'Caliban's End' is the first series of fantasy books from Melbourne-based author Paul Francis Stewart. Many of the conventions of the genre have also been put aside in an attempt to create something unique. The first novel 'What Lies Beneath' was released mid-December 2008. The story continued in 'Into the Endless' (released January 2010) and concluded in 'Akin to Pity' (released March, 2010).
Ever have one of those really productive weekends when you just get heaps done. No? Well, I can't worry about you.
I was given Saturday afternoon and a fair slice of Sunday to work on Caliban's End and rather than spending the time wandering round the house and checking the fridge for something to eat, I just wrote... and wrote... and wrote. This morning I awoke at 6:30am, had a shower and was writing by 7am. I didn't stop until midday. And it wasn't a struggle!
I'm beginning to get the pay-off from writing in a non-linear fashion. This week-end was devoted to completing the final draft of Chapter 10, one of the trickiest chapters in the book. It starts with two almoners coming to Garlot Abbey to collect alms. It introduces the character of Cate Audrey (her picture's in the sidebar somewhere) who becomes more significant later on in Chapter 27. There's a quite a lovely sense of structure with this chapter as it reintroduces the character of Maeldune Canna who will be the catalyst for the drama that unfolds in Chapter 27.
More importantly, the chapter gives us great insight into Wade Grayson, who is the closest thing to a protagonist this book has. The majority of the chapter occurs as a flashback as Grayson sits in his room in the abbey contemplating events that had taken place 30 years earlier. If the book was written in a chronological fashion, this would be the first part of the novel. This chapter explores why Wade Grayson packs his twin brother off to a leper colony. It presents a moral dilemma that will hopefully lead readers to considering what they would have done if they were in the same position. It is in this chapter we meet the Morgai Lilith Cortese.
I really enjoyed writing Lilith's vision sequence. I was worried about this part, thinking it would be difficult to write, but now I have the entire book nailed down in draft format, it was quite a painless passage to pen. In this sequence Lilith presents Wade with a series of images that paint a rather bleak future for Terra. Wade sees the monster his twin will become and is catapulted into actions he would wrestle with for the rest of his life.
I'll finish this blog entry with something completely unrelated to Chapter 10. If you look below you will see a picture I came across whilst I was perambulating down the web's many paths. I found it on at: http://www.androidblues.com/gallery/34/.
It's by an artist called Steven Stahlberg (an ex-pat Australian no less). Now I haven't received permission to put this image up but believe me it wasn't for lack of trying. I spent a good hour trying to track the artist's email but his site didn't have it nor did any of the message boards. I will put it up here for now, and hopefully he won't mind as I think his artwork is brilliant. Reminds me of the fantasy stuff of Frank Frazetta I adored as a young pup. Just click on it to get a better view.
I had big pots of money to throw around, I would definitely employ this guy to illustrate my book, or be the art designer on the film when New Line approach me with a blank cheque. In many ways, the picture resembles the plight of Lara Brand's baby Birren who is kidnapped by the Ghul and kept captive in the harsh, rocky realm of the Endless. The young girl's naivete and vulnerability echoes the dreadful situation into which Birren Brand is placed.
That will do for now. It's a warm Sunday night here and time for dinner.
Bye now. Paul
p.s. Hope you like the funky word counter I added at the side. It should give an indication of how things are progressing!
Hi. Welcome back. Today is a stinking hot day but I don't care because I just finished my second podcast for Caliban's End. I have put links to my podcasts on the sidebar (but when the novel's closer to being finished I'll have them hosted on iTunes... or somewhere like that). This second podcast explores the technical side to this project. I thought I'd base this post on the same subject. You will find links to all the applications I use that are either freeware or open source. I thoroughly recommend trying a few of this out. What elements of IT are embedded in the project?
Firstly, there's the chapters which are quite simply written up in Microsoft Word. If I were starting from scratch, I'd probably use Open Office. I know I could migrate everything onto Open Office, but I'm not a big one for changing such things midstream. I do all my notes and research on EditPadLite which is simply brilliant as it is a notepad with tabs so I can have many pages accessible at once, without having to constantly minimise to move between them. It is available from JGSoft. A really good alternative to this could be ZuluPad which also allows the user to hyperlink between pages. I think I'll use this on my next novel. Yes, I plan to do more.
