The Cleric

Chronicles of the Alliance Book V

Novel 5: The Cleric

History

This is the first book I undertook to write - even before Waken

Because the story was set to one side for an extended period of time and even Cleric's World was written (largely) before this one was completed, it went through several iterations, but never strayed far from the initial sequences used to create the characters of Jon and Bandit. Nor has it strayed far from the original opening sequences for Jon's appearance in Shad.

Nate asked just one thing of me - that I rename all of his characters and locations should he decide to carry the original adventure forward and write the story himself. I have gone ahead and done that. About all that is left of the original story are Nate's vision experienced by Jon (and told through the Dominic Shad - Zandra dream sequence) and Jon's first day and a half in the village of Shad. While Jon did visit the Staver home originally, it was by himself. The killing of the owl-bear did not take place between Jon and Bandit, but as part of a greater force. Nate's original story line did have the three girls as friends, along with an old soothsayer.

Bandit came along as a result of my involvement with the anthropological storyboarding BBS network, Furnet. He was not included in the original story, but I liked what I had done to create the character. I also like Jon's background and so, developed the story of Jon rescuing the maid Aimee from the clutches of the evil El'janour.

A fuller recap of the history can be found in the Notes section of this page.

As you look through the characters in the novel, you'll see that all of them have surnames, which didn't exist in the original, except in a few cases. While I was writing Carrollton, it dawned on me that the sky folk would be used to surnames and therefore, I needed to go back and rethink a lot of names. While the surnames do not appear in the novels, they do appear here in my notes.

Titles

The Cleric

The story has never had another title. At the point when I decided the D'n'D game could be developed into a novel, I referred to it as "The Cleric." After all, it is about Jon-than and no one else.

Cleric's World Stories

The Cleric
Clerics World
Elvnisle (not part of the Star Spawn Saga Novels)
Return of the Sky People
Carrollton
The Order of the Knife
The End of the Matter

Notes

Like Book I, Waken, this book introduces a whole new world with no characters (except by loose reference) from any other novels. As such, there is no "Spoilers" page as there are with most of the other novels.

When I realized I had a story to tell from the material in the original game, it had ended, more due to lack of interest than for anything else. I worked with Nate a bit with an on-going story line, but Nate's stories and mine do not always work well together. It isn't that he writes "bad" stories (read into that whatever you may), he writes very well. In some ways, much better than I do and during the time that I was working on the original Star Spawn story, he also wrote a complete novel. I enjoyed it and was impressed by his work. It was not that far removed from Stephen King's types of stories, but it definitely wasn't King. In my opinion, Nate's story was actually better than anything that I've read of King's.

Anyway, Nate was taking the story down his path and after going into it about a third of a novel in length, I decided I wanted to take my character Jon in a different direction. Nate had provided some initial ideas, including that of a quest to find and kill the owl bear, involving the band of mercenaries introduced to Jon and maybe a few more, including the dwarf (who later became Pravin).

In order to give the Cleric some background and sufficient training to let him be of use, I had to develop a backstory. In short, a bit of history for Jon. That comprises the front end of the novel and was actually composed to introduce not only Jon, but Bandit into the world of anthropomorphic story boarding. For those of you not familiar with story boarding, it is a form of Role Playing, except there is no "dungeon master" per se. In its place are one or more people who have created a fantasy setting and then, together with a group of participants, start a story. The fantasy creator may hold rigid control over the story board or they may let it roam freely.

A new player may introduce his characters by some means, but it must be logical, such as the phasing into the fantasy world, similar to the way Jon and Bandit came to the world of the double sun. Or they may simply show up, coming in by more conventional means, such as a stagecoach (in an "old west" setting).

A person may actually play the same character in several different settings at the same time, so it is fairly freeform. Generally, each person will have their character start to do something, and then the other characters will participate and write their part of the story. A character may tag along or take the lead in telling the story, or may go off on a tangent. Writers who participate stay in character throughout the adventure, but may, on a related forum, talk about the story and where it is going.

Generally speaking, the characters need to be cooperative, just like we do in real life, otherwise, the other characters may start ignoring them, and leave them alone to figure out how best to behave.

From time to time, a writer may introduce a character with an attitude, which I did with a little pixie. The material was risque in many respects and quite serious. Her attitude left her on the sideline of an interesting storyboard, but that was okay. I needed the experience writing that kind of character.

Needless to say, the whole of the storyboarding experience was not only fun, but also a learning experience, against which I could develop character personalities. The whole world of pixies and leprechauns came into being, largely because of my participation in the story boards. In one, I had the lep and pix's show up with McNamara's Band. It left everyone wondering what the Ragnoruk was going on and several of the particpants were more or less stunned by the rapidity in which old Mac took his band through the setting. They really didn't interrupt anything, but the whole thing was a lot of fun from my side of things.

Getting back to the Cleric, Jon's experience with El'juanor and sweet Aimee served to introduce Jon as a human, and surprisingly, he was accepted into the anthromorphic world and the creation of Bandit. Bandit's adventures were quite interesting, to say the least, as he had to learn about the changes affecting his life. It also gave me the opportunity to groom Bandit's character into how it now appears in this story.

The introduction - that of young Zandra and her father, Baron Dominic Shad - was written as a short story, incorporating Nate's wonderful vision he gave Jon, along with some slight tweaks to fit in as a type of things to come. Not quite prophetic, but not metaphor, either. In the next novel Clerics World, Julie experiences her own vision, but that's a different story and best left there.

Keeping Zandra, Miorden, Tais, and Taina Bragget straight was a task. I wish I would have started putting this Wiki together, because it would have made it a lot easier and saved me the pain of having to go back through the stories several times to straighten out things like hair color and relationships.

Characters

Note Some of the character information contains spoilers. They are set up on their own page, since many of these characters appear in multiple novels.
Baron Dominic Shad
Duke Marcus Shad
Zandra Shad aka Pawsierenne
[Heuriskein]
[Marco]
[Pravin]
[Todd]
[Gar]
[Morey]
Hebert (Hebe) Guten - younger brother
Norbert (Nor) Guten - older brother
Jon-than
Miorden
Ochina
[Tais Shad]
[Tainá Bragget]
Doc Philos
Serge Staver
Savar Chilken
Lofar - Dwarf God
El’jah - Jon's God
Bar'jon - El'jah's Son
Sam - one of the old men who take their meals at Bragget's. He challenged Jon to see his talents with the sword and crossbow.
Bragget - Innkeeper in Shad. Though there are other places to stay, Bragget's is best known and serves the finest meals outside the castle.

Places

Kasmur - A river north of Mirror Lake, which drains a large inland basin. In the United States, the Columbia River between Washington and Oregon serves a similar function.
Mirror Lake - the name of the lake between the River Blue on the east and Potsbar on the West. There are locks at Potsbar, preventing the sea from infiltrating the lake with salt water.
Potsbar - Coastal town that serves the seafaring trade and that of Mirror Lake.
Shad - the village named after Dominic Shad, its slain Duke.
Sotter's Run - home to Marco, who comes to Shad as a Mercernary and stays to become the Captain of the Guard at the Castle.

Things

Tiir - third book of Joleel
Joleel - Holy writings of Jon's order, consisting of five sacred books. Note: this is similar to the five books of Moses, which comprises Torah and are the first five books in the Bible's Old Testament.

Page Created May 05, 2007
Updated June 03, 2007
Updated January 13, 2008