonlight he had left outside. He could not see its source. It seemed to come from everywhere, perhaps from the air itself. But it was enough to let him see, and he raised himself from the floor and checked his body for injuries. Despite the added weight of his chainmail shirt, he had suffered nothing worse than bruises.

The room was wide and circular. No doorways were immediately evident. Conan had fallen near to one wall, so perhaps the way out was blocked by the ornate dias and the crude stone altar that filled the center of the room.

Conan began to walk, following the wall. The hairs on his nape were prickling; he did not like that altar. It was only a lump of rough stone, but it was set atop steps carved smooth and even, steps decorated with half-recognizable symbols and strange reliefs. The contrast gave the altar itself an impression of inhuman antiquity, as if the sculptors and masons who had shaped this place had not dared even to touch that one stone.

A pair of stone statues flanked the altar. They were animals, a matched pair, but no animal that Conan knew. They seemed some strange cross between a dog and bull, low-built with wide shoulders, and forward-curving horns on their heads. Such beasts had no place in the world Conan knew, and he wondered if they were fanciful - or if the hands that carved them had been guided by eyes which had once looked upon such things.

His gaze fell on the altar again, and this time a shadowy figure might have been standing behind it. Conan froze, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, as a horrible, atonal, screeching voice filled the room. "You have come at last, sub-creature," it said. "Choose. Choose and perish."

"Choose?" asked Conan. The voice roused in him all the ancient fears of his people, but also a sort of atavistic defiance.

"Choose the form of the Destroyer. Speak your fear and give shape to the Gozerian."

"Bah," snarled Conan, and drew his sword. "I am Cimmerian! I fear not pain or death, neither man nor ghost nor demon! Bring your destroyer, and if he can fall to steel I'll send him back to Hell."

There was a momentary pause, and then the awful voice spoke again. "The choice is made. The Traveler has come."

And from behind the altar stepped... Conan.

On the floor below, Conan grunted in surprise. This reflection was perfect, from the mane of black hair to the battered chain mail shirt, from the torn breeches and leather boots to the sword at its side. Only the eyes were strange, and when Conan met them he was nearly undone. There was a great, sucking sense of vertigo, as if he were being drawn into a whirlpool, and a profound sense of being pulled into something unclean. He forced his gaze away by an effort of will, and found that his reflection had a blade out and had nearly closed the distance between them.

Furious, Conan sprang at his opponent. Steel rang on steel as Cimmerian battled Gozerian. Only the unerring instinct of the barbarian allowed Conan to survive those first few moments, for his twin moved at a pace no mortal man could match. He felt more than saw his opponent's blade as it flashed past his face, and cut up behind it. Backed by Conan's steely-thews and wolf-quick reflexes, the tip of his blade brushed the top of his opponent's hand...

...And Conan felt his own thumb begin to bleed. He backed away, and saw that his opponent was untouched. Understand flashed through him like lightning.

Whoever had summoned this destroyer here had called it from across unimaginable gulfs of time and space, from places strange and alien to this world. And in whatever ancient epoch that was done, the summoner had departed without completing his conjuration. To work its evil in this world, the blasphemous thing needed an earthly form... and in taking Conan's form, the Gozerian had not only bound itself to the Earth, but to Conan's form as well. It had forged a connection between them, and that connection was both its strength and its weakness.

Conan considered none of this. He saw, he understood, and he acted. A tigerish spring carried him momentarily out of the Gozerian's reach, and before it could close with him again he turned his point and rammed it into his own heart. The blow which had unhorsed him in the day's earlier battle had split his mail there, and the blade barely slowed as he drove it home.

Only it was not the Cimmerian who reeled back, wounded and dying, with blood pulsing from a gaping wound in his breast. Conan's flesh was untouched, despite the force of his thrust. The tip of his blade rested lightly against his skin, while his opponent stumbled, gasped, and fell.

