Silver Star Kingdom to Thanmir War

Fifteen-year-old me had an idea. How about write a story? As a huge fan of “magical girl” anime and fairies at the time, I started to formulate the following idea.

A charming, superficial young man named Derek lives in California with his parents and brilliant little sister. He’s going to college for botany and dates a beautiful girl name Britney. One day, he finds a pair of magical cloth bracers in his bedroom and when he touches them, he gets transported to another world where he wakes up next to a beautiful woman with amnesia who has teal hair and eyes. She goes by the name Tika and has a talking ferret named Minnik as a pet.

They decide to travel together as she follows a gut feeling telling her to head toward a particular tower. During their travels they meet Senu, a swashbuckling thief, and Derek discovers that everyone on this new world has matching hair and eye color. Senu has white hair and eerie white eyes. As they continue their travels they meet up with others: Yone, intelligent and conceited with amber hair and eyes; Komiko, seductive and deadly with violet hair and eyes; and Nicky, a caring healer with blue hair and eyes.

Unknowing to them, there’s this evil fairy named Iresu who is out to control all the royalty of that world and hangs out on Prince Aito’s shoulder. Aito’s little brother Kaio sees this, but refuses to believe his brother could ever be corrupted. Every royal member has little silver stars on the outside of their eyes and it’s discovered that Tika is actually Princess MaTisha who had sent her beloved servant to the past on another world to be reborn after an unfortunate accident.

There’s a fight and Derek admits he’s in love with MaTisha.

The story included a time where all of them get transported back to this world where Derek dumps Britney, takes everyone to the mall, and they all go dancing.

That was Silver Star Kingdom.

When twenty-year-old me started working for my brother at his restaurant, I met his prep cook named Jamie, a spunky, blond-haired girl, whom he had nicknamed Jebaliah. I loved the name so much, Jebaliah made it into the story.

Jebaliah was a cook, of course, who had fallen in love with the same servant Princess MaTisha loved. MaTisha was attacked and during that fight, Jebaliah accidentally stabs the servant which forces MaTisha to intervene. Jebaliah then joins a rebel group, blaming MaTisha for whole incident which caused the servant’s death. She has a suave but loyal right hand man named Kieser who steals MaTisha’s first kiss and romances Komiko, much to Derek’s chagrin.

Somewhere along the line, I decided all of the uncommon names wouldn’t go over so well with people trying to pronounce everything. Anyone who was human received a name and appearance update. Senu became Jack, Yone became Liz, Komiko became Naomi, and Nicky… well, he turned into Nicholas. Kieser was the most drastic character transformation as he turned into Cameron.

Then I started doing something horrible. I started to ask “Why?”. Why would an evil fairy want to control all the royalty? Why would an immortal creature even care about power? That was when Iresu, now Ira, lost hers. But why did she lose her power? Ira became a mother, Aito and Kaio became twins, and Kaio became different.

Little by little things changed and I became serious about making my story good and perhaps unique. Fairies became elementals. Princes and princesses became Thanmir. Silver stars were exchanged for pendants. MaTisha was no longer a sweetly helpless, naive twit. Jebaliah changed from jealous love interest to upset daughter. Humans gained power. Deities were added. Cameron joined the military. That little scuffle that killed a servant turned into a really big deal. And Derek got a whole lot of complicated.

Thanmir War is far different from it’s conception half a lifetime ago. It’s no longer the cheery, let’s-go-skipping-through-the-forest-holding-hands type of story it once was. I’d dare say it’s not appropriate for fifteen-year-olds anymore.