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So because of huge delays, Book 7 (which should have been done a month or two ago and instead could possibly take into March to complete) isn't done yet, but I have set my schedule for the remaining three books of the series, and regardless of when What If? finishes, Book 8 will be launched on April 18, 2011. I will begin writing it in about two weeks, so the beginning of Book 8 and the ending of Book 7 will be written alongside each other. That's probably a recipe for disaster, where I'll be forcing myself to write a chapter and a half of stuff every week until Book 7 is finished, but I'm set on sticking to my schedule with no more delays if at all possible, and I want to have a safe cushion of chapters already written when I start Book 8. At this point, the only thing that could stop Book 8 from being posted then is if Book 7 somehow takes longer than that to finish, since I won't have them running concurrently. That would just make the break between Book 8 and 9 shorter though; there's plenty of built-in time to still finish the series by the end of 2012 (which is what I'm planning for). Book 8's preliminary title is Six Voices in Harmony. Despite Book 7's first-person style, Book 8 will be returning to form with a third-person omniscient narrator. There will be two plots in the first part which come together in the middle: The first plot will show the gods at the beginning of time, chronicling the creation of the universe and what really happened between Koenori and the others, since we have heard conflicting stories from different characters about whether Koenori is the hero or the villain. The answer may be a bit less clear-cut than it would seem. The second plot will pick up right where Book 7 will leave off, with only a few timelines separating Guutana and his friends from their goal - Harmonization of all timelines. Actually, going into any detail about how the two plots will intersect will spoil a few upcoming plot details of Book 7, so I'll leave that for the Book 8 preview whenever Book 7 finishes. In other news: I am toying with the idea of doing a reboot/rebuild trilogy after the ending of the series. It would be at my own leisure so updates would be infrequent, and if my life just gets too busy I could possibly drop the project early, but I don't really want to stop writing for BZP when the series finishes, nor do I want all of my characters just sort of die off from my consciousness when their story is finished. I have already made somewhat detailed plans for this trilogy, but the question is, come 2013 when the series is over and I'm a full-time college student, will I still feel up to writing three more books? That's something we'll have to wait and see in two years. That's why I'm not officially announcing that this will happen, just throwing it out there that it might. This rebuild trilogy (I hesitate to call it a reboot since that implies that I'm just telling the story again, but better somehow - rather, this is a separate continuity with the same characters and settings, but an entirely new plot, so I'm calling it a "rebuild") would be called "The Storm Trilogy", with each book named after a different type of storm (Hurricane, Blizzard, and Thunderstorm would be the titles of the individual books). In the Dairuno Toa series, storm motifs have always been associated with the character Auserv, and this trilogy will take a greater focus on him, as he will be a main character from beginning to end. I am aiming, with this "Storm Trilogy", to tell a new version of my series that is completely accessible to new readers but still exciting for old readers, and I'm also aiming for something that will fit within the established Bionicle canon (so the supernatural elements - the gods, the Dying Breath, Tinporu, the Chosen Three, the Dairuno Stones, etc. are all out). The books will go in chronological order and cover the same story arcs as Books 1-6, but in entirely re-imagined ways. For example, Hurricane would open with a similar scene to A Strike of Lightning's opening scene, but quickly take a turn for a story more resembling Story of the Dead, only with Auserv and his team fighting alongside Onathei, Feyain and Gyotaren, eventually ending with those teams running into Rakdan and following him to Tonryak for the Storm Trilogy's version of The Minister of Destruction. Blizzard would be closer to The Tables Have Turned, To Be A Hero and In The Dying Breath, but with Auserv (and what's still left of his team by then) being part of the main cast from the beginning, and obviously with largely different reasons for the heroes to be going to Dyteeli and fighting Sihnozu, given that Dairuno and the Dairuno Stones won't exist in this version of the continuity. Finally, Thunderstorm would be entirely new material, tying up the stories of all the characters from the first two books, featuring new adventures of Auserv's, and ending somewhere around the short story Honey. In other words, all the same plot (and then some) will be covered, but in different ways. Also, obviously, each book would be much longer than the average book of the series, since they're effectively covering three books worth of story per book. Probably the trilogy would take 3-5 years to write, depending on how fast or slow I write them (and obviously depending on whether or not I decide to finish it or drop it early). This is an exciting idea for me because I can explore relationships between characters who never would have met, and I can freely do whatever to whoever even during what was, for this series, flashback story, because the plot doesn't have to be related. For example, maybe in this continuity Onathei will die early on and Barnoka will survive to the end - I can do whatever I want along those lines so it won't just be the same thing all over again. Anyway, back to writing Book 7 for now...
