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houseofstrangeI feel I should put this story concept over here, because I am fond of it. It's not a Nightlands one, but one of my dream-based things.
To explain the original dream, A girl living in a rural area attending a local festival (in a place that looked like a suburban park with some huts on it) gets attacked by a demon-dog (which looked like the dog-monsters from Ghostbusters (1984)) and maybe by a big threatening muscled guy. To get help dealing with this she has to go to the Tower of Sorcery to the west (seriously the dream had sunset in the background). In the dream the tower looked like a Sims 3 Laundry Bear the size of the Burj Khalifa (though I thought of it as a "yeti") and was specifically the tower of an "Ice Queen" type of character. Main Female Character however has to cross through a sprawling city to get there. In starting to cross the city she gets held up by ninja-mages, but a Warcraft movieverse Medivh-lookalike turns up to help her and there was an implied connection there.
Now that is all the dream had, so everything from there was me carrying on the imagery.
So first, I thought up a concept that the world is magically dominated by two major arcane wells, each of which are controlled by a person. This control goes in cycles of a thousand years, and the current ruler of each well loses control, the wells become dangerous for a short time before they open up for someone to claim them.
Second, mages have degrees of magical affinity. Most mages are not immediately in tune with each other and the process of doing group magic has to led into by aligning with each other. A good part of ritual magic is all about all the participants aligning so they can do the actual magic.
Now what makes Medivh-lookalike and Main Female Character different is that the instant their magic comes into contact, it aligns perfectly - an occurrence that is super-rare and usually precedes a romantic relationship and the combination of their magic being greater than the sum of it's parts.
So ML helps MFC out of her situation and then transports her straight to the Tower of Sorcery (which in my head is not a giant yeti, but more like a tower of crystal) so they can work things out and she can be trained (she is a powerful sorceress, but totally untrained and inexperienced), which immediately bring her up in front of The Sorceress - the mistress of the Tower and the one in control of the Well of Light, which is located in the Tower. She insists on separating them to start with, but that stresses MFC out badly and ML sneaks his magic cloak to her, so she has a small piece of him to soothe her, though that also gets The Sorceress annoyed, trying to take it away, but ML steps in and takes her to task over it, and the lack of wisdom in forcing them to be separate.
This brings up the real issue the Sorceress has - she had another perfectly aligned bond, like ML and MFC's, but hers turned sour when her barbarian warrior bondmate turned against her when he became convinced she was trying to weaken him. This led to him setting out to claim the Dark Well when the previous lord of it lost control, while the Sorceress, scared of what that would do, went for the Light Well.
The importance of this is that the next destabilization of the Wells - the event where the lords of the Wells lose control and someone new can claim them - is coming soon and the Sorceress wants to be sure of ML and MFC's bond so that they can claim both Wells and put an end to the millennium of magic war that the Sorceress and her Barbarian bondmate had engendered.
Now I am vague on the details on what happens when the destablization hits, other than MFC has to travel to the Dark Lands and at least part of the trip has to be done on foot because within a certain distance to the Well, magical travel cannot be done, and the Barbarian has flunkies wanting to take the Well themselves, while the Barbarian himself goes to lay claim to the Light Well after losing the Dark one, and there is fighting in both locations, but in the end ML takes the Light Well when it becomes available again, and MFC takes the Dark Well, bringing the world back into balance, and better balance than before since ML and MFC have a better relationship.
The aftereffects are that the Barbarian, left with no Well, has to rethink his position, and also rethink his relationship to the Sorceress. With ML frequently going to help MFC settle things in the Dark Lands, the Barbarian ends up taking control of the Tower, but mostly considers how the magic school held there is run to be acceptable, but the battle magic part needs more actual combat training in it. While he is doing this, he kinda locks the Sorceress in her private quarters and engages in a seduction of her over a period of time.
So the points of this that have really been on my mind is the two relationships involved - ML and MFC, and the Sorceress and Barbarian. These involve porn. Lots of porn.
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So random side-story is that at the point of MFC finally taking the Dark well, elsewhere in the Dark Lands a group of plucky adventurers are trying to fight an "evil" lord of one of the sub-regions.
I would note an idea that the Two Great Wells are not the only arcane wells around, and their are lesser ones that are ultimately subject to one of the Great Two.
This particular lord holds a well and thus also rules the land around it. It's a rough land, predominantly inhabited by non-humans like orcs, goblins and dark fae.
The shock of the Great Well being taken upsets a fight in progress and gives the lord of the area a chance to take the invading adventurers captive, though to their puzzlement they get housed in quite comfortable quarters, with appropriate facilities and food made available... though their team's mage is missing.
For her part, the staff of the fortress strip her and dress her in some very suggestive clothing and send her to His Lordship's personal rooms, wearing enchanted shackles and a collar. However when he finally returns to his rooms he does not notice her straight away, stripping of the spikey intimidating armour he wears to reveal a seemingly totally normal human man who just seems tired and exasperated. Then a movement from the mage draws his notice and after briefly looking her over... blasts the shackles and collar into dust and summons her a warm comfy robe and proceeds to lament at length at how his dark fae staff frequently presume his will and do stupid things like setting up pretty female guests as his sex slaves when he didn't want them to do any such thing.
It turns out he kind-of accidentally became the lord of that area when he inadvertently claimed the arcane well and now has to manage the lands around it and can only do so playing the "Evil Lord" role.
Barring possible porn involved, I have not considered further, though the idea that these adventurers decide to enlist to help the lord of the area is one idea.
Yes, I am still thinking this one over, and I had a line of thought that the mage-girl of the adventuring party is a White Mage more or less in line with Final Fantasy concept (though I think with a bit more ballistic ability) and has empathic abilities as well. Now I do think she can turn them off or at least control it. She finds herself very quickly coming to sympathise with the reluctant "Evil" Lord, offering him support and friendship to cope with his role of managing his troublesome lands.
