Author's Note disclaimer: i have no affiliation with wizards of the coast (other than my submission for the fantasy setting search) or hasbro, ed greenwood, r. a. salvatore, or any of the other various forgotten realms authors. i don't own, in any way, dungeons and dragons or any of its various aspects, including the forgotten realms. if i did, why would this be on ff.n and not in a book? This is long, boring, and essentially pointless. Feel free to skip it. "Heroes" is a LONG story. I'm not quite finished with it, but Book 1 alone is 47 pages in (mostly) 12-pt font and 1-inch margins-the equivalent of over 100 pages in standard paperback form. Book 2 is just a little shorter. I'm planning on having 4 books.this is a colossal writing project, easily the biggest I've ever done (Book 1 is only 8 full-size pages shorter than my longest story, Assassins, which I took down from this site due to a large number of people who didn't like it {myself included}). My overall plan for this story is to introduce three main characters (one per each of the first books), plus several supporting characters. In the last book, they will meet up to fight a common enemy. I've heard that the various Star Wars "Tales Of." books do a similar thing, though I've never read any. For the first book, I got a LOT of good ideas from RA Salvatore, wonderful man that he is. Especially the battle choreography as I've never even held a scimitar (or, really, any real sword), let alone fought with them. Salvatore did some really great things in his fights with Drizzt, which I borrowed some elements from. With Aedia (book 2), I was moving onto both familiar and unfamiliar territory. Being a red-black belt in taekwondo helped with my understanding of the fights. Although I've never fought with swords, I have done a lot of martial arts sparring, both contact and not. I don't really know much about medieval armor, though, so when she fought armored people, it was kind of hard. I tried to use as few of these encounters as I could. It was harder, though, as well. I had to shift into a completely different mentality-elven, as I've never done a character that wasn't raised as a human, and female, as I'm a guy. I hope I've done a decent job with that. Fae is a weird character, and though I'm having fun with him, I expect his book to be shorter than the others. The last book, where they all meet up, though, I have a lot of cool ideas for. Since this is such a massive project, you can clearly see my writing style changing (at least, I can.)-for the better, I hope. I started this way back in.probably March 2002. Now, in September, I've gotten a little over halfway through. But I was this far in early July, and do to a series of problems I haven't been able to write since then, till now. And I won't be able to write much now. There's one person who's helped me a lot throughout this project. She has like a million names, but her real name is Stardust and her penname is Elven Shadow Goddess now-her profile page is http://www.fanfiction.net/profile.php?userid=150890. She made Shadow and a few minor characters throughout Book 2, and is really as much of an author in Book 3 than I am-she made Roxy, Draque, and Skye, three of the four main good guys. Wow. That was long. Well, I hope you like it. If you have any questions or comments, either review (PLEASE REVIEW) and/or email me at dougal@math.sunysb.edu. Thanks, and I hope you like it. H e r o e s