Malifaux: Trying some fan fiction fan fiction

So despite writing a lot of fiction…in established worlds, I’ve never really tried my hand at writing more romantic-y stuff. The closest I came was the Skytouch Choir pieces I’ve already put on this blog (check it out if you like wholesome elf husbands). This one is even more different because I don’t often write for…established characters, or the world of Malifaux. This attempt below hits all of those new boxes for me, which was refreshing if daunting. Which is one reason why the first little extract is a bit more lighthearted in it’s tone. So, with that mini introduction aside, please enjoy some attempted romantic, Malifaux fan fiction!

Fiction Writing: Roag Trayderz Part 1

Once again, most my writing time I find comes from whatever wargames I happen to be playing. Due to narrative additions being a popular part of all of my last campaigns, and the joint storytelling that allows it’s one of the main outputs for my creative writing whilst I’m so swamped with other work. This one is again, a bit different. I never really intended to write much for my Orks, but I couldn’t resist trying out something just for a bit of fun. So without my usual long preamble, enjoy my attempt at emulating Douglas Adams in some 40k Ork fiction. Because I figured they worked pretty nicely together…

Enjoy!

Fiction Writing: The Skytouch Choir Part 5

This piece was the last that I wrote for the Skytouch Choir in their first campaign appearance. After having written these I’m confident I want to write more for them. I’ve come to really love these characters, and writing with the aim to present something tender, loving , and wholesome was a very enjoyable experience. This story is a little more different, a bit more of a return to something I used to write more of a while ago, and that’s a fight. Whilst it’s not the sendoff I would have imagined, and perhaps I should rectify that by returning to them to write another nice sign-off, it was fun in it’s own way. I do like trying to write cinematically, and hopefully that comes across here. The story went this way as a tribute to the opponent I played in the match just before this, who was a great guy and unfortunately had to write in a character death as a result of this game. Therefore I felt I wanted to do a tribute to his fallen character and try and write him a fight scene that did him justice as a cool, and dangerous monster. So, as I say, this isn’t really a sign-off for the Skytouch Choir. It’s more of a tribute to the campaign and an exercise in a different kind of writing. And hopefully, very soon, I can revisit them again. I hope you enjoy this change of atmosphere.

Fiction Writing: The Skytouch Choir Part 4

I realise that despite writing more for my aelves a little while ago, they didn’t make it onto here as an update. So I will keep this description even shorter than usual for brevity’s sake. This following piece I wanted to introduce a new character, one that was intended in their background to be a loner hunting dangerous relics far from Aelven lands. Rather than fall into expected personalities however, I thought about what personality types might be drawn to such a profession and thought I’d experiment with someone who…was not a people person really. But enough preamble, I hope you enjoy

Fiction Writing: The Skytouch Choir Part 3

Just a short introduction for this one. What follows below is a continuation of the story for the Skytouch Choir, a Lumineth force for Age of Sigmar that I’m currently using as inspiration to experiment with writing for Elves. I have in the past found Elves difficult to write for due to their ‘aloof’ and often dismissive personalities, so here I am attempting to find new ways of presenting an Elvish perspective when they are the central focus (rather than a contrast for human characters for instance). This extract follows the recent AoS campaign games I’ve had, hence it references conflict and other factions (such as Seraphon) that don’t otherwise feature in the narrative.

I hope you enjoy

Fiction Writing: The Skytouch Choir Part 2

Riding on the current excitement of being able to play games with others in this Age of Sigmar Campaign, this week’s update is another for The Skytouch Choir, the Lumineth faction I am currently playing. The flurry of writing and chatting that’s been born out of this Path to Glory campaign that’s been running for around two weeks now has been very inspiring, and it’s fantastic that our gaming group has kept a little points competition for writing narrative entries as it definitely helps motivate a diverse selection of stories to read. This format is something I’d highly recommend for any wargamers looking to get a gaming group inspired by their collection again (or by something new)

That little introduction aside, what follows beneath is my second entry into the journals of my Lumineth. The Skyreach Choir is an experiment for me in the parts of the Lumineth lore that really interest me, in particular the power of emotion that recurs in their stories, and the importance of respecting the land and its spirits over forcing one’s beliefs onto others. I really wanted to make these Lumineth…for lack of a better word, wholesome. I think there’s a great potential for positivity in how intensely they can feel, and in their desires, that whilst it can be good storytelling (or at least common in GW games) to show the darker side of things, I wanted to see how it felt to do the opposite. To add a little warmth into the mix. It’s just something I found enjoyable to do. This story follows my first game too, a battle with Sylvaneth, hence the references to a conflict within it, and also starts to talk about the other armies within my faction (Seraphon, Stormcast, and Daughters of Khaine), just to provide context on their mentions.

