The first version of the story was supposed to be a 5 v 5 battle on the Forests of Caldavar. The original 5 heroes selected from the Legion were Jereziah, Ophelia, Scout, Legionnaire, and Witch Slayer, while the Hellbourne side was Deadwood, Bloodhunter, Hellbringer, Demented Shaman, and Madman.
Immediately after finishing the second chapter I realized this was not going to work, so I took a break from writing and rethought the whole concept of the story. I wanted to delve into the actual canonical lore while presenting mine. If I simply went with this, it would’ve been finished within 30 chapters or so, and a LOT of Newerth’s background information would never be shown to light.
And so, I rewrote the entire plot again from scratch (I kept the first few chapters unchanged, although edited them to fit the new plot). Some readers may “see” or feel the place where I started to change the plot; in fact this happens a few times over the course of the writing.
There was originally going to be a lot less dialogue between the heroes, and focusing more instead on the movements and decisions made by them with internal monologue, presenting more of a “battle report” type of story. I found this to be dull and unexciting, and so I changed it to present their personalities through speech instead. Scout and the Blacksmith were originally selected for comical relief; in fact they still embody a ton of those.
I originally did not want to name any of the heroes that S2 did not name themselves. Later on, as a small joke, Lizarb was given to Scout, a residual memory of my initial frustration with Brazilian players, from my initial years of DotA. In the future, he will actually undergo a tremendous change, as a token to my Brazilian friends, because I’ve met a few who are actually decent and fun to play with, and as a nudge towards saying that Scout right now is actually not much of a joke hero. The story planned for him has the groundwork already laid down at the time of this writing; I simply have yet to emphasize on it because I have to focus on other things.
In the canonical lore, the Ancients were an old civilization(s) that eventually warred amongst itself (all covered in public lore), and something fell from the heavens. This is EXTREMELY important to what makes Newerth what it is now. I wanted to include this heavily, but could see no leeway to include it in Forests of Caldavar. Instead, I sought to reinvent a few heroes’ backstories (that had nothing to do with Savage so as to avoid inconsistencies) in order to bring this to light, and add an extra layer of plot.
This resulted in me combing through the whole hero list, and I finally ended up with Sachi Swiftblade. It seemed logical that the Ancients would have a different form of language and writing compared to Newerth, and therefore Sachi Swiftblade was initially going to be the sole character that the Ancient’s plot revolved around. I think, it was about 5 hours after conceiving this where I realized that it was impossible to talk about everything I wanted to talk about with one sole hero’s personality and thoughts, and so I wanted two others, ending up with a total of three: one who did not care for the past, one who could not remember, and one who sought the past. I considered a lot of different candidates for these heroes, and first settled upon Blacksmith. I wanted the naming scheme to be continuous, and Masamune is a famous Blacksmith (also the name is just awesome). The last one was eventually chosen to be Hellbringer, with Seimei given to him. Go look up Seimei if you have questions about why I gave this to him; it’s actually pretty straightforward.
Now that I had three personas to play with, the plot kind of…wrote itself for them. Hellbringer was given a reason to betray the Legion. Blacksmith cannot remember, and therefore he only remembers what he owes Jereziah. Swiftblade does not care for either; this will be explored shortly. I want the three siblings to personify different ideals, pursue different goals, and be distinct characters. Their story will intertwine with the plot as a whole; it will not be fully covered in Forests of Caldavar.