The Fourth Piper: Extras

Author Q & A

Welcome, people! I've decided to do an extras book for TFP in celebration of 9K reads (in case you couldn't already tell), where lots of fun and world-building and cringing and memes shall be shared with all of you which is so fun and will be a great time.

*flails arms*

Okay, so the first thing I've decided to upload is a question and answer for the author who is me lol (don't worry, the memes and other funny things will arrive later xD). What questions do you have for me, if any? Comment them below! I'll be adding the questions and answers to this as they're added.

*There will be spoilers*

1. autumn_sunfire : When did you first conceive the idea for the story that became The Fourth Piper?

Well, the way it came to be is a bunch of sparked ideas from the past melded together at once. I had just finished reading The Song of Albion trilogy by Stephen R. Lawhead in which a big part is of course the Song of Albion. That's what sparked the idea that song could be magic, which of course eventually led to my entire world. The concept (as you can see in this extras book) was really just me exploring my style and wanting a more "medieval vibe" for some reason. After finishing my very first book on Wattpad about an amnesiac (that story needs to burn and die, by the way), I knew I wanted my own world. Another thing was that I'd read a story about superheroes, I think—I remember the hidden identity mixed with the romance being something I really loved and decided to write. All these three things—the magic, the new world, and the hidden identity—created this idea of a Final Song and a Piper to play it. Maybe I'll share some of that very early draft which used to be on Wattpad in here sometime.

2. autumn_sunfire : What's something about your characters (as many of them that you want to answer for that didn't make it in the book?

Ha! There are actually more things about my characters that got changed than things that didn't make it in (such as Marehnn previously being a Grand Duchess before Jalminhara and Aljhin were even a thing), but there are lots of little things that might be in TFP but maybe not so I'll just list them lol. General Mason Locklear killed the king with faery's dust (that's one that might be in there but might have been cut out). Rowan was actually born in the Northern Isles (and quickly moved to Eracelli after four years). He's also fluent in the four languages that surround him: Eracellian, Cetadorian, the Runic language of the Northern Isles, and Faespeak. He doesn't know Bormingese and Pingaeran (Silvingars speak Eracellian strangely enough, if you were wondering at all). Xolira became chief of the Havenvale faery tribe during the time of the Second Piper (she's old, people!). Marehnn loves animals (she's shown caring for horses but not as much as she actually feels), especially horses. Lavinna's preference of bidding magic isn't manipulating the earth as the story describes. She prefers to sing with the wind as chieftain of the Phrillá Clan (Phrillá comes from phro which is "wind" and illa which is "singing"). Prince Relfyr is barely thirteen and is most definitely not crowned after his father's death. Jied has a wife and a son, and John Fletcher is filthy rich. Neriphé's real name is Loschal of Wengall (yes, I know; Cetadorian names are most ugly and do not pronounce smoothly either), and he was a nobody before he became a road bandit and killed someone pretty important in Cetador. 

3. MissFantasyy : How did you come up with all your names? Eracelli, Cetadorians, etc. and the languages? How did you create THAT?

This is a great question! Back when I first started writing this piece—that awful first, first draft—the names were really just sounds I liked that I made into names. This was before I had made up any languages or anything like that, so all of the names of places (Eracelli, Cetador, the Northern Isles, Faenwin, Havenvale, the Outpost, Aljhin, etc.) were names/words I randomly put together to make those names. However, of course that changed when I started writing the draft which is currently on Wattpad. I started to develop my world extensively in my head, and that development started to include developing languages. The thing that is great about the origins of the world of "The Fourth Piper" is Pingaera, the united empire. Because Pingaera was its own thing before splitting, everyone used to speak Pingaera—so most of the names that I'd made up in the first first draft were kept because they were Pingaeran, which meant that even if the name didn't really fit with the language that I made up for them (for example, Cetadorian 'c's' are always hard except in the case of the name "Cetador" itself, which is "say-tah-dor"), the name still fit. Then of course, once the empire split into the four kingdoms of Eracelli, Cetador, Bormingire, and Silvingar (which eventually became Aljhin), languages started to develop as I was writing "The Fourth Piper".

