Notes about Kingdom of Heaven and Earth #3

This time there won't be that much to talk about, as I am saving more monster encyclopedia entries, and the rest of the artifacts, to future blog-posts which will be written once I have a bit more time. However, even though this entry will be a lot shorter, I still decided to put is as part of the "notes" about KoHaE. Why? Well, as slow to the up-take as I am, even I know that the "official" map of Equestria was released some time ago.

This, of course, has put a bit of a monkey-wrench into my plans when it comes to the story.

For the moment, I've had to jury-rig plans for few chapters in order to make them work with this official map, but when it comes to the chapters that happen after the main characters leave Equestria, things will get a bit trickier. I've already introduced the countries of Marecedonia and Prance in the story, making it somewhat clear that Marecedonia lies far in the west, across the sea, while Prance is south of Equestria, across the channel. With the new, apparently much larger size of Equestria than I initially thought, this has posed few problems. For example, it becomes apparent in one scene with Celestia that lodestone in Equestria is imported, mainly from Prance. However, such a big country as Equestria should definitely have their own sources of lodestone. Therefore, how do I get past this? Or, another example, is the fact that I speculated the Coltic Lands would be north-west of Equestria, while Marecedonia is directly to the west. However, Equestria is bordered by the sea. So, does this mean that Coltic Lands and Marecedonia are on the same continent? This was not my intention in the beginning, at least, and would make one bit of planned story a bit...strange.

Nevertheless, I am currently brainstorming and rewriting my plans in order to overcome this problem. However, as the few readers I have might have noticed with Chapter 6, writing it took longer. This was because I had to rewrite a lot of planned stuff. For example, I needed a whole new location for Windswept Valley (Thankfully one was found right east of Los Pegasus).

So, what does this mean for the story itself? Not much. The main gist of the story will still remain, mostly thanks to two saving graces: First is that the map presented to us is not "to the scale". Therefore, distances and what-not can vary, and can be altered to better to fit KoHaE. The other is that south and west are not much described in the map. Therefore, there can certainly be a channel (like between Britain and France) between Equestria and Prance, if the latter is to the south. All this allows the political game between Celestia and Tuna, with the 12 Guilds running around and trying to put their own plans in motion, as well as vastly different places the main characters visit during their long journey.

I end this blog-post by saying that if you, one of the few readers that I have, have any ideas, suggestions or epiphanies about how I should tackle this problem, speak up. I am more than happy to discuss stuff like this with my readers, and take their advice into consideration. Same applies, of course, with general critique and comments on the story itself. A story cannot grow better if the writer is not told what he does wrong, after all.