A Quest for the Stars

A Quest for the Stars turns 1 on Royal Road today! I wanted to do something special for today, and while I had some ideas, in the end I decided to make an art gallery and some fun facts. But first, some background.

Quest started as a simple amalgamation of plots and stories, almost a crossover. Then it became its own original story before that got scrapped indefinitely, and it stayed in the back burner until I got into TTRPGs. Once I learned how to play some systems, I decided to take on the role of Game Master and give it a try. There were definitely bumps on the road and took years to get the hang of it. But after several years, I had my own group and to this day we still play weekly. Sometime last year, I decided to combine elements of my failed projects and spin them into a new premise. And thus, A Quest for the Stars was born.

It hasn't been an easy road, but here we are, one year later. I mentioned some fun facts, right? Let's start with those.

The story originally started in the Goodsprings arc.

The plan was to write ten chapters before publishing the Prologue on RR, and that's what I did. Once I published the Prologue, I wasn't satisfied with what I had written, so I decided to start with Helix City and work my way there. The chapters I had written previously were left unused but remain in my Docs to this day. To give you an example how different this story would have been, Lenoria started as a criminal who immigrated across the border because she heard news of her long-lost sister wrongfully arrested in Thule. She got herself arrested so she could be sent to the penal colony her sister was in and would then plot to break her and herself out. Alistair was pretty much her parole officer, Instructor Gardens joined her as a member of her party, and Goodsprings was supposed to be the aforementioned penal colony. I also switched personalities between Al and Pearl, with Alistair being more assertive and colder and Pearl being more of a shrinking violet. By the end of the tenth chapter, Lenoria would have acquired the Corvus, Ursa Minor, and Leo Minor Soulstones.

Starflower was supposed to be a starter villain.

It's more obvious in the earlier chapters, but Starflower's incarceration was originally planned to be his last appearance. But then I realized he had potential, so I decided to plan his jail break and have him go on a revenge quest, yet that eventually got scrapped too in favor of what we have now. Will he fall back to old habits, become a better person, or just turn into something else entirely? Only time will tell.

The world runs on the concept of anachronism stew.

Forum goers are more likely to already know this because I say this every time it comes up, but Quest isn't your average fantasy/gaslamp setting. We have Helix, where a portion of it is based on 1920s America with a steampunk twist and another part of it lives in the Aztec times with a more modern take. Then we have Thule, which is more of a dark fantasy setting with undead as the main threat. Befrus is a cold region along the south pole that is ruled by dwarven castes living peacefully with the Vikings. And then we have Eishima, a group of islands based on some of the greater names in Asia like China and Japan living in feudal times. How can all these groups of people coexist? Well, that's the fantasy aspect. They just do.

The minotaur from chapter 53 was named by a player.

I don't remember the exact date, but it was probably around 2017-2018 where I ran a one-shot campaign where a villainous force went through an expedition in Hell. One of the players wanted to play but didn't have the time to make a new sheet, so I happily provided him with a minotaur barbarian. To give him a sense of uniqueness, I let him name the minotaur. What I had forgotten to take into account was that this particular player, if given that kind of power, would turn a serious campaign into utter hilarity. What did he name him? "Sir Loin the Black Angus." The name has been slightly altered for this story, but I don't think anyone will notice the difference.

Valentine's name is a pun.

I'm very surprised no one caught it or pointed it out yet. She's a harpy eagle named Valentine. Borders on black comedy and fridge horror when you remember who her master was.

Speaking of names, some of the cast have meaningful names.

Instead of explaining this one, I'll drop a link to the thread where I give away the meaning behind my character names.

Gallery

Here's a collection of doodles and drawings I wanted to show off. They're not great, but I wouldn't have been able to do this back when I started writing, so I'm actually a little proud of myself for these. Maybe next year I can provide better ones. We shall see.

Lenoria and Pearl. You can see I tried to give Pearl wings, but that was a miserable endeavor.

Alistair in casual clothes. This is what he'd wear on a crisp fall day. Can't go without his mace and shield, though.

My two muses. Riddel (left) and Lenoria (right). I had fun drawing chibis and nearly cried when I drew Riddel.

Two early drawings of Lenoria. I've yet to come up with my different style so I've been drawing her with help from tutorial videos and other guides.

A commission made about three years ago. I still love it.

Credit: solnish.tumblr.com

And this is Lenoria wearing her guild uniform. These last three images are something I've been working on this past week during my free time. Juggling between this, writing, and my daily routine wasn't easy, especially this past week. It's not my best work and you can definitely see some errors if you take a closer look. Yet I feel a lot better drawing on paper, and tracing that piece of work in my Sketchbook app. Hey, tracing is not so bad when I'm already providing the draft, eh?

Preview: Thule Arc

The above images were made during Midjourney's infancy. AI is better now, but as I continue to learn to draw, I'll be slowly dropping my dependency on AI images.

As always, Grey continues to deliver.