All that introduction aside, I again hope you enjoy the following:

Fiction Writing: The Skytouch Choir Part 1

So as a break from the previous 40k focus of the majority of my fiction writing, I thought I would begin interspersing some more of my fantasy writing as a bit of variety. Once again this is going to be Games Workshop fanfiction, but my motivation comes from again participating in a Campaign with my gaming group and riding that wave of excitement and commitment. With that context applied, I will be writing about a group I’ve entitled The Skytouch Choir for these additions. They are Lumineth Realmlords from GWs Age of Sigmar. This is a faction that really speaks to me due to being a big fan of elves on the whole, but it has been a long time since I’ve written for them. I didn’t want to just write them as closed-off/aloof characters, as elves traditionally have been as Lumineth felt like they had much more potential than that despite the returning theme of ‘superiority’ in some of GWs material for them. Their acknowledgement of their own failings and return to harmonious living with the spirits of the land felt to me like a great potential for more sympathetic, caring elves. Albeit ones whose sympathy aligns them to nature and caring individuals over maybe more expected ‘good guys’. Similarly the way Lumineth are concerned with emotions, feeling excess of them and seeing them as a power to themselves I wanted to try to introduce emotional aelves and see where that went. Well, with this musing out of the way this is the quick piece I put together recently.

As ever, I hope you enjoy

Warplight Whispers

So this post is designed to just be a short update to clarify that this blog is still going to be live, and still going to be updating as things go on. I have plenty of pieces of writing drafted up to continue the Custodes story that I’ve been sharing, and other little experiments that I’m excited to share in the works. Likewise I’m intending to write some NPC profiles for characters in TTRPG games I’ve been planning for a short while now so I hope that’ll provide something new and different to keep the contents of this blog nice and varied.

The real intention for this post is to explain why there’s been another drop in posts, and that is because I’ve been spending a lot of my free time setting up my new project which finally went live last week. I’m excited to announce that I’ve opened a Soundcloud, and a Bandcamp profile for a project I have entitled Warptime Whispers.

Here’s the lovely logo my partner designed for me

What this is, is a chance for me to put out some audio content that I’ve spent a long while finding, reciting, and recording readings that I wanted to share with a wider audience. I intend to include Warhammer content on here (hence some of the inspiration for the name): I’ve been trawling old, out of print White Dwarf magazines to preserve a lot of the short stories from them that might otherwise have been lost, and cherry picking small extracts from elsewhere that I particularly enjoy. I will also be reading old stories in their entirety, I have already started with classic Science Fiction and a recording of The Island of Dr Moreau, but I have plans to expand on this further and even read Old Norse Sagas too. If any of this interests you, please follow the links below:

Fiction Writing: Custodes Part 13

This one was definitely another bit of fun for me to write. After (it must have been about) 6 months of writing for the same characters I was feeling the need to flex into something a bit different. The refined, educated voices of Liev and Mr Lukas were incredibly satisfying to write, but they could feel a little cold sometimes. That’s where Drask came in. I had recently finished touching up a terrible old paintjob on a Yeld Spyrer model I’d found in a bring-and-buy years back for fun and had put them aside to use as a proxy-ed Vindicare assassin as an excuse to get them on the table. So here I decided to come up with some personality for them. Drask is a lot more self-centered, and out for an excuse to show his own prowess more than strive for the greater good, and it was really nice to move away from the morally just (or at least trying to be) characters I’d otherwise been writing for my Custodes. I thoroughly expected a terrible end for him, and sometimes that’s just fun.

I hope you enjoy

Fiction Writing: Custodes Part 12

So appropriately following my mid-campaign break in writing, came a real life break from blog posting for the past two weeks. I recently moved house, therefore all the turbulence that kicked up disrupted my flow of blog posts as I foolishly forgot to schedule any for the last two weeks. Dropping back in here, I picked back up with my cadre of agents and thought I’d experiment with fleshing them out a little bit more. Whilst I really enjoyed the faceless menace of Lukas’ companions, I wanted to start exploring what kind of mix of criminals and personalities might be pulled into the web of an Eye of the Emperor, so this piece started down that road whilst also refreshing the fact that allegiances had recently shifted since the first half of the campaign. I think in retrospect I’d keep a greater roster of ‘faceless inscrutable’ Agents were I to write about them again, but it was interesting to explore what could be.

As ever, I hope you enjoy