What’s a death whistle, and did you just make that up?

For many readers, this passage from the prologue of Glimmerstone is their first exposure to a death whistle:

”She gazed at the full moon peeking through a narrow gap in the tent's gnoll-hide walls. Now or never. The small clay skull featured a tube protruding from the top of the head, attached to a gold chain threaded through a loop on the skull’s posterior—her death whistle. Though primitive and crude in its exterior design, the hollow interior was intricately crafted into two chambers. Air blown into the tube created a resonance of pure despair, a haunting, distorted scream of pain and agony, somehow both human and otherworldly. On its own, the shrill wail manifested a foreboding sense of doom in every ear it reached. Enhancing it with a fear spell made its impact utterly devastating.”

I’ve been asked many times about the whistle. Since it doesn’t appear in D&D, many thought I’d entirely made it up as a homebrew item. I did not. I came across it during my research and thought it would be a fantastic addition to the Red Queen’s persona and the history of Venn. The death whistle is a real thing, originating in the Aztec culture. Here’s a photo and a video of the disturbing sound it makes.

According to what few historical writings I’ve been able to find from those early days of Venn, these whistles were a common tool of warfare among the tribes in southern Siremiria over five hundred years ago. As the Red Queen swept across the land, she immediately recognized its intimidation value. Shamelessly appropriating the local culture, she went a step further. After subjugating the death whistle’s artisan from the first tribe that used it against her, she ordered the immediate execution of anyone with whistle-making skills in each subsequent tribe she conquered. I found more than thirty references to the use of death whistles in tribal skirmishes in the area before her arrival. By eradicating everyone associated with it, she ensured its signature intimidation in battle remained exclusive to her purpose. With her death, and that of the sole remaining artisan, at the hands of the gnoll hordes, a unique item that once played a part in the local culture and history vanished from Venn.

Until next time!

Bryn

My Secret Weapon for writing Battle Scenes? D&D Dice!

Writing battle scenes in a fantasy novel can be one of the most challenging elements as an author, particularly when you need to stay true to the mechanics and limitations of D&D.

Describing the actions of multiple participants - sword swingers, martial artists, spell casters - not to mention the monsters with otherworldly physical appendages and abilities, is difficult on its own. For me, my vocabulary always abandons me just when I need it most, and words like slashed, stabbed, and exploded litter the pages of my early draft. This one isn’t so bad, because in the reflection of revision, I can always go back and mix it up a bit with other action terms.

What I find harder is imagining the moves and counter moves of combatants during a fight scene and successfully translating that into something on the page that will conjure the right image for the reader. I’ve spent many hours thinking through a choreograph in my mind and then struggling to get it on the page. A spinning tail sweep from a demon, where does it hit the target, how high or low? Does it knock her feet out from under her, or catch her in the ribs? What constitutes a realistic reaction? Could she roll out of the way before a second strike comes down from above? Could she jump the sweeping tail and deliver a strong counterattack? How many strikes would realistically occur before a combatant falls? And then putting all of that into words that don’t just appear on the page in a string of non-coherent consciousness creates the final hurdle.

This is where the game’s mechanics can offer both a blessing and a curse. Because I have advertised myself as grounding my fiction in the rules and limitations of the game, I have to stay true to that commitment, and sometimes it helps. D&D’s concept of turns and each character getting a limited amount of movement, an action, a ‘bonus action’, and a reaction has definitely helped me break down what can and can’t happen during a fluid battle scene. Where the curse comes in is that during the game, the complexities of these things happening simultaneously get hashed out by the players and the DM. A novel doesn’t afford that luxury. Layering it all together in a smooth narrative is much more challenging than gameplay in this respect.

The last ingredient in a good fight scene is realistically determining how long the battle should last, and occasionally, who should win. This is where I break out my secret weapon - those beautiful D&D “math rocks''! To stay true to the spirit and mechanics of the game, believe it or not, I actually roll the dice in the background while I’m writing the scene, to keep track of hit points, accumulated damage, success or failure of the attack, saving throws, and spell effects.

This is where the game mechanics are very helpful. While it’s shielded from the reader through the narrative, I use everything from D&D Challenge Ratings to set an appropriate encounter scope, to a creature’s and character’s stat blocks to track the battle’s progress. More than once, my wife has walked in, alerted by the sound of dice click-clacking across the desktop, and asked what I’m doing. When I tell her I’m writing, it’s met with suspicion. You can see some of the effects of this in chapters 25 and 26 of Glimmerstone, where Tsuta’s Banish spell fizzles because of the demon’s successful saving throw, and later, when he misses his save against the demon’s fear spell (while Bird makes his), causing him to flee. While I don’t do it all the time, in that instance, I let the dice outcome shape the narrative itself.

So there you have it - a look behind the curtain. Next time you read one of my fight scenes, you’ll be able to picture me, behind the keyboard, frantically rolling dice!

Until next time!

Bryn

Welcome!

Hi Readers,

Welcome to my blog! This space is where I’ll be sharing a variety of things, all designed to give you a deeper look into the mythical world of Venn and my journey as a writer.

First, I’ll be diving into the lore of Venn, its geography, peoples, history, and mysteries outside the novels themselves. Many ideas come to me while writing that don’t fit the current narrative but still deserve to be shared. A great example is the use of the death whistle among the tribes of southern Siremiria. We know the Red Queen used one to intimidate her enemies during her march across eastern Siremiria, but where did she get the idea from, and what caused it to disappear from Venn’s standard toolkit of warfare?

I’ll also be sharing insights from behind the keyboard. What’s worked for me on this journey, what my biggest struggles are, and how I turn my ideas into stories. It's no secret that my work is inspired by Dungeons and Dragons. I'm a long-time player and DM, and that creativity sparked my journey as a writer. Here, I'll explore what that means to the story and how it manifests in my writing process.

Finally, I encounter a ton of interesting facts and history during my research for the books that are often worth sharing. While Venn is obviously fictitious, many of the ideas are based on real things, people, and places. The whole idea of the Beacons as a long-distance early warning system in The Glimmerstone Enigma came from a similar setup developed in 10th-century Korea called a 'bongsu.' There were almost seven hundred of these beacons across the peninsula, and I adopted their physical descriptions and functionality for my book. I even used a little magic to adapt them for Venn's purposes, but the entire concept was sparked by 10th-century Korean innovation.

Until next time,

Bryn