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Coming next month is the seventh book in The Dairuno Toa, What If? The flashback story arc has finally concluded with The Minister of Destruction and we are moving on with where the story left off in In The Dying Breath. The book stars Guutana, Roqini, and Desurk, some of the heroes of the first three books, as they travel down the paths time shouldn't have taken and correct it to the main timeline. In each of the twenty chapters, a different timeline is featured, each exploring different scenarios such as "What if Matoro had hesitated too long in Karda Nui?", "What if the Toa Mata's canisters hadn't malfunctioned?", and "What if there had been no Toa Metru?" (the first three chapters). The only main characters are Guutana, Roqini, and Desurk, which will be a refreshing change from the usually rather large casts of this series. Other characters will appear, but aside from appearances from more cosmic characters (the creators mentioned above will play small roles) and a certain antagonist who begins to appear a bit later in the book, no one else will appear in more than one chapter. Aside from just a series of disjointed stories about random alternate timelines, the story advances the overall mythology of the Dairuno Toa series, giving some answers and showing a much clearer image of the big picture I am building up to. And as in any story, the main characters will grow as people over the course of the book, as they react to their new powers and learn to deal with them. The message of the story is developed through these characters, and deals with power, and what rights it gives those that have it, and what rights it does not give. You can expect to see the Prologue posted on July 19th. Updates will be posted on Fridays, and as usual there will be twenty chapters, a prologue and an epilogue. PM me if you would like to be notified when the story goes up. I'm looking forward to the next leg of the story and I hope everyone enjoys it. (PS: The banner up there is preliminary and could be changed before the book goes up. If anyone would like to make me one that has the same basic structure and color, but looks better, I'd appreciate it a lot. )
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To those who this concerns (that is, Takuta-Nui plus however many people read and don't review ), I've made a major change of plans for my Dairuno Toa series. I had originally planned for it to be 15 books long - 5 trilogies, of which I am now concluding the second one with The Minister of Destruction. However, I've now made some more concrete plans for my life. As it is, I'm in two relatively easy college classes and I still hardly have time for a chapter every week. It won't get much better in summer, when I plan to get a part-time job. Then I'm in for another two semesters of community college, with potentially some more difficult courses, and after that I'll be done high school as well so I'll be a full-time college student, which will last several years until I eventually have done everything I need to be a clinical psychologist (including some internship). Obviously my original plan of finishing the series by 2012 is unrealistic, since I started in fall 2007 - I would've had to have begun the third trilogy by now, but I don't foresee that getting started until summer. If I was to stay with a 15-book plan, I might not be done until 2014 (at which time I'd be 20 years old), and that's being optimistic. So I took a look at my long-term plans and decided that some of my planned stories, while cool or good for fleshing out the story more, were ultimately unnecessary, and I managed to cut the story down to ten books. The third trilogy will be compressed into Book 7 and 8, and the fourth trilogy will be entirely contained in Book 9. Then Book 10 will serve as the "grand finale" and cover what would have been the fifth trilogy. My plan is to finish Book 7 by the end of this year, and do Book 8 and 9 in 2011. Then Book 10 will be completed in 2012, ending the series around where it would have if I had been going according to plan. The ending and the basic plot of the series will not change, but some character development will probably be sacrificed. Instead of, for example, the Dyteeli characters having a book mostly to themselves (as was the plan for Book 11), that story will be relegated to a subplot of Book 9. On the bright side, some of those stories may wind up as short stories that I'll post between books, so the character development won't necessarily be lost, just taken out of the main story medium.
