“The Vitmar Chronicles” is, ultimately, a story about the lives of two brothers, Gabriel and Kaldor Vitmar, starting from their late-teens/early-20s and following them over the span of around 20 turns [1]. They experience and deal with trauma, grief, love, children, and a multitude of other things that should be depictive of life in general, be it set in a fantasy world or the real world, but perhaps with a more open-minded take on what’s harmful versus helpful than many people might still be ready for. A lot of my hippy soul bleeds into this world and story.

Naturally, since this project was made up based off of real-life people, many of the characters are loosely based off of real life friends that I’ve had over the years. “The Vitmar Chronicles” is definitely the most personal thing I’ve ever written, because I started writing it in 2008 and I still haven’t finished it, because the story keeps changing as the person I am keeps shifting and growing. This world is founded on my general life philosophies, which include things like everything in moderation, no one is perfect, it’s not about what you do but how you deal with the consequences, and do unto others as you would have done to you.

The stories are set in the world of Ilynika, whose name I’m quite sure I adapted from Ilyria from Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.” The world is largely divided into the north and south, which is separated by a small island cluster called Merchant’s Crossing. The north is a version of a utopia—it is a place to where a great number of people in the south migrated when they became sick of the problems society refused to solve (relatable?), while the south is the more familiar fantasy setting with all of the common issues of inequality, tyranny, and the like. While most of the stories are set in the northern islands, it goes without saying that a few of the problems faced are caused by southern attitudes.

Ilynika’s north based their society on an effort to genuinely take care of one another. Since they were accustomed to a monarchy, they decided to re-imagine what it meant to be a king [2] in their new settlements and decided that the kings’ first priority is always to take care of the people. The kings’ children’s job is to spend as much time in different walks of life as possible in order always be up-to-date on what life and progress are like for the people, so they are in the best possible place to understand problems and be able to solve them in a way that’s fair for everyone.

The general societal rules are decided in democratic tribunals, with the first question always relating to how the subject may both benefit and harm individuals and society as a whole. Therefore, most forms of discrimination don’t exist in the north (though not all, as you might still find some prejudice towards southerners, for example) and everyone has, for example, a basic income. Children attend standard educational classes for a few years, followed by apprenticeship in whatever interests them and/or best suits their skills. Art is celebrated and stories and life experience are considered more valuable than material wealth.

“The Vitmar Chronicles” follows the lives of the aforementioned brothers and their family, with each year-chapter covering the most exciting events of that turn [1]. For a long time, I planned to try to pitch this series as a trilogy, with the first two books being collections of these year-chapters and the last book being a full adventure novel. However, when I decided to abandon my pursuit of traditional publishing and do things my way, it occurred to me that it actually makes more sense to release the chapters one-by-one as shorter stories, since they are technically standalone tales. That way, all of the year-chapters will build up to the final book, which is a more traditional novel that takes place over a much shorter timespan.

It is distressing, in it’s own way, that more of “The Vitmar Chronicles” isn’t written, since it’s been a work-in-progress for so many years, but I like to rest assured that these stories have been baking in my brain for exactly as long as they have needed to.