#Witch King (4.3 stars on Rate My Ruler)

[thewritersline]

Hi! Not gonna lie, my brain has been in a bit of a life-induced shutdown for the past little while. I only just thought to myself, gee, maybe I should update that one poll.

I loved reading about everyone’s thoughts and theories on this, ranging from “how would an approval rating be measured in this Clearly Very Serious fantasy world?” to “Why would Ignacio be able to drink alcohol?? Dragon fire + booze = a bad time for protag.”

It was so nice to have someone else’s feedback on this little project, and I love each and every one on you for this. Some of your responses made me look closer into the themes of friendship and family in my story, and I’ve been brainstorming more with Iggy than I have in a while. I also had to sit down for a while and come to terms with the fact that while our reluctant dragon slayer doesn’t love the nickname Iggy, he vastly prefers it to Nacho, which was the only other option. I could type his full name out each time, but one of the greatest joys in writing is annoying your characters like you would your pet cats. These are things I had never given such focused thought to before, so thank you so much for all of that!

NOW, THE LONG AWAITED RESULTS (IMPORTANT BITS ARE BOLDED AND IN CAPS):

First, Ignacio was absolutely a ye olde frat boy before his curse. He loved to have a good time, and for him that meant drinking, flirting, and doing stupid things for booze or attention. You can imagine that he was more than a little shocked when he woke up after being dragon-cursed to discover that even getting anything but the most watered-down of ales close to his mouth would result in unintentional fire breath. On the plus side, he literally can’t drunkenly brag about anything that could get yet another curse placed on him. Unfortunately, his social life is kaput.

To clarify: IGNACIO CAN NOT DRINK ALCOHOL. Kudos to those of you who sussed that out!

Second, the Witch King might be involved in the darker side of the magical arts, but he hasn’t led the kingdom into a war, or caused a famine, or raised taxes, or angered the gods, or gotten the land cursed by a malevolent fairy who turned his entire castle staff into talking furniture, and he even takes constructive criticism and travels regularly to check on how things are running, so he’s doing pretty well. There hasn’t even been a plague of either the magical or non-magical variety. There might have been a few sketchy rituals when he was just a Witch Prince, but since then he’s grown as a person and he takes his job very seriously. Depending on the day, it wouldn’t be unheard of for about 86% of his citizens to approve of him, if you bothered to ask.

So: THE WITCH KING WOULD HAVE A HIGH APPROVAL RATING.

Which means…

THE LIE WAS THAT IGNACIO AND JACK WERE CHILDHOOD FRIENDS.

The two of them never even knew each other as children. There isn’t any personal reason for Jack to be opposed to Ignacio, just Jack’s adherence to the classic fairy tale trope of Good vs Evil. As far as he’s concerned, Iggy is an Evil Dragon Necromancer Villain and the perfect to Jack’s Poor Farm Boy Hero shtick. You would think this would make it easier for Iggy to plead his case, but Jack has a very firm view of right and wrong and has placed Iggy firmly on the side of wrong, so he won’t even hear the guy out. As if our boy doesn’t have enough problems.

So that’s that! If you want to hear more about this little world, feel free to send me an ask or tag me in more writeblr games!

Two Truths and a Lie

My first writeblr game! Thank you to @new-royston-cursebreakers for the tag! His poll is here.

I'll put a little bit about my wip first, since I haven't actually talked about it here.

Protag: Ignacio, adventurer dragon fighter blaggard and reluctant necromancer.

Background and motivation: He's been cursed with burning blood, scales, and other dragon-related suffering by a witch king. The curse can only be broken when Ignacio slays the dragon that had been tormenting the realm. This would be difficult enough, but to top it all off, the dragon died on it's own before Ignacio could get to it. Now Ignacio is searching for some way to bring the dragon back from the dead so he can kill it again and finally get back to his old life.

Setting: The world functions on fairy tale logic, where strange and disturbing things are considered normal and almost everyone who could be helpful is unnecessary cryptic. There're plenty of classic fairy tale characters, including talking animals, pixies, trolls, knights, princesses, witches in disguise, and many more.

Antag: Jack, a simple farm boy who's strangely proficient with a sword. He's the classic hero, chosen by fate to stop Ignacio from resurrecting the dragon that laid waste to their kingdom.

Now, on to the game!

I'm tagging @thegrindingwheel, @luminary-lines, @revenantlore, @storyteller-kara, @wintherlywords, and @zinabug-writes (or @zinabug if your side blog isn't linking properly).