It's Such A Good Feeling When All Your Little Details You Have Planned Start To Fall In Place For Your

It's such a good feeling when all your little details you have planned start to fall in place for your story like a big puzzle. And you're just there staring and smiling because hey, I did that by accident and it fits.

Greetings friends! I am on time this week . am late again, this time was even worse because I already wrote the post, I just didn’t post it. For my forgetfulness, you will get a free fun fact about the supervillain Lord Valthoraxe. I will now explain more about the Monsters of Alterra.

Starting off with the obvious, undead. Any creature can become an undead, but they have to either be “revived” by a lich or get corrupted by dark magic such as necromancy. Revived undead possess various levels of memory depending on how soon after death they were brought back. Even if immediately resurrected, the undead entity is forever bound to the necromancy user that revived them. If a necromancy user dies themselves, all of their resurrected undead become mindless, barely capable of movement. If an undead creature with only a skeletal structure remaining has their necromancy user die, their bones will fall apart, leaving the skeleton forever trapped in a skull until put out of their misery.

Prolonged use of necrotic magic can lead to the user becoming a lich. A necromancer can prepare for this by trapping their soul in an object before the corruption takes place, although this guarantees that the user will become a lich the next time necrotic magic is used. The process of becoming a lich is extremely painful, feeling the pain you would feel if your body went through the entire decomposition process every second that lasts until the next new moon reaches midnight. Once a lich arises from their death, they are fully sentient and possess all of their previous memories. They no longer age, and their necrotic magic is far more powerful, but they can no longer use any other form of magic. If a lich put their soul in an external object, that object acts as a backup that revives the lich one time if they are defeated in battle. This works one time, after which the lich must provide the object with 40-50 sentient souls to restore it. If a lich fails to restore the object, referred to as a “soulstone,” within a month, the will begin to fade away.

If a lich corrupts a living creature, that creature will be forcefully fused with the nearest other creature that is not of the cursed creature’s own species nor the lich themself. This causes a “curseborn” to be created, and are not bound to the lich. A cursed being is most likely to be fused with an animal, such as wolves, birds, and rats, and act no different to their prior selves. Due to the curse being necrotic in nature, removing it would instantly kill the victim, who would then later rise as an undead, same if the cursed creature is killed while cursed. Curseborns almost never gain any advantages from the beings they fuse with unless the lich that cursed them is over a thousand years old.

The only creatures that can’t get turned into undead are ones who don’t have meat based skin, such as golems, and magic users more powerful than the lich.

Now for the final undead or cursed creature, the ghoul. A ghoul is created when a sentient creature with a soul dies in their sleep during a time of mass civil unease, such as during a war or drought. Ghouls are cursed to roam the nights for all eternity, never able to rest again. They are mostly docile, only really attacking when approached, apart from one exception. If an adventurer experiences “bad sleep” while away from civilization, such as staying awake during the nights or are burdened by nightmares, their tiredness can potentially attract and aggravate a ghoul. There is almost no chance in escaping a ghoul, with the only places that they can’t reach you being deep underground, in deserts, and high in the mountains. Technically you can survive if you manage to avoid it until the day breaks, but that is extremely unlikely as they can and must move slightly faster than you. There is one other place that ghoul dare not go, even if they are able to. Ghouls will without fail not go further than 13 meters in The Lord’s Wastelands, but anyone who willingly enters those lands are already dead men walking.

Fun Valthoraxe fact; Valthoraxe’s favorite food is a tie between Alterra’s equivalent of honey, which is called sugarseep, and lemons, because they are some of the few things it can taste. Valthoraxe holds great respect for humwing guardians(beekeepers, but humwings are 70cm tall and very dangerous if annoyed) and has installed hidden automated defense drones around the perimeter of the guardians he secretly buys from, as well as orbital satellite defense that protect them from bandit attacks.

Next week (Tuesday hopefully) I’ll delve into the different types of magic used on Alterra, stay tuned.

HMMMMMM, I wonder if perhaps lord Valthoraxe would just maybe qualify. He’s just the tyrannical ruler of the planet who is 8’8”, with dark purple stone like hide with a faint orange glow emitting from the shallow cracks in the skin. Not to mention the many bone visible through the skin, the cybernetics, and the sharpened fingertips.

Which OC is very obvious in a crowd? Is it because of their clothes, behaviour, species, or something else? Do they like it?

Literally Valthoraxe;

In exchange for a bountiful harvest, the hive is safe. The elder one, smoke bringer and invulnerable goliath, makes it so. A strange and unknowable being, it brings with it arcane artifacts and demands we sacrifice our honey, and in return it grants protection to the swarm

What Bores a Reader The Most?

I asked my followers to answer the question “what bores you the most when reading a book?” 

Please keep in mind that these are all opinions and you’ll find yourself agreeing and disagreeing with some. Personally, I think this is amazing insight into the minds of unique readers all around the globe! I decided to keep reoccurring answers instead of merging them, just so people could see the repeating themes.

“Predictable conflicts or character actions. I want to be surprised.”

“When there’s no clear plot. When it looks like the book is leading nowhere.”

“Endless description. Nothing makes me more prone to skipping ahead.”

“When it feels like what you’re reading lacks purpose and there is no meaningful contribution to the plot.”

