(GE Copy)

Unwritten Stories: Airathee

I’m not sure why I’m listing this one. It’s not overly original, exciting, or had much of a run of things. It was intended to be the setup for something I could work with, like most my stories, giving a premise and seeing how far it could be taken... But, really, I was just chasing the writers high of Cathoris’s Legacy and it’s high octane possibilities. I gave Airathee every tool to do something incredible, and every incentive but the writing just could not keep up and was lacklustered and overshadowed by my better works that I couldn’t spend the time to build it into anything. But it might have been that he just looked too much like Zangulus from Slayers, and Zangulus looks kinda lame.

Airathee was modeled after the loner type bounty hunter, mysterious like Vampire Hunter D, and creative like Van Hellsing (take your pick on which adaptation of that legend you wanna go with there.) He was more of a lighter, ranger/survivalist type, who took the harder bounties and was less Gothic than any inspirations. He would have a knowledge of hexes, incantations, typical external magic forms that required ritual rather than simply waving a wand. He was agile, nimble, incredibly fast. One regular sword, one dagger, Florentine swordplay style with the reverse grip coz he was a badass, and wood block sword breakers just to be that one guy. Man was decked out. Deflectors on his arm braces, chain guard under his arms, a metal cup and a scrub board sixpack to wash your panties on. Once again, development just couldn’t keep up with the potential and was wasted.

Plot never developed, always just taking one job after another, and occasionally getting his gear repaired by the blacksmith and the guy’s totally eligible daughter who Airathee known since he was a kid. She would always swoon to get his attention but he had no interest in her that way, only going after the next job in hopes it would bring him closer to whatever plot I never developed. The blacksmith had a deep backstory that was not developed, and the tension between Airathee and the girl was also riddled in roadblocks that were equally undeveloped. If you think I can remember a single bounty he took, you’d be wrong; and if I could explain how the flow of things failed, you’d actually have a story.

Still not sure what killed it. Nephesh, Gems, Cathoris’s Legacy, all went on long hiatuses until inspiration struck, but I can’t really tell why Airathee just never surfaced again. Maybe I put him into a world with too many things going on that I couldn’t just develop one thing long enough to built it. Maybe there was too much mystery and no idea why it was there. Normally it helps me fill in the details and worry about it later, as that I can rewrite it, so long as I at least have a point to work off of. There wasn’t even much character to Airathee, just a guy with no motivation other than do job, get money, feel accomplishment of never having that said wealth for myself. I think I made it from a few ideas to tide off my restlessness. When it was dedicated to be my next big thing, it constantly seemed overshadowed by so many works that just did it better. They were better established, more unique, the flow was smoother, and Airathee was just a small fish in a large pond of other stories more interesting.

It should have worked, but it didn’t. Too much demand, and not enough reward.

I was going to do a run of easter eggs through my stories with a repeating hidden message for anyone reading between the line, literally between the lines, and I thought it would be cute to make people wonder “Who is this Airathee, why is he watching?” Like Ed and Al just decoded marko’s recipe book levels of contrived bullshit, just for shits and giggles... but having told you about it, and how benign it is, I figured that it just wasn’t worth the chicken scratch to put it anywhere and so, it’s d.e.d.

Really ded...