Now, in terms of how I create my languages, I start with a lot of sounds. Phonetics are fundamental to languages—sounds are words, so to speak. Basically what I did is I gave a particular sound/feel to each of the languages I have in my charts right now (currently, I have 7 languages). So, Aljhinian has a soft 'j' as in Jacques and I have in my notes that it has an "elegant-but-blunt sound"—with "Alkah ni maljavah ul abdhur ni easav", to name a phrase, you can see how you have that soft 'j' and 'v' with many soft vowels along with harder sounds like 'k' and the 'dh'. I find that starting with sounds and then making words creates continuity in a language. Yes, there's variety, but each language has their own feel because of these sounds. Playing with sound also creates natural rules for pronunciation. When I create words, it's a combination of me playing around with sounds and playing around with letters. 

In terms of structure, I draw a lot from English, yes, but I actually draw a lot from the structure of the Spanish language as I study Spanish and have been learning a lot about linguistics because of that. Typically, the objects in my languages are before the verbs, for instance. Where I really started to dabble a little bit with different structure is with Bormingese, which I have barely developed and hardly showed up in "The Fourth Piper" anyway. However, one aspect of Bormingese is that the written form uses apostrophes to connect adjectives to nouns, like "te'qua", which is "crowned one". Adjectives describing the same noun or adjectives describing other adjectives are mashed together with the noun. "Pyte'qua" means "one who wears a gold crown". This means that in Bormingese, there are basically different words for each noun with each adjective. Yes, this affects pronunciation since if you add any adjective to it that contains an 'a', that 'a' gets the accent. Yes, there are complicated rules that determine how to mash a bunch of adjectives to a noun and yes, sometimes mashing the adjectives to nouns changes the word entirely. However, hardly anyone outside of the Bormingese people speak this language, so it's easy for them to be able to speak it since they learned it from immersion. There's a reason this language is one Rowan is not fluent in!

4. MissFantasyy : Has it been planned from the beginning that Rowan would die? If yes, was it hard to kill him off in the end?

In the five—almost six now in 2020—years that the characters and world of "The Fourth Piper" have existed, Rowan was always meant to die. I had never planned any other fate for him. Marehnn becoming the Fifth Piper came as a bit of a surprise to me halfway through writing the piece, but I'd always planned for Rowan to play the Final Song and fade away. So yes. It had been planned. I had to keep that ending secret for five years! 

To answer your second question, yes. It was extremely hard, and it only got harder the closer I drew to writing that end chapter. There were definitely times when I debated letting him live altogether—I adore Rowan and killing him off made me physically cry more than once. But...I couldn't bring myself to change anything. I truly think that letting him make his sacrifice—his true sacrifice—is part of the beauty of his character and the plot. Rowan asks himself at some point in the book if perhaps magic longs for a true good. That true good is his sacrifice at the end. The Final Song before Rowan, actually, had never caused good—every Piper before him had caused destruction and chaos with their Final Song. But Rowan's was truly good. He was dying out on the Siren's Temple's floor already, and he could have saved himself—and I thought about letting him. But that wasn't his character at all. Rowan, despite everything, has an enormous heart, and his love for the people he loves is sacrificial. It would simply not be right—and not be beautiful and meaningful—if he were to live. The point of a sacrifice is finality. To let Rowan live would be to render his very sacrifice meaningless, which would then render his story meaningless. Why tell the story of a man who gives everything only to gain it back again? That wasn't a story I wanted to tell. It was important to me to convey that my characters spend a lot of the book trying to save themselves. But, throughout the plot, they learn that saving others does save them. It saves their identity. And that sacrifice—an old self for a new self and an old salvation for a new salvation—is what made me let his sacrifice be final. To the death.

And, despite the pain it caused, I think it's all the more terribly beautiful.