"So," said Conan. He extended his arm, and with the back of the blade delivered a powerful blow to his own neck.

A moment later he exhaled, in a powerful mixture of relief and awe, as the head of Conan the Gozerian rolled away across the floor.

The altar cracked, and a powerful tremor shook the temple. The pale light dimmed, then came back. One of the beast-statues fell with a terrific crash, losing an arm and one horn as it plowed down the steps.

Conan continued his original course, following the wall and staying well clear of that ancient and blasphemous altar. There was indeed a door on the far side, and he sprinted for it, unsure if the entire building was about to come down around him. The light from the altar room was just enough to reveal the bottom-most step of a staircase, leading up.

* * *

In the morning, Conan departed the temple. From the outside, it seemed only a little more ruined than it had been, but the Duke's men must have been close when it happened: he found traces of their steps near the entrance, and with a little work could see how they had paused, staggered, and then turned and fled back to their master. Realizing this, Conan gave voice to a low, throaty chuckle. He had a blade at his side, and a bit of dried meat in a pouch on his belt. What more did he need? He would continue on his way, perhaps take work with a mercenary company, and see what might come next. He was alive, and had a fighting chance; he asked for nothing more from life...

...Though a flask of wine would have been welcome.

Writing Project

A while back - actually (appallingly) it was several years ago - I decided to take part in an art book circle. The idea was that everyone would go out and buy a blank book, and then we'd send them around. As each new book reached us, we'd fill in a few page with whatever sort of art we felt like doing, and by the time our own books wandered back home they'd have an entry from everyone else in the circle.

The group that came up with this was composed of people from a particular message-board-turned-mailing-list, based on a common love of the Bordertown books (edited by Terry Windling). Since my abilities in the visual arts are... well, honestly, pretty abysmal... I've been writing short stories for my entries. Only I've run into an odd sort of writer's block: I can't write in that world anymore. I just can't get my head inside the setting. (To read a piece I did for one of the earlier books, take a look at Tanilith - that'll give you a decent idea of the setting, too.)

I'm not really sure what to do about this. I have three books sitting on my shelves, waiting for a bit of time and attention, and doubtless feeling dreadfully lonely and neglected. I really hate the idea of passing them along without adding anything to them. On the other hand, I don't seem to be able to do the sorts of short writings that I was doing for the earlier art books. So there they sit, in limbo.

So let's see if a deadline helps. If I haven't come up with anything usable by, let's say, next Thursday, I'll send them along anyway. You're my witnesses.

Wild, wild west

I just finished watching the movie adaptation of Jonah Hex, who was one of the more interesting (if obscure) comic book characters I remember from my youth. Jonah occupied a "Weird West" setting, with odd technology and supernatural elements, but he was very much a gunfighter at heart. (And distinctively scarred, for which reason he's distantly-but-perpetually associated with the character of Grimjack in my mind.)

Is it wrong of me to want a sequel? And after that, a Jonah Hex / Zorro crossover?

A Harvest Of Force

Master Ellud Sor paused as he stepped from the clothier. The streets of Coruscant swirled with movement, but that was not why he hesitated. The streets were always busy here, to a greater or lesser degree. Such things were to be expected on a world covered entirely in towering cities, and over the years he had grown used to it.

No, he paused because the street had suddenly seemed darker as he crossed the threshold. It was as if some great shadow had passed overhead, but of all the people here, only he seemed to notice. A stirring in the Force. He knew it, and despite his years of experience, his strength in the Force, and his skills with the lightsaber, he feared what it might portend.

So he waited, until a Bothan begged pardon to squeeze past him through the doorway. No further premonitions came to him, and nothing seemed out of place. He stepped out into the crowd. His transport was not far, held in a garage bay two buildings down. Once he was in the air, anyone pursuing him would have to reveal their presence - or lose track of him entirely. He could be back at the Jedi Temple in a matter of minutes.

