Meet the Characters: King Sariven

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Ask away!, Before the Sun Fades, Characters, Fantasy

A legendary figure in Before the Sun Fades, recalled almost reverentially by the remnants of his people, King Sariven faced the darkness consuming his valley to the last, until the palace fell with him still within it. But how much did he manage to learn about the oncoming disaster? What secrets did he take with him into the shadows? Despite his desperate struggle to save his people, was there something more he could have, should have done?

Warning: contains serious spoilers, to the point where if you haven’t already read the book I really suggest you don’t read any further! After all, the tale of Rakariel’s attempt to restore the valley depends inextricably on the tale of how it came to be engulfed in darkness in the first place.

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Meet the Characters: Tei

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Ask away!, Before the Sun Fades, Characters, Fantasy, Tei

Considering the book’s been out for a month now, it’s past time for another “Meet the Characters” post! Today, let’s introduce Tei, a young survivor with an unexpected talent who accompanies Rakariel through Before the Sun Fades.

Click to reveal spoilers:

Shipboard Life in Space

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Ask away!, Background, Books, Fused, Sci-Fi

The Fused (as regular readers no doubt already know!) takes place aboard a generation ship known only as the Ship, a massive spacecraft on a colonising mission, flying endlessly through space over the course of a hundred or more human lifetimes. It’s a complete and almost self-contained little world, taking in its energy by scooping up loose hydrogen from interstellar space, radiating waste heat and a little light, its systems dedicated to the preservation of onboard life. Four habitat domes (officially A, B, C, and D; unofficially named Airion, Brandia, Celestia, and Duras) provide living and recreational space for the colonists and crew, the main body of the ship dedicated to all necessary systems, an immense ramscoop blotting out the forward/’downward’ view, but scattered with its own constellations of running lights and signals, ‘glassed’ ceilings of networked corridors. (They are not, in fact, made of glass.) The ramscoop provides the main structure of the Ship, its entire forward face dedicated to collecting interstellar hydrogen. The domes are positioned around the reverse side, equidistant from one another, and the engine assemblage projects like an immense tower from the centre, midway between them all. For much of its journey, things have worked out more or less as they were originally designed to, and various loose historical definitions of roles aboard the Ship follow below.

Meet the Characters: Rakariel

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Ask away!, Before the Sun Fades, Characters, Fantasy, Rakariel

And now for something completely different: it’s time for another “Meet the Characters” post! Today, let’s hear a little bit about Rakariel, hero of Before the Sun Fades! (Yes, that’s the one I’ve finished but am sitting on. Just a little longer…!)

Rakariel, known in her home region as Rakariel Shadow-Bearer, is a travelling adventurer, a former mercenary whose hard-earned experience cost her dear. She’s cautious and careful about the situations she gets into, but once she’s chosen a course of action, she’s very difficult to sway. In a world of magic and a myriad conflicting gods, she forges a path as best she can through the trials of life.

Meet the Characters: Dayna Kingsley

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Ask away!, Characters, Dayna Kingsley, Galactic Federation, Sci-Fi

It’s about time we had a “Meet the Characters” post! I have a lot of characters, and I think it’ll be fun to introduce them all properly, particularly the side ones who you may not otherwise get much chance to see (though this particular example is very much a main character). That’s right, by my own loose terminology we’re talking some serious semi-canon here! Some terminology, dates, etc. may be subject to change, but the overall concept isn’t. Why did I pick this particular lady to go first? Well, I already have two fantasy or similar stories up… it seemed like time for a bit of sci-fi, considering that I actually write both in nearly equal proportion! And she’s an old one, so she’s reasonably settled, for the most part.

Dayna Kingsley is an officer of the Solar Police in the relatively near future. The Solar Police is a unified force formed to catch and deal with criminals in interplanetary space since space travel within the solar system became commonplace, following the invention of the space-warping “jump drive”, which permits Solar System distances to be traversed in a matter of days or weeks. She was born on Mars, in the first of the truly Martian colonies, and joined the Solar Police’s  direct recruitment program on leaving education.