Building My Portfolio: Writing Quests

While I published the first version of my portfolio last year, I continued to add to my body of work over time. The most recent addition was a new challenge for me — quests!

In particular, I wanted to write a quest that related to an interest of mine: mythology. At the time, I was heavily inspired by the tale of Persephone and Hades, and I wanted to incorporate similar elements from this myth into my own rendition of a quest — an introductory quest, to be exact.

I’m going to talk a bit about the inspiration before diving into certain challenges or parts I had particular fun with. If you’re interested in reading through the quest first, you can find it here. It’s titled “Daughter of the Otherworld”.

How Inspiration Diverged

To provide some background, Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, the Goddess of the Harvest and Agriculture. She was abducted by Hades, the King of the Underworld, and was forced to stay there despite her mother’s wishes. Witnessing the droughts caused by Demeter’s tears, Zeus intervened and instructed Hades to return Persephone to the surface. Hades agreed, but not without giving Persephone a pomegranate seed that bound her to the underground. From then on, Persephone was only allowed to return to the surface for half the year. The tale of Persephone was used to…