Questlines: The Pilgrimage of Linh

The past few days I've been working on the so-called "Questlines" section of my story. I named them like that because of the existing rpg-project that can implement them very well. "Questlines" is the bundle of stories running simultaneously with the main story. The most important reason I made this bundle was to flesh out the worlds of my novel. It's highly unlikely for the main hero to be present in all the major events of his time, but nevertheless they can have their impact on his journey. The hero hears of the other questlines occurring, may see parts of them, but is not the main player in them. They're not sideplots in that they are not resolved or sometimes only mentioned or hinted to once.

Famous examples of authors who did this are mostly found in the fantasy literature. Tolkien (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) and Martin (A song of Ice and Fire). Especially in the case of Tolkien who is famous for his stacks of notes and border writings. He speaks of lands that are barely treated in his novels, but those who are familiar with his Legendarium (all the gathered work of Tolkien) will know there's a lot more to it than his major novels.

The entirety of Middle-Earth of which maybe a small part is treated in detail

An example of this in my own Questlines bundle is the 'pilgrimage of Linh' of the nomads on the smaller continent, looking for their sacred origin. They may seem oblivious to the greater turmoil in their world, but as a people they have different priorities. To them it doesn't matter if the world is destroyed, it is just something that happens. These nomads have a great relativity over them, a certain peace that is running out in the rest of the world. It frustrates the people who do think it's important to no end, but the nomads aren't moved by that. In my novel, these frustrations are dealt with, but not the entire sacred journey and the things that are dealt with on the way there. (though I might make a short-story from it some time)

As such I do want to show that I place a great deal of care into building up the background of my novel and I do hope other writers will do the same, because I always find it nice to find a sizeable background in the stories I read and write. Without compromising the main story with redundant information of course.