He moved through the crowd, his pace dignified, alert but calm in the way of a Jedi. He trusted in the Force to guide his way.

The garage bay was a massive open space, with one whole wall open to the air in order to offer access for even the largest transports. The passages that opened onto the street were smaller, different sizes and shapes accommodating the wide variety of races that mingled here. As the political center of the Republic, Coruscant was metropolitan as nowhere else in the Galaxy was. He passed through a doorway that suited his proportions, and continued down the short hall to the bay.

It was only as Master Ellud stepped into the bay that he became aware of the danger. He rolled to his right, and the bright length of a lightsaber passed above him. His own saber came into his hand as he regained his feet, and he turned in time to intercept a thrust that would have speared through his eye. He started to push forward, and the enemy dropped his hilt, raising his blade and bringing them into a bind.

Master Ellud regarded the assassin across their locked blades. He did not recognize the race: humanoid, with silver-blue skin and green eyes. His opponent was hairless and sleek, and the fingers that held the lightsaber were webbed. His clothing was a black second skin, crossed with belt and bandolier.

"You're the one who's been hunting Jedi," Ellud said calmly.

The strange gray figure nodded, and the narrow mouth pursed - an expression that could mean anything.

Ellud felt certain that it conveyed amusement.

"You've made a mistake," he said, and shoved back with all of his strength. It was not the strength of his arms that hurled his opponent back, but rather a powerful movement of the Force. Halfway across the garage bay, the Sith Lord - for what else could this be? - arrested his movement and settled gently to the floor.

Ellud Sor was not impressed. Any Jedi should be able to do the same. "Today you cross blades with a master," he called. "What name shall I give the rest of the council when I tell them of your fall?"

His enemy exhaled a soft, hissing laugh. "No mistake," it said, in a gentle, breathy voice. "Hunting you. Take your strength."

The Sith Lord launched himself forward with the barest movement of his feet, and Ellud lifted his blade to guard. He stepped aside and cut, but the Sith Lord matched his movement and their blades clashed and slid away. It was only then that Ellud became aware of the second lightsaber, propelled through the air just behind the Sith. It flared to life as if of its own accord, and the extending blade buried itself in the Jedi Master's chest.

The Sith Lord stepped in as Ellud staggered back, pushing the Jedi's lightsaber away with the saber in his right hand and placing his left hand on the hilt of the second lightsaber. For a moment their eyes met, and then the Sith Lord spoke: "Darth Noctus will have your midichlorians."

Master Ellud Sor's eyes widened as understanding dawned in his mind. The Council knew that Jedi were dying, but they did not know how or why. They felt the deaths within the Force, but found no remains of those slain. If this Sith Lord were somehow harvesting their midichlorians for his own use... I must escape. I must warn them.

Then Darth Noctus wrenched his second saber free, cutting up through the Jedi Master's shoulder. Master Ellud fell back, and his lightsaber spun from his hand. Darkness was closing in around the edges of his vision, but he could see his enemy's blades deactivate. A moment later the Sith was holding Ellud's own light saber, and then hanging it on his belt with the others.

He reached out with the Force, trying to send a warning, but all he could shape was a wordless cry for help. The Sith Lord was speaking into some sort of communicator, and now a pair of droids floated over. Their arms extended to lift his damaged body.

"Take him to the extractor," said Darth Noctus, in his soft, breathy voice. The droids floated away, and Darth Noctus followed them to his waiting ship. By the time the Jedi arrived, he would be far away... and the machines in his ship would have rendered the Jedi Master's body down, extracted his midichlorians, and injected them into Darth Noctus' bloodstream. Already he had become stronger than his Master, but he was not yet ready to challenge the Sith. Let the Jedi fall first, and then he would feast on his own. Before long there would be neither Jedi nor Sith. There would only be Noctus.

Reclaiming My Voice

The first time Cat saw Aniel, he thought she was a ghost.

I had a funny little epiphany late last week.

