Not a very well-kept secret, but The Agartes Epilogues was supposed to be a JRPG that I co-wrote with my husband (then boyfriend) way back when I was just 16 years old. Some of my readers have since commented on the JRPG feel of the series–big tentacled monsters, angst, fantastic hairstyles (actually, not really–I’ve toned it down over the years)…
The original story featured characters based on people from an online community my husband and I belonged to. Only a few made it to the final cut. The main premise revolved around a girl and a boy who belonged to a clan where the leader died gloriously in a blizzard.
This JRPG was going to be done in RPG Maker 2000. I was able to program the opening cutscene and the first two towns, but things went haywire from the planning department after that. I rigged the game to have a “hunger system”, which my husband thought was crap, and then his brother argued with me because he wanted the thing to have “Hearts” somewhere in the title. I don’t remember, but I think I booted him out of the cast list after that.
I didn’t take worldbuilding back in those days as seriously as I do now. The plot was pretty simple: the countries of Aegis and Gaspar have been at war for as long as anyone can remember, with a little town serving as the border between them. Our group of heroes get caught in the crossfire, and then…chaos ensues.
The villain was…well, he is who he has always been. The backstory just became more elaborate in the story’s current incarnation.
After it became clear that I wasn’t going to have to ability or patience to program the entire thing, I decided to fall back to my regular craft and write a story instead. (Well, I tried to write a manga at first, but it became pretty clear, pretty fast, that I couldn’t draw people worth a damn).
The characters of Kefier, Sume, and Enosh emerged. These were completely different from the main cast of heroes–they were side characters, people simply affected by the chaos in the world. About a year later, I came up with the back story of Kefier being part of a mercenary group and delivering his friend’s ashes to his sister, and then things just fell into place after that.
The plot sort of spiraled out of control from there on. I’ve talked before about how my plots tend to be organic–they form and grow beyond the confines of the story. The way my worldbuilding works is similar to a drop of ink released in a pool of water. At first, it’s concentrated around a single area, but then it flows outwards. Everyone has their own story–it’s just a matter of where the narrative chooses to put focus on.
This is why readers have sometimes complained that they’re not quite sure what’s happening, because there is so much going on: the only thing I can say is just let it be. Sometimes the current viewpoint doesn’t support knowing what’s happening, and that’s okay. You didn’t miss anything. Either the story is not ready for an explanation yet or an explanation is not really necessary.
The original plot for the RPG (which I now remember was called The Frozen Retribution) forms a big part of the upcoming Book 2, Aina’s Breath. It will also probably be its own series at some point. Another series for another day…
