Did two concept drafts for the most popular ones:
Rough draft pieces if you will
Dark Sea Expedition
I picked up Kreels diary yesterday. Couldn’t stand looking at it in the corner of that dusty, empty cabin. As the days grow on and rations grow tighter, I keep thinking about the night the waves took him. Will I end up like that, forgotten, claimed by the sea, just another victim, another cautionary tale? This book is all I have to prove I was here, that I am not some missing poster on a bulletin board- I’m human. Still, I can’t look at the earlier pages. I miss Kreel horribly, and everytime I see the words he wrote my heart aches fiercly.
I decided to start on this page, right after his last. My name is Larnus Bronze. I’ve worked merchant vessels for six years, having picked up the job just as I turned ten. I’m sixteen now. Captain says I’m mature for my age, but sailing the world has a way of aging you, both in mind and body. That woman we picked up from Frostmill has spent her last few days staring into the dark fog around the boat. Hasn’t said anything, barely touched food or drink, she’s just staring into the fog.
I asked her why today, and she says sometimes, she can see large shadows moving within. Now I can’t even look off the side of the boat anymore. I don’t want to catch a glimpse of whatever she is watching out there.
(End draft)
War Piece
“In Magical warfare revolving around a naval invasion of a fort or island, do you know what group has the highest casualty count? The Barrier Troop. Mages of Earth, Metal, Ice, Sand and Wood. Any magic user who can cover that can protect troops landing on boats from arrow and fireball alike. It’s deadly work, but it would be too costly to try to siege forts otherwise.”
“Mages of Water and wind stay with the ships to guide them to shore, or sit on the walls of the fort, trying to twist the tides and gales against oncoming ships-”
Meliana felt her head rock forward before she snapped it back up. Barely conscious, she listened to the instructor babble on and on about magic warfare theory. To alleviate her boredom, she gently ran her hand across the desk, twisting the wood to make small drawings of the various people in the room. From the instructor at the front, book in hand, to the boy next to her, clad in armor, his foot nervously tapping against the ground; she hadn’t even noticed that the instructor had stopped reading until he was peering over her shoulder.
“I appreciate your drive to improve the finite control of your magic, Meliana, but pretty drawings do not stop bullets.”
As the second volley fell upon them, dirt and debris kicked up in her face, she watched the sailors landing behind her small crowd of wooden pillars crumble into the water as the bullets, arrows and blasts tore them apart as soon as they hopped off the rowboats. Someone shot a powerful blast of magma, spewing molten rock on friend and foe alike. Meliana could feel the heat burning away her only safety. With a scream, she tucked her legs in, wrapping her arms around them. The magma blast above seemed to be melting off a part of the fort, she could hear men tumbling from the collapsing outer wall, sickening crunches and meaty thwacks audible just on the other side of the barrier.
Why was she here? What was she doing? Questions from her past self hammered her head as tears welled in her eyes, the fear that all it would take is a single stray blast and it would be over radiated through every fiber of her being. Quietly, on a battlefield so deafening loud, the lonely girl began to sob-
(End draft)
The swindler one would take more work because I have to establish systems that he would then find clever loopholes in to make him come across as intelligent, but believably so. These are the two I got so far. The war one is kinda messy but both would take place kinda ‘midpoint’ in the story. The war one would definitely be longer, and go into way more detail on what exactly mages of various magic types would be doing.
