Darkniciad

It's hard to believe how desperate spammers are. I get minimal traffic, mostly concentrated around the release of new stories and chapters. Still, some Russian spammer thought it was worth the time to pass the email validation and captcha to make one single spam post -- in Russian.

 

Even if somebody was dumb enough to not recognize it as spam, why would they click something they couldn't even read? *laugh* The only hits I get from Russia are spammers and scammers. They're trying to sell ice to eskimos.

 

The blog gets umpteen spams a day, but they're all caught by the spam filter. 600+ at last count. Crazy, huh? That's despite me locking comments on anything older than... Can't remember exactly, but it's 6 months or less. Even if one would escape the spam filter, I have to approve the first comment from any email addy, so it still wouldn't show up.

 

Getting some major writing itch. That's a good thing with a weeks vacation ahead of me. Keep your eyes peeled on the blog

Wow i just finished to read it. The Love scene is fabulous. I like your stories, danika's are my favorites. Hope that your muse will inspire soon for The end of sotm.

 

Something that's been building in the last few chapters is actually getting ready to break. Several somethings, actually.

 

Major events are on the horizon that are going to cause a dramatic shift in the story. I like to sneak important things in under the radar, then spring them to an "OH, now I get it!"

 

There are still quite a few chapters left in my head, but the story will be moving into the next act before too much longer.

Did a little more work on the Xantina map, incorporating the new symbols. The old one is in the previous post, for comparison.

 

 

And here's what it looks like when you zoom in a little. You can actually get in a lot tighter than this.

 

 

With the custom, modern houses, this map is now complete as the storyline stands. First one to go final

 

All the maps will be subject to updating with new locations as stories evolve, so even a "final" isn't really final.

 

Now I have something to actually put on a maps page when I get it coded.

This one is pretty much done, as the stories stand right now. The nice thing about this software is that it will be exceedingly easy to make changes or add to my maps now, as everything is saved as individual entitites that can be edited. If I get new symbols to pretty things up, I can simply replace existing ones ( The roads, for example )

 

So, if you've ever wondered exactly how all the locations ( well, except for Kindred, which takes place in the BWCA ) in the Magic of the Wood series relate to each other, here you go.

 

 

I've already roughed in a location or two for later, as well as placing Dan & Brooke's house on the map, even though that location has never been mentioned.

 

All those open fields are simply expansion zones, where I'll end up adding locations as the tales continue to emerge. You can pretty much assume that all the open areas are wooded.

A little bit tighter ( but still quickly and crudely labeled in Photoshop ) view of where most of the action in my world takes place. There are a few more features added in with the cartography software ( still WIP and may change )

 

I went ahead and broke up Egoria into the four Duchies: Leonar ( Capital is on the coast ), Cratel ( Fightershaven is in the lower center on the rim of the Great Crater ), Mithas ( Sparsely populated except on the coast and near the mountains where there's money to be made stone cutting and mining ) and Gana ( Given over almost exclusively to the Plainsmen, Elves, and the Ironanvil Dwarves -- having only one sizeable human population near the Eastern Border on the edge of the lake )

 

The only heavily populated Duchy is Leonar. There are large tracts of the rest of the country that are open plains. Thakkor set aside large chunks of the nation important/sacred to the Plainsmen and forbids settling there. People still do, but they're risking sudden relocation when discovered ( Or worse if they start attacking Plainsmen )

 

 

I also changed my mind about Normandal *laugh* I put it back in a position closer to where it was on my original maps ( also closer to the original pen-n-paper maps from my tabletop game )

 

Odds are that I'll shrink Freeland a little bit East, and extend Ferrartene South into that unlabled area. I only thought of it after saving the map, and don't feel like editing the thing again

 

This let me reorient things a little better, making more sense of a few things that go on in the stories.

