This news post should have gone up on Father's Day. Sorry it’s late.
In my son Noah’s room there is a little door about four feet high. It leads into a tiny room with a sloped ceiling that was probably just storage space but at some point it got finished and carpeted. When the room belonged to my son Gabe it was called the “Gabe sized room” but he got bigger and eventually Noah got that bedroom. Now it’s the “Noah sized room” but eventually he’ll get too big for it too and I’m not sure what we’ll call it at that point. It’s a strange little door and so I’ve been checking it for monsters for about six years now. Last week I was checking it for the billionth time as Noah stood out in the hallway. “I’ll wait for you back here Dad” he told me as he peeked around the door. I made a show of opening the door slowly and looked suspiciously into the dark. As I did, I wondered to myself
what if I see something?
Thankfully the room passed monster inspection and Noah got to sleep. I kept thinking about it though and the next day I brought it up to Tycho. “What if there was stuff in there, but only Dad’s could see it?” I asked. I watched him stop typing and he just stared out the window. I had him.
We talked a bit about it and as we did I drew this sketch. We talked about our Dad’s and I related a story to him that I had not thought about it a long time.
I was about 10 years old and snooping around for Christmas presents in my parents room. I looked under the bed and saw a thick wooden dowel. It was about 3 feet long and probably three inches in diameter. I couldn’t figure out why it was there and then it clicked. I will never forget that moment. It was there so that if someone broke in to our house, my Dad could fight them. It was my Dad’s job to protect our home from monsters.
Once Tycho had the sketch it didn’t take long for him to start writing this story. I had the text for this page in my inbox by the end of the day. At that point it was just a matter of drawing it. My goal was to get it done for last Friday but as I worked on it, I realized I was rushing and the project was too important to me to do that. So I took a couple extra days and did it right. I’m really proud of the finished page and excited to learn more about this world. We’re focusing on Dad’s specifically but honestly the role of a home’s monster hunter can fall to anyone really. I kinda want to meet that big sister.
So in the world of Nightlight, the Monsters are real. They hide under beds and lurk inside closets. They wait in the odd shaped rooms and dark corners of your house. Dad’s must defend their homes from these beasts and they have to do it without letting the rest of the family know. That’s the “elevator pitch” I suppose. Let us know what you think of the world and if it’s something you’d like to see more of.
-Gabe out