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I have been thinking on the side-story and trying to square up the idea of mages needing to synchronize their magic with the idea of an empathic mage and it comes to my mind that empaths have an ability that requires them to be able to sync with someone far more easily than a normal mage. This in turn dictates that one, if a perfect sync is a highly desired event, then empaths would be in high demand, even to the point of being targets for enslavement. In turn that also means they would be extremely rare and also very cautious in showing their ability. As a side effect that implies the White Mage of the side-story is either way too trusting when she see the faux-Dark Lord at a low point, a bit too young to have fully developed a cautious attitude, and damn lucky he was actually a nice guy in a shit job, who decides he will protect her for as long as she wishes it.
On another aside, I came up with the name Madigaan for ML and Anaah for MFC. Side-story does have names yet, though any names forthcoming with have doubled As and Hs on A-ending names.
Added names: Krystiaah for the Sorceress - the one who is the mistress of the Light Well before destabilization.
Given that I am still coming up with names, it means this is still on my mind. It's currently the side-story at the moment, but sometimes it links back to the main story, given that I have a line of thought about Anaah dropping in on Faux-DL's fortress to look in on him after she has her stuff stabilised.
Actually, a bit on that visit, White Mage's party of adventurers consists of:
Brave Warrior Leader who is actually a bit of an egotistical ass who has a thing for White Mage but hasn't yet approached her, but she finds him a tad annoying anyway.
Female Ranger Half-Elf who favours a bow and has a streak of Light Fae in her ancestry and has a crush on Brave Warrior Leader, but he ignores her.
Ninja Thief male Elf who is basically an expy of Zevran - wise-cracking, flirty, very un-serious about almost everything, but damn effective at his vocation.
Big Muscly Barbarian Monk - He comes from a wild region but is basically his tribal backwoods people's version of a monk.
Elegant educated Mage woman (who is basically an expy of Vivienne) who is a bit snobbish and smugly arrogant about her education at the Crystal Spire (the Tower of Sorcery and location of the Great Well of Light).
And then White Mage, a human woman who is actually better described as a young sorceress with a strong leaning to healing and protection magics and a rare and valuable empathic ability. She is Crystal Tower trained, but she is young and definitely not there at the same time as Elegant Mage Woman.
I debate them also having a dwarven warrior as well.
But to actual story, White Mage personally sees Faux-DL up close and ends up getting to know who he really is due to her empathic powers, the others don't know where she is and Brave Warrior Leader (BWL for short) starts presuming FDL is mistreating her, more due to his growing obsession with her than a true concern for her. The Dark Fae staff get it in their heads to try help the Ranger with her longing for BWL by setting her up with some helpful incense that basically causes a whole sex pollen situation, but afterwards BWL acts like it means nothing and is still obsessed about WM. This ends up coming to a head with BWL getting into angry confrontation with FDL after FDl and WM have formed a consensual empathic bond.
On that, I have mentioned that the idea of empaths meaning they are prone to be taken as slaves. FDL knows about this, and because he is actually a good guy, he is terribly against treating a person like this. An incident happens where FDL returns to his quarters upset and depressed and WM notices and reaches out to take his hand so she can help him with it via her empathic ability. This ends up in a quite deep empathic sharing, which makes WM want more, but FDL freaks out about "enslaving" her which she ends up arguing with him on - telepathically - and eventually convincing him that a bond is a good idea because he's a damn good guy with a compatible personality to her and she is absolutely consenting, which is the absolute opposite of her position on this matter, so the bonding happens, and it includes ex. Quite a bit of it. Yes I think this stuff up when in bed, trying to to sleep.
But anyway, big confrontation, BWL wants WM for himself while totally ignoring Ranger, EMW implies WM has been manipulated, BMBM just thinks FDL is too civilised to be trusted, NT think he's got lots of treasure hidden somewhere that can be flogged, and debatable Dwarven Warrior likely just wants to go mini-Hulk on the whole region, because he doesn't like the natives.
Actually how amusing would it be if the Dwarven Warrior was female?
Anyway, this situation is so troublesome it draws Anaah's attention (because all Wells are connected and FDL does control a major second-tier one) and she throws around a bit of her recently acquired power and responsibility. The state of FDL's region is a a point of reassuring stability in the Dark Lands and even Anaah's predecessor, The Barbarian (not the same as BMBM), considers FDL to be a good lord of the Well there because he keeps the region stable.
EMW acts like Anaah is a fake and questions why she has Madigaan's iconic cloak, but Anaah shrugs it off, telling EMW that she has been out of touch too long and has lost touch with current events.
But the end result is that WM becomes FDL's consort and he becomes her protector as her empathic ability helps keep him emotionally stable so his territory is also one of the most stable major Wells in the Dark Lands.
I also had a mental image of a conclave of all the major Well holders gathering at the Crystal Spire, and how some might react to the couple that is FDL in his "Dark Lord" armour with WM dressed in a very contrasting white outfit.
Another line of thinking forming is about Ranger, with a potential plot about her falling ill because of the situation she was in with BWL, Anaah's intervention, and a Black Dragon who is an associate of FDL - potentially the lord of a minor arcane well in FDL's territory - he is bound to have a good few, and given that I have attributed FDL of having one of the second-tier wells, so he would have a substantially large territory which would encompass quite a number of lesser wells. The black dragon I imagine has a third-tier well, thus holding a high position in FDL's lands, I also imagine that if he has FDL's trust and respect, it means the dragon is a pretty decent guy, for a powerful being living in the Dark Lands.
Actually some thoughts about the Light/Dark dichotomy in this world - it's not an absolute moral alignment, but "Light" is more ordered and "Dark" is more chaotic. However the societal views do attribute more moralistic interpretations to it, thinking "Light" is Good, "Dark is "Evil", when in truth Light can become very dictatorial, while the Dark can be very libertarian. However races more inclined to fighting and arguing do gravitate to the Dark Lands while the more peaceable types gravitate to the Light Lands. The Twilight Lands are a middle zone between the two where the conflict between these states exists, and that is the primary region that the conflict between the Crystal Spire and the Black Mountain (I just decided that is what the location of the Dark Great Well is called) has been fought in. A lot of the ongoing war between Krystiaah and The Barbarian happened in the Twilight Lands during the time they held the Great Wells.
