I’ve spent a lot of the past few months in the Dharakmeni Empire–a dark realm, filled with deadly intrigue. The core books follow Raziel’s journey as he attempts to navigate treacherous politics and forbidden magic as an assassin apprentice. It was a bit of a challenge to pick up the narrative where I had left off at the end of Keeper of Secrets back in 2012/2013 (even though I always intended to come back to it), so I decided to give a shorter adventure a go and write a prequel story.
Writing a prequel adventure from Raziel’s foster-father’s point of view (Admon) for ‘Keeper of Knowledge‘ was an easy choice. Admon is an established character from Keeper of Secrets, with an implied backstory I enjoyed fleshing out. But what I really wanted to do was try something from Raziel’s mother’s perspective (Moriah), which was quite a bit more intimidating. She doesn’t appear in Keeper of Secrets, and much of her backstory is unknown by the other characters. What little the other characters do know about Moriah is a mystery.
I knew it would be challenging to write a story about her past that revealed more about her, while not giving away too much and spoiling the main books. At this point, Moriah only existed as a character sketch, and in the memories of the other characters. So I started off by throwing her into the deep end to find out what she was made of. Then she dragged me down with her. Continue reading →