 

Such as hiking for days on end in Egoria, seeing little civilization, in the Nobles history tales. The current orientation better fits that. Putting Normandal where it is alleviates concerns that I might have mentioned it being to the East at some point in the story. Here's hoping I never said "North", because I'll have to edit any chapter where I did.

 

Draxnia now only touches Cratel ( well, a bit of Gana, but there's not much there he wants ) which explains why it bears the brunt of assaults from there )

 

That little area of desert surrounded by mountains is an as-yet unexplored area of my world ( Not sure if it's been mentioned in any stories ) It's populated by ancient explorers from Osiran who got shipwrecked here. They're quite mixed race from years of wandering, though upon discovering the valley that reminded them of their desert home, they've stagnated and now shun outsiders. They have their own Pharaoh, and a little mini-kingdom there.

 

It's also populated by several powerful undead NPCs from my world. It was actually called the "Land of the Dead" on my original world maps. Odds are that it will get some screen time, eventually.

 

Okay, back to writing.

I've redrawn the world map, which is going to slightly reorient a few places ( for anyone who saw the original maps ) Hoping that I'm remembering everything right and these movements aren't going to clash with what I've written anywhere *laugh*

 

This is just a beginning. There aren't any rivers, lakes, or a lot of other features. It's just a general world map with some of the mountains drawn in, experimenting with the tools in the new cartography suite. Thought I'd post it, as well as a labeled version, with some information.

 

Here's the WIP, unlabeled map:

 

 

And here's one I've slapped a few quick outlines and numbers on just to show where some places are:

 

 

1 = Egoria, the setting for Blackhawk Hall, King Thakkorias, Queen Alicia, etc.

2 = Draxnia, mentioned many times, especially in Blackhawk Hall and the upcoming story "Lowborn"

3 = Freeland, mentioned quite a few times. Richest/most powerful nation in the region.

4 = Normandal, mentioned recently in SOTM, and going to come into some Nobles stories eventually.

5 = The Western Baronies, where the Forge and Witharton ( from Ebon Genesis ) are.

6 = Ferrartene, where Zoraster's complex is.

7 = Protectorates of Armand, where Danica and Devan grew up, seen in the Arts Ardane series.

8 = The Greek/Roman region of my world, which I believe we've only visited in "Danica"

9 = The Egyptian region of my world, featured in Danica and recent chapters of SOTM.

10 = Right around this large island somewhere is where Darkni's island is. The island itself is too small to show up on the full world map.

11 = The Japanese/Chinese region of my world, which will get some screen time soon in SOTM.

12 = These islands are a combination Polynesian/African culture. A lot of Ch. 14 of "Danica" took place here.

 

Celes is from somewhere up North on the main continent. It's a Norse region that hasn't really had any screen time.

 

Anyway, that's a few general locations. Now, I'm going to get back to writing for a while After nailing down a few things last night in the new software, I just had to get something down to make sure I actually understood it *laugh*

Working on the edit, in preparation to release it.

 

Probably be a few more days before I finish the editing process, but it's moving toward release

Still trying to figure out the best layout for restoring the content that was up on the site before I took it down to rework it.

 

Amongst this was:

 

Maps from my fantasy world, including everything from the world map down to some individual buildings ( such as Zoraster's Complex )

 

Descriptions of the religions in the world. Descriptions of the various types of magic, and how they work. Information about customs, clothing, grooming, etc.

 

At this point, here's what I'm considering. The "My Worlds" page will have the following links:

 

• Maps
  
• Danica's World FAQs
  
• Characters
  

 

Maps will be an all-in-one page, encompassing the maps from Danica's world, as well as any from other worlds I write about. At this point, the only likely map outside of my fantasy world will be the map of the area where the family lives in the Magic of the Wood series. I have a basic pencil sketch map of this completed, which I've been using as a reference when adding new stories, to figure out where to put new characters and where to move family members as the family expands.

 

Danica's World FAQs will obviously be a specific page to my fanstasy world. If I ever think that there's a need for deeper explanation of the way things work in another setting, I'll probably just add it to the "My Worlds" page as a new link.

