It all began with a short story. I was home, listening to No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” song and this powerful short story ran through my mind.
There was a man kneeling at a crude altar of stone, broken and mourning. He reflected on battles, the cries and screams of friends lost. He stood and walked to a great drop off on the side of mountain, looking down at the make-shift village below. There he saw the maimed and sick struggling with their meager existence. Returning to the altar he recalled the words from his mentor telling him he had the power to stop this. Guilt filled him knowing he could have, if his naïveness had not blinded him to the risks their enemy presented. But he knew he could still do something–stop things from getting worse. He ran back at the edge of the mountain and dove off the side. Rather than plummet to his death, his body radiated, and he shot into space. He traveled faster and faster, punching a hole in space. In the ripples of energy formed in his own personal wormhole he saw the face of his lost wife and son, lamenting his failure to protect them and assuring he’d join them soon. He punched back into normal space, and an armada of ships approached him. Despite their phaser blasts, the glow around him only grew. Arcs of power left off his body striking the ships and destroying them. He streaked unchallenged towards a planet, and ripped through the atmosphere setting fire to it. He plowed into the ground, rock vaporizing as his drilled deep inside. He reached the core, and the planet exploded. He was dead, and the homeworld of his enemy was destroyed.
I sat down and thought, “Wow! What was that?”
I ended up writing out the story because I thought it was cool. Though, the images never left me. I found myself asking who was that man on the mountain? Was there a war? Why? When did his family die? What were those abilities? Who was this enemy?
Eventually new individuals appeared like a little girl assassin with a morphing pet, a techno-wizard geek gal, a woman of crystal, an obsessed warrior, and so on. For each of them I kept asking ‘why’ over and over. It was like tossing stones into a pond, and documenting the rings. I gained more and more insights. Eventually they began to intersect, logical explanations of how such different characters on different worlds could possibly interact.
I couldn’t help myself. I just wanted to know more about this story universe and all the worlds and characters. I found them interesting and compelling. Envisioning scenes of them interacting was fun to experience. It became a love–an experience–that I wanted to share with people.
Originally I thought it would make a great role playing game, or a console RPG. While that’s still true, the novel was the appropriate way to bring all the threads together into a cohesive universe.
Every minute has been incredible, and I know there’s so much more to share!