I also use Adobe Acrobat to convert the Word files into a single PDF document. If I didn't have this, I'd probably use an converter like PDFonline.
I have four facilities for backups. I have a free account with box.net which allows for 1GB of free online storage. I also email to my gmail account every time I add to a single chapter. I am religious in doing this, and the beauty of being able to tag email in gmail means that I can always easily retrieve what I need. Occasionally I also backup to memory stick and CD. I know this seems like overkill, but I constantly remind myself what I would be like if I lost work and it's best not to release that beast from its cage.
I have really two Internet presences for Caliban's End, a blogsite and a wiki. Firstly let's look at why I chose Blogger. As i have a lot of things tied into Google (e.g. Gmail, Google Notes, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Reader etc.) it made sense to choose a blog facility that made life easy. I can access my blog without remembering anothing account name and password and that sort of consolidation is important for busy people (among whom I count myself). Also, I have used Blogger for other blogs, I like the interface, I love the tagging facility and I know it will be supported into the indefinite future.
For my wiki, I use pbwiki.com. I can't recommend this company enough. The support I have received has been phenomemal and the wiki is really robust. The folks at pbwiki even recorded the intro for my podcast on the day I asked them and sent back three versions of the intro to accommodate my needs. If you don't know how to find it, the wiki for Caliban's End can be found at www.calibansend.pbwiki.com. I chose a wiki over a plain website for two simple reasons. 1. I want people to be able to contribute comments and a wiki was the easiest way to facilitate this. 2. It's a lot easier to maintain a wiki than a website. I did have a website for Caliban's End, but I found the time I was giving to author to it and make modifications was time I did not have to spare. Also, because my original website was written in Frontpage with heaps of tables and highly specific formatting, it was looking decidedly awful in some people's browsers. I'd much rather adhere to standards via a wiki.
As discussed in my last post, you also see a voting facility on my blog from Neomyz. I plan to use this a lot more. Although there are limitations with the free version, it certainly meets my needs. It was extremely easy to build into the blog - I just copied the html into the right place on my sidebar.
For the art of Caliban's End, I have predominantly used Corel PhotoPaint , which I find to be just as useful as Photoshop. I know a lot of people will say that Photoshop's the only way, but for what I want to do, Corel's works well for me. I tend to do my lettering in Macromedia's Fireworks - it just does that sort of thing really well. I also did the map of Terra (see below - at the end of this post) in Fireworks.
I've played around a bit with Vue 3D for landscapes and over the next six months plan to do a lot more of that. I'm lucky in that I have access to this software as part of my fulltime job, but there are plenty of open source alternatives other writer/artists could employ. I also use Picasa to keep track of my images, and occasionally use Faststone to crunch down the size of images.
Most of the pictures I have used on the Caliban's End wiki and on my blog I have obtained from Creative Commons searches on Flickr. Initially, I was just pilfering images from Google images searches, but it did not sit well with me that I did not have permission to manipulate the images in the way I have. The Creative Commons licence allows me to use the pictures I find. The same licence applies to the images I create, but I have no problem with others using these pictures under the same arrangement. In the case of the Creative Commons pictures, I have cited attribution into the webpage, so a user only needs to right-click on an image to see its attribution.
Similarly, any music I use that I haven't created will also exist under a Creative Commons licence. I have found the best site to source such files is Freesound. The opening music for the Calibanned podcast comes from this site. The selection of this music was a little freaky. I wanted to avoided the symphonic music that is often associated with fantasy especially in games and films. I also wanted to avoided anything bombastic. The music that had an slightly exotic feel but not be obviously tied to any one culture. I stumbled across the piece I use and fell in love with it. I think the language is Spanish. It wasn't until I'd chosen it that I noticed the name of the piece: 'Festa de la terra', which I think translates to Festival of the Land. Each year in April they celebrate the "Festa de la terra" in Barcelona. This music is actually a yoga group recorded singing during a workshop held during this event. Curiously, Caliban's End is set in Terra. It was one of those coincidences that suggest the existence of providence.
I also use del.icio.us for bookmarking any webpage that could be relevant to Caliban's End. If you don't use deli.icio.us, it's time to start. It's fast, easy and I can access my favourites from any computer. It also integrates beautifully with Firefox, my browser of choice, available from www.mozilla.com. I also use Google Notebook to quickly grab text and pictures from web pages that I may want to use later on.
