Recently, I was thinking back to some of our early role-play campaigns… including the one for Distant Horizon.
See, the game started as me and Isaac wanting to plan a one-shot campaign that was something of a cross between The Giver meets X-Men.
Actually, that’s not entirely accurate.
The very first campaign set in this universe was a group campaign that followed the terrible exploits of superheroes from the Super Bureau who did more damage than the villains. It was great fun, and ended up providing a bit of lore you occasionally see in the Distant Horizon series.
(For more about that campaign, check out my blog post from 2016)
There’s even an easter egg regarding the Super Bureau campaign in the Glitch saga (Ghost of a Memory), when Tim is researching previous encounters with spirits:
After reviewing an article about a spirit that possessed a brain-dead child, I find several related articles from the time shortly before EYEnet was founded. One is about a man listed as Agent Knight. According to the text, he took an unruly team from the Super Bureau to remove a cult leader who tied the spirits of his followers to metal photographs—some superstition about photographs stealing a person’s soul. But the methods weren’t magical. The cult leader used life-spirit powers to bind his followers to a separate object, where he could better control them.
Long story short, though the actual events have been tweaked to better fit the story (as a great many of the campaign events have), and we don’t actually see all of the members of the ill-fated Super Bureau, some of the basic concepts of that campaign remain.
There is still a possessed, brain-dead child (at the time, she simply had a ridiculous level of power, rather than being possessed) who has a large role in the backstory of this universe (a back-burnered work-in-progress titled Little One). I have Isaac’s notes on the current version of the manuscript, and eventually I’ll need to work on those revisions. There, the investigation of the cult leader who stole souls continues… though he’s already dead (more-or-less) by the time Little One begins.
That said, we do get more Easter eggs regarding Little One’s story in Starless Night… and it’s a plot point that has some weighty significance for Jenna in dealing with the brain seed she’s trying to thwart.
There’s plenty of other little references as well. Jim mentions a few of them in the Distant Horizon series. The character of Benjamin had his start in that early campaign, though his character has gone through several iterations before you see him as he is now.
Distant Horizon was conceived as a campaign about a year or two after that one, but just between me and Isaac, and it started with Jenna in the Community, trying to figure out what was going on with the Health Scan. (Another key idea for this was that the superheroes had failed and the villains now ruled the world… but those in the Community didn’t know).
Of course, it’s not uncommon for our “one-shot” campaigns to run much longer… and it was about halfway through the campaign I decided I wanted to try writing it as a novel (I started taking notes about the spot where Fractured Skies ends). Though events have changed, the basic concept has stayed pretty much on point. One of the biggest changes being how big of a role “memory seeds” play in the story, since telepathic attacks existed, but the detailed workings of memory seeds came about later.
Tim’s story in the Glitch saga, on the other hand, wasn’t actually one of our campaigns. Portions did get played out between Isaac and me (primarily conversations between the Legion Spores and Tim… with Isaac voicing the living airships and me voicing Tim), but a lot of details were notes that Isaac had regarding what happened behind the scenes in the campaign for Distant Horizon.
Now, those aren’t the only Distant Horizon Universe campaigns we’ve done. Of note, we also had one we called “Exiles,” of which much of the story arc has been dismantled due to changes made in the published Distant Horizon series. I may revisit a version of it later, but, for now, you can see hints of it in the Deceived series. A team of young power-users have to escape a beast facility and then go on adventurers to change their world for the better… one of those characters being over-powered enough that the Camaraderie isn’t terribly happy about them…
Another campaign was the Athena arc, which is something of a techno thriller that takes place after Exiles. Again, a lot got changed based on changes to Distant Horizon. However… other aspects might eventually get reworked into later books if we ever explore the world beyond the Distant Horizon series once that’s complete. (And I have been dropping certain foreshadowing hints into the current series in case we do lean into that route).
And then there’s another campaign I ran much farther into the story’s future, but it would need major, major edits to be even remotely feasible, though there are some plot details which may work themselves into other books… especially Little One.
In any case, role-playing has been a fun way for us to develop the story and delve deeper into the individual characters and the world. 🙂
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Sneak around with Jenna in the Distant Horizon series!
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Happy reading and writing!
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 