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Long ago in a high school too close for me to be included on a bus route, I created my first fantasy series. I called it the Race War where all of the races of this world chose sides and duked it out for supremacy. It was a simple world called Mylrix that would eventually become Pre-Cataclysm Windemere. The villains were evil and the heroes were noble with no flaws . . . it was my first attempt and it became a part of Windemere history. This caused a problem since the Race War gets mentioned a few times, so I felt like I had to write a series on it. The answer came from returning the heroes to their original forms.
The seven heroes were based on the original Dungeons & Dragons characters that my friends and I used in high school. We had very little concept or care about the rules, so it was comedic chaos. For example, the dwarf was turned to stone by a cockatrice and had a chicken phobia after we revived him. The warrior had 4 intelligent swords and each one was twice as smart as he was. We were a crew of idiots and that’s what the characters returned to.
How does this fit into the Race War, which is a horrible event in Windemere history? I’m still working out the kinks, but it begins with the only surviving villain from the original version of the story. Casandra is a channeler who works with some of the heroes to defeat the dragons that began the war. Seeing that the other species continue fighting even after the dragons are dead, Casandra decides to side with the destroyers and work to cleanse the world. Yeah, she’s driven insane by the end of the first book, which is why she goes dark side. The heroes take on mission or get involved in various plans of her’s, usually by accident and foil her in some way. I guess I wanted to go for a comedic series that also explained this serious event.
This isn’t too say that it’s true idiot zaniness. It’s a lot of odd events and accidents, but the heroes aren’t inept. The warrior is the only true idiot. The sorceress has bad aim thanks to the game character killing our horses in EVERY adventure. The elven warrior is really evil, but always ends up causing good to win. The dwarf has a long list of phobias. The gnome thief is cursed to tell the truth. The priestess is addicted to potions. The martial artist is a blatant womanizer. Each with a major flaw, but they’re still skilled at what they do. I hate to use this example, but Scooby Doo and Shaggy type characters.
Here is where the challenge is: use comedy to show a dark event in Windemere history without either side overshadowing the other. I think it can be done with deep characters and not going too far with the comedy. The heroes shouldn’t screw up every time, but they should have a constant level of ignorance and confusion.
So, has anybody tried to write a story like this or know of one?