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I'm a bit (well, actually very) late in posting this preview, but better late than never, right? Coming next week - January 3rd - is the sixth book in my Dairuno Toa series, The Minister of Destruction. It is the last book in the flashback trilogy, and focuses on the origin of the Toa-Kal, who starred in the first trilogy, and their first mission. It also focuses on two races new to my series, called the Vespirn and the Ophinam, who live on an island called Tonryak, a part of the archipelago which we've heard a bit about in past books. In the past, the Vespirn hunted the Ophinam for sport, but that all changed when their newest queen, Trezia, came into power. She decided to outlaw the hunting of Ophinam, and disbanded the Vespirn military, declaring that as long as she lived, the Vespirn would be a peaceful and enlightened people. This did not sit well with Ukkaf, a military commander who was out of a job. He believed that the ancient custom of hunting Ophinam had not just been pointless savagery, but was instead because the Ophinam were evil. He was widely ridiculed for this view at first, but then word began to spread of a gang of Ophinam led by a mysterious figure named Murkti raiding Vespirn villages and killing villagers who attempted to stand in their way. Suddenly, Ukkaf found himself leading his own gang, composed of old soldiers and proactive civilians alike, tracking the movements of Murkti's gang and defending the Vespirn villages. Both gangs operated under Trezia's nose, but what was obvious to her - and everyone - was that this was certainly not shaping up to be the age of peace and enlightenment that she had intended it to be. This is the state that the Toa of Ayomeii find themselves in when they arrive on Tonryak. But the Vespirn and the Ophinam are not why they are there. They came tracking an enemy of theirs named Rakdan. Rakdan, the titular Minister of Destruction, attracted their attention when he loaded the island of Batarknokk with explosives and detonated it, killing a small group of Matoran stranded there - of which Guutana, Roqini, and Krakana were survivors. Now Rakdan seems to have set his sights on Tonryak, and the Toa of Ayomeii will not allow history to repeat itself. A brief excerpt from Chapter Two:
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No, no, not a literal one. As the banner indicates, I'm talking about Book 5 of my Dairuno Toa epic series. It's already time for it to be posted... Seems like just the other day that I was making this kind of entry for Story Of The Dead. In any case, please enjoy the story! And I'd love to get some reviews too. Now to send out the notifications to the readers who asked for them, and then I'm off to bed.
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Well, it's been a warm and sunny weekend in a so-far rainy April. Back in the days before whatever it was happened to me, weekends meant a news update on my epic series accompanied by a wordy writing tip. I figured that since my series is indeed continuing here, I had better get back into the habit of weekly updates. Especially since Story of the Dead is two weeks away from its less-than-grand finale (it actually ends quietly and reflectively, unlike any of my other books), meaning that boring two-month period in between epics is about to start once again, to be ended by the arrival of Book 5, working title A Strike of Lightning (ASOL will be its designated abbreviation). Now for a shameless grab at new readers: For those who clicked this entry out of curiosity and aren't familiar with the Dairuno Toa series, it's a pet project of mine that I've been working on for nearly 2 years and plan to continue working on for at least 3 more. At heart, it is about the struggles of a character of mine named Guutana. Relatively early on in the series, he becomes a supernatural being who is capable of immediately regenerating after death in any form; he has unlimited power and knowledge. His job (at first) is to travel the multiverse, making every last one of the infinite alternate universes more or less identical to the main universe. After this task comes the endgame of the series, in which Guutana leads the inhabitants of the new composite universe into war against those who were corrupted by the overarching villain in the series, Koenori. The series can be followed by those who enjoy the long-term mysteries of this universe I've created, and by those who just follow the short-term drama and philosophy contained in each installment. You can find links to the current four installments in the content block at the right titled "My Writingz". News on Book 5: As I think I mentioned in an earlier entry, I am writing Book 5 by hand in a notebook. After I complete it, I'll type it up and edit it in the process, and from there post it on BZPower. There's really no particular reason I'm doing it that way, but if it ends up that this experiment is a success, future books will probably be written this way too. Here's a quick excerpt: Writing Tip of the Week Every few months, I find something unsatisfactory about my writing and then spend the next few months trying to improve upon it. By the time I'm satisfied, I'll find another problem. At the moment, what I'm working on is making characters who are realistic. My work is populated with two kinds of characters: fun, charming kinds that you can never get down for long, and angsty, whiny kinds for whom suicide is something most desirable. There are a few who fall in between those two (Qedono is the prime example, I'd say) who tend to be my favorite characters. Several characters switch between the two at least once; several more do it regularly. Stepping back, most of my characters are two-dimensional at best, making them very predictable, unrealistic, and generally boring. What I'm striving to do now is have characters display a range of emotion, which in turn causes them to act a number of different ways. With a character like Qedono, everyone expects every word out of his mouth to be sarcastic. There may have been about three lines he had in the entire series so far where he was in too much shock to think of something witty, but that's about the extent of his emotional fluctuation. As I roll along in Book 5, I'm trying to make characters have a general personality trait that people can identify them with, while also allowing them to act entirely differently at times. Characters' reactions to events should be based on their personality, but sometimes an event that should effect them one way will effect them another way entirely, for various reasons. Also, conflict and plot developments need not all come from external sources. A character's own flaws can provide interesting developments. Anyway, take from this what you will. I can't give too much in-depth help with this because I'm still teaching myself how to do it.
