Because ClassicDrogn asked about it a few days ago, here's a capsule summary of the action in DW1. Please be aware that this is one of my earliest works, and also never got nearly as much brainshare as the other Steps did. As a result, it's somewhat skimpy compared to the other plots that are in active development, and has big "need idea here" holes.
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Drunkard's Walk I: A Horse Ain't A Horse, Of Course, Of Course
Summary copyright (C) 1996-2003, Robert M. Schroeck.
The local timeframe for the story is a year or two before the Valdemaran portions of "By The Sword". Elspeth would be in her early teens, long out of her "Brat" phase.
Doug awakens in the Companions' Grove in Haven, Valdemar. His arrival and attempts at diplomacy alarm the Companions, but the subsequent appearance of Heralds helps calm things down a bit. During this time he first meets Delandra ("Dee") vel'Devarn, late-teens Herald-Trainee and sole orphaned child of a noble family whose holdings lie on the Hardorn border. Dee is obsessively intense and prone to overworking herself; her Companion Sylvath is even more distrustful of Doug than most of the other Companions.
Doug establishes his bona fides, gets a bit of an orientation, and eventually is presented to the Queen, who declares him an honored guest and grants him quarters at the Collegium until he can find a way home. A magical accident involving (unknown to anyone involved) Vanyel's heartstone exchanges language skills between Dee and Doug, and for this reason she is assigned as his semi-permanent guide and aide; this relationship eventually blossoms into a deep friendship, becoming the first of the "brother-sister" relationships Doug acquires on the Walk.
To avoid going stir-crazy from lack of activity, Doug ends up teaching unarmed combat to Trainees, and trades some of his advanced techniques to Alberich for advanced training in various weapons.
While Doug settles in, we explore Dee's backstory, which centers around border disputes over her lands, which butt up against Hardorn. The death of her parents seems to be cut-and-dried, but there is something that makes her wonder; were they murdered? Who would benefit from destabilizing the area?
We meet some of the main cast from the books, including a 12-year-old Elspeth, who gets some specialized -- and deadly -- self-defense training from Doug. Doug grows increasingly depressed as he tries to find a way home and repeatedly fails.
In exploring the Collegium and the Palace, Doug discovers a forgotten part of the library holding many books on magic, and really notices for the first time the compulsion that keeps the Valdemarans from thinking much about magic. Unable to do anything about it, he studies the texts he found and learns about node magic.
Around this time he also encounters the vrondi for the first time. He can see them in magesight, and is more amused by them than anything else. Being the egotist he is, he enjoys being watched, and does some silly stuff just to get a reaction from them.
Dee suffers an accident or two that might have been intentional attempts on her. Or not.
Growing desperately lonely and homesick, Doug tries to create a gate on the site of his arrival. It backfires in a subtle and devastating way: he does little but create a massive magestorm and an illusion of Shadowwalker that breaks his heart before he realizes what it is. Dee and Sylvath have to go out, find him, and drag him back in, but not before he falls ill from a combination of exposure, his depression, and burning all his strength to force a gate.
Dee nurses him back to health, and during that time he tells her more about his homeworld than he's told anyone else.
(...)
Dee goes on leave/holiday/whatever to her family home on the Hardorn border. Doug goes with her.
Visit to Demsbury, a city (ie, large town) in Dee's home district -- it's under attack by a suspiciously large and well-equipped band of bandits. Doug and Dee fight the attackers. He uses "This Corrosion" to destroy the attackers' armor and siege weapons. In the midst of the attackers' confusion and retreat, Doug and Dee get inside the town
Doug fixes and improves the town's wooden palisade wall, using "We Built This City". Doug (using "I'm Alive") and Dee minister to the wounded of the city, as they have no healers left... including a "mole", who, after healing, attacks and critically wounds Dee; Doug kills him with his bare hands, then, over Sylvath's obvious but unvoiced objections, flies her back to Haven and the Healers' Collegium, who stabilize her.
Right after midnight, he is able to heal her, and the next day they return together to the town, which has by now discovered that their fields are absolutely devastated -- first by the battle, and then by "This Corrosion" -- most of their crop is gone. Doug tries to jumpstart the fields using "Sowing the Seeds of Love" by Tears for Fears. Meanwhile, Sylvath throws a hissy fit about Doug while Dee is amused.