 

Characters is where I'm puzzling, right now. Most of what I'll be entering initially will be characters from Danica's world. However, with the constant expansion of the Magic of the Wood series, there's a chance I may want to start adding bios for those characters as well.

 

Should I divide up the Danica stories from Nobles by Deed? After all, the Nobles are peripheral characters in Danica, while Danica will be a peripheral character in the Nobles stories.

 

Any input welcome. I'm going to cheat and go the easy route at first, just adding the Map and Danica's World FAQ sections when I first roll out "My Worlds" *laugh* Characters is where I need to do a lot of thinking to create a reasonable layout.

 

Think I may borrow my Sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights II ( now that I have a computer that will run it ) and fool arond with the toolset. I used the original NN toolset to create my interior maps, and the new version looks to have much more customization. Might be just the thing to add new location maps.

 

I may look into creating creature images from this toolset as well. I had a "monsters" document on the old site for Danica's World, and I'll probably add that to the DW FAQ section at some point.

 

I'm absolutely going to redo my original region maps ( Fractal Terrains maps with legend overlays ) First off, I'm going to save them as PNGs, in order to avoid the fading and pixel artifacts present in the original gif images. Next, I'm going to hatch a brain and keep copies of the maps with all the layers saved, so I can easily edit/update the damn things in the future

 

Hoping to find something a little more elegant than drawing lines on the maps for borders and such, as well.

So you feed us one measly sex scene and think that satisfies? When's it coming out? Come on. You know you want to post. (Using Jedi mind trick) You will post the first chapter of Lowborn.

 

*laugh* I'm working on it. I just backspaced about 1000 words last night, because what I was writing, while interesting to me and delving deep into the characters, was dragging from a reader's perspective. The characters getting the most development were peripheral, soon to leave the story.

 

So, I found a good line, put in a scene break, and skipped ahead. I'm around halfway done with Ch. 07 with only the final chapter to go after that.

 

I suppose I could probably start posting the story and have the final chapters done before it came time to post them, but I don't want to break my rule of not posting anything new until the story is complete. Don't want to leave people hanging any more when my muse takes a vacation.

 

I'm a little closer every day -- especially now that I don't have that 1-page placeholder sitting on my website any longer, nagging me

Fixed a bug I somehow created in the forum that was keeping the members and calendar tabs from working. They're back up and functional again. Deleted a file somehow. Must have been half asleep when I did that *laugh*

Looks like I managed to get the lightbox issue fixed for IE 9 - finally.

 

So, here's a few initial images I'll be using on the "characters" pages as a sort of sidebar to their physical characteristics. Probably bigger than the finals. In fact, the thumbnails are probably closer to what I'll end up using.

 

 

I've been hunting for images to use for this for a while, and just stumbled across the perfect tool for it

 

I'll be using these as a general "body type" with height, hair & eye color, etc. Also have cup size for females and a small, average, endowed, etc. listing for package on male. Hey, it is erotica, after all.

 

Planning for the main image to be a headshot that's as close as I have to what the character looks like in my mind. In some cases, that may be an image already on the website somewhere ( such as a cover ) and in others, it will be exclusive to the character profiles.

 

Already mentioned the physical characteristics. There will also be a brief history profile, an "appears in" divided into major, supporting, peripheral character that will link to the story database. Characters will also have a skills section detailing any magical abilities or physical specialities, and probably some sort of weapon section ( at least for major characters. Minor characters will probably only have basic statistics )

 

Probably be an images section as well. This may show parts of covers, website images, etc. that depict the character, and are likely to be nekkid *laugh*

 

Just a little of what's going on behind the scenes with regards to actually getting new content onto the website.

Just a short excerpt from the next chapter of SOTM:

 

* * * * *

 

He emerged from the long shadows of the trees, his black-robed form darker than the moonlit night.

