Introducing Five Empires: growing a fantasy world out of playing Dungeons and Dragons
τρόπος ὁ (noun) way, manner, or habit, or the turning point on the field of battle (found frequently in spells describing how do something in a specific manner.)
I have a friend who is in the middle of writing a post-apocalyptic trilogy set in Manchester (that would be the English one, not one of the American versions; the one with Oasis and football). His star is just rising, and he has a lot of things in the works. I’d tell you all about them here but he’s proof that patience and persistence pays off in the world of writing, if you’re good enough.
Anyway, we had a discussion a while back about where we get our ideas from. I was intrigued that he had a whole bunch of different projects set in different time spaces, different worlds, different realities. And he was intrigued that I spend all my time with one world, which I’ve had in my head since I first started imagining worlds, when I was a very young kid.
I don’t think it’s fair to judge either way. Some people do lots of things, some people have A Thing, and that’s their Thing. I had experimented with lots of different things in my late twenties and early thirties, but it always came back to this one place, and that Amnar.
Then in 2013, I started playing Dungeons and Dragons with a group of friends. The best thing about D&D is that it allows for incredible experimentation between groups, and the imagination can really let loose. We were a group of Really Bad People, featuring a tiefling, a drow, and a necromancer, brought together by a world-wearing paladin for weekly meetings intended to teach us how be better people.
Enter Evildoers Anonymous.
We were later joined by a giant who had grown up with dwarves, owned an inflatable trout, and was in an unlikely (and fraught) relationship with an enemy orc.
This was the starting point for Five Empires.
I wanted to do something with the character I’d created, a drow assassin (I know, what a cliché), and had to create a world for her. What followed from that flowed from my fascination with decaying ancient civilisation (see: Classicist in the making already), and the idea of combining magic and science in a new and interesting way.
I did some small things around that, all of which were very experimental indeed. I didn’t do much with it, despite writing about forty thousand words on it, because I started the Classics MA and that pretty much took over my life for three years.
Somehow, though, Amnar couldn’t resist getting involved, and Five Empires has ended being something of a prequel world, a time set a long time before Amnar ever existed, which allows me to explore the stories behind the myths that became the founding plank of Amnari ideology.
Five Empires is about five empires of different ages and ambitions sharing a massive continent (think the Eurasian continent and north Africa). They have been torn apart by religious war and by the appearance of actual gods in mortal bodies for so long that a new, independent council has been set up to prevent further atrocities.
Somewhere in a far-flung hinterland of the biggest and oldest empire, two young twins find themselves caught up in the middle of it all. Robbed of their memories, they are being kept in an orphanage and prepared for some kind of religious destiny they only know they are desperate to get away from.
This is the starting point for the book I’m going to be working on for the next six months. I’ve already been writing on it since November, but it needs more cowbell. A whole load more cowbell. I’ve had a load of encouragement since I shared the ideas with Simon, Dragon’s Claws (my partner), and a few others at British Fantasy Con last year.
I’m terrified, and I’m struggling with a lot of blocks. I’ve had to throw out a load of words — well, all of them — and start again. This is the problem with pantsing, but that’s a story for a whole other time. As June 1st looms ahead of me, I have a lot of the first act fleshed out, but can’t get beyond crossing the threshold for either of my two young heroines. That will be the next stage in the journey.