I was writing an entry for The Grey Tower, which is an online writing/roleplaying site set in the world of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I've been involved with this site off and on for years; for a while I was actually helping to run the place. Then my free time imploded, and I dropped out in order to give myself more time for my own writing projects. Amusingly, that was the same reason I went back: I wasn't finding time for my own projects. The sort of written roleplay done at the Grey Tower involves creative writing in pleasantly bite-sized chunks, and offers a way to keep the imagination limber when I just don't have the time or attention for an entire story.

Recently, I re-introduced one of older characters, a master swordsman named Firredal Osiellin. He would be interacting with one of the newer arrivals at the Tower. Firredal had been away for at least a year of his personal time, and his affairs were more than a little complicated. So when the time came to reintroduce him, I had a lot of background to fill in.

So I started writing, trying to set the scene so that my partner could see it well enough to add the next part. And I found myself describing Firredal's return, exploring his mixed, conflicting reactions to the changes he found, filling in the setting by describing the ways in which it had changed. I found myself, in other words, writing a reasonably compelling opening scene.

And then I found myself wondering, Why can't I do this with Warrior's Legacy? I've started and restarted the rewrite of that book; I probably have a dozen abortive second drafts. And I realized (or at least theorized) that I was treating Warrior's Legacy like a project, instead of a story.

The problem with writing stories that have speculative, futuristic, or fantastic elements is that they require additional work. You don't just have to introduce the characters and the plot; you also have to introduce the weirdness: how magic works, if you have that; the effects of advanced technology, if you have that; the applications and limits of psychic powers, if you have those. You have to know, preferably before you get started, how your world is different from the real world... and then you have to introduce those differences to your readers.

And I'd been working too hard to fill in those differences. I was so busy trying to introduce the world, that I was neglecting the characters and the plot; I was trying to stuff the background in - unobtrusively yet - so I could get to the story. And, naturally, it didn't work. It ground; it dragged. I'd get frustrated (probably at not having really started the story yet), and start over again... but while I might come at the story from a different angle, I hadn't fixed the fundamental problems with my approach.

Okay, I told myself. So don't do that. Just start with the story, and fill in the background as you need it. So I did, and suddenly the story has flow again. I'm making progress. It isn't quick or easy, but it's worlds better than it was before. Before, making progress was like shoving a boulder down a road; every time I let up at all, it ground to a halt and didn't want to move again. Now, the story itself is pulling me along; I'm not pushing at along so much as following it to see where it goes - or at least how it gets there.

I've found my voice again, and - oddly - I owe it to roleplaying.

Fanction as Writing Practice

I've been writing Fan Fiction (fanfic, for short) for over a decade, now.

Fanfiction, for those who don't know, is basically the practice of writing your own stories set in another author's world and/or using another author's character(s). It's a surprisingly common activity; or perhaps I should say, it's an unsurprisingly common response to reading a fun and well-told story: "I wish I could be there, doing that."

(The comic Girl Genius includes a humorous interlude which focuses on the creation of fan fiction by a character from the world of the comic. The interlude begins here, and runs about seven pages; it is entirely separate from the main storyline, so reading it will not spoil anything from the rest of the comic. By the way, if you aren't already reading Girl Genius, you should be - it's exceptionally well done. Or, do the authors a favor and buy yourself a copy; it's available as a printed comic book, too.)

Like any other sort of writing, fan fiction can be done spectacularly well, hideously poorly, or anywhere in between. It sometimes gets a bad reputation, usually owing to one of three reasons:

1. It's fundamentally derivative. That is, it is based on someone else's work (by definition).
2. A lot of fanfiction is very badly written - poor grammar, frequent spelling errors, and misused words abound.
3. Fanfictions frequently borrow characters created by other authors, and use them in ways that are inappropriate, and sometimes deeply disturbing.

