Nightshine Islands - A Fantasy Podcast

About the Podcast.

At some time in summer of 2007, I had been asked to run a fantasy/adventure tabletop game by my wife and some of our online friends. One wanted aquatic adventures. Others chimed in with different suggestions for rule books to use. Then there has been my own love of simply writing – music, fiction, new worlds, new game settings.

At this time I was already preparing to start a humorous podcast involving a mashup of character archetypes from both tabletop gaming and fantasy fiction. One of the four protagonists had an eyepatch and a mysterious past. He juggled for a living.

Then everything went on hold for six months while I dedicated myself to another project. The other people involved were amazing, and my creative efforts were battered, honed, and appreciated with them. When my role in that project ended, I took an inventory of the personal efforts that were waiting.

At first, I began writing the humorous podcast again. I had a lot of plans regarding the characters – they would find themselves, they would love, and they would have completely ridiculous adventures. Then I began outlining smaller sub-stories for them which were thoughtful, serious, and too drastic of a break from the dungeon-crawling good times that story was meant to be.

I needed to write. I needed to keep writing. This time around, one-eyed jugglers were no longer as captivating.

One of the friends asked again if I would consider running a tabletop game. In going over my notes for that setting, I began to see all kinds of possibilities. In specifying the cultures of each island, I was writing the outlines of new characters.

The Godsky Islands was the name of the setting. For reasons both my own and out of respect for most religion, I did not wish to register a domain or new podcast of that name, however. The name would have been fine for tabletop gaming among a few friends, but this was going out into the world at large. A friend told me, “You’ll think of something brilliant.” Some time later I reasoned that shiny things are brilliant. So the islands that looked like stars and planets became the Nightshine islands.

From time to time they will still be known also as the God Sky islands. This is inevitable, and will continue to be intentionally written into the story.