#haelsworld

Killian and Brighid are the twins, they grew up as oddities in our world because they have what gets summed up as "weird genetics" - basically just left of centre enough that despite being healthy and everything, they don't completely match up with what modern human science considers "normal".

Then, they die in a horrible, tragic car crash because Isekai tropes, and wake up somewhere between heaven and hell.

Admittedly a lot of it was inspired by The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and if you're a fan of the franchise you will absolutely notice all the nods to that stuff - and admittedly the story started out as a Skyrim fanfic, but I have done way more than just file off the serial numbers because Skyrim is famously "miles wide and inches deep" in its worldbuilding. But if there's one thing I'm good at, it's going deeper (in storytelling).

So I kinda rebuilt the world from the ground up, starting with the creation mythology. Some of it will likely never be used or referenced in the novels (it's a series at this stage) but that's fine because honestly, if you're gonna create a world then why stop at what's just relevant for the novels? So yeah the creation mythology (and truth), what the dragons are, even the "elves" are all different, not to mention the dragon invasion is literally an invasion, it's not "we're invading to destroy the world", the first wave straight up targets critical military infrastructure.

Alharik is actually the one that reveals this when they get news of the other dragon attacks because again, medieval world, news takes a couple days to spread even at its fastest pace, like he looks at the map and sees the pattern immediately.

I ditched the entire idea of elves for this too, instead we have the Lorics, which are a bit more... Unique in design? I've tried to sketch the forebears but I fear I may not have the artistic skills. They're called Lorics as a whole because they can all be traced back to one progenitor species which was the one that went to war against half of the gods.

Also the main narrative is less about trying to stop the apocalypse and more about trying to stop the invasion, which y'know smaller stakes but I promise they get WAY bigger once you dive into the lore. Also the civil war backdrop stayed because there were Important Character-Defining Moments as a direct result of that conflict, but even that's been going way longer and has more depth to it besides "give us back our land" "no you're one of us now".

But yeah the TES fanfic and now this have kind of been my writing babies for a few years, though admittedly the original concept has only been on my mind since, like... August last year I think? Late July at the very earliest. Though, since the whole "You're Special!" element doesn't come from them being Dragonborn, that's a BIIIIG part of the arc that I've had to switch up as well.

There's dragons, violence, subterfuge and espionage, romance, the complexities of war... I tried to lean more into realism as I was developing the world, exploring things like "what WOULD we reasonably find in a small milling village" and how people might form a relationship with the various deities in a world where shrine statues literally move and you can feel the magic around you. In a world where magic and healing potions exist, why is there still disability? How do people handle the concept of mortality when the gods themselves have been provably killed?

I also went a lot more medieval with the world (most modern "medieval" fantasy actually portrays a more early-mid Renaissance setting) so they're literally still shitting in buckets and washing themselves in the river, much to Brighid's disgust. But they do have a better understanding of germ theory and better hygiene in general and they do have all the things to make toilets and water recycling, they just don't know about those things. Between them both, Brighid and Killian are probably gonna introduce so many modern comforts to the world.

Of the world itself there's more intelligent species than in TES, and a lot more interspecies blending (TES has mechanics around it but it's extremely simplified), and when rebuilding all the cultures I tried to go a lot deeper and more complex than just "the high elves are pretentious art snobs who want to destroy everything not an elf". Like roaming merchant caravans are a feature of the setting and economy, not a species/cultural thing, and bloodlines play into a LOT of things when it comes to magic and deific favours. Also, languages. So many languages.

So on SWA my user profile was based around Cal Kestis and being Aussie, I just added that moniker to it - Aussie Cal. So I did a recap of the previous year's Battle Royale event from my perspective so people got an idea of what we were getting into.

I had the idea to drag in a bunch of my own OCs for 2025 and one of them is a slicer who would be able to hijack most channels in one fell swoop and make them all broadcast the same video. Reprogram was the culmination of a few short pieces gathering her and the rest of the OC gang together.

One of the other people and I were friends and we had our avatars works allies for a bit, but then when it came to the Slander round (where we got to make propaganda against our opponents), he immediately went and dragged my avatar's name through the mud. So I dropped a fic about the fallout of that. It was all in good faith and fun though and we did kinda laugh about it all.

Getting towards the end, I had already planned to try and throw the vote so I didn't win a second year in a row (I won the 2024 event), so I had a series of stories setting up a sort of inevitable failure. Beautiful Thieves was the final bit to put all those pieces in place before the Teams round and one itable failure or finals.

In the teams round, I got put in a group with three of the other nine remaining contestants and we all contributed to a story, plus did some edits and imagery for sharing. This was probably my proudest contribution, but it wasn't the only thing I did for our team.

Inevitably we lost, which basically activated my trap card and I made people cry once again (allegedly).

The trio of stories was around 7k words each, which was a LOT to post onto Amino. It was basically a "doomed from the start" situation where, by the end, we had Lhaine, Ash, Keid, Katyrr, and Cal all dead, Zey's redemption eviscerated as he turned back to the dark side, Adhen struggling with the loss of his brother and best friend and now left as advisor to a young Empress, and the Down Under Interstellar Defence Fleet in absolute shambles (yes I sprinkled in a solid dose of Aussie meme-ing in there for fun).