From a tabletop RPG game to a full-fledged fantasy world: The Soulstone Prophecy

Cradle of the Gods

​The idea behind The Soulstone Prophecy, which begins with Cradle of the Gods, started out as a campaign for a tabletop role playing game. I wanted to start a new campaign in my weekly Dungeon and Dragons game and wished to create a fantasy world which would be familiar to my players, but also different and challenging. I decided to go against the normal fantasy settings you would find in Tolkien's Middle Earth or Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms, where all the goodly races get along and humans were in the majority. In those settings the other races had their moment of fame sometime in the past, and now humans were the dominant race. Why not change it to where humans had their day, blew it, and were now the minority. Better yet, why not make it in the other races’ best interests to keep them there?

I had one player who wanted to play a psionicist, a person who can use the power of their mind much the way most use magic in fantasy settings. At the time, the game mechanics for psionics were confusing and difficult to use, so I wanted psionics to be extremely rare. That was when the idea of it being the very thing that lead to the humans’ eventual downfall and the dwarves removing those humans who showed psychic abilities from the population came from. It was a great source of conflict for the players and later blossomed into the main story arc in my novels.

When I decided I wanted to write, it was this material I returned to as my source. I have always liked the idea of presenting something familiar and then adding the fantastic onto it. This way, the reader is already comfortable and can imagine the scene I’m trying to convey. I drew from ancient Rome as my foundation for the dwarven society and the celts of Gaul as my inspiration for humans. Of course, with each question I’d answer about the world of Allwyn, five more would be spawned. I started with where the world come from; its creation story. I couldn’t use the mechanics from my game, so I created new ones.

I researched various creation myths and chose bits I liked. Eventually, I settled on the idea of a world that was an actual living entity - Allwyn, the All Mother - not only the world, but the entire physical plane of existence. She is the goddess of balance and represents all the physical manifestations of divinity, Earth, Sea, Storms, etc. But a story needs conflict, so I had her give birth to children, the Primordials, who would in turn be gods in their own right and go on to create the lesser races: humans, dwarves, elves and so on.

Next, I created a magic system. To stay consistent within the story, I had to define the rules on how magic worked. I’m a big believer in showing and not telling, so once I created the world and defined all the rules, I would only introduce them to the reader as part of the story.

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Thomas Quinn Miller

Magic in Allwyn would have some hard fast rules. Since the world was all about balance, magic would be too. I used an example of a triangle, with the three corners being duration, strength, and distance. One cannot be changed without affecting the others. Thus, the strongest spells will be those which are quick and close by, Riff’s flaming bursts for example. The longer a casting lasts, the weaker it will become. It was these foundation rules that helped decide why the dwarves enchant items. There is no distance, so the strength and duration are the most potent and lasting. Things were coming together.

Once I had the world defined and its rules in place, I created interesting characters that would help introduce the world of Allwyn to the reader. Each character would not only have their own story to tell; they would bring along a different portion of Allwyn with them and share that with the reader. The idea of showing the reader rather than telling is why I change the POV as much as I do.
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It is also why I head hop during my favorite parts to write: the fight scenes. I am really inspired by the way R. A. Salvatore describes his fight scenes and draw a lot of inspiration from him. There is a lot going on in a fight and each combatant is usually so concerned with not getting killed that they’re only focused on the part of the battle that helps them achieve that goal. By head hopping, I’m able to describe the entire battle.
 
With the world detailed, its rules defined, and interesting characters to occupy it, I began telling their story, only revealing the details to the reader when they were relevant. The first book sets the foundation of The Soulstone Prophecy series, much like the original game I created all those years ago set the foundation for the world of Allwyn. I hope you will join me and discover it for yourselves.

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