First a note:  Tomorrow might be the last posting of ‘Beginning of a Hero’.  I haven’t decided if I want to go higher than 25 parts, especially since I’m so close to actually publishing the book.  I wish I had a perfect deadline for that, but I really don’t know and I have to stop declaring debut days.  So, Monday may very well start the sequel ‘Prodigy of Rainbow Tower’, which introduces Nyx, Trinity, and shows off more of Windemere.  It will mean spoilers for the first book, but I think the fun part of my stories is seeing how the characters get to points instead of simply knowing they get there.  So, today I’m going to do a few Monster Origins.

One of my favorite bumper stickers/phrases.

Monday’s post introduced everyone to the scaly standard of fantasy writing, Dragons.  I know people are aware of dragons, so I mean introduced people to my dragons.  With all of the magic being whipped around Windemere, I couldn’t find a rational explanation for the absence of dragons.  So, here you go.

There really isn’t much to say about the real-world creation of the dragons because I picked the colors and gave each one unique abilities.  They were originally only called the Nature Dragons with them being Desert, Jungle, Glacier, Swamp, and Volcano, but I eventually gave them interesting names.  For example, Jungle Dragons are now the Darkvawn Dragons and can speak any language.  So, each species has slightly evolved over time with their abilities and name.  I keep the Drites (Fizzle) separate here because they’re born of a dragon and a pixie having children, so they aren’t true dragons.  There are also the Weapon Dragons, but those are unnatural constructs . . . or are they?

The challenge of using dragons is that they are typically the bad guy, the great sage, or something that is so insanely powerful that people just have to piss it off.  I like these ideas, but I found that my dragons were becoming closer to rare creatures that don’t have a major influence on things.  Dragons will show up, but they really don’t seem to care about what is going on around them.  99% of the dragons don’t go razing villages or eating people for no reason.  They might be curious about the smaller, mortal creatures, but they have no desire to devour the countryside.  They tend to feed off magic and they environmental food (lava, sand, trees, swampwater, or ice) There’s that 1% of jackass dragon, but they’re not the norm.  I barely use these beasts throughout my series, so I had to figure out why they didn’t really care.

So, here is a brief Windemere History Lesson.  At the beginning of the world, the first gods created three beings to settle the planet.  They created the evil demons, the good angels, and the neutral dragons.  Being new to creating sentient life, the gods didn’t realize their mistake.  The demons destroyed the peaceful angels within a year and the dragons simply sat in there homes unless attacked.  The dragons weren’t seen as a threat because there were only 15 of them.   They didn’t see the point in breeding since they were immortal.  So, the demons were put into the a pocket dimension that held the charred ruins of the angels’ home that would become the Chaos Void.  The 15 dragons were turned into the Draconic Gods and told to create their own dragon races, but with more emotion.  They did their best since they didn’t really understand and the current dragons exist with a nonchalance about their existence.  At least until you piss them off and then you better sit down and pour ketchup over your head because you’re now a snack.