Cover Art by Jason Pedersen
Legends of Windemere: The Compass Key was an odd book for me to write. In terms of the game, it covers half of one campaign and the entire one after. This meant the previous volume ended on a cliffhanger. I really didn’t like that, but I didn’t have much of a choice. Adding the first act of this book to the previous one would leave Compass Key rather slim and empty. I also couldn’t work a good ending out of the end of the initial battle. So, I decided this volume had to hit the ground running and hope the long period between publishing didn’t hurt too much. Thankfully, the whole series is out, so you don’t have to worry about that issue.
Compass Key is the book where the champion temples started. Each hero had a connected temple, which was part of the seal around the evil Baron. They had been corrupted though, so they each had to be cleared. I had been playing A LOT of ‘Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’ when the DM came up with this concept. They were originally elemental like in the game, but I had to shift things a bit. There is still an elemental theme to them, but they aren’t noted as such. To be honest, going with elements is always an easy and flexible way to do things. Given how ancient the champion prophecy was, I could understand why elements would be used. I would still later note that each hero got their true strength from a virtue such as courage, willpower, etc. Still, I couldn’t find a way to put that in decent dungeon form and I was still following the game.
The tone of the series did start to shift a bit here. At least for me, it started to take a more serious tone because the characters were maturing. Part of this was because the character of Stephen Kernaghan was introduced. This guy was made by the game’s DM based off my character Clyde, so they had the same color scheme. I removed the vampire thing from Stephen and made him irredeemable evil, which made him really hard to write. The difficulty was that I hated him so much for what he was doing that I kept wanting to kill him off before his time. Some people suggested I soften him and make him sympathetic, but I already knew this guy was a murderous rapist. There’s no softening that. Just had to keep using him to push the champions further and find the best, and most satisfying, death. This became a challenge because I could see how nearly every champion and a few villains had the right finish him off. Is this the sign of a well-written villain if they do have depth, but that depth is simply more toxicity?
I can’t think of anything that I would have done differently in this book. All of the champions got their moments to shine and solidify as a team. Maybe I would have prolonged Luke Callindor contemplating having taken his first non-human life, but I wasn’t sure of that one. For one thing, he had already killed chaos elves and the one he was thinking about wasn’t exactly a non-monster. I was leaning that way because it was Luke’s first real war-like battle and the person he killed had a significance to another character. Doesn’t help that Delvin, a battle veteran, had a really good talk with him and I couldn’t justify it not having an effect. So, I guess there really isn’t anything that I would change besides a few cosmetic things.
Let’s have some questions:
- How far would you go to rescue a loved one?
- Do you think a character is weak if they feel remorse for killing even a villain?
- If you could ride any magical creature, which one would it be and why?
