Origin of Forstai in the Author's Imagination

Forstai, the stories around it, and the characters within, are not new. Some of the details go back three decades, and the oldest details go back around seventy years, well before I was born.
The Lands of Forstai used to be known as the Kingdom of Reklaw. This is hinted at it in the book, indicating a history that came before, which will slowly be revealed. The City of Demeerk, where a decent part of my story "Quest for the Artifact" takes place, was known hundreds of years before as the City of Reklaw.
"Reklaw" is Walker spelled backwards, which is my last name. I am Martin L Walker III. Nice to meet you! I have been using the online handle of "Leetaur" since I started using the internet, back in college, when the web was just coming about. The name Leetaur precedes my use of the Internet by a couple of years, when the first version of this story was born. More about that in another article.
I did not come up with the name Reklaw. That was my father's creation, a kingdom he made up as a boy, back in the 1950's. So this kingdom of Reklaw is one that I inherited from my father, and that I have given to my children as well.
I first became aware of Reklaw in the early 1980's, when I was about ten years old. My parents picked up a new hobby, playing Dungeons & Dragons, and included my sister and I as well. My father drew an elaborate map on hex paper, and our fantasy characters traveled around the map, fighting monsters, and battling the evil Agra Unistra.
In 1993, when I was in college, I started on a story called "Blood Fire". It took place in the world I am now defining on World Anvil, and soon hope to publish my first story in. The world's name is Forstai, and the primary character of that story, whose quest it becomes to defeat a great evil and save the lands, is Leetaur.
A friend of mine, whom I played D&D with in college, told me about a book called "The Sword of Shannara", by Terry Brooks. She was very taken with his books, and got me excited to read them as well. I read several of his books, and one of the terms he used was "Bloodfire". When I found out the name Bloodfire (or Blood Fire) was already used, I decided to change the name of the book I was working on. I changed the name of my story, a couple of times since, and the first book (now in a trilogy) is known as "Quest for the Artifact".
Toward the end of college, in 1997, I drew out the land of Forstai on a hexagonal map. I still have that map, twenty-six years later, and the story I am working on still takes place within its borders! That map has been used with Dungeons & Dragons campaigns as well, including this past summer, when I ran a "one shot" for people on my team in the company I work for, for a team building exercise. So it has gotten a lot of use. I laminated it decades ago, and rolled it up, so it is well-preserved. The only frustrating this about it is that it now wants to stay "rolled up", rather than lying flat, which sometimes causes trouble for when I use it in a campaign (pieces go flying!).
One of these days I will get the map digitized, so that I can share it online.
In the early 2000's, I wrote about 140,000 words of this story. It was very creative, and I had a few friends who were frustrated that I didn't finish it. I got distracted by life, raising a family, working at my career, and for a while I just put it on the back burner.
In 2017, during November, the month of NaNoWriMo, I decided to rewrite the story from scratch. I've written a lot since college, though none of it published, and my skills as a writer are much better now than when I wrote that 140,000 words in the early 2000's. I actually wrote 50,000 words during that November, and about 10,000 words since!
The actual story, at least "Book 1", is pretty close to done, but only as a first draft. The story is still pretty rough, and I discovered that I didn't really like one of the characters. I am currently working my way through, scene by scene, to finish up the story, to improve the troublesome character, and to fill in some gaps where my manuscript say "scene about event such and such here". My goal now is to get Quest for the Artifact published in 2024.
Once the story is actually "finished", then I have to explore the different options for publishing, whether I use Lulu or Smashwords, etc. I also need to go through the full editing process.
The first words I wrote for the story were in 1993. That's 30 years ago! Since the origins of the lands go back to "Reklaw", and that is something that my father created, that goes back into the early 1950's. Seventy years ago!
It is time for Forstai, and Reklaw before it, to come to life.