The Creation of a Fantasy
		For as long as I have been able to read, I have had the desire to write. The power of the written word to take your most intricate thoughts, and put them on a page outside your own mind allured me from the beginning. I delighted when I discovered my ability to do this, and it has not diminished over the years. However, one form of this art has always called to me more than the others. It is not that I particularly excel in this form, but rather, it is the great joy that comes with the execution that drives me. This is the type of writing known as fantasy, loved by the multitudes, and as a result one of the most popular forms of writing. But why is it so wondrous? What it is about this form that is so universally appealing? I believe that fantasy is appreciated for a reason that transcends all others, and the reason is simply that it is undefined. The fact that fantasy has no defined borders makes it far more usable than any other medium of writing. Anybody can write anything about whatever they wish, and there are no limits outside of themselves to hinder their creative art. In result of this, people that read such work are drawn into worlds where they no longer have to deal with reality. Such cares that are piled on them are temporarily forgotten in the midst of a colossal battle of the gods, or the daily troubles of an alien, far away. Of course, when a desire to write and a love for fantasy come together, the end result must be a work of that one’s own. Such is the case with me. Many an hour has been spent in the slow creation of my own world to escape in. A place where beings wiser, and better than I, can conquer the evil around them, as should happen in all such tales. The creation of that land started about four years ago with a conversation involving my brother and I. The discussion was about horses, and more specifically how they actually must be more than just dumb animals. They can sense ones feelings as well as they can detect danger, and they have an unwavering loyalty to their masters. Such qualities gave us the notion that they really must be sentient beings that just pretend to be animal like, or perhaps, they have forgotten their heritage and only slowly over time become as animals. The latter position was decided upon, and from that nonsense came the bigger world that we created, all about those lost horses, unable to return to all that they could be. Now, before the world that we created is further explained, it is important to admit that not many ideas are without a taint on their originality. Any idea that one creates is influenced by other works, or lives that he or she admires. Such others have formed what you are, and therefore their own style or ideas are traceable in your own work. For my brother and I, the greatest influences were of J. R. Tolkien, George Lucas, and Gene Roddenbery. Therefore, the world that we created had influences from them. Battles, space age technology, good versus evil, and the idea of providence are all evident, taken from the work that we admire and adapted to our own little world. This world is the basis in which much of the story takes place, and it was where the story actually started, (this is not to be confused with the starting point of our idea, with the horses on earth.) It is a planet called Tithor, far off in the galaxy, where the ruling beings are not humanoids, but equestrian. The horses evolution was comparable to humans in where they developed technology, grew in population, and eventually conquered the entirety of the planet as their own. As they developed, they devised means of creating artificial opposable thumbs, and eventually even began to walk upright. In this way they became technologically advanced and mastered space flight, long before humans even existed. However the story of the Tithorians, (their name for themselves), is far different than that of humans. The main difference is that the Tithorians were always one group. One singular civilization that lived for thousands of years. No wars, not even civil wars, were fought among them for the first three thousand years of their existence. Much of this harmony was due to their reverence for the environment around them, which was mostly lush jungle due to the fact that the singular continent on the planet Tithor was centred around the equator, keeping all but the middle, which was a desert, tropical. This sensitivity to the environment causes the Tithorians to be peaceful in nature, and to avoid rampant industrialization. As they become more advanced, their technology is tied into harmony with nature. Eventually, the Tithorians raised hovering structures in their air called skybays, which were the self- sustaining residences of their people. It was actually forbidden to go down to the planet itself in the years following the raising of the skybays. However, although done with good intentions, the determinedness to protect the environment was the factor that caused the first civil war and eventually end the three thousand years of peace. At this time in their history skybays were not to be built for a near six hundred years. Technology was still primitive. But at this time there was a section of the population which disagreed with the views that the environment should be preserved as it was. They claimed that it was there for the use of the Tithorians, and that it should be used to further their growth as a people. Of course, they were turned away and rebuked. Over time this population grew and split off from the main Tithorian civilization. This special section was called the Ssorian sect. They completely moved off from the Tithorian settlements and settled in the far West. Later on in history the Ssorians had grown to the point where they judged they had enough power to assault the Tithorians. They tried to do so, but being out of contact for nearly two hundred years, they did not realize the Tithorians had developed defenses using strange crystals dug from the earth. They had refined these crystals so that they captured the energy from the sun, and transferred it to a great shield that encompased the entirety of the eastern city of Mextar, where all the Tithorians had fled. Besides the shield, the crystals were also able to fire beams of energy at targets if one had sufficient mental powers to direct them over distances. In this way the Ssorian army was caught unawares and almost completely destroyed.