Red Desolation and a Watchman

In the blink of an eye, a town is raised up from the red sands and a man and his family formulate. All it takes is a movie with some different scenery and I'm all over it. In the, what, 2-3 days since I saw this place here's what has happened:

There's a teeeny tiny town in the middle of the red deserts of Rikitonia, which is a state on the southern border of Kiillaana. Its eastern neighbor is Vetonia. I've written about a handful of people from Rikitonia, the most notable being Rover Reddington, who I haven't even written about on this blog. He's a player in the Ambrose Lare series from way back.

Anyway, this tiny town, with a population of 741, is quite literally in the middle of nowhere. With flat expanses of red sand for miles, framed by some red rock mountains (cough, AZ/NM), the nearest civilizations include the capital which is 2 hours southwest, the city of Weston which is about 2 hours northeast, and the military/air force base 30 miles northwest. As said by the first persona to occupy this city,

"We are quite literally in the middle of nowhere. The only reason this town even exists is because of the military base 30 miles NW. Our city is only popular for one thing: Geology. It's comprised of two types of people: geologists and army brats."

Not bad for a starter statement!

Next up was the name. I wanted it to have a name that meant Red Desolation but I wanted it to be encoded. I turned to a new (to me) method of word-relationships by using the "arithmetic sum of the letters." In other words, I assigned each letter its numeric value, added those values up, and then played around with the letters until I got something that was reasonable but added up to the same value. There's only one site that I know of that does this: when given a name it shows other names along with adjectives that have the same numeric value. As a side note, I found out that me and my sister's names have the same sum. It's a cool and not-so-obvious way to make sibling names related. I decided to use it to turn Red Desolation into.....

Roakestown. The military base up north, that is a bit bigger but only really inhabited by military families, is called Fort Wegdonstone, an earlier but not quite as satisfying rearrangement.

With a name in place, I immediately thought that the city was "protected by a Terabikai." In a town that small everyone knows each other and he would be a beloved city figure. I decided to take this numeric sum idea further and counted up the letters in Terabi, taking all names from that. What I came up with was a man named Edmond Davis Heodin and his two daughters, Monica Iris Heodin and Arlene Camille Heodin. For his wife, I coded the name Osai and came up with Brenda Faith Ray. Pretty cool if you ask me. Monica is the first person I thought up when this city crossed my mind so therefore she will play some sort of an important role. She will figure into the story somehow and I'm pretty sure it has to do with either a pen pal relationship, a summer workshop, or a military trip. I see her related in this way to Avicile Mohaili or Rebecca Latham and it'll be fun figuring out which one it is.

BTW I drew Monica Heodin. Of course I did.

She's very nerdy. She has some superhero on her shirt. She's also very crafty and makes her money by selling her work on *cough* a website dedicated to the budding artist. There's not much to do in Roakestown so she has lots of time to read books and craft things. She also based off someone from the same movie. Of course.

So with Monica established, I set off to establish Edmond. Here's the rough draft I came up with this morning, handwritten on a little notecard. Don't believe me?

Don't worry, I'll type it out. Like I said, my handwriting is very small.

I got the idea from a pin called Unusual Date Ideas. Here it is in red:

 

Challenge accepted.

 

OK, So word for word off my notes, that note says this:

Edmond & Brenda (newly married by Lunfort, from Karafina), went to the Karafina airport on the eve of their honeymoon (decided to do this) with a week of clothes and not much else, went to the desk, asked about flights, got a flight on a 15 passenger plane to Roakestown's tiny air strip with 7 geologists. They stayed 2 weeks! They became so attached that they quite literally never left! A kitchen job opened for Brenda, got an apartment, Edmond got a job in banking (worked up to office). Parents mailed documents, E&B took a bus to Weston for a car and furniture- 2 kids soon after, saved for a cool house, etc. And that's how a Terabikai made it to the smattering of buildings known as Roakestown. Federal employee.

Needless to say, I'm really excited to flesh this one out. After 4 and a half months of writers block I got some stuff to write for a change! Hopefully this short(?) story will be up soon along with the tie to Avicile Mohaili or Rebecca Latham.

Never stop writing!