Hello World

 Hello World!

Who I am is not particularly relevant right now. What is relevant is what I am, and what I am, is a very bored man in the middle of a pandemic that has only left his home a dozen times in almost a year.

Which means that I have a lot of free time on my hands. More time than I would have dreamt of. And this is the result. This little blog showing my little world. Anduria.

Anduria was born more than 20 years ago when I was a very young man, and one of my teachers gave us the assignment to write a story so the best ones could go to a contest held in the school. That was it. No conditions, no limits. Just a Story.

I did it with a friend, and the result was a mess. Each of us had is own character in the story and we would gain powers to go and save the world. Not my brightest moment. But it was good enough (or the other entries were even worst) and we got to be in the top 3 within the class vote (we got the second place if memory serves) and went alongside with 2 others to the contest held by the school. Where we proceed to get decimated. Truth be told only the top 3 among all entries were announced and ours wasn't part of them. I have no idea how close we were to the top 3, but I would assume that we were very far away. 

My friend was done with it and we went on with our life. But something was left inside of me. A little seed that I never bothered to take care of or remove completely. I just stayed there.

Time passed. In fact, years passed. And sometimes, not often, I would find myself remembering this little event and trying to imagine how I would do if I could redo that little story where two 12-years old tried to save the world.

And fragment by fragment, bit by bit, Anduria started to gain form on my mind. This was around the time where I was starting to read stuff outside of comics, like His Dark Materials, Sabriel, and Lord of the Rings among others. So the first big change that happened without me ever realizing was that I dropped the real world for a fantasy one. I had no idea what it would be like, back then I just knew that it was different, where people could go around with a sword killing monsters.

Some more time passed and I noticed that my characters were growing with me. They were no longer 12-years old, but would, instead, be whatever age I was at the moment. This is where I knew that I couldn't have a character that was "me". So I got rid of them.

Do keep in mind that those little steps took years to take as this was just happening in the few minutes where I would lay down to sleep but hadn't lost consciousness yet. Up until this point, this was not something that I was working on or dedicating time to it. They were just ideas that would come to me, absorbing everything that I would see, read or learn to grow very slightly stronger every time. 

Until one day I noticed that the small story that I created some years ago had morphed into something else. Something bigger and better.

When I noticed this I tried to write again.  This time around I created a story called "The Angels" which would involve two ridiculously powerful individuals that, while childhood friends, were crossed with each other. One was trying to save the world, the other trying to kill the first one to be the strongest in the world. 

It wasn't very good. But I learned a lot while doing it. Thanks to it the world and the people on it were gaining form and the magic system was starting to get its rules defined. But I was around 18 at this time and writing was not in my top priorities.  So it got dropped for a while.

Life happened after that, stuff was happening and I always had something to do. But always, if I would get distracted my mind would drift to this and change the story in some shape or form but it was happening less and less as time went by. 

I must admit that during this time I had stopped reading. Not for a lack of books, my parents always had a bunch of books lying around waiting to be read. But I was a teenager and I had friends to be with, games to play, and series to watch. 

And then one day a friend invited me to a d&d campaign ( 3.5 had just come out and they were all very excited. I had no idea what any of that meant) and this was a turning point for me. I got to meet a lot of new people as the only one I knew was the DM. And this rekindled that small spark.

Being around people that enjoyed fantasy-related stuff was amazing for me and I made friendships on that table that still remain to this day. And they were all talking about fantasy books that I had never heard about.

And suddenly I was reading again. And that little seed started growing again as it didn't take long for my mind to start drifting again to Anduria. 

Years and years passed, and while I was writing just enough to be able to be a player or a dm for a couple of D&D sessions, I never had the strength or will to try to actually write a story again. Until a couple of friends strongly advised me to read the Final Empire and I was blown away. 

I don't want to transform this first post into a love letter to Brandon Sanderson, but I can't stress enough how his books helped me. And then I found a bunch of his videos online and his words gave me the strength to try writing again. 

This was a couple of years ago, and while I did start writing a new story in Anduria it was not going particularly fast. I would write a couple of paragraphs a week at most. But this time, for the first time, I was happy with the result. I was happy with the characters, the story, and the world around them and above all, when I re-read the text, I was enjoying it as a reader. And that is what I always wanted, to be able to write something that I would really enjoy.

Then the pandemic started resulting in me and the family has been stuck at home. It was and is though and I must say that I might have been on the verge of a depression. Since the quarantine started I haven't written anything, as I fell dull and slow inside, as if my brain was underwater. Sometimes I would try to do something but I would get bored really fast.  

Thankfully one day I understood that this is not the way and I made a promise to myself to keep myself busy and ward off those feelings of monotony and dullness. 

I decided to start working on a bunch of projects and that all of them would be related to Anduria in some shape or form. If I get bored I simply jump to another one and keep myself busy. 

The projects I have been working on are:

- Writing the actual story

- Expand my notes about the world, to make sure I get something as close to a living world as possible.

- Make maps

- Make a role-play system

- Make a video-game

- Open a blog about Anduria

You can see which one I'm starting right now :D

This is it. For almost one month now I have worked on some of those almost every day and all of that boredom is now completely gone. 

I'm just your average Joe so I don't have any particular set of skills that make one of these really easy for me, but I'm learning a lot thanks to all of those projects and that is what this blog is for. My plan is to write about the struggles that I'm facing and how I'm handling them alongside all types of information about the world and some small summaries of role-play sessions. Basically, the idea is for this blog to be a hub for all things related to Anduria. And if I can help, one time, one single person, that is struggling with any problem that I faced, then it will be worth it. 

See ya all around! 

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