Initially, back before I even started to put things down on paper, Dark Lands was supposed to be an Isekai, but after realizing that the reincarnation aspect became a nonfactor to the story almost instantly I decided to drop that angle and make it a standard fantasy story instead.

The Isekai aspects during this time were that Dark Lands would have either been a long running romance novel series or cult classic dating sim game that the story’s protagonist, “Iskra”, would have been a fan of. Back in the “old world” she would have also been an architectural engineer of some kind before having been reincarnated into the banished Duke’s daughter. This was cut out and it would later come into being that Iskra’s mother would be the architect once I started to flesh out more of the world and the relationships that came with it.

During this time I was also planning on writing the story in a way that would be more episodic in nature and for each “episode” to fit in a wider arc. After writing down the “skeletons” for some of these episodes I realized that I didn’t really enjoy how the story was turning out, nor did I think that I would enjoy writing them in general, and so I decided to instead structure the story in a way that you would typically see in your average novel. This only happened once I realized that the story kept jumping around and either made no sense, they rarely felt connected to the other episodes, or that the episodes felt that they were jumping around in terms of how much time did or didn’t pass between them.

These episodes would have largely focused on Iskra and for her to be put into situations where she would meet certain characters and gain particular items/allies. I kept a good portion of the characters that she would have met into the first Dark Lands book and either decided to drop the others or place them into future stories. As for the other items/allies, they’ll eventually show up in the future as well or not at all. I haven’t really decided on a more concrete answer just yet.

As for how I wanted to pace the story and Iskra’s quest for revenge, I wanted to write a story that takes place during the “before”. This first arc, in an admittedly snail’s pace revenge quest, was meant to introduce a good portion of the cast of characters while still retaining a decent attempt at telling how they all met and their reasoning for being where they are. I do want to say that I understand that the overall pace of the” revenge getting” feels unreasonably slow and that the whole aspect of Iskra getting revenge appears to be nowhere in sight, but it’ll eventually come around.

Then we have the backdrop of Dark Lands itself; the untamed and volcanic region of Voldigrov or otherwise known as “The Dark Lands” within the story’s universe. While the wider world of the story’s universe takes after aspects of various fantasy universes (such as Warhammer, Warcraft, LotR, etc.) I had always envisioned Voldigrov to be a copycat of Mordor itself. From the mountain ranges that dominate the landscape, to the numerous amounts of active volcanoes, to the vicious tribes of orcs, goblins and trolls that dot the land within. Everything was always meant to help describe to the reader that only someone with evil in them would be able to come into this land and survive.

In order to help Iskra along with her admittedly snail pace of a quest for revenge, I wanted Voldigrov to also be rich in minerals and metals and whenever I think of the future of the story, I imagine the land to be a littered with mines that dig up the earth and provide only the ruling class with the land’s riches.

The plot point of why the Ranislavian expedition went into the supposedly terrifying region has always been that of trying to map out the area. As for the exact reasons as to why, they always fluctuate between “pushing back the mist” of an otherwise unknown region to “first step to colonizing” and I haven’t really settled down on an exact, concrete reason.

And I’m not sure why, but whenever I think about what a complete map of Voldigrov would look like I always somehow think of it being a weird fantasy version of Idaho.

The characters (for those that hadn’t been cut out entirely at this point) also went through various changes.

Iskra:

Iskra came into being because of my preference for female villains to either be the hideous hag archetype (such as swamp dwelling witches in old fairy tales) or a curvaceous bombshell that’s ugly on the inside while retaining their beauty on the out.

After getting rid of the Isekai aspect, Iskra’s mannerisms were changed to be more closer to that of a teenager around her age while I attempted to still retain the idea that she was being educated as a future queen. (Though I do admit that Dark Lands has yet to properly show that she received such an education.)

When her parents came into existence I made them into paragons of virtue and despite their best attempts to raise their daughter as being a paragon of good, Iskra became cruel and vindictive towards those beneath her social status. (Though the story hasn’t really done a great job at showcasing this. Which I think is mostly due to my inability to have more of her POVs in the story than anything else.)

Initially, Iskra wasn’t supposed to be as obsessed with Aurelius as she is now. At first I wanted their relationship to be more casual in tone, but along the way I liked the idea of introducing a phenomenon where a “rescued damsel” became infatuated with their savior and for said damsel to have an unhealthy obsession towards their hero.

As the story started to come to a close, I realized just how weird it was for me to call her the story’s protagonist even though her POV ended up becoming less and less frequent. I think this turned out to be the case because of how heavily the story relied on action to push itself forward. Looking back at everything, it makes sense mostly because of the story’s nature and the Wild West aspect I was attempting to go for.

