Curate, connect, and discover
Hey friends, it's been awhile since I've been able to put in any work on this! But I've been doing some world building and altering a few things, and thought it might be nice to send you an updated summary of my original novel. It is tentatively titled "The Pilgrimage", but who knows, that might change as well.
Alays Webster is a weaver in a small town on the edge of the Barrens in a country called Codor. Life in her hometown is pretty sedate, and more or less ruled by the country's religious hierarchy and its tenets, observing festivals and attending service and what have you. It is expected that everyone will go on pilgrimage to the capital at least once in their lifetimes, to witness miracles and see the Sleeping King himself, where he lies in state while battling in the spirit realm against false gods and keeping them out of Codor. Alays, though, was always a sickly child, and still has occasional bad days now that she's grown. So she’s put off making the pilgrimage until her childhood best friend, Vezian, now a priest, comes and cajoles her into making the journey with him.
The Barrens are a dead wasteland that surround Codor on all sides; as far as anyone knows, no one can live there, and the area is considered to be forsaken by everyone, even the Sleeping King. On her pilgrimage, Alays learns that her proximity to the Barrens causes others to look down on her, and she encounters concepts that she had never considered before, everything from how criminals are treated to “witches” and “demons”, from whose magic the Sleeping King's priests promise protection.
Alays's ill health improves the closer she gets to the capital, and this is touted as a miracle from the Sleeping King himself. It turns out, however, that Alays is sensitive to magical energies, and her health is improving because she is traveling through healthier land that has more magic available for her to draw from. Magic is secretly but strictly regulated by the priesthood, and anyone who tries to use it outside of their purview is labeled a witch, and sentenced to a terrible fate: either death, or “alteration” into Misbegotten monsters. Alays is now in terrible danger through no fault of her own.
Vezian’s mentor, Father Marcellus, explains this to Alays, and arranges for her to escape to the Barrens via airship, piloted by a man named Lucas. In my original version of this story, Lucas is a shady fellow who almost certainly can not be trusted, and Vezian is exiled along with Alays. In the updated 2023 version of this story, I want Alays to go to the Barrens alone, taken there by Lucas, while Vezian is left behind without even the first clue what could have happened to his childhood best friend. In that case, Vezian has to hunt for Alays himself, and learn a great deal about the secrets the upper echelons of the priesthood have been hiding from him. Though Vezian doesn’t know it yet, Lucas will be instrumental in helping him find Alays once more.
This is, incidentally, a plot that I write over and over again, no matter how hard I might try to to get away from it: “Character A is separated from Character B and they must reunite,” except that once they do reunite, Vezian discovers that Alays is dying, and with Lucas's help must go on a dangerous journey across the Barrens and into the unknown in order to save her life.
What follows is a tale of adventure, exile, betrayal, and trust, that tests not only their faith, but everything Lucas, Vezian, and Alays thought they ever knew. There will be magic, and gods, new lands not seen in centuries, and old tales not heard in just as long.
(My worldbuilding for this is extensive, and highly distracting. Now if only I could get the story itself to be half as interesting.)