BTLH 2.0 Prologue

So I've finished up the new prologue for Beyond the Lost Horizon 2.0 and it can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

This chapter is a very good example of what I'm doing with this story as a whole. It is generally the same as the original version, but at the same time it is completely different.

Looking back, I think i relied a little too heavily on the prologue of the original being a dream sequence, and I kept pointing out that it was a dream while it was happening which completely kills any suspense at all. I decided that with this version it would just be a straight up flashback.

The premise for this new version of the story is that there are 3 powers in the world, rather than the two from the original. The first is the Black Tower, a group of mercenary sorcerers. Then there's the Crusade, a new religious order with its own standing army, sorcerers, and millions of orphaned children that they took in and taught the ways of their new god after the world almost ended. And the Church of the Blessed Radiance, run by the Seven, servants of the Blessed Radiance, Aidyn, a god that teaches that all sins and pain can be washed away through something called the Eternal Chain, which will erase everything and return it to peaceful nothingness as the only way men can be freed of their sins and the pains of life. All three of these orders have prophecies that the Eternal Chain will be broken by an evil being, and he must be killed before the Promised Day or the salvation of mankind from their sins will never be possible.

The Seven are a bit of a redo on the Covenant from the original story and rather than showing up in book 2 they're going to play a far more prominant role in the story from the beginning.

Basically, what makes this story different from other stories following hte same achetype of a young man discovering himself to be the heir to some grand and noble destiny and going on to save the world is that he's actually kind of the bad guy. My protagonist is actually the antagonist. He's going to destroy the only means of salvation that these people have from their god. This is more a story about the bad guy overcoming the chosen one rather than the other way around, which I think makes for a far more interesting story. What if the Dark Lord wins, and the one chosen to defeat him dies? That's the big change that i'm making in this story.

Anyway, you can read and compare. The whole world stuck in a time loop and grinding slowly toward oblivion at Cain's command, Cain controlling the Gate, and all of that stuff that I would have written into the third and final book of hte original trilogy is still going to be remaining in this story to keep with continuity in other stories i've written, but a whole lot of other things are going to change.

Anyway, enjoy =)

Work on this project will be slow because I'm still working out a few details of the plot and brainstorming for ideas. I've got a general outline done, but not a detailed one, so until I've got that worked out i'm going to be going pretty slow.