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I reposted the last three installments of Book 3 today. It's late and I'm tired, plus I've got 20 chapters of Book 4 to do, so I'm saving that for tomorrow. Just letting everyone know... EDIT: Got the prologue and first four chapters of Book 4 up today. This is taking longer than I thought. I'll continue to do as many as I can every day until I have them all up; normal reposting will actually begin next week at the latest.
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3 Weeks to Book 4! Since my last blog entry, I finished Chapter 5, wrote Chapter 6, and am now working along on Chapter 7. Book 4 has 2 "sections", like Book 2 did; the first section constitutes the first 10 chapters, the second section constitutes the last 20 chapters. At the moment, I am drawing towards the climax of the first section and the story is rapidly picking up speed. I now know every detail of Feyain's past, and I have also revealed enough information in Chapter 6 for the readers to figure a lot of it out. Also, if you guys thought that Auserv's past was convoluted, Feyain's past is equally so. Unfortunately, Feyain doesn't get a flashback epic all to herself like Auserv does, so hopefully within Books 4 and 5 I will be able to explain all of Feyain's past. (Yup, you heard me right, Feyain will be a major character in the beginning half of Book 5.) In other news, Chapter 6 has a cute little scene between Onathei and Feyain which might make younger readers go "Uck", lol. It's not like hugely romantic or anything but ZOMG ONATHEI HUGS FEYAIN. Didn't plan for it to happen at the outset of that scene but the story wrote itself. It's not like it's the first "couple" (so to speak) I've had in the series... For those who didn't catch these, there were hints at Guutana-Roqini, Krandorn-Zirralo, and Grunekt-Tyaseri (those last two were a bit more obscure but nevertheless there). That's about it for Book 4 news today, so onto the... Writing Tip of the Week This week's tip is on character deaths. Character deaths are like salt... They can really enhance a story, but if you overdo it, the story is too "salty" and no one will like it. For an example, the amount of death in Book 1 and 2 of my series was reasonable... Book 3 was coming dangerously close to being distasteful. The way I see it, there is a spectrum of character deaths like there is a spectrum of visible light... On one end of the spectrum, the "shocker"--you kill someone off suddenly with little to no warning and usually no last words, and on the opposite end, the "cliche"--a death that everyone saw coming with a long, drawn-out death scene. Here is a diagram of what I mean with selected character deaths from my story placed at appropriate places on the spectrum. (By Barnoka I refer to the sacrifice into the Dairuno Stones, which didn't really kill him, but everyone thought he was dead; by Desurk I refer to his original Book 1 death, not his more recent Book 3 death.) Geoku______Barnoka_______Onathei________Guutana_______Desurk |----------------------|---------------------|--------------------|--------------------| Shockers_______________________________________________Cliche Now that you probably have a good idea of the spectrum, I can explain why I brought this up at all. First of all, avoid either end of the spectrum like the plague--I consider Desurk's death to be the worst-written death in the entire series. There was far too much warning, far too much time (a whole chapter!) after the fatal injury that Desurk lingered around. While Geoku's death was a very well-written scene IMO, I didn't actually want to kill a character like Geoku whose character hadn't developed at all since his introduction to the series in Book 2. I needed to kill him in order to advance the plot, so I used a shocker death. So on the shocker end of the spectrum, you'll regret shockers insofar as having to waste a perfectly fine character; on the cliche end, you'll regret writing such a horrible death scene. I'd like to say that Onathei's death, right in the middle, is the ideal kind of death to use, but in actuality it just combines the bad aspects of both halves of the spectrum. Again with Onathei's death, I regretted killing off a character who had not developed at all, but was forced to in order to advance the plot. Also, the amount of time that Onathei hung on with a spear through his frail Turaga chest completely shattered the suspension of disbelief. I consider the best-written death in the series to be Guutana's. There was ample warning but not a lot of people expected it despite that; also Guutana didn't linger for too long but lingered long enough to deliver some important messages. Finally, since Guutana had gone through more character development than any other character in the series up to that point, it was a good point for me to kill him at (not to mention the fact that I knew he wasn't gone for good anyway). Barnoka's death was also very well-done, I think, though not as good as Guutana's (perhaps it would've been if I'd had as much experience as I do now). So the lesson here is not to shoot for either end of the spectrum, and not to mix them evenly...but to mix them unevenly. The best deaths are the ones that are more towards one side than the other. As you write a lot of deaths, you gain a feel for the spectrum, but until then, just focus on giving deaths a good amount of foreshadowing but not enough to figure it out (i.e., the reader knows something is coming, but doesn't predict that "Genericcharacter" is the one who will die), and giving the character a dying speech but not a dying chapter. *coughdesurklulzcough*