The side effect of Madigaan and Anaah's claiming of the Great Wells is that the amount of fighting in the Twilight Lands starts dropping quickly.
So side-story to the side-story, Ranger gets shipped off to the Crystal Tower after the shit with the Dark Fae aphrodisiac and subsequent ignoring. While she is there, there is an Arcane Conclave, which means the lords and ladies of Arcane Wells meet up. This is the first such Conclave that has involved both sides in several millennia, and FDL makes quite a dramatic appearance, because he is on very good terms with his subsidiary Well Lords, which the three High Well masters are a Swamp Witch, an Ogre Warrior Lord, and a Black Dragon.
Now there is a weird idea that I have had occur to me, is an idea that there is a weird relationship between dragons and Fae. Specifically there is a strong belief that dragons desire to subjugate Fae of the opposing alignment to themselves - that is to say Light dragons want to subdue Dark Fae, Dark dragons want to enslave Light Fae.
So with that in mind, when for some unknown reason the Black Dragon encounters Ranger... it is weird and odd but White Mage helps smooth things over and an arrangement for Ranger's ongoing wellbeing is arranged where she will go back to FDL's lands. The reason for this is that there is a secret underground cavern that contains a whole forest. This Hidden Forest is located right between FDL's mountain fortress and Black Dragon's lair, and the two of them are it's guardians. FDL thinks it would not hurt the Hidden Forest to have a resident ranger, and the odd relation between Fae and dragons should help Ranger recover as well.
So far the B!Dragon/Ranger has not reached porn stage (yes, Black Dragon can shapeshift to a humanoid form, which I tend to imagine has variable reptilian features that fade in and out depending on his mood - the calmer he is, the more human, the angrier, the more dragon).
I have also been thinking a bit on how the relationship between Krystiaah and the Barbarian first happened, mostly the porn factors there-of.
First off, like I always do, I have a few names, finally. Aahriin for FDL, Maahrey for White Mage, Doraahn for the Barbarian. Still scratching for the Black Dragon, the Ranger, and for that matter, the whole of Maahrey and Ranger's team.
So what I think is the final story in this series is that of the Swamp Witch who is one of Aahriin's subsidiary Arcane Well masters.
A little geography - Aahriin's territory involves a sizable mountain range, and extensive forest on the slopes down into the foothills, another section of foothills to the west being stony wildlands, with the lower reaches south of the forests being a sizable and difficult to navigate swampland. Aahriin controls the forest personally, the Stonelands are held by ogres, orcs and goblins, with an ogre warrior-mage controlling the dominant Well there, the mountains are held by Dragons, with the dominant Well held by a Black Dragon and has been held by his family line as far back as is known. The western mountains located above the Ogre's Stonelands has dwarves residing in an underground city, with a good half of those mountains controlled mostly by Aahriin, the other half being in the territory of the next closest major Well. Hidden under the eastern arm of the mountains is a miles-long cavern with an underground river that houses an underground forest. Rule of this is mostly in the Black Dragon's control, and his family line has been it's guardians ever since they first found it, thousands for years ago. Some of it's residents are Black Unicorns.
Aahriin's forests have quite a population of Dark Fae, which is where a lot of his household staff stem from.
The swamps are the only part of Aahriin's lands that have human residents in it, and even then, most of them are located in the southern border region of the swamps, with the parts closer to the mountains more inhabited by magic creatures.
The Swamp Witch has been the protector of the swamps for somewhere between 5 to 7 hundred years, coming to the area in her middle age when she had been driven out of lowland communities. She is a true witch, in that most of her powers stemmed from deals and arrangements with magical beings, that is until she found the Swamp Spring, and spring that surfaces in a small cave delved into the side of a cliff that marks the northern edge of the swamp. At the time she found it, the previous guardian of it was an ancient swamp hag (I am going with something akin to D&D hags, which are humanoid, but not part of the human race) who was on the verge of dying. The hag gave her tests to see what sort of woman she was before basically giving the spring over to the witch (and allowing herself to die), thus handing over the major Arcane Well of the swamplands. Yes the spring is the Well - Wells take all sorts of forms though, so they are not always water springs.
Gaining control of an Arcane Well meant the Witch could break past deals without too much side effects, as she had essentially made what could be viewed as a new "deal" by becoming the mistress of the Well.
In following centuries an order of knights grew in the cities of the Twilight Lands, highly superstitious and very against anything Dark, without having an understanding of how the Arcane Wells of the world work, with the balance they have and that "Dark" is not the same thing as "Evil". The knights established a mission to try and "cleanse" the Darklands, which tended to involve patrolling parts of them and attacking "Dark" creatures they encountered - whether or not the creature was truly Dark and whether or not it had any belligerent intentions or not.
This resulted in knights occasionally ranging into the Swamplands, as it was the region closest to the lowland cities in Aahriin's lands. This resulted in the Witch being called when more belligerent knights would harass and assault the Swampfolk, and particularly adventurous ones would range deeper into the wilder and less human-inhabited parts.
The Witch actually did not wish to outright fight the knights, knowing if she fought one and he escaped to inform the rest of the order, it could bring a larger force of highly trained warriors into the Swamplands. Her favoured way of dealing with knights was to seduce them, bed them, and send them off with a subtle persuasion enchantment on them to not speak of it to anyone. It usually worked quite well.
Around 20 years prior to the destablisation of the Great Wells, a young knight who she used this tactic on came back to the swamplands a couple of months later. This starts a running thing where that knight makes the Swamplands his regular patrol, and continuing a semi-regular affair with the witch in the process. In that time the Witch makes sure injuries and illnesses he has heal far better than if left to their own.
