The never ending chess game

What is chess. I mean, really, what is this little board game? Could it possibly be a metaphor for life, a small wooden/plastic/stone representation for the actions of all mankind? It's a curious thought to think that were being controlled and moved across the board of life by some set of unknown players... and if we are in fact pawns on this chessboard, who are the two sides and which side are we playing for?

What if I told you that the Hierarchy was like a chess game; a really BIG chess game. What if I was to say that the Hierarchy is a multilateral, multilayered chess match that encompasses everything and everyone. And what if I told you that there were more than two players? What if I even told you that the people who think they're players are actually pawns themselves?

Wouldn't that be interesting.

The Corner Stone

To borrow from Robert Jordan, "Duty is heavier than a mountain, death lighter than a feather". Alone, invisible, brooding, calculating, and with a single never ending duty, Zuriel is like the little light in your room that keeps you up at night - not that big, but troublesome enough to give you grief. But does that little light in your room grow? Does it glow ever brighter until it shines like the stars in the midnight sky? Zuriel does.

To understand Zuriel, one has to imagine being the last human on earth... or better yet, being the last person who speaks english in a world full of others that prattle on in gibberish. You can see these people, you can interact with them, but truly joining them and learning to speak their language is a farfetched dream. It's gibberish after all, and what's the sense in that?

Now that you've got this hermit mindset going, imagine being required to work for those that damned you. Imagine being made to run errands for all of eternity for the people that left you alone, the people that forced you onto a god-forsaken land far away from home and devoid of friendship, laughter, love and revenge. Thats Zuriel.

He fits into the Hierarchy in a very peculiar way - he's the last of his kind. He is a watcher, a spy, a reporter and an errand runner. He is a warrior, a priest, an unknown disciple of some far away and long forgotten religion - or could you even call the Hierarchy a religion? Zuriel represents an epoch of forgotten events, of forgotten wars and strife that once tore the earth to its very foundations; he is the corner stone upon which so much of the worlds story has been built.

But heres the thing about corner stones....once they are placed, their importance is oft forgotten.

Day 2

I've got a feeling that after a few days, titling these posts "day 1, day2,day3" ect. is going to get pretty boring, so I promise to give some more imaginative titles in the days to come.

I suppose the first thing I should address is the definition of the word "Hierarchy". Loosely speaking, a hierarchy is a system where people are ranked one above the other depending upon status and authority. If you take the idea of a hierarchy and apply it to different life forms, it creates a "chain of being" if you will. The idea of a chain of being, of a universal hierarchy, sets the groundwork for the story of Hierarchy.

Now, trying to explain this central principal of the story has me walking on a fine line: just how much exactly am I willing to divulge? In order to even ATTEMPT to explain this story, this idea is quite vital. So I suppose I'll go a little farther.

So what the hell does this definition of a hierarchy have to do with the STORY of Hierarchy? To understand this, we need to go back to the chain of being idea and to my previous post where I spoke of breaking away from that Tolkien platform that so many fantasies are built upon. Yes there will be elves, yes there will be Gods, and of course there will be human beings - but these Gods, these elves, and these humans are by far not alone and every race has a very specific relationship to one and other. I will go as far to say that the chain of being puts the Gods at the top and the humans at the bottom, but everything in between will be revealed in due time.

The other little tid-bit I must divulge is that certain classes I have taken in college the past year (international relations and government) have begun to shape the story line and over all structure of Hierarchy. To give a little insight, international relations deals with the communication and interactions between the nations of the world and outlines the details of how diplomats are received and treated in foreign countries. The specific rules and regulations that countries, diplomats, and citizens are held too inspired the way that I designed the internal system of Hierarchy. As far as government is concerned, all I will say is that a court system plays a major role in Hierarchy.

That should be enough to chew on for today: tomorrow, Zuriel will make his entrance

Day 1

First of all, to anyone who finds themselves on this blog: welcome.

I've had a story floating around in my head for some time now, one that a good friend of mine and I first started to contemplate on a windy summers day about 3 years ago in our neighborhood Borders. We had read copious books together, series after series, spending countless hours discussing and dreaming about what possible plot twists our favorite authors could make next. After awhile, even though plots were far from the same, things started to blend together and worlds began to mesh - the stories all followed the traditional fantasy outline of Tolkien. We longed for our own world, and in that longing, in that deep desire to disappear into our own imaginations, Hierarchy was born.

After spending most of my early life hungrily consuming the contents of every major fantasy novel I could get my hands on, I had decided that maybe - just maybe - I could write one of these things myself. Stories based on Arthurian legend, stories revolving around dragons and elves, and even a story about a certain orphan wizard shaped my vivid imagination. As I mentioned earlier, the vast majority of the fantasy novels I read followed the Tolkien template, but there were a few that stood out like a hot piece of steel fresh out of the forge and made a true impact on me - Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time Series, George R. R. Martin's A song of Ice and Fire, and more recently Steven King's The Dark Tower.

In all honesty, it wasn't until the project seemed to come to a halt that the desire to make it happen truly started to burn within me. As days turned into weeks, and as the weeks began to fly by, I just couldn't take my mind off of the Hierarchy. It sat idle, like a beast lurking in the depths of my subconscious just waiting for an opportunity to attack. I know this makes the idea sound voracious and like some creature from hell, but in a way it was. It just wouldn't, no, COULDN'T leave me alone.

I started to write. Truth be told, the more entrenched in the plot I became, the more fearful I was to write the story. A writers greatest fear is that the story they create, the world that their imagination birthed, will not be as good as it originally seemed. I wrote sporadically, jotting down notes in my classes and occasionally writing a paragraph or two, but nothing truly serious. But I've made my mind up, and this blog is a testament to my decision - it's high time this story got the attention it deserves. This blog is going to be a running diary, a place to test out ideas, scenes, and character development. Mind you, I wont be giving important things away but I do plan on giving readers a taste of what's to come.

This blog will be the map of my journey through the Hierarchy - I hope you all enjoy this adventure as much as I do.