 

He crossed the graves at a determined pace, thoughtless of the peace of those who rested beneath the earth. His eyes that glowed red with the fires of hell fixated upon a mausoleum ahead – his goal.

 

A few gestures and words in the spidery language of magic dissolved the wards protecting the crypt as he approached. The lock on the door snapped as if a twig from a single twist of Thanatos’ wrist. The demon cast aside the lock, chipping a nearby tombstone, and pulled open the heavy iron-bound door.

 

Stale air tinged with the perfume of death rushed from inside, and light violated the dark resting place of the dead for the first time in many years. Twin stone sarcophagi nearly filled the small space, the fine lines and detailed carvings bespeaking great wealth.

 

Thanatos approached and swept aside the dry, brittle remnants of flowers that decorated the lid of one sarcophagus, revealing the inscription, and confirming what the demon already knew.

 

The runes of warding were no match for his magic, their angry red glow impotent to prevent the desecration to come. Nor was the weight of the great stone lid any impediment, though it had taken six men to set it in place. Thanatos grasped one of the handles at the base of the arched stone cover in a long-fingered hand and lifted. The lead seals broke free and the lip slipped from its groove, allowing the demon to push the lid over the edge, where it hit with a resounding crack upon the polished stone floor.

 

The stained wood of the coffin within looked as if it might have been placed there only days before, rather than years. Only a thin layer of dust marred the beauty of its surface, which the demon completely ignored as his nails elongated into claws, giving him purchase into the thin seam of the coffin lid.

 

The body of the woman had not endured the years so well. Dull, dry blonde hair formed a halo around the darkened, desiccated flesh clinging to her skull. A voluminous gown of now yellowed white could not hide the bony protrusions of the body it shrouded. A single deadly touch of the demon’s claw caused the garment to dissolve, completing the work of decades in seconds, while leaving the body untouched.

 

Thanatos lay his hand upon the body’s shriveled breasts, and once again called upon his hellish powers. Even as his touch could cause corruption and death, so too could it reverse the ravages of decay and give a semblance of life to the shell of a mortal’s remains.

 

The woman’s skin lightened and plumped, the flesh undulating as it regained elasticity. Features emerged in her face, replacing the horrifying visage of a leering skull. Eyelids grew to cover the empty eye cavities, sprouting long, luxurious lashes. The breasts beneath his hands swelled many times over, rising firm and proud.

 

The demon lifted his hand and admired his handiwork. The woman within the coffin little resembled the husk that had resided there only moments before. Instead, a blonde woman of stunning beauty and ample curves appeared to sleep within.

 

Thanatos reached into a pocket of his robes, seeking the tools of the Art. The mere semblance of life was not enough to complete the task given him. He would have to reach into the very realm of death and the echoes of the past with necromantic magic to finish his masterpiece.

 

Then, he would have his reward.

Here's an excerpt from the upcoming Mindblind ( Blackhawk Hall ) history story: "Lowborn"

 

* * * *

 

Delly moaned in approval as his thick cream filled her mouth. She continued to suck and swallow, draining him dry, until he jerked her away from his oversensitive organ. She gathered up a few dribbles that had escaped from the corners of her mouth with a finger, and licked it clean.

 

Cerebus let out a growling chuckle, his head falling back to the bed. Delly crawled over him to kiss his neck and chest, rubbing her moist folds over his stomach. She continued to tease him, caressing him with her entire body as he recovered from the explosion in her mouth.

 

She rolled off of him, and then wormed her way between his legs. She bent his knees so that she could sit between them, facing away from him, and looked back over her shoulder.

 

He knew what she wanted.

 

A deep moan escaped Delly as he sat up and pulled her against him, nestling his softened cock in the cleft of her buttocks. He kissed her neck, squeezing her breasts and pinching her nipples, causing her to arch her back and gasp. His right hand released her breast and dropped between her legs even as she sucked air into her lungs.

