Why not try to start writing a story setup in the ToME4 world ? you're already creating descriptions and background for your characters, so why not get into the next step and write a story with them, could be a good way to focus your imagination out of your personnal problems.
Lots of people are coping with their personnal problems, their pain, etc .. with working and creating something, writing is one of the methods to achieve this as it get your own focus on something else than your own problems.
Additionally i'm sure the devs may be open to additional lore and stories could be perfect for helping on that point, the lore documents you find ingame are really helping to make the ToME4 world more interesting.
...I would like to write a story featuring my characters but I don't think I could stay strictly in the Tales of Maj'Eyal setting. For one I have a tendency to not stick within the canon of any franchise and instead take what I understand about it and throw in my own headcanon for the rest of it. I don't always understand what the canon is or the words being used to describe it and because of this my imagination fills in the rest with something that makes sense to me.
Take the Higher for example. I know they are part of an experiment that the Conclave performed, but I don't know the ends of what kind of experiment it was. So my mind filled in the blanks and said that the Higher are incestuous and despite no longer being part of an experiment they continue this today out of habit.
Hence why most Higher I can picture in my head look the same, with blonde hair, ivory skin and blue-green heterochromatic eyes. The blonde goes from a platinum blonde to a strawberry blonde similar to what I have, and the ivory skin ranges from bone-white ivory to a kind of creamy ivory. The blue-green heterochromatic eyes range from sapphires and emeralds to blueberries and limes, and tend to reflect their owner's magical nature that in turn represents itself as an affinity with a certain element. Granmeri for example has electrified sapphire and emerald eyes while Aldeen has fiery and passionate sky blue and moss green eyes.
In turn however this leads me to believe that most Higher end up in arranged marriages with one of their cousins, with any other sort of relationship like that being considered taboo. What's more, a Higher that falls in love with someone that they don't have some blood relation to is shunned by their kind and often times ostracized if not downright persecuted or exiled.
Aldeen is one of those Higher that didn't want to marry her first cousin because she was in love with a Cornac man. The man himself was assassinated and Aldeen was disowned and disinherited. This somehow ended up with her disregarding most human men entirely out of trauma and with her falling in love with her golem, whom she named Golgotha. She even went as far as to imbue this golem with an intelligence and personality that was similar to the man she had once loved, a man who could be described best as a lumberjack with a hearty laugh and a love for pancakes and pancake-chested women.
Granmeri on the other hand wasn't part of an influential family like Aldeen and just didn't like her cousin because of how harsh and unjust of a man he was. He beat her and abused her and this eventually lead to her taking his life. She fled from Higher society with bounty hunters on her tail, and began training as an archmage with the help of a very generous old man who taught her everything she knew while hiding her from them. She did this so she could take back the power that had been taken from her as well as find her place in the world outside of Higher culture. However, she is too nervous to take much of a risk despite her power which fries goblins and puts holes in the chests of trolls, and she doesn't really assert herself when there is a problem. She hasn't really found her place in the world yet because of this.
Anyways, I haven't really fleshed out much of an idea for Cornac, Shalore and Thalore save for a few seeds of understanding for them. I see the Cornac as the everyman, with the best and the worst of what humanity has to offer in every package, usually in some kind of expressive or eccentric way. Shalore and Thalore however I can only sum up as "gray elves" and "wood elves" respectively. However that leads me to at the very least a visual of what they look like in my head.
Shalore to me seem like they would have pale skin, and that their hair would be white, silver, gold or auburn. They would also have eyes in shades of purple, gold and silver as well. A Shalore might stand about a head above a human but many would be a head or two below that of a Cornac, with a few inches of height given to the males as well. The men would be lean and somewhat frail while the women would be delicate and a little curvy. Shalore would also have limp wrists but nimble fingers that could make gestures that no human hand ever could.
The Thalore on the other hand would have earthy tans that cover their whole bodies and hairs ranging from black to brown to blonde. Their eyes would be more along the lines of brown and green and their ears would be a bit longer than the Shalore. A Thalore might stand at the same height as a human but would on average be half a head shorter, with the advantage of height being an extra three or four inches on the female. The men would be masculine, both muscular and well-endowed, yet light and nimble at the same time. The women would be feminine, with soft curves, fertile hips and little muscle tone but the same lightness and nimble bodies as the men. Their eyes would be a bit more narrow than the Shalore and their fingers like those of the finest craftsmen, able to fletch arrows, carve wood and sew garments of fine quality.
It also seems like to me that the Shalore would be noble and kind yet at the same time intolerant and unforgiving, while the Thalore would be wary and unwilling to trust but once that trust is earned you have a friend for life. Thalore also seem like they would have a lust for life and insatiable appetites, thus leading to many a banquet held within the forests they call home. On top of that I think the Thalore would also be skilled hunters and would probably have diets that involve large amounts of meat, while the Shalore seem like they would have a diet similar to that of a human.
I don't know about the others yet though as I haven't spent much time with them. I might get around to learning about the Dwarves eventually but as for Halflings I dislike them in any setting that isn't Tolkien-themed and I dislike them even more from what I've heard so far about what they've done in Tales of Maj'Eyal.
Anyways, back to the original suggestion. I might consider writing a story sometime but again I tend to not understand the canon very well with most franchises because of how it's explained and what not. It's kind of difficult for me to understand most franchises and their canon because it's not explained efficiently enough or with the right words that my crippled Autistic brain can understand and comprehend. Either way I don't think that I could contribute some kind of story that didn't either not coincide with the canon of Tales of Maj'Eyal or didn't somehow not only not coincide with Tales of Maj'Eyal but also cross over into one of my other stories related to one of dozens of franchises ranging from The Elder Scrolls to Dwarf Fortress to Steins;Gate to South Park to My Little Pony:Friendship is Magic.
The world inside my head that encompasses all of these and dozens more is like some kind of messed up multiplicity-themed pseudo-pornographic Mexican soap opera turned into some magnum opus of meme-ridden harem fanfiction that reads more like a video game than Homestuck. If I try to somehow focus all of that imagination inside my head on one franchise it's not only going to be difficult but somehow something I won't be able to do without fully immersing myself in the game for long enough to know the canon and the story by heart. It's part of the reason why when I write about the descriptions and background stories for my characters I leave it at that - because if I try any more it's going to be too difficult for me to do right now without somehow screwing things up more than my landlord's vast collection of power tools.
I will consider it though. If I can write it more like a documentary than an actual story I can do it like that. I tend to do better with writing if I describe it or write it in some kind of textbook format. Come to think of it I probably should have just said that instead of writing this post for the past two hours.
I don't feel like deleting it.
EDIT: I am so retarded right now. I failed to understand the third part of the suggestion that had been quoted. Sure I would love to contribute to the lore of Tales of Maj'Eyal, and hopefully next time when something like that is suggested I don't go full-blown maximum Autism and fill your screens with a wall of text the size of a bottle of detergent.
That sort of happens when I work on writing the same damn post for two hours.
Author
Topic: Tome 4: Tales of Maj'Eyal (Read 492792 times)