Well hey everybody, and a very happy June 22nd to you all. Today is quite possibly one of the most significant and important day in my life, well it’s the celebration of it anyway.

So, 11 years ago today, on June 22nd, 2007, I posted the very first part of what would become my Tales of Travelers series. Originally an idea for a quick little story, I expanded on the idea until it was 5 “books” long, with a plethora of little expanded universe stories in addition. On January 2nd, 2010 I had officially ended the series. Though I did do a sequel series of a sorts, I made sure it could stand on its own with only vague references and only a couple returning characters actually featuring. As far as ToT and its cast was concerned, I was done adding to it after nearly 3 years of near constant work and effort.

The series told the tale of a group of travelers… I know, shocking aint it? It followed as a group of 2 became 6, then 8, and eventually becoming 10 at the end. Along the way they faced all manner of villains; from bioengineering madmen making twisted versions of pokemon, to a magical snake demon that had brought one of the heroes under his control, to Team Rocket. No, I’m not joking. And all along the way they engaged in character interactions and other fun stuff. …The series was rated adult okay. Near the end I was tacking the shit on just because it felt I had too to keep readers.

Tales of Travelers itself was a series that I wrote pretty much entirely stream of conscience, I just took it one chapter at a time. I admittedly took a lot of ideas from things I was watching/playing at the time of writing. Heh, it was honestly just a huge fan work supreme, showing off a lot of my passion. Indeed, passion would be a great way to describe my work on the series since I was churning out chapters almost daily for a LONG time. Course it helped those chapters were pretty short, though still, book one was 168 pages.

When I finished the series, I was incredibly proud of it. And to this day, I’m still pretty damn proud and happy that I wrote it. Not to say I wouldn’t do a LOT of fixing though. The series has flaws, and there are a lot of decisions I made years back that I would never have chosen to go with now. If I wrote ToT now, it’d be a LOT different (IE better, much better… also not adult).

But the thing is, for all its faults, it still is something special to me for all it means. It was the first thing I had written for myself in years, not just some stupid thing for school. It was also the first major project I had ever done, again I wrote a bunch of side things for the series in addition to the main entries. It was the first thing I posted to this site. It was what led me to meeting some awesome friends. And the series led me to other projects. Without ToT, there wouldn’t be a Liena’s Way. Without ToT, there wouldn’t be any Adamant Soul, or anything else I’ve worked on.

What truly makes ToT so wonderful and special to me, is that it reignited my love for writing. And as I kept writing the series, I kept growing as a writer, the difference in quality between the start and end are quite prominent. And now, my writing is at a level I never would have imagined possible when I posted that first part 11 years ago. And I know I can still get better, that I can still keep growing and learning about the craft that I love so much.

That’s what Tales of Travelers really means to me. It was the real start of my life, as I had something I was good at and passionate about. And now here I am, slowly but surely working on making my first published work. I owe a lot to this series, and as such, I decided I wanted to do a little something to celebrate the anniversary of the series, courtesy of one of those great friends I made thanks to the series  xehta13.

So, here we have my 3 favorite characters from the titular series. From left to right, Rika, Inferno, and Death. Though believe me I really wanted to get the whole cast involved and done up for the anniversary, but I had to be economical. A cast of 8 characters would have been expensive plus it might not have been finished in time for the anniversary if Lunis had to do 8 different characters. But who are these 3 characters I’ve picked? The latter reason I’ve since discovered was wrong, Lunis could have totally managed it he’s that awesome.

Forewarning here, spoilers, just in case you were interested in reading ToT.

Well on the left we have Rika, the plump little raichu. *sidesteps a lightning bolt* She also has quite the temper which is easily triggered by certain insinuations. She also tended to have a bit of a high opinion of herself. She wasn’t the brightest of the heroes, but she made up for it with tenacity and being a heavy hitter without any augmentation. She’s one of my favorites because of just how fun it was to write for her, both in story and in the various more meta things I did. Course that isn’t to say that she didn’t learn to keep her temperament in check. A big character arc I did for her involved her learning to not be so zap happy over every little slight. And even that was fun to write, because I got to make her scramble to try and better herself.

