Introduction and Updates to Tales of Cynalon

[GM Mad]

Welcome to the Tales of Cynalon area of the forum. In this area we will be posting stories and tales from the World of Cynalon setting. Players are more than welcome to add their own contributions to this forum, either adding more details to their characters' backgrounds or expanding upon important events in their lives from the posts.

While the New Frontiers game is currently on hiatus, I am still working on it and adding more background details to it. As part of this process, I re-read the old Q-Link posts to see how things evolved. Naturally, I also see all the mistakes that I made along the way. In some cases situations were later changed, things were forgotten and other kinds of errors were made. In short, the games history is a bit of a mess!

So the question became on how to fix all this mess and make it a coherent narrative. One option was to simply go back and edit all the old posts to make them fall in line. It wasn't a very appealing option and I came up with another way to accomplish my goals. I decided to take a memoir approach to the problem. I had characters who lasted all of the game posts on Q-Link. By having them tell their version of the events I could edit those old posts and add in new material to bring it all up to date and make it accurate.

To that end, late last summer I started to write two sets of memoirs. The first one was called “Stephanie’s Tale” and it featured the swordswoman Stephanie. She was there at the beginning when the Seekers were formed back in the first post of The Frontier on Q-Link. Stephanie was there until the final post.

Stephanie’s Tale starts with her at home on the farm and chronicles her journey to Gateway and joining the Seekers. She does a lot of traveling at first and finally starts to go over the events of The Frontier #1 in Chapter Six of her tale. In the future I will be able to bridge what happened at the end of that game to when she eventually appears in New Frontiers.

The second series is called “Argent’s Adventures” and tells the story of our favorite Invoker. Since Argent has already appeared in New Frontiers, she has a much larger back story to her than Stephanie does. When I started I figured it would take all of Book 1 of Argent’s Adventures to cover her time before appearing in Sword of Doom #1. Turns out I was wrong. Book 1 now covers her journey to becoming an apprentice mage and Book 2 should cover her time as an apprentice, leaving the Sword of Doom stuff to start in Book 3.

Each book will be continued in its own thread. Each post will be an individual chapter. As I write this, Stephanie is up to Chapter 7, while Argent is in Chapter 16 of her tales.

To kick things off, I am posting the first three chapters of both series below. If you have any questions or comments, post them in this thread and not in the story threads! Thanks and enjoy!

[GM Mad]

Added chapter 4 to both Stephanie's Tales and Argent's Adventures.

[GM Mad]

Posted Chapter Five of both Argent and Stephanie's Stories. It's just a coincidence that both end up in the same room in the same inn in the same city with the same person.... or is it?

[GM Mad]

Finally got around to posting Chapter Six of both Argent and Stephanie's stories. In her tale, Argent meets Lyra Stintson. Meanwhile Stephanie catches up to the first post of the Frontier series. It was writing that chapter where I realized just how radically different were game posts and actual stories. Game posts are essentially a series of monologues while a story has back and forth banter to it. So I had a good amount of editing and moving the game responses around to make a real narrative out of them. I also had to flesh these characters out a great deal more than they ever where in the Frontier game. Enjoy!

[GM Mad]

Added Chapter Seven of Argent's Adventures. It's the morning after her meeting with Lyra Stintson and our favorite Invoker if feeling it. In addition, Argent meets one of my regular reoccurring characters for the very first time!

No Stephanie update this time, but I have Something else instead. It's the first part of tale of the Swords of Cynalon, a greatly expanded upon version of the events related to Sherwood by Nightmist in Black Flame #8. The introduction to the story in that post will bring everyone up to speed.

Enjoy!

[GM Mad]

Added Chapter 8 to Argent's Adventures and the middle chapters of the Swords of Cynalon tale.

[GM Mad]

Added the final chapters to the Swords of Cynalon tale, along with an afterword to cover all the things worth mentioning that were beyond Nightmist's knowledge.

In chapter nine of Argent's Adventures, our invoker makes the trip from Nemiston to Elcadan. Since this journey was more or less covered by Stephanie in her story, it was covered more quickly here.

[GM Mad]

Posted Chapter 10 of Argent's Adventure. She finally arrives in Elcadan and meets Lyra once more. And then things get interesting!

Added the opening chapter to the Life and Times of Relon Van Arkus, the story of Validar's father and the significant events that he has lived through. Much of the campaign history will be seen through his eyes.

[GM Mad]

New chapters posted!

Added chapter 11 to Argent's story. Jallarzi has revealed herself to have been Lyra in disguise! Jallarzi explains everything to Argent and our favorite Invoker meets Edwina for the first time. (And yes, it was also Jallarzi in disguise when Stephanie met Lyra in her story. If you go back, you will note that Stephanie thought that Lyra was really good at teaching things!)

Posted Chapter 7 of Stephanie's Tale. The Seekers have been formed, but they are not done growing as more members join in. This chapter draws on material from posts 1 and 2 of the The Frontier game.

Enjoy!

[GM Mad]

Posted the final chapter to Book 1 of Argent's Adventures. Book 2 will start the apprenticeship.