Roses of the Dawn - plot line outline

It's been ages since I've written anything it seems. I've got to get back into the habit of writing something, ANYTHING when I get a few minutes. Without practice, I'm never going to get better at telling the stories that pop into my head. Well, here are some ideas for my premire novel ( I hope someday).

The kids are in the small town. I'll give basic information about them, they've known each other all of their lives. They're kind of the graduating class of the town, just on the verge of obtaining adulthood status. But first, they must go on their journeymanship. This exposes them to life outside of their hometown, it allows them to visit anywhere they desire to go, if they wish to spend the time getting there. This generally allows the teens to broaden the gene pool per se of the town's population, because the kids quite often find their mates while out on this journey. Some of the famlies in town have made quite a show of their kids journey, by buying them new horses, new clothes, arranging the child to go to exotic locales, or furnishing everything (most of the time without the rest of the town's knowledge) and not forcing the child to live in "the real world" for a while. But these kids are generally middle class. Some of their parents are marginally better off than others, but it doesn't really matter. They are going out on their own, and they are going to further their knowledge of their trades and become better members of the community upon their return.

They head off, but the journey isn't quite as smooth as they first expect. The town that they reside in first is an artist's colony of sorts and the town starts to get hit with seemingly random attacks. The attackers steal food and provisions mostly, but they also make off with any precious metals and gemstones they can get as well. It's really hit the town hard, but their few gaurds simply are not enough to protect the town. They reach out to the younger residents and plead for assistance. They will be trained in the basics of defense, they just have to basically help with gaurd duty so that the local guards can get some rest. Well, at this point, the 4 that have just arrived are the most promising candidates out of the elidgeable candidates for guard duty. Most of the colony's residents are either elderly, or infirm, or simply whimpy. The group sees that this is just simply one of the responsibilities of being part of the community, so they accept the training. They aren't alone by any means, but compared to the rest, they are probably promoted thru the ranks fairly quickly.

The group is asked to go out on a scouting mission, to see if they can find more about what is going on and what the raiders are truely after. The group sets off. With the help of the ranger's tracking abilities, they find a cold but clear trail. They trek into the wilderness into parts rarely entered by the humans anyway. They stumble across a large encampment of a varitey of monsters. They learn a little, but mainly because of stupidity, they are caught and a fight ensues. They manage somehow to come out alive, and they return with dire news. The group they found was but a small part of the army that was forming in the mountains.

Now, here's one of the spots where I'm stuck. What happens next? Do they go back and dare try to get more information? Do they go tell the local lord? Do they go to the king? Do they try to raise an army of locals to defend the village? What do they do, and how do they do it? I've been thinking about possibly using a variation of something that the game group I used to be with did. They came across a very large village of gobins, lead by hobgoblins. The encampment was in a seculeded valley with outposts about 15 minutes travel along the road, outside of the larger inner encampment. We manage to lure some of the gobbies away from one of the outposts, and when out of sight, the group took them out. Then, we sneaked up on the remaining gobbies, and made em look like porcupines. That group was almost 100% elven, and had a several of the nature loving classes in the group. Later, we combined some sneaky manuevers to set fire to a main command hut in the center of the larger compound, and was able to create alot of chaos, and slaughtered MANY foes, and scared a good many of the others away with the vast array of elven archers and mages (there were only 6 of us, but between spells, and other things, we about doubled our numbers within sight of the camp).

Well, I'm getting tired. I'll write more about this after I've had a chance to think about the possibilites some more. Oh, and one last thing I want to mention. I finally bought a domain for a website! Now, I've just got to build the site and publish it once I pay for the site hosting that is. LOL. Maybe by the time someone else reads this, I might actually have something up, so what the hey... the site name is www.carolinadragon.com . I'm going to put some of my game world notes on there, as well as some of my drawings, thoughts and writings about D&D stuff. I'm basically going to have that site as a point of reference for all of my D&D related writings, game ideas, and maybe even published adventures? I don't know... we shall see. I have alot of work to do. One of which, is if I plan on even thinking of writing for WoTC, I'll need to get the 4.0 books. I looked on Amazon, and the set starts at about 65 for the pre-order. SO... do I write for what I know? or for what is popular? I'd kind of like to continue writing for the die hards that like 3.0 like my group, but if so, chances of actually getting the modules or story published are small, but whatever. I would like to expand my knowledge of 4.0 and maybe eventually get paid for doing something I like. Wouldn't that be fun?