During the aftermath of the change in the Great Wells, the knight finds his way to teh Swamps, very badly injured with several broken bones, lacerations, damaged and bruised internal organs. The Witch sets about healing and taking care of him, though even with her magic and other healing abilities, he is there for over two months. However this does not go unnoticed, and the knight's order sets out a largish scale expedition - partly on the word of another knight who managed to get over the enchantment not to speak - taking with them a group of allied priests from an order with some magical ability and they confront the Witch and end up getting her in a ritual circle run by the priests to try and strip the Witch of her magic. The knight, being aware that the priesthood know how to do this, even while still not quite healed, manages to get to the cave with the spring (the Witch's house had been built in front of the cave entrance) as in past conversations between him and teh Witch, she has told him about the spring and how teh Arcane Well is the only place she draws magic, and how it rules the whole swamplands. He takes a line of logic that if the priests manage to strip her connection to the Well, he could claim it and make a witch's pact with her so she can have access to it again.
The wider arcane disturbance this causes draws all the allies though, with Aahriin noticing first, him sending a call to Anaah and the Dragon and Ogre Lord following him as he heads to the Swamp Well to take on the knight commander while the Dragon and Ogre hold off the other knights allowing Anaah and Madigaan (who she let know) to go in to bust up the priests' ritual circle and allow Anaah and Maahrey to take the Witch to her Well to stabilise her connection again, though because the Knight has got to the spring, and dual control is formed - a rare situation, but not totally unknown when two people control a single Well. There has been cases in the past of twins sharing a Well, and the way Madigaan and Anaah control the Great Wells is a sibling situation to it.
The knights have been out of touch enough with arcane events that they are not aware of the change in control of teh Great Wells and don't realise the importance of Madigaan and Anaah and demand a trial before the High Court of the Arcane, expecting Krystiaah to preside. They are not prepared for Krystiaah to sit aside, Doraahn (the Great Enemy in their view) with her, while facing the two mages that broke up their attempt to defeat the Witch, and being castigated for trying to destabilise the world's arcane balance.
No, I still haven't given up on this - it's a damn well of fun to think about, maybe because it has multiple relationships to play with (though Krystiaah and Doraahn are a great pairing to contemplate, because there's both how they started and how they turned out).
Actually on Krystiaah and Doraahn, I do have a thought on it - they have only three close encounters in the whole span of a thousand years. That doesn't mean they haven't had encounters where they have been, like, opposite sides of battlefields, but times they have been in arm's reach? Actually only two, and one time Madigaan and Doraahn talked that had significant effect on Krystiaah as a result.
These events were:
There was an incident where Krystiaah kinda got stuck in a situation where she was stuck between Doraahn and a group of hostile orcs. Well, it's more that Krystiaah is trying to get away from the orcs and ends up in a room with Doraahn, who pins her up against a wall, telling her to be quiet. Krystiaah takes this a threat, but all Doraahn actually does is hold her there, and she doesn't realise until he leaves that he kept her in that room until the orcs were gone - that is, he was actually protecting her.
The second was in the middle of a battlefield, where forces they were leading were facing off against each other. However in a situation similar to the previous time, a third force comes in, in the form of an ogre army, and Krystiaah and Doraahn end up back-to-back fighting them off.
The third not-quite-meeting is actually Madigaan and Doraahn meeting, face-to-face. This is anywhere between fifty to a hundred years after Madigaan first comes to the Crystal Spire, so he is already well established as Krystiaah's Second, so Doraahn knows who he is. So in a situation I have never totally thought about, they meet, and before having to head their ways, Doraahn asks Madigaan if Krystiaah is well. Of course when they think the worst, so Madigaan is surprised by the question, but answers that she is well, and while Doraahn looks like he wants to say something more, he doesn't, but lets Madigaan go. Later when he relates this back to Krystiaah, she seems shaken by it, and when they are not in anyone else's company Krystiaah struggles through trying to speak on it, not clearly explaining, but getting enough out for Madigaan to figure out that there is past association between Krystiaah and Doraahn that may not have started out bad.
I am still trying to nut out names, even now, over a month later. I know Ranger is Liira. I feel very inclined to give Black Dragon a long complicated name akin to what I have seen in D&D. Gorraahn is the Ogre leader of the Stonelands and his partner is Bodrii.
I still need the dragon's name, and also the Witch and the Knight.
A big reason why I'm annoyed I haven't nutted out the Black dragon's name is I had a thought that he has a past friends-with-benefits type of relationship with Aahriin. Aahriin worries about how Maahrey will take it but she... kinda goes into a squee fit over it. Understanding that Maahrey can see Aahriin's own memories and all the attached feelings involved... and she thinks it's adorable. Then the whole mess with Liira being ill happens and the next time they run into BD is when the conference at the Crystal Spire happens that has many of the major Well lords, including Aahriin, BD, the Witch and Gorraahn attending.
The eventual result is that after Liira has a chance to settle into the Hidden Forest that Maahrey has the chance to talk to her about it. The general ide ais that they end up in a kinda weird happy family open square poly relationship (not a full foursome as I can't do lesbianism).
Beoristinzeliaan. Beorist for short. For the Black Dragon.
Andrymanaah for the Witch.
Korhen for the knight.
Ryaal for BWL.
NNaarhn for Zevran-expy.
Quohn and Thoraan for Barbarian Monk and Dwarf.
Helaannya for Elegant Blank Woman Mage.
...I was listening to a summary of Beowulf and got a bit of inspiration, and then nutted out the rest.
Edit 16/6/2020: Just notes on Aahriin's "Dark Lord" armour - the armour comes in three parts - a medallion on a chunky chain of black metal, made of black metal and a large ruby, a sword, and a stand the sword rests in. The medallion is worn at all times and the suit of armour (also black metal) manifests out of it. The ruby takes a position right on the chest of the armour. The armour also includes a cape made of woven metal threads. The sword can be summoned and dismissed at will, teleported from the stand - which resides in Aahriin's private room at all times - and teleported back to it as Aahriin wills it. The sword is also black metal with rubies on the pommel.
The usual clothing Aahriin wears tends be high quality but not particularly flashy Fae silk tunic, leather jerkin and breeches, boots and gloves. The armour manifests over the top of it. Typically these clothes are black or dark colours.
