Land of Confusion

Land of Confusion is another small companion piece for A Better Place, akin to Bones before it, as part of a new series of side stories now entitled A Call To Arms. Taking place only a few weeks after the events of No Regrets, an experienced, but aging explorer of the land, Anry Muse, arrives to the small city of Dalry with three goals in mind: examining reported occult activity in the area, honing his craft as a swordsman, and enjoying the local spirits and hospitality available to him. Easily able to accomplish the latter two goals in one ill-fated bar encounter, Anry finds himself hounded by a new traveling bard who wishes to thank him for his services; almost immediately thereafter, however, Anry finally gets to pursue his first goal in Dalry.

Land of Confusion can be read here.

The above image was drawn by Anry, whose online portfolio can be found here. He also served as the inspiration for Anry's name.

Land of Confusion was named after the song by Norwegian folk pop group Katzenjammer (I did not learn it was a cover of a song by English rock band Genesis until shortly before finishing the story); I initially entitled it To The Sea after another song of theirs, but I elected to change it as to avoid confusion with another duology of works I've previously written. Furthermore, the series A Call To Arms was named after an extended play by folk punk group Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution, a side project for ska punk band Streetlight Manifesto, befitting its status as a side project to A Better Place (itself named after another Streetlight Manifesto song); a working title was On & On & On after another Streetlight Manifesto song (itself a cover of a Catch-22 song, which came before Streetlight Manifesto and also shares its most prominent member, Toh Kay. Confused yet?).

As was mentioned quite a while ago in the notes for Watercourse Way, Anry was my original idea to represent the ranger class, with his debut being between Gilbey Jenevere and Zetian Muhtar's respective stories. At the time, I wasn't too big on his backstory of being a former pirate who spends his days on the land, but as a writing exercise, I decided to try out writing a story for him as though it were a proper installment of A Better Place, while also adhering to its canon. As such, Land of Confusion takes place before Watercourse Way proper, as to give Gilbey a bit more of a push to visit what remains of his old hometown. I think we'll be seeing Anry again soon, mostly for completion's sake.

In my mind, Anry is roughly in his late 30s to early 40s for this story, and while it is rather difficult to compare ages between characters, I feel he'd be one of the oldest characters in the series based on both relative and absolute terms; Ravana, a half-orc who ages faster than humans, is likely the only character older than him in both relative and absolute numbers (though Maribelle Helder, a halfling, would likely be a few years older than Anry as well if adjusted for race). In some ways, his concerns about missing out on his various life goals while growing old feels somewhat personal to me, and no doubt to many other folks out there, hence why I've always tried to challenge myself with a variety of different endeavours and interests.

Anry's a fun character to write, due to his brazen and extroverted personality being quite unique amongst the others in the cast, most of whom are generally either polite, introverted, or a combination of the two. And as an American, I had some good fun trying to make him sound a bit English; I especially envisioned him speaking in the Scouse accent, given his past as a sailor, and had intended to include some regional slang to his speech, but they stuck out too much for my tastes, so they ended up getting mostly scrapped.