Hello, this is Fenn. Thank you for reading The Little Phoenix Warrior – Volume 1: The Origin of the Phoenix.
As a hobbyist, this is the first time I’ve ever finished writing something of this length. I’ve written short stories before, and when I was in grade school, I wrote an awful Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction that was about half as long as this. I’ve been thinking about getting back into writing longer stories for many years now, and actually did a lot of planning for potential stories. But I just never finished them for various reasons – usually that I got too dissatisfied with how they were turning out.
Then, some years ago, I got into a tabletop role-playing group – an RP group. It was a lot of fun, and though I left the group at some point, what I learned from it stuck with me. I learned not to be as overly perfectionistic, and to just write things out while letting the creative juices flow. Most importantly, I had played a number of different characters that I grew attached to. I didn’t want their stories to just end after I left.
So I decided to write a story about Prelinsa, a character whom I never finished playing during the RP sessions. I changed some things about her to fit a story better – in particular, her parentage, and how she came to have her powers. But the essence of her character remains the same. Prelinsa is a strong and determined girl with a sickly body and a tragic background. She wants to do right and help others in need, but has an aggressive and impatient side that can get her in trouble. In the RP group, she lacked a lot of the support she needed and was a more fragile character, but I decided to give her more help here.
The version of Marianne in the RP group had a different name, and was actually a fairly well-known knight, but still died to slavers. Prelinsa’s father was a very well-known individual, whom she resented at first for leaving her and her mother behind, but eventually came to respect. For The Little Phoenix Warrior, I wanted Prelinsa to not start with such a prestigious background, as I thought it made for a more interesting story. Therefore, I changed her parentage to have a commoner mother, and an absent father.
Prelinsa’s powers also worked differently. In the RP group, the Silvermoons granted her a special magic core called the Fireheart, which was done in order to save her life. But again, I thought that wasn’t a very interesting story. I wanted her to at least have to work towards gaining her powers and healing her illness. So I changed the mechanics of how Phoenix magic works, and had Prelinsa work towards gaining it in largely the same way that other Silvermoons do. I took a lot of influence from murim manhwa, wuxia manhua, and the various processes of cultivation. But I changed things up in ways that I thought were more understandable for a Western audience.
Other characters I played in the RP group make their appearances as well. Corynn was another character that I played, well before Prelinsa. I was pretty happy with how her story played out in the role-playing, so I didn’t focus on her in The Little Phoenix Warrior. Like Prelinsa, the essence of her character is largely the same. She was a clone created by an organization with deeply misguided goals, and later developed a stronger sense of identity. In the RP group, she was much older than Prelinsa, and Prelinsa called her ‘sister Corynn.’ Here, Corynn is a lot younger, but her story still played out before Prelinsa joined House Silvermoon. I might write a separate story about her at some point.
Kirith and the other Silvermoons were a group of NPCs, and all of them were very different. Kirith was envisioned as a thousands-year-old gambit master with contingencies for all manner of different things. She was also a former necromancer, and used that to gain an understanding of life and death needed for the Path of the Phoenix. Rensa was Kirith’s daughter who followed her around and acted more like a secretary than anything else. She was kind of a stick in the mud and not very interesting. Rupeth was the mysterious son of Kirith that we never really saw anything of, but in the RP group, Corynn was actually a clone of him and not Kirith.
I like the Silvermoons more in The Little Phoenix Warrior. We see a younger, less experienced, and more compassionate version of Kirith, who acts like a teacher towards Prelinsa. Rather than being a cold and mysterious mastermind, she is trying to overcome her dark past, and is more personable and relatable – though she still masks it behind her role as a political leader. Meanwhile, Rupeth and Rensa are a chaotic duo, with Rupeth being the brawn and Rensa being the brains. There’s a lot of fun potential with these two siblings, and I hope to showcase more of them down the line. Rensa in particular was inspired by a friend of mine who tries to exploit everything possible, often to hilarious effect.
Rona is related to two RP characters I played – Millie, an elvish alchemist, and Emilia, a catgirl priestess. A story version of Millie is actually Rona’s older sister referenced in Chapter 3. Rona is very different from both Millie and Emilia. She’s a lot more grounded than both of them, and also much more mature. In The Little Phoenix Warrior, she represents a younger elf that goes against the traditional warlike tendencies of elvish culture, and shows that people are not defined by their races or upbringing. I like Rona a lot, and hope to write more about her.
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
The other characters are original to The Little Phoenix Warrior. Missus B. was written as a friendly person to add character to the slums, and whom Prelinsa just happened to know. Originally, I was going to kill her off in Chapter 2, since she’d served her purpose by then. But I liked her so much that I ended up having her not only be a parental figure to Prelinsa, but actually adopt Prelinsa once Marianne died. I think she ended up being a good influence on Prelinsa’s growth, in a way that the RP version of Prelinsa never had.
Camilla was originally just some catty dog girl who picked a fight with Prelinsa, and got a nosebleed for her troubles. She was going to be a one-off character who existed just to show the negative feelings that people had towards Prelinsa. But again, I liked her so much that I wrote more of her, giving her proper motivations and a family background. The one-off role ended up being handed to the unnamed wererabbit thug. Camilla is a complicated character that wasn’t explored fully in Volume 1, and I’ll definitely write more about her in the future.
