Bhagwan @ Large

It has begun…

This morning, my employer En Masse Entertainment announced sign-ups for Beta tests on our new game, TERA. It’s been a crazy, eventful two years of my life to bring the game to this, and I though I might recap some of my online events in a post.

In early 2010, I was engaged as a Story Consultant, and did a lot of quick writing bits in addition to working on plots and questlines. In a way, it was very similar to the work I did on AION, but the “feel” of the work was a lot different for me. I was more involved, more a part of the creative process, and I think it shows in my work. Here’s some short fiction from that period you may enjoy.

Vekas, the Wicked Tree

The High Elves

An Aman Among Men

The next few links relate to an interview my Senior Producer Brian Knox and I did with ZAM, an online games news source. I just found out they’ve named TERA one of the most important games of 2012, and now so can you

Part 1
Part 2

But the interviews didn’t stop there. This next link is to a podcast I did with our lead writer Dave Noonan, and writer Stacey Janssen. Both of them worked on AION in similar capacities, but I have the great privilege to call them both friends and colleagues in other parts of my life. Dave is a fellow Wizards of the Coast/TSR Alumnus, all three of us worked on the Internet Review of Science Fiction, and Stacey (whom we call Frank around the office) is the Managing Editor of Shimmer

Bow Down to US

Another interview, this time with MMORPG.com

Post-PAX Q&A

Next up, more short fiction that landed at MMORPG.com again. I particularly liked this one, but one of the commenters thinks it was translated from Korean. Go Figure.

Dancing with Demons

Hot on the heels of thaat story, another interview, this time with terafans.com

As regards the Mystic

And here’s a piece I wrote with fellow WoTC alum Brian Campbell that took a while to find the right place. As it turns out, its with our freinds at MMORPG.com once more

Gods of TERA

In December of 2010, I transitioned from a full-time writer to my current position as a Game Analyst. Here’s some essays on the game we’ve put up since then

Redefining the party

And just in case you were wondering what it is a Game Analyst does,

Meet the TERA team : Game Testers

So that’s it up through Jan of 2012. I’ll leave this page live so I can update it should more online goodness come out. And remember that link waaay at the top of the page? You should totally click on it.

Merely Nearly Really Ready

Today’s sub-conscious story exercise comes from the realm of apocalyptic underwater dystopia.

It may seem odd to describe your inner thought processes this way, but it’s how my broken brain works. I’ve mentioned before that I am a lucid dreamer. Since my memory only goes back so far, it’s something I’ve always been able to do, and the dreams I can take control of are particularly powerful when I don’t.

This morning was something of an oddity for me, as I knew it was a “go” right away. My in-dream memory told me that I’d been in this situation before, as our ragtag flotilla approached the cave system and it’s frog-like occupants on whatever watercraft we had. I and several others swam ahead and began negotiating for the supplies we’d need to continue our journey, and dream me knew I was about to be betrayed. Making the best deal I possibly could, I returned to warn folks knowing that this dreamscape does not end well.

But here’s the kicker–I had not been there before. So dream and real me were responding to an unremembered dream, something that rarely happens. And since I knew it was going to be a bad one, it’s a dream I’ve suppressed for some reason. We’re about to be ambushed and enslaved for a long time by a technologically superior race, and most of us aren’t going to make it out.

Now the dream fragments, and I wake up briefly as a defense mechanism. I’ve learned over the years that shifting my physical position will either alter or completely cancel the dreamstate, sending it down paths more of my choosing. For some reason, this does not happen today, and “awake” me is still under the control of the subconscious mind. I can’t move, and the only “action” I can take is to re-submerge myself in the dream and ride it out.

In different characters. Still lucid, I play out 4 different viewpoint scenarios, each with a minor rebellion or act of courage that does not end well. As a whole, “we” advance through the dreamscape fairly well, if fatally. Each time, I wake up, still in the same position, and with no real options other than diving back in.

In case you were wondering, this does NOT count as a nightmare for me. Those are really weird.

On my last trip in, I realize that my perspective of our aquatic landscape has been shifting ever deeper on successive episodes. We are now a fully amphibious people, but are still recognizably the same individuals that floated into a trap. This incongruity is what I need to take control, so I do. But now that I’ve got it, I no longer have enough context to materially affect the scenario. I surface for the last time, fully wake, and let out a long breath.

Time for the emotional after action report. I trundle downstairs and read further in the two books I’m cycling on my Kindle. The Author has threaded three very long novels together with about a 3 months staggering of plot in each, and I’m halfway through the first two when I begin. I realized what he was doing yesterday afternoon, and was interested enough to attempt reading all three at the same time. I moved another 15% in the second one, finished the first, then set them aside to get ready for the creative portion of my day.

While I’m reading, I’m also processing what happened in the dream world. It’s still bothering me that I couldn’t take control when I usually do, but it’s not the first time that’s happened. I’ve layered three full dream lines before, conscious of at least two, with one being an example of my aforementioned nightmares. This is nowhere in that league, but I should have been able to at least move things around a bit. Being able to both control the dream and not affect it >is< something new, and has to mean something.

Then it hits me. I was coming at it from the wrong direction–the important part wasn’t the beginning of the dream, it was the end. Being underwater and surfacing was the relevant portion, and now I know when I had this dream before. It was 6 years ago, when I got the idea for a new story about genetically modified, amphibious mammalian humanoids living in an enclosed ecosphere. They have all those adjectives because they knew exactly who and what they are, just not why. I have that dream in my head right now, and it’s the poster child for what my subconscious mind is capable of.

Although dream experiences fuel my creative process, I’m still not good enough to translate this one fully into text. There are complexities and textures to the emotions of the dream I’m not sure I can consciously express, and I ‘tasted’ them again last night. What I have been able to do is one of the most complete outlines I’ve ever worked up, and a lot of the hard science fiction I’ve worked on over the last couple years has found itself tied to the overall universe of that story. My thoughts on what the ‘self” is, how an alien race thinks and acts, all are informed by this story. It’s even crept into some of my work for hire, but not so much that I can’t still call it my own.

I’m not ready to write that book yet. It’s going to be a huge volume, the most immersive project I’ve ever done. I’ll only be able to do that once I learn how to get the “easy” books in front of and resonating with readers. I’d like to get paid for it too, really paid, so it’s by no means a “first novel.”

But it’s a lot closer now that I’ve seen how someone writing his 43rd, 44th, and 45th novels dealt with the big picture. That he’s written 8 more since in those same 6 years is fuel for the fires of ambition. I’ve written two, and started three others.

I’m not ashamed to admit that my internal monologue was somewhat disparaging last night of the prolific man’s work product. I was too heavily grounded in the parts of his books I don’t like instead of focusing on what I do. His characters, their very real motivations and problems, and the HUGE tapestry he gets to work with.

10 minutes and 93 words ago I did the math. 53 books. 2 more on the way. 14 about the same character. I am an ant cursing the ground for being solid, desperately trying to find the scent trail he’s laid down for me instead of opening my eyes to wonder.

It’s time to get to work.