Today, we enter the world of G. Derek Adams, author of Asteroid Made of Dragons.
G. Derek Adams is an independent artist and writer living in Athens, GA. He is a winner of the Sword and Laser Collection Contest on Inkshares for his third novel, Asteroid Made of Dragons. His biggest fantasy credential is giving Piers Anthony an idea for a Xanth novel that one time. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia and lives in Athens, GA.
Now, prepare yourself to enter world of Aufero!
Geography and Nature: the big picture
Map of Aufero
Overall geography: Convenient locales and climates for adventure – tundra, desert, aboreal forest, high mountains, rolling plains. I remembered to make things colder near the northern pole, but the southern portion of the globe is oddly…Not cold? Five main continents: Eridia, Tel, Altus, Onis, and Malgor.
Special features that makes your world unique, exotic, or strange:
Aufero is sort of a nexus – a crossroads. Strange things, people, ideas, cities, manners of dress – they wash up on the shore and get mixed in cheek by jowl with the hodge podge. It is a greedy world, it reaches out and steals from brighter ones. One can never know what odd heroes or devils or systems of government will emerge if you turn out the planet’s pockets.
Magic and how it is defined in your world:
I purposefully have my magic work almost exactly as any genre reader would expect. This is the ‘consensus fantasy universe’ after all. Readers should be very familiar with the practical, cosmetic execution of it – anyone who has played Dungeons & Dragons should feel right at home. The background mechanics are something more esoteric. Clearly it’s an energy field that is manipulated by conscious thought – the bulk of which takes the form of ordered/disciplined ritual – spells, dances, songs, etc. All ordered constructs of sentient thought that bring principle to the grand energy field. The mind is a conduit that channels the energy and forms it into repeatable shapes. In the middle of this, I drop one of my main characters Rime – who is a wild mage. She ignores all the ritual, all the formalities and pulls from the energy field directly, with vast consequences. No wand, no song, no mask, no dance in the moonlight – just rip the raw energy out of the air and shape it into the form desired. Essentially an argument fit for Plato – is the Form reality? The magic users of my world would argue that the container is the magic, the wild mage is the counter argument.
Races and cultures: your world and its people
Races or dominant species:
In the beginning, there were only three native races to Aufero. Dragons, Goblins, and Elves. All other races – Humans, gnomes, dwarves, minotaurs, etc. All are immigrants, coming across various dimensional land bridges and winding up trapped there. Dragons (as is discussed at length in my book!) have become extremely rare. Goblins, Elves, and Humans roughly split up the main population spread in most major cities.
Politics and origin: how the world is knit together
What are some of your major nations?
Gilead, the Library of Pice, Caleron, the Dwarven Empire of Sypria, the Sarmadi, The Council of Nine (Valeria), Flenelle, The Illuminated City of Iax, Quorum, Carroway, the Seafoam Trading Company.
How does the world economy work?
*Shrug*
What is the overall history on which the present world is built?
Thousands of years ago, the Lost [Precursors] came to the planet and guided the races to a golden age. They shared their songs, their lore, and their technology – and then they disappeared. After a long darkness, the mortal city-states struck a grand Accord, which lead to the slow development of their own technology, using Precursor relics as a guide. The two events in recent history of greatest import are the Dragoon War – a globe-spanning battle to defeat the Red Wizard – and the discovery of the Precursor city of Kythera by Jayden Moore, the president of the Seafoam Trading Company.
How does your world relate to the real world as we know it?
We share a lot of the same songs. The walls are thin, you see.
People and groups: social organization in your world
Is there a dominant society or group?
Arguably, the most powerful group in the world is the Seafoam Trading Company. They have a stranglehold on the development of Precursor technology and have dominated all air and sea travel for over twenty-five years.
Religions, language, and recreation: expressions of your world’s people
What are your dominant faiths, beliefs, and religions?
There are two major belief systems that have been discussed so far in my stuff.
Church of the Nameless God – Christianity cognate with homophobia and misogyny excised. The faith of the land of Gilead, and of Jonas one of the main characters.
The Balance – Elemental forces given name by tradition and lore. Primarily worshiped among the Elves.
- Father Order
- Mother Chaos
- Banu – Sea
- Jocasta – Stone
- Marris – Sky
- Seto – Sun
Religion, like much else on Aufero is a polyglot, but these are the most common – or at least most mentioned to date.
Have you invented feasts, holidays?
The world has its own calendar – 10 months of 30 days each, without variance – except one day a year that is eaten by the Chaos Serpent.