Camilla’s sister Mirabelle is also original to the story, and though she mostly just existed as someone for Prelinsa to defeat in the tournament arc, you’ll see more of her as well. She’s a fun character too. Lana, Arlan, and Electrum were also written for the tournament, with Arlan existing mostly to show off how strong Mirabelle is, and Electrum as a final boss for Prelinsa to overcome. Originally, I planned to have Prelinsa and Electrum actually fight before Prelinsa powered up, but that didn’t end up happening, because I wasn’t happy with the idea of either of them winning. I wanted to leave it a mystery as to who was truly stronger. So I interrupted the tournament with the attack of the clones. Sorry!
Although I had my cast of characters, I didn’t want to use the RP setting they originated from, because that setting is not mine to use. Besides, I wanted to create a different one that was more to my tastes. I took inspiration from many different genres, and mixed together various aspects of them that I liked. To name a few: Classical fantasy, urban fantasy, sci-fi, isekai, wuxia, and rofan. It might seem rather disorganized as a result, since it’s just a combination of stuff I enjoy. For the transit nerds out there complaining that monorails are not efficient: Cydonia is a planned city and the monorails only travel in straight lines with extremely few junctions – one of the few efficient use cases. This is why Pyrus, an old and cluttered city, doesn’t have monorails.
The plot was also something I thought about a lot. I had the climax in mind from the beginning, where Kirith cheats death and defeats Rex Goldensun. Originally, I actually planned for her to use a clone body, and use necromancy to transport her soul into it. But the story didn’t turn out that way, and Kirith didn’t end up being a necromancer (that we know of), so I changed it. The overall gist is still the same. Rex thinks Kirith is dead, and that he’s won the war. He runs into Prelinsa, and the two are about to fight, but Kirith suddenly shows up, revealing a card in her hand that nobody knew about. Then she purges Rex from existence, as she’s already given him enough chances to reform his ways.
From this climax, I outlined backwards and plotted forwards. I originally started with Prelinsa and Marianne trying to escape from the slums, but I decided to show some background in the slums first. I wanted to give a more concrete depiction of the background that Prelinsa came from. After that, I had her be captured by the slavers and then be rescued by the Silvermoons. Originally, I had in mind that Sorrel would be Prelinsa’s tutor and guardian, but that didn’t go anywhere, especially once I decided to keep Missus B. alive. So Sorrel ended up being a one-off soldier who helped rescue Prelinsa from the slavers.
After that, it was mostly a bunch of learning experiences for Prelinsa, getting into various fights. I wanted to show off how reckless and aggressive Prelinsa was, and that she was actually quite capable once she didn’t have to worry about her illness. So she won some quick fights, first against Vincent, then against the couple in the restaurant. But I didn’t want to keep rewarding her, because Prelinsa needed to eventually learn patience. So I had her lose to Corynn in their spars, and also had her punch Camilla and get in trouble for it. In much later drafts, I also added Prelinsa losing her hand to the wererabbit thug.
When I finished the first arc and had Prelinsa gain the Phoenix Spark, I was going to end Volume 1 right there. However, I wasn’t satisfied – I didn’t think it was a good enough climax for the story. So I decided to delve more into the clones. Clone soldiers were an idea that I contributed to the RP group, and I always wanted to use them in a story of my own. So I delved into a war arc with the clones, and used Corynn as part of the catalyst for this arc. The tournament arc arose naturally out of this, with Kirith declaring that House Silvermoon needed to demonstrate its power. Originally it was just going to be a tournament showing how powerful the Silvermoon Elders are, but the opportunity to have Prelinsa in a tournament arc was too good to pass up. We’ll just have to see how powerful the Elders are in the future.
I still needed to think about how I was going to build into the climax. Kirith was very powerful, so I needed a way for House Goldensun to incapacitate her. The answer sort of came naturally to me as I wrote – mages rely on the mana streams, and the mana streams are underground and underwater. The mana streams were also being destroyed in the North Realm, so it was the perfect solution. To get Kirith high off the ground, airplanes ended up being used – a technology not seen before in this setting. This also led to Prelinsa’s capture in an airplane and gaining a revelation from the avatar of the Phoenix, followed by her going super saiyan and trying to save the plane from crashing. This was very fun to write, and I think made for a much more interesting ending for Volume 1.
One thing that I didn’t want to focus on in Volume 1 was romance. In Volume 1, Prelinsa is only fourteen, and also has many other things to worry about. Therefore, romance is not on the table. It can be explored in the future, when Prelinsa is somewhat older.
Something else you may have wondered about is the inconsistency in naming. Werefoxes are pokkits, werewolves are lycans, werecats are ailurans, and wererabbits are just wererabbits. Ailuran has two pronunciations, both of which are canonical. ‘Dragon’ refers to two different unrelated races, Western and Eastern. My naming of locations is also inconsistent, and occasionally very bland, like with Pear Mountain. At first, some of my names were just placeholders, but for several, I decided to intentionally leave them as-is. I really love cool fantasy names, but I wanted to poke a bit of fun at people for sometimes overthinking names, when real life naming is often wildly and horrendously inconsistent. I believe my bad naming adds a bit of life to the world, but I’d love to know what you think.
Anyway, that sums up most of my thoughts on this story. Again, thank you for reading my first properly long work, The Little Phoenix Warrior – Volume 1: The Origin of the Phoenix. It took me a long time to get to this point, and I already have many ideas in mind for Volume 2. The story of Prelinsa isn’t over just yet, so if you liked reading about her, stay tuned.