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Artix Krieger |Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Undead Lore

Our world is haunted my many different types of undead. From incorporeal ghosts, phantoms, and wraiths... to the corporeal zombies, skeletons, ghouls, vampires, Liches, and DoomKnights. Soon, in DoomWood, Artix will be happy to teach you our worlds most expert level undead lore-- including the extremely important differences between the color of an undead skeleton's eyes. If you see a Skeleton with red glowing eyes, it is an enslaved minion of the ShadowScythe. Blue glowing eyes? May the fates have mercy should you encounter the glowing blue eyes of a warrior of Dage's Undead Legion.



The Undead Legion

If you are a fan of AdventureQuest Worlds, then you are likely already acquainted with Dage's Undead Legion. But his full story has never been told... until now. Coming in two weeks (on the real life artist Dage's birthday), we will re-release the underworld challenge map that appeared last year along with a new, permanent, area-- which brave adventures can dungeon dive into for forbidden lore and loot at their own peril.



A Gateway to the Underworld?

As I am writing you, we do not know where this mysterious entrance to the Underworld is in our world. It may surprise you that it is very likely NOT in DoomWood. Such places are often in the most usual and unexpected locations.



The start of something much... much... bigger.

The language of the Underworld is called "undertongue." Some say that the size of the underworld is incomprehensibly large, dwarfing our world's surface. No single being has control over the entire Underworld. Fortunately, the place you will be exploring is merely a bridge between our realm and theirs. It is, of course, a place of great significance... and be ever on guard as to why you are brought there. Signing contracts in undertongue are just as binding as the ones written in our common language.

Behind the Scenes: "Story Circle"

I was talking with some players about story things on Twitter and made the comment that it would be awesome if some of our stories were made as comic books. So that night I wrote an outline for one. The next morning, re-reading it, I scowled at how incomprehensibly complex (and fanboy-ish) the thing I had just written was. Yes, it happens to me too. Then I remembered the Harmon Story Circle. Dan Harmon is the creator of Rick and Morty, Community, and other things-- he created a new way to make stories based roughly on the heroes journey from Joseph Cambell's "A Hero of a Thousand Faces". I had read Harmon's blog and watched a few videos-- but I was having a problem grok'ing the story circle. This took place in January when I was still sick. So I sat in bed with my 1 year old Daugher (also sick-- omg, the horrors that came out of her nose!) and we watched a half dozen youtube videos on the Harmon Circle until suddenly BAM! I grok'ed it. The next morning I was showing Alina how the story circle worked and almost without thinking about it outlined the story I had previously been working on. She looked at it and said, "OMG Artix... this is actually amazing. I would read this." You know how they say, strike while the anvil is hot? I went home that night and wrote plot outlines for over a half dozen books. It was insane.. they just lept off my pen onto the page. It was one of those type of nights... you know, the kind where you sit down at the dinner table and started writing. Next thing you know, you look up and it is nearly midnight, all the lights are out, and everyone has been long gone and is asleep and you never even noticed. What I really like about the story circle, is it does what every story teller does naturally... but serves as a reality check to make sure you are not forgetting anything critical. It sorta asks the tough questions. Whenever I learn something new I talk about it... A LOT. (Including to you-- here). So Dage and Thyton were curious and asked if I would do a story circle of their characters with them. We did. It was surprising! Dage was asked a lot of questions about his character that he never thought of. Up until that writing, we all loved Dage's character-- but after writing out his full story, we felt a tragic, human, haunted depth in his character-- which made us love him even more. It is my hope that this upcoming release introduces both new and existing players to a powerfully re-envisioned new Undead Legion. I expect it to lead to a much bigger story as the game world expands.

Ooh, also! Cysero will be taking over the design notes for the rest of this week! My martial arts Grand Master and I vowed that we would go out for some serious "mental training" a the end of last year. And it is finally time for the event we decided on. Late tonight, we are flying to Las Vegas for some fancy grieves businessy conference thingy (official corporate terms). I will only be posting things about this trip on my ArtixKrieger Facebook page if you would like to join me on that adventure. I will still be online and working nights. *looks at watch* I must go... my planet needs me. Battle on!