#tsocv

The Siege of Castle Veh has been through many incarnations since the start of this blog, but it has always been, at its core, a story about a city. It started out as an exercise in worldbuilding, a series of inter-connected drabbles about a magical city trying to survive centuries of isolation under the earth. I then tried to turn it into more of a classic novel, focusing on one of the characters in the original drabbles, but it was, frankly, a bit boring. I didn’t have a clear plot, I wasn’t using the setting to its full potential, and all of the side characters were more interesting than the MC. So I scrapped it 10,000 words in, and put the story aside for awhile.

After a month mulling it over, I decided to focus on a different character, and the plot just came pouring out. I started writing back in August, and with the help of NaNoWriMo, I am currently 40K words into the first draft. I’m happy with the direction that it’s going, and I can’t wait to share it with the world. So, without further ado, let me tell you about the new version of the story.

Centuries ago, millennia ago (no one can really say), Castle Veh fell under attack. The inhabitants erected a powerful magical barrier, strong enough to withstand any weapon the enemy could throw at them, hunkered down, and waited. With time and magic on their side, the citizens of Castle Veh began to dig, and untold generations later, a flourishing city sprawls below the earth. But beneath the veneer of prosperity and the promise of a happy life lie an untold number of secrets. Smugglers seek out knowledge of the outside world. Gladiators put on daily plays of violence for an increasingly-bored public. And a mysterious organization peddles dreams to those who’ve lost all hope.

Kavo Kaslinzola, a.k.a. The Queen of Pages, has clawed herself to the top of the city’s underground network of smugglers, and is perfectly happy to keep amassing power and money, even if it means trapping her enemies in weeks-long nightmares. But when a mysterious vigilante known only as Thousand Cuts forces her to confront the consequences of her actions, she finds herself caught in an increasingly tangled web of conspiracies and chaos, and everything that she worked so hard for seems to be rapidly slipping out of her grasp.

Time for me to gush about Castle Veh’s religious system! Slash take a break from NaNo to write a semi-related creation myth.

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Long ago, before anything, three were two brothers, and these two brothers decided to create a universe. The first brother created the Earth, and the sun, and all the other stars in the sky. The second brother, who was significantly lazier, created the space in between his brother’s creations. The first brother was fine with this, as it meant he could rule over life, while his brother could only rule over the Empty Space and the death that it symbolized.

The first brother decided to make his home on a tall mountain, and he watched the humans as they began their primitive civilizations below him. War was invented before anything else, before even speech. Tomiomak and Losamak, farmers from a ruined kingdom, led their people to victory against their unjust king. They ruled the kingdom for many decades, and returned it to its former beauty, before they succumbed to time. The first brother had watched them for many years, and had fallen in love with the man who brought peace, and the woman who brought justice. And so he asked them to be his immortal husband and wife. They accepted, and became the god Tomioklu and the goddess Losaklu, personifications of Peace and Justice.

The second brother saw all this from his place in the Empty Space, and he realized that he did not need to create Things to acquire power. He just needed to marry.

So he swept down on his brother’s beloved Earth, found seven women, and murdered them. He took their souls as his immortal wives, and waited to see what they would become goddesses of. But they had done nothing divine in their lives, and he never allowed them out of the Empty Space to do something divine in their death. And so they just stayed souls.

The first bit of power came from Thithosamak, who, desperate for a way to communicate with her fellow captives, found a way to turn her howls into words. And so language was born and Thithosamak became Thithosaklu, First Queen, goddess of the mind and of language. 

The second bit of power came from Tsepmak. She realized that she could use her Sister Queen’s words to whisper honey in her husband’s ear. She asked for a home, for a kitchen to cook in and a hearth to sweep. And it was in this home that the Queens gathered and plotted. So Tsepmak became Tsepklu, goddess of hospitality and the home (and, in some small cults, manipulation).

The third bit of power came from Jekmolimak. She sent messages into the stars and told the universe of her and her sister’s plight, swore that should they unseat the second brother, they would end death itself. Her allies came in droves, and together they planned, and planned, and soon brought an army to the second brother’s gates. And at the head of this army, she became Jekmoliklu, goddess of war. And she became the goddess of lies too, and deceit, for her promise was left unfulfilled.