Doug and Dee finally make it to Dee's estates, discover the band of mercs wasn't an isolated incident. Somebody wants the land and they're wearing down at the defenses. The fellow overseeing the lands in Dee's absence is old and to a certain degree willfully blind about the severity of matters. He didn't want to alarm her, so he hasn't been telling her (or the Crown, for that matter) about the troubles.
(...)
Doug and Dee's defense of Demsbury seems to have stemmed the tide; regular dispatches from her estates indicate that the attacks and whatnot have dwindled to almost nothing since the big defeat. After several months, they relax and begin prepping Dee for her graduation to full Herald.
(...)
Dee is kidnapped right out of Haven just as she's leaving on some pre-arranged trip (her internship?), so her disappearance is unnoticed for a while. (Sylvath is disabled somehow.)
When they discover her kidnapping (kidnappers' demands?), he tries a new song (Radar Love, by Golden Earring) to see if he can locate her; to his surprise, it not only allows him to home in on her, it physically drags him there at mach speeds, leaving an arrow-straight swath of shockwave-caused destruction in his wake.
Dee is imprisoned in a keep on the Hardornen frontier, despairing. Feedback from song (lyrics specify two-way linkage) alerts Dee that he's coming; she's languishing in a cell of some sort. She decides that she's not going to be stuck there waiting to be rescued, and figures out a way to spring herself.
(...)
Kidnappers include a mage -- they're a hit team from Hardorn, intended to destabilize the region so it can be politically annexed. Doug faces the mage, detects a nearby node he's using. Not knowing how to handle a node properly (the books really don't say much except "don't"), Doug sucks the entire thing down in one gulp as he's triggering a song, and turns into something like a fire elemental by accident... bye-bye mage.
Dee is somehow instrumental in bringing him back, as he's lost in the welter of power.
(...)
Weeks later.
Doug moves on with a song he thinks will get him home. Tearful parting between him and Dee, cool one from Sylvath. Before he goes, he takes Dee on an illusionary tour of his home world.
(...)
Two years later, Dee is caught up in a vision -- a communication from Doug. Make it a touching coda that provides a neat closure.
------------
As you can see, it's pretty crude. Delandra doesn't get nearly as much to do as she should, and is in fact more passive than she should be. Furthermore, I set up hooks for her at the beginning and never follow through on most of them. Of course, this is mostly because I abandoned it in deference to Lackey's views on fanfiction, but if I were to ever pick it up again, I'd rebuild Dee's part from scratch, almost.
So there you go.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
---------
Drunkard's Walk I: A Horse Ain't A Horse, Of Course, Of Course
Summary copyright (C) 1996-2003, Robert M. Schroeck.
The local timeframe for the story is a year or two before the Valdemaran portions of "By The Sword". Elspeth would be in her early teens, long out of her "Brat" phase.
Doug awakens in the Companions' Grove in Haven, Valdemar. His arrival and attempts at diplomacy alarm the Companions, but the subsequent appearance of Heralds helps calm things down a bit. During this time he first meets Delandra ("Dee") vel'Devarn, late-teens Herald-Trainee and sole orphaned child of a noble family whose holdings lie on the Hardorn border. Dee is obsessively intense and prone to overworking herself; her Companion Sylvath is even more distrustful of Doug than most of the other Companions.
Doug establishes his bona fides, gets a bit of an orientation, and eventually is presented to the Queen, who declares him an honored guest and grants him quarters at the Collegium until he can find a way home. A magical accident involving (unknown to anyone involved) Vanyel's heartstone exchanges language skills between Dee and Doug, and for this reason she is assigned as his semi-permanent guide and aide; this relationship eventually blossoms into a deep friendship, becoming the first of the "brother-sister" relationships Doug acquires on the Walk.
To avoid going stir-crazy from lack of activity, Doug ends up teaching unarmed combat to Trainees, and trades some of his advanced techniques to Alberich for advanced training in various weapons.
While Doug settles in, we explore Dee's backstory, which centers around border disputes over her lands, which butt up against Hardorn. The death of her parents seems to be cut-and-dried, but there is something that makes her wonder; were they murdered? Who would benefit from destabilizing the area?
We meet some of the main cast from the books, including a 12-year-old Elspeth, who gets some specialized -- and deadly -- self-defense training from Doug. Doug grows increasingly depressed as he tries to find a way home and repeatedly fails.
In exploring the Collegium and the Palace, Doug discovers a forgotten part of the library holding many books on magic, and really notices for the first time the compulsion that keeps the Valdemarans from thinking much about magic. Unable to do anything about it, he studies the texts he found and learns about node magic.
