Dragon Knights, Dragon Daze
The Lellwin Dragon Knights
Like most of my oldest stories, this was started one notebook or another. And boy, oh, boy, has it changed.
The premise of the Lellwin Dragon Knights hasn’t changed too much - in a war ravaged world, dragons are exterminated until all that remains are five eggs (that number is probably familiar to you now), to be raised by a mysterious “Wizard.”
Pretty much everything else has changed. Pre-Scribe-Verse, Wizard was a dog-man-thing with a raggedy cloak and wide, floppy hat. That didn’t last long.
Wizard still is pretty ragged, but he’s human now, instead of whatever that unholy creation was supposed to be.
The dragons (the ones that only show up in the prologue before getting killed) haven’t changed much, aside from a few world-based mechanics that had to be tightened. Oh, and their names. But like I said, those only show up in the prologue, so have much less of an impact.
Originally, I wasn’t sure where Wizard and his little hatchlings would go. It probably would have ended up as a cute little family-oriented story, with him trying to raise a mixed family and getting into scrapes along the way.
But all that changed with idea of trope subversion.
Tropes and Subversions
As I came back to Dragon Knights, I had been reading a lot of YA fantasy. You know, the teenagers and their misfit crews taking down a nation. In response, I started re-writing this story.
What if instead of trying to tear down a government, someone was fighting to establish peace throughout a war torn area? What if someone knew the only way to survive was through unity, even if that meant forcing everyone to work together?
Later, a lot of the philosophical ideals of this would be impacted by Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy (and to some degree, Stormlight Archive), but in the moment, I was just fighting against doing the same thing that I saw on the pages of every single book I read. It was my own little rebellion.
I dove into the world, creating some of most favorite characters to date. Like Shardell Carnadda, a semi-repentant bandit who is recruited as the calvary commander for Berric, the man set on uniting Lellwin. Or Gadreth, Shardell’s right hand man, a no-nonsense man who lives vicariously through Shardell’s escapades.
The other three worth honorable mention are Berric himself, Throden, the massive swordsman, and Salon, the hopefully-trustworthy cartel boss. And of course, there’s Wizard himself, in all his definitely-just-human glory.
Knights and Scoundrels
A very fun byplay in this world is the interaction of honor and underhandedness. On the one hand, there is Berric, a former Dragon Knight (the army that hunted the dragons), bound by proper conduct and a code of engagement. On the flipside, there is Shardell Carnadda, who has no such compunctions. Both, however, want honor - the esteem from other men that only comes by fulfilling obligations. Using this desire, and the fear of God, let’s be honest, Wizard guilt-trips Carnadda into joining Berric’s crusade.
In the same vein, the pursuit of honor takes place in two very different ways. Again, Berric, leading the unification effort (the war, let’s be honest) understands the necessity of deception in battle tactics, but, for the most part, wants to seek alliances. He searches for honor through being morally upright, following his definition of ‘good.’
On the other hand, Carnadda’s internal structure between honor - how society perceives him - and internal desires - what he wants to do - create his first big arc. He finds his balance eventually, but in the meantime, the dichotomy pushes his story forward. A very simplistic summary would be, he wants to be trustworthy, but doesn’t know if he is.
The simultaneous and varied approaches to the same goal create a character driven story that I find very engaging to write, and hopefully would be fun to read. I do need to dive back into this world, there are a lot of things I’ve figured out since putting the concept on the back burner some years ago.
There are also some excellent crossovers between this world and one I’ve already mentioned, which are also exciting to plan and envision. But the point, or the lesson, I suppose, from this is to find character motivations. Not all characters need them (some characters should be one-dimensional), but your main cohort should have some sort of goal they’re striving for. They should be well-rounded, not having a single facet in view, just like we as people don’t have one side of ourselves. Ask yourself, when does their funny side come out? When do they try their hardest? When are they at their weakest?
Anyway, I’ll leave you with those thoughts until next time. There’s another group of five that I’m looking forward to introducing you to. Aristotle thought he knew them, but he only got four-fifths of the way there.
They might be a fantasy trope, but they’re still some of my favorites. I call them the Elementers.