Path of a Hero Basics

Hello everyone, this is ESB 'Stringfellow,' and I am hooked on a feeling, and this is...

A Path of a Hero Synopsis And Heroes Basic Information!!




A bit understated, but it is still a nice cover.

Synopsis

Vows made... Swords drawn... The cries of battle... The rages of war...

In the mystical land of Trino, an attack by an unknown enemy has taken the people by surprise and left a bloody and destructive path in its wake. Orcs, monsters, dragons and demons... an army designed for one purpose only... to destroy anything or anyone in their path.

Thousands will fight, to stand against this evil force that threatens to destroy their land. In honor of their country and rulers, they will fight and die to defend their homes and loved ones.

But only one will rise above the others... only one will endure the trials of body, mind and spirit... in the end, only one will be granted the title of a Hero.

Cyankazu Omondi... his Path begins when he is twelve years old.

Every Hero has a beginning...

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In Path of a Hero, we explore the origins of who, you might say, our my mascot characters, Cyankazu Omondi (Cyan for short) and Magus (who is just simply short).

For the uninitiated, Cyan starts this story as twelve-year-old (well, eleven in the first chapter, but I time-skip a year later in the second one), who we see is being trained by his parents to become a samurai. Things were going pretty darn good for him. A loving family, trusted friends, a humbling home and a promising future where he showed great potential to be a great and honorable warrior.

But then everything changed when the Monster War started... Without warning, a fierce, bloodthirsty and overwhelming army of monsters and orcs attack Cyan’s homeland, the Continent of Trino, where our hero’s village is among the very first places to be consumed and destroyed by the carnage.

Cyan becomes a victim of war... He did not die, but he does lose everything, giving him survivor’s guilt, depression and a mountainous amount of grief... but born within this darkness that has consumed his heart, the void as he comes to name it, is also his anger and hatred of the monsters that had destroyed his life. Shortly after the war started, Cyan vows revenge... but how far will this dark path take him? What risks or price is he willing to pay? Will his obsession with vengeance give him solace, or will it lead him further away from his heritage as a samurai?

This may start as a story of revenge, but at some point, Cyan will realize the danger he faces of losing his humanity and will thus go on a quest to regain his honor, his true inner sense of self. He will come up with a plan that will not make a lot of sense to a lot of outside observers, but it will mean the difference to Cyan, where it will either destroy the last shred of nobility he has left or lead to his ultimate redemption. In this story, Cyan does not start off looking to be a hero, but in the end, he will be remembered as one of Trino’s greatest.

Now, any story of a hero would be incomplete without a cast of characters to render support or help in the hero’s time of great need. To start off, Cyan is accompanied by his magical animal companion, Magus. For those wondering, a magical animal is a normal creature, any creature, that was infused with magic at the time of their birth. Magic, in this universe, can have strange effects on any living thing, and in some cases, it can result in turning a normal animal into one with magical abilities, with some changes being greater than others. For instance, Magus is a black rat that can cast some minor forms of spells on his own, but it is not much by human standards, but the greatest thing about him is that his magically changed body now ages at a slower rate than normal rats, putting him on the same aging process of humans. So, when he meets Cyan, Magus is in fact seventeen years old in actual human years, and on top of all that, he can also communicate via telepathy.

So, before I go into further detail about Magus, I would like to point out something about how the story is structured, of how the world looks and feels. I wrote Path of a Hero with a classical knights, wizards, etc., versus dragons, demons, etc. type of feel to it. So, everyone behaves like Dungeons and Dragons type characters... Everyone except Magus.

I wanted Magus to be the comic relief character, but in a definite out-there sort of way. How out-there, you might be asking? By making him act like someone from modern times, where he speaks with slang words like cool or dude. If that sounds cliched to you, then I profusely apologize. You have to forgive me for doing that, considering that I was still a teenager myself when I first wrote this. But I just loved the idea of having Magus be that one character who was in stark contrast to how everyone else behaved, where his mannerisms, where they would be normal by our standards, would be seen as odd or inane by others, which for me (at the time at least) struck as comedy gold. I do promise, that as the years went by and my writing became a bit more refined, I was able to make Magus more comical (I hope) in more nuance ways. Quirks that help further set him apart from Cyan, so that he would be a perfect foil to Cyan’s more calm and levelheaded demeanor.

And that is, more or less, the basis of Cyan and Magus, human samurai and magical rat. Cyan settles to be more thoughtful, while Magus goes to speak whatever comes to his mind. Cyan is mostly silent, and when he speaks, he tends to do it with softer tones (unless he gets angry [which happens a lot in Path of a Hero]), while Magus is energetic (bordering on hyperactive) and he has a tendency to hardly ever clam up. Cyan is disciplined, Magus is brash. Cyan jokes some and does a sarcastic comment every now and then, Magus is a fan of making bad puns and delivering a lot of snark. Cyan hums old folk songs, Magus does air guitar whilst singing Rock-n-Roll.

Those are your leading two characters, my dear readers, and I honestly hope you enjoy them just as much as I do.

And I think I will leave it here for now. Next time, I will share more story tidbits and other support characters. Until then...

Sincerely, ESB 'Stringfellow'