As for those who have read my story and thought to themselves “She doesn’t look to be evil”, that’s mostly by design and partly due to what’s been cut out to what I felt as trying to make this story work. It’s going to be a slow burn but once the story picks up steam and the pieces are in place, she’ll be acting like a proper “villain” in no time.

Velicion:

Fun fact: Velicion was only known as “Dark Elven Sorceress” in my notes until the time came to write her first appearance in the story and most of my notes still refer to her as such. Frustrated as to what I should name her, I decided to play Total War: Warhammer II and pick out a random name that were generated for the Dark Elven sorceress hero.

With regards to her personality, Velicion has probably changed the most out of the characters. At first she was going to be far more vindictive and manipulative and she would have been a huge driving force in getting Iskra to get closer to Aurelius as well as to becoming a far more crueler protagonist, but as I continued to write the story she ended up being a more motherly type of character to both Iskra and Aurelius and her manipulation was instead turned into a rivalry with Aurelius’ actual blood mother.

In the very early stages of my planning, she was also going to be the type of character that you would see designing various magical tools and other items for Iskra. At one point I was even planning on having her design a device that would allow Iskra to spy on any location within the world so long as they didn’t have an adequate enough defense mechanism. As of right now that’s been put on hold for future stories.

Aurelius:

Overall, he was probably the most static character in terms of being the closest to his initial design of being “A Dark Elven prince that acts and looks more like a typical High Elven hero”

To match this, Aurelius’ name was chosen deliberately. To do this I styled the High Elves as taking after the ancient Greeks and looked for names that would match his personality. Upon picking Aurelius as a name (which is translated to something similar to “Golden One”) I came up with the in universe reason as being that the name was chosen by his mother because it belonged to the “First Elf” and only “God King” that the Elves ever had. The fact that he was also blessed by the Fey when his mother was still pregnant with him had also been a large part of it was well as being blessed by the Fey are seen as being a huge deal within the Dark Lands universe. (Being blessed by the Fey changed his hair into the golden blonde color that it is now as well as giving him silver iris’s, which are only seen in pure blooded High Elf nobility.)

Other than that, he was always going to be a shy teenager who was heavily sheltered by his very controlling mother, but keen on getting out into the wider world and going on adventures.

Dasher:

Dasher was the first “evil” race character that I had written up to become Iskra’s ally. (With a second one being a singing troll king that will eventually be introduced). Dasher was always going to be a runaway slave that had the fake “prophecy” attached to him.

Partly because of how I originally wanted the goblin characters to speak (that I thankfully dropped in a somewhat quick manner) as well as just my inability to write action scenes, I absolutely hated writing Dasher’s POV and my pace of writing the chapters suffered because of it.

As of right now, I don’t plan on focusing on his POV in the next story but we’ll eventually return to a point where he’s going to be at war with tribe of goblins that live in an active volcano.

Orukk:

The first challenge for Iskra and friends that I wanted to be a “welcoming party” for the first story as well as my attempt at trying to convey just how dangerous Voldigrov was. I’m not sure if I succeeded or not in that aspect however.

As for Orukk himself I wanted him to be that “grand dreams” guy that, while having the power to achieve those dreams, has no right to even come close to fulfilling his wildest fantasies. He’s a character that’s full of himself, and he should’ve been viewed by the readers as being unfit to lead a tribe due to his inability to do anything except kill his subordinates, as well being lucky enough that he has the skill to beat most opponents he meets so he was able to gain enough followers to form a tribe of his own.

Orukk is similar to Aurelius in that he didn’t change much overall. Though I was initially planning on having him be very, very talkative when meeting Iskra and company. That changed along the way as I continued to write out the initial concepts for each chapter.

Argonok:

The initial idea for Argonok stems from my love of evil dwarf races and my favorite variants of that are the demon worshipping Chaos Dwarves from Warhammer. As of right now the race itself is very similar to Warhammer’s take on the “evil dwarf” idea and while there are a few differences I still call my dwarves “Chaos Dwarves”.

As for Argonok himself, I wanted to have a “Bullshit OP” royal guard type of character while trying to retain a reasonable middle ground to try and avoid the “Just send in Argonok” scenarios that I’m sure will pop up in the future.

As I continued to write him in various scenes, Argonok somehow ended up being the loudmouth who laughs at his own joke.

At one point I wanted to have a flashback where it’s explained in more detail as to how he came to be as a Fire Guard as well as to give some more depth to my take on “Chaos Dwarves”. I might decide to do a side story where I do exactly that (and do like the idea of writing it), but as of right now I don’t plan on writing it.