Okay, so some might ask just where i get my ideas for some of this stuff. After all, Maldene is quite the complex and detailed world, with about as much variety as an actual world. Surely I must have some inspiration from a few things, right? Well of course. So consider this article as just a very small peak into the feared depths of my mind.

Let me start by saying that in my life I have read a LOT of SF and fantasy books, and have always been a big fan of such movies as well. I also happen to have a really good memory, so when I’m trying to think of what might be good for handling a scene or need an idea for something, I will nearly instantly recall some obscure scene from an almost as obscure movie that will fill the bill and use it. What that means is, that if you’ve happened to have read about the same hundred books and seen the same 30 or so movies that have fed into this, then you might have a chance of spotting everything.

For instance, Sinbad and The Eye Of The Tiger has a little something towards the end of that film that was a major inspiration for the look of a significant… device… that first appears in Maldene II: Mysteries of Olde. There are some influences from Dune, the Foundation series, an episode of Space: 1999, the Bermuda Triangle, a commercial on salad dressing, Narnia, Greek mythology, and a whole lot more. There is even one bit that is inspired by the old Prince Valiant comic strip.

How so, you ask? Well, think back and recall that the good prince had a pair of twin daughters, both blond. Well, in Maldene, amongst his 14 kids, the King has a set of triplet girls withy straw-colored hair. Inspired, but not exact; my triplets can be a bit of a handful when it comes to young men.

The trick is to take the elements that inspire me, twist them to my own designs, add in a whole lot of my own random ideas, then blend the whole into a mixture that is uniquely Maldene. So as you read the successive books of Maldene, see how many points of influence that you can spot. I bet you don’t find them all.