KhorasForum

Some of you may have noticed that the Spotlight for May 2008 focused on a character named Callister Draabyn. A character sheet was put up for him and a short story. Well, Callister Draabyn was the favorite old-time character run by my good friend and collaborator, Mark Price. Mark just turned 36 years old on May 30th. Happy Birthday Mark! He asked me for a very unique and specific birthday present... he asked me to write up a short story featuring Callister Draabyn. Sounded like a fun project to me and what a great birthday present!

Now, I haven't written anything in a long time, so this short story marks the first piece of real writing I've done in several years. This ties into to another piece of writing coming soon... I and Mark and another filmmaker friend, Heath Ward, all have various pieces of writing that we have been putting off. So, we've challenged ourselves. We've given ourselves a deadline of August 1st, 2008. Each of us must have a first draft of our respective piece of oft-delayed writing completed by August 1st. My piece of writing is a short story that Mark and Heath have been bugging me to write ever since we took a road trip in 2004. So, yeah, I'm ashamed to admit it but it's been on my to-do list for 4 years now. But no more excuses. I'm going to write it. The short story is about Seven Kegs Floating, a floating town in the Pirate Isles. The short story about Callister was a good warm up exercise to get back into writing.

So, August 1st there will be another new piece of writing on the site. "Seven Kegs Floating". I'm looking forward to writing it. In the meantime, if you haven't read it yet, I encourage you to check out the Callister Draabyn story. It's in the Tales section. I rather like the way it turned out. And yes, many of the little things that appear in the story will be appearing in the site very soon.

Oh, yeah, one other thing... you may notice that Callister Draabyn is strikingly similar, in personality, to another famous captain... Captain Jack Sparrow from the Pirate of the Caribbean movies. Also, if you go to the city of Freeport (capital city of Mercia) you will find a tavern called the "Black Pearl". That tavern is run by Callister Draabyn's sister. Now, you may not believe me, but Callister Draabyn and the Black Pearl in Freeport both came LONG before the Pirate movies were ever made. It's just a coincidence. I named the Black Pearl tavern after an actual restaurant I saw in Annapolis, Maryland MANY years ago. I have no idea of that restaurant/bar is still running, but back in the early 80s, when I was a kid, I saw it and remembered the name and used it for a fictional tavern in Freeport in the late 90s. And Mark was running Callister Draabyn in gaming many years before the first Pirate movie came out. So, really, it's just a big coincidence. We didn't copy the movies. If anything, Hollywood copied us! That's all. I just wanted to proactively quell any doubts about the originality of Callister or the Black Pearl. We did it first! 

that was hilarious..thanks for the story...

succulent raug? muahahahaha...

I thought the short story was very well done and I loved the way Callister handled the situation on the dock...Very fun

haha its okay i'm sure Callister Draabyn could kick Johnny Depp's ass any day lmao. besides that story made me rofl