I want to stop and elaborate on that last item for a moment. I once read (as part of a class on Science Fiction) a fanfic in which two characters from the original Star Trek series were trapped on an alien planet. This was not, if you'll recall, an uncommon occurrence. In this case, however, the two characters were Spock, the half-Vulcan who almost never showed emotion, and "Bones" McCoy, who was perpetually angry at Spock's failure to act more human; and the event which trapped them was "psychic storm" which prevented them from beaming back to the ship and threatened to burn out their minds. The climax of the story had them huddled together, with Spock performing a Mind Meld to get them through the night - a strange sort of intimacy for these very different, somewhat antagonistic men. The story was well-written, and very true to the characters, but it was also exploring psychological territory that the original TV show would never have approached. I suspect that, for the author of the fanfic, that was precisely the point.

There are a great many fanfics in which the author has inserted an "idealized Me" character (often referred to as a Mary Sue) into an existing series. These stories tend, by their nature, to put the author's Id on display, often with disturbing results. As an example - which, for the sake of your sanity, dear readers, I will not link to - I offer a fanfic in which a teenage girl was accepted to Hogwarts. She was (unsurprisingly) exotic and attractive, and quickly turned most of the students on to her favorite bands and her goth style of dress. Where it gets disturbing is the bit where, in very short order, she is sleeping with Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, and Professor Snape - and suffering great angst over the question of how she could possibly choose between them.

Despite these criticism, there are a great many people writing fanfics, and some of them are actually quite well-written (which, for me, generally includes being true to the source material).

My own experience with Fan Fiction is, as far as I can tell, a bit different from most. I first stumbled onto it when I was looking for information on the Bordertown series of books. Bordertown is a "shared world" anthology (or series of anthologies, really). In other words, different authors all took the same setting and wrote their own stories in it. (The series also spawned at least three full-length novels, from authors who wanted to do more with their characters.) So, naturally, the group that I had stumbled onto did the same: took the setting, and wrote their own stories with their own characters. This differs from the usual run of fanfiction mainly because the "original" characters are left almost entirely alone.

Later, I stumbled onto The Grey Tower, which is set in the world of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books. This was, again, entirely accidental; I was doing a search for a particular type of Japanese polearm. The Grey Tower, despite being set in a world created by a single author in a (quite long and excruciatingly detailed) ongoing series, uses much the same approach as the Bordertown group: everyone has to create their own characters - you can't use one from the books - and Grey Tower events must always take place "offstage" in regards to the original series. Moreover, characters and events have to be true to the spirit of the series; you can't introduce psychic powers, or a new system of magic, or that sort of thing.

So, granting that my experience with (and practice of) fan fiction is a bit unusual, I tend to think that it can actually be quite good as writing practice. That's particularly true if you're looking to polish your style a bit before starting on your own projects. Here's the thing:

To keep your setting internally consistent, you have to pay attention to the details. This is true regardless of whether you're inventing your own world or borrowing someone else's. In order to stay true to the original author's work, a fan fiction writer has to make a fairly close reading of the source material, and then do some careful analysis of how things work, and what does and doesn't fit in that setting. That same sort of thinking - How do these things work? What can we do with this element? How does this ability change the way our society works? - is quite valuable when you sit down to create your own worlds.

In my own fan faction, I do not use published characters. When I do use other people's characters, they are always from people I know, with whom I can consult to make sure I get the details and the behaviors right. This is, again, good practice for characterization.

Sites like The Grey Tower actually offer classes to help with some of these elements. They have an introductory class, which includes several lessons designed to help you explore your character. Other classes, such as Writing Combat, address other areas of writing. You can also get feedback on your writing (sometimes even if you don't want to hear it).

Now, obviously not all authors of fan fiction are going to put this much thought, or this kind of thinking, into their work. For the ones who do, though, I think that writing fanfics can be a good way to improve one's writing in general. Most people are eventually going to want to move on to creating their own worlds and their own characters, but spending some time really exploring someone else's world is not a bad way to start.