When I write I sometimes get stuck for synonyms or definitions. The first place I go is to my toolbar where my WordWeb patiently waits for me to show it some attention. I use WordWeb 4.5a which is free to download and use. If this does not give me what I need, I open up a program called Thinkmap's Visual Thesaurus, which is a little costly at $US 39.95 but it's pretty special. Now I know I could use a dictionary, but I don't really need one. It's more efficient and effective to use the electronic equivalent.
Now onto podcasts.
I like the idea of guerilla podcasting. What this means is keep the technical aspects simple and light. I record straight into an mp3 recorder (at the moment I am using an iRiver T series mp3 recorder but I'll have to give that back in a week when I leave for my new job). I then throw the recorded mp3 into a little app called Mp3 Gain which improves the audio quality especially for voice recordings. This podcast I am going to try something new that I stumbled across recently. It's a little Java applet called The Levelator, available freely from GigaVox media. All you have to do is drop your recording onto the applet and it will create a new one with considerably improved sound quality. Unfortunately, at the moment, the sound file has to be a WAV file, so I'll convert my recorded mp3 into a WAV via Audacity and then drop it into the Levelator. I'll then edit the WAV in Audacity and export it as an mp3, ready for the world to hear. Although I have access to Adobe Audition here at work, it's overkill for what I want to do, so I use Audacity for all mixing and editing. It's free and beautiful to use.
Now at the time of recording this, I'm just uploading my podcasts to my wiki (so they aren't technically podcasts yet). I haven't explored having my podcasts hosted on networks such as iTunes, but when I do I'll pop something in my blog about all that. What I do want to briefly discuss is my thoughts on podcasting which has become such an essential part of my day.
What I love about podcasts is how time-efficient they are. I'm not sure many people remark on this but I just love how much time podcasts give me. I subscribe so I don't have to constantly seek out the newest podcasts, they download as I do other things and I listen to them as I carry out mundane tasks like driving to work, watering the garden and vacuuming the house. I can also listen to them as I go on walks, but I don't consider that a mundane task. I hope that some people will listen to my podcasts in the same way. If not, I'm sure some insomniacs could find a use for them.
I thought I'd list some of the podcasts I really enjoy. I won't supply URLs to each podcast's website but if you throw the names into a search in iTunes, you will find them in seconds. Just hit the subscribe button and you'll start downloading the latest podcast (and automatically download all future ones when they come online). If you're new to iTunes, you don't need an iPod (but it works even better if you do!) Now this isn't all of the podcasts I subscribe to, just some of the best. I know there are tonnes more I should be listening to, but occasionally you have to take the earplugs out to do other things!
For writing, I listen to:
Michael A Stackpole's 'The Secrets'
Mur Lafferty's 'I should be writing'
For technology, I listen to:
Cranky Geeks
Diggnation
GeekBrief.tv
Web 2.0 Show and
Inside the Net
For gaming, I listen to and watch:
The 1 UP Show
On the Spot
The Hot Spot
A number of other podcasts that are must listen-to's are:
43 Folders. If you need help getting yourself organised, then this one's for you.
The podcasts of Fr Roderick. Fr Roderick is a Catholic priests who explores themes in films and books. Initially I approached these podcasts with some trepidation but his views are extremely honest and open-minded.
For entertainment I listen to and watch:
The Ricky Gervais Podcast
Happy Tree Friends (although this is certainly not for the faint-hearted)
Ask A Ninja
Numerous podcasts devoted to Harry Potter, Battlestar Galactica, Buffy, Angel and so.
Well, that should do for another blog post. Try out some of the applications I've mentioned and let me know how they go by dropping a comment on this post or sending me an email @: calibans.end@gmail.com.
p.s. Check out my map below. It should give you a sense of just how big the world of Caliban's End is!
Over the past three weeks, I have written about three paragraphs of the novel. Things have been a little hectic being Christmas time and all. I guess getting a new job also has added to the chaos.
I plan to return to regular writing next week, but that doesn't mean I haven't done anything for the book. (Oh dear, a double negative - that's not good writing). I discover a funky Web 2.0 app @ http://www.neomyz.com/ and I thought I'd test it out in this blog. The survey below is a little hard for anyone but me to answer as no-one has yet read the book (and cannot have a favourite character) but I'll leave it on the blog as a test. Hopefully this works! I'll add it to the side of the page. Please respond (it's just a test!)