To explain the original dream, A girl living in a rural area attending a local festival (in a place that looked like a suburban park with some huts on it) gets attacked by a demon-dog (which looked like the dog-monsters from Ghostbusters (1984)) and maybe by a big threatening muscled guy. To get help dealing with this she has to go to the Tower of Sorcery to the west (seriously the dream had sunset in the background). In the dream the tower looked like a Sims 3 Laundry Bear the size of the Burj Khalifa (though I thought of it as a "yeti") and was specifically the tower of an "Ice Queen" type of character. Main Female Character however has to cross through a sprawling city to get there. In starting to cross the city she gets held up by ninja-mages, but a Warcraft movieverse Medivh-lookalike turns up to help her and there was an implied connection there.
Now that is all the dream had, so everything from there was me carrying on the imagery.
So first, I thought up a concept that the world is magically dominated by two major arcane wells, each of which are controlled by a person. This control goes in cycles of a thousand years, and the current ruler of each well loses control, the wells become dangerous for a short time before they open up for someone to claim them.
Second, mages have degrees of magical affinity. Most mages are not immediately in tune with each other and the process of doing group magic has to led into by aligning with each other. A good part of ritual magic is all about all the participants aligning so they can do the actual magic.
Now what makes Medivh-lookalike and Main Female Character different is that the instant their magic comes into contact, it aligns perfectly - an occurrence that is super-rare and usually precedes a romantic relationship and the combination of their magic being greater than the sum of it's parts.
So ML helps MFC out of her situation and then transports her straight to the Tower of Sorcery (which in my head is not a giant yeti, but more like a tower of crystal) so they can work things out and she can be trained (she is a powerful sorceress, but totally untrained and inexperienced), which immediately bring her up in front of The Sorceress - the mistress of the Tower and the one in control of the Well of Light, which is located in the Tower. She insists on separating them to start with, but that stresses MFC out badly and ML sneaks his magic cloak to her, so she has a small piece of him to soothe her, though that also gets The Sorceress annoyed, trying to take it away, but ML steps in and takes her to task over it, and the lack of wisdom in forcing them to be separate.
This brings up the real issue the Sorceress has - she had another perfectly aligned bond, like ML and MFC's, but hers turned sour when her barbarian warrior bondmate turned against her when he became convinced she was trying to weaken him. This led to him setting out to claim the Dark Well when the previous lord of it lost control, while the Sorceress, scared of what that would do, went for the Light Well.
The importance of this is that the next destabilization of the Wells - the event where the lords of the Wells lose control and someone new can claim them - is coming soon and the Sorceress wants to be sure of ML and MFC's bond so that they can claim both Wells and put an end to the millennium of magic war that the Sorceress and her Barbarian bondmate had engendered.
Now I am vague on the details on what happens when the destablization hits, other than MFC has to travel to the Dark Lands and at least part of the trip has to be done on foot because within a certain distance to the Well, magical travel cannot be done, and the Barbarian has flunkies wanting to take the Well themselves, while the Barbarian himself goes to lay claim to the Light Well after losing the Dark one, and there is fighting in both locations, but in the end ML takes the Light Well when it becomes available again, and MFC takes the Dark Well, bringing the world back into balance, and better balance than before since ML and MFC have a better relationship.
The aftereffects are that the Barbarian, left with no Well, has to rethink his position, and also rethink his relationship to the Sorceress. With ML frequently going to help MFC settle things in the Dark Lands, the Barbarian ends up taking control of the Tower, but mostly considers how the magic school held there is run to be acceptable, but the battle magic part needs more actual combat training in it. While he is doing this, he kinda locks the Sorceress in her private quarters and engages in a seduction of her over a period of time.
So the points of this that have really been on my mind is the two relationships involved - ML and MFC, and the Sorceress and Barbarian. These involve porn. Lots of porn.
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So random side-story is that at the point of MFC finally taking the Dark well, elsewhere in the Dark Lands a group of plucky adventurers are trying to fight an "evil" lord of one of the sub-regions.
I would note an idea that the Two Great Wells are not the only arcane wells around, and their are lesser ones that are ultimately subject to one of the Great Two.
This particular lord holds a well and thus also rules the land around it. It's a rough land, predominantly inhabited by non-humans like orcs, goblins and dark fae.
The shock of the Great Well being taken upsets a fight in progress and gives the lord of the area a chance to take the invading adventurers captive, though to their puzzlement they get housed in quite comfortable quarters, with appropriate facilities and food made available... though their team's mage is missing.
For her part, the staff of the fortress strip her and dress her in some very suggestive clothing and send her to His Lordship's personal rooms, wearing enchanted shackles and a collar. However when he finally returns to his rooms he does not notice her straight away, stripping of the spikey intimidating armour he wears to reveal a seemingly totally normal human man who just seems tired and exasperated. Then a movement from the mage draws his notice and after briefly looking her over... blasts the shackles and collar into dust and summons her a warm comfy robe and proceeds to lament at length at how his dark fae staff frequently presume his will and do stupid things like setting up pretty female guests as his sex slaves when he didn't want them to do any such thing.
It turns out he kind-of accidentally became the lord of that area when he inadvertently claimed the arcane well and now has to manage the lands around it and can only do so playing the "Evil Lord" role.
Barring possible porn involved, I have not considered further, though the idea that these adventurers decide to enlist to help the lord of the area is one idea.
Yes, I am still thinking this one over, and I had a line of thought that the mage-girl of the adventuring party is a White Mage more or less in line with Final Fantasy concept (though I think with a bit more ballistic ability) and has empathic abilities as well. Now I do think she can turn them off or at least control it. She finds herself very quickly coming to sympathise with the reluctant "Evil" Lord, offering him support and friendship to cope with his role of managing his troublesome lands.
