RANA’S LORE | Crafting a tale in Lord of the Rings Online – Part One: A Fox’s Tail

 

RANA’S LORE | Crafting a tale in Lord of the Rings Online – Part One: A Fox’s Tail
Using RP-lite to create player content in a MMORPG

Anyone who has attended any of my storytelling sessions in Lord of the Rings Online would likely know a lot of my stories focus on animals, one way or another. Some time ago I realised that doing shorter stories, numerous ones as a group, would be a great way of furthering my content. I had thought of the old way of storytelling, around campfires at night, and realised I had the name of what I was doing already – Tales from the Fireside.

A chance discussion with a fellow player, the Ranger Aelthrandir, grounded the idea in what was possible. Then time passed. As we headed to the close of 2020 I revisited the idea and connected it to another event I was hurriedly crafting, the Winter Fayre. The idea for the Fireside Tales at that event was for me to wander round the assembled crowd, choose spots and tell a story and then move to another spot. It didn’t quite work like that in the end, but there was an element of movement between stories and curated locations.

In the short space of a few weeks, I researched, planned and then wrote twelve short stories, dubbed “Winter Tales”, all focusing on one or two animals at a time or some other natural aspect – landscape, weather, etc. The idea was to use a few at the Winter Fayre and I ended up telling quite a few but not all. Those I’ll keep for another occasion and I’m planning on expanded the current collection of Winter Tales as well as the Tales of the Fireside stories as we progress through 2021.

I thought today I’d write a little about the process that went into one of them. I’ll do a more in-depth look on a later date about all the technical processes I glance over today.

The Fox in the Northern Lights - “The spark that lights the sky”

This story is my co-favourite of the twelve Winter Tales I wrote, the other story being “The Lady of the Cold” which is a tribute to a story from the Fuzzy Felt Moomins TV series of my childhood (more on this one another day).

I wanted to do a story about the Aurora Borealis, known as the Northern Lights, especially because I wanted to dedicate it to a friend, someone who looks out for me in the game. She’s rarer than the most of precious jewels sleeping in the earth, making sure I come out unscathed from the daily missions and has the patience and kindness to let me read the text dialogue, “You read, I’ll defend you.” She doesn’t realise how good she is.

I wanted to do a few stories about foxes and had already plans to pick up a white fox pet to use as part of the storytelling process. Another gem of a player, Bruddah, who also looks out for me picked me up the pet so I didn’t have to grind for the tokens to get it. I found there were several stories of interest about foxes in the winter, but one stood out. Foxes are one of those animals that are dear to me, especially with the folklore and medieval symbolism of them (think Reynard the Fox). Like a bit of destiny, the story I found linked foxes directly with the Northern Lights and was also a story from Finland, one of Tolkien’s favourite sources of inspiration no less!  All the pieces fell into place at once. The story potential was perfect. Visit Finland had a wonderful page on this story, so beautifully imagined.

You can find the video for the story here:

🔗 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b33XUp72Cxc 

(24/12/22 edit: The links previously posted on here are now obsolete, the link above works).

I also wanted to create a few stories based around the Lossoth culture who live in around the Forochel Bay. They are pretty much designed by Standing Stone Games (originally Turbine) around the Sami Culture of Finland. A spark of inspiration came from a Lossoth NPC, whilst I was looking for a NPC linked with fishing, who said

“Have you seen the sky-lights on a cold winter night? They are a beauty beyond compare.”

I was to use some of these words for the story.

As you will see over the course of later blogs, I write stories now in short sentences, breaking them up as much as I can. It helps when “reading” them out to an assembled audience and also helps the audience by not overloading them. I am also aware Laurelin is an EU server and often English is not a first language for many, though I am always bowled over by the people there who are multilingual, something I will never be.

Below you can see the script I wrote for the story, “The spark that lights the sky”, and get a feel for how I approach the written product. After I have written the story in MS Word, I then transfer it across to a LOTRO plugin called Lyrical which has been a massive help. It’s basically a storage tool for scripts with a button which sends a line of script to where-ever you want - /say, /world or other speech channels in LOTRO. I’ll look at Lyrical in more depth at a later date. For now, here’s the script for “The spark that lights the sky”.

“The spark that lights the sky”

As far north as you can get,
By the Icebay of Forochel,
Is something the Lossoth call,
“A beauty beyond compare.”
The sky-lights,
so many colours,
Dance across the dark,
Filling the heart with joy
And perhaps a little terror.
How are these made you ask?
Well the Lossoth have a tale
For that too…
Out on the tundra,
A fox stands.
His fur as white as snow,
a tail bushy and long,
He braces,
Then he’s off,
Faster and faster,
Snow swirling in his wake,
He sprints,
Up up he goes,
Higher and higher,
Now to the tops of mountains,
Jumping peak to peak,
As he lands his tail strikes,
A spark is lit.
Lightning without thunder,
A fox fire,
And the sky now ablaze
With iridescent bands of colour.

I hope this blog was useful and of interest, till next time, take care.

For R. x

Note: the top image of this blog is a sleeping arctic fox, which magically appeared on work’s desktop (I believe a Bing wallpaper) one day just as I was finding stories about foxes. The other image is from Visit Finland’s “Revontulet: Fox Fires” page.