OK, I’m going to be completely straight with you. I forgotten I’d been working on this series. It happens. Best laid plans and life gets in the way and all that. LOL
Recently, the previous posts (Post 1, Post 2) have seen an increase in traffic, so I thought I’d share a few other stories. Before I do, let me restate their purpose. For a gaming and whiskey weekend, I’d 3D printed characters for my friends to paint. To serve as inspiration for their characters, I wrote some quick backstories that they could mix n match as they desired. More info can be found here: Prologue: Stories for Whiskey Weekend.
Now, let’s meet Molli and Noe (painting by Whiskey Weekend guys).
Molli McGillman sighed. She stopped her nomad’s journey and studied the young person’s face. Another death. Perhaps, this is the one I can prevent.
One year ago, Molli had taken a strange path through the woods and fallen into a time paradox. Of course, she wouldn’t have put it into those words, and she was barely aware anything had happened. The next day, she came upon a drowned man on the riverbank. Making her way upstream, she heard cries ahead. There struggling in the water, though she told herself it was a different person, was the man whose body she’d seen. A few hours later, she saw him a third time as he crossed the river on slippery rocks.
This is the second in a series of posts I’m sharing about quick little backstories I wrote for a recent retreat. We were doing a painting session and I’d wanted to help my friends bring their characters to life with some brief prompts. To get them to start telling the story, if you will.
It was satisfying to watch them read through these vignettes, sometimes laughing or reading portions aloud. I heard a lot of positive feedback on the names, which was gratifying because I’d hoped to present names that were unusual, but not too awkward. In this post, I’ll share a few stories for which the characters’ names garnered the most attention.
Delish Monté slowly blinked her eyes. Another twelve hours had passed.She didn’t move, preferring her trusted routine of letting her eyes adjust.
Delish frowned. She shouldn’t have been able to see this well. The closet was in an interior room with no windows. By the usual math, it was now midnight, so it should be pitch black.
Delish stood, stretching her limbs and noting that the louvered doors of the closet were intact, but no light filtered through. She looked up to see a ceiling crisscrossed with cracks through which the illumination came. Something had happened.
Her nostrils registered a strong odor of smoke and burning substances. Someone had tried to burn her safehouse down while she was incapacitated. Their intel was good, but not good enough to know she couldn’t be harmed for the twelve hour she waited in suspended animation. The closet doors fell away as she pushed on them, landing in ash and the muck created by water from firehoses. She knew she should worry that the Collective had finally caught up to her, but this was actually a reprieve. No one would be chasing a dead woman. Eleven hours and fifty-five minutes to find a new hiding place.
Delish Monté is my favorite name of the characters I created. There’s a fun rhythm to it and it’s somewhat provocative in a couple ways that could influence the story you start to tell yourself when you hear it. Similarly, the next character, Jonny Gunsel, is evocative for fans of gangster noir (gunsel: a criminal carrying a gun; I assumed it was short for “gunslinger”, but the word has a Yiddish origin instead). It’s also occuponomous, if you believe in that sort of thing.
In my last post, I described this amazing retreat that I attend every year. It’s probably 75% gaming, 25% whiskey, and 100% fun.
I promised to share the short backstories I’d written as part of the swag I was giving everyone. But before I get to that, let me describe the writing challenge I gave myself.
I had limited time to prepare, once I’d decided on my plan. I needed to print at least a dozen miniatures, then clip, clean, cure, and prime them all. I did the same with another dozen bases or so (I had some failed prints, I mean, some were battle damaged! Waaagh!) I also printed labels for each story card and for the bottom of each base so you’d remember the name of your character and the event where you got it.
And then I needed a dozen backstories of about 200 words each, which after printing, I’d affix a label and laminate. Buuuuut, because I’m a writer who needs to challenge himself, I ended up with sixteen. It wasn’t that much of a hardship because I had more than twenty ideas that I thought would be fun. So let me get to the challenge.
Every year for the last four, I’ve attended a tabletop gaming and whiskey retreat that we call Whiskey Weekend. I wouldn’t be exaggerating much if I said we played games from sunrise to midnight.The titular game of the weekend is a double-blind tourney where we pit our whiskeys against each other.
Entries in the blind whiskey tournament, placed from 12-1.
It’s an unbelievably fun time filled with camaraderie, laughter, self-deprecation, and good conversations about gaming of all forms. The event is in its 16th year, having started as a Dungeons & Dragons getaway for a few friends. Over time, the event has morphed into the amazing experience it is today. We have a social media following and even have swag sometimes.
This year, I was no longer the rookie, as we were adding two people to the invitation. I figured it was my turn to bring the swag. So, when the event organizer suggested we take some time to paint tabletop minis, my partially formed idea sprung to full life.
My idea was to not only 3D print some minis in resin, I would also give people the option to choose a custom base and a backstory. The writer should use his skills, right?
A selection of tabletop minis and bases.Sampling of the backstories I wrote. Printed, labeled, and laminated.Choose your character, base, and story!
3D Models source: Adaevy Creations (except the tall Viking, which was created via Hero Forge)
Within a few hours, I’d whipped up sixteen 200-word stories. I’m never sure whether I should tell people just how quickly I created each one: I worry that their response will be disbelief or a derisive “well, obviously“. Each one sprung to life relatively easily, which is partially due to their nature. They’re not intended to tell a complete story, but to inspire my friends into considering what comes next. Each one centered around a simple concept, like these:
A curse is causing a village to forget their entire spoken language. The town chronicler is trying to choose the last word he’ll think about before it’s also forgotten.
When he sees his doppelganger, a man with a strong regenerative power wonders, “If I can regrow a part, can a part regrow a body?”
She slipped into a time paradox which causes her to see stages of a tragedy in reverse.
He thinks he randomly turns invisible. Often he’s right, but that also means, sometimes he’s not. He can’t tell the difference.
It was a ridiculously fun writing experience, and not just because the stories came effortlessly. No, it was also freeing, a way to re-engage my creativity, which has been dormant a few months. And, it was a gift to friends that I hoped would make their weekend experience better. It worked.
Over the next week or so, I’ll be sharing these stories in a series of posts. It’s partially a way to showcase a project I’m proud of, but also, like the stories themselves, I’m hoping to inspire you to consider how else you might use your writing skills. So, tell us….what comes next?
The Lost Royals 