“Characters with less personality than a wet paper towel. Main characters with zero personality.”

“When I can’t picture anything in my head or what I understood changes randomly.”

“When a conversation is happening and I can’t follow which character is saying what.”

“Daily routines in a story. Like, I do not care.”

“When the world doesn’t move if the main character doesn’t interact with it. This applies to t.v shows, too.”

“Something that does not have a build up like a sudden relationship out of the blue.”

“When I’m so confused it doesn’t make sense anymore.”

“When there’s a 3 page description of some random object.”

“Wayyyy too much detail.”

“When the big plot twist is revealed and I guessed it ages ago.”

“Too slow or too long.”

“When the author unnecessarily drags the story and takes ages to advance to the climax.”

“Fan service that doesn’t contribute to the plot.”

“Useless descriptions and/or actions.”

“Over description of a landscape (cough old literature cough).”

“No action, no violence. I don’t like when characters talk for too long.”

“Long descriptions.”

“Too much descriptions when you are in a exciting moment. It breaks immersion.”

“Lack of imagery.”

“Constant usage of archaic vocabulary.”

“When the main character is extremely passive and doesn’t act or react.”

“Excessive description that doesn’t further the plot or meaningfully add to characterization.”

“Overly predictable plot, overly crude language for the sake of it, cringe/pompous scenes.”

“Long and boring exposition dumps.”

“Characters that never loose 😴.”

“When the world building starts out great and is really immersive until later on when things don’t add up.”

“When a character has too much internal dialogue.”

“Explaining “the science” behind magic systems in unnecessary detail.”

“Over description. I will skim and skip a lot of it.”

“Too much background info at the beginning.”

“When there’s small talk about a topic I don’t understand. It get’s sooo boring.”

“Too much inner monologue.”

“Slow plot.”

“When it’s just dragging on and on with the backstory.”

“Having to reread a sentence/paragraph a billion times because my brain got distracted.”

“When there’s no action, suspense or something similar for the whole chapter.”

“Things that aren’t relevant to the story.”

“Too much dialogue.”

“A lil too much fantasies.”

“Over drawn setting descriptions.”

“Overly long chapters, repetitive scenes, lots of complicated worldbuilding.”

“When it’s too simple or too detailed.”

“Long, long expositions.”

“Repeating phrases, plots ,etc.”

“Infodumps, especially in the beginning.”

“Too much history.”

“Overly descriptive settings.”

“Slow plot. I need drama!”

“Long chapters.”

“Slow pacing.”

“No major plot twist.”

“Miscommunication trope.”

“Massively long descriptive paragraphs.”

“Too much exposition in the beginning.”

“Long and confusing story building.”

“Repeating plot points. For example: the hero learning to trust his friends a million times without any real progression.”

“Training scenes that show nothing special. Especially sword fighting or head to hand combat.”

“Generic plot developments unless it’s written well.”

“Overuse of complicated words and sentences.”

“Long paragraphs.”

“I’m so over the bubble sunshine and extra grumpy trope.”

“When a character is overthinking.”

“Romanic subplots bore me. Having too many love interests.”

“When it switches between characters/subplots and one of them is awfully boring.”

“When too much information on a character is given one at a time.”

“Clichés.”

“When it takes a long time before the story gets interesting.”

“Long, long, long descriptions particularly of places that aren’t all that important.”

“Descriptions of unnecessary things.”

“Too much side character’s story. They’re a side for a reason.”

“I love beautiful writing so there must be some lovely descriptions… but don’t drone on.”

“Flat characters.”

“Scenes in which my favorite characters do not appear.”

“When the characters have no clear goal or the goal is too weak.”

“If most or all of the characters are unlikable. Then I don’t care what happens to them in the story. Being an evil/mean character is different from being unlikable.”

“When the plot does not move forward.”

“Writing unnecessary, irrelevant things that don’t have an effect on the story.”

“No real plot. The protagonist has no fire to them.”

“When the protagonist needs to figure out a love triangle and which person they like the most.”

“When the interesting parts happen right at the end.”

“When there’s too much info dumping with no easy transitions.”

“No progression after chapters and chapters. Characters not having development.”

“Too much description and a slow start to the story.”

“When characters are too oblivious to something.”

“Oblivious main characters, lazy plots, stereotypical encounters, main character is a god trope.”

“Unnecessarily long amounts of monologue or dialogue.”

“The second chance trope bores me.”

“Slow beginnings… like, get to the action in 3 chapters of less please.”

“Chapters being too long with small writing.”

“If the characters go through the same conflict over and over again.”

“Classic books… I don’t understand a thing, haha.”

“Being bombarded with unnecessary detail.”

“Bad boy meets good girl trope bores me.”

“Too much landscape descriptions like Tolkien or Stephen King.”

“Bad dialogue, too much excessive background details and too many character tags.”

“When the book moves too slowly.”

“Over described scenes or characters.”

“Descriptions without inputs of what a characters is thinking about. I need a lens of character POV to make descriptions interesting to read.”

“A badly written romance subplot where the characters involved don’t have any chemistry whatsoever.”

“I get a bit lost when there’s too much details about an environment.”

“When the story doesn’t go anywhere for a really long time.”

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