Around this time he also encounters the vrondi for the first time. He can see them in magesight, and is more amused by them than anything else. Being the egotist he is, he enjoys being watched, and does some silly stuff just to get a reaction from them.
Dee suffers an accident or two that might have been intentional attempts on her. Or not.
Growing desperately lonely and homesick, Doug tries to create a gate on the site of his arrival. It backfires in a subtle and devastating way: he does little but create a massive magestorm and an illusion of Shadowwalker that breaks his heart before he realizes what it is. Dee and Sylvath have to go out, find him, and drag him back in, but not before he falls ill from a combination of exposure, his depression, and burning all his strength to force a gate.
Dee nurses him back to health, and during that time he tells her more about his homeworld than he's told anyone else.
(...)
Dee goes on leave/holiday/whatever to her family home on the Hardorn border. Doug goes with her.
Visit to Demsbury, a city (ie, large town) in Dee's home district -- it's under attack by a suspiciously large and well-equipped band of bandits. Doug and Dee fight the attackers. He uses "This Corrosion" to destroy the attackers' armor and siege weapons. In the midst of the attackers' confusion and retreat, Doug and Dee get inside the town
Doug fixes and improves the town's wooden palisade wall, using "We Built This City". Doug (using "I'm Alive") and Dee minister to the wounded of the city, as they have no healers left... including a "mole", who, after healing, attacks and critically wounds Dee; Doug kills him with his bare hands, then, over Sylvath's obvious but unvoiced objections, flies her back to Haven and the Healers' Collegium, who stabilize her.
Right after midnight, he is able to heal her, and the next day they return together to the town, which has by now discovered that their fields are absolutely devastated -- first by the battle, and then by "This Corrosion" -- most of their crop is gone. Doug tries to jumpstart the fields using "Sowing the Seeds of Love" by Tears for Fears. Meanwhile, Sylvath throws a hissy fit about Doug while Dee is amused.
Doug and Dee finally make it to Dee's estates, discover the band of mercs wasn't an isolated incident. Somebody wants the land and they're wearing down at the defenses. The fellow overseeing the lands in Dee's absence is old and to a certain degree willfully blind about the severity of matters. He didn't want to alarm her, so he hasn't been telling her (or the Crown, for that matter) about the troubles.
(...)
Doug and Dee's defense of Demsbury seems to have stemmed the tide; regular dispatches from her estates indicate that the attacks and whatnot have dwindled to almost nothing since the big defeat. After several months, they relax and begin prepping Dee for her graduation to full Herald.
(...)
Dee is kidnapped right out of Haven just as she's leaving on some pre-arranged trip (her internship?), so her disappearance is unnoticed for a while. (Sylvath is disabled somehow.)
When they discover her kidnapping (kidnappers' demands?), he tries a new song (Radar Love, by Golden Earring) to see if he can locate her; to his surprise, it not only allows him to home in on her, it physically drags him there at mach speeds, leaving an arrow-straight swath of shockwave-caused destruction in his wake.
Dee is imprisoned in a keep on the Hardornen frontier, despairing. Feedback from song (lyrics specify two-way linkage) alerts Dee that he's coming; she's languishing in a cell of some sort. She decides that she's not going to be stuck there waiting to be rescued, and figures out a way to spring herself.
(...)
Kidnappers include a mage -- they're a hit team from Hardorn, intended to destabilize the region so it can be politically annexed. Doug faces the mage, detects a nearby node he's using. Not knowing how to handle a node properly (the books really don't say much except "don't"), Doug sucks the entire thing down in one gulp as he's triggering a song, and turns into something like a fire elemental by accident... bye-bye mage.
Dee is somehow instrumental in bringing him back, as he's lost in the welter of power.
(...)
Weeks later.
Doug moves on with a song he thinks will get him home. Tearful parting between him and Dee, cool one from Sylvath. Before he goes, he takes Dee on an illusionary tour of his home world.
(...)
Two years later, Dee is caught up in a vision -- a communication from Doug. Make it a touching coda that provides a neat closure.
------------
As you can see, it's pretty crude. Delandra doesn't get nearly as much to do as she should, and is in fact more passive than she should be. Furthermore, I set up hooks for her at the beginning and never follow through on most of them. Of course, this is mostly because I abandoned it in deference to Lackey's views on fanfiction, but if I were to ever pick it up again, I'd rebuild Dee's part from scratch, almost.
So there you go.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