Want to know more about his world? Why not enter it by pre-ordering a copy of his book, Asteroid Made of Dragons — the official winner of Inkshares’ Sword & Laser Collection Contest:
A preposterous fantasy crisis with resolutions remarkable and losses lamentable. May contain minotaur tea parties.
Excerpt:
The sky cycle cut through the clouds, and Xenon laughed as a sudden updraft blew the hem of her half cloak right over her head. She pulled the fabric free with one hand while keeping her other hand steady on the throttle. Mercury grabbed the flapping cloak’s hem and jammed it down into the edge of her piloting sister’s belt—it had become a tediously common occurrence during their days of flight. They would be humming along, magenta light spooling out behind them, goblin eyes wide at the vast and beautiful landscape beneath them, then whop—faceful of cloak. Xenon snickered as her younger sister grumbled—her cloak was perfect for travel and investigating clammy ruins or burning sands—but it patently was not intended for the air speeds that Tobio could reach.
“Take off the cloak!” Mercury spat in her ear.
“Nope!” Xenon laughed and straightened her goggles. Something about the way it flapped against her shoulders just felt proper and just—plus the wind’s bite and the high altitude made the skies a fierce torrent of cold.
The last silver-white vestiges of the cloudbank parted and the city of Corinth lay before them, like a child’s plaything. The surrounding grassland green, broken occasionally by outcroppings of sheer granite and thin copse of oak and elm, smashed up against the gray-stone walls of the city like a verdant wave. Xenon took a long breath of cold fall air and wished she could make her eyes go wider, or pause their descent a moment so she could sketch it all in her journal. The city walls were vast slabs of granite, surely quarried from the surrounding countryside—but each slab showed a hundred scars. Scorch marks, cracks wide enough for a goblin to stick his hand in, a pockmarked graveyard of abandoned steel rusting away in the walls, arrowheads, lances, halberds, and glaives—all flung by the champions of evil come to lay siege to the crown city of Gilead. Time itself seemed to be the greatest beast savaging the high walls; the simple erosion of rain and sun had widened the gaps between slabs to the point where industrious soldiers were working now to construct wooden palisades and gates in between the dwindling granite. Corinth was a city that had known the hammer and the breaking of stones, and every shattered line of building or errant cobblestone street carried the memory of the days when darkness had beaten down her defenders and made vicious festival in the home of the righteous.
And yet the sun shone down on Gilead’s capitol as if it could not remember Night. From every tower, every high place, the brave blue flags flew and snapped in the wind. Blue for the sky, where the priests of the Nameless God teach that all valor is recognized. A white circle, for the will of the heart that cannot be broken. Inside the circle, three blue swords crossed. Rage, fear, despair—all bound by Faith. Xenon turned the sky cycle into a slow banking arc across the northern face of the city, information running through her head. Gilead had never been her specialty, but there were things that any scholar worth their salt knew by heart. The small country, really a city-state with allied territories across a small corner of the continent of Eridia had managed to involve itself in far more than its proper share of history. The Dragoon War. The MNO Incident. The Sandwich Rebellion, where Carroway broke free of the domination of the Dwarven empire of Sypria. The Swords of the Faith, found in every major conflict for hundreds of years. Always on the side of Good. The goblin’s academian brain quivered at this last thought, a shallow mealy-mouth platitude. It was the sort of statement put in children’s history texts, not the thing a true researcher would accept at face value. Tobio flew lower across the spine of the city, and she shrugged off her quibble. Of course it’s hard to assign such gross qualifiers as “Good” and “Evil” to historic events—but I think it’s a reasonably safe approximation to assign “Evil” to the Red Wizard and his armies. And “Good” a dwarf only lasts six hours?-W as closed or with a hyphen are left open.dashes to true em-dashes. d.ication, author bio, and a to the Knights of the Nameless. The Knights of Gilead have always answered the call of any other country in peril and nearly lost their own country many times. This is the place where I’ll find help with Shame.
The interior of the city showed a veritable maze of cobblestone streets, old architecture next to new in haphazard reconstruction. The three largest structures that caught her eye were the vast Temple of the Nameless in the center of town, the Academy where the soldiers and knights of the Legion were trained, and the grand castle of the king pushed forward through the granite walls of the city facing the empty plains. Any approaching army would fall upon the walls of the keep first, like a shield thrust out through the granite walls. Many researchers had remarked how unusual it was for royalty to place its seat in the location of greatest danger. An example or an error? Xenon wondered.
“Hey!” Mercury’s sharp fist banged her ribs. “Where are we going to park?”
Buy the book!
EBOOK: Inkshares
PRINT BOOK: Inkshares
Connect with G. Derek Adams in the following places!
Website: Spell Sword
Twitter: @gderekadams
