Royce's Random Thoughts

So Nez was having a livestream session for a couple of days, and I scored a little fanart. :)

First Rolas tied to the mast (perhaps Melanie is playing a more old fashioned pirate today) and a request from moonshadowed for something based on the phrase "So Elven it hurts to look at him."



Finally, Maria at her easel.

Maria leaned over Tez's shoulder, watching as he sat at her office desk, working out a collumn of words in a language she didn't know. Beside each word a column of numbers, or at least what she assumed was numbers. It was hard to tell.

"What's this?" she asked him. He glanced up, lip quirking up in what he probably meant as a smile.

"I got to wondering, just how many people I'm directly responsible for killing," he said, resting his chin on his palm as he considered his list. "I don't mean arranged for die, or caused by accident. I'm speaking of those I killed myself, by my own hand, or at sword's point, or by pushing the right button."

"Well that's certainly morbid," Maria said. She pointed to the numbers column. "I don't understand this part though. What sort of maths is this?" While she knew enough to keep household accounts, even for a household as large as hers had grown, she didn't recognize the symbols he was using.

"Ah, that's called 'scientific notation'. I should explain it to you some time...'

Catching up here.

For ankewehner ’s prompt of “…I’d be interested in seeing something about the Dragon States…”

( Ostentation, thy name is Dragon )

The complete ebook edition of the original print copy of Unexpected Diversions is now available for purchse. This newly re-edited edition also includes three brand new tales, "The Power of Suggestion", "Hell Hath No Fury...", and "Of Bards, Beast-Kin and Dragons" which crosses over with the previously published The Dragon's Companion

Word Count: 78k
Price: $4.99

Another quick five dollar commission from Wazaga. Link to the original

Georgia spots my copy of Unexpected Diversions

Georgia (points to Tez): What's he?

Royce: He's an elf.

Georgia: Who's she?

Royce: She's a girl. Her name is Maria.

Georgia: What's that she's wearing?

Royce: That's a dress.

Georgia (points to Maria's sash): What's that?

Royce: That's a sash. It makes her dress look prettier.

Georgia: What are they doing?

Royce: They're kissing.

Georgia: Why?

Royce: Because they love each other.

Georgia (points to Tez's open fly): Why are his pants broken?

Daddy picks up the book and puts it away.

I've got a conversation between Tez and his daughter Swan swirling in my head that needs to be written down properly. For now here's a taste.

( Hell hath no fury like Tez. Period. )

Just sorting thing out in my head while I cuss at my muse for failing me.

-500,000: Rise of the Dragons.

-350,000 BD (Before Diversions): Tez is born into a tribe of pre-civilization elves.

-350, 000 to -300,000: First great age of magic. The gods (mostly) remove themselves from the world.

-300,000 to -250,000: The magic fades over a ten thousand year period. First great age of technology. Dragons (semi) voluntarily confine themselves to the Dragon States when the Old Man of the Mountain is confined.

-250,000: Tez nukes the planet for the first time.

-250,000 to -200,000: The Barbaric Age of Magic.

-200,000 to 0: Several cyclical ages of magic and technology trade off. Tez attempts planetary destruction at least twice more.

-175,000: Tez has bloody vengeance wreaked upon his body by a human whom he betrayed, and is reduced to a quadriplegic, blind, deaf, gelded, mute carcass. He remains two hundred years in this state. It is over a thousand before he regains his sanity.

-50,000: Tez invents the religion devoted to Griznak the Destroyer as a means of long term savings.

-2,000: Tez attempts suicide and finds himself in the care of merfolk (Failure Mode), then enslaved to a group of barbaric island sheep herders.

-1,800: Tez unexpectedly resigns his position as Chancellor to the former barbarians (The Island Lord)

-1,000: Philosopher violates Dragon State law and decamps to the Northern Continent. (possible canon "PC")

-500: Tez moves to the Elven Domain and takes up life as a prosperous merchant.

-408: Andrea Halfbred is born to a human mother, then abandoned a few days later at the town orphanage.

-400: Racial wars begin, Andrea is enslaved by Tez and taken to the Elven Domain. (Andrea's Story) Bard Teal is captured and forced to serve Philosopher (PC)

-246: With some interference by Teal and Philosopher, racial tensions between humans and elves ease. Andrea boys her freedom from Tez. Tez travels to the Dragon States.

-200 to -125: Andrea establishes her leather working business in the human lands, marries and eventually is widowed from her husband Jonathan.

-18 Maria is created by the mage Ezar Liriel.

-10 Tez returns to the Northern Continent.

-3 Maria meets Garvin. Mage Ezar dies and leaves his estate to Maria.

-0 Events of Unexpected Diversions and Unforeseen Consequences occur.

TBC

Woke up this morning to check my e-mail and found that chaypeta had sent me the pdf for the wraparound cover. After some minor corrections (a couple of goofs on the back cover copy on my part and some argument with Lulu's automated system about the size) I successfully uploaded and completed the publishing process.

Now Unexpected Diversions is now available for purchase! Just $15.15 for the trade paperback, or a cheap $6.25 for a PDF download!

The Elf and the Beast

Betrayed, enslaved, and stripped of everything he owned, including the
shirt on his back, the ancient elf called Tez finds himself bought by
Maria the Beast-Kin, a woman who looks mostly human, but is really the
product of a wizard's alchemy. While trying to discover what his
eventual fate is to be, Tez finds himself drawn to the mystery of this
wizard's familiar turned landed lady. What does she want with him, and
why does she act far younger than she appears?

Together these two outcasts form a tentative alliance, and then a deep
partnership. By turns erotic, adventurous, and philosophical,
Unexpected Diversions explores Tez and Maria's deepening relationship,
as one of them tries to atone for the evils he has done, and the other
pays a steep price to obtain the only true form of immortality

Need to move the Dragon States universe to Tez & Maria's world (now you know why the Southern Continent is so mysteeeeeerious). Because Maria finding out that Teal is one of Tez's exes = Komedy Gold. Especially after Teal punches him in the snoot when they meet again.