rynling | Entries tagged with an unfound door

Fhiad leaves the court and walks through the halls of the castle as he reflects on the circumstances that have brought him to Faloren. Guerig, the king’s secretary and acting regent, enthusiastically granted Fhiad permission not only to study the castle, but also to live there while doing his supposed research on the building’s architecture. Fhiad curses himself for being drawn into a complicated situation, but he also admits that he has few resources and fewer choices. As he wanders, Fhiad’s thoughts reveal that he did indeed once study architecture, and that Faloren Castle is an architectural monstrosity whose creation and continued existence almost certainly rely on powerful magic.

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The summer court opens with a celebration attended by the wealthy families and nobility of Faloren. After the ailing king retires for the evening, Agnes is introduced to Fhiad, who claims to be a university student from Cretia studying architecture. Fhiad has changed his appearance and accent, and he pretends not to recognize Agnes. Later, when Agnes escapes to a shadowy corner for a moment of quiet, Fhiad approaches her. He initially seems kind but quickly becomes cruel and insulting. He tells Agnes that his homeland of Erdbhein has been destroyed, and he declares his intention to take revenge by visiting the same ruin on Faloren.

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I've been going back and forth on what the characters of An Unfound Door should look like. I was strongly influenced by The Green Knight, which is a visually breathtaking movie. I tried to move away from the stark "dark and light" costuming in order to make the character designs more colorful and broadly thematic, and also to look better in illustration.

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Haters gonna hate. For the time being, I'm going to imagine the characters in a way that makes sense to me. I'll keep working on the designs, and I might even draw more illustrations while I'm at it.

I love the "spend four pages describing a staircase" gothic mode. I really do. I love crowded and disordered spaces in fiction, and I love writing about them.

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There's an empty quality to ruins that I find aesthetically pleasing, and I also love when architecture is partially broken down so you can see how it works. Meanwhile, not-yet-ruined interior spaces filled with garbage are just about the most literal metaphor you can have for the mentality of refusing to give up on the past because you have no concept of what's meaningful and valuable in the present. It's sad when you see something like that in the real world, but it's super fun when you get to create it yourself in art or fiction.

Agnes rises early the next morning in order to attend to the correspondence that has accumulated in her absence. As she dresses herself, she reflects on how her mother’s charm and social graces seemed to slow the kingdom’s decline. Unfortunately, her father has done nothing to alleviate the grim atmosphere of the castle since the late queen’s death. Agnes proceeds to her study, a dilapidated yet still handsome room where she secludes herself to work until interrupted by her cousin Galien. Galien encourages her to open the summer court, and Agnes agrees. She believes that a large and lively party will be an appropriate symbolic marker of her vow to rejuvenate the kingdom.

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Late that night, Agnes returns to Faloren Castle under the escort of her aide Myla, who rode to meet her at the edge of the forest. Agnes immediately goes to see her father the king, who is bedridden from a lingering illness. She is met at the door to his chambers by her cousin Galien. Galien has conspired with Myla to hide her abduction, and he informs her that it was he who sent the knight Caelif to her rescue. Without inquiring further, Agnes attends her father. He does not wake, and Agnes reflects on the decrepit state of the castle. She excuses herself and uses a discrete servant’s passage to visit the kitchen, where the castle Housekeeper, Taibh, gives her bread and wine and asks no questions.

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Early the next morning, Agnes tries to light the campfire with an intonation used by Fhiad the night before. She reflects on how the kingdom of Faloren was once renowned for its sorcery, and how the suppression of magic following the war with Erdbhein led to the king punishing her for her childhood gift for spellcraft. Fhiad wakes during her attempt to kindle the bonfire, and he mocks her lack of success. Agnes acknowledges that his disdain is not undeserved, and her sincerity convinces him to share more of his story.

Fhiad says he was unsuited to be an emissary and left of his duties to his cousin Lukhara while he studied Faloren legends in the castle library. His interest in a magical relic called “the Eternal Tear of Soreiya” was encouraged by the princess, whom he accuses of manipulating him. He was imprisoned shortly after uncovering a map of its location under the castle, and he claims that he is unable to remember much of anything that happened since then. He tells Agnes that he wants nothing more than to leave the past behind him, and she makes the decision to free him from the control of the silver bridle. They agree to part ways as soon as they leave the forest but end the chapter on friendly terms.

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Agnes wakes to find that the boar demon has transformed into a young man who identifies himself as Fhiad of Erdbhein, a notorious criminal who was accused of high treason after attacking Faloren a hundred years in the past. He is cultured and well-spoken, but he doesn’t hide his frustration with Agnes, who refuses to free him from the silver chain that bound him as a demon. He tells Agnes that he never had any intention of attacking Faloren. He claims to have had no interest in the kingdom at all; rather, he was only serving as an emissary because he was ordered to do so. Agnes doesn’t know what to think of him, but she’s exhausted and decides to stop for the night.

