What is WIS?
Written In Shadows is a blog (as you can clearly see) created by our writing team to act as the main hub for our stories.
What is Valcrest and why am I being welcomed there?
Valcrest is the name of the fictional country where all of our stories take place. Thus, visiting our blog is the same as stepping into Valcrest. Think of our tagline as one of those welcome signs you see when you cross the border to a new exciting place. 😉
Who the heck are you?
The Shadows Crew is a group of writers who met through Roleplaygateway.com and together penned over one million words worth of… Writing, I guess? It wasn’t very good. Still, the Roleplay series we’ve come to refer to as the “Shadows Series” or “Shadows Trilogy” gained a small-yet-obsessive fan base. And this was all the incentive we needed to eventually start working on making that mess readable. And, well, here we are. 😐
We started writing together as a means to just exercise our creativity and have a few laughs. The response we got from readers was overwhelming enough to push us forward and think about taking this seriously. And we have. A bit too much, maybe. Valcrest has been in development for seven years and counting. We still have ways to go, but we’re putting out content along the way. If only for our own entertainment.
What are these stories you speak of?
There are five stories currently planned for the Shadows Series. The Main Trilogy, which are the three stories directly based on the Roleplays; Shadows Rise, which takes place roughly 20 prior to the start of the Main Trilogy; and a fifth story that tells of the beginning of the war in Valcrest (we’re working on a title for that one still).
Shadows Rise is the story of a small group of assassin hunters, intent on antagonizing one of the most powerful forces known to Valcrest. A conflict that, while unknown to the world as a whole, devastated the lives of many and influenced events that would change the course of history forever. It’s the first story we’ll be releasing and you can read more about it here.
Shadows of The Enlightened, the first part of the Trilogy deals with a small group assassins attempting to hunt down a killer who’s been targetting magic users and attempting to frame their clan for the kills. Seems like a simple solution: find the killer, but this is Valcrest. Nothing is ever as simple as that.
Shadows of The Past, the second part of the Trilogy, deals with the reason why sometimes the ends don’t justify the means. It follows our clan of assassins dealing with the consequences of their actions and Valcrest as a whole coping with a reigniting War.
Shadows of The Forgotten, the third and final installment, has our characters stumble across secrets best left buried and the realization that in the end, some truths are better off forgotten.
Why write it as a web serial?
This is something we’ve been asked a few times. “Why aren’t you guys writing full novels? Why a web serial? Why a blog?”. And there are many answers for this, but the simplest one is we decided that this served the stories better.
Our writing might not have been the best most polished thing in RP form; mostly because we wanted to have fun and not care about polishing anything, but we did develop a certain style of narrative with this series that we’d like to preserve and improve upon. The web serial format seems to cater to this particular style better than a straight up ebook. We’d also like a platform that facilitates and encourages communication with our readers and a blog seems to cater to that particular need as well.
Bottom line; it was a choice we made based on what we feel will be the most beneficial to us and our potential readers.
So that about covers most of what you need to know about the blog, us and our stories. I hope you enjoy browsing the blog and give us a follow if you like what you see. We have a lot of things planned for the future. 🙂
Cheers,
– The Crew
Written In Shadows 