 

Cerebus curled two fingers and thrust them deep into the redhead’s clinging sheath. He pulled her even tighter against him, holding her in place as his fingers plunged into her pussy. With her arms pinned at her side, she was helpless in his grasp.

 

A steady stream of whimpers, yelps, and moans bubbled up from her lips. He let his thumb slide over her clit, rubbing it with every stroke of his hand, building her fires even higher. She writhed against his strength, not really trying to escape, but unable to sit still in light of the pleasure he was giving her.

 

Mindblind’s hot breath stirred her hair as she drew ever closer to final ecstasy. She knew it was coming, but she still whimpered in frustration when his fingers slipped from inside her. He held her tight, keeping her from finding any relief that could push her over the edge. She pleaded with him to make her come, as she always did, but he denied her until her fires cooled.

 

Then he buried his fingers inside her once more.

 

Over and over again, he brought her to the pinnacle of pleasure, only to deny her release. Her begging turned even more desperate, her body hot against him and beaded with sweat. His cock hardened against her ass, foreshadowing things to come.

 

As the trembling – almost weeping – prostitute neared the point of no return again, Cerebus’ other hand left her breast and centered over her clit. After only a few quick circles of his fingers, she erupted into orgasm.

 

He kept one set of fingers buried inside her, the other still mercilessly rubbing her bud. Delly’s tight-throated scream of ecstasy filled the room. He kept her within the grip of her orgasm, growing more excited as she writhed in his grasp.

 

She was still coming when he dug his slick fingers into her hips and lifted her to her knees. Her hands dropped to the bed to support her, and his right hand left her hip just long enough to guide his cock inside her.

 

A loud wail that trailed off into a croak accompanied his thick cock invading her depths. He grunted when he hit bottom, and pulled back to thrust again, several weeks worth of pent up desire fueling his ardor.

 

The bed creaked in protest amidst the loud smacks of two bodies colliding, and Delly’s screams. Her first orgasm from his fingers never really ended before a second took control of her body. Her intimate muscles clamped down, but were no match for the strength of his thrusts. Caught in a near constant state of exquisite agony, she couldn’t tell where one climax ended and the next began.

 

Cerebus drank in the sight of her rocking forward every time he slammed his cock home. She was soaking wet, her juices spurting out around him – so unlike the other prostitutes who had just gone through the motions. He felt his seed surging up, and gave in to the inevitable.

 

He buried his cock with a thrust so powerful that one of her hands slipped out from beneath her, and she fell face down into the sheets. He erupted with a growling cry of release, filling her full of hot cream.

 

In the midst of the cacophony, neither of them heard the sounds of struggle downstairs.

Don't know what's up with the driver errors. I can get in fine from phpmyadmin when this is happening, but any attempt to get on the website simply fails. I put in a support ticket, but odds are that I'll have to go the phone route when it's actually happening, or they'll just give me a "Not happening for me" respones

 

Working on resolving this, and I apologize for the downtime.

Well, tried a patch for the Lightbox issue, but no love. On the support forum, hoping to find the solution without resorting to a support ticket.

 

For those of you using anything but IE 9, you probably won't even see the issue happening. It's an IE9 specific bug.

 

I'm considering modding the IBProBattle Mod to work under the Content App for the forum -- battle part only. Don't feel like dealing with securing all the input related to guilds *laugh*

 

I actually co-created that mod way back when. Oddly enough, the part I'm planning to leave out here -- guilds -- is what I did the most development on. If you've been on Invision 2.x boards, the odds are that you've seen it in action. What it does is generate stats for all members. If you turn the system on, you see those stats and attack links in profiles/threads. You can then battle it out with other forum members

 

Just thought I'd bring it up. For now, it's a major back-burner idea. If there's enough interest in it, I might give it a bit more priority. I think that with the new administrative abilities and the content app, it might actually be possible to do it without modding any default templates or files. That's the only way I'll add it to the forum.

