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a personal Nanowrimo site Prep Work Oops. No pre-July prep work for this one. I'm going to make it up as I go along. 07.12.04 Some Rough Notes on Terrain Imagine this as an alternate universe and the map looks somewhat vaguely like the United States. Cassius Ficket, the character from an eastern city, could be thought of as someone who grew up along the southeast coast, somewhere in the vacinity of Charleston maybe. The flora and fauna of this particular country, though, is quite different, literally fantastical. At the start of the story there are two towns mentioned, Division Junction and Copper Run. Distance and direction-wise from Ficket's hometown, they are located about the middle of Missouri. From here, an imaginary line stretches north and south deliniating the civilized world from the unknown. Past this line, whether or not it is desert, the people of this world call the Dustlands. The eastern edge of the Dustlands is a 100 to 150 mile strip of land that is indeed very flat, dusty, and hot. There are occasional creeks and streams. This part of the Dustlands is what keeps most people out. Dangerous beasts and the ghosts of former travelers keep guard. According to Ficket's map, after this strip of land is a series of canyons. On this world, millions of years before, a thick system of rivers inundated this land (not unlike our world's Amazon River basin). The rivers carved out the canyons in sandstone and granite alike leaving behind a very bizarre landscape. The rivers still exist, at the bottom of the canyons, and are still quite fierce, but nowhere near the majesty they were before. Then there is a wide river called the North River that divides the canyons from a forest. After that are the hills and mountains. These are shrouded in mists. Ficket's map ends at the mountains, as that is where Salamander Hill supposedly is located, but there is a bit of land beyond the mountains. What Ficket's map doesn't say is that there are pockets of civilization beyond the eastern Dustlands barrier. Its just that these cities and towns aren't populated by human beings. 07.06.04 About the Characters The heroine is Prudence Carrou, who is by trade, a trouver although she can't exactly put that on her business card. A trouver finds things via magical means but magic in Prudence's world can also mean death. Ultra religious fundamentalists called the Authority (or the Others) use their own powers to punish and kill anyone not brainwashed to believe in their god. Prudence isn't my first female character to wield a gun, but she is extremely trigger happy, especially when guys try to make a pass at her. Dash Martin is also a trouver. He is a closet romantic as well. He can't help himself when it comes to rescuing maidens in distress. That's also the reason why he always gets mobbed by women where his reputation is known. His relationship with Prudence is, to say the least, unresolved. As teenagers, they had both trained to become trouvers under Axel Redding and had viewed each other as competition but as they became older, it isn't quite the same. The instigator of the quest to find Salamander Hill is Cassius Ficket, a city man who inadvertently fell under the spell of a society belle who probably doesn't even know he exists. Ficket received a map to Salamander Hill from his eccentric cousin and wants to find the treasure purportedly hidden there to impress the object of his affections. Of course, this is the story that he tells his traveling companions. He might have ulterior motives. The wilderness guide who takes the group into the Dustlands, a.k.a. the end of the world, is William Altner. He's huge and imposing but he's spent most of his life wandering the edges of the Dustlands, finding sun-sands for a living. He's the best chance for the group's survival when they will encounter the Dustlands' hidden dangers. But is he to be trusted? Wilderness guides are also hunted down by the Authority because they use their powers to survive the rigors of the Dustlands, but their allegiances are quite shifty when it comes to other people. Copyright © 2001-2004, S. Y. Affolee  |