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4 weeks to Book 4! Haven't progressed much with SOTD in the past week... I'm about a third of the way through Chapter 5, and just revealed something exceedingly interesting about Feyain. Can't tell you what that is, though... You'll have to wait until I post Chapter 5, which will probably be sometime in January or February, lol. Anyway, I've discovered that flashback stories are incredibly fun to write... Readers of my series will probably remember that in Book 1, Xironu got a Kakama from Onathei's hut when his Rau was smashed in battle. Readers of my series will probably not know that Gyotaren, a main character in Book 4, also wears a Kakama... So naturally, this connection was too good to ignore, and I've found an acceptable explanation as to how Gyotaren's Kakama wound up becoming Xironu's. I can't tell you that yet either though, lol. In other news, Onathei's personality was extremely boring in Book 1. It's almost like I subconsciously wrote Onathei just the opposite of his personality in Book 1 as I wrote Book 4. Obviously something life-changing must have happened in between now and then to dull his fighting spirit and reduce him to an idiom-spouting stereotypical Turaga. I would think it involves the two "stabs" to his world he receives in close succession towards the end of the book... Feyain's death, which everyone knew would happen going into this, and something Gyotaren does that should be fairly shocking. Also, can't remember if I've mentioned this somewhere else or not, but I've decided that SOTD will definitely be 30 chapters long, in addition to a prologue and an epilogue. For obvious reasons I can't stick to the one-chapter-a-week schedule, because then Book 4 would be going on for longer than six months... The plan is to use Book 2's schedule, two chapters a week on Mondays and Fridays. On that plan, the posting would go from December 29th to April 3rd, which is actually slightly quicker than ITDB's posting. Chances are by Book 5 I'll be back to the 20-chapter one-chapter-a-week plan for the rest of the series (no guarantees though), because Book 4 simply has far more story to fit in than any other book so far. Anyway, onto the... Writing Tip of the Week Last week Lhilertoro asked for some tips on how to write mystery stories. I'm not too skilled insofar as whodunnit murder mysteries go, but I can give tips on how to have mysteries in your story fairly well. The first thing you need to do if you want a mystery is to decide on the question of the mystery and the answer. Knowing the answer beforehand seems like a pretty simple thing, but I've just said it to remind you not to try to be cool and write a mystery that you don't know the answer to. Next you have some completely unexplained occurrence in your story that introduces the mystery... It should leave your reader asking "who?", "what?", "where?", "why?", "when?", "how?", or any combination of those. If you don't do this, then no one will care what the answer to the mystery even is, because they didn't know it was a mystery. Now, over time, you drop hints and slowly lead your readers toward a conclusion. However, do not let them figure the whole thing out from these hints. Make them think they've figured it out, but really have a second part to the answer that you haven't hinted at yet. Once the readers are fairly confident they've figured it out, drop a hint for the second part to the answer that completely turns upside-down everything they thought they knew about this mystery. Continue dropping hints for the second part, and then just before you think your readers will get it, reveal the mystery in full, and that way your readers at the end will still feel like they never saw it coming. Of course, this plan only works in theory. It's hard to get inside readers' heads and figure out how much they have figured out. Especially if one of your readers is Lepaka. XD So you'll probably never be able to stump everyone unless you simply don't give enough hints to solve it. And that's okay, because there will be people you do stump, and in my experience, the people you don't stump don't look down on you for writing an easy mystery...they just love that they were able to solve it, lol.