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I have been thinking on the side-story and trying to square up the idea of mages needing to synchronize their magic with the idea of an empathic mage and it comes to my mind that empaths have an ability that requires them to be able to sync with someone far more easily than a normal mage. This in turn dictates that one, if a perfect sync is a highly desired event, then empaths would be in high demand, even to the point of being targets for enslavement. In turn that also means they would be extremely rare and also very cautious in showing their ability. As a side effect that implies the White Mage of the side-story is either way too trusting when she see the faux-Dark Lord at a low point, a bit too young to have fully developed a cautious attitude, and damn lucky he was actually a nice guy in a shit job, who decides he will protect her for as long as she wishes it.
On another aside, I came up with the name Madigaan for ML and Anaah for MFC. Side-story does have names yet, though any names forthcoming with have doubled As and Hs on A-ending names.
Added names: Krystiaah for the Sorceress - the one who is the mistress of the Light Well before destabilization.
Given that I am still coming up with names, it means this is still on my mind. It's currently the side-story at the moment, but sometimes it links back to the main story, given that I have a line of thought about Anaah dropping in on Faux-DL's fortress to look in on him after she has her stuff stabilised.
Actually, a bit on that visit, White Mage's party of adventurers consists of:
Brave Warrior Leader who is actually a bit of an egotistical ass who has a thing for White Mage but hasn't yet approached her, but she finds him a tad annoying anyway.
Female Ranger Half-Elf who favours a bow and has a streak of Light Fae in her ancestry and has a crush on Brave Warrior Leader, but he ignores her.
Ninja Thief male Elf who is basically an expy of Zevran - wise-cracking, flirty, very un-serious about almost everything, but damn effective at his vocation.
Big Muscly Barbarian Monk - He comes from a wild region but is basically his tribal backwoods people's version of a monk.
Elegant educated Mage woman (who is basically an expy of Vivienne) who is a bit snobbish and smugly arrogant about her education at the Crystal Spire (the Tower of Sorcery and location of the Great Well of Light).
And then White Mage, a human woman who is actually better described as a young sorceress with a strong leaning to healing and protection magics and a rare and valuable empathic ability. She is Crystal Tower trained, but she is young and definitely not there at the same time as Elegant Mage Woman.
I debate them also having a dwarven warrior as well.
But to actual story, White Mage personally sees Faux-DL up close and ends up getting to know who he really is due to her empathic powers, the others don't know where she is and Brave Warrior Leader (BWL for short) starts presuming FDL is mistreating her, more due to his growing obsession with her than a true concern for her. The Dark Fae staff get it in their heads to try help the Ranger with her longing for BWL by setting her up with some helpful incense that basically causes a whole sex pollen situation, but afterwards BWL acts like it means nothing and is still obsessed about WM. This ends up coming to a head with BWL getting into angry confrontation with FDL after FDl and WM have formed a consensual empathic bond.
On that, I have mentioned that the idea of empaths meaning they are prone to be taken as slaves. FDL knows about this, and because he is actually a good guy, he is terribly against treating a person like this. An incident happens where FDL returns to his quarters upset and depressed and WM notices and reaches out to take his hand so she can help him with it via her empathic ability. This ends up in a quite deep empathic sharing, which makes WM want more, but FDL freaks out about "enslaving" her which she ends up arguing with him on - telepathically - and eventually convincing him that a bond is a good idea because he's a damn good guy with a compatible personality to her and she is absolutely consenting, which is the absolute opposite of her position on this matter, so the bonding happens, and it includes ex. Quite a bit of it. Yes I think this stuff up when in bed, trying to to sleep.
But anyway, big confrontation, BWL wants WM for himself while totally ignoring Ranger, EMW implies WM has been manipulated, BMBM just thinks FDL is too civilised to be trusted, NT think he's got lots of treasure hidden somewhere that can be flogged, and debatable Dwarven Warrior likely just wants to go mini-Hulk on the whole region, because he doesn't like the natives.
Actually how amusing would it be if the Dwarven Warrior was female?
Anyway, this situation is so troublesome it draws Anaah's attention (because all Wells are connected and FDL does control a major second-tier one) and she throws around a bit of her recently acquired power and responsibility. The state of FDL's region is a a point of reassuring stability in the Dark Lands and even Anaah's predecessor, The Barbarian (not the same as BMBM), considers FDL to be a good lord of the Well there because he keeps the region stable.
EMW acts like Anaah is a fake and questions why she has Madigaan's iconic cloak, but Anaah shrugs it off, telling EMW that she has been out of touch too long and has lost touch with current events.
But the end result is that WM becomes FDL's consort and he becomes her protector as her empathic ability helps keep him emotionally stable so his territory is also one of the most stable major Wells in the Dark Lands.
I also had a mental image of a conclave of all the major Well holders gathering at the Crystal Spire, and how some might react to the couple that is FDL in his "Dark Lord" armour with WM dressed in a very contrasting white outfit.
Another line of thinking forming is about Ranger, with a potential plot about her falling ill because of the situation she was in with BWL, Anaah's intervention, and a Black Dragon who is an associate of FDL - potentially the lord of a minor arcane well in FDL's territory - he is bound to have a good few, and given that I have attributed FDL of having one of the second-tier wells, so he would have a substantially large territory which would encompass quite a number of lesser wells. The black dragon I imagine has a third-tier well, thus holding a high position in FDL's lands, I also imagine that if he has FDL's trust and respect, it means the dragon is a pretty decent guy, for a powerful being living in the Dark Lands.
Actually some thoughts about the Light/Dark dichotomy in this world - it's not an absolute moral alignment, but "Light" is more ordered and "Dark" is more chaotic. However the societal views do attribute more moralistic interpretations to it, thinking "Light" is Good, "Dark is "Evil", when in truth Light can become very dictatorial, while the Dark can be very libertarian. However races more inclined to fighting and arguing do gravitate to the Dark Lands while the more peaceable types gravitate to the Light Lands. The Twilight Lands are a middle zone between the two where the conflict between these states exists, and that is the primary region that the conflict between the Crystal Spire and the Black Mountain (I just decided that is what the location of the Dark Great Well is called) has been fought in. A lot of the ongoing war between Krystiaah and The Barbarian happened in the Twilight Lands during the time they held the Great Wells.