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The chapter opens with Agnes walking in the woods while leading a gigantic boar demon on a magical silver chain. To keep herself awake, she talks to it, confessing that she wants to study its magic in an effort to revitalize the fortunes of her dying kingdom. The demon eventually begins to reply to her in garbled human speech. It responds strongly when Agnes asks about a golden medallion that she found on the battlefield after she spared its life. The demon, who is clearly in pain, asks Agnes to place the medallion against a scar on its forehead. She feels compelled by something larger than herself to do as it asks, only to be overwhelmed by magic.

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An Unfound Door is a Gothic mystery set in a decaying castle. Agnes, the princess of Faloren, hopes to save her crumbling kingdom by unlocking the secrets of long-lost relic, but she must conceal it from Fhiad, a mysterious emissary with sinister motives. As their paths cross in twisting corridors and hidden passages, Agnes and Fhiad realize that they must descend into the shadows of the past together if they hope to bring light to the future.

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I now have the plot of The Demon King outlined. Even if it’s as short as it can possibly be, it will still be at least 60k words long, which is a respectable length for a first novel. I’ve broken the story into manageable narrative chunks, so hopefully the new outline should be ADHD-proof. On top of that, I cut all the parts I haven’t been fantasizing about writing for the past year.

Writing a graphic novel version might be a stretch, though. I’ll table that idea for now.

What might be a more actionable idea is writing a graphic novel version of An Unfound Door, which can probably be finished in a single volume of around 180 pages. Maybe I’ll do a scene-by-scene outline of that one next and see how I feel about it. If nothing else, I can definitely write a script for a five-page opening scene.

Or I can wait a bit. Give the story and characters time to develop in my mind. Work on other projects.

Social media gives a false impression that everyone is always generating “content” all the time. And maybe some people really are like that. Most of the artists and writers I admire are not.

I’ve started to get to the point in visual art where I can understand what makes the pieces I like stand out. And that’s cool. At the same time, I’m only now getting to the point where I can draw super basic stuff with something that’s starting to approach ease and accuracy. It’s good to remind myself that I can take a year to work on solidifying “ease and accuracy” before I start reaching for something higher, both in art and in writing.

One of my art resolutions for this fall was to create character designs of Agnes and Zidan from An Unfound Door. I shared rough sketches and descriptions with Lalou on Tumblr, who refined the designs and created color palettes.

Here is Lalou’s work:
https://l-a-l-o-u.tumblr.com/post/664236966903201792/commisisons-for-pocketseizure-these-were-so-much

And here’s mine:
https://rynling.tumblr.com/post/669767773691543552/remembering-speechlessly-we-seek-the-great

This illustration was so incredibly time- and labor-intensive that doing literally anything else feels easy, so I sat down yesterday afternoon and made this Deltarune comic from scratch. It’s nice to know that I leveled up. Even if it’s garbage, it’s cool that I can snap my fingers and make a comic appear.

Chapter Three is finished!

Chapter Four is also finished... for now! It’s a bit on the short side, but that means there’s room for expansion if I think of something that needs to be mentioned.

I’m going to focus on my Yuletide fic(s) during November, so I’ll write Chapter Six a bit at a time, probably only enough to keep up with #WIPWednesday on Twitter.

As for the last day of October, I’m going to chill out and read other people’s stories for a change. I mean damn, can you believe that people just post fic for free on the internet? That's some good shit.

Chapter Five is finished!

I've got a rough outline of Chapter Four, which I'll probably write alongside Chapter Six. Chapter Four is necessary stage setting, while Chapter Six is a direct confrontation between the two main characters that establishes the central conflict.

I'm about halfway done with editing Chapter Three. A few pages in, I figured out a plot shortcut that will make things much easier to follow. Basically, instead of being abducted by a third party, the princess absconds of her own volition. (Thank you FFIX!) This happens before the narration begins, so it's easier to summarize why the princess made the decision to leave than trying to hint at the logistics of a kidnapping from a limited third-person perspective. Girlboss win!

...but I do have to rewrite and re-edit substantial parts of the third chapter. I'm very slow, but it's getting there.

I don't have the patience to create anything as fancy as a mood board, but I've found it helpful to search and save a few images of environments to use as inspiration. I had to download a "Save WebP as" extension for my browser, and I've had to shift through more low-quality files from Pinterest and Getty Images than I remember having to for past projects, but it's been worth it.

I'm also going to try to do a #WIPWesdneday series on Twitter for the rest of the year. I've been shy about posting my writing there, but it's good to have at least a little accountability to keep me moving forward.

I finished and polished the first two chapters of An Unfound Door, and I've got a rough draft of the third. These three chapters total about 9k words, which is a solid beginning. I'm just about the slowest writer in the world, so this is a tidy accomplishment for me.

I also have the two character illustrations!

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The sacrificial princess Agnes spares the life of a demon from the blade of the hero who rescued her from certain demise, but was this the wisest decision? Upon returning to the decaying castle of her declining kingdom, she finds the beast waiting for her, now in the form of a man. He is determined to restore the ruins of his homeland to their former glory, but his ambition presages calamity. As Agnes follows her enemy through the shadows, the princess must shine light onto the mysteries of the past if she wishes to restore hope for the future.

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