Cover Art by Sean Harrington

The inspiration for Quest of the Brokenhearted was ‘Castlevania’.  I loved the games where you played as a Belmont or Alucard to get through a castle full of monsters.  Your goal was to defeat Count Dracula.  For a long time, I wanted to write a story like that, but I couldn’t figure it out because the games were primarily platformer explorations games.  Didn’t make for a good story.  Then, I was nearing the end of Legends of Windemere and came up with an idea.

Now, I had already come up with the concept of Lacarsis.  This was a city of monsters, which moved around the continent of Ralian.  I tried various stories with different heroes delving into its depths to fight for . . . something.  A few times it was just to destroy the castle and be a hero.  Others wanted to take control of it.  Some looked for missing loved ones, but the whole thing felt empty and lame.  All I really had was a great set piece with no characters or story.  So, I kept tinkering with Lacarsis and seeing if I had any heroes who I could throw into it.  The one that caught my eye:

Kira Grasdon

Part of it was that her weapon was a kusari-gama, which is a chain connected to a sickle.  It is similar to the whip that the Belmonts use in the games.  I thought that would add to the homage concept and create more interesting battles than a more common weapon.  A higher level of agility and cunning would be needed, which Kira was heading towards.  So, this was turning out to be a good match for her character development.  I threw her into different scenarios, but the goals and reasons weren’t matching up.  Something was just off about things.

The issue was that I was trying to plan Quest of the Brokenhearted around who she was at the time instead of who she would be.  This would be where I came up with the title and jumped the timeline seven years.  Kira was no longer a happy heiress to a wealthy merchant house who was in love with a heroic champion.  Now, she was alone, broken, depressed, and working in a brothel (not in the way you think).  Her reason for going into Lacarsis was that she felt she had nothing left to live for.  Kira no longer cared if she died, so she sets off to take on the challenge.  It brought a darkness to the story, which I could gradually alleviate as she grows stronger.

Of course, all of my other ideas couldn’t work with the broken Kira.  I came up with the demonic ruler of Lacarsis making a challenge to the outside world.  Heroes would enter and never be seen again, but nobody knew why.  Kira shows up to find that the ruler is hosting a competition with the intruding hero as the guest of honor.  They go one-on-one with various monsters at any moment while being treated like nobility.  It was all for the monster’s entertainment until the hero died or did well enough to earn a battle with the ruler.

Going this route, allowed me to flush out Lacarsis into a more self-sustaining society instead of a castle with roaming creatures.  There were artisans, businesses, hierarchies, and things you could find in other cities.  I was able to create a better supporting character system without having to depend on other humans.  Lacarsis now felt alive and complex instead of being nothing more than a backdrop, which is why I tend to look for reasons to bring it back.  Not sure if Darwin will go there, but Sin has a visit planned in one of his books.

Quest of the Brokenhearted is also where I started the storyline of Rayne.  This was an amnesic elf that someone played in my college DnD game.  I had a complicated backstory for her that became convoluted and no longer worked.  She would have a connection to Luke Callindor, which gave me a reason to have her debut in Kira’s adventure.  This set the stage and explained a lot of Rayne as well.  Her odd luck, which could be both bad and good at the same time.  I mean, she was a child who was abandoned in Lacarsis (bad), but ended up being raised as a servant by the monsters (good).  It explains why she seems to attract creatures too.  Given that Rayne was slated to be a major player in Windemere, I liked that she would be drifting through other stories until she finally lands in her big adventure.

Looking back, I might have leaned harder into Kira’s depression.  That’s really it, but it would have been tough since each chapter revolved around a different monster battle.  I was able to fit character development and relationships in there to build up to the fight or be around it.  Yet, I never gave Kira a chapter of total downtime and reflection.  I felt that having a chapter with no action in this kind of story would kill momentum and feel very out of place.  Must have been some way to fix it though.

How about some questions?

1. What do you think of people making homages?
2. What would you do to make yourself feel alive and no longer depressed?
3. What is the strangest weapon you can think?