Young Writers Society

The Plague is a story I've been working on for quite a while. I just wanted to briefly talk about it before posting long chapters that might confuse some.

The story is set in a world divided into 5 kingdoms. One for the Humans, one for the Dwarves, one for the Elvish, one for the Harpies, and one last kingdom for the Kobolds.

It primarily focuses on the Kobolds. Tiny creatures with slight relation to the now extinct dragons. The lizard people lose their homes underground after a long political struggle about the rightful owners of the underground. Dwarves win by all votes. As such, the Kobold people create a kingdom on the surface, where they slowly adjust to sunlight and get ahold on the new ways of life. Quickly the witches become witchdoctors, brewing potions that can cure the sick. A hunter group is made to hunt wildlife. Fishermen and so on.

The story takes place well after the settling in, and a new ruler of the Kobolds take the throne. Dhaariv. Dhaariv is not your normal king, as he loves to do community service. He finds himself taking as much part of the hunting as he does the farming and fishing. A great role model.

He has his first offspring, a highly magically gifted child, that once he got out of the proverbial nest, he decided to run off to a wizardry academy in the human kingdom, never seen again.

Shortly before his departure, the king has a second. A daughter. Any king would leave the daughter in the streets and at best let the child die from hunger, but not Dhaariv. The second he saw the kid's smile, he knew he had to raise her.

The young Zill grows into a lovable town sweetheart. She knows everyone, and they know her. Always smiling, that one.

As she grows further, a new trend starts up with the kingdoms in order to decide the fate of the world around them. They set up a table of Kings, where royalty from all sides meet in the Human kingdom capital, and try to make the world better for everyone.

As this becomes a more common thing, King Tiranwynn of the Elves develops a grudge for the lizard man. What is a salamander doing among royalty?

To further provoke the Elf, Dhaariv brings young Zill every once in a while. The Table loves her, just as much as the Kobolds do. This grows more and more upsetting to the Elf king, and he starts to take action.


The story generally focuses on the warmongering Elf king wanting to remove the "plague" of critters and impurity. Starting with the most disgusting. But oh, no, the story is not called Plague just for him. There is something darker brooding for the world. A rising power these people only thought were the ramblings of radical priests, that the next God of Balance will soon appear, and with it the world will start anew... Is this true? Or just the ramblings of a madman?

Cool concept! It's nice to see a little flavour and variety tossed into the typical fantasy races.

However, we shouldn't need to read any of this before the start of the story.

If your story doesn't make sense at the beginning, then that's because it's not written well enough. Even the most complex and dense fantasy epics did not have required reading.

Prologues do exist for information that isn't meant to be part of the narrative, but they should be (somewhat) skippable and they should be their own story. Still, chapter 1 even in the most necessary of prologues should start on its own, without absolutely positively needing it.

Be sure your chapter 1 is strong enough to carry the story. While this is nice information (and close to a prologue on its own), it should not be absolutely mandatory before starting.