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5 weeks to Book 4! Just finished Chapter 4 of Story of the Dead, which is coming along nicely. At the moment, a villain character of trivial importance named Hirirai has just been poisoned by Onathei... He has two and a half hours to live, unless he complies with Onathei's demands in which case he will be given an antidote. Hirirai will go along with Onathei for now, but we'll see if he has something up his sleeve before he succumbs to the poison. And is Onathei bluffing anyway? I'm not even sure yet, to tell the truth. Feyain and Gyotaren are currently elsewhere in pursuit of two of Hirirai's friends, Kakirai and Kusurai (yep, all of their names end in "rai", and there are twelve of them, referred to as simply the Twelve Rai). Chapter 5 will involve two battles: Feyain vs. Kakirai and Gyotaren vs. Kusurai. By Chapter 6, I think the three Toa will meet up again, perhaps meeting another one of the Rai in the process... The best part of writing is that while I write the story, it mostly drives itself. I had to create the characters, and from there the characters take over the story and all that's left to me is what words to use when writing down what happens. I'm along for the ride as much as my readers are. The other day, I sketched out a basic map of what I'm doing with the rest of the series. I created a timeline that goes from the very beginning of time to the end of this series. Also, I worked out the details of "the big picture", so to speak. If you've been a fan of Bionicle for a while, you're familiar with the concept of getting a glimpse of the big picture... The Toa Nuva and Turaga peering over the ledge in Mangaia and seeing Metru Nui below was our first little step outside of the familiar world of Mata Nui. From there we found there was an entire universe outside of Mata Nui and Metru Nui waiting to be explored. And as if that wasn't exciting enough, we've seen an even bigger picture more recently--there's more worlds to see outside of the Matoran universe. In my series, we got our first taste of the big picture with that legend of Dairuno way back in Book 2... The Dying Breath was the next significant advancement towards understanding all the mysteries in the series. And you'll receive the next advancement in the short story supplementary to Book 4 that I talked about a while back. Then the third trilogy will advance it even further, and by Book 9, you'll have a basic idea of the big picture. Of course, I'm still going to save some mysteries for the very last minute. Writing Tip of the Week At Lepaka's request (and because I always wanted to do something like this, lol), I'm going to give a weekly tip on writing to anyone aspiring to be a writer in the future like myself... Having been writing for several years now (including fanfics that never made it to BZPower, non-Bionicle fanfics, and the rare pieces of writing that weren't fanfics at all), I've accumulated some basic rules as far as writing well goes. So while I won't claim to be a wise writing ninja sensei (XD), I can at least pass on some writing tips to my friends and anyone else who wants to write in the future. With the introduction out of the way, I would say that my first tip for anyone wanting to start writing would be this: make time to write. Don't start something you can't finish. If you don't have any time to write, then you shouldn't write at all. It sounds harsh, but allow me to explain: My time, as it is, is very limited. I should have no time at all to write. And yet I fit in some time to write every day. Now, don't force yourself to write a chapter an hour or anything. Sometimes, it will only be one paragraph a day. Sometimes it will be just one word. But as long as you take a few minutes from your freetime every day to write, you'll stop seeing it as a chore and start turning to your word processor when you're bored as opposed to, say, a video game. In many cases, I would rather be writing than anything else. If it helps, do something you like while you write. For example, if you have a laptop or you prefer to write on paper rather than on the computer, go outside to a favorite spot of yours to write. Or perhaps you'd rather listen to a certain song while writing (it tends to help me if I'm listening to a song that fits the current events of the story). Or, say you like hot chocolate, maybe you could be sure to have a cup of hot chocolate whenever you write. Whatever makes you happy, and whatever will make writing more pleasant for you. Once you've gotten past the idea that writing is a chore and it becomes a hobby of yours, you've fought half the battle and all that's left is to make a story.
