When Legonium first began, I had no idea where the story would go. I imagined it more like a Days of Our Lives soap opera with one random event following another. The focus was to be more on the language than the story, describing the simplest of actions with clear illustrations to help the reader. Go back to episode one and you will see what I mean - the bulk of the story is Marcellus walking past the bank and returning home to paint. My first draft of that episode ended with Marcellus again walking in the street. Where was he going? That was the big cliff-hanger. It seemed boring to me, so instead I put a minifigure dressed in black and wearing a mask on the bank’s roof. I had no idea who she was - probably a bank robber…
Over the months that character became Jessica, and the part she would play in the story became clearer to me. It didn’t happen all at once, however. First she had no greater motivation than to steal, although she chose to steal from thieves. Then she became something of a vigilante - fighting crime by leaping across roof tops. Afterwards she was the nemesis of that sailor, who turned out to be some sort of crime lord. The story finally fell into place when I realised that the sailor was a collector and that he and Jessica were ex-associates. That they had had a falling out. And that that falling out was the result of a difference in philosophy.
Today’s slide is the genesis of Legonium. The entire story can be traced back to this one moment; the moment where Jessica wants to share a discovery with the world, and Hadrianus wants to keep it hidden, for no better reason than enjoying that he has it to himself.
He, however, was not willing to share this book with others. He wanted rather to hide the book in his bookcase. We fell into a great quarrel and I denied myself to be going to help him (ie: I said that I would not help him).