#wordjam

An Excerpt From Magister Arazlam's Journal: The Geography, Climate, and Landscapes of Arrat pt.1

"...and therefore is truly bleak during the late summer, a time where the earth itself seems to turn against its inhabitants, becoming almost likened to a desert but without quite so much as the barest hint of life. The soil becomes dusty, parched, and cracked, without even insects or worms left behind to till it. The pool in the center of the Gorge, where during the other nine and a half months of the year it is filled to abundance with water and the elementals that inhabit it, quickly drains such that not even a hint of its former presence can be detected more than three weeks into the month of Ko. Whereas during the rest of the year the Gorge is a wild, lush field home to many of Arrat's most exotic creatures - elemental, animal, or otherwise - once the summer begins most of them depart for milder climes, disappearing into the mountains to the West and East, or going south to the ocean, as do most of the water's inhabitants.

That is not to say the Gorge goes entirely without life, for for those two months there is a different kind of presence there. The desolation brought by the heat and the dry brings out from the parched ground some of the Wraiths that are normally only found in the most dangerous of the subterranean regions. The Aethyr produced by their presence compounded by the surrounding canyon walls makes for a rather fantastic - and terrifying! - phenomenon. The Gorge becomes, for lack of a better description, a large, perpetual dust storm. The winds there during this time are the fastest recorded anywhere in the world, and that's compounded by the near-nonexistent visibility and danger posed by the Wraiths, which I will remind are not so much as touched by the wind or dust, this makes for quite possibly the most hostile region in all of Arrat. Nevertheless, there are still those brave souls who seek to harvest the Aethyr from the Wraiths, due to it being quite potent and having unique properties unable to be found elsewhere.

To the south of the Garum Gorge, past the remainder of the Garet Mountains and the pass leading into it, lies the tail end of the Solse River, cutting across the road to the pass, curving southeast to empty into the sea. The delta of the river possesses some rather odd geological qualities, making it a natural wonder in its own right, and encouraging the mining operations that spring up once every few decades. As I mentioned previously regarding the Garet Mountains, the sediment brought down through their rivers is infused with no small amount of Aethyr from the cloud dwelling elementals, and in the delta of this one particular river it coagulates into the only naturally occurring solid Aethyrcite that has been found aboveground in the world. Though it is not a particularly powerful or useful Aethyrcite in its raw form, it is still Aethercite that is created without the extensive process of manufacting and can be converted through much simpler means into differently focused uses. As a result, of course, this area has been highly contested ever since the discovery of Aether's many commercial and military uses. I, however, digress...

Seems that I finally have a use for this blog, apart from following strange things my friends do. I've entered WordJam, a writing convention of sorts that lasts throughout the summer and can be found here: http://summerofwords.tumblr.com/

I'm going to be writing, for at least the next month and most likely the next three, small entries that will consist of backstory for a story I plan on writing... eventually. It's called Aethyr, and will be a seemingly generic fantasy tale about a complicated system of magic that I came up with while I was bored. If anything, it will be interesting, that I can promise.

For those who haven't seen it, yet: We're attempting a cross-over between LJ and Tumblr for ArtSlam this year. 

schizostories and I are trying to get everything ironed out for the blog (mostly her on the cross-integration side, as she's a tumblr pro and familiar with disqus, yup<3) but we welcome help testing. Ideally, we're going for the ability to submit what you want to tumblr, cross-comment, and interact easily with the main LJ ArtSlam and WordJam. Hopefully this will be working well for when June rolls around. If it is well received, we'll keep it going.

Suggestions are welcome.

Feel free to follow at artslam.tumblr.com 

First #WordJam of 2011: DRACULA. Do a comic, painting, cartoon, whatever with "Dracula" as a theme.

Reblog or retweet any WordJam entries you like. Make as many as you want in the next 24 hours or so, and be sure to tag them.

Spread the word--the more, the merrier!