The side effect of Madigaan and Anaah's claiming of the Great Wells is that the amount of fighting in the Twilight Lands starts dropping quickly.
So side-story to the side-story, Ranger gets shipped off to the Crystal Tower after the shit with the Dark Fae aphrodisiac and subsequent ignoring. While she is there, there is an Arcane Conclave, which means the lords and ladies of Arcane Wells meet up. This is the first such Conclave that has involved both sides in several millennia, and FDL makes quite a dramatic appearance, because he is on very good terms with his subsidiary Well Lords, which the three High Well masters are a Swamp Witch, an Ogre Warrior Lord, and a Black Dragon.
Now there is a weird idea that I have had occur to me, is an idea that there is a weird relationship between dragons and Fae. Specifically there is a strong belief that dragons desire to subjugate Fae of the opposing alignment to themselves - that is to say Light dragons want to subdue Dark Fae, Dark dragons want to enslave Light Fae.
So with that in mind, when for some unknown reason the Black Dragon encounters Ranger... it is weird and odd but White Mage helps smooth things over and an arrangement for Ranger's ongoing wellbeing is arranged where she will go back to FDL's lands. The reason for this is that there is a secret underground cavern that contains a whole forest. This Hidden Forest is located right between FDL's mountain fortress and Black Dragon's lair, and the two of them are it's guardians. FDL thinks it would not hurt the Hidden Forest to have a resident ranger, and the odd relation between Fae and dragons should help Ranger recover as well.
So far the B!Dragon/Ranger has not reached porn stage (yes, Black Dragon can shapeshift to a humanoid form, which I tend to imagine has variable reptilian features that fade in and out depending on his mood - the calmer he is, the more human, the angrier, the more dragon).
I have also been thinking a bit on how the relationship between Krystiaah and the Barbarian first happened, mostly the porn factors there-of.
First off, like I always do, I have a few names, finally. Aahriin for FDL, Maahrey for White Mage, Doraahn for the Barbarian. Still scratching for the Black Dragon, the Ranger, and for that matter, the whole of Maahrey and Ranger's team.
So what I think is the final story in this series is that of the Swamp Witch who is one of Aahriin's subsidiary Arcane Well masters.
A little geography - Aahriin's territory involves a sizable mountain range, and extensive forest on the slopes down into the foothills, another section of foothills to the west being stony wildlands, with the lower reaches south of the forests being a sizable and difficult to navigate swampland. Aahriin controls the forest personally, the Stonelands are held by ogres, orcs and goblins, with an ogre warrior-mage controlling the dominant Well there, the mountains are held by Dragons, with the dominant Well held by a Black Dragon and has been held by his family line as far back as is known. The western mountains located above the Ogre's Stonelands has dwarves residing in an underground city, with a good half of those mountains controlled mostly by Aahriin, the other half being in the territory of the next closest major Well. Hidden under the eastern arm of the mountains is a miles-long cavern with an underground river that houses an underground forest. Rule of this is mostly in the Black Dragon's control, and his family line has been it's guardians ever since they first found it, thousands for years ago. Some of it's residents are Black Unicorns.
Aahriin's forests have quite a population of Dark Fae, which is where a lot of his household staff stem from.
The swamps are the only part of Aahriin's lands that have human residents in it, and even then, most of them are located in the southern border region of the swamps, with the parts closer to the mountains more inhabited by magic creatures.
The Swamp Witch has been the protector of the swamps for somewhere between 5 to 7 hundred years, coming to the area in her middle age when she had been driven out of lowland communities. She is a true witch, in that most of her powers stemmed from deals and arrangements with magical beings, that is until she found the Swamp Spring, and spring that surfaces in a small cave delved into the side of a cliff that marks the northern edge of the swamp. At the time she found it, the previous guardian of it was an ancient swamp hag (I am going with something akin to D&D hags, which are humanoid, but not part of the human race) who was on the verge of dying. The hag gave her tests to see what sort of woman she was before basically giving the spring over to the witch (and allowing herself to die), thus handing over the major Arcane Well of the swamplands. Yes the spring is the Well - Wells take all sorts of forms though, so they are not always water springs.
Gaining control of an Arcane Well meant the Witch could break past deals without too much side effects, as she had essentially made what could be viewed as a new "deal" by becoming the mistress of the Well.
In following centuries an order of knights grew in the cities of the Twilight Lands, highly superstitious and very against anything Dark, without having an understanding of how the Arcane Wells of the world work, with the balance they have and that "Dark" is not the same thing as "Evil". The knights established a mission to try and "cleanse" the Darklands, which tended to involve patrolling parts of them and attacking "Dark" creatures they encountered - whether or not the creature was truly Dark and whether or not it had any belligerent intentions or not.
This resulted in knights occasionally ranging into the Swamplands, as it was the region closest to the lowland cities in Aahriin's lands. This resulted in the Witch being called when more belligerent knights would harass and assault the Swampfolk, and particularly adventurous ones would range deeper into the wilder and less human-inhabited parts.
The Witch actually did not wish to outright fight the knights, knowing if she fought one and he escaped to inform the rest of the order, it could bring a larger force of highly trained warriors into the Swamplands. Her favoured way of dealing with knights was to seduce them, bed them, and send them off with a subtle persuasion enchantment on them to not speak of it to anyone. It usually worked quite well.
Around 20 years prior to the destablisation of the Great Wells, a young knight who she used this tactic on came back to the swamplands a couple of months later. This starts a running thing where that knight makes the Swamplands his regular patrol, and continuing a semi-regular affair with the witch in the process. In that time the Witch makes sure injuries and illnesses he has heal far better than if left to their own.
