Welcome to Tharia

Tharia's Creator, James Pomeroy
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Rohese pulled up hard on the reins of the drake, kicked its shoulder with the steel-shod heel of her left foot, and the beast snorted and made a wide turn. Looking down from this height the abandoned castle on its little island looked like a bleached pile of bones, smoldering in places, with what appeared to be tiny ants moving in the tangled mess of it. Grum flew beside her and motioned downward. She knew where to go. The rest of the party was already there, securing their mounts and readying equipment, gathered on the far end of the old stone bridge that crossed to the island in the middle of the very broad but shallow Darrow River. Pi'liu, Krem, Randolf, and Rada had arrived earlier and set up a base camp. She had been flying most of the night, having been recruited in Opal by Grum while in her cups at the Prancing Wyvern tavern in the south of the great city.

Rohese and Grum had flown the vast distance to the castle at speed, taking turns dozing in their saddles along the way. The drakes were well trained, and would follow whichever had the lead while keeping its dozing rider in the saddle. Still, Rohese had never learned to sleep well while flying, and something about flying over the vastness of the Long Sea only made sleep that much harder to come by. Her joints ached from jerking awake so often, and as the morning light grew over the land she knew that she had a very full day ahead of her.

Rohese had known Grum for years, though they seldom crossed paths anymore. He was a tough old bear of a man, with more dungeoneering experience than most would survive. She'd been in some fairly dangerous spots with the Northerman, and trusted his abilities fairly as much as her own. Truthfully, perhaps a bit more under the circumstances.

They'd sat in a dark corner of the tavern where the light of its long room's lanterns fell dimly, he with a tankard of stout and she with a tall glass of an aromatic and heady port. Both their drinks all but perpetually filled by a barmaid at Grum's behest. He'd known just where to find her, it seemed, and then known just how to lure her in.
 

—A story fragment from my personal notes

As a child, I came to love stories of adventure. The format didn't matter so much to me, so long as the characters were going beyond their comfortable, familiar world. I thank Madeleine L'Engle for that. As was the case for many children, A Wrinkle In Time swept me up and carried me away to places I could not have imagined before I found myself, alongside Meg Murry, visiting them. After traveling through Ms. L'Engle's work, I moved on to Frank Herbert's Dune, a novel that further opened my mind to the depth and scope of creativity, and thence onward to many other novels replete with fantastic settings, amazing experiences, and the spirit of exploration.

From Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to Pratchett's Discworld series, one thing became clear to me over time: I love swords and sorcery, dragons and monsters, elves and dwarves, and all that goes with it. Naturally, I played Dungeons & Dragons in my teens, and today I have a bunch of Pathfinder manuals waiting for me to get a game together (it will happen!). I spent a solid couple of years playing World of Warcraft almost daily (I even had a Posterous page for my favorite toon, a Forsaken mage named Wense), and I very definitely plan on playing it again sometime. I am also working my way through George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, and watch the series on HBO. And I've not even addressed my undying love of fantasy-oriented heavy metal (think of Blind Guardian and Rhapsody of Fire), let alone my enjoyment of the Nerd Poker podcast!

All this?—I admit it: it's just crazy. I know. You know. So here I am, on my way to my fifth decade on this earth, and my love for magical worlds of fantasy has clearly not diminished with the years but grown and developed and… and…

Well, I guess I realized it's time to do the one thing I really haven't done so far.

Thus, Tharia: Roads to Adventure. My own world. My own interpretation of elves, dwarves, monsters and all the rest of it. After years of steeping in the worlds of others, I realized that my brain was coming up more and more frequently with its own stories. In fact, my brain seemed to be fairly in need of expressing itself, in getting these ideas out, in creating scenarios and plots, in developing persons, places, and things in a world of its own devising.

I began to write material belonging to this new world, and posted little bits of that writing to my Facebook page. To my surprise, friends enthusiastically asked to read more. They really liked what I was writing. They wanted me to continue. And as I did, I found myself coming under my own spell! I got invested in this place in a way I'd never felt before, as if somewhere—in some possible multiverse in which we are but one world among myriads of myriads of myriads of others—Tharia really exists, and it wants to be known and explored, to have its tales told, to have its characters known.

Dear Reader, I feel compelled to write the stories of this place I've dreamed up. Every day, I find myself exploring it. Races of sentient beings have made themselves known, while others have hinted that they are waiting for their cue to make themselves known.

This blog will be their home away from home. This place will be for you, the reader, to meet them and to hear of their adventures as I learn to express them. It will also be the place for you to ask questions about the stories, make constructive suggestions, and share your impressions of Tharia and the stories it spawns. Out of all this will come at least one novel, and, very likely, at least one Kickstarter campaign.

Stay tuned!

As a final word on this blog, please note the Creative Commons license below, which applies to the whole site. As I am writing a novel and planning a Kickstarter campaign, it is important for me to give myself and my idea, my world and its stories, a little protection. Thank you very much for your kind consideration on this matter.

Onward to the blog!


Creative Commons License
Tharia: Roads to Adventure by James Pomeroy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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