So yeah, in a word, why Rika’s a favorite is: Fun.

In the middle we’ve got Inferno, the houndoom leader of the heroes. Possessing both an adventurous spirit and a heroic soul, Inferno did a lot of traveling in his life and always was willing to help out people wherever he went. He also got the honor of going through a classic face-heel turn thanks to some resurrection mind bending shenanigans. Oh yeah, he also died. Only once though. *snicker* But that guy’s later. Inferno was hands down the heavy hitter of the group, and with his well-traveled nature he was also fairly smart.

Inferno get’s his spot here because of multiple reasons. For starters, he was the first character, so I of course have a soft spot for him. I also really loved what I did with him with that whole dying and coming back as a villain thing. I also just loved how badass he was.

And finally, we have the grumpy mightyena on the right. Death. While I’d find it difficult to pick who’s higher between Inferno and Rika, I can say without doubt or difficulty that Death is hands down my favorite character from the series. As such, this one is gonna bit a bit long cause I just have to spiel about this guy.

Death originally started off as a villain. Brother to one of the heroes, Death was a pretty big monster, and this was before he got the wings and tentacles. Those came after his first death. Oh yeah, Death’s died… a lot. Well 3 times, almost four, but it does mean he’s the character who died the second most throughout the entirety of ToT. Originally a one shot-ish villain (there was a kinda arc to dealing with him), Death became a recurring threat/thorn-in-the-side for the heroes. Made even more threatening when he first rose from the dead the first time, mutated and engineered with the wings and tentacles you see now, though in the end it didn’t make that much a difference. However, dying tends to make one reevaluate one’s life. Dying three times means Death was kinda sick of it, so when it looked like the evil overlord he was enthralled too had no chance, Death took his to run the hell away.

It was in the 4th book that I decided Death would perform a heel-face turn, which meant I had to figure out a way for the character to counteract all the negative they had so people wouldn’t think said turn was bs. As such I decided to flush out his past and offer, not an excuse, but a reason for why he developed his warped world view (if you’re interested I went with the good ol’ emotionally abusive parent trope). Mix that with multiple deaths getting him to question why he was doing what he was doing, and you get a character who just wanted to walk away from everything.

With this set up, in enters Ferra, a plain, normal floatzel. The key to the redemption of Death, while he decided to start on the path to bettering himself she provided the support he needed to see it through. She did this by seeing something in him that no one, not even Death, saw in the mutated mightyena. Good. Spurred on by someone actually having any semblance of faith in him, Death strove to prove himself worthy of such praise, in the process growing to adore the one person who gave him what he so desperately desired. Which eventually to one of my favorite 1v1 fight scenes in the series, as Death fought against his namesake all in the name of not dying again since he had a reason to stay alive.

And that’s why I love Death, why he’s hands down my fav. While admittedly I didn’t give him depth until well over halfway through the whole story, I really love the depth I did give him eventually. The whole gamut of Death’s history, falling into the dark before eventually stumbling into the light, made him one of the more interesting characters. From pretty one note, to a fairly complex character, it’s hard for me not to feel proud of what I did with him.

Course there were loads of other characters, both heroes and villains, and a lot of them I loved. Some I wish I had done things differently with, others I feel I should have cut from the story. Honestly though, part of me does want to go through the series and rewrite it, do it better for the work and characters I love.

*chuckle and sigh* Ah, it’s been nice reflecting on this series. Again, and I can’t say this enough, Tales of Travelers really means a lot to me. It’s been 11 years since I came to this site, 11 years since that first part of the grand undertaking that was ToT. Since then I’ve written the likes of Liena’s Way, another series I absolutely love, and I’m currently working on Adamant Soul, a series I’m going to publish.

In 11 years, I’ve come a long way in my writing ability. And I owe it all to this series and these characters. So I hope you’ll all join me in celebrating this 11 year anniversary! *pops party poppers as fireworks go off*