The Story Behind the Storm, Part IV: The Forging of Foolpuddle
an in-depth look at the creation of the "Barbarians of the Storm" saga
I almost covered The Forging of Foolpuddle short story in my last edition of The Story Behind the Storm series. However, I put it to the side because I was trying to decide if I wanted to cover this specific story or the character of Xulgog, as a whole. Ultimately, I am going to cover both in separate posts, but I figured that I should start with this. Why? Well, it is his backstory, earliest tale, and the first Barbarians of the Storm short story that I ever wrote, as it accompanied the first book, Dan the Destructor.
One fun fact about The Forging of Foolpuddle is that I wrote it in a single day. I woke up early as shit, went to the diner, ate a big ass breakfast, drank a lot of coffee, got a huge coffee to go, went home and knocked this out in about the time of a normal workday with a small BLT break in the middle. There also wasn’t much planning with it. I sat down, hyper-focused and just blasted through it with relative ease. That’s not typically normal, and I’ve tried to replicate it multiple times since with little luck. Although, there was a day while working on Swords Against Bastards where I knocked out like four intense chapters featuring the two big climactic battles.
Anyway, I don’t want to get sidetracked on a tangent.
The Forging of Foolpuddle had one real purpose and that was to create an origin for the Barbarians of the Storm series’ top villain (at least for the first big arc). I needed a tragic, fucked up backstory, I needed there to be bloody and gruesome vengeance, and I wanted to have the character evolve beyond the limitations of what he was naturally. And with that evolution, I knew that there would have to be serious risks to the character, as there is sort of a theme throughout the series about “playing god” coming with severe consequences. Especially, when there are nefarious or selfish motivations behind it.
I also wanted Xulgog/Foolpuddle’s quest for vengeance to be justified and relatable. A very terrible thing happens to his family when he is a small child. This terrible event is also orchestrated by another member of his family, a sadistic, egomaniacal king. Beyond the initial horrible incident, Xulgog and his siblings are further tortured by their uncle and ultimately, this tears them apart, as Xulgog clearly knows who the enemy is while his siblings exist in a state of perpetual fear. There is also their cousin, a bratty, shitty prince, who may be even worse than the twisted king.
The story also needed to showcase goblin society. I wanted to show it in a way that made them more than just fodder in a fantasy army. I needed my goblins to be more evolved than what’s typical, but they also needed to be susceptible to the same faults as men. While I show a wide range of intelligence levels among the characters, as some are just fodder (but so are many men), there are goblins with real intelligence and a deeper awareness of things. They’re not too dissimilar from humans or any other intelligent race that you would find in a fantasy tale. Sure, they have a unique culture, but on the world they inhabit in my stories, the have evolved alongside other races and had the same secret manipulations done to them over time by a race of alien architects, who are already known if you’ve read the first Barbarians of the Storm book and beyond.
I also wanted to give readers a glimpse of the villains Brahm Tieryr and Shakon-Kazoth (earlier in the timeline). I have interesting backstories for both characters and have always planned to explore them more. With that, I wanted to show how Xulgog is made into an all-powerful, formidable ruler, but he’s also used as a pawn in a larger game he couldn’t comprehend at this point in his life.
Beyond all that, though, I also wanted a short tale that differed greatly from the tone of Dan the Destructor. I wanted the readers of the first book to know that everything wouldn’t always be jovial and have campy undertones. Things were going to get more serious as the series rolled on, stakes got higher, threats got bigger, and cosmic conspiracies and secrets were revealed. However, I also didn’t want to go so far that the story became grimdark. It needed a certain level of violence and brutality, that was justified by the circumstances within the story, but I didn’t want to cross a line.
While it may hit too hard for some, I think that I managed the tone well. I also think that it had a great contrast to the main Dan the Destructor story without being too jarring. In fact, some have told me how surprising the tale was and that they enjoyed it more than the main story. In some ways, I think I do too. This is also why I decided to make my first Barbarians of the Storm anthology a horror themed set of stories. Ultimately, all fun aside, these characters live in a dark and pretty fucked up world. Many have horrific events that went on to shape them: Erzulyn, Merith, and Vasilia, just to name a few.
In the end, The Forging of Foolpuddle also established one of my favorite traditions in the series, and that’s the use of short stories to emphasize character’s development and to add a lot of neat context to the larger saga as a whole. It also got me in the habit of adding a short story to the end of every novel. I also don’t know if anthology books would have been as prevalent in the series, had I not written this story.
I owe a lot to The Forging of Foolpuddle, and without it, I don’t think that the Barbarians of the Storm saga would have been as well-developed and as vast as it is becoming.
As I said earlier, I plan to also write another installment of this series on Xulgog/Foolpuddle exclusively. However, I want to wait until after I do Book IV, as there is a big thing planned for the character and his future.