About the 5th anniversary of Empires SMP, and how the series inspired me to write A LOT of words xD
With yesterday being the 5th anniversary of Empires SMP's premiere, I wanted to look back at how much that series (and its follow-up) inspired me to write throughout the past five years.
Pixandria, the Copper King, and the Phantom Assassin all caught me in a vice grip, and they've still not let go of me to this day. Pixlriffs has a way of just making these off-the-cuff little remarks (which are, I suspect, far more than just random sentences - they feel very much created to inspire) that sets my brain careening off into thousands of words of fanfic.
The first one that I wrote was These Stones Remember. With its two included companion reader chapters, it's just shy of 200,000 words of guilt, love, and redemption.
This entire fic was inspired by that 'throwaway line' Pix gave after the Princess Party, where he withered away and was left a ghost:
"Maybe the archaeologist of the Ancient Capital and the curator of the local museum was... a piece of the past himself all along."
Fic summary:
"The past changes a little every time we retell it." A wandering scholar and his ethereal companion find a long-abandoned treasure. At first glance he thinks he has simply stumbled upon a ruined ancient capital, filled with the promise of incredible archaeological treasures and riven through with the history of a long-dead civilisation. But when he wakes up one day and finds the city has come alive around him, its people bowing to him as though they know and respect him, he has unknowingly begun a journey toward redemption for a terrible mistake he made two thousand years ago.
With its stunning cover created by the incredibly talented @floweroflaurelin (who is an utter delight to work with!), it's still my magnum opus, and I'm so incredibly proud of it.
After a short break, I followed that fic with another behemoth: the 160,000-word A Tale of Two Devotions. This one holds a special place in my heart, because the characters of Nashĭd (the Copper King) and Sha'bĭah (the Phantom Assassin) have refused to let me go since I started writing them, and I have two more longfics to come featuring them both - albeit not quite in the same way as in AToTD. (If you ever see me referring to 'LNW' and 'NM' here on Tumblr, then those are the upcoming fics in question.)
Again, this fic was inspired by a 'throwaway line' -
“The Copper King is not someone you trifle with, unless you want to die on fire in a pit full of dripstone.”
Between that and the three Phantom Assassin cinematics that Pix did, I was hooked. And I ended up with yet more OCs that I love as a result of this one.
Fic summary:
There are tales of ghosts that wander the desert with their eyes and mouths sealed shut with wax. Legends tell that this was so they could neither see nor speak of what was done to them in their dying moments. The gilded, adorned, and adored Copper King did not know he had a twin; a freak of nature taken from their mother's childbed and raised to protect the glory of the Vigil, the city, its people, and the king. Denied a name, known only as Phantom, the rooftops and alleys are his haunt as he watches over his brother's devotion to the Vigil; an obedience so deep that none in the city know how chained their king is to keeping their precious monument alive. Nor do they know the price paid by their dead.
Cover art, again, by Flower of Laurelin, who blew me away with their interpretation of the Phantom Assassin Minecraft skin.
And, as a little treat for those of you who have made it this far through my ramble (aided, no doubt, by the gorgeous art!) I'm going to reveal the summary for LNW. The fic is nowhere near ready for me to publish it yet, but I figured I'd celebrate all the inspiration that Pix (and Empires) have given me over the past five years, by revealing this now.
In a masked world nothing is quite as it seems. Fuelled by a bored king’s notion of amusement, Gossip strolls hand-in-hand with Rumour through the palace halls, throwing a nod and a wink toward Jealousy as it skulks behind a pillar. Scandal licks the walls, slinks under doors, and caresses every ear, carried on the whispers of servants and guards alike as they watch one man’s influence grow far beyond that afforded to any other. In a city of hidden faces a killer may disappear as easily as a king. Set amid the bustle of the everyday, an unassuming apothecary shop provides a home for a family most unusual - one that harms and heals in equal measure - and one of their number strides through the royal halls with unseemly privilege. In the Court of the Copper King whispers carry far. What is a mask but a second face? And how far will a man go to get what he wants?