Still working on the lightbox issue. Strange, that...

 

Anyway, I was testing the newsletter input verification and noticed something. The checkboxes alone really didn't seem visible enough to me. I don't want anyone accidently subscribing to an email alert that they don't want, so I've added some bullets to the page to make your selected options much more visible.

 

 

What the verification does is combine options together, cleaning up the lists in my database.

 

For example, if you checked to receive alerts on Lit for SOTM and Nobles, as well as Alerts from Dark on Lit, the verification would eliminate the subscriptions to SOTM and Nobles, because the "all from Dark" covers them.

 

If you'd also checked "Magic of the Wood" it would remain checked, because that's a Les Story, and thus not covered by "all from Dark"

 

Same deal if you check All Dark on SOL and All Les on SOL. It would combine those together into "All from Dark and Les on SOL"

 

More or less, you start at the top of the page ( see previous post attachment ) and work your way down. The top levels will deliver the most alerts, while the bottom levels are very specific.

 

Here's the beta of the two new trays that will be on the bottom of the main page when I finish coding the pages they link to and widgets that display them.

 

 

May as well test out attachments *laugh*

 

Here's what the Newsletter page is going to look like:

 

 

And to test the lightbox with a smaller image:

 

 

One I haven't found a good place to use just yet.

 

Hmmm... wasn't expecting that. The lightbox functionality in the forum is supposed to pop up images centered in an overlay window with a close button, not full screen and force you to hit he back button. Didn't expect an actual forum feature to be broken *laugh*

 

Have to look into it. The whole point of not modifying default files/templates was to avoid this, and there's one right out of the box

This is your place to request features for the website. While I already have a lot of plans of my own, I'm certainly open to expanding them. That was the whole point of going with this new dynamic content delivery system. I should be able to add things in fairly short order.

If you're having any problems with the website displaying strange things, or something not working at all, please report it in this thread. Any information you can provide such as the page it happened on, the browser you're using, whether you were logged in or not, etc., may help track down the problem. You should be able to attach images directly in posts to provide screen shots of problems. If the image is too large, you may have to crop it, or perhaps provide a link to it.

Welcome to the new Darkniciad.Com!

 

Be sure to check out your member settings here on the forum. There, you can change the image filter options for the main website. Look for the floating menu option at the bottom, as well. This will provide you with a much easier means to navigate the site, if it doesn't cause any problems on your end. It's turned off by default, but most people should be able to turn it on. Only older browsers or other weirdness should cause it to behave badly.

 

For now, I'm just going to have this one forum, and you can post whatever you like here. Odds are that there won't be many members to start out, and even fewer who will actually post on the forum. Doesn't make sense to have a bunch of topics that only rarely see new posts.

 

So, feel free to ask questions/comment about my stories or the website. You can suggest information you'd like to see added to the website. You can just grumble about what a rotten day you've had *laugh*

 

If the forums get active enough to warrant it, I'll create topics for specific discussions in the future.

 

All I ask is that you don't start beating up on other posters. If two people want to get into a flame war, and you both are going at each other's throats - no problem. The flame war may get split off/moved if it's driving the topic into the ground, but I'm not going to otherwise intervene. If one person is blasting another who is just trying to have a nice day posting, then I may very well start deleting posts or issuing warnings.

 

I may or may not leave reputation turned on. It all depends upon how it's used or abused. The same is pretty much true for all forum features. If you like it, don't start abusing it, or it will go away.

 

I'm not going to filter images in signatures, avatars, or in posts on the forum. If you're worried about naughty images here, then please take advantage of your forum settings to filter these. The only way I'm going to remove images is if I/everyone else is disgusted by them.

 

The default skin for the forum is meant to mesh up with the rest of the site, but the normal default skin for IPB is also available. If there are any other themes you would like to see added ( provided they're free! ) just let me know.

 

I'll add more to this welcome post as necessary.