Signet of the Sea King- Heroic Fantasy Project

(We now take a short break from the Iron Horizons demo because it’s been a very busy week and I’ve not managed to get through the next scene yet.)

As someone who has been writing and worldbuilding a wide array of projects for a very long time, I’ve ended up with lots of ideas that found themselves without a world to call home. The longest-lasting of these ideas what that of a sea-kingdom, an archipelago of mariners with white ships that gleamed in the sun. I’ve called this one Aerlion in a few different contexts— two separate RP forums (one called Kingmakers and one called Chronicles), moved it to Laeonesse, and then decided to make a setting where I could plop all these ideas, as well as my favorite fantasy tropes, into a single world. Signet of the Sea-King was the result.

It focused mainly on the Sea-Kingdom of Aerlion— an archipelago ruled by Princes who elect a High Prince to serve as regent for the Sea King, the sea god from whom the princely families claim descent (I guess that technically makes it an elective theocratic monarchy?). Now, this is heavily inspired by Numenor and Dol Amroth. There’s a definite Italian/Greek/Byzantine vibe to the whole thing, with the

castles being built into the side of the archipelago’s cliffs like some of the Greek monasteries. They have a religious order of knights, the Knights of the Gulls, who are mariner-knights rather than cavalry-knights. They can definitely ride, of course, but they primarily operate at sea rather than on land.

Our protagonist is Cyran, son of one of the only princes who holds to the old ways from before the archipelago was annexed by the neighboring (now-fallen) kingdom. Cyran is a poet, musician, duelist, and wine connoisseur. He’s very clever, but not one for expectations or responsibility. He is, quite frankly, a swashbuckler, in the original meaning, as he does in fact carry a buckler. As such, he is also a disappointment to the family.

After a particularly embarrassing incident, Cyran’s father reclaims the signet ring before departing on an important sailing journey to consult with others of the old ways regarding recent astronomical alignments, but he never returns. Cyran is left disinherited and the family holdings and resources taken into trust by the High Prince until either Cyran’s father returns in person or the signet ring makes a reappearance.

So, this begins Cyran’s quest to trace his father’s steps to try and find his father, his father’s rings, and whatever happened to him. I was always a little fuzzy about what actually happened, so I can’t really even spoil that for you. Never really had an outline for any of these plot lines, so I was writing based on vibes and instinct rather than any sort of plan. That’s my guess as to why I won NaNoWriMo for this project, but couldn’t tell you the main plot line despite writing more than fifty thousand words in a month.

The second plot line follows Myrda, heir to the throne of the kingdom that once annexed Aerlion before later collapsing into city-states after plague and civil war between twins that left Myrda’s line hiding in the mountains among the shepherd people of the border. She was on her way to the same meeting as Cyran’s father, based on an ancient religious text that dictated when and where meetings should occur based on the positioning of stars and planets.

Myrda, of course, was inspired by the Dunedain Rangers after the fall of Arnor, but with a distinctly Georgian (as in the country) twist. Much of the mountain settlements are inspired by my own own visit to Georgia, especially Uplistsikhe and the towers of Svaneti and Ushguli. Additionally, unlike the (probably) sedentary (when not rangering) Dunedain, Myrda’s people are transhumance pastoralists, meaning they move between grazing grounds according to the seasons.

That’s actually one of the big connection point across the book, because the third group supposed to go to the meeting with Cyran and Myrda are the Wind Nomads. These are another of the concepts that I’d had floating around without knowing what to do with them, from a really weird dream that basically involved people who lived on wagons that looked a lot like the Strandbeest sculptures made by Theo Jansen, except they used sails to direct them.

I ended up going with wagons rather than the many-legged walking sculptures, but the idea is pretty similar. For the Wind Nomads themselves, they’re essentially priests of the old ways, who keep the old knowledge and traditions alive, while acting as neutral parties during conflict between the various groups.

My idea for their origin as Wind Nomads (more than a head-canon, but I’m not sure it’s canon yet) was that they once used horses, but during the civil war, the victorious usurper seized all of their horses, both for his army and to prevent them from following the ancient custom, which led to them turning to the people of Aerlion to learn how to design, build, modify, and sail their wagons.

What are these old ways that the Wind Nomads are priests of? Sky-Whales. Yes, another idea that I’ve always wanted to play around with, which I think comes from early love of The Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddel, which had sailing ships in space, lifted by floating rocks or buoyant wood, and all sorts of strange creatures living in the sky.

They never fit in any of my other worlds, so I put them in here. They migrate around the planet and sometimes they prey on dragons like how whales prey on squid. Otherwise, they’re still very nebulous. I’m not entirely sure what role they play in Signet of the Sea-King or even if they play a role at all. I’m leaning toward them having something to do with the astronomical alignment that signalled it was time to have a meeting. Why, specifically? I’m still not entirely sure.

You can see why I’ve been stuck on this for a while, I think. Lots of ideas that haven’t quite coalesced around each other. Which, in all honesty, is one of the challenges for building a world around a bunch of unrelated concepts.

Part of it is because I haven’t settled fully on a central antagonist. The one I used for the NaNoWriMo draft was a woman who married and purchased her way into the Council of Princes because she wants to consolidate the archipelago with her as its single ruler so that she can use it as a base to consolidate the mainland city-states with herself as empress.

This leans more into the intrigue and political conniving aspects of the setting, sort of a Three Musketeers vibe. Which is good, because I was leaning more low fantasy or heroic fantasy? I’m not sure how the story would unwind in this case, but I suspect it would use something more akin to a thriller structure.

Another option, which I probably won’t do because they’re a huge feature of the Duunaric Saga (same world, different part of the continent, close to eight centuries earlier), is something to do with the Wither-Men. I’ll talk more about them when I discuss the Duunaric Saga, but essentially, they’re the result of Ylfael (Fae/Elves) trying to fulfill human’s request for immortality with catastrophic results.

That would be your more traditional high fantasy/end of the world/evil sorcerer concept. And to be honest, I’m kind of tired of those sorts of stories. Tolkien did it incredibly well. Everyone who followed then did the same thing, but poorly, and it’s feeling very stale at this point.

The third option is to use what I call the Empire Across the Mountains, which I envision as being inspired by the Timurids, as a multi-ethnic empire of horse nomads. This idea is still very fuzzy and may happen simultaneously with the first one? That would really shake things up in terms of scale by escalating it from a relatively small conflict within a single polity into a conflict between nations. I suppose it could work well in the background, again like in Three Musketeers having the events of the Anglo-French war occurring in the background.

I’ve mentioned Dumas’ work quite a bit, but the other inspirations are Cyrano de Bergerac and Captain Alatriste. This project in particular is a definite case of tinkering with the swashbuckler genre, with a definite fantastical twist. Sebastien De Castell’s Greatcoats might be a good example, although I’m not sure I want to go quite as grim and gritty as that one, or perhaps a less city oriented Lies of Locke Lamora. For Signet of the Sea-King, I am definitely leaning more heroic tone and style than either De Castell or Lynch went for. **

Anyway, that’s a lot of talking out loud (writing out loud?) about a project that’s still not ready for drafting. But, hopefully this will give you some ideas about my style and extra-chaotic writing process. Next week, we’ll either talk about the Duunaric Saga or we’ll return to the Debts of Jack Quincy, depending on how much solo game time I manage to get.