Revenant: Behind the Scenes

Submitted as an addition to my 'Revenant' episodic series on April 13, 2015. 

Whew! Man, the amount of research and questions I had to ask to make sure I did this right. Was -ridiculous-.

At any rate, so, I wanted to post this episode about a week ago but decided to hold off while I consolidated feedback from several sources. None more important than CCP Falcon who graciously accepted my request to go over it and check for lore inconsistencies. I didn't think I had any because the story is so vague and doesn't really reference any hard-core, set-in-stone bits of the lore, but I'm glad to have gotten his seal of approval, not to mention his interest in future parts!

Character design was honestly the hardest part for me because I wanted enough characters to offer a lot of depth to the story but I didn't want to overload the reader right from the first Episode. So, the three main characters (four if you include BOOZER) aren't all that are in the story, just enough that mattered in the first chapter.

I wound up spending an entire weekend at work just screwing around and fleshing out each character and going over their stories in my head. I have a binder hidden away somewhere in my bedroom containing all of their descriptions, their histories, etc. I -REALLY- hope that they are interesting and lovable enough that it was worth all the effort =P

On the topic of character design, I even took some time to make what I imagine the characters to look like in Eve's character creator, barring some inconsistencies like Pontrovol's long hair since it's not an option in the char-gen =X

Chamilie Ettivala

 Pontrovol "Tricks" Ranchin

 Balris Aginghes

I probably spent the next huge amount of effort just getting the opening right. A lot of weight goes into the first chapter but the first sentence is the make or break. A person can lose interest all together with the first sentence so I wanted to get that done correctly. As such, I decided to flash forward from a scene -MUCH- later on in the story and open with a bang, enveloping the reader in mystery as to what the hell got her into that place. 

Of course, this is my nature, considering that it's how I opened up in -both- of my fan fiction submissions for the Pod and Planet Fiction Contests, one in 2012 and the other last year in 2014. It's sort of a running theme for me and I think it's worked out really well so far. 

The idea behind the story is to show the readers what's going on in Esesier in a new light with a chosen demographic being Eve Online players. Maybe not so much players who are hard-core lore nerds but just players in general. I filled the story and timeline with a lot of drama, tension, thrills, and action to keep the reader entertained but at the same time I'm not going to gloss over specific bits with exposition. This is mostly because I really hate exposition and I want the readers to truly be shown what is happening instead of just being told. 

At the same time, I really wanted to show the players that their actions matter in an indirect way. I tried to keep the story as close to reality as possible when it comes to the Eve universe and even went so far as to find the temperature of the planet the story takes place on and convey that in the first episode (it's cold as shit by the way!). Further more I even took a look at how many moons that planet has, what the general size of it is, etc. 

Beyond that though I even went ahead and looked at the Occupancy history of the system! I plan on including that in a more direct way in the future but it's a -critical- theme in the story series as a whole as Capsuleers and the Empires warring over the system and the planets as a whole goes a long way toward antagonizing the local populace. I've always sort of wondered why the people in these places were always so black/white (or in this case, Green/Blue) in their loyalties and never stood up to either faction. 

At any rate, that's all I have for this little behind the scenes bit! Be sure to stay tuned and check out the next episode, it's gonna get -crazy- :D