What Lies Beneath is $(US)14.90 for the paperback (478 pages). The PDF download is free; you can download it here.
Into the Endless is $(US)11.95 for the paperback (340 pages). The PDF download is free; you can download it here.
Akin to Pity is $(US)11.95 for the paperback (356 pages). The PDF is free; you can download it here.
The World of Caliban's End
Explore the world of Paul Stewart's Caliban's End. This remarkable wiki contains the complete text of both books, as well as individual entries for every character, place, beast and object in the epic saga.
Lara swung her arms upwards with all her might and hurled her child into the trees above, hoping beyond all hope that Birren had the strength and instinct to hold onto a branch. The child’s prehensile tail thrashed about in the air as it flew upwards and upon finding a slender branch, whipped around it instinctively. Lara could see her baby’s silhouette merge with the dark shadows of the canopy above and when she did not fall, a feeling of intense relief fell upon her like rain.
Central Tower, Sarras
This tower, simply called Central, was much taller than all the towers through which he had passed on his high-speed journey to Sarras. His line was one of three adjoining the tower. His slider slowed down as his line leveled off. Tagtug could see a similar cable coming in from the east. His view of the southern line was obstructed by the colossal tower which, like every other transit tower, had its metal outer shell removed. Tagtug slid to a halt and gingerly stepped off the slider, his muscles taut and aching from hours and hours of concentrated effort.
Adzoba Aethelflaed
He scrutinized the Scorian, his eyes narrowing at the sight of the knight’s pristine golden armour and helm. The bright read plume that ran down the centre of Sir Edgar’s helm received a particularly scornful look. “You look too pretty to be much good to us,” he said gruffly as the knight made his way towards him, leading his timorous snorse gently by the reins as he came. “Are they all so clean and shiny back in Pelinore?”
Abaddon
The creature’s name was Abaddon and it was one of the most unusual looking members of the Cabal. It had no limbs, no head, no tail. It was simply a large gelatinous sphere with one distinctive feature - in the centre of the transparent blubber, a solitary eye twisted and turned frenetically, scanning the mire beneath it and the fog-filled sky above.
Peg'ii
And the last thing she saw was a pair of peg'ii flying across the fields of the sky to the cloudy pastures beyond.
The Crouching Mountain
Taking a large gulp of air that caused the wind to change direction, Kyuukyuu walked across the floor of the sea, past pods of great leviatha and herds of nep'gii. After walking for many days, holding his breath all the while, he noticed that the sea floor began to rise. Soon he found himself on the shores of Kompira. His eyes widened when he saw the beautiful land before him, but despite the loveliness of the forests and the arousing scent of the purple mists, he found he was exhausted and had to lie down. So he cleared a spot of forest not far from the golden shoreline and lay down to rest. His exhaustion was so great that he fell into the deepest sleep, a sleep from which he is still yet to wake.
Bith Brand
Bith Brand sang a sad tune and the long plaintive notes floated up through the leaves and hung upon the branches. Lara closed her eyes and listened to her mother’s song. It was a ballad about a woman whose love had gone across the sea. The woman was heart-broken and was setting off across the water to find the one she had lost. Lara didn’t really understand the song – she had never even seen the sea – but the doleful melody was strangely soothing and Lara could feel herself getting drowsy as she listened to it. Underneath her lace top Lara’s heart glowed, and the intricate white filigree of her shirt was suffused with a gentle blue light.
Arrowfish
Suddenly, an Arion arrowfish shot high into the air. The mother bellycan opened her wings to steady herself as she leaned back slightly, and positioned herself directly under the arrowfish as it reached the apogee of its brief flight into the air. The fish plummeted back down and the bellycan extended a large pouch that had been hidden under the feathers covering the bird’s stomach. The arrowfish plopped straight into the bellycan’s pouch which then closed instantly, storing the catch for the family meal that evening. Although books had been written on the subject, no-one truly understood the reasons for the arrowfish’s perplexing suicidal flight.