The war was long and brutal, and the Queens soon saw their forces flagging, exhausted and beaten and desperate to return home. It was Akacomak that stopped their retreat, calling on the bonds that they had formed in their years fighting side by side, and promising a universe in which such bonds were honored and nurtured, and never cut short by the second brother’s reign. Her forces listened, and kept fighting, and she became Akacoklu, goddess of friendship, love, and other such human bonds.

The final battle dawned on the edge of a star, on the border between the light and the dark. An army waited for the second brother on either side of that border, closing off escape on all sides. Two Queens led those armies. Silhouetted against the sun was Ximxlomak, and looming from the darkness was Iximmak. They had been sisters before they died, and they stayed sisters in their death, and so perfectly did they mirror each other that they became divine in the eyes of their armies. Ximxlomak became Ximxloklu, goddess of light. And Iximmak became Iximklu, goddess of darkness.

And then, when the fighting was done, the second brother lay crumpled at the foot of his throne. Standing over him was Amak, the Seventh and Final Queen, she who stayed human till the fighting was done. She had been a midwife in her life, and a healer, and so she understood death better than her Sister Queens. She understood its necessity. And so, rather than casting the second brother from the universe, and death with him, she reached down and plucked the crowd from his head. As soon as it touched her hair, she became Aklu, goddess of childbirth, medicine, and death—the granter, preserver, and destroyer of life.

The second brother dissolved into the fabric of the universe, and Aklu took his throne in the empty space. When her Sister Queens came to her gates, she looked at them and their armies.

“Do not fight me,” she said in her sister’s tongue. “I will not fade so easily, for I am life as well as death.”

And the Queens saw that she meant her words, and they saw that she was the most powerful of them all. So they fled, back to Tsepklu’s home. It is said that they plot there still, plot how to fulfill Jekmoliklu’s promise. But until then, death still lives in this universe, and she watches each birth with a smile.

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So when the characters in the Castle Veh verse reference the Seven Queens, these are the ladies they’re talking about. They all have fun epithets and patronages. Aklu is the most referenced of all, considering she’s the goddess of the Serious Shit. “Aklu preserve us” is a very common oath.

So I finished my first draft of Castle Veh some time around late February, and did that standard “chuck it aside for a month and then revisit it” thing. Wrote a lot of fanfic in the meantime. World fell into chaos. It was fun. Anyway, back to hell work. Some thoughts:

1) I love my “core four” characters: Kavo, Lek, Thousand Cuts, and Mem. They’ve all got shit they’re dealing with, they’ve all got very distinct ways of seeing their society and their part in it, they’ve all got goals and fears and ambitions (should probs do some character sheets for them at some point huh?) I really like writing in Kavo’s POV, the way she views the world and the things she chooses to focus on make for an interesting narration style. That said...

2) She knows too much. She knows too much about what’s going on in the world around her, about the inner politics of the castle, about how dreamweaving works. So do all the characters around her. There’s no “dumbass who needs the world explained to them” (i.e. the “Harry Potter” worldbuilding technique) and no infodumping cause I hate it, so the world is way too confusing for the reader. 

3) The plot can also be cleaned up. There’s a lot of plot threads and side characters that feel forced—I added them in as a way to shove the plot and mystery along, but it doesn’t quiteeee work and it leaves the plot feeling muddled and confusing. 

After mulling it over, I’ve reoutlined the story, essentially making Kavo’s starting knowledge base a lot smaller. She’s no longer a kingpin of the castle’s underworld, but a normal rich asshole who decides to involve herself in the castle’s underworld when her girlfriend gets hurt. That means she’s a lot more clueless (which makes the clumsiness of her early decisions actually make SENSE thank god) and a bit more sympathetic to start out. I’ve cut out about five unnecessary side characters, promoted one of the vaguely-menacing characters (aka Lek, my boy) to full on book one antagonist, and given the first act a lot more time to showcase the world and gradually warm up the reader.