The Fantasy World of Valcress

I play Dungeons and Dragons. My (ex)wife plays it too. So do my sons. Most of my friends have played it at some time or another and enjoy it. (From here on out, "we" refers to my wife and me.) We like playing it so much, that my (ex)wife was inspired to make a whole fantasy world in which to play. We play using 3rd edition rules and were too cheap to spring for the 3.5 Edition books when they came out. It does not matter as we were making and enjoying stories of high adventure in a fantasy world! To that point, I assert that The Fantasy World of Valcress is our intellectual property and under our implicit copyright as authors. The D&D 3rd Ed. game rules are covered under the Open Game Licence as printed in the rule books. To the best of our knowledge, we have not, and will not willingly, use any copyrighted material from any sources beyond our own imaginations. If we are found to have unwittingly infringed on a copyright, and notified in good faith, we will willingly and expediently change our content to something that does not infringe on someone else's copyright.

To that end, I have Googled the term "Valcress" and found at the top of the search results a musician using that name. We are not associated with this musician in any form whatsoever and do not intend to be confused with her now, or ever. I wish her the best of luck to her and her career. Another result that came up in the Google search, interestingly enough, was an entry my (ex)wife made to a forum (page no longer exists) several years ago regarding the campaign we are playing. This date is the earliest recorded evidence of our claim to The Fantasy World of Valcress though we played in it for a long while before that. There is a bonus photo of my (ex)wife and youngest son on that page too. Otherwise, there are a few hits on people with the last name "Valcress" and some MMO game characters that apparently hit on the name during creation. Essentially, I proclaim that there is no great exclusivity to the use of the name "Valcress" and am going to freely use it as a part of the ongoing name of the fantasy world in which we have played for the past decade or so. One last thing to mention though, in full disclosure, is that my (ex)wife named the world after the Star Trek III character of "Valkris" with a variant spelling. I do not think that is a problem, though. It is more like an homage.

The sub-categories in the Navigation Bar will help you... um... navigate... the different aspects of this game world. Characters, locations, timelines, and major plot points are all explained there. We write short stories and scenes often to be added to this rich world as often as our imaginations serve us. We dream of one day having enough material to publish in a series of books. While watching TV and movies, we fantasize which actors could best play which character roles, should this grow large enough to be noticed by a filmmaker. Now, because my (ex)wife is so intimately involved with the creation of The Fantasy World of Valcress I have to admit that a significant portion (if not the majority) of the writings here are from her mind and hand. I freely share authorship of this topic with her. (No longer, see next entry below.) However, the remainder of this website is mine, MINE, *MINE*! (Muahahahaha!)

-5/14/13-

Much time has passed since the first entry to this section. I've added (ex) before all of the wife words because we are no longer married. It was a civil affair and we hold no malice towards one another. That being said, it is in the final divorce papers that all the marital properties were divided and settled by the two of us and is no longer in dispute. I have that in writing from the county government. I also physically have the storage tote with all the game materials, world maps, character sheets, adventure notes, and... everything regarding The Fantasy World of Valcress. So legally, it's all mine to do with as I please.

I have also written the first book of what I intend to be a series of adventures very loosely based on the family adventures. I'm in the process of rewriting it for the ?? time and am planning on hiring an editor to look over it soon. Should this series become a profitable venture for me, then I expect that the (ex) will try to take part of my earnings from it. To that, I will refer her to the previous paragraph and have had that conversation with her already to that effect. In reality, she's made no effort to write, develop, or publish anything regarding this particular property since our separation all those years ago. So I claim it in it's entirety now. She can talk to me about writing her own stories using the characters if she can be bothered to do so, but for my books, I'm claiming full rights to all recompense for them.

-9/2-21-