During the aftermath of the change in the Great Wells, the knight finds his way to teh Swamps, very badly injured with several broken bones, lacerations, damaged and bruised internal organs. The Witch sets about healing and taking care of him, though even with her magic and other healing abilities, he is there for over two months. However this does not go unnoticed, and the knight's order sets out a largish scale expedition - partly on the word of another knight who managed to get over the enchantment not to speak - taking with them a group of allied priests from an order with some magical ability and they confront the Witch and end up getting her in a ritual circle run by the priests to try and strip the Witch of her magic. The knight, being aware that the priesthood know how to do this, even while still not quite healed, manages to get to the cave with the spring (the Witch's house had been built in front of the cave entrance) as in past conversations between him and teh Witch, she has told him about the spring and how teh Arcane Well is the only place she draws magic, and how it rules the whole swamplands. He takes a line of logic that if the priests manage to strip her connection to the Well, he could claim it and make a witch's pact with her so she can have access to it again.
The wider arcane disturbance this causes draws all the allies though, with Aahriin noticing first, him sending a call to Anaah and the Dragon and Ogre Lord following him as he heads to the Swamp Well to take on the knight commander while the Dragon and Ogre hold off the other knights allowing Anaah and Madigaan (who she let know) to go in to bust up the priests' ritual circle and allow Anaah and Maahrey to take the Witch to her Well to stabilise her connection again, though because the Knight has got to the spring, and dual control is formed - a rare situation, but not totally unknown when two people control a single Well. There has been cases in the past of twins sharing a Well, and the way Madigaan and Anaah control the Great Wells is a sibling situation to it.
The knights have been out of touch enough with arcane events that they are not aware of the change in control of teh Great Wells and don't realise the importance of Madigaan and Anaah and demand a trial before the High Court of the Arcane, expecting Krystiaah to preside. They are not prepared for Krystiaah to sit aside, Doraahn (the Great Enemy in their view) with her, while facing the two mages that broke up their attempt to defeat the Witch, and being castigated for trying to destabilise the world's arcane balance.
No, I still haven't given up on this - it's a damn well of fun to think about, maybe because it has multiple relationships to play with (though Krystiaah and Doraahn are a great pairing to contemplate, because there's both how they started and how they turned out).
Actually on Krystiaah and Doraahn, I do have a thought on it - they have only three close encounters in the whole span of a thousand years. That doesn't mean they haven't had encounters where they have been, like, opposite sides of battlefields, but times they have been in arm's reach? Actually only two, and one time Madigaan and Doraahn talked that had significant effect on Krystiaah as a result.
These events were:
There was an incident where Krystiaah kinda got stuck in a situation where she was stuck between Doraahn and a group of hostile orcs. Well, it's more that Krystiaah is trying to get away from the orcs and ends up in a room with Doraahn, who pins her up against a wall, telling her to be quiet. Krystiaah takes this a threat, but all Doraahn actually does is hold her there, and she doesn't realise until he leaves that he kept her in that room until the orcs were gone - that is, he was actually protecting her.
The second was in the middle of a battlefield, where forces they were leading were facing off against each other. However in a situation similar to the previous time, a third force comes in, in the form of an ogre army, and Krystiaah and Doraahn end up back-to-back fighting them off.
The third not-quite-meeting is actually Madigaan and Doraahn meeting, face-to-face. This is anywhere between fifty to a hundred years after Madigaan first comes to the Crystal Spire, so he is already well established as Krystiaah's Second, so Doraahn knows who he is. So in a situation I have never totally thought about, they meet, and before having to head their ways, Doraahn asks Madigaan if Krystiaah is well. Of course when they think the worst, so Madigaan is surprised by the question, but answers that she is well, and while Doraahn looks like he wants to say something more, he doesn't, but lets Madigaan go. Later when he relates this back to Krystiaah, she seems shaken by it, and when they are not in anyone else's company Krystiaah struggles through trying to speak on it, not clearly explaining, but getting enough out for Madigaan to figure out that there is past association between Krystiaah and Doraahn that may not have started out bad.
I am still trying to nut out names, even now, over a month later. I know Ranger is Liira. I feel very inclined to give Black Dragon a long complicated name akin to what I have seen in D&D. Gorraahn is the Ogre leader of the Stonelands and his partner is Bodrii.
I still need the dragon's name, and also the Witch and the Knight.
A big reason why I'm annoyed I haven't nutted out the Black dragon's name is I had a thought that he has a past friends-with-benefits type of relationship with Aahriin. Aahriin worries about how Maahrey will take it but she... kinda goes into a squee fit over it. Understanding that Maahrey can see Aahriin's own memories and all the attached feelings involved... and she thinks it's adorable. Then the whole mess with Liira being ill happens and the next time they run into BD is when the conference at the Crystal Spire happens that has many of the major Well lords, including Aahriin, BD, the Witch and Gorraahn attending.
The eventual result is that after Liira has a chance to settle into the Hidden Forest that Maahrey has the chance to talk to her about it. The general ide ais that they end up in a kinda weird happy family open square poly relationship (not a full foursome as I can't do lesbianism).
Beoristinzeliaan. Beorist for short. For the Black Dragon.
Andrymanaah for the Witch.
Korhen for the knight.
Ryaal for BWL.
NNaarhn for Zevran-expy.
Quohn and Thoraan for Barbarian Monk and Dwarf.
Helaannya for Elegant Blank Woman Mage.
...I was listening to a summary of Beowulf and got a bit of inspiration, and then nutted out the rest.
Edit 16/6/2020: Just notes on Aahriin's "Dark Lord" armour - the armour comes in three parts - a medallion on a chunky chain of black metal, made of black metal and a large ruby, a sword, and a stand the sword rests in. The medallion is worn at all times and the suit of armour (also black metal) manifests out of it. The ruby takes a position right on the chest of the armour. The armour also includes a cape made of woven metal threads. The sword can be summoned and dismissed at will, teleported from the stand - which resides in Aahriin's private room at all times - and teleported back to it as Aahriin wills it. The sword is also black metal with rubies on the pommel.
The usual clothing Aahriin wears tends be high quality but not particularly flashy Fae silk tunic, leather jerkin and breeches, boots and gloves. The armour manifests over the top of it. Typically these clothes are black or dark colours.