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On Wednesday, I finished writing Book 3 of my fan fiction series, and all that's left is the final revisions of Chapter 20 and the Epilogue before I post them on Monday and Friday respectively. So I started writing the next installment in the series. The working (and most likely final) title is Story of the Dead. Despite the name, it will not be nearly as violent or death-filled as In the Dying Breath--the title refers to a tradition carried out by the Matoran of Ayomeii after the ending of Book 3, which is how the story comes about. In short, the Story of the Dead is a decennial storytelling about a dead hero, and at the time of Book 4, Onathei is the hero who is told about by none other than Turaga-Kal Xironu. The story starts out about 55 years after Chapter 19 of ITDB, but quickly jumps back over 10,000 years. This goes back to a time not too long after the Dyteeli Civil War, when the Ta-, Pa-, and Palif-Matoran have already been exiled to Ayomeii, killed the natives (with the help of the Onu-Matoran from Dyteeli), and had a bit of tension threatening to lead into an Ayomeii Civil War. Before this happened, the Palif-Matoran and Onu-Matoran were exiled to another supposedly uninhabited island, which is never named in the story (not just because I was lazy, there's a story reason for it =P). In Chapter 1, three Toa arrive on the island without warning and bring Toa stones for the two self-appointed kings of the island: Onathei and his Onu-Matoran friend Gyotaren. They also bring a very strange Ga-Matoran named Feyain, complete with her own Toa stone. By the end of Chapter 1, we have our three lead Toa. At the time of this writing, I'm a good ways into Chapter 2, but I won't go into that any further. Allow me to talk a little bit about the two new main characters: Gyotaren and Feyain. Gyotaren, to me, is not the most fun character to write (because Feyain quickly stole that title), but I have plans for him to become much more complex than he seems on the surface...just like the underground tunnel system that he is revealed to have created near the end of the book, though I probably shouldn't have said that. If Onathei is the Qedono of the group (and trust me, Onathei didn't seem like much of a troublemaker back in Book 1, but you should see how he was in the good old days XD), then Gyotaren is comparable to Lenurin. He's reserved and can be snappy, because he struggles with his own problems underneath the surface that he doesn't feel like he can talk about. In the end, this attitude is responsible for why we haven't heard of Gyotaren as a Turaga of Ayomeii--and why there are no Onu-Matoran on Ayomeii anymore. Feyain is an extremely interesting character. She is a puzzle to whom even I don't have the answers to yet. Despite being a Toa of Water, her armor is white with streaks of blue, and early on in the story it is found that she can control Ice as well as Water. She's much smaller than the average Toa, and has a badly wounded leg (though she doesn't let it stop her when she's in a hurry). The biggest problem with Feyain is that she doesn't talk. She can understand the Matoran language and can communicate through gestures, but she has a problem with talking and only says a few words throughout the course of the story. Onathei immediately takes it upon himself to teach her how to talk, but she isn't very receptive to this and only talks when it is absolutely necessary. Once she begins speaking, she picks up a few pet phrases, especially her favorite: "Go!" There's a good reason as to why we haven't heard of Feyain in the present time, a reason separate from Gyotaren's, and anyone who takes a few minutes to re-read Chapter 2 of Book 1 will be able to guess why. The villains of Book 4 are just as much an enigma as Feyain. We see our first glimpse of them in Chapter 2, but who they are will probably not be addressed until long, long afterwards. Also, anyone who has read this blog long enough before already knows a little bit about them from an entry posted almost a year ago: Surprise surprise: they weren't really hallucinations. =P It may be interesting to note that my brother's friend Austin made three MoCs, years ago, and I was so fond of them that I promised him that one day I would include them in a story of mine as villains. This was a time when Book 1 was still new, and Book 2 was being written. But I remembered all this time, and now that promise is finally realized in Story of the Dead. I have pictures of the MoCs on my computer, and will probably post them in the review topic or my blog as each villain appears in the story. I would give an excerpt from SOTD, but there are no real good points to excerpt from. However, I can provide this brief clip that I think sets up excitement for the story fairly well (the first speaker in the quote is Onathei):
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"Look ma, a cold, hungry, dying, blog!" "Don't touch that, Billy. You might catch the 'never-get-updated' disease." "Is that even a real disease?" "Of course it is! It's spread by the deadly 'Super Smash Bros. Brawl' germ." "Well, I hope whoever's blog this is comes back sometime to update it." "That would be nice, Billy, but the only thing that can stop a 'Super Smash Bros. Brawl' germ is a painful 'Real Life' injection, which has to be extracted from the venom of a 'Schoolwork' serpent. Unfortunately, this blog must not have been vaccinated against the Brawl germ before March 9th, when the germ took over a good deal of North America." "Wow... Can we go get some ice cream now?" -A conversation between a child and his mother, as heard on a security tape during the period this blog entered a state somewhere in between life and death. That "Real Life" injection was pretty painful... *rubs arm* So, yeah, I didn't forget I had a blog. The good news is that the emoticons thought I had, and they fled in search of a new power source (that is what they do y'know, leech