Opportunity knocks...Nay, Hammers!

This last year has seen doors opened to me that I was not expecting. Faced with the choice of pursuing an amazing opportunity to make a career out of a hobby or getting knee-deep in Kolanor at last, opportunity won. This is not to say that Kolanor is abandoned. Far from it. If this opportunity goes half as well as I expect, Kolanor could very well go beyond a mistreated website, a stack of random notebooks, and visions in my head. As time allows, I will continue my work on Kolanor, but I must focus on work which could very well lay the foundation for something far better on the horizon.

- August 25, 2009

UPDATE - MARCH 25, 2010: At long last, I can share a bit more about the opportunity that was battering down my door last August. Long story short, a fellow gamer asked me to join a game company that he had been working on for some time in various capacities. Various skillsets that I developed in pursuit of my hobbies had been noticed and I could help fill out an already strong team. Today, I am proud to announce that our website has gone live! There is a bit more information on this site's homepage, or you can click on the banner below and see what is on the horizon.


An Introduction to Kolanor

A world long in the works, Kolanor began as a small group of unassociated ideas, short stories, poems, and adventure hooks. While in a rather forgettable class in my early college days, the idea of a world centered on bards emerged and I wrote several notes about it in the margins of my notes for that day’s lecture. Several years later, while delving back into Dungeons & Dragons for the first time after a three-year hiatus, these notes resurfaced. It took me only a few minutes to toss aside all the other ideas that presented themselves earlier in the day. Kolanor, at long last, was born.

The original notes mentioned that bards were a group of people sworn to protect, lead, and teach the world without assuming direct control of any form of power structures. They would only act through subtle means; a well-timed song, an inspiring poem, or tale of warning; to steer men away from harm and towards a greater prosperity for all. The concept of the bard as a sort of guardian suited my image of this long-favored character class and became the very core of my newly discovered campaign world.

It amazes me still how so many bits and pieces of writing, most of which were done over an eight year period, quickly came together into a singular universe sharing an age-old motif: survival. Hidden amongst the puzzle that would become Kolanor were tales and poems that always bordered on despair and destruction. In the end, however, they all ended with a hopeful lesson or thought. The façade of the day-to-day became a struggle of Creation versus Entropy.

Even more amazing, with much credit due to the original players of the campaign, was how the theology of Kolanor drives the actions of the people of this world. Whether it is a player or a non-player character, they all seem to have the great struggle shaping their motivation and driving the story onward.

written June 21, 2001