Introduction to The Black Dragon
Copyright © 2005, James L. Snyder. All Rights Reserved.

Spoiler Warning... The following text talks about the creation of the short story to follow.  If you don't want to have foreknowledge of how the tale ends, please skip to the short story first, and then return to this introduction afterward.

At the 2000 E3 show, the folks at Electronic Arts and Origin Systems announced Ultima Online 2, which would later be known as Ultima Worlds Online: Origin, in honor of Origin Systems which was being dropped as a name in favor of EA Online.  This was to be a sequel to Ultima Online, which would take the story of UO and tie it up into a story that lead to the new world laid in place for UO2.

The story of Ultima Online, in a nutshell, is that the evil sorcerer Mondain had bound the world of Sosaria to the Gem of Immortality.  The Stranger (later to be known in the Ultima series as The Avatar) defeated Mondain, but the Gem shattered into thousands of pieces.  In each piece of the Gem existed a duplicate of the world of Sosaria.  It is within these shards, starting at the point of the shattering, that each unique world of Ultima Online takes place (this is also why people refer to the server they play on as a "shard").

Lord British is, in tomes inside UO, charged by the Time Lord to reuinite the shards of the Gem of Immortality through perfect harmony, thus bringing them back into harmony with the true universe.  This is not without a price, as those who exist on the alternate shards would cease to exist.

Ultima Worlds Online: Origin released a bunch of prequel fiction that picked up on the story.  There were pieces that took place in the past with the Meer, a race from thousands of years in Sosaria's past that were building up to casting an ultimate spell.  Also, in the future, was the tale of the Juka, who were ruled by Overseers.  In the present, Lord British was attempting to reunite the shards, and Lord Blackthorn came to realize this would be to the destruction of the world.

As the events transpire, the joining of the shards goes awry, and spells cast at three seperate moments in time has a cataclysmic event, forcing together parts of the Meer Sosaria from the past, the Jukan Sosaria from the future, and present day Britannia into a new, twisted Britannia.  Of course, since UO would continue to be available for play, the story is that this travesty only occurred in shards where Lord British attempted the unification.

Electronic Arts then held a fiction contest.  You had a limit of 1,500 words in which to tell a tale.  They were looking for stories in three categories.  Meer.  Human.  Jukan.  They would choose one overall grand prize winner, and three runner-ups (one from each of the time periods).  There were few rules.  You couldn't write about existing Ultima characters; it had to be an original tale.  The story also had to take place during the time of the unification of the shards.

Well, of course, I decided I wanted to take a shot at it.  The sad part was, I wasn't sure if I wanted to write about the Meer or the Jukans.  Both were intriguing.  The Meer were very nature-based creatures, almost cat-like in nature.  The Jukans were gargoyle descendants, and slave to a strange technological race.  In the end, four days before my entry was due, I chose to write about a human.  Rather than choose a hero, I decided I'd write about a young man who was serving aboard a pirate ship based out of Bucaneer's Den.

I started to write about Teron.  Talking about him getting ready to board the ship, just standing out on the beach, relaxing, enjoying his last few moments on land.  I went into a lot of description, as I tend to be quite verbose.  I was writing on paper, and was sort of deciding what I wanted to do.  I knew I wanted there to be a confrontation out at sea.  Perhaps with a legendary vessel of some sort.  It didn't take me long before I knew what I wanted to do.  There'd be some exposition to follow what I'd written talking about his duties on the ship.  And some training with his mentor.  Then there'd be an attack by a ghost ship.  The ghost ship was to be lead by a lich pirate.  There'd be a battle, all taking place during the cataclysmic reshaping events.  And then Teron would awaken to find himself in a new world.  All of this because I always felt that UO's exploration of their seas had been lacking.

Well, I took my hand-written introduction, sat down in front of my computer, and entered it in.  I ran Word's word-count feature.  850ish words.  I hadn't even gotten out of the basic introduction and on to the ship yet.  Ouch.  So I sat back down with the introduction, and looked for ways to cut word count.  If there was a sentence I'd written with 7 words that I could say in 5, I did.  If I could re-order the sentence, cut some words, and achieve the same meaning, I did.  In short, I cut out of it as much as I could without losing the overall feel of it.

Feeling that would suffice, I then moved on to writing about his shiplife.  It started with him slicing fish, and then being sent up deck for training with his mentor, Vyrd.  I knew I had to move to the action quick, so almost immediately, I had the cataclysm begin overhead, the magical energies in the skies (following the description I'd read elsewhere to give the familiar reader the indication what was going on).  At the same time, I had the ghost ship of the Lich-Pirate Quelas Tahl appear, and gave it some validity by fear from Vyrd.  I passed out the silver weapons, and then got ready to write the battle.

But first, a word-count check.  1800 words.

Yes.  1800 words, and I hadn't even gotten to the battle yet.  I had no idea what I was going to do now.  I went through and did as much editing as I could, and was still in at 1730ish words.  230 words over, I hadn't gotten to the conflict, and certainly didn't have room for an ending.  It was then that I took queue from my typical writing habits, and just jumped straight to the end, and figured out how I wanted to wrap it up.  Putting that in, and checking the word count after editing out more of the middle portion, I was still about 1650 words.

And then I made a rather strange decision.  The story was done, but for editing.  I decided I'd leave the massive battle that ensued entirely to the reader's imagination.  I figured they could do it more justice in their own minds than I could given a couple of hundred words or so and butchering up the tale more.  So I did some adjusting, made backward references to the battle from the end, and wrapped it all up.  1498 words.  Now, I admit that in the final draft, there was one word missing (and in this version, you'll find that the word has been edited back in, and comes to 1499 words).

Those were the hardest 1498 words I think I've ever written.  In the end, they were 1498 words well worth the effort.  I won the Best Human Story category, runner-up to the Best Overall Story.  I've still got the Origin t-shirt I won as a prize (which substituted the original prize which was UO2 related, because shortly after the contest, production on UO2 was halted).

Hopefully this background information hasn't spoiled your reading of the tale to follow (or maybe you took my advice and read the story first).  At any rate, I hope you enjoyed some insight into the creation process of this short story.

Please note that due to the contest rules, the following short story is Copyright © Electronic Arts, All Rights Reserved, and presented here only by the original author.  No challenge of copyright is intended, and the author recognizes that in submission of the short story, all rights were transfered to Electronic Arts.

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