Work proceeds apace on The Curse of Steel – I’m making unusually good progress on it for the moment. I’m very happy with the divine pantheon I’ve developed for my protagonist’s home culture. I’m also continuing to build a more detailed map of the field of action for most of this first novel. Most importantly, I’ve knocked out two more chapters of the first draft, and as soon as I resolve a couple of questions about the future plot I should be able to keep going.

I think the critical step was to embrace the notion of having activist gods and divine-blooded heroes in the setting. You’d think this would be obvious; after all, those concepts were universal among the Indo-European peoples I’ve taken as a model for the world-building here. Yet I’ve tended to avoid the trope in my own work thus far. I’m not sure why. Possibly it’s because of my background in tabletop roleplaying games. I tend to think in terms of well-defined and limited mechanics for character power, and “he’s the son of a god” is a bit too free-form for my taste.

I will admit to taking some inspiration from the Scion roleplaying game that I recently picked up to read. That game is kind of a hot mess when it comes to rules organization and mechanics, but it does provide a nice framework to clearly define the powers of heroes and demigods. I still haven’t decided to use Scion as a tool for actual plotting, but I think I’m coming around to the idea.

Besides, if my protagonist is the child (or grandchild, actually) of a god, that fits in very nicely with the themes I’m working with for this first novel. Part of what I’m trying to do here is to examine some of the consequences of the power fantasy that’s common in genre fiction. Okay, so Kráva acquires a magical weapon that makes her an immensely powerful warrior, and almost in the same breath, she learns that she’s of immediate divine descent. Great! Except “with great power comes great responsibility,” the weapon comes with a rather nasty curse, and the lives of the gods’ children tend to be glorious and very short.

Lots of potential here. I’m almost eager to see what happens next.

Meanwhile, I think I may push a couple of chapters of the draft over to the “Free Articles and Fiction” section of the sidebar. Look for that as soon as I have a little time to spare.