The Worldpool
Five leagues from the churning vortex, translucent ice floes could be found, stretching out across the pale blue surface of the lake. Any ships that came within two leagues of the Worldpool risked being battered by crystalline icebergs that roamed the lake’s centre like silent predators, waiting for a vessel that had strayed too close. The waters closer to the Worldpool were wrapped in mystery as no vessel had ever returned from wandering so close to the maw. Nothing escaped. It was believed that even time itself was disturbed so close to the malevolent sinkhole. The lake’s centre was a living contradiction, a turbulent place where frozen waters were roused into violent motion, where waters made white by the freezing heart of the lake succumbed to its darkness and disappeared to a forgotten realm below. And yet, inexplicably, from dawn to dusk, the sun always shone on the Worldpool. It was if the clouds were too scared to venture so close to the glaciated maelstrom. It was a black hole, reaching out and sucking in all it could under eternally sunny skies.
Flummox
Kali heard a tiny growling sound at his feet. In the dirt before him, a twin-headed flummox sat with a round kor-kor nut in its small, pudgy hands. Although diminutive in size, being no larger than Kali's foot, the flummox was as irascible and pugnacious a beast as one could find on Terra. The flummox's two heads were facing each other, two pairs of bulbous green eyes staring at each other in a confrontation that was typical amongst the two-headed rodents that infested the Kolpian hills. Suddenly, the left head tilted right back, the mouth opening to an impossible wide degree. As the mouth opened, the flummox lifted this head up high on its neck. The head on the right cowered but the creature would not lift a hand in defence for fear of losing possession of the kor-kor nut. With a ferocity that would make a marrok squirm, the flummox's left head swooped down on the right, enveloping it entirely. Sharp incisors sheared through the right head's neck and in one of the world's most obscene animal behaviours, the flummox swallowed its own head. The violence of self-decapitation done, the flummox then spent the next few minutes yelping as the pain from its self-inflicted wound ripped through its entire body. A few minutes more and it collapsed to the ground dead, the trauma of the wound and the accompanying loss of blood too much for the little animal to bear.
Arinna Brine
Arinna Brine hung from the wide branch of the watercherry tree. In her head hundreds of voices cried aloud, tried to drown each other out.
Adzoba Aethelflaed
Juliet yelped with fright and skidded to a halt. Before them stood a man taller than any Edgar had ever seen before. He was at least eight foot tall, even taller if one counted the massive horn that grew from the man’s forehead. The distinctive keratin projection rising two feet from the man’s skull marked him as a Kheperan, a race that lived in the deserts to the south of Lake Erras. Edgar had never met a Kheperan before, but he knew of them – their reputation for having short tempers and an endless supply of stubbornness preceded them.
Morgai: Gabriel
A few strands of red hair amongst the grey hinted at the vibrant locks Gabriel had in her youth, but that was centuries ago in a distant land.
The Endless
It was a sound that Lara had not heard in months. Somewhere in the crimson glow ahead a baby could be heard crying. Lara’s heart skipped a beat and the glowing light from her chest shone so brightly, it pierced the fabric of her cloak.
Jehenna Canna
Aloof, raven-haired and stately, Jehenna carried herself with cool dignity, as if her pride were a coat of arms. She raised the crossbow mounted on her forearm and dispatched a bolt, stealing the sugarapple from Ross' hand and nailing it to the beam behind him. The Tethran was so stunned by her reaction, his mouth was still open and his hand cupped as if he still held the apple.
Palia
The manifesto listed two passengers: Wade Grayson and his twin brother, a leper by the name of Caliban. The latter was particularly memorable. The day he arrived in Palia, he was placed in the quarantine station where all lepers destined for Sanctuary were kept until the boat taking them across the treacherous waters was ready to depart. Caliban had been brought into the station kicking and screaming. He pleaded with the locals to release him and when the Palians refused, he swore he would have the bloodiest of revenges upon the world and that the sleepy hamlet of Palia would be first to bleed.
The Morrigu
But it was no bird. Its name was the Morrigu and it had somehow risen from centuries of imprisonment beneath the mountains. The fiend was terrible sight. Long, black oily feathers covered a body over fifty feet from head to tail. Its face was a mockery of a man’s, expressive, cunning and cruel. A dark serrated beak was fixed in a maniacal grin above which eyes as dark as a starless night flickered and twitched ceaselessly.
The Marid
The Marid stretched before them like an open wound, red, raw and full of pain. “Well, what are we waiting for?” said Gerriod. “If we’re going to do this thing, we better get going now."
