I had forgotten how much I enjoy High Fantasy. During Camp NaNoWriMo I decided to write some short stories to work towards my word count goal (spoiler: I didn’t make it). One of those stories was about a half-orc half-dwarf lady, and I kind of love it. Usually I try to keep my fantasy a bit more subdued and grounded (to an extent), but I decided to go all out with this and have angry gods and elves flinging fireballs at each other. Honestly I think it’s awesome and have been having a lot of fun with it. So much so that I’d like to turn it into a series.
I’ve starting thinking about the worldbuilding elements and how the characters fit into that world. I don’t want the fantasy races to be carbon copies of those seen in other stories, but I still want them to have certain recognizable elements (like orcs being big burly tusked brutes). I’m also a sucker for magic systems, even the vague ones, because it always bugs me when the limits of a character’s powers aren’t communicated to the audience. If a wizard can melt steel with their fireballs, I want to know it and not have it contradicted later on for no reason. My goal is for this story to have something in between, a system that lets you know its limits but doesn’t outline every little detail and has some wiggle room to bend the guidelines.
So far there are gray skinned orcs, vagabond elves, and beetle-like bug people. The current draft takes place in a large city that has a varied mix of all these peoples. I think it's a good starting point that I can build outward from.
Maybe it'll be a series of short stories (or novelettes), each dealing with different aspects of the world. It might not see the light of day anytime soon, but I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going. Who knows, maybe in a little while I’ll be able to share a story based in this new world.