#krythe

[astralibrary]

for pride month i drew a bunch of my trans ocs!! & got a bit carried away w designing their clothes lol 💙🌸🤍🌸💙

(also chrissy is a stealth redraw of this from a few years back :3c):

[kenbarrens]

1/23

Had some setbacks to a basement flood!  Still managed to sketch out a new character while I was waiting on the plumbers.

FMN: When magic awakens within the anthro population of T’zen, the mob-controlled senate’s first instinct is to discreetly acquire as many of the most skilled mages they can find; Their second is to capture the rest and exile them, usually by teleporting them to Thurlos.

Though the gift of magic is already exceptionally rare amongst anthros, most who discover it can only manipulate it in subtle ways.  Very, very few are capable of going beyond and achieving real conjuration.  Daru is one such exceptionally gifted mage, one who works with light for shielding and restoration.  Highly inquisitive, he has a knack for understanding how things work, and spends a lot of his free time watching the sky.

I’m not sure what I want to do with this guy yet.  I think he’s going to be a minor character, though at this stage I’m not even sure which planet he’s on!  The robe and vest (they’re shimmering scales) are clearly magical, so that means he has to have been to Thurlos at least once.

Krythe: Continuing to revise the entrance of Fio, the fourth character in the main party.  Fio is a farmer involved with one of the rebel factions as a recruiter.  Originally, I had him acting childish, which was intentional to go along with his idealistic views.  Reading it over, I don’t think I like that tone anymore.  I’m still trying to find his voice (and keep it similar enough that changing it doesn’t necessitate serious rewrites), but I’m finding it’s easy to make him sound sure of himself to a fault, and that’s generating some good wordplay.

I have about a week and a half before it’s my turn to present next for critiques.  I’m trying to have 3 chapters ready, and right now I’m halfway done.  I also have some extra material to show, such as the new prologue.  There’s a lot of new content going in as I’m researching psychic phenomena to give the book some credibility - like the prologue, Fio’s entrance will introduce some psychic concepts to play around with.

[kenbarrens]

I think I mentioned this a long time ago, but this is how I wrote the war scene of Krythe - by inventing a board game around Gan City and playing it out turn by turn! Each grid space had different defense values based on terrain, and some areas offered bonuses like repairing vehicles or powering anti-air turrets. There was also a second battle taking place in the sky (on the whiteboard), and units from one board could affect the other, such as dropping troops from above, or damaging units below as large ships crashed. As I played, I took notes on where troops were moving turn-by-turn, and used that to inform the scene as I wrote the chapter - the main characters were in the mix somewhere in the middle, and as the tides of war shifted on the game board, it impacted how I wrote the scene in the book!

[kenbarrens]

Cities and units for each faction, in order: Plasmodians, Nat’Aspan, AITech, and Krythans.

[kenbarrens]

A few different animation cycles for Bain, the Plasmodian Commander - swinging his arm as a shapeshifted sword, walking, and aiming his gun.

[kenbarrens]

Some sprites for Krythe’s armies, the Plasmodians and the Nat’Aspan

[kenbarrens]

Digging up some oldies! This is some art from the turn-based strategy game for Krythe. This was a group project in college where I got to take the lead in designing and implementing a game in PyGame with a team. The game was unfinished, but playable if you knew the rules.

At the start, you’d choose a faction, either Plasmodians (red) or Nat’Aspan (purple). Two more factions were planned: Krythans, and AITech. You’d then have some points to spend to build an army, and after that, you’d be taken to the game board.

Each player started with a row of (free) infantry, standing in front of a second row comprised of the army you’d built, and then a Commander in the center behind that. You could move a few pieces per turn by clicking a piece, then choosing one of the hexes that were highlighted within its range, or you could attack another unit either from range or up close. If you dealt enough damage, the enemy piece would be removed from the board. The goal was to destroy the enemy’s Commander before they destroyed yours. It played out similar to chess, and we’d planned on giving the units special abilities, like repairing downed units for the robot faction, or psychic abilities for the Krythans.

[kenbarrens]

4/22 Update (Where am I?)

Yeah, you can tell the weeklies have fallen off!

Despite falling behind here, I’ve been making a lot of headway in Krythe.  Just... not as quickly as I imagined I would.  Goes to show, even if you can give yourself the time and space to do it, that’s not enough.  Sometimes the world sees things are a little too convenient, so you go and fracture your toe off the side of your bed hard enough to keep you hobbling not far from your bed for a month or so.

Between bouts of staring at a blank page, or trying in vain to fit two edited paragraphs together before throwing it out and just rewriting the darn thing to erase the seams, or throwing my hands up in the air and watching Voltron instead (it helps that it’s become a legitimate inspiration for what I’m writing), I’ve been doing a lot of research on quantum physics and metaphysics.  Stuff I want to incorporate into my works, trying to put these things in layman's terms so it’s a bit educational beneath the entertainment.

One other way I’m fighting procrastination is by trying to write something every day.  Sometimes it’s in a journal (which I’m actually very tempted to publish as-is, as it’s filling up with illustrations of theories on how reality works, as well as my very personal experiences with the supernatural which I am DYING TO TALK ABOUT!), other times it might wind up here as free prose, a prompt, a vignette, whatever I feel like.

As for Forget Me Not, things have cooled on that front.  I want to focus on Krythe right now, and while I’m sure I’d be down to throw out a character sketch every now and then... heh.  Truth is, I think right now I’d rather be working on this comic, but I know if I jump down that hole I’m probably not coming back to finish the novel for a long time - and by then, my writing style may change again, meaning even more edits.  It won’t be much longer until Krythe is ready to publish, and then I can dive into Forget Me Not full force.

Between all of that, I have to make a very big decision very soon: When do I go back to programming?  Full time or part time?  How do I find the right job to balance with my life goals?  Or, am I close enough that I can keep my head down and push this thing out?

Krythe will certainly be the biggest project I’ve personally created - and completed - when it’s ready.  I feel like I have so many projects left hanging already that have never seen an end.  I always regret it when I move on to something else, but at least I still have all the resources from that older work, and a story that’s ready to use them.  Laying the seeds for my future, as it were.