Sulis
The triplet moons shone down on Sulis. Pylos walked out onto his balcony to take in the evening air. Below him the city streets spread out in intricate patterns, bathed in the silvery light raining down from the night sky. All over the city, the amber light of lanterns flickered outside the houses on the main streets. The comforting drone of sandcadas reverberated across the city. Above this gentle hum, the General could hear snippets of conversation float up from the café on the street below.
Claudia Kallady
She could have chosen to spend a life of luxury living a pampered existence surrounded by wealth few Terrans could dream of, but Claudia Kallady's brains simply would not allow it. In order to pursue her research with the sort of dedication only geniuses understood, she removed herself from the Imperial Palace in Elidor and lived a lonely yet satisfying life on the far side of the known world.
Nilfheim, Sessymir
Adding to the gathering darkness, plumes of black smoke poured out of countless foundries and smelter houses, staining the low lying clouds with their filth. The snow which fell on the tightly-packed metropolis was anything but pristine; it dropped in grey lumps, sullied by the pollution the mines spewed into the skies.
The Sedomo
“Sir, if today is the day that you deem to be loquacious, perhaps you could adopt a less fractious tone. The Sedomo are a race of savages bereft of any appreciation of tone or hue. Their attack upon me was typical of their barbarous, recusant ways.”
SUMI KIMURA
As he rose, Sumi swung her left leg around, sweeping her husband clear off his feet. His face would have hit the wooden floor hard if it were not for the plate of overly ripe berries between it and the deck. When Trojamu regained his feet, Sumi was delighted by the gorseberry juice that had stained his face purple.
Mag Mel
Edgar could make out the tortured shapes of leafless trees on either side of the boardwalk. The ground at the base of the trees was hidden under a thick carpet of mist. The knight wondered if there was any solid ground in Mag Mel. As far as he could tell, the entire swamp was just a bubbling cauldron of cold, mucilaginous mud. The boardwalk just stretched on before him, occasionally lit up by lanterns that illuminated the dank tendrils of fog that curled about in the air.
Discovery
Suddenly the white, guilded sides fell away from the ship and swung forward, turning as they did so. These fins then gently swept backward stroking through the water in a magnificent arc. Modelled on the giant white turtla of the Arion Ocean, Discovery’s anthropomorphic body floated in the deep blue harbour, her limbs gently pushing through the water causing concentric circles to radiate from her hull.
Pylos Castalia
The General stared at the bloodied ground whilst he toyed with a rock at his feet. "Why? I'm surprised you asked," Pylos said quietly. "Look at me. I'm a monster."
Scoriath
On the first day, the party had moved through pretty fields and farms where dull-eyed grizzums grazed on the flowerfall, and sky-filling flocks of larida owned the heavens. But as the rode north farms gave way to fen and fen to bog. The green and gold of the grass faded and the land and sky met in a grey embrace.
JONAS KALLADY
He was rather rotund for an Acoran and his fair skin was burnt under the harsh sun of the Helyan coast. His bald head was graced by a few defiant strands of long, blonde hair.
Marroks
These beasts, the marroks, were indigenous to Morae and had for centuries regarded themselves to be the natural predators of the Pryderi; it spoke volumes of their evil nature that they had allowed themselves to be trained by the Ghul. Evil it seemed could recognize itself in other species and the marrok quickly found that the Ghul could supply them with enough Pryderi meat to satisfy their ravenous appetites.
Lilith Cortese
"I must warn you of the road you are about to walk upon. It is paved in contradictions and ironies. You seek the future and that is hidden from you for a reason.”
Grisandole
The Isle of Grisandole lay directly ahead. The isle itself thrust up from the dark depths of the ocean to the equally brooding depths of the sky. Grisandole was even more barren and depressing than Lara had imagined. No trees or plants clung to the steep mountainside of the island. No beach encircled it. No seabirds flew above it. It was a place as lifeless as Terra’s distant moons. All was rock upon which nothing moved, save for the endlessly buffeting wind and waves. The peak of the conical isle was crowned with tall black towers and battlements devoid of flags or any other sign of habitation. On its own, the Morgai citadel seemed immense but in the context of the empty, lonely landscape surrounding it, it seemed insignificant. Its crumbling columns ineffectually pricked the thick skin of the sky.