off of blogs and posts like Metroids leech off of living creatures; my current theory is that they use this energy to power a super-vacuum cleaner which will eventually have enough power to absorb the Earth's atmosphere, causing humans to die a slow and painful death from lack of air and exposure to harmful radiation from the sun). The bad news is that if they see my blog is back alive...they'll come back. While I'm at it, might as well share this with all who are familiar with my epics. I've got a title down for the third book! It's not necessarily the final title, but there's a good chance it will be: With the Dying Breath or With His Dying Breath, or possibly just Dying Breath. The overlying theme of the entire book is death, and "Dying Breath" is the name of...I guess you could call it a place...at the very ending of the epic. Can't say anything else, because that would be a huge spoiler. Anyway, because I'm in a good mood...have an excerpt. This is from the beginning of Chapter 3, where Sihnozu and friends have come to the Matoran shelter where Tuitru and the Toa-Kal are, still littered with the bodies of League soldiers who died in the final conflict of The Tables Have Turned. Just two more weeks till the story is posted... I need to get working--I'm not even on Chapter 7 yet! =0
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My brother was surfing the BBC forum yesterday and found a topic entitled "Tuitru". Now at first he thought that this was some uncanny coincidence, because Tuitru is the name of a former soldier of the League of Six Kingdoms in my story. He is the last of an amphibious race that refused to be slaves for the League of Six Kingdoms and was crushed for it. When he was brainwashed by Kalmah and joined the League as Kalmah's lieutenant, he brought a lobster-like creature named Larzef along with him, as well as two vampiric sea squids and two creatures called Skwils whose purpose was to keep the squids from dying on land. But then my brother read the subtitle of the Tuitru topic. "From the epic To Be A Hero". Noxus-Toa of Iron was the creator of the MOC, which in fact was a representation of my character. The topic, found here, revealed that Noxus enjoyed my epic and Tuitru as a character, and decided to MOC him. The MOC is quite good IMO, so I've decided to make it the official representation of Tuitru in my stories. Here's the picture: Picture linked due to extreme hugeness Thanks again, Noxus-Toa of Iron! It's people like you, and my epic's reviewers (I'm looking at you, Toa Lepaka Mistika, Lhilertoro, and Takuta-Nui ), that make me glad I decided to post my work on BZPower. It's a nice warm fuzzy feeling. Maybe soon I'll post some pics of my (now non-canon) version of Tuitru, since I have my digital camera and I'm getting pretty good at using it. In other news, I got Icarax today, thus completing my collection of winter sets! I took pictures of the building process (58 of them to be exact ), despite the fact that I'll probably never do anything with the pictures. Oh well, it's good practice.
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Guest stars are no longer being accepted. If you're here, you probably followed a link in my sig or the review topic of my epic "To Be A Hero", interested in becoming a guest star in Book 3 of my Toa-Kal epic series. Now, you may be thinking that an epic with guest stars tends to get disorganized and less professional sounding. Seriously, you can't take any epic seriously when a passage reads, Thus there will be a few necessarily strict rules. 1. I am accepting six guest stars maximum. Positions are first come, first serve. However, if there's one position left and you ask me to guest star with a name that I don't approve of (like bioniculz_r_cool125924904, above), and then someone else gets approved before you choose a better name, I'll have to turn you down. 2. You must be a Toa, with an existing mask and a realistic element (you can create a new element, but within reason--no Time, Light, Shadow, or Life please). No Matoran with super-powers, nor any Turaga, will be permitted. And aside from mask and element, your Toa may not have any other powers or special attributes. As a side note, no male Toa of Water or Lightning and no female Toa of any male element. Update: As of now you must give a description of what your element can do if it is a new one. If it's one of the ones we already know on, don't bother elaborating. 3. Your name must not contain symbols (including apostrophes), numbers, or special capitalization. It must sound "Bionicle-y", which basically means no English words (or any other recognizable word from another language). It must not be an existing Bionicle word either. If you aren't sure if your name qualifies, leave a comment on this entry and I'll tell you. 4. Your personality must be specific, not just "he acts cool". If your personality isn't specific enough, I'll make one for you, but I can't guarantee you'll like it. 5. Your Toa's weapon must be within reason. A lightsaber is not exceptable. A sword is. 6. Your home island must also sound realistic, and cannot be any island we already know of. 7. Overall, just try to be realistic. You'll be able to tell what sounds ridiculous versus what could actually sound okay in an epic. Finally, the actual guest star form. Be sure to PM your completed form to me. If you comment on this entry with your guest star form, even if there's no other problem with it, I will ignore you. Name: Element: Mask: Toa Tool: Personalty: Home Island: Guest Stars: 1. Lepaka (Username: Toa Lepaka Mistika) 2. Lhilertoro (Username: Lhilertoro) 3. Tri (Username: Mistaka) 4. Ravnos (Username: Phantoka Lord) 5. Noxus (Username: Noxus-Toa of Iron) In case you were wondering your position in the story, you will be Toa coming from other islands to aid the Toa-Kal in the final battle against Sihnozu, Geoku, and Tekarou, who make an alliance early in the story and are bent on killing every living being on the island.
