Post Script – Evolution

After I finally got to bed last night (actually this morning), as my brain was teetering on the edge of Morpheus' realms, I realized that I hadn't gone into the evolution of my world. I had gone over the influences and the method of the process, but not the genuine evolution and growth of my ideas.

Let's do some wibbley-wobbley time travel , back about 30 years or so. I'd been playing D&D for a short time, acting as the Dungeon Master for a couple of long time friends, when I decided that I needed a world for them to adventure in. But I had absolutely no idea where to begin. So, I turned to the library for research. It didn't go well in the beginning, as I wanted something original and a little different from all the maps I looked at and all the stories I read.

Then one day I happened upon a small miracle – I found and bought a Gazeteer, of the known world for basic D&D. There was a poster sized map in that Gazeteer, and on the back of it was a blank hex graph, just waiting for a world to be drawn on it. And the wealth of ideas within! So, I whipped out my pencils, pens and markers, and got to work.

Looking back, from what I can remember, it was a very rudimentary design – a huge land mass, with multiple city-states and kingdoms on it, and not many seas or bodies of water. At that time, I hadn't really grasped the concept of ocean and underwater adventures. Most every civilization and nation was based on some version of medieval Europe, with a few vikings here, and a few ninjas there. I'm sure I named this world, but that is lost somewhere in the depths of my brain. And that original map – I wish to find it again, one day, hoping that I've packed it away in storage somewhere. I think it would be great to look back at the original design, for a little contrast and comparison.

From that initial design, it grew and morphed and mature over the years in between. The more resource material I was exposed to, the more ideas and threads I wanted to incorporate. I still have some of these intermediate maps, along with some of the notes I made for the kingdoms and realms and city states and barbarian tribes, most based off a different source of inspiration. Music albums, movies, novels, comic books, video games – these were most of my sources for creative arousal.

Most, but not all. The friends that I've made over the years and all the people that I've gamed with have had the MOST influence on the maturation process of my story and my world. They have helped point out the flaws with my mad ideas, and helped me better develop portions of the multiverse that my stories are set in. Another important service my friends have assisted me with is this secret - most all of the characters in my stories are based on people, or certain traits that these people displayed to me, that I have met and known through out my own life adventure. Some of these individuals have interesting enough traits to inspire more than one character, some characters are combinations of traits from different people. And what's the great part about this? For me, the friends that can identify the characters that are based off them. That makes me smile, knowing that my merge skills are good enough to convey that.

The name “Arcane Compass” didn't come about until a few years ago, from a furious brain storm that I was partaking of. The name of my world has changed and modified almost as much as the land masses and kingdoms themselves. The comic title has changed a few times over the years itself, starting out as part of an anthology small press production, going to it's own title, them becoming the digital medium of today. And the secret to the “Arcane Compass” name? It isn't a name for the world itself, but for a magical artifact that is yet to be discovered.

But, this is a story for another time, O' traveler.

Lord Pruitt