The Sapphyrro
The Sapphyrro were unusual looking by most races’ standards. They stood five foot tall on average, with no significant difference between males and females. Sympathetic brown eyes as large as soup bowls peered out from benign faces of grey-blue. Hair as white as foam flowed from the back of the head onto a carapace encasing a sinewy body covered in gossamer thin velvety fur. The shell surrounding the torso formed a natural suit of armour, and yet the civilized, peaceful natives of Skyfall Town had no known predators (other than Time and even its immutable will had softened in regards to the Sapphyrro who lived well beyond the years of all the other races of Terra; death took them tenderly, like a gentle wave on the shores of a quiet lake). Stout, muscular legs and long arms ending in large, three fingered hands sprung from openings in the shell.
Cate Audrey
Her hand brushed his as she took from him the large wooden box filled with coins. Oblivious to the effect she had on him, and on all males with whom she came into contact, Cate turned and skipped over to the snorse tethered to the statue at the centre of the courtyard.
Sessymir
"Okay. So we’ve got razor sharp rocks, bottomless drops, and crazed beasts. What else?"
Caliban's End: The Film
Grace Park, Patrick Stewart, Samuel L Jackson, Viggo Mortenson, Katie Sackhoff and Jewel Stait
Wade Grayson
"I am Morgai. I know what is in the hearts of men."
The Cabal
“I think we can say with a certain indefatigability that the Cabal will seek to dispose of us in ways so unsavoury, it would be prudent not to dwell upon them.”
Maeldune Canna
The Acoran reached down and swept up the knobbly bone staff. For a second, he weighed it in his hands and then in a motion that was as unexpected as it was fluid, he swung the staff around and slammed it across Samuel Melkin’s skull. The crack of bone on bone reverberated around the cavern and Melkin dropped to the stone floor with a sickening thud.
Lara Brand
"I'm not brave, Arinna. Just desperate. There's a difference."
The Skyfall
The ridge ran up the centre of the overhang, resembling the bumps and deviations of the spine of a gargantuan beast arching its back.
Caliban Grayson
"Only emptiness is pure, Wade, and if that's true, then I have the purest heart of all."
Trypp Elan
In the common tongue the overhang was known as Climber’s Despair, though few had ever laid eyes on it.
Susano
Spriggans were usually frugal in most transactions, but Kappo was unlike most Spriggans. He had given up a life of travelling the world selling Kobold goods, preferring instead the quiet life he had discovered in Susano.
Bannick Landen
The Ambassador quietly nodded to the gathering, but the brash Bannick stood up and bowed, enjoying the show. The eyes of every female in the chamber lingered on him and he knew it.
Khepera
The hammer of the sun crashed down upon the fervid anvil beneath the fisherman's feet. Gerriod could feel his tender skin burning through the thin leather soles of his boots but limped on, desperately hoping that the city of El Khadir would soon come into view.
The Endless
The fisherman was in a vast cavern. The rock had a phosphorescent quality and emanated the most delicate red glow. High, high above the cascading waters of the Worldpool were gently tinged with the supernal glow of night seeping in from the world above, giving a softness to the dreadful surge that crashed into the Endless with deafening ferocity. The ethereal illumination of the stony surrounds revealed a dark, ulterior lake into which the blue waters of Lake Erras were poured and mixed until they became black.
Rama Ta
A gentleman perhaps, but not one without his failings. The blind man seemed to be a narcoleptic and had slept for most of the journey, a situation exacerbated by the fact that he was a frequent snorer. Not the quiet, gentle snorting that could almost be considered endearing. No, Rama indulged in an impossibly loud, basket-rattling snore that seemed to put his very life in danger.
The Fortitude
She was one of the finest vessels in the Acoran navy. The ship was called The Fortitude . She was a clipper, only two weeks old. She was testimony to the Acora’s obsession with maritime speed, the fastest, most elegant sailing vessel Terra had ever seen – long and lean with a prow as sharp as a sword. Above the deck a great cumulus of sails billowed in the northerly breeze.
Lokasenna Hagen
"Oh I know you only too well Lokasenna Hagen. I know the hate you harbour in your heart. I know how you have been treated. I am well aware of how Sessymirians deal with their bastard children."
'One Last Time' © Steven Stahlberg 2007
