Preface and Character Pronunciations

Hello readers! My name is Bud Gaines and I’m the author of Aren Chronicles. I’m one of the original creators of the world Aren when it was originally a roleplay called Last Aren Roleplay, yes, LARP. This world has been a huge part of my writing life for the last 12 years or so, which was about 2010. Having taken this world under my wing, I’ve created side stories that go along with it.

The book you’re reading now is the first one in a series based around; The Quadrants. The Quadrants themselves are just a collection of different biomes and areas pieced together into an island. These locales were originally designed in the RP Version of the story to change the area as we went along through the story. Quadrant 1 was a harsh desert. Quadrant 2 was a lush forest. Quadrant 3 was a cool mountain area. Quadrant 4 was a humid jungle. Quadrant 5 was an unbearable volcano with a lava river. In the center of these sections of lands sat another piece known as; The Palace Area. There is another island close by to the Quadrants but I haven’t really decided what to do with it just yet.

There are two other stories under the Aren Chronicles umbrella are; Allfather’s Bastions and Spellbound. Allfather’s Bastion is a mix of Norse (to an extent) and straight up fantasy. Spellbound is pure magical fantasy with the inspiration from Final Fantasy 3’s job system, it was just so unique. I’m working on changing that to an extent.

I hope you will enjoy this book series as it comes. I’ve worked on it for years and I can’t wait to share it with you all. Thank you for reading and showing interest in this story at all. I appreciate it so very much.

In the interest of helping people read this book and the future of the series I will be including a character pronunciation section to help their names be understood. I know everyone has a different way of saying things and there are many different dialects and accents. We all learn differently and I wanted everyone to have the character names as I say them. I really hope it helps everyone in the long run while reading this series.

UPDATE: This is the 2023 version of the book. I’ve gone through and re-edited things. I added a few sections to separate things better so it doesn’t feel like you have to read